Thank you so much for publishing today’s Op-Ed on The Youth Gender debate sparked by the Release of the Cass Report.
As the parent of an autistic teen who thinks it is possible to change one’s sex, it is always a relief to read something in the mainstream that takes a more circumspect approach on this issue. Someday soon, I hope to see an investigative piece that is not just in the op-ed section which has been the case with the Washington Post and the NY Times.
The piece on the Autistic Trans college kid who wanted to be accepted into the sorority was in the online edition of the WaPo for quite some time, among other articles of a pro trans nature.
Please consider doing an investigative article on WPATH’s influence on the APA, AMA and AAP. Also dig into the release of the WPATH files. They are quite revealing. Interview parents who are struggling. Interview both detransitioners and people who have transitioned, (ideally been transitioned for more than 10 years).
This issue may not affect enough of the population in the more tangible ways but I believe it has affected everyone in the less tangible ways, ie. our speech(how we refer to people, pronouns) , how we think about biology and our sense of reality. It is no trivial matter and it will leave a lasting affect on my kids’ generation for years to come.
I am a physician with special interest in the evidence behind medical strategies to affirm a trans identity, and have followed the Cass Commission for at least 2 years. Its release is a huge resource for medicine and the broader society as we try to sort out what actually helps gender dysphoric kids. It has been extensively covered in the UK media outlets of all political persuasions. In the US, not so much. I see your editorial, an article in the NYT, and something in the Atlantic, plus not surprisingly in conservative outlets like the NY Post. We need to be hearing much more. Unfortunately, opinions on gender have aligned with political identity in the US. With the Cass Report, the UK is taking the lead in getting politics out of gender care. We need more of that in the US.
The Washington Post took early leadership in covering questioning voices back in 2021 when it published the editorial by Erica Anderson and Laura Edwards-Leeper advocating gender exploratory treatment for gender questioning kids. That was a good start, but you now have an enormous opportunity to inject science into the American debate. I hope you will aggressively share the Cass Report with the American public.
Thank you for publishing Paul Garcia Ryan’s guest OpEd on youth gender medicine.
I am a mom who has lost a daughter to transgender medicalization. I advocate for parents who have lost children to this tragedy. I also advocate to stop the harm befalling children and vulnerable young adults to drastic medicalization of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries that remove healthy body parts and healthy reproductive organs.
I have written a book: "The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology" to share my views and represent the many parents who have lost their children. Our voices need to be heard.
I, and the parents I represent, would be grateful for more coverage of the harms befalling our children with the removal of safeguards and the push to drastic, irreversible medical interventions as the first line of treatment instead of the last resort. We parents want our children's root cause of distress to be addressed, explored, treated, and healed before they are placed on a rushed pathway of drug dependency, which makes them medical patients for life, and before they are sent to surgery, which cannot be reversed. Our medical system has lost its way with its purpose of "Do No Harm".
I thank you for reviewing my book and investigating and reporting any perspective that sheds light on children who have been harmed with gender medicine such as detransitioners. Please keep writing pieces that balance trans activist agendas with the tragedy that is occurring to thousands of families and kids.
Thank you for publishing Paul Garcia Ryan’s guest OpEd, “A New report roils the debate on youth gender medicine,” and for providing your readers information about his organization “Therapy First” as a resource.
Paul is a friend, and I have long admired his compassionate, clear-eyed and thoughtful approach to supporting kids who are distressed about their sexed bodies. As he details, he knows first-hand of what he speaks. He has paid enormous personal costs, both as a patient and as someone standing up for better treatment for kids.
I come from a family of therapists, and I know that not all therapists are created equal. I believe Paul is the best kind of therapist: a wise and kind person who cares deeply for his patients and sees them as inherently whole, just as they are. A good therapist provides a caring, safe presence. A good therapist helps his patients examine how they see the world and move in the world, so that they can be happier and more productive. Paul Garcia Ryan and other “Therapy First” therapists should be supported—not harassed and threatened for their work.
As many of us have long known and as the Cass Review confirms, most of these kids will outgrow their distress, and many of them—like Paul—will simply grow up to be gay. It has never been easy to be gay as a teenager, and it is never going to be easy—because most people in the world are straight. You have a much smaller dating pool, and you are not the norm. I want a world that celebrates gay and lesbian people, without trying to make them straight.
It should not be a status marker to be gay either! This trend is confusing many straight young people as they try to adopt a cool identity. This only further hurts actual gay young people. I don’t know how many friends I have with daughters who proclaim they are “lesbians,” and yet have never had a girlfriend and still obsess over male pop stars. Something doesn’t add up there. So, we’re also not helping straight kids, especially the girls who are tragically over-represented in trans-identified populations, as Abigail Shrier and many others have detailed. We can do so much better.
Offering pretense, medicalization, and surgery as a first course of treatment (“gender affirming care”) is not the way to support proto-gay kids. It’s not the way to support any kids.
The conversation must change, and the Washington Post must continue to be part of the change. Please continue to be brave. Below are some suggestions for stories:
Provide more (non-opinion) factual reporting about the implications for America of the WPATH Files and of the Cass Review itself. Read the WPATH Files report by Mia Hughes. Commit the resources to paying non-biased reporters to examine the documents and videos in detail and come to your own conclusions.
Hire good US reporters who dig deep into other aspects of this subject as well, reporters like Lisa Selin Davis, Eliza Mondegreen, Mia Hughes, and Christina Buttons.
Report about the silencing and attempts to cancel people like Paul and so many others who have been trying to alert people to the dangers of “gender affirming care” and suggest better alternatives.
Provide more reporting about feminists, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, trans-identified people, and others who have come from the political left in the US and who have been working for many years on this issue, most of us as volunteers. Your readers need to know we exist!
I used to respect and trust the Washington Post, and I would like to trust you again. Maybe I would even subscribe again. This is not a right-left issue, and you must report on this more responsibly for the sake of the public. People need to know the truth, so this medical scandal with children and young adults can finally end.
Thoughtful letter! Glad you reposted here since it probably won’t go anywhere in the WaPo. I’m remembering when I was a teen (back in the ‘60’s) and I’d grown to be 5’11 by age 14. The comments about “how’s the weather up there” got a little old. Girl’s basketball was no fun when I could just stand over all the girls. Of course, as we grew I soon learned there were some good girl athletes (not many!) I took to golf - fun! Even my parents came out with “I hear there’s treatments that can make you stop growing” Scared me - dafuq they think I’m a freak? Who would want to “stop growing”? Frankensteinian. So what people think of you, how they reflect back to you plays a role. Not sure there’s much to say to another, most do what they want. Drugs too. It’s what the culture gives to you.
As a Lesbian, it's horrifying to see my people, as well as gay men and bisexuals in a coalition with our worst enemy, which is the trans cult. It's not even a real category. These are the men sending us rape, mutilation, and death threats, and who have killed too many Lesbians already. Might as well add KKK to the list. I am still being stalked by the man who's been after me since I was 17 and recently was quoted making disgusting slander about me in what had been one of our last Lesbian publications.
These "trans" murderers are put into women's prisons:
Rabbitholed #78: Dana Rivers Is the Story the Media Doesn't ...
The genius move by the radical trans ideologues was to make the treatment of trans persons an issue of "social justice". That's how gay and lesbian people were duped into acquiescing in the parasitic attachment of the T and all the rest of the alphabet soup onto the LGB....
The widespread but ignorant suppositions that trans is a sort of "super gay"or that drag is sort of like trans and not what it really is, mockery of women, have greased the skids for the descent into the trans delusions.
Dear Editor,
Thank you so much for publishing today’s Op-Ed on The Youth Gender debate sparked by the Release of the Cass Report.
As the parent of an autistic teen who thinks it is possible to change one’s sex, it is always a relief to read something in the mainstream that takes a more circumspect approach on this issue. Someday soon, I hope to see an investigative piece that is not just in the op-ed section which has been the case with the Washington Post and the NY Times.
The piece on the Autistic Trans college kid who wanted to be accepted into the sorority was in the online edition of the WaPo for quite some time, among other articles of a pro trans nature.
Please consider doing an investigative article on WPATH’s influence on the APA, AMA and AAP. Also dig into the release of the WPATH files. They are quite revealing. Interview parents who are struggling. Interview both detransitioners and people who have transitioned, (ideally been transitioned for more than 10 years).
This issue may not affect enough of the population in the more tangible ways but I believe it has affected everyone in the less tangible ways, ie. our speech(how we refer to people, pronouns) , how we think about biology and our sense of reality. It is no trivial matter and it will leave a lasting affect on my kids’ generation for years to come.
Thank you,
My words of wisdom submitted to WaPo:
I am a physician with special interest in the evidence behind medical strategies to affirm a trans identity, and have followed the Cass Commission for at least 2 years. Its release is a huge resource for medicine and the broader society as we try to sort out what actually helps gender dysphoric kids. It has been extensively covered in the UK media outlets of all political persuasions. In the US, not so much. I see your editorial, an article in the NYT, and something in the Atlantic, plus not surprisingly in conservative outlets like the NY Post. We need to be hearing much more. Unfortunately, opinions on gender have aligned with political identity in the US. With the Cass Report, the UK is taking the lead in getting politics out of gender care. We need more of that in the US.
The Washington Post took early leadership in covering questioning voices back in 2021 when it published the editorial by Erica Anderson and Laura Edwards-Leeper advocating gender exploratory treatment for gender questioning kids. That was a good start, but you now have an enormous opportunity to inject science into the American debate. I hope you will aggressively share the Cass Report with the American public.
I wrote to the B globe, will now write to the W post.
Thanks for what you do
Thanks for continuing to let us know how we can help support the effort! I have sent my email!
Done
Done, also to the NYT, thank you.
Done! (I'm a suscriber, too.)
I am a WaPo subscriber so just sent mine in.
Email sent.
Here is what I wrote to them:
Dear Washington Post,
Thank you for publishing Paul Garcia Ryan’s guest OpEd on youth gender medicine.
I am a mom who has lost a daughter to transgender medicalization. I advocate for parents who have lost children to this tragedy. I also advocate to stop the harm befalling children and vulnerable young adults to drastic medicalization of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries that remove healthy body parts and healthy reproductive organs.
I have written a book: "The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology" to share my views and represent the many parents who have lost their children. Our voices need to be heard.
I, and the parents I represent, would be grateful for more coverage of the harms befalling our children with the removal of safeguards and the push to drastic, irreversible medical interventions as the first line of treatment instead of the last resort. We parents want our children's root cause of distress to be addressed, explored, treated, and healed before they are placed on a rushed pathway of drug dependency, which makes them medical patients for life, and before they are sent to surgery, which cannot be reversed. Our medical system has lost its way with its purpose of "Do No Harm".
I thank you for reviewing my book and investigating and reporting any perspective that sheds light on children who have been harmed with gender medicine such as detransitioners. Please keep writing pieces that balance trans activist agendas with the tragedy that is occurring to thousands of families and kids.
Thank you,
Lisa Shultz
Thank you for publishing Paul Garcia Ryan’s guest OpEd, “A New report roils the debate on youth gender medicine,” and for providing your readers information about his organization “Therapy First” as a resource.
Paul is a friend, and I have long admired his compassionate, clear-eyed and thoughtful approach to supporting kids who are distressed about their sexed bodies. As he details, he knows first-hand of what he speaks. He has paid enormous personal costs, both as a patient and as someone standing up for better treatment for kids.
I come from a family of therapists, and I know that not all therapists are created equal. I believe Paul is the best kind of therapist: a wise and kind person who cares deeply for his patients and sees them as inherently whole, just as they are. A good therapist provides a caring, safe presence. A good therapist helps his patients examine how they see the world and move in the world, so that they can be happier and more productive. Paul Garcia Ryan and other “Therapy First” therapists should be supported—not harassed and threatened for their work.
As many of us have long known and as the Cass Review confirms, most of these kids will outgrow their distress, and many of them—like Paul—will simply grow up to be gay. It has never been easy to be gay as a teenager, and it is never going to be easy—because most people in the world are straight. You have a much smaller dating pool, and you are not the norm. I want a world that celebrates gay and lesbian people, without trying to make them straight.
It should not be a status marker to be gay either! This trend is confusing many straight young people as they try to adopt a cool identity. This only further hurts actual gay young people. I don’t know how many friends I have with daughters who proclaim they are “lesbians,” and yet have never had a girlfriend and still obsess over male pop stars. Something doesn’t add up there. So, we’re also not helping straight kids, especially the girls who are tragically over-represented in trans-identified populations, as Abigail Shrier and many others have detailed. We can do so much better.
Offering pretense, medicalization, and surgery as a first course of treatment (“gender affirming care”) is not the way to support proto-gay kids. It’s not the way to support any kids.
The conversation must change, and the Washington Post must continue to be part of the change. Please continue to be brave. Below are some suggestions for stories:
Provide more (non-opinion) factual reporting about the implications for America of the WPATH Files and of the Cass Review itself. Read the WPATH Files report by Mia Hughes. Commit the resources to paying non-biased reporters to examine the documents and videos in detail and come to your own conclusions.
Hire good US reporters who dig deep into other aspects of this subject as well, reporters like Lisa Selin Davis, Eliza Mondegreen, Mia Hughes, and Christina Buttons.
Report about the silencing and attempts to cancel people like Paul and so many others who have been trying to alert people to the dangers of “gender affirming care” and suggest better alternatives.
Provide more reporting about feminists, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, trans-identified people, and others who have come from the political left in the US and who have been working for many years on this issue, most of us as volunteers. Your readers need to know we exist!
I used to respect and trust the Washington Post, and I would like to trust you again. Maybe I would even subscribe again. This is not a right-left issue, and you must report on this more responsibly for the sake of the public. People need to know the truth, so this medical scandal with children and young adults can finally end.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Hummel
Thoughtful letter! Glad you reposted here since it probably won’t go anywhere in the WaPo. I’m remembering when I was a teen (back in the ‘60’s) and I’d grown to be 5’11 by age 14. The comments about “how’s the weather up there” got a little old. Girl’s basketball was no fun when I could just stand over all the girls. Of course, as we grew I soon learned there were some good girl athletes (not many!) I took to golf - fun! Even my parents came out with “I hear there’s treatments that can make you stop growing” Scared me - dafuq they think I’m a freak? Who would want to “stop growing”? Frankensteinian. So what people think of you, how they reflect back to you plays a role. Not sure there’s much to say to another, most do what they want. Drugs too. It’s what the culture gives to you.
As a Lesbian, it's horrifying to see my people, as well as gay men and bisexuals in a coalition with our worst enemy, which is the trans cult. It's not even a real category. These are the men sending us rape, mutilation, and death threats, and who have killed too many Lesbians already. Might as well add KKK to the list. I am still being stalked by the man who's been after me since I was 17 and recently was quoted making disgusting slander about me in what had been one of our last Lesbian publications.
These "trans" murderers are put into women's prisons:
Rabbitholed #78: Dana Rivers Is the Story the Media Doesn't ...
mandystadtmiller.substack.com/p/rabbitholed-78...
Yes, by all means let’s make sure we get these measures in place. You know, because the kids aren’t fucked up enough by the Left.
I think we ended up this way because we keep posing these and other issues as a Left vs Right binary (ha!). Enough already.
The genius move by the radical trans ideologues was to make the treatment of trans persons an issue of "social justice". That's how gay and lesbian people were duped into acquiescing in the parasitic attachment of the T and all the rest of the alphabet soup onto the LGB....
The widespread but ignorant suppositions that trans is a sort of "super gay"or that drag is sort of like trans and not what it really is, mockery of women, have greased the skids for the descent into the trans delusions.
I don't disagree with you. And any idea can be co-opted by any side of an issue and be manipulated for self interest.
But the trans issue is directly opposed to the safety of Lesbians, women, gay men, etc. And not even a real category.