I shock people who know me when I say that I do not support the current model of “gender-affirming care” for minors.

To keep my friends listening, I need to be careful. The language I use matters.

Here’s what I do say:

I love that you care about children who are struggling. Did you know that the latest scientific studies show that medical transition does not prevent suicide? If this stuff saved children’s lives, I would support it. Can you imagine how terrifying it must be for parents who hear, “Would you like a trans son or a dead daughter”? Yet, that’s not a real thing.

[…]

I’m scared that in the U.S., children are often offered puberty blockers or hormones on their first visit to the doctor, without any exploration of their other conditions, like autism or mental illness. (That’s what happened to my kiddo.) What do you think about that?

[…] Did you know that the doctor who is the most vocal advocate of these treatments has refused to publish the data from her NIH-funded study?

Yet, she also recommended girls as young as 13 to get double mastectomies, saying they can have breast implants later if they change their minds. I wonder why no one has conducted a comprehensive follow-up study on what happened to those children? Don’t they deserve that?

Was adolescence hard for you? […] How did it feel when your body changed so fast, and your mind was whirling with hormones? Did you struggle to find your group or feel like you didn't fit in?

I wonder: what if adolescence is meant to be challenging? When you were 13, did you have strongly held beliefs about yourself that you don’t hold now? Do you think children are equipped with the perspective to make decisions that will affect their entire lives? How do they know if they are uncomfortable temporarily because they are gay, or female, or changing a lot, and/or undiagnosed autistic?