Religion is a Mental Illness

The new anti-gay activism

Those who advocate for gender identity ideology are fundamentally opposed to gay rights. We need to start describing them accurately.

andrewdoyle.org

“Trans kids do deserve better. They deserve better than to be told lies that that they might have been born in the wrong body. They deserve better than to be told that these hormones and surgeries that they are clambering for will somehow solve all their problems. Many are on the autism spectrum. Many are struggling with their sexual orientation. We know that. They deserve better than to be told that we hate them. And they deserve better than to be labelled trans when they’re going through all the turbulence of adolescence, when your feelings about yourself are in constant flux.”

“When designing gender settings on Grindr, it was important to us to not further perpetuate discrimination and harm for the trans and nonbinary community. For this reason, we allow filtering based on gender - you can specify that you want to see men or women - but this will include all men or all women, because trans men are men and trans women are women.”

Lots of responses to this post I made the other day laying out the case for why trans activism is homophobic, most of them supportive. For the few that weren't, here's a thread where I brought the receipts. If my earlier post was opening arguments, consider this the full case: 🧵

First up, the charities, such as Stonewall and GLAAD. These are the groups that were originally set up as gay rights advocates, but were retooled around 2015 into trans rights advocates, and - since trans activism seeks to erase homosexuality - promptly began to do exactly that

With the anti-gay activists now in charge and setting the tone, media now takes the reins and begins subtly erasing the very notion of same-sex attraction, suggesting that lesbians who don't want to date ppl with penises, and gay men not interested in vaginas are hateful bigots

And more of the same nonsense:

With the activists dictating, and the media following their lead, the homophobia inevitably trickles down. This manifests in different forms, but one of them is the psychological torture of homosexuals, some of whom have come to believe their innate orientation means they're bigots

But mostly the biggest effect is in the trans community itself, who have increasingly internalized the idea that same-sex attraction doesn't exist, and thus, any ppl who claim to be exclusively same-sex attracted are actually just transphobic bigots who can be abused at will

The rest is just gonna be a firehose of hate, as I try to dispel the idea that this homophobia is "just a few bad apples" instead of the truth: it's a core component underpinning the entire ideology transgenderism, as are the violent threats that often accompany it:

I could go on and on, but I think the point here is made. Homophobia doesn't just exist in the trans community, it's RIFE in it. It's a feature, not a bug, the erasure of sex (and by extension, homosexuals) is a core goal of trans activism. Hopefully this has opened some eyes /end

Thread by @Rob_ThaBuilder on Thread Reader App

@Rob_ThaBuilder: Lots of responses to this post I made the other day laying out the case for why trans activism is homophobic, most of them

threadreaderapp.com

"Okay, I know you guys are gonna tell me I'm crazy, but I think all gay men would benefit from a gender transition. And it's like, guys, not being gay literally saved my life. It saved my life you guys, and it's like, as a gay man think of all the benefits for you, right.

You get to go through your life without dealing with homophobia or discrimination, you get to date straight guys, and you don't have to deal with, like, being seen as abnormal for being your feminine self. You know, you can be feminine and you're just gonna a be a feminine woman, right.

And it's like, honestly, in the year of 2024, maybe being gay is an outdated concept. Maybe it's just an outdated concept. Because why are we allowing people to live in a dark room where they're seen as a minority when we have the medical advances to make them like the majority, to have a successful gender transition and to live a normal life."

Support for Stonewall crumbles after Cass review

The LGBT rights charity has come under intense scrutiny for its stance on trans rights, with the NHS and other public bodies reviewing their

thetimes.co.uk

A decade ago, as same-sex marriage became legal, Stonewall was riding high.

Lauded for its key role in pushing for equal rights and campaigning prowess, it was helping government departments and schools expand their diversity offering and become more welcoming to all.

Now, the NHS has distanced itself and other public bodies are reviewing their associations with the charity, as the fallout from a landmark report on gender identity shines a spotlight on the organisation.

Stonewall, Britain’s most well-known LGBT rights charity, has come under intense scrutiny for its stance on trans rights since the publication of the report by Dr Hilary Cass.

Campaigning for transgender people became a key part of Stonewall’s offering from 2015, including backing the prescription of “puberty blockers” for transgender teenagers.

The Times revealed last week that the charity had tried to suppress early warnings to schools about the shaky evidence base, telling teachers to shred a resource pack which highlighted potential dangers.

But Cass found that children experiencing gender distress and wanting to transition had been let down by a lack of research and “remarkably weak” evidence on medical interventions.

She said studies had been “exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint” and there was a “toxicity” in discussions, with young people being caught in “stormy social discourse”.

Critics have put some of the blame for that at Stonewall’s door.

Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green, who ran Stonewall between 2014 and 2019, said in an interview with The Times that she had never attempted to shut down debate and that her only regret was trusting the “experts”. She said she did not recognise the characterisation of Stonewall as being a bullying campaign group.

But one source close to the charity said it was Stonewall’s increasing stance of “demanding” change rather than campaigning and enabling progress to be made that had caused issues.

They said: “What Stonewall does now is ‘we demand you agree with this, we demand you agree with that, we demand the next thing’, and it just doesn’t enable that bigger principle which is ‘what support should we be giving to some young people and vulnerable young adults so that they can make the best decisions for their life?’”

They added: “Some people think it shouldn’t be campaigning on trans rights at all, I think that’s up to it and that’s not my point. My point is that actually it just didn’t build broad alliances and it absolutely did no debate.”

Responding to the report, Stonewall said Cass’s recommendations could “make a positive impact” if implemented properly.

But in a review of the recommendations published on Thursday it said hormones and puberty blockers should still be prescribed to children and young people in a “timely manner” — against Cass’s recommendations — if supported by a medical practitioner. In a sign that the charity’s influence is waning, The Times understands NHS England has distanced itself from the organisation, cancelling conference tickets and a planned membership of the charity’s Diversity Champions Scheme.

An NHS spokesperson said: “After consideration, NHS England took the decision to not renew its membership with Stonewall last year.”

Other quangos which The Times revealed last month had kept their memberships, despite a government diktat to withdraw from the scheme, are now reviewing their associations.

Sport England had been part of the Diversity Champions Scheme, which brought in £3.9 million for Stonewall last year. But a spokesman told The Times: “We have reviewed the partnership and Sport England will not be renewing membership.

“As a public body which scrutinises how we spend every penny of public funds, this decision has been taken with value for money as our primary concern.”

Historic England had also paid £3,000 a year for the scheme. It said it was also reviewing whether to renew its membership “based on a value-for-money test” with the Stonewall partnership due to end this month.

Arts Council England, which had a three-month membership which ended in October, is also no longer part of the scheme.

Other government departments have also withdrawn from the scheme over the years, and Kemi Badenoch, the women and equalities minister, said last year: “We have engaged with numerous LGBT groups, but the fact of the matter is that many of them support self-ID.

“That is not this government’s policy. Stonewall does not decide the law in this country.”

A government source added: “Stonewall has gone from being a leading civil rights organisation, to the leading pusher of the dangerous trans ideology that led to the outrageous events documented in the Cass Review.”

They said the government had “made it clear that Stonewall’s divisive schemes aren’t welcome in Whitehall” but that some arms-length bodies and civil society groups still handed over funds. “This needs to stop,” they said.

Stonewall was contacted for comment.

Dr Hilary Cass 'surprised by homophobia' during review of gender identity services

The chair of the Cass Review has told MSPs she was "surprised" by persistent levels of homophobia as well as transphobia during her review…

The Herald

The chair of the Cass Review has told MSPs she was "surprised" by persistent levels of homophobia as well as transphobia during her review into gender identity services, as she noted that a "very high percentage" of the young people seeking help are same-sex attracted.

Giving evidence to Holyrood's Health and Social Care Committee, Dr Hilary Cass said it was easy to see "how the two things could get conflated".

She added: "This may have been naive, but one of the things that I was surprised about in conducting this review is how much homophobia there still is as well as transphobia, so we do have to support people in being able to express and understand their sexuality as well as their gender identity."

Dr Cass, whose 388-page report published in April concluded that the evidence for prescribing puberty blockers and hormone treatments to under-18s with gender distress was "remarkably weak", said that it is unclear how many patients have gone on to de-transition in adulthood due to the lack of long-term follow-up studies and because individuals who regret it "don't necessarily come back to the NHS".

She said: "That is a significant problem, but I think it's more subtle than that because for example I spoke to a young adult who started to transition very early - male to female.

"She's doing well, she had puberty blockers at the earliest stage, she had feminising hormones at the earliest stage and she passes very well as a woman, but with hindsight she knows she was a boy with intense internalised homophobia and was gay.

"But at this point in her life she's clearly not going to de-transition."

When the first NHS gender identity service was established at London's Tavistock clinic in 1989, it saw fewer than 10 children per year - mostly birth-registered males who identified as female.

Between 2018 and 2022, it was receiving thousands of referrals a year for under-18s, 73% of whom were birth-registered females.

The Sandyford clinic in Glasgow - Scotland's only NHS gender identity service for children and adolescents - has experienced a similar shift and surge in demand, with more than 1000 under-18s waiting for their first appointment with waiting times of over four years and a majority of the demand coming those seeking female-to-male transition.

Dr Cass told MSPs that the changing profile of this cohort meant it was even harder to draw conclusions from existing evidence about the long-term consequences of puberty blockers.

She added that this group of young patients also had to be considered "within the broader context of what's happening to adolescence in Gen Z" - those born between the mid-1990s and the early 2010s.

Dr Cass said: "We know that there are very high rates of depression and anxiety, there are stresses that previous generations didn't have growing up in terms of social media, and expectations on young people that arise from that early exposure to pornography.

"We don't know what any of those do to how you might present your [gender] distress.

"Certainly for some young people, that distress or feeling that you don't fit what you perceive to be the expected gender norms may manifest through questioning your gender identity.

"That's why we have to take this as a new cohort and not rely on previous research, and work with young people to help them unpick all of those things that may have led to that gender distress."

The Sandyford clinic has suspended the prescription of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to any new patients under-18 following the publication of the Cass Review, but the restriction only applies to the NHS.

Dr Cass told MSPs that she had "really deep concerns" about private providers continuing to provide drugs off-label, and said that self-medication by young people was "happening way more than we would wish".

The Cass Review recommended a ban on puberty blockers to under-16s except within the context of clinical trials, and advised "extreme caution" in administering cross-sex hormones to 16 and 17-year-olds. 

A clinical trial into puberty blockers is currently under development in England, and is expected to incorporate sites in Scotland and internationally. 

Dr Cass told MSPs that the review's findings had been distorted by "significant misinformation", including the false claim that 98% of studies into puberty blockers and hormone treatments had been disregarded and only randomised control trials were included. 

"Both of those things are wrong," she said. 

Of the 102 research papers identified for puberty blockers and hormone treatments, none were randomised control trials but two were rated high quality and around 50 of moderate quality.

These were all included in the analysis. 

Weaknesses tended to include follow-up periods which were too short, patients dropping out over time, or inappropriate control groups, said Dr Cass. 

"It was a very poor literature compared to most other literature, including in children's healthcare practice, so that was quite striking," she said. 

Dr Cass stressed that medical transition was "a really important option" for youngsters whose trans identity would be long-term and enduring, but the difficult is correctly distinguishing those individuals from patients whose distress is rooted in other factors such as unhappiness with their sexuality, undiagnosed neurodiversity, family breakdown, and mental health. 

She said: "Medical transition does not come without costs in terms of effects on sexual function, fertility, knowns and unknowns about long term bone health, the limitations of surgery...it's a high cost to pay if, in the longer term, you don't [have a stable trans identity]. 

"Picking that sweet point where you have a high level of certainty that you're giving the treatment to the right people is very important.

"And the group that we have least understanding about is the group that we are most commonly seeing now in clinic, which is birth-registered females who are presenting in adolescence for whom there may be a range of other factors driving their gender-related distress."

Aids and the new homophobia

UnHerd

“All of my friends are dead.” It was said in his customary matter-of-fact tone, without the slightest hint of self-pity. This was Robin, my supervisor at university, who would often discuss his pre-academic life and what it was like to be a gay man during the worst of the Aids crisis. That he had survived at all struck him as incredible.

In those early days, the sense of an angel of death targeting a particular community seemed like the realisation of a nightmare. When it first emerged in the US it was known as GRID (gay-related immune deficiency). An article appeared in the New York Times on 3 July 1981 with the ominous headline: “Rare cancer seen in 41 homosexuals.” Some called it the “gay plague”.

Confusion turned into widespread panic, not limited to the gay community. The first time I heard of the disease was during a PE lesson at primary school. Such was the general ignorance that our teacher warned us not to borrow each other’s plimsolls or we’d catch Aids. Some time later I saw the government’s public health advert on the television; I remember little about it except the large tombstone with the dreaded four-letter acronym as an epitaph.

In the 40 years since the virus was identified, there has been a sea-change in attitudes. Whereas the government’s campaign set out to frighten people with the message “it’s a deadly disease and there’s no known cure”, a recent advert by the Terrence Higgins Trust reminds people that those diagnosed with HIV “can live a healthy, happy life just like anyone else”. Much of the stigma has dissipated.

The same is true of homosexuality itself. One could say that while the Aids crisis exacerbated the hatred and mistrust against an already beleaguered community, it also spurred activists onto the pathway to normalisation. Whereas the pursuit of a gay lifestyle was romanticised — or demonised — as a dance of Eros and Thanatos, a way to ensure that one remained beyond the scope of civilised society, today the very notion of being orientated towards one’s own sex is largely perceived as unremarkable. Those who bleat about their oppression as gay people in a climate of widespread tolerance are luxuriating in a kind of perverse nostalgia for a reality they could never comprehend.

For those who lived through it, the Aids crisis was a moment when the concept of a “gay community” actually meant something. Lesbians were instrumental in providing support for their gay brothers, and amid the loss there was a sense of greater solidarity. I remember seeing a production of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart in New York in 2004. The audience mostly comprised of older gay men, and Kramer was among them. Afterwards, people were visibly shaken from watching the worst of their past so unflinchingly dramatised. One man approached Kramer and, through his sobs, I heard him simply say: “thank you”.

Kramer has been credited as a kind of Cassandra figure, one who had warned that the hedonism of gay life in the late Seventies would lead to trouble. His novel Faggots (1978) was loathed by conservatives for its graphic depiction of the sexual free-for-alls of New York’s bathhouse culture, but it was also mistrusted by the gay community for its moralising implications. Its lead character is on an impossible quest to find meaningful love in a world of fleeting sexual encounters. Kramer was criticising what he saw as a sybaritic and morally vacuous culture, and the sense of an impending reckoning has led to the novel being interpreted as predicting the outbreak of Aids.

When the crisis exploded, Kramer was one of those calling on gay men to exercise sexual temperance, and to shut the bathhouses until the virus could be contained. For this he was accused of being a puritan and a traitor to the gay lifestyle. His play The Normal Heart is set around this time, and in one furious monologue a character rails against a Kramer-type figure for trying to make gay men feel ashamed of their own liberation.

For the ultra-religious, Aids was seen as a righteous punishment from God. Many had been appalled at the promiscuity that inevitably arises when women are no longer in the equation. Male sexuality has always been contained to a degree by the institution of marriage, but gay men had been forced to exist on the periphery. There was no need to abide by sexual mores, because the rules had clearly not been written with them in mind. In other words, sex became an integral aspect of their own defiance against the society that had shunned them.

It always seemed a catch-22. Gay men were loathed for their sexual licentiousness, and at the same time excluded from the very ethical framework that would, to a degree, offer some kind of incentive against it. In his 1982 lecture, “Rediscovering gay history”, the historian John Boswell addressed this fundamental contradiction and argued for the need for a gay archetype or moral aspiration. He pointed out that when a straight man cheated on his wife, he at least knew that he was falling short of society’s expectations. But the same could not be said for gay men:

“I think that part of the reason for the ambivalence of the intellectual establishment in the United States is that they can’t tell when they read a book like Edmund White’s States of Desire, whether the life of casual promiscuity it depicts represents a homosexual ideal or the failure of an ideal. Are they reading about what gay people should do, what they do, or both, or neither? So they don’t know how to fit it into their usual critical apparatus. They don’t understand what would be a departure from homosexual ethics because they don’t know what homosexual ethics would be. And neither do we.”

Boswell was right that this ambivalence existed within and without the gay community. When William Friedkin’s film Cruising was released in 1980, the most vehement opposition came from gay campaigners who feared that it would depict them as being inherently deviant. And yet the movie had been shot in the leather bars of New York City, and the real-life sex acts that were filmed were hardly atypical. This subculture may not have been reflective of gay society as a whole, but it certainly existed.

Perhaps it could be said that the activists who sought to ban Cruising won out in the end. Their implicit goal was that gay people could be brought under the aegis of heterosexual respectability — that they could, in other words, live as conventionally as everybody else. It didn’t surprise me at all, therefore, that it was a conservative government in the UK that eventually legalised same-sex marriage. It would appear that we have seen the cultivation in the Western world of the kind of shared ethical ideals that Boswell seemed to crave. Gay monogamy is no longer seen as an oxymoron.

Many gay rights groups, of course, opposed same-sex marriage. To them, it was a way to control gay people, to bring them within the same heteronormative yoke that dominated the rest of society. This debate echoed those of The Normal Heart, where there was a fear of an attempt to “civilise” those who had found freedom in occupying a realm outside of social convention. To be gay was to be different, and for many this was a source of pride. An older gay man once told me that sex was far more exhilarating when it was illegal. It meant that even the most casual sexual encounter was a little act of rebellion.

But even as tolerance has increased, anti-gay feeling has not gone away. The Aids crisis galvanised such prejudices, and of course religious fundamentalists have always opposed those who they deem to be acting against the wishes of their various gods. Today, these prejudices are resurfacing through the obsession with gender identity, an ideology that shames gay people for not being attracted to members of the opposite sex and has been responsible for the government-funded medicalisation of gay youth. In many ways, this is a “progressive” rehash of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, with its prohibition in schools against the “promotion” or “acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.

The instinctive disgust that many people feel towards those who do not share their own sexual inclinations is seemingly hard-wired, and so what we call “homophobia” will always emerge in one way or another in a majority heterosexual culture. But at least to be gay is no longer defined solely by the sexual act, and that for one man to fall in love with another is widely considered to be an unexceptional fact of life. The gay rights activists of yesteryear weren’t necessarily calling for universal indifference, but perhaps we’ll get there in the end.

Calling All Major Medical Associations

What they should learn about LGB kids and gender-affirming care from the Cass Review

lgbtcouragecoalition.substack.com

“Every major medical association supports gender-affirming care.” You’ve likely heard this talking point from activist organizations defending gender medicine for children and adolescents: puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sometimes surgery to treat gender dysphoria.

I don’t deny that American medical associations—advocacy groups that support clinicians—take this position. But I do argue that the position is not rooted in science or reality, and that it can harm the very patients it purports to help—especially gender nonconforming and gay and lesbian young people. 

Now, a nearly 400-page report, commissioned by England’s National Health Service, backs these assertions up. 

The Cass Review, which took four years to complete, comes in response to complaints about the only public youth gender clinic in England and Wales, Gender Identity Development Service, or GIDS, which was shut down last year—that they were fast-tracking kids into irreversible medical interventions, and that the culture of fear prevented concerned clinicians from speaking up. Cass and her team needed to understand the current landscape to come up with a plan to fix it. So they listened to trans people, detransitioners, therapists who feel pressure to affirm, doctors who passionately support these treatments, and many others with differing opinions. They also commissioned systematic reviews of the evidence about both psychological and medical interventions.

Here’s just some of what they found: 

• No one had followed up with the 9,000 children who’d gone through the service—and, shockingly, the adult gender clinic would not share the data about how they fared later. 

• There was no clinical consensus about how to treat them. “Clinicians who have spent many years working in gender clinics have drawn very different conclusions from their clinical experience about the best way to support young people with gender-related distress,” Cass wrote.

• The evidence to support medical transition for youth was “remarkably weak.” “The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress,” Cass admitted. That includes the evidence around the use of puberty blockers, which the NHS has now largely banned, and their effects on bone health, brain development, and fertility.

• Of great importance is what some of that stronger evidence showed: a correlation between child-onset gender dysphoria and later homosexuality. “The majority of these children [in the studies] became same-sex attracted, cisgender adults,” Cass writes. In the one Dutch study upon which all gender medicine is based, 89 percent of the young people who transitioned “were same-sex attracted to their birth-registered sex, with most of the rest being bisexual. Only one patient was exclusively heterosexual.” 

Some parents had told Cass that their children had “been through a period of trans identification before recognising that they were cisgender same-sex attracted. Similar narratives were heard from cisgender adults.” Among the studies cited in the Review is one of almost 3,000 adolescents, whose high amount of “gender non-contentedness” in early adolescence had declined by early adulthood—but that non-contentedness “was also more often associated with same-sex attraction.” 

LGBT Courage Coalition co-founders Jamie Reed and Aaron Kimberly both experienced gender dysphoria as girls and adolescents. Both grew up to be same-sex attracted. Aaron went on to transition as an adult; Jamie went on to marry a trans man. My child is as gender nonconforming as Jamie and Aaron were—but no one can predict her future based on that. And perhaps her lack of gender dysphoria is related to growing up in a time and place and family in which that gender nonconformity is completely accepted, without anyone trying to make meaning from it.

Of great import to me as a parent is that most kids in the original cohort studied in the Netherlands were likely gay. But the medicines they received were the same as those once given to gay adults to punish them or cure them of their sexual proclivities. Somehow, these treatments are touted as being safe and effective for “LGBTQ+ kids,” but the reality is that they can sterilize and remove sexual function from same-sex attracted people—something they’ve been fighting for decades to stop.

Instead of talking openly about these hugely important issues with youth gender medicine, those who advocate for it have insisted on “no debate.” But debate we must. Because today, many more kinds of kids seek these interventions. There has been an “exponential change in referrals over a particularly short five-year timeframe,” Cass reports, with girls quite suddenly making up the bulk of patients, instead of boys—a shift that cannot be explained by increasing social acceptance. Meanwhile, children and adolescents “are on a developmental trajectory that continues to their mid-20s”—that is, it’s hard to make grand decisions during this long period of growth and change.

The youth cohort sheltered beneath the umbrella of “trans” is actually a heterogeneous group, and the inconvenient truth is that no one knows the best way to help them thrive. No one knows who they will grow up to be or how they will identify in adulthood. Nor does anyone know the benefits or harms of social transition, in which children adopt the gender identity that doesn’t correspond with their sex. “However, those who had socially transitioned at an earlier age and/or prior to being seen in clinic were more likely to proceed to a medical pathway,” Cass notes. That is, it is not a neutral intervention, but rather an active one that seems to increase the likelihood of medicalizing later. 

Cass states clearly that “For the majority of young people, a medical pathway may not be the best way” to achieve self-actualization. She supports expanding psychological support for those young people, and strict and standardized evaluations, in line with what several other European countries are doing. She demands long-term follow-up not only of anyone who will transition in the future, but of those who already have.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, an advocacy and activist organization that appointed itself the generator of “standards of care”—and which England and other European countries are increasingly rejecting—directed people toward an opinion piece called “The Cass Review: Cis-supremacy in the UK’s approach to healthcare for trans children.” In other words, they dismiss the whole thing as bigotry. But Cass dismissed their own standards of care as lacking “developmental rigor.”

The NHS thanked Cass for her work and suggested that it may have international influence. I hope so, too. The report makes clear that the American affirmative model was a departure from a more cautious approach, and that even the cautious approach was based on substandard evidence—that modifying secondary sex characteristics in adolescents, or transitioning children to live as the opposite (or neither) sex was never fully supported by any high-quality research and became more about social justice than evidence. But medicine, Cass reminds us, is in fact evidence based. The issue is “about what the healthcare approach should be, and how best to help the growing number of children” with gender distress. It is not about ideology.

We don’t have the same system in America. We don’t have the kind of centralized healthcare and state agencies to craft guidelines that all must follow. Here, we battle it out in the legislature, state by state, red against blue, based on moral worldviews more than evidence. So how will the Cass Review influence our toxic gender culture war? How will they affect the medical associations that craft guidelines and create policy statements?

I queried the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recently reaffirmed its commitment to the affirmative model; the American Psychiatric Association; and the American Psychological Association, which have pro-affirmation models statements of their own. Only the latter responded, and I spent over an hour talking to APA Senior Advisor, Psychology in the Public Interest, Clinton Anderson. He admitted to the low quality of evidence and said that there’s a fundamental tension between those who view transition as a social justice issue and those who advocate for a more cautious, evidence-based approach. Where does the APA land? “Our concern has been largely about a human rights issue, and the way this is treatment has become politicized in our system and used as a punishment against people for being different,” Anderson told me. “And that I think has to be seen as the biggest issue.”

I disagree. But I will say that Anderson listened to my points more than anyone at these institutions ever has. I urged him to take a closer look at the Cass Review, and to listen to those who’ve been hurt, not just those who feel they’ve been helped. Maybe, just maybe, he heard me. Maybe, just maybe, these associations hear the science-minded and nuanced words of the Cass Review.

Letters, Responses & Press — GAY MEN'S NETWORK

GAY MEN'S NETWORK

The final Cass Review is a devastating account of an unprecedented homophobic medical scandal in the NHS and private health sphere. Dr Cass details how an authoritarian brand of gender ideology came to replace evidence-based practice in the GIDS service. Whistleblowers like Susan Evans and Dr David Bell were silenced and cancelled. Brave detransitioner Keira Bell and Mrs A were forced to fight an arduous court case to expose elementary malpractice. Powerful former gay rights charities like Stonewall failed in their first duty of protecting samesex attracted youth, speaking in favour of a harmful ideology when they should have been opposing it. Those who did speak up for gay youth, like the LGB Alliance, were subject to misconceived and stressful litigation by ideological actors disinclined to discussion. The Cass Review may be a watershed moment for gay rights, but it is a damning indictment of gay politics that this reality check was ever necessary.

The recommendations of the Cass Review represent a return to the evidence-based norms of medicine. It is frankly terrifying they were ever abandoned in the first place. We wish to emphasise this was primarily a homophobic medical scandal. Staff at the Tavistock famously told a dark “joke” saying “soon there will be no gay people left”. Institutional homophobia must not be overlooked, edited out or erased from the post-Cass discussion. Homophobia ran riot because staff were too scared of accusations of transphobia.

With the exception that there be a clinical trial of puberty blockers, we welcome the recommendations of the Cass Review. Puberty is a human right and growing up into a welladjusted post-pubertal gay man is a gay right. Given mounting global evidence of testicular atrophy, increased testicular cancer risk, IQ deficits, osteoporosis, and more, GMN believes there are no circumstances in which a clinical trial having gay youth as live test subjects could be conscionable. We object to such in the strongest terms.

Kemi Badenoch: I have evidence gay young people are being told they are transgender

Minister quotes clinicians who believe helping a homosexual child change gender is in effect 'making them straight’

The Telegraph

Kemi Badenoch has told MPs she has strong evidence that gay young people are being convinced they are transgender instead.

The equalities minister quoted experts who said children likely to grow up to be same-sex attracted “might be subjected to conversion practices” which persuade them to change gender.

In a letter to the Commons women and equalities select committee, she revealed a former clinician at the NHS Tavistock child gender identity clinic had said that in agreeing to requests to help children change gender, they were in fact “making them straight”.

Another said that agreeing to help a homosexual child change gender was in effect “conversion therapy for gay kids”.

Mrs Badenoch agreed to write to the committee to provide the evidence following an appearance before them last month.

Her letter shows that the number of children in England going to the NHS Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) has soared from 250 in 2011-12 to more than 5,000 in 2021-22.

She wrote: “I committed to providing further details on the evidence that children likely to grow up to be gay (same-sex attracted) might be subjected to conversion practices on the basis of gender identity rather than their sexual orientation.

“Both prospective and retrospective studies have found a link between gender non-conformity in childhood and someone later coming out as gay.

“A young person and their family may notice that they are gender non-conforming earlier than they are aware of their developing sexual orientation. If gender non-conformity is misinterpreted as evidence of being transgender and a child is medically affirmed, the child may not have had a chance to identify, come to terms with or explore a same-sex orientation.”

She cited the Dutch founders of a medical gender transition service from 1999, who stated: “Not all children with GID (gender identity disorder) turn out to be transsexuals after puberty…

“Prospective studies of GID boys show that this phenomenon is more strongly related to later homosexuality than to later transsexualism.”

One of the same authors said in 2012: “Follow-up studies have demonstrated that only a small proportion of gender dysphoric children become transsexual at a later age, that a much larger proportion have a homosexual sexual orientation without any gender dysphoria.”

Mrs Badenoch also pointed to English data from GIDS, showing that older patients expressing a sexual orientation were overwhelmingly lesbian, gay or bisexual.

For example, 68 per cent of adolescent female patients were recorded as being attracted to other females only, 21 per cent were bisexual and just 9 per cent were heterosexual.

Among adolescent male patients, 42 per cent were attracted only to other males, 38 per cent were bisexual and 19 per cent were only attracted to females.

She said she was aware of “troubling accounts” that some clinicians are hesitant to work in gender identity services because they feel under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach.

She quoted Dr Natasha Prescott, a former GIDS clinician, who said in her exit interview from the Tavistock that “there is increasing concern that gender affirmative therapy, if applied unthinkingly, is reparative therapy against gay individuals, i.e. by making them straight”.

Dr Matt Bristow, a former GIDS clinician, said he had come to feel that GIDS was performing “conversion therapy for gay kids”. 

Tavistock was closed two years ago.

The minister also quoted a survey of 100 “detransitioners” – people who have changed gender but then regretted it – which found the experience of homophobia or difficulty accepting themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual was expressed by 23 per cent of respondents as a reason for transition and subsequent detransition.

She quoted one German gender clinic as stating: “It must be understood that early hormone therapy may interfere with the patient’s development as a homosexual.

“This may not be in the interest of patients who, as a result of hormone therapy, can no longer have the decisive experiences that enable them to establish a homosexual identity.”

Bev Jackson, co-founder of the LGB Alliance, said: “LGB Alliance is delighted that the minister for equalities has recognised the concerns that we have been raising for a long time.

“The evidence is clear. The vast majority of young people being put onto irreversible medical pathways are attracted to their own sex.

“We are literally ‘transing the gay away’ when we should be helping them to understand and accept their sexuality and grow up to live happy, healthy lives as lesbians, gay men or bisexuals.”

Helen Joyce, from the women’s rights group Sex Matters, said: “It has been well-established for decades that children destined to grow up gay are far more likely than other children to be highly gender non-conforming in early youth.

“Such children need to be allowed to grow up in a safe, supportive environment, and to be allowed to discover their sexuality on their own timescale.

“Instead, trans ideology interprets gender non-conformity as a potential sign of a trans identity. This tragically misguided framing is today’s version of the historic atrocities of gay conversion therapy.”

One of the more maddening aspects of the culture war is that language has been rendered meaningless. Most of the disputes are destined to remain unresolved because there are few shared definitions among competing parties. We are left with armies of strawmen thrashing about on an imaginary battlefield while most of us look on in a state of bewilderment.

The recent debates over conversion therapy are a case in point. At a Labour Party event in Parliament on the 29th of January, Keir Starmer pledged to "implement a full trans inclusive ban on all forms of conversion therapy."

Now he's likely to find some support among the population. A YouGov poll last year revealed that 65% of voters believe that gay conversion therapy ought to be banned, and 62% feel the same about trans conversion therapy. And this would suggest that most people do not recognize the difference between the two. A natural consequence of a climate in which discussion of sensitive issues is routine styed by both the brow-beaters and the brow-beaten.

Yet when we wade beyond the messy definitional quagmires, we find that the phrase "conversion therapy" is only coherent when applied to sexual orientation rather than gender identity. The consequence of this semantic ambiguity means that most people do not understand that in order to oppose gay conversion therapy, one must be opposed to a ban on trans conversion therapy.

Now, this is going to require some explanation. When we hear the phrase "conversion therapy," most of our minds leap to a variety of horrific practices. In America, Christian fundamentalists have established programs to address the "problem" of homosexuality. This was satirized in an episode of South Park where Butters Stotch is mistakenly assumed to be gay by his parents and dispatched to Camp New Grace, whose slogan is "Pray the Gay Away."

At one point the boys attend a presentation by Pastor Phillips who tells them that he used to have unclean urges but was healed through the power of prayer, all the while prancing around like Nathan Lane in "The Bird Cage." The episode doesn't shy away from the darker side of these kinds of retreats. Suicides are shown to be common among the boys, all of which the staff are happy to shrug off.

Now, one might argue that praying the gay way is at least a step forward from the brain surgery, castration and electric shock treatment favored by the scientific practitioners of the 20th century. One thinks of the American psychiatrist Dr. Robert Galbraith Heath, whose team implanted electrodes into the brains of patients, which were then stimulated while the victims were shown heterosexual pornography. Heath claimed to have successfully converted a gay man and wrote a paper with his colleague Charles E. Moan called "Septal Stimulation for the Initiation of Heterosexual Behavior in a Homosexual Male."

This was happening in England too. In 2014, I performed in a show called "Outings" at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, In which verbatim testimonies of coming out stories were dramatized. One of the scenes that had been submitted was by a Liverpudlian man who, as a teenager in the 1960s, was referred to doctors to an institution where he was forced to look at pictures of naked men while drinking to excess and being injected with substances that caused him to vomit. These medical practitioners also applied electrodes to his penis. Needless to say, it didn't work.

Another form of conversion therapy is the "corrective rape" of lesbians to "cure" them of homosexual tendencies. I recall one chilling account of a victim, Simphiwe Thandeka, who was interviewed by the New York Times in 2013 as part of a piece about the epidemic of corrective rape in South Africa. A tomboy in youth and a lesbian in adult life Simphiwe was raped on three occasions by an uncle, who then paid a friend to rape her multiple times and take her as a wife. She was left pregnant by this man and HIV-positive from her uncle. Her mother and grandmother encouraged her to keep it a secret, saying that it was a family matter and not to be spoken of again.

Now such practices are of course already illegal in the UK. So why are there so many calls for bans on "conversion therapy" even from members of the Conservative Party? In the past we've seen Labour politicians holding placards calling for this "trans inclusive ban" and now Starmer has confirmed that this is the official Labour position.

But what precisely does that mean? In her book, "Time to Think," Hannah Barnes revealed that between 80 to 90% of adolescents who were referred to the Tavistock Pediatric Gender Clinic were same sex attracted. We have known for a long time that there is a strong correlation between gender non-conformity in youth and being gay in adult life. Members of staff at the Tavistock joked that "soon there would be no gay people left." And whistleblowers revealed that homophobia was endemic.

In other words, children who are likely to grow up gay are being "fixed" by medical practitioners to better conform with stereotypical heterosexual paradigms.

Starmer's proposed "trans inclusive ban" on conversion therapy is therefore based on a misunderstanding. It conflates the state sanctioned torture of gay people in the past, with the important work of pediatricians that support children who are struggling with their feelings. Moreover, Barnes's research shows that the Tavistock Clinic ignored evidence that 97.5% of children seeking sex changes had autism, depression or other problems that might have explained their unhappiness. With only 2% of the country's children suffering from an autistic spectrum disorder, why did 35% of referrals to the Tavistock fit into this category? In almost all instances, children who are prescribed puberty blockers go on to cross-sex hormones, which in some cases leads to irreversible surgery.

We're dealing overwhelmingly here with gay and autistic children, fast-tracked onto a pathway to sterilization. The Scottish Government has already charged down this regressive path via its consultation on banning conversion practices.

As Dennis Kavanagh has written, it seeks to introduce "a new criminal offense which imposes liability for practices that seek to change or suppress a person's sexuality or gender identity." This risks the criminalization of medical practitioners who do not automatically take the gender affirmative approach and could see parents referred to Social Services if they fail to support the social transitioning of the children, that is the practice of allowing children to dress as the opposite sex and be referred to by different names and pronouns.

Social transitioning has already been criticized as "not a neutral act" in the interim Cass Report, whose conclusions led to the decision to close the Tavistock and could risk exacerbating feelings of gender dysphoria that in most cases will just naturally resolve themselves.

The gender affirmative approach favored by clinics across the Western world has already been widely debunked. Most notably in an open letter last July to the Wall Street Journal by 21 leading experts in pediatric gender treatment.

They were writing to oppose the view that gender affirming care is best for children, and pointed out that the common claim that puberty blockers reduce the risk of suicide is simply not backed up by the evidence. Unsurprisingly, this letter went largely unreported.

And as for puberty blockers, well the interim Cass Report found that there's a lack of secure evidence for their safety. Finland, Sweden and Norway have already implemented some restrictions and in March of this year, the NHS announced that puberty blockers for children in the treatment of gender dysphoria would be banned. The risks of sterility, depression and lifelong regret are now clear. But the Scottish government, of course, is doubling down. And we are nowhere near banning these dangerous treatments throughout the rest of the Anglosphere.

But why not? Why are medical experts willing to experiment on the most vulnerable in society on the basis of intuition that flies in the face of the evidence. Studies show that in the vast majority of cases, feelings of gender dysphoria in youth are resolved by puberty. So why are so many blocking the cure?

Thankfully, more and more people are waking up to the scale of this problem. Recently there was a debate in the House of Lords in which many of these concerns were raised, and this debate was on the conversion therapy prohibition bill being championed by the Liberal Democrats. Baroness Claire Fox was particularly strong on the point of "gender identity" and how the proposed legislation fails to define it.

"Can I ask the noble Baroness Burt how she defines 'gender identity' before she tries to embed it in UK law for the first time? It's at best a contested concept. I appreciate a precise fixed definition might be tricky when this particular identity can cover 100-300 genders. Transgender, Gender Fluid, Gender Queer, Gender Variant, Gender-less and Non-binary..."

Were it not for the inherent austerity of the House of Lords, she might well have added the identity category of Genderfuck, defined on LGBTQIA+ Wiki as "a gender identity and/or gender expression where gendered expectations are deliberately played with to combine gender-specific signals. Make of that what you will.

And also recently the Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch wrote to the Commons Women and Equality Select Committee about her discussions with former clinicians at the Tavistock. And the conclusion? So-called gender affirmative care amounts to "conversion therapy for gay kids".

Crucially, she cited a survey of detransitioners, those who are pressurized into transitioning and later regret it, in which 23% of respondents put their experiences down to homophobia. Badenoch quoted a gender clinic in Germany: "It must be understood that early hormone therapy may interfere with the patient's development as a homosexual. This may not be in the interest of patients who, as a result of hormone therapy, can no longer have the decisive experiences that enable them to establish a homosexual identity."

It is profoundly disturbing that Starmer's Labour Party is now officially supporting gay conversion therapy, in the form of a ban on trans-inclusive conversion therapy." And in spite of the likes of Badenoch, this is also the official policy of the Tory Party.

In other words, the promotion of gay conversion therapy has cross-party support from the likes of Alicia Kearns on the Tory side and Lloyd Russell-Moyle of Labour. Kearns has even tabled an amendment to the criminal justice bill in the hope of criminalizing doctors who don't automatically affirm children's claims that they are born in the wrong body. A charitable interpretation is that politicians like Kearns, Russell-Moyle and Starmer simply do not understand the issues behind these dangerously anti-gay proposals.

Homosexuality was removed from the World Health Organization's list of psychiatric disorders in 1993. And I'm pretty sure that our likely next Prime Minister doesn't sincerely believe that gay people require medical treatment. But if his policies are enacted, his good intentions will count for nothing. With all the information now freely available, ignorance is no longer an excuse.

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." -- George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty-Four"

The ugly return of homophobia

UnHerd

As a child of the Eighties and Nineties, I remember well that homosexuals were fair game in the mainstream media. One columnist in The Star railed against “Wooftahs, pooftahs, nancy boys, queers, lezzies — the perverts whose moral sin is to so abuse the delightful word ‘gay’ as to render it unfit for human consumption”. After the death of Freddie Mercury, sympathy in The Mail on Sunday was limited. “If you treat as a hero a man who died because of his own sordid sexual perversions,” one writer cautioned, “aren’t you infinitely more likely to persuade some of the gullible young to follow in his example?”

It was sadly inevitable that the AIDS crisis would exacerbate this ancient prejudice. A headline in The Sun declared that “perverts are to blame for the killer plague”. And while a writer for the Express held “those who choose unnatural methods of self-gratification” responsible for the disease, letters published in its pages followed suit. One reader called for the incarceration of homosexuals. “Burning is too good for them,” wrote another. “Bury them in a pit and pour on quicklime.” Someone had been reading his Dante.

I happened to come out in a much less hostile climate. In the early 2000s, we were enjoying a kind of Goldilocks moment, neither too hot nor too cold. We weren’t generally on the receiving end of homophobic slurs, but nor were we patronised by well-meaning progressives. My memory of this time was that no one particularly cared, and I was more than happy with that. Being gay for me has never been an identity, it’s simply a fact, as unremarkable as being blue-eyed or right-handed.

And so it has been troubling to see a resurgence in the last few years of the kind of anti-gay rhetoric that was commonplace in my childhood. Of course, it could be argued that the rise of social media has simply exposed sentiments that were previously only expressed in private. As Ricky Gervais has pointed out, before the digital era “we couldn’t read every toilet wall in the world. And now we can.”

Yet the most virulent homophobia appears to be coming from a new source. Whereas we have always been accustomed to this kind of thing from the far-Right — one recalls Nick Griffin’s remark on Question Time about how he finds the sight of two men kissing “really creepy” — but now the most objectionable anti-gay comments arise in online spheres occupied by gender ideologues, from those who claim to be progressive, Left-wing and “on the right side of history”. The significant difference is that the word “cis” has been added to the homophobe’s lexicon. Some examples:

“Cis gay men are a disease.”

“Cis gay men are truly some of the most grotesque creatures to burden this earth.”

“I hate cis gay people with a burning passion.”

“If you’re a cis gay man and your sexuality revolves around you not liking female genitalia I hope you die and I will spit on your grave.”

“Cis gays don’t deserve rights.”

“There’s so many reasons to hate gay people, most specifically white gays, but there’s never a reason to be a transphobe.”

“It’s time to normalise homophobia.”

Of course, any bile can be found on the internet, but these kinds of phrases are remarkably commonplace among certain online communities. Even a cursory search will reveal innumerable examples of gender ideologues casually branding gay men “fags” or “faggots”, praising the murder of gays and lesbians, and claiming that the AIDS epidemic was a positive thing. Many thousands of examples had been collated on Google Photos under the title “Woke homophobia: anti-gay hatred & boxer ceiling abuse from trans activists & gender-identity ideologues”. The site was taken down last year, presumably because it violated Google’s policy on hate speech — or perhaps because it revealed the toxicity of the ideology the company has spent so long promoting.

If such ideas were restricted to the demented world of internet activism, we might be justified in simply ignoring it. But we now know that the overwhelming majority of adolescents referred to the Tavistock paediatric gender clinic were same-sex attracted. Whistleblowers have spoken out about the endemic homophobia, not simply among clinicians but also parents who were keen to “fix” their gay offspring. And of course there was the running joke among staff that soon “there would be no gay people left”.

And now a series of leaked internal messages and videos from WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health), has revealed that clinicians in the leading global organisation for transgender healthcare have openly admitted in private that some teenagers mistake being same-sex attracted for gender dysphoria. The result of the “gender-affirming” approach has amounted to what one former Tavistock clinician recently described as “conversion therapy for gay kids”. Homosexuality was removed from the World Health Organisation’s list of psychiatric disorders in 1993, and yet here we are medicalising it all over again.

So how did we reach the point where gay conversion therapy is being practised in plain sight by the NHS? Much of the responsibility has to lie with Stonewall, a group that once promoted equal rights for gay people but now actively works against their interests. It has even gone so far as to redefine “homosexual” on its website and resource materials as “same-gender attracted”. It should go without saying that gay men are not attracted to women who identify as men, any more than lesbians should be denounced for excluding those with penises from their dating pools. What trans activists call discrimination, most of us call homosexuality.

Indeed, activists often claim that “genital preferences are transphobic”, or that sexual orientation based on biological sex is a form of “trauma”. The idea that homosexuality is a sickness was one of the first homophobic tropes I encountered as a child. Now it is being rebranded as progressive.

As for Stonewall, its former CEO Nancy Kelley went so far as to argue that women who exclude trans people as potential partners are analogous to “sexual racists”. She claimed that “if you are writing off entire groups of people, like people of colour, fat people, disabled people or trans people, then it’s worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attractions”. It is worth remembering that Stonewall is deeply embedded in many governmental departments and quangos, as well as corporate and civic institutions. Anti-gay propaganda is being reintroduced into society from the very top.

Meanwhile, the Crown Prosecution Service has been meeting with trans lobby groups such as Mermaids and Stonewall to discuss changes to prosecutorial policy in cases of sex by deception. Since these meetings — only revealed after sustained pressure from a feminist campaigner who submitted Freedom of Information requests — the CPS has recommended what Dennis Kavanagh of the Gay Men’s Network has described as “a radical trans activist approach to sex by deception prosecutions that would see them all but vanish”. In trans activist parlance, the barriers to having sex with lesbians and gay men are known as the “cotton ceiling” and “boxer ceiling”. Now it seems the establishment is attempting to support the coercion of gay people into heterosexual activity.

Consider a recent post on X by Stephen Whittle, OBE, a professor of equalities law at Manchester Metropolitan University. In a reply to LGB Alliance’s Bev Jackson, Whittle took issue with the notion that “love is all about genitals” (an argument that Jackson has never made). Having dismissed this straw man as “a very hetero/homo-normative perspective”, Whittle then claimed that “a lot of gay men can’t resist a young furry ftm [female-to-male] cub”.

While it is true that there are some bisexuals who identify as gay, it is simply not the case that homosexual men “can’t resist” certain kinds of women. As Jackson rightly noted in her response, this is rank homophobia, “disturbed and disturbing on every level”. Yet it has been expressed by an individual who has been described as a “hero for LGBTQ+ equality”. With heroes like these, who needs villains?

Another example is Davey Wavey, a popular online influencer, who has encouraged gay men to perform heterosexual acts in a video called “How to Eat Pussy — For Gay Men”. It may as well have been called “Gay Conversion Therapy 2.0”. We are firmly back in the Eighties, where gays are being told that they “just haven’t found the right girl yet” and lesbians are assured that they just “need a good dick”. And yet now these demeaning ideas are being propagated by those who claim to be defending the rights of sexual minorities.

The Government’s recent guidance on how schools are to accommodate trans-identified pupils — in which biological sex will take precedence over identity — has been met with horror from gender ideologues. One of the common refrains one hears from activists is that it represents “this generation’s Section 28”. But this is to get it precisely backwards. Gay rights were secured on the recognition that a minority of the population are same-sex attracted. In dismantling the very notion of sex and substituting it for this nebulous concept of “gender identity”, activists and their disciples in parliament are undoing all of the achievements of previous gay rights movements.

The widespread homophobia of the Eighties, epitomised by Section 28, was based on the notion that homosexuality was unnatural, dangerous and ought to be corrected. Present-day gender identity ideology perceives homosexuality as evidence of misalignment between soul and body. In other words, it seeks to “fix” gay people so that they fit into a heterosexual framework. It is no coincidence that so many detransitioners are gay people who were simply struggling with their sexuality. Gender identity ideology is the true successor to Section 28.

The proponents of this revamped gay conversion therapy dismiss our concerns as “transphobia” and “bigotry”, or as part of a manufactured “culture war”. Worse still, the new homophobia is being cheered on by those it will hurt most. While prominent gay figures continue to feed the beast that wishes to devour them, we are unlikely to see this dire situation improve any time soon. It was bad enough in the Eighties, when gay people were demonised and harassed by the establishment. Who thought we would have to fight these battles all over again?

Gay teens conflicted by their sexuality hoped becoming trans a 'cure'

Hormones and surgery are being too readily offered to young people questioning their sexuality, several young gay people have told The New Y

Mail Online

• Several young people who transitioned as teenagers, in a bid to cope with their sexuality, have spoken to The New York Times
• They all said they wished their surgeons or those prescribing hormone therapy had asked more questions about their mental health and motivations
• A study cited by the paper showed that 80 percent of those with childhood gender dysphoria resolve themselves by puberty

Gay teenagers disturbed by their own sexuality have described deciding life would be better as a transgender person and undergoing surgery - only to regret it several years later.

The young people said that, in hindsight, drastic surgical operations were offered with insufficient discussion or thought. Their stories emerged as concern grows that so-called gender-affirming care for children is homophobic, as it permanently changes the bodies of children and young adults who are not transgender, but merely trying to come to terms with their sexuality.

One told of being abused online by trans rights activists when, after five years living as a trans man, they realized they wanted to revert to being a lesbian woman.

Another, who began transitioning from male to female at the age of 15, now campaigns against surgical intervention under 25 for anyone who has not had psychotherapy first. 

Yet another, growing up as a lesbian in a conservative community, convinced herself life would be easier as a trans man and had a double mastectomy - only to revert to living as a woman six years later.

Studies cited by The New York Times showed that many teenagers wrestling with their identity and sexuality ultimately found peace: 80 percent of childhood gender dysphoria resolve themselves by puberty, and 30 percent of people on hormone therapy discontinue its use within four years, the paper said.

The effects of the hormone therapy, including infertility, are, however, often irreversible.

Kasey Emerick, a 23-year-old woman and detransitioner from Pennsylvania, told The New York Times she saw living as a trans man as a better alternative to being a gay woman.

'I transitioned because I didn't want to be gay,' she said. 'I believed homosexuality was a sin.'

Emerick, who grew up in a conservative Christian church, told her mother at 15 that she was gay.

Her mother told her it was likely a response to her father, who was convicted of raping and assaulting her repeatedly from the ages of four to seven.

At 16, Emerick was caught texting a girl, and her mother took her phone away: Emerick was then admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

Emerick convinced herself inside the hospital: 'If I was a boy, none of this would have happened.'

She said she found trans advocacy websites online, and felt she could 'pick the other side.'

At 17, after two 90 minute consultations, she was cleared for a double mastectomy - despite the anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies, panic attacks and ADHD she was also suffering.

'I'm thinking, 'Oh my God, I'm having my breasts removed. I'm 17. I'm too young for this,' she recalled, but said she went ahead with the operation.

'Transition felt like a way to control something when I couldn't control anything in my life,' she told the paper.

Emerick lived as a trans man for five years, but then realized she was no happier, and began detransitioning - despite online threats from trans activists.

'I thought my life was over,' she said. 'I realized that I had lived a lie for over five years.'

One man, Paul Garcia-Ryan, lived as a woman from the age of 15 to 30, undergoing bottom surgery in college.

He has detransitioned and is now, aged 32, a psychotherapist in New York, treating young people who suffer from gender dysphoria.

Garcia-Ryan told The New York Times he believes no one under the age of 25 should be allowed surgical procedures unless they have seen a psychotherapist.

He said he was driven to identify as a trans woman because he could not countenance being a gay man.

'It was much less threatening to my psyche to think that I was a straight girl born into the wrong body — that I had a medical condition that could be tended to,' he said.

He said that, when he sought medical help aged 15, the clinic immediately confirmed his own thoughts, rather than challenging them.

He said he had surgery in college, but suffered severe complications from the surgery and hormones, which made him reconsider his decisions.

'You're made to believe these slogans,' he said. 'Evidence-based, lifesaving care, safe and effective, medically necessary, the science is settled — and none of that is evidence based.

'When a professional affirms a gender identity for a younger person, what they are doing is implementing a psychological intervention that narrows a person's sense of self and closes off their options for considering what's possible for them.'

Grace Powell, who grew up in a conservative community in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said that she became convinced that her sexuality would be 'solved' by living as a trans man.

She had a double mastectomy the summer before college, then went off as a transgender man named Grayson to Sarah Lawrence College.

Powell, now 23 and detransitioned, told The New York Times she wished more questions were asked before she opted for the life-altering procedures.

'I wish there had been more open conversations,' she said.

'But I was told there is one cure and one thing to do if this is your problem, and this will help you.'

Aaron Kimberly, a 50-year-old trans man living in British Columbia, transitioned at the age of 33, and lives happily as a man.

But he said he left his job at a clinic treating gender-dysphoric young people because he felt there was not enough emphasis on mental health treatment, before surgical options or hormones.

He then founded the Gender Dysphoria Alliance and the L.G.B.T. Courage Coalition, to advocate better gender care.

'I realized something had gone totally off the rails,' he said.

I often wonder how it would look because, you know, the left was majorly against things like gay conversion therapy and rightfully so. You know, just leave the kids alone. They can express themselves however they want. Let them marry whoever they want, all that type of stuff.

And what really struck me with this whole gender stuff was that, to me, it seemed like just that similar, even more extreme conservative impulse to make people conform to gender roles.

You know, previously with the gay conversion therapy, it was just like, oh you're a man, you're attracted to other men, you should be attracted to women. We're going to, you know, try to change your mind so it matches your bodies and make you actually attracted to women. And with the whole, like gender surgery stuff, like most of these kids they're quite sex non-conforming most of them end up uh being just gay adults.

And so but now we're taking these kids and we're saying, oh there's a mismatch between your brain and body just like as the conservatives would say, but instead of changing your brain to match your body, we're going to change your body to match your brain now. And that's just like conversion therapy on steroids, literally.

And it's, it's really just like that. It just seems like if this was the right wing doing it, if Republicans were doing something like this where they were clearly taking, you know, sex non-conforming kids who were going to turn out to be most likely gay when they grow up and they were trying to give them surgeries to make them straight, like, that would just be the biggest scandal in the world.

But because it's coming from the left-hand side and coming from the people who are, you know, waving the the rainbow flag or whatever the flag looks like now, it's somehow just, you know, it's it's love and life saving and everything like that.

And it's, I'm just sitting back, just shocked at everything that's going on there because I I was never like a tribal political person. I was not like, I vote Democrat because I'm, you know, vote blue, no matter who type of thing. It's, that's never been me. It's always been, as you said, you have your principles. Those are stable. You know, you can change your principles, you know, based on life experience or whatever. But I ultimately look at the political playing field, try to identify where those principles are being expressed mostly. And in the past they had been most well expressed, I think, on the sort of center-left. And now I think they're more better expressed in my opinion, on sort of the center-right and that liberal right position.