Seattle Times Journalist Includes Quotes from a Letter I Sent Her About Transgender Teens
Recently the Seattle Times published a fairly standard article on trans teens, “Transgender kids: a family quest, a medical quandary.” It featured the usual story of a teenage trans boy much happier transitioning but mildly raised some concerns over how young these teens are when receiving irreversible medical interventions. The article’s author, Nina Shapiro, requested some feedback from the public. I sent her a letter of concern I have sent out to all of the major LGBT organizations about the rapidly rising numbers of children and teens being diagnosed as transgender, along with some other information. I plan to post that letter in full soon.
The author has now published some responses to the original article and included some quotes from the information I sent her (Justine). Since I am used to seeing even very reasonable comments showing concern over youth transitions deleted off of mainstream liberal websites, I was very surprised to see my skeptical statements included. They address gay and lesbian skepticism about gender clinics and the safety of gender-nonconforming youth that may outgrow gender dysphoria. I also relayed some disturbing stories I have heard about the lack of gatekeeping among gender therapists diagnosing minors. I was pleased to see a variety of opinions here. Some of the reader’s stories are positive, some negative. Any viewpoints outside of the happy-clappy narrative have been rare in reporting on this issue. And the Seattle Times is a liberal paper in a very liberal city. Seattle isn’t Portland, where teens can get mastectomies at 15 years old, but it’s pretty close. The final comment is from a mother who flat out says a trans identity is the new form of self-mutilation for females.
In many cases, transition stops the self-harming behavior so it’s not a perfect analogy, at least not in most cases. However, anyone looking at these statistics, who also knows something about young females and social contagion, has to ask if this is just another form of female body hatred for the increasing numbers of females going to these clinics. The full article is here…
“Readers share their family stories after article on transgender teen”