Tom Ultican, retired teacher of advanced mathematics and physics, insisted that the war on trans athletes should stop. In his view, the widely publicized debate about letting them participate on high school and college teams is a bogus issue.
He writes:
With our lying President, we don’t know if he is actually a homophobe or just plays one on TV. His Department of Education recently reported finding San Jose State University violated Title IX regarding a transgender volleyball player. The transgender player, Blaire Fleming, was on the San José State roster for three seasons after transferring from Coastal Carolina. Her status as transgender apparently became known when Southern Utah forfeited its match against San Jose State in September, 2024. It was Flemming’s third year on the team.
Shortly after this came to light, San Jose State co-captain Brooke Slusser and two former Spartans were incensed by the new knowledge about Fleming and sued the Mountain West Conference over its policies they claim muzzled them. While Slusser was the central figure among the three players that were outraged, it is very likely that a lot of that outrage was fueled by Brooke’s Christian Nationalist mother, Kim Slusser.
A dive into Kim’s Facebook page, shows that she is much more focused on being a mom supporting her kids than she is politics. However, she did recently post to Facebook “Let’s go Leigh Wambsganss for Texas Senate.” Leigh is the wife of a former Southlake mayor, founder of Southlake Family PAC and Leader of a Patriots Mobil PAC designed to take over public schools. Mike Hixenbaugh quoted Wambsganss in his book They Came for the Schools:
“… Leigh Wambsganas … said there was no hope of changing the minds of any Black Lives Matter activists. ‘Sadly, they need to die.’” (Pages 108 and179)
Besides politically supporting crazed right-wing religious zealots, Kim Slusser also posted a graphic encouraging people to listen to the Megyn Kelly show.
A Post in Kim Slusser’s Facebook
The President’s attack on transgender people is fueled by bigoted ideology.
Transgender Reality
A 2022 study by the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute identified of the 1.3 million adults who identify as transgender, 38.5% (515,200) are transgender women, 35.9% (480,000) are transgender men, and 25.6% (341,800) reported they are gender nonconforming. The LGBTQIA WIKI defines gender nonconforming:
“Gender non-conforming is a term describing people who do not follow gender stereotypes and differ from their society’s conventional binary expectations of masculine men and feminine women. Gender non-conformity can encompass many things, such as gender expression, gender roles, or another aspect of gender. It is typically apparent in people whose gender identity is a binary gender, whether they are cisgender or transgender; for instance, a feminine trans man and a feminine cis man are both non-conforming with expectations of masculinity.”
From the 2022 study cited above about 700,000 transgender people are between 13 and 24. Extrapolating from these numbers, I would expect less than 400,000 of them to be transgender women. It is a small but not insignificant number of people considering that there are about 350 million people in America.
The bottom line is that a small subset of human beings is born with gender-dysphoria, a mismatch between gender identity and their own personal sense of gender. Scientific American reported almost all major American medical groups have “policy statements and guidelines on how to provide age-appropriate gender-affirming care”and “find such care to be evidence-based and medically necessary.”
Columbia University Psychiatry reports:
“It is well documented that TGNB [transgender non-binary] adolescents and young adults experience anxiety and depression, as well as suicidal ideation, at a much higher rate than their cisgender peers. According to The Trevor Project’s 2020 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, 54 percent of young people who identified as transgender or nonbinary reported having seriously considered suicide in the last year, and 29 percent have made an attempt to end their lives.”
Both homosexuality and gender dysphoria are naturally occurring phenomena. They are not a mistake and they are human beings worthy of maximum respect.
The PBS article “Why is the GOP Escalating Attacks on Trans Rights? Experts say the Goal is to make sure Evangelicals Vote” reports that “Survey after survey show that Americans support LGBTQ+ equality, and Republicans are no exception.” When Donald Trump first ran for office, he briefly vowed to be an ally to queer Americans. “In office, his administration made so many policy moves against LGBTQ+ Americans that advocacy organizations branded his leadership ‘The Discrimination Administration.”’
Even though the Evangelical community is a minority in the Republican Party, their strong unity on cultural issues has made them a must get for victorious GOP candidates. Our President quickly realized he needed them and apparently had no problem abandoning his vow to be an ally to Queer Americans.
Respecting Life and Protecting People
Sixteen-years-old trans-student, Nex Benedict, was attacked in the girl’s bathroom at her Oklahoma high school. The attack was severe enough to require some medical attention, but she was well enough to go home that night. The next day she committed suicide. Caught in a web of ignorance and bigotry she was convinced that life was not worth living. She would be about the same age as San Jose State’s volleyball player, Blaire Fleming, if she had lived until today.
A new law, that took effect January 2025 in California, says teachers, counselors and schools are not to disclose a student’s apparent gender-dysphoria to their parents without the student’s permission. The arguments in the Bill noted, “Unfortunately, not all young people are able to be their authentic selves at home safely, and, in those cases, schools can be a critical source of support.” It also highlighted the large tendency for trans students like Nex Benedict to engage in suicide. The bill claimed that students with “access to affirming homes, schools, community events, and online spaces reported lower rates of attempting suicide.”
That same month, President Trump signed many executive orders including:
“This executive order directs federal agencies and federal employees to interpret “sex” solely as an immutable binary biological classification determined at conception. The order also requires all federal agencies to enforce sex-based rights, protections and accommodations using this definition of “sex.”
A few months before Trump became President, a symposium organized by the National Human Genome Research Institute, an institute of the US National Institutes of Health completely rejected the Trumpian view. “Throughout the symposium, many speakers argued that any attempt to categorize sex runs into the same issue—human variation always provides an exception to the rule.”
An interesting case was presented by Physician Tucker Pyle, from Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC. A person who was born in the 1980s was raised as a girl but felt like a boy. As a teenager, the patient received feminizing hormones but still experienced dysphoria. Years later, he learned doctors performed surgery on him as a baby to make his genitalia, which weren’t clearly a penis or a vulva, look like a vulva. But he ultimately identified as male and socially and hormonally transitioned.
A Personal Opinion
In a dialogue with youth, Daisaku Ikeda said:
“Everyone has a right to flower, to reveal his or her full potential as a human being, to fulfill his or her mission in this world. You have this right and so does everyone else. To scorn and violate people’s human rights destroys the natural order of things. We must become people who prize human rights and respect others.” Faith into Action page 276
This current attack on gay people is evil. Some gay people are not the sharpest tool in the woodshed and some are possessed of brilliance, but more importantly they are all human beings with a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They all deserve respect.
I think trans kids in sports is a made-up issue. Participating in sports with their preferred gender should be accommodated. There are more gender nonconforming females whose male side leads to sporting victories than any unfairness caused by the few transgender participants.
Should someone disagree with this position, we should listen if they have valid points. However, I do not think transgender athletes are the problem that needs reforming.
It is benighted bigots who must be reformed; whose ideology must be shunned.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
February 12, 2026
An Open Letter in Response to Tom Ultican’s Piece on Trans Athletes and Diane Ravitch’s Blog
Mr. Ultican and Ms. Ravitch,
We are writing as lesbians who lead a national nonprofit, the LGB Courage Coalition. Our work centers on protecting the rights and dignity of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people—especially gender nonconforming youth who are increasingly swept into medicalized pathways.
We read your recent post arguing that the debate over transgender athletes in women’s sports is “a made-up issue” driven by bigotry. We want to respond—not with insults, but with clarity—because the issue you dismiss is neither fabricated nor trivial.
Your essay repeatedly blurs the distinction between homosexuality, gender nonconformity, and transgender identity. These are not interchangeable categories. Sexual orientation concerns who someone is attracted to. Gender identity concerns a person’s belief about being male or female. Gender nonconformity concerns expression outside stereotypes.
The debate about sex-segregated sports categories is not an attack on gay people. Many of the women objecting to male participation in female sports are lesbians. Conflating disagreement over sex-based categories with homophobia is a rhetorical maneuver, not an argument. If we cannot distinguish between these categories, we cannot reason clearly about policy.
You describe the controversy as manufactured. Yet multiple collegiate teams forfeited matches. Teammates filed suit. The U.S. Department of Education opened a Title IX investigation. State legislatures across the country have debated policy. One may support inclusion. One may oppose it. But to claim the issue does not exist is to ignore observable events. The question is not whether transgender individuals deserve dignity. The question is whether sex-segregated sports categories exist for a reason.
Title IX was enacted to ensure equal athletic opportunity for females based on sex. Sex-segregated sports were not created out of hostility. They exist because male puberty confers average advantages. These differences are not erased by identity. The debate is whether those differences matter in female competition. You do not engage this biological reality at all.
A substantial portion of your article focuses on Brooke Slusser’s mother’s Facebook posts and alleged political associations. Even if every characterization were accurate, it would be irrelevant. If Brooke believes her athletic category was compromised, the merits of that concern do not hinge on her mother’s politics. Arguments should be addressed on their substance, not by association.
You cite Trevor Project statistics about suicidal ideation among transgender youth, data that has been questioned. But even if they are deemed accurate, they do not answer the policy question at hand. There is no evidence that allowing or disallowing male athletes in female sports determines suicide rates. To imply that disagreement over sports rules contributes to self-harm is an emotionally powerful claim—but not an empirically established one. Compassion cannot substitute for evidence.
You cite statements from American medical organizations suggesting gender-affirming care is evidence-based. What you do not mention is that systematic reviews in multiple European countries have downgraded the quality of evidence for pediatric medical interventions. Several have moved toward more cautious protocols. Also missed is that two medical organizations have recently stepped back from that support because of the evidence. Policy statements are not the same as high-quality clinical evidence. This matters because sports policy intersects with medical transition protocols and hormone suppression timelines. Ignoring the international shift gives readers an incomplete picture.
Nex Benedict’s death was tragic. All youth suicide is tragic. But invoking a young person’s death as evidence that sports policy disagreement is evil oversimplifies a complex and painful reality. Public policy should not be built on emotionally charged causation claims absent clear evidence.
You end by asserting that “benighted bigots must be reformed,” yet earlier you suggest we should listen to valid points. If those who disagree are preemptively labeled bigots, dialogue is foreclosed before it begins. Many women raising concerns are not animated by hatred. Many of us are homosexuals and lifelong liberals and Democrats. We are asking whether sex-based protections in athletics still mean anything. That is not hatred. It is a policy question.
The entire debate reduces to this: Should female athletic categories be defined by biological sex or gender identity?
That question can be discussed respectfully. It can be answered in different ways. But it cannot be dismissed as imaginary.
Dignity for transgender individuals and fairness in female sports are not mutually exclusive moral positions. The work of public reasoning requires us to hold both realities at once. If we care about human rights—as you eloquently quote Daisaku Ikeda suggesting—we must also care about the rights Title IX was written to protect.
Respectfully,
Jamie Reed and Lauren Leggieri
Co-Executive Directors
LGB Courage Coalition
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Dignity for transgender individuals and fairness in female sports are not mutually exclusive moral positions.
Agreed
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Jamie Reed, if you genuinely care about trans people, and especially about trans minors, I do not understand why you would intentionally sensationalize an issue that could and should have been addressed in far better ways.
I have read some good and fair critiques of some of your first exaggerated claims. There is nothing wrong with honest people discussing how to best meet the needs of trans minors. But that’s not what you did. You sensationalized the issue, and became the darling of the right wing.
You highlight the folks who regret transitioning, but instead of a thoughtful discussion about how to continue to meet the needs of the majority of trans kids who are helped and do NOT regret it, you seemed to derail it into demanding that ALL kids be told they can’t be trans and denying them proper care. You have politicized an issue that didn’t need to be politicized, the same way the anti-vax people did. The same way the response to COVID-19 was. The same way the people amplifying the right wing falsehood that “it is now an indisputable fact that COVID-19 was caused by lab leak and that was covered up” did.
Why? For teachers here, I compare this to what Emily Oster did with her questionable research about how schools being closed during the height of the pandemic, before any vaccines or good treatments, when bodies were stacked up in morgue trucks and people’s access to medical care for EVERY illness was seriously harmed – was unnecessary. Instead of having a thoughtful discussion that would have helped all kids, she eagerly allowed her research to be sensationalized by the right, implying a certainty that simply didn’t exist and blatanly leaving out all the downsides and trauma to children that keeping all schools open during the entire pandemic would have caused.
It’s sad that there are people like Emily Oster and Jamie Reed and Bari Weiss who greatly benefit career-wise by pushing and amplifying misleading and overly simplified right wing’s narratives while professing to just be moderate and reasonable people who just want to make things better for all. Can they help it that they benefit from the right wing liking them so much?
Someone could also have a valid concern that there are too many rhinoplasties and breast enhancement surgeries and teenage male breast reduction surgeries and medicating kids for ADHD going on. If there were good, thoughtful people whose main goal was bring light and clarity to this discussion, they might talk about regrets some people had, but also consider that many people are helped. If they wanted attention and there was a right wing billionaire funding to shut down all of those treatments, they would sensationalize the people with regrets only, implying a certainty that simply does not exist to PREVENT a thoughtful, fact-based discussion.
Jamie Reed, do you believe that we should return to a time when lesbian minors and young adults were counseled about how they just had a mental illness? But maybe you do think that needs to happen because there are women who identified as lesbian at one time who then stopped identifying as lesbian.
Every minor is different. You have sensationalized this the way people used to justify banning gay teachers because minors would decide to become lesbian or gay if they had a teacher who was (the implication being that lesbian and gay teachers would intentionally influence kids to become gay). You should know better. You should be a better person even if sensationalizing this might be more lucrative.
I don’t trust Bari Weiss and Emily Oster because they seem to be more interested in self-promotion than a real search for honesty and truth. If you are their kindred spirits, readers should know that so they can judge the claims you make.
Here is an interesting critique written by someone who supports trans rights, but tries to be at least a little more fair-minded than what I see from you.
https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/jamie-reeds-allegations-are-not-even-partially-confirmed
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Thank you for writing. I want to try to respond.
I am still a liberal. I’ve voted Democratic for decades. I am a lesbian. I support the civil rights of LGB people and the dignity and safety of gender nonconforming people. Nothing about that has changed. My concerns about pediatric gender medicine came from what I witnessed inside a clinic, not from a shift in my values.
I did not speak out to sensationalize anything, and I have not made money from doing so. I’m not funded by right-wing donors or political groups. In fact, speaking publicly cost me professionally and personally. If some on the right amplified my concerns, that says more about how polarized this issue became — and how unwilling many on the left were to engage the evidence — than it does about my motives.
Raising questions about medical interventions for minors is not the same as denying that trans identified people exist. My position is narrower than that: irreversible medical treatments require strong, transparent evidence and full honesty about risks.
International systematic reviews have found that the evidence base is weaker than many organizations previously claimed- and now American Medical Societies are starting to say the same thing. That deserves discussion — not dismissal.
Highlighting regret is not about erasing those who report benefit. Medicine has a duty to protect the minority who are harmed, especially when children are involved. That is not anti-trans; it is basic medical ethics.
I would never support pathologizing homosexuality. In fact, part of my deep concern is that many gender nonconforming and same-sex-attracted youth are being, and have been, steered toward medicalization rather than being supported as they are.
We have been transitioning gender non conforming young people and homosexuals
You may disagree with me. That’s fair. But my motives are not financial, partisan, or self-promotional. I am the same liberal lesbian I’ve always been. I believe in civil rights and evidence-based care — and in protecting vulnerable kids, even when that conversation is uncomfortable.
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Thank you for replying.
You said:
“Raising questions about medical interventions for minors is not the same as denying that trans identified people exist. My position is narrower than that: irreversible medical treatments require strong, transparent evidence and full honesty about risks.”
Correct. But you seem to have rejected the opinions of the many parents who WERE advised of the risks and consulted with their child’s doctors that trusted to weigh the risk versus benefits. Just like they do with allowing their child to have plastic surgery or take one of the many drugs prescribed for kids with ADHD or depression or the supposed mental illness called “gender dysphoria”.
You are being disingenuous. Why aren’t you ALSO standing up for the parents who are advised of those risks but also believe that their child will be helped? If you really cared about your anecdotes being misused AND you believe that some trans kids would benefit, why aren’t you speaking up? Why do folks who think that trans people don’t exist see you as their strong ally?
You say:
“International systematic reviews have found that the evidence base is weaker than many organizations previously claimed- and now American Medical Societies are starting to say the same thing. That deserves discussion — not dismissal.
Highlighting regret is not about erasing those who report benefit. Medicine has a duty to protect the minority who are harmed, especially when children are involved. That is not anti-trans; it is basic medical ethics.”
You do realize that is. true for every medication and surgery. What are the risks of regretting plastic surgery? The risks of taking certain ADHD medications that have caused some children to become violent?
There are also risks of taking vaccines. People like me don’t deny that there have always been adverse effects. And the right amplifies that with anecdotes that don’t give the full picture of the BENEFITS.
You are holding puberty blockers and other drugs prescribed for trans youth to a higher standard than most drugs get. What are the long term effects of children using ADHD drugs and anti-depressants or hormones that make kids taller than they would be? Do you know the long term effects of those growth hormones? Why aren’t you fighting to ban those? Because you don’t think that children who think they should be taller should be treated with mental illness medication and therapy?
Raising questions about people who want to ban CERTAIN medical interventions for trans minors IS because you don’t believe there are any benefits to those treatments that would outweigh the risks. This IS the view of people who deny that trans people exist. You don’t want to ban all drugs that have risks, do you? Are you fighting to ban growth hormones because those short kids should get therapy and drugs for their mental illness instead because there are “risks”?
Highlighting regret is not about erasing those who report benefit – EXCEPT when you erase the benefit. Medicine has a duty to protect the minority who are harmed, especially when children are involved – which isn’t done by banning drugs except when it comes to trans kids. That IS anti-trans; it is NOT basic medical ethics.
Does a kid need to be taller because their gender identity makes them believe they should be? Do boys need surgery to reduce their “natural” boy breasts?
I support informing parents of ALL the risks for ALL those “irreversible” treatments.
But I don’t support right wing Republican politicians deciding based on their hatred of trans people.
And if I was being constantly cited as a source by the champions of that hate, and I remained silent, then my silence would speak volumes.
I agree parents should be informed of risks. In fact, most parents at the clinic you demonized felt they WERE informed of the risks. So I hope you will be honest and admit that you don’t believe parents should have that choice when it comes to trans kids. And therein lies the problem.
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Thank you for staying in the conversation. I’m going to respond plainly, because this is where the real disagreement lies.
I am not rejecting parents. I worked with many of those families. I know they love their children. I do not believe most of them were reckless. I believe they were trying to relieve profound distress with the information they were given.
My concern is whether the information given — and the confidence with which it was delivered — was proportionate to the actual strength of the evidence behind these interventions.
You’re right that all medicine carries risk. The question isn’t whether something has risk. It’s whether the evidence for long-term benefit is strong enough to justify irreversible intervention in minors — especially when fertility, sexual function, and lifelong medicalization are involved.
Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones were rolled out for adolescents with claims of strong evidence and reversibility that are now being reassessed internationally. This reassessment is not coming from people who “deny trans people exist.” It’s coming from systematic evidence reviews questioning whether the data ever justified the certainty with which this protocol expanded.
And we have to be honest about something else: the population most rapidly medicalized were vulnerable adolescents — disproportionately distressed, socially isolated, often with co-occurring mental health conditions, and frequently gender nonconforming youth who historically would likely have grown up to be gay or lesbian adults.
Instead of protecting gender nonconformity, a large-scale medical protocol was introduced to alter their bodies — without solid long-term evidence to support its widespread use.
That is not a small ethical issue- it is profound and impacts gays and lesbians with gut wrenching pain- what has occurred to young people who would have grown up bodies intact to be LGB.
Yes, some adolescents report short-term relief. But short-term relief is not the same as proven long-term health improvement. Medicine has a duty to protect the minority who are harmed — and in this case, harms have occurred. That is now documented. When harm becomes clear and the evidence base is weak, continuing the protocol unchanged is not neutrality. It is negligence.
Ideally, professional medical bodies would have slowed this down themselves. Instead, many declared the science “settled” and shut down dissent. That vacuum invited legislative involvement. I also do not believe parental consent alone is sufficient to justify irreversible medical intervention when long-term outcomes are uncertain.
You’re right that this comes down to where we draw the line. I draw it at irreversible medicalization of minors in the absence of strong, durable evidence of benefit — especially when the youth in question are among the most vulnerable.
Harms occurred. The evidence base has been reassessed. It is time to address that honestly and to stop expanding — or defending — a protocol that did not meet the evidentiary standard it was presented as having.
That is not anti-trans. It is an argument for caution, evidence, and the protection of vulnerable kids — including gender nonconforming ones- and it is an argument that I continue to be astonished that democrat and liberals are not open to reviewing the systematic evidence and being willing to reassess their position- as I had to.
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I am a huge advocate of continuing to keep an open mind and continuing to research the effects of various medical treatments, especially with young people So we are in agreement there. I assume you agree that needs to be done with vaccines, with ADHD drugs, growth hormones, anti-depressants, and Ozempic and various new cancer treatments. The difference is the politicizing of this when it comes to the puberty blockers and hormones that help trans kids. The difference is that you don’t trust parents when it comes to weighing the risks and rewards of those medications for trans kids. The difference is YOUR perception – not supported by any evidence – that you reveal in these comments:
“population most rapidly medicalized were vulnerable adolescents — disproportionately distressed, socially isolated, often with co-occurring mental health conditions, and frequently gender nonconforming youth who historically WOULD LIKELY HAVE GROWN UP TO BE GAY OR LESBIAN ADULTS.”
“it is profound and impacts gays and lesbians with gut wrenching pain- what has occurred to young people WHO WOULD HAVE GROWN UP BODIES INTACT TO BE LGB.”
How do you know what they would have grown up to be? You are the one pushing certainty without any evidence whatsoever. It sounds like a lot like the anti-lesbian summer camp administrators certain that those girls who mistakenly think they are lesbian would have grown up to be good wives to men and mothers to children. Maybe those kids whose future you are certain you know would be among the too many trans youth who don’t grow up at all because they have harmed themselves. Or became self-medicating drug abusers.
Talk to young people and you will see that some identify as gay, as lesbian, as bi, and as trans. I don’t see a lot of young lesbian women or gay men freaking out about trans women and men existing. They don’t resent their trans friends and they don’t believe their trans friends are really lesbians and gay men like they are. Why are some much older lesbians from a different generation so certain that all these trans kids are not trans but gay or lesbian? You seem to think they live in a world where there is a huge stigma attached in being gay or lesbian so they reject it and decide they are trans. But that just isn’t the reality. And you think you are doing something admirable by BANNING them from getting medications that help them because you don’t think their own parents are capable of weighing the risks. Even though that is not how medicine has ever worked. And you should know that. You’ve created a completely false narrative of clinics pushing these drugs that -to you – have only very strong evidence of great harm and little evidence of anything good,
You’ve created your own straw man to prove your “truth” – that trans kids are merely confused gay and lesbian kids who need to live the life you know they were meant to live. Because YOU seem to have gut-wrenching pain at the thought that a young girl might be trans while her best friend is lesbian and her other friend is non-binary and another friend is straight.
Why did you exaggerate, misrepresent and oversimplify what happened at the clinic where you worked? Your “standard” seems just an excuse to deny care to kids who are already benefitting from it because you don’t see any benefits to happy trans kids who – as you admitted – should be the lesbians and gay men they were meant to be.
I support studies that examine how “strong” and “durable” that evidence of benefit is for trans youth and long term benefit and potential harm. But since they are now banned from treatment despite their parents knowing the risk, they can’t be followed! How convenient. Is there “strong and durable” benefits of growth hormones or ADHD drugs or anti-depressants or cancer treatments or even vaccines on kids? Do they get banned until benefits meet politicians’ criteria of being “strong and durable” enough? Anti-vaxxers say that kids survive measles and chicken pox and covid in large numbers. Are you positive there is ”strong and durable” evidence of a benefit or should those vaccines be banned too?
Despite your straw man argument of a world where clinics and doctors are aggressively pushing puberty blockers and hormones on unwitting and easily manipulated youth, that is rarely the case. Puberty blockers and hormones aren’t just given on demand. Clinics don’t just hand them out on demand.
But it’s perfect if you are anti-trans to claim the evidence of benefit isn’t “strong enough”, and so you need to ban all youth from transgender care so the evidence of benefit can never be measured.
If you were making an argument for “caution, evidence and the protection of vulnerable kids” as you claim, I would agree with you. But that’s not what you are doing. Your starting premise is that trans kids would grow up to be happy lesbians and gay men if their psychological disorder was properly treated (except not by any treatments that don’t already have strong and durable evidence of benefit, which probably means no therapy or anti-depressants!) And I continue to be surprised that some people like you are not open to reviewing the systemic evidence and being able to reassess their position.
I question why you would embrace anecdotal evidence of harm and reject as insufficient far more evidence of benefit. OF COURSE more study should be done, just like it should be done for growth hormones, cosmetic surgeries, anti-depressants, cancer treatments, weight loss drugs.
But taking parents out of the decision-making and banning their kids from taking medication that very well may be beneficial because of your questionable anecdotal evidence that it is definitely harming them? That’s just politics.
Unless you believe that trans kids are really gay and lesbian youth who deny it. Is that your position?
If you were really just advocating for oversight and caution in prescribing these on demand, we would be in agreement. But the bans? That’s just politics. Do you know how awful it is to be a trans youth right now, with supposedly “open minded experts” like you telling them they are just misguided gay and lesbian kids so despite them having thoughtful parents who have researched the risks and benefits, they are banned from continuing medications that have benefitted them?
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Every medicine has risks. The CDC has stopped research on mRNA drugs because, they say, 10 children died after getting a COVID shot. But the same medication saved millions of lives. So, to assuage the fear that someone might die, should we deny access to the vaccine, knowing that doing so will lead to thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of deaths?
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I am so grateful to see that you are shifting the discussing into actual medical ethics- that is the way forward.
Please consider in the future that this is the actual debate right now and not a political “let me show my friends how much I too hate Trump” there is a very real international medical debate of the clinical evidence and the international consensus has collapsed.
Please continue this kind of discussion.
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Are you seriously suggesting that parents and doctors and many others who are concerned about the anti-trans rhetoric and misinformation you have amplified both on here and in other media are driven by the desire to show their friends how much they too hate Trump?
I think you are projecting here – perhaps the right wing billionaire-supported media gave you too much positive reinforcement for your “trans people don’t exist and bad liberals are making kids trans” rhetoric and that made you convince yourself that the harm you have done to the most vulnerable youth is negligible.
It’s a shame that you had a megaphone and you could have used it for good and instead you used it to deny the existence of trans people and cause more harm than good.
Think about how you have politicized medicine that didn’t have to be politicized, and consider why you would do that? What’s next? Will you be publicizing some women who regret having abortions and claiming (without evidence) that the medical establishment is giving abortions on demand to women influenced into having an abortion? Will you be testifying to support banning all abortions until there is “strong, durable evidence of benefit”? Which of course can’t really happen since abortion is now banned and you dismiss any evidence from women who don’t think they were harmed. How are you different from anti-abortion activists who just want to “protect vulnerable women” who are supposedly misled into believing that it never causes harm?
Your Republican kindred spirits call Congresswoman Sarah McBride “the gentleman from Delaware, Mr. McBride”. Her dignity and refusal to lower herself to their level is remarkable. She is the temperate and reasonable one, and the contrast between her and the angry and unhappy people who demand doctors treat her like a mentally ill gay man who needs therapy, because they claim there’s no “strong and durable evidence” that transitioning benefitted her, are the ones who could use some therapy.
There is a way to debate the risks and benefits of medicine and vaccines and cancer treatments. Your politicization of science and medicine is how the right wing wants to do it. When they come for the rest of the LBQ community with their faux concern and anti-science rhetoric, you may wish you had fought this battle with more honesty and restraint. But you are getting the bans you want, and your lack of concern for the trans youth you have harmed is duly noted. No doubt you believe you “saved” them all to be the gay men and lesbians you know they need to be. Did you just want to show your new friends how much you hate Sarah McBride?
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Thanks to Jamie Reed for stating the case so eloquently for those of us who were (and are) gender nonconforming, and can see ourselves in the many young people who have been allowed to limit their life choices, often drastically, in a vain attempt to become something they can never be. Humans cannot change sex, which is a material reality with real-world consequences. Our efforts would be far better spent helping young people to relate in healthy ways to that reality.
“Trans” is not a state of being into which children are born. It’s an action one takes in an attempt to relieve the discomfort of gender nonconformity by conforming to a sex stereotype. Gender nonconformity has always existed and has been accommodated in various ways across populations, but never before has a medical industry grown up around the attempted removal of secondary sex characteristics and the creation of artificial ones mimicking the other sex. There is no excuse for institutionalizing the lifetime medicalization this process involves, for the denial of the material reality of sex and its consequences, especially for girls and women, or for promoting an ideology that removes rights and protections for girls and women that were hard-won for us by previous generations.
Gender dysphoria is far from the only reason people identify as trans. Autogynephilia, sexual trauma, autism, mental illness, social contagion, and distress about same-sex attraction are all factors shown to heavily influence trans identification. Sexual trauma was a factor in the non-binary identification of Dagny (Nex) Benedict, whose father abused her for years; his release from prison and re-arrest on grounds of parole violation may well have precipitated her suicide. We’ll never know, because her death was instantly blamed on “transphobia”.
This is a nuanced discussion that cannot happen in an atmosphere where “trans” is treated as a religious category and those who point out facts that contradict the current narrative are dismissed as “bigots”.
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You are denying the very existence of trans people, correct? And you are praising Jamie Reed for stating your beliefs so eloquently, right?
Does that mean that Jamie Reed’s alluding to “Dignity for transgender individuals” means “dignity” does mean what you think it means?
Maybe you think it’s better to medicate a teenager with all kinds of drugs instead of just recognizing that trans people have existed long before the far right decided to use this issue to gin up hate with lies.
You and I have had this argument before, when you were spreading outrage about a supposed rash of sexual assaults by trans women in LA prisons. Those lies were thoroughly debunked through a very comprehensive KQED report.
I do understand that if you start with the belief that trans people don’t exist, then you likely feel that sensationalizing this through entirely exaggerated anecdotes to scare people is warranted.
What is “dignity” for a young child who has identified as the other gender from the time they were very young? Being told they just have some sickness that needs therapy and medication and prayer? Isn’t that what they said about lesbians, too?
The sports federations were already making changes to address inequities in women sports while allowing for the existence of trans athletes. Most trans kids aren’t athletically superior to a female athletes but some may want to play sports where they’d simply be average competitors. It’s ironic that the same people who would deny them the puberty blockers that they ask for would then complain they have an unfair advantage because they have gone through puberty.
This is a complicated issue when it comes to women’s sports, but it isn’t helped by people who simply deny the right of trans person to exist as their starting point. Just like there is little discussion to have about gay rights when you have to start with the premise that all gay people are mentally ill.
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