Censorship and Avoidance of Problems in Pediatric Transition for Gender Dysphoria
NEWS COMMENTARY
The GHQ website has a section on trans activism and censorship and harassment of people who raise issues around the safety of pediatric transition for gender dysphoria. This is an ongoing issue.
Censorship
The Pediatric Endocrine Society does not want its members to discuss the safety of hormone blockers, their use in treating gender-dysphoric tweens, and whether or not minors can consent to irreversible medical treatments. “They strongly oppose” discourse. The below is a letter they sent out to members on October 29, 2019:
It appears a story about our organization was removed from an LGBT news site, the Star Observer, in Australia. The LGBT press does not print any negative information about transitioning children or teens, nor do they mention the association of childhood gender dysphoria with adult homosexuality. Gender Health Query sent Australian officials a letter in support of other people in Australia who are alarmed about the spiking numbers of minors presenting to services for gender transition. We sent the letter to LGBT organizations and media there, including the Star Observer. This link was only up for a short time before they removed the mention of it. If LGBT media entities will not discuss the risks involved in childhood and teen gender transitions to pre-gay and lesbian youth it is best for them to advertise themselves exclusively as trans rights organizations:
4thwavenow is a site for parents skeptical of pediatric medical transition. There are multiple accounts on their website of female teenagers, often same-sex attracted, who went through long periods of identifying as trans (a year or more) and then desisted. They were locked out of their account for using the term “natal male.” This term is widely used and doesn’t violate Twitter’s policy and wasn’t directed at a trans individual. Jesse Singal, a journalist who has received a lot of harassment and verbal abuse for writing accurately about youth and gender dysphoria, stated he contacted a Twitter employee who replied the lockout was a mistake. However, their account is still locked. This is suspicious, and it appears Twitter may be targeting this account. All other social media companies have similar policies as people opposing aspects of trans activism are often removed from social media platforms.
GNC-Centric, a Canadian detransitioned lesbian and activist, whose work is linked on the GHQ site, was removed from Twitter for using the biological term “male” for an individual. Scientifically accurate terms are disallowed on major platforms. As all other major platforms (Facebook, Youtube) have these policies, discussing the reality of a person’s biological sex is now widely banned on the internet. This calls into question why they should essentially own the public square and something that functions as a utility.
This Federalist article documented a case of a doctor accurately discussing the medical risks in transgender medicine. The video was worded in ways many people would find offensive. The author, Michelle Cretella, is also an anti-same-sex marriage activist as a member of the anti-LGB American Academy of Pediatricians. But it highlights the power social media companies have to silence criticism of pediatric transition.
In the original video, Dr. Michelle Cretella, a pediatrician and executive director at the American Academy of Pediatricians, commented on the insanity of wanting to mutilate one’s body for the sake of becoming transgender.
Marcus Evans, a British psychologist who has called into question the safety of the affirmative protocol in treating gender dysphoria, also had his account temporarily banned by Twitter.
Poor Reporting on Trans Issues
Jessie Singal writes about flaws in news articles reporting on gender dysphoria. The UK press has been reporting on the topic of detransition. As a result, Stonewall UK put out a “fact sheet” meant to “debunk” some information on detransition. We review some commentary Singal made about that here.
There are other articles Singal, one of the few reporters to cover this subject, has analyzed. This quote is from an article called How “'Science Vs' Made Two Gender-Dysphoria Errors:”
I’ve been worried, for a while, about the level of bias creeping into mainstream journalism about gender dysphoria, and the frequency with which major outlets make basic errors when covering this subject. I’ve touched on this from time to time: In one blog post responding to critiques of my own work I showed that two of the journalists who cover this subject regularly weren’t familiar with the well-documented phenomenon of trauma sometimes appearing to cause gender dysphoria — a phenomenon you will come across if you have conducted any in-depth interviews with gender clinicians, or read much of the literature on this subject. In another, I critiqued a Slate article that, in my view, took an irresponsible and unsupported stance on the complicated question of what it means when someone goes on hormones and finds their dysphoria has, at least temporarily, gotten worse.
Those older critiques can be found here.
He went on to cover two recent errors in the “Science Vs” podcast:
(1) Science Vs claims that in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM-IV), “being trans” was a mental disorder, but that in the current edition, the DSM-5, being trans is no longer listed as such. This is incorrect on multiple counts…
(2) With regard to the gender dysphoria desistance debate — we’ll get there — the episode claims that “The only study we’ve found that zoomed in on kids [who identified strongly as being trans fairly early in life]… found that out of 45 of them… 44 grew up to be transgender.” Here Science Vs accidentally fabricated and published a study result. There is no such study.
Below is a screencap pointing out the poor reporting by Vox:
Rolling Stone is also involved with poor reporting on gender dysphoria. Rolling Stone is wrong that minors are not taking cross-sex hormones or even getting surgery:
The Advocate failed to make several corrections to a defamatory article referencing Singal. The corrections they should have made can be found here.
Kirsty Entwistle is a British psychologist who has acted as a whistleblower around youths and the Tavistock clinic in the UK. She pointed out that Psychology Today deletes even reasonable comments that do not support anything other than total affirmation:
The author of the article, Jack Turban, is also apparently unwilling to engage with arguments that present concerns about his research or possible false positives, even with other health professionals and scientists:
Trans activists obtained a similar domain name to Transgendertrend in the UK, which is a group that addresses safety concerns around medically transitioning minors. Silencing campaigns commence against anyone who raises any issues or highlights negative outcomes that seem to be increasing. The similarly named site redirects people to Mermaids who believe in affirming all minors and providing them with surgery and hormones underage.
REFERENCES:
4thWaveNow lockout: Twitter employee admits “mistake” to journalist, yet account remains disabled. (2019, December 11). Retrieved from https://4thwavenow.com/2019/12/16/4thwavenow-lockout-twitter-employee-admits-mistake-to-journalist-yet-account-remains-disabled/
Clark, Chrissy. (2019, November 5). YouTube Removes Video Of Doctor Discussing Medical Reality Of Transgenderism. The Federalist. Retrieved from https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/05/youtube-removes-video-of-doctor-discussing-medical-reality-of-transgenderism/
Singal, J. (2019, March 27). A Critique of the ‘Science Vs’ Episode on Being Transgender, Part 1. Retrieved from https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/how-science-vs-made-two-gender-dysphoria
Singal, J. (2018, November 21). Gender Dysphoria, Trauma, and Online Misinformation. Medium. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@jesse.singal/gender-dysphoria-trauma-and-online-misinformation-59a0ed43d275