A note about the audio. A number of activists attempted to disrupt the speakers at the rally though sirens, music, and bullhorns. You will hear these disruptions in the video. The transcript is included.
Good Morning, my name is Jamie Reed and I am a whistleblower from a pediatric gender center in the United States. I am a lesbian and a mom. I also serve as the Executive Director of the Courage Coalition, a coalition of lesbians and gay men opposed to pediatric gender transitions.
I join you today on the steps of this great institution to tell you about what has happened in our country when one of our fundamental core institutions in this nation goes awry- science. We are here because a series of flood walls fell under the onslaught of good intentions and misplaced ideas about kindness.
When I worked in a pediatric gender center I believed that I was operating under guidelines that were created from the scientific method. That a hypothesis was created and tested with rigor and then either proven or disproven. I would like to tell you about what happens in one person’s world when science goes completely awry.
In 1953, Jim Lovell who would go on to become one of our most famous and beloved astronauts on the Apollo 13 Mission (yes you can picture Tom Hanks now if you need to), was a test pilot. He flew planes in the Navy, planes that took off from aircraft carriers in the middle of the ocean. Planes would take off with a limited runway, fly, and then have to land by lining up in the most precise way to allow a hook to grab the back of the plane to allow it to stop.
Jim Lovel took off in a plane that he believed had all of the best scientific instruments available to him. Instruments that would allow him to track the plane in space and time, its velocity, speed, heading indicator, altimeter; all of these instruments glowing and precise so he could confidently operate this machine.
At some point near dusk, all of the instruments go black.
He was left with nothing but his basic observations of the world. He believed that he was quite possibly going to fly that plane, in circles, alone, until he crashed into the ocean and that he would drown.
When I worked in a gender center I believed that I was operating a machine that had precise instruments, that had a measured and tested hypothesis well before we had ever given these interventions to children. At a certain point I came to understand that I was operating a machine that had no working instruments at all.
We relied on self reporting questionnaires given to children, research studies that lost to follow up 30% of the patients experimented on, and a self congratulating loop of clinicians who made money off of the very treatments that they reported to be studying and when the data didn't suit their narrative they simply buried it.
I was flying blind, in the dark, very very alone, and I felt that if I continued on this trajectory that I would be forever harming children.
Jim Lovell faced the obstacle of having no scientific instruments and fell back on the basics of what science gives us. A way to observe the world and to let those observations of our natural world guide us.
He began to circle his plane in a huge wide loop, taking in as much information as he could, similar to the group Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine, the only group who submitted an amicus brief in Skrmetti in support of neither party, rather neutral and regarding the medical evidence. They reviewed the evidence and saw the developing patterns, that the interventions were not without harms, that the presenting cohort had radically changed, that something was awry.
Lovell too followed the pattern, making concentric circles and he got those circles to get smaller and smaller. He then began to scan the horizon, something in the natural world would be there to point him in the right direction,
There is that fundamental feeling of confidence in the self, even when the institutions go so far awry, have you felt it?
Eventually he found it. Because that giant aircraft carrier was in touch with life in the ocean. As the giant propeller churned and moved that aircraft carrier stirred up the smallest lifeform, a bioluminescent plankton. Plankton that when it was churned would glow. This gave him the direct pathway home. The natural world guided him back in the same exact way that the natural world guided me back from perpetuating this evil on children.
The glow lined up for him the direct straight shot to land his plane and catch the hook. When I first made the critical decision to become a whistleblower I went back to the basics of science. Is this intervention given to children helpful or harmful? Do the risks outweigh the benefits? Are these children getting better?
When I was able to look at these interventions on the most basic level I was able to see what so many have been able to see from the start, when they are not distracted by the ideas of kindness and civil rights, so many of were able to see from the start that children do not have the capacity to make a decision to try to pretend to change their sex.
Look around you, that person standing next to you today might have known from the start that this was always wrong, and they might have been your hook that caught you when your plane was finally coming into land.
Those that shared news articles with you, or those on twitter that liked your posts, but like you they saw that bioluminescent plankton. They trusted that they had the confidence inside of themselves, when the rest of the world was telling them, “the science is settled” they were willing to stand by your side and say, “Not only is the science not settled but Jack Turban, Joann Olsen Kennedy, Meredith McManara and yes even WPATH are simply liars. Liars of the worst kind.
When you were in your own plane, and your instruments all went dark, and you felt nothing but alone, they knew exactly how you felt.
And some of us here today not only had our instruments all go dark but some of us are women who love women, like myself, and men who love men and know we have lost everything. We have lost every single legacy organization that was created to support and fight for us.
We need each other more than ever, we need everyone here today in this movement, those who knew from the start, and those like me who made grave errors and took a long time to find my way back, and even those over there who simply have seen the pathway home- yet.
So today as they are inside grappling with complex legal questions. We know, we know that there is one truth that we all already know the answer to: no one can change their sex. We can not change the natural world, and no adult should be allowed- in any state- to lie to children about such a fundamental truth.
I believe that the Supreme Court is going to make the fundamentally correct decision. They will agree that we as a society have the right to govern ourselves in a way to protect children and ground them in the natural world.
And together we can guide more back to that aircraft carrier, back to the hook, and eventually back to solid firm land where the basics of science can lead us home.
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