Thursday, March 28, 2024

Transgender Ideology More Important to the Left Than Children’s Health

In a recent op-ed for the Daily Beast, writer Elaine Korry argued that doctors should start using hormones to artificially block puberty for children experiencing gender dysphoria, or, as it is popularly known, transgenderism.

Gender dysphoria is recognized as a mental disorder by leading medical and psychological doctors. For the most part, they believe that it ought to be treated, not supported, because individuals with gender dysphoria are at risk for a number of other dangerous psychological problems, including self-harm and suicide.

Of course, Korry recognized these tendencies for mental disorders, self-harm, and suicide among transgender youths, even pointing to a recent Harvard study confirming this data.lgbt_flag

Korry wrote, however, that parents of those suffering gender dysphoria ought to support their children’s delusions, going so far as to give them a cocktail of hormones and chemicals meant to postpone and alter the body’s natural, healthy maturation process. To her, this is the best way to fight the serious issues transgender youths face.

“Treatment with puberty blockers gives transgender children a breather so they can continue to mature and decide whether they will pursue treatment with cross-sex hormones or gender reassignment surgery,” Korry wrote. “For many families, the question is not whether to intervene with blockers, but how early to start.”

Of course, as Korry readily admits, “Data on puberty blockers is scarce.” There is not enough information to know if preventing the body’s natural processes is healthy or harmful to it biologically, so by blocking puberty, parents take a risk with their children’s health.

On top of that, Korry is recommending puberty blocking in place of traditional treatment of gender dysphoria, such as counseling.

Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has written extensively on gender dysphoria and transgenderism. He has consistently opposed sex reassignment surgery and other indulgences of mental illness.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, McHugh wrote, “When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings.”

McHugh also wrote, “At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered. ‘Sex change’ is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is a civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.”

Puberty blockers, and other medical interventions, for small children expressing transgender feelings, may do more harm than good in the long run. Ultimately, those suffering with gender dysphoria need the love and support of their families and communities as they pursue proper treatments. Puberty blockers, sex change surgeries, and hormone therapies only encourage delusion and mental illness.

Left-wing sexual ideology has descended into outright madness so pervasive that the left is recommending medical treatments that could have serious harm on a significant number of children. It’s time for Americans to say that things have gone too far.

Michael Lucchese works for the American Principles Project.

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