Emily Bazelon NYT article

I thought that was the only major weak point of the article(accepting its a both sides approach)- given the parents are so much more accepting, how do you know the children haven’t Eg after deciding they want to wear dresses then absorbed from their parents that it means they should be a girl?

Emily Bazelon is an excellent old-school journalist who has been writing on difficult issues for decades. I read this the day it was published and was heartened by its steady, even-handed approach.

Today many Dutch parents are more accepting of this behavior, and the Amsterdam clinicians think that as a result, most of the children who come to the clinic are asserting a strong and persistent gender preference. It’s more likely that such children will stay the course of being transgender, research shows

This really struck me. If dutch parents are now more accepting of "cross-gender stereotypical" behaviour, what then explains the rise in children coming to the clinic? Why are there more children now than there used to be when the gay kids have effectively been weeded out by parents who don't care if their child is gay? Shouldn't the numbers have gone down?

editing? 😬

Thanks for that @DeaconBoo

nothing is enough!

Id love to know more about the people making these comments. There’s a rabbit hole there. Are these trans people or are they over enthusiastic supporters who’ve read this sentiment online and are just regurgitating it?

I saw that thread this morning, I hope she’s made of tough stuff. The pressure and abuse must have been eye opening, hopefully for some of her be kind colleagues and bosses too.

(First replies I see to this thread:
'"To me being a journalist means transcribing right wing talking points about gender for a lobbyist I presumably got bribed to feature in the NYT".'
and
'frankly, assuming bribery is quite charitable of you. I assumed she's just in it for the love of killing trans people.' )

The reaction to this article is really interesting. I'll copy the latest twitter thread from the writer, addressing 'criticism' (you can imagine what most of that consisted of).

twitter.com/emilybazelon/status/1539621289295495168

I think an important point has gotten lost in the Twitter din over my
@NYTmag
piece on gender therapy for teenagers. (For the record, the response has been far different in NYT comments and very positive feedback from readers, including trans people & practitioners in the field.)

I have zero appetite for Twitter combat. It’s been horrifying to me to be called a murderer and compared to Nazis for writing about a debate that is happening, with consequential effects, within the field of gender-affirming providers.

I’m responding in this thread to criticism, not really expecting to persuade anyone to change perspectives, but to make some basic points about journalism that apply in this case and others, I think.

1. Criticism: The timing of the story was wrong because of the right-wing assault on trans rights. --My editors and I talked a lot about the political backdrop, which is threaded through my story and has deepened divisions in this field.

We decided the conflict makes WPATH’s Standards of Care, issued for the 1st time in a decade, more important. The Standards are the story's focus and the source of the points that have caused controversy here, about how teens should be evaluated & the role of social influence.

The Standards at issue in my piece have the consensus support of the working group that wrote them and of WPATH's leadership. Those groups include trans and non-binary practitioners.

2. Criticism: The framing of the story was wrong because it didn’t center the trans community. --No group of millions of people has a single community. It’s true that this story didn’t center trans activists or trans kids. (Though I did quote them at length.)

Those are also good stories, which the NYT has told and will tell. But this one is primarily told through the eyes of clinicians in & around WPATH. It’s about a scientific debate. Trans providers express every point of view the story contains about gender-affirming care.

3. Criticism: The story doesn’t include trans kids who are doing well. --False. Two kids in the story, nicknamed Tori & Charlie, are medically transitioning & thriving. Two adults (Yael & F.G.) speak to how critical transitioning in adolescence has been for their well-being.

4. Criticism: The story "platformed" the wrong people. --The story, in a total of 11,400 words, includes 363 words from the perspective of parents who are skeptical of medical interventions for minors. Some are affiliated with the group Genspect.

I made it clear what Genspect stands for by including comments of members & a post on strategy from an affiliated Substack. Skeptical parents are politically active, testifying in statehouses in favor of banning medical interventions for minors. Leaving them out of the story ...

... would deny that reality, which would be a disservice to readers who want to understand the full landscape.

5. Criticism: There’s no evidence that substantial numbers of kids are transitioning without the kind of diagnostic assessments or process WPATH recommends. --No one is tracking this. Anecdotally, many clinicians—not one or two & very much including trans clinicians—told me ...

... they are aware of this happening. I heard firsthand accounts—from teenagers as well as parents—of clinics offering medication during a first brief session. I did NOT hear of this in states that are proposing bans, where care seemed to be more conservative.

Parents can say no to medication. But doing so when a provider is offering it can cause serious conflict within families. I’m surprised to see journalists who have not covered this topic dismissing the assessment issue out of hand when it is a focus of WPATH's Standards of Care.

6. Criticism: Patient Zero is an offensive term --I referred to F.G., the first Dutch patient to take puberty suppressants as a teenager, as Patient Zero because the Dutch used that term for him & he used it in our interview.

Readers have pointed out the term is associated w/ communicable disease. Because of how the Dutch use it, I didn’t think of that association. Neither did anyone who read the piece before it published, including our outside trans readers.

In the context of my story, Patient Zero means the first adolescent to receive gender-affirming medical treatment.

tl;dr: Much of the criticism of my piece reflects a profound disagreement over the role of journalism on a controversial topic involving a vulnerable group.

To me, being a journalist means following the facts where they lead. It isn't advocacy. I didn’t know where this story would go when I started reporting eight months ago.

---(That was weirdly difficult to c&p so hope I haven't lost anything)

That is a fascinating observation.

Previously I'd noted the vastly unfair (misogynist) discrepancy between the serious effects of the hormones and surgery young transmen are encouraged to embark upon, and the fact that middle aged late transitioning trans women usually keep their genitals fully functioning.

I'd not thought to make this comparison between young men and young transmen. I think the problem, for the backers of the trans lobby, is that whilst protein shakes and good physical health can certainly bring in the big bucks for someone, it doesn't bring in the big bucks for them. And there's the pesky side effect that good physical health can often lead to good mental health. No more life long patients.

I sampled the comments. Most of them are very clearly on the gender critical side. Several asked if the vast increase in teen girls wanting to transition out of being viewed as female might be partly driven by the current wave of misogyny (porn-based views about women's sexuality, supposed to result in women wanting to be slapped or choked in sex), the return of more rigid gender roles supported now not only by the right but also by the left, and perhaps also things such as the incel movement and its long tentacles among some young men and boys.

Then I read another NYT piece, this time an opinion piece about Bimbos being a good thing. It felt almost like an answer to those comments. I think I'd prefer to be a trans boy rather than a Bimbo who is proud of not being able to count and of not bothering to work etc.

Thank you for posting this mirax. It makes fascinating reading. It's fascinating reading about the contortions of adults desperate to use children in this battle. It's also optimistic in that this genie is not going back into the bottle - but what awful casualties there are - with so many more coming down the line.

Interesting that the article on WPATH SOC8 makes no mention of 'eunuch' now being included.
www.wpath.org/soc8/chapters

MN thread and link to Telegraph article: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4569010-nhs-scotland-links-to-eunuch-archive

Glinner/ Gluck article: grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/top-trans-medical-association-collaborated?s=r

It's absolutely horrific. How is this being included in all the gender care stuff? It can't be by accident.

One discussion that I read elsewhere made the astute observation that when you actually look at recent images of "successful" surgical interventions in young transmen, it was notable that surgery was mooted as the solution to defeminising the body, and there was no evidence that anyone had suggested to these young people that, say, exercise or resistance training, coupled with a more healthy diet, might achieve some of those goals in a less interventionist, less expensive and more productive way -- which was precisely the reverse of the advice often given to young men who worried about not looking masculine enough.

For transmen and boys who want to look masculine, it's all about the scalpel and the pills. For young males who worry about not looking masculine enough, it's "get down to the gym, lift heavy and drink protein shakes."

I think that says a lot, to be honest.

And not forgetting, these are the same people that say women can have penises. So why the massive focus on changing kids' bodies?

"Mr Potato Head" approach is a good description!

"People are who they say they are, and they may develop and change, and all are normal and OK. So I am less concerned with certainty around identity, and more concerned with hearing the person’s embodiment goals. Do you want to have a deep voice? Do you want to have breasts? You know, what do you want for your body?”

This is like some bizarre Mr Potato Head approach to actual human beings. It's medical consumerism writ large. I can't quite believe I've just read it.

And the one thing that never gets talked about is the constant assumption that all this is viable long term. What the hell happens if there's a some sort of crisis and artificial hormones are no longer be available for public consumption for a short to long term period? What happens about growing antibiotic resistance?

It's all so unstable and short-termist. We already know that there are transpeople who have struggled to access post-surgical care, and we also know that some transmen have discovered they need hysterectomies after taking testosterone for over five years. What if someone just can't get these procedures done at that point? What happens if you can't have remedial surgery because you develop a heart condition or a blood pressure problem?

I am just flabbergasted by all this. I really am.

It sure does! I used it and bam! Deleted. I guess chopping off healthy body parts is seen as something else on MN ...

Jack Turban is one of the worst offenders w.r.t. medical misinformation in the US. Jesse Singal's recent article was prompted by Turban's appearance on some science podcast, insisting that puberty blockers and hormones were "not controversial at all".

And as Jesse says:

I've reached out to Turban repeatedly and never heard back. I'm not aware of him ever responding to requests for comment from those w/critical questions a/b his work. Softball interviews, always.

Exactly, and in the article, there is this:

"...I talked to F.G., the first patient to take puberty suppressants for gender affirmation 35 years ago, when he was 13... He told me that when he was a child, he wanted simply to be a boy. But of course that was impossible. Taking medication to stop puberty, he said, saved his life. He waited until he was 18 for hormone treatment. It would be unusual now to have such a prolonged stint on puberty suppressants. F.G. says he never wanted to have children, though he’s not sure if that’s because he didn’t know if he could....
F.G. has watched the rise in numbers of transgender young people with a mix of joy and trepidation. He thinks kids who want the medical treatment he received should go through a significant assessment process. “It makes me sound a bit of a hypocrite, because I needed that to be who I am,” he said. And yet the time on the suppressants, to test the strength of his own desires, was essential to his peace of mind. “I really, really thought about it,” he said, “and I’ve never been so sure of anything in my whole entire life.”

It's a long read, but an essential one, about WPATH's new draft Standards of Care (so, things like age limits on surgery, hormones etc among many other things) and the controversy around them. A few rushed thoughts:

"And just like that, after four years of painstaking work, Leibowitz, de Vries and the rest of their group were being called out as traitors by peers and the community they sought to care for. “We understood the enormity of the need for these standards from the beginning,” Leibowitz told me. “I’m not sure we recognized the enormity of the controversy. It’s a result of the fact that our world, the world of gender care, has exploded.”"

I can't decide whether it's sweet or alarming that they were so naive/sheltered from how the discourse has been in the past few years. Are they not on Twitter? (I'd hope they don't use it to inform their studies, obviously!) Of course setting any kind of age limits or even fuzzy requirements ("Identify as the gender for some time" - I paraphrase) will earn you 'fury from providers and activists within the transgender world.' The fact that you've been working in this field for years is irrelevant to the TRAs.

Based on this research, in some cases Zucker advised parents to box up the dolls or princess dresses, so a child who was being raised as a boy (a majority then) wouldn’t have those things to play with.

It's really hard to know what 'a child who was being raised as a boy' means. I assume male, but 'raising as' suggests gender not sex? I wish language wasn't so stupidly constrained. In fact the author hardly uses the words 'male' or 'female' unless describing e.g. 'male puberty'.

The Amsterdam clinic shifted, too. Some Dutch families socially transitioned kids on their own, which de Vries and her colleagues accepted; they began counseling other families about social transition too. Though the Amsterdam researchers’ previous results, like Zucker’s, showed that most kids who came to the clinic in elementary school later realigned with the genders of their birth, and often came out as gay, lesbian or bisexual, de Vries and her colleagues now see those findings as a product of their time, when the children whom parents brought to the clinic included many boys with an interest in wearing feminine clothing and playing with dolls that didn’t turn out to be gender dysphoria. Today many Dutch parents are more accepting of this behavior, and the Amsterdam clinicians think that as a result, most of the children who come to the clinic are asserting a strong and persistent gender preference. It’s more likely that such children will stay the course of being transgender, research shows

This is a good thing, I think? And look, it's a result of going against the notion that 'playing with dolls means you're a girl', that is so commonly brought up by parents of transgender kids (this was a big issue with the Mermaids' woman's kid). I.e. - being more critical of gendered roles. I hope this approach is encouraged.

“I know there are worries that effeminate males can be assumed to be female or masculine girls can be assumed to be male,” says Amy Tishelman, the lead author of the SOC8 chapter on children and a child psychologist who is the former director of clinical research at the gender clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital. “That’s not what we’re advocating. Support for trans people should not be a way of limiting what a girl or a boy or a woman or a man or a person can be.”

I hope they expand on this and make it extremely clear that femininity and masculinity have nothing to do with sex or gender. Currently, the NHS 'gender dysphoria' criteria rely heavily on stereotypes.

St. Amand thinks the purpose of an assessment is not to determine the basis of a kid’s gender identity. “That just reeks of some old kind of conversion-therapy-type things,” he told me over the phone in April. “I think what we’ve seen historically in trans care is an overfocus on assessing identity.” He continued: “People are who they say they are, and they may develop and change, and all are normal and OK. So I am less concerned with certainty around identity, and more concerned with hearing the person’s embodiment goals. Do you want to have a deep voice? Do you want to have breasts? You know, what do you want for your body?”

Interesting that this person wants to get away from 'identity' and reduce people to concentrate on body parts and physical characteristics. This would seem to be a logical progression from 'there's no such thing as a male or female body' that Stonewall etc assert.

Interesting descriptions of internalised misogyny driving trans boy identities.

Jack Turban is included in the article, whom I mainly know from this medium.com/@JLCederblom/the-lukewarm-perjury-of-jack-turban-a85903109051

Lots more to think on but it's a good summary.

I'm flabbergasted by the top comments too - what is happening? It's like intelligent people are finally using their critical thinking and realising that kids and young adults are being harmed. Could this really be? Are people finally seeing the emperor's new clothes for what they are?

Abigail Shrier called out part of the dynamic on Twitter.

Long ago, the NYT was in the news business. Today, it's in the business of telling Liberals what they're allowed to talk about.

Years after the dangers of pediatric gender medicine became undeniable - it has decided Liberals may talk about them.

Two good comments.

Re the comment from the transwoman, I am aware through twitter and personal life that many trans people share this sense of caution around trans youth. Why is it they are so rarely platformed by the media? Why does the Guardian in particular only ever platform trans people with really extreme, misogynist views?

It is so damaging - to left wing politics, to women, to non conforming children and to trans people and trans acceptance.

I thought hell would freeze over before the NYT published anything remotely GC. I cancelled my subscription as a result of their advert featuring a photo of a woman supposedly 'imagining Harry Potter without its creator'. NYC is one of the most woke places on the planet these days, so I suppose that kind of shit went down well there, but I'm truly surprised to see this article. I shall now read it at leisure! Thanks for the link.