They call it mutilation. They call it poisoning. They stand in state capitols, church pulpits, schools, and city council meetings, to shout about protecting children from doctors and teachers who want to cut them, drug them, and destroy them.
But the data tells a different story. And the data does not care about their shitty antics.
The accusation is that gender-affirming care harms children. The reality is that denying it kills them.
A study published in JAMA found that transgender and nonbinary youth who received gender-affirming medical interventions had significantly lower odds of depression and suicidality over twelve months.1 Those who had access to puberty blockers or hormones were 60 percent less likely to experience moderate to severe depression and 73 percent less likely to contemplate self-harm or suicide.2 This is not ideology. This is survival.
Transgender and nonbinary youth experience anxiety and depression at nearly ten times the rate of their peers.3 But children who have socially transitioned, who are supported in their identity, show similar levels of self-worth and depression as their cisgender classmates.3 The difference is not the child. The difference is whether the adults around them choose cruelty or care.
The regret rate for gender-affirming surgery is less than one percent.3 For context, the regret rate for knee replacement surgery is estimated at around 20 percent. But no one is passing laws to ban knee replacements. No one is standing in a legislature screaming about the mutilation of joints. The selective outrage is not about protecting children. It is about erasing the people who refuse to conform.
And the outrage is built on a lie. The claim that children are being put on puberty blockers at alarming rates is false. A study published in JAMA Pediatrics analyzed private insurance claims from 2018 to 2022 representing over 5 million patients ages 8 to 17. The findings were definitive: fewer than 1,000 adolescents with a gender-related diagnosis received puberty blockers during that entire five-year period.4,5 That is approximately 0.017 percent of all youth in the database.6 An average of only four youths per day initiated puberty blockers across the entire United States during the study period.6 Even among transgender and gender-diverse youth who had a diagnosis, only 5 percent were prescribed puberty blockers.7 The vast majority of transgender youth receive no medical intervention at all.
Major medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association, have all published policy statements and guidelines affirming that this care is evidence-based and medically necessary.2,8 These are not activist organizations. They are the institutions that define the standard of care in the United States. When politicians with no medical training override the consensus of every major medical body, they are not practicing medicine. They are practicing control.
The Endocrine Society, Pediatric Endocrine Society, and United States Professional Association for Transgender Health have explicitly stated that legislative efforts to ban this care “lack scientific merit and in some cases misinterpret or distort available data.”8 The bills are based on information that is, in the words of one pediatrician who helped write the guidelines on gender-affirming care, “completely wrong.”2
Opponents claim that being transgender is a trend, a social contagion spread by peers or social media. This is a lie. Gender diversity has existed in every culture throughout human history. The increase in visibility is not evidence of contagion. It is evidence that people finally feel safe enough to say who they are. The research does not support the social contagion hypothesis.9 It supports the opposite: when acceptance increases, people come out. When acceptance decreases, they hide, they suffer, and they die.
Being transgender is not a mental illness. It is no longer classified as such by the medical establishment. It is an example of human diversity.8 The basic premise of gender-affirming care is that every individual is entitled to live in the gender that is most authentic to them.8 This is not radical. This is not mutilation. This is the simple recognition that a child knows who they are, and that the role of medicine is to help them live as that person, not to force them into a shape that does not fit.
What they call poisoning is the opposite. A study comparing youth who initiated hormone therapy in early puberty with those who did so later found that the early group reported significantly lower levels of depression and anxiety.10 The longer a child is forced to endure a puberty that feels like a betrayal of their own body, the worse the outcomes. Delay is not neutral. Delay is harm.
Transgender individuals who received puberty suppression as adolescents had much lower rates of suicidal ideation over their lifetime compared to those who wanted the treatment but could not get it.3 The bans do not protect children. They strip away the very interventions that keep children alive.
And here is the number they do not want you to think about. Transgender people make up approximately one to two percent of the population.11 In a country of over 330 million people, that is millions of human beings. Millions of people who wake up every day in a society that debates their right to exist. Millions of people who are used as punching bags by politicians who have no solutions for the actual problems facing this country. These bans are not about protecting children. They are about fueling a moral panic to score political points. The cruelty is the point. The power is the goal.
The argument against care often centers on the idea that these decisions are irreversible. But the silence on the other side is deafening. A child forced through the wrong puberty experiences changes that cannot be fully undone. The deepening of the voice, the growth of facial hair, the development of breasts, the restructuring of the body. These are not reversible. When you deny care, you are not pausing the clock. You are actively choosing a path for that child. You are forcing them to undergo a permanent transformation that will mark them for the rest of their lives.
The narrative of mutilation is a lie. It is a lie designed to sound reasonable to people who have never met a transgender child, who have never watched a teenager come alive after years of darkness because finally, finally, someone listened. It is a lie designed to make cruelty sound like concern.
What these children are being given is not poison. It is the room to be themselves.12 It is the chance to look in the mirror and recognize the face staring back. It is the opportunity to grow up.
The real mutilation is the one inflicted by a society that tells a child their identity is a disease, their existence is a sin, their body is a problem to be controlled. The real poisoning is the message that they are broken, that they must hide, that they must suffer in silence so that the adults around them can remain comfortable.
The science is clear. The care works.13,14 The children who receive it survive, and more than that, they thrive. The question is not whether we should provide gender-affirming care. The question is why anyone would fight so hard to take it away, and what they gain from the suffering of children.
Citations:
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11045042/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/35212746/
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/what-the-science-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-kids-really-shows/
- https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/01/06/nx-s1-5247724/transgender-teens-gender-affirming-care-hormones-jama
- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/fewer-than-0-1-percent-of-u-s-adolescents-receive-gender-affirming-medications-report-finds
- https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/gender-affirming-medications-rarely-prescribed-to-u-s-adolescents/
- https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/01/gender-affirming-care-is-rare-study-says/
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0005789424000340
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12294553/
- https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(24)00439-7/fulltext
- https://www.srcd.org/research/gender-affirming-policies-support-transgender-and-gender-diverse-youths-health
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK610242/
- https://www.nm.org/healthbeat/healthy-tips/emotional-health/Studies-Suggest-Gender-Affirming-Care-Supports-Mental-Health-Young-People
- https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-08/gender-affirming-care-young-people.pdf
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Stop using the term “gender”, when what you really mean is sex (in regard to medical interventions).
Sex change, or a mimic thereof is what you’re referring to. Yes, anyone can assume some characteristics of the opposite sex via medication and surgery. Although it takes more “work” on some people, than it does for others.
Also, one would also have to be truly gullible to automatically accept these statistics as unbiased.
Have some honesty regarding the issue, at least. Starting with “gender” vs. “sex”.
You are actively choosing a path for that child. You are forcing them to undergo a permanent transformation that will mark them for the rest of their lives.
“You” (meaning parents, for example), are not forcing the transformation. The kids themselves contain the blueprint for transformation from the moment they’re conceived – as does every other mammal.
What you’re advocating for is a medical-based ALTERATION of that path, based on a reported feeling from a minor.
Now, are there people who are permanently happier as a result of that alteration – for whatever reason? Yes, it would seem that some are (but time will tell).
I would imagine that some parents (who would be inclined to “honor” their kids feelings) are literally praying that they don’t hear from their kid one day that they were born in the wrong body. Parents in general are generally wiser than their minor kids in regard to long-term impacts of decisions.
“Also, one would also have to be truly gullible to automatically accept these statistics as unbiased.”
And yet so many people automatically accept the statistics of the Beth Bourne and anti-trans crowd as “unbiased.”
It’s amazing to me how many people willingly take the hateful position instead of the position coming from generosity and compassion when it comes to these young people.
I guess hatred is in the eye of the beholder.
I can see some of it in this article, including comments implying that parents are sentencing their own kids to death, if they don’t acquiesce. What a horrible message.
And then there’s the one stating that the right to exist is being denied.
These type of comments generate hatred toward those promoting it.
In general, no one cares about kids more than their own parents do. If not for parents, the kids themselves would indeed not exist.
Ron, you use the word acquiesce, but I think a much more appropriate word is empathize. When I look at the motivation behind some of the people who are in the allies of Beth Bourne group what I see is that they don’t have any empathy for their children who are feeling gender dysphoria. It would be better if they walked in the shoes of their children, as opposed to imposing their own sensibilities on those children.
A parent who fails to show empathy for the feelings of their trans child will frequently, if not always end up in the same situation that Beth finds herself in where the child ends up rejecting the parent who cannot find it in their heart to empathize.
Well said Matt. And that’s at the heart of what went wrong this week in Winters, she went to a protest that had nothing to do with her issue, attempted to raise her issue, and failed to empathize with the students whose lives have been disrupted by the Trump administration immigration policies.
I understand the point, but it seems to me that Beth and those who share her concerns are primarily going after the institutions that they believe are pushing an “agenda”.
I’ve seen some evidence of this myself in regard to a hospital in another state. A video showed an administrator speaking to medical staff – noting the money that can be made regarding this issue (and that those who have any objections might want to seek employment elsewhere).
I can probably find that video again, if needed. Matt Walsh highlighted it some time ago, and I believe it resulted in some changes in that state.
I don’t believe schools are actually pushing this, as much as they are trying to create a “welcoming/accommodating” environment. So in that sense, I suspect that Beth is not correct.
Of course, there’s also the issue with sports/bathrooms, but I personally view that as a secondary issue for the most part.
Then again, it seems to me that a lot of the “local” concern started with a librarian who tried to ban the use of the word “men”. This is something I would actually be willing to show up for to protest in person, had they not backed down.
Ron, I suspect … but do not know … that the motivations behind “those who share their concerns” are much more political than Beth’s are. Most of them … but not all of them … do not have the personal history with gender dysphoria that Beth has. So I believe those people “who share their concerns” are indeed going after institutions … the “Forest” … while Beth appears to be going after the trees.
Beth apparently believes that the “trees” are already infected by the institutions.
I don’t doubt her underlying motivation, which apparently started in regard to her own kid (attending Davis schools). But I think she’s mistaken, regarding active “indoctrination” at schools. Or, perhaps she doesn’t think the issue is the business of schools at all (which I’d tend to agree with).
I have never known public schools to be particularly “safe” spaces in the first place. Bullying and racism are rampant in some districts (probably not in Davis). But the racism I’m referring to was directed against white people (and perhaps Asians). I experienced it, and witnessed it as well.
It’s a flat-out contradiction to on one hand rail
against the system, including the profit-based medical system emanating from America’s hyper capitalistic model, and on the other cite numerous “studies“ by the same greed-based medical system for “gender affirming care..”
European countries are starting to take a much less ideological and more cautious psychosocial approach, rather than assuming that 10 or 11-year-olds, who are so susceptible to social pressures in one direction or another, are sufficiently self-knowing to make such life determinative medicalchoices.
Martin, what do you think the number of 10 or 11 year olds is who have had the mastectomies Beth is railing about? Or even contemplated having?
Further, the typical 10 or 11 year old girl hasn’t even had her first period. The University of California, San Francisco Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics notes that in the 1890s, most girls didn’t menstruate until around 17. By the 1950s, that age dropped to about 12, largely due to improved nutrition and health.
You have exhibited a zealous tendency toward “parental” behavior in your past articles and comments. Your comment above continues that pattern.
I fully agree with the great points that Martin LeFevre made above.
Thank you for your common sense.
Keith, the problem with Matin’s common sense is that it fails to walk in the shoes of the 10 to 11 year old. Since Martin has said I have misread what he has said, here is what I have heard him say … that in the interests of “psychosocial” principles, a parent should tell their child “my feelings and thoughts are right and your thoughts and feelings are wrong because I am a self-knowing adult and you an insufficiently not self-knowing child.”
My misreading of Martin’s comment may have been because he liked to use jargon terms, and I had never heard the term “psychosocial” before reading his comment. So I looked it up on Google, which says, Psychosocial refers to the dynamic interaction between an individual’s psychological processes (thoughts, emotions, behavior) and their social environment (relationships, culture, societal structures). It is used in health to describe how social factors impact mental/physical health and in developmental psychology to explain life-stage growth.”
I’m not sure how a parent showing empathy for their child’s gender dysphoria is somehow contrary to psychosocial principles. For me, gender dysphoria is a textbook manifestation of thoughts, emotions, and behavior in the context of relationships, culture, and societal structures.
To draw a parallel, when I first encountered you here on the Vanguard in order to try and better understand the thoughts and emotions you were sharing I made a conscious effort to walk in your shoes … listening for the signals you were sending through your words and actions (the way you shared those words here on the Vanguard) about how you felt about relationships, culture, and societal structures. We certainly didn’t have mutual agreement about many of the topics at hand, but I’m pretty sure you felt I respected your right as an individual to have the thoughts and emotions you were sharing.
With that as a baseline, what is it about a child that makes their thoughts and emotions invalid and subject to an adult veto? Is there something about a child that makes them less than an individual?
Another misreading of what I said Matt, plus a projection of your own pompous, parental attitudes and utter lack of self -reflection. Is your obtuseness deliberate?
No Martin, my obtuseness isn’t deliberate. Please see my reply to Keith, which I repeat here in its entirety by proxy.