How many more thousands of children will suffer at the hands of a medical profession with these Nazi-esque experimental procedures before they are called out for what they are? Why does your medical profession allow these treatments for a condition they do not know the cause of? Giving cross sex identity confused children these drugs, when there has been NO proven research as to the actual cause of the condition is nothing short of child abuse. It is experimentation worthy of Dr. Mengele. Keep up the good work Turban, your name will go down in history books with Josephs.

Did you read this headline and think I was accusing The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) of opposing the LGBT community? That’s the problem. A small anti-LGBT group called the “American College of Pediatricians (ACP)” created a name that is easily confused with the AAP, the largest pediatrics organization in the country.
It is disturbing that news organizations and physicians are citing the "ACP" as a reputable source. The ACP is a small group of physicians that left the AAP after the AAP released a 2002 policy statement explaining that gay parents pose no risk to adopted children. The Southern Poverty Law Center has repeatedly labeled the ACP as an anti-LGBT hate group that promotes false claims and misleading scientific reports.
Chillingly, the group has moved beyond its online reports, deeper into the political arena. They have gone as far as filing amicus briefs to U.S. courts for major cases concerning LGBT rights. Their reports have gained traction, despite clear criticism from expert physicians in the field. When asked about the ACP, Dr. Scott Leibowitz, medical director of the THRIVE program at Nationwide Children's Hospital and chair of the sexual orientation and gender identity issues committee for the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, did not parse his words, "It can hardly be a credible medical organization when it consistently chooses to ignore science and the growing evidence base that clearly demonstrates the benefits of affirmative care with LGBT youth across all ages."
Below are a few false statements propagated by the ACP that have the potential to harm LGBT youth:
1. Reparative Therapy for Homosexual Youth Is a Good Idea
Reparative therapy refers to an attempt to change an individual’s sexual orientation (generally from homosexual to heterosexual). In 2010, the ACP sent a letter to 14,000 school district superintendents promoting reparative therapy for gay and lesbian students. In the letter, they incorrectly cite NIH director Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., who swiftly denounced their letter as misleading and dangerous.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, and The American Psychiatric Association, among others, have labeled reparative therapy dangerous and unethical. Reparative therapy has been repeatedly shown to be ineffective at changing sexual orientation, and non-acceptance of a youth’s sexual orientation dramatically increases the risk of suicide, depression, and substance abuse.
2. Gay Parents Are Bad Parents
This was the reason for the ACP's original formation. The American Academy of Pediatrics explained in 2002, citing a range of literature, that children of gay and lesbian parents have the same potential for health, adjustment, and development as children whose parents are heterosexual. In response, the ACP ignored key literature and issued a non-peer-reviewed report under its new legitimate-sounding name: “The American College of Pediatricians.”
The ACP seems to be the only group of physicians holding this stance, with the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, The American Academy of Pediatrics, and The American Medical Association, among others, vehemently disagreeing. The American Psychological Association dispels false claims on the topic by the ACP here for those who are interested in learning more.
3. Affirming Transgender Youth Is a Bad Idea
Perhaps the most popular falsehood1,2 publicized by the ACP recently is that transgender youth who are supported in their transgender identities are caused harm by this affirmation. Again, they ignore major studies. In the journal Pediatrics in 2014, researchers showed that pubertal blockade and cross-sex hormones resulted in improved mental health for transgender youth.
In 2016 and 2017, two papers showed that transgender children who are supported in their identities and allowed to socially transition have developmentally normal rates of anxiety, depression, and self-worth. Furthermore, transgender individuals whose families do not support their transgender identities are 20 percent more likely to attempt suicide.
I urge news organizations and individuals to stop propagating these false claims from the ACP. The health of LGBT youth depends on it.
Footnotes (and examples of how the ACP misleads readers and policymakers):
1 The ACP, in this report, claims that 97.8 percent of prepubescent transgender children change their minds about being transgender after they hit puberty. This is based on a study from 1987, and researchers explain here why such studies are flawed (the gist is that the kids in that study and others were never transgender to begin with). Furthermore, pre-pubertal children do not receive hormonal interventions under Endocrine Society Guidelines. Only adolescents who have reached puberty do, and all existing literature suggests that transgender identity is stable after youth hit puberty for the vast majority of these youth (Cohen-Kettenis 2003, deVries 2014).
2 The ACP claims that hormonal interventions make it impossible for transgender individuals to have biological children. This is false. Transgender teens receiving hormonal interventions are offered fertility preservation measures as explained in Endocrine Society Guidelines and detailed here.
Jack Turban's writing on neuroscience and children's mental health has appeared in The New York Times, The Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, and Kevin MD among others. Follow him on Twitter or online.
References
Adelson, S. L., & of Child, T. A. A. (2012). Practice parameter on gay, lesbian, or bisexual sexual orientation, gender nonconformity, and gender discordance in children and adolescents. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 51(9), 957-974.
Cohen-Kettenis, P. T., & Pfäfflin, F. (2003). Transgenderism and intersexuality in childhood and adolescence: Making choices (Vol. 46). Sage.
De Vries, A. L., McGuire, J. K., Steensma, T. D., Wagenaar, E. C., Doreleijers, T. A., & Cohen-Kettenis, P. T. (2014). Young adult psychological outcome after puberty suppression and gender reassignment. Pediatrics, 134(4), 696-704.
Durwood, L., McLaughlin, K. A., & Olson, K. R. (2017). Mental health and self-worth in socially transitioned transgender youth. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 56(2), 116-123.
Olson, K. R. (2016). Prepubescent transgender children: what we do and do not know. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 55(3), 155-156.
Olson, K. R., Durwood, L., DeMeules, M., & McLaughlin, K. A. (2016). Mental health of transgender children who are supported in their identities, Pediatrics, 137, 1-8.
Hembree, W. C., Cohen-Kettenis, P., Delemarre-van de Waal, H. A., Gooren, L. J., Meyer III, W. J., Spack, N. P., ... & Montori, V. M. (2009). Endocrine treatment of transsexual persons: an Endocrine Society clinical practice guideline. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 94(9), 3132-3154.
Transgender Health & Nazi Germany
I'm afraid you are misrepresenting history here. The Nazis sadly destroyed institutes in Germany that provided medical care and support for transgender individuals. The Institute of Sex Research in Berlin was one such target. Magnus Hirschfeld, director of the institute, was one of the earliest advocates for gay and transgender rights. With the rise of the Nazis and the destruction of his institute, he ultimately went into exile in France. His books supporting transgender and gay rights were burned along with those of Jewish authors, those that discussed evolution, etc.
trans and nazi
Mr. Turban. Once again your LGBT politics is blinding you to reality. The only thing that separates your TS hormone therapy and SRS from the work Joseph Mengele performed in the camps is a signed consent form. There is no valid science behind the "science" of your medical treatments for people with this condition. Simply following your medical predecessors line of treatments, and regurgitating their beliefs that gender confusion is not a treatable/curable condition shows intellectual laziness and an unimaginable hubris. While your education background is impressive. My knowledge comes from a half century of living as a transsexual and the now clear knowledge that the medical profession's propensity toward writing scripts for hormones and sexual mutilation is false. Even Stoller had to eventually come to grips with the fact that SRS outcomes were a failure. They and yours are all inline with those very same ideas that Hirschfeld, Benjamin, Mengele, Money and Freeman promoted and ruined the lives of so many. Let's agree to disagree.
Logical fallacy
Anecdotal evidence of your life is not scientific based. If you are trying to disprove this theory, then you must convey actual proof instead conjecture. Statistics from reputable sources would be a start. Unfortunately, you may have been misdiagnosed and your experiences don't prove that transitioning should not be done. So, please don't waste anybody's time. The wrong people are going to quote you and use it to cause harm to others.
Question
Hey, just one question. What about complexes kids suffer while in childhood, like Oedipus complex ? Don't kids seek in their father and mother a male and female representantion of themselvs?
That gives me an idea.
So, the clear solution to an Oedipus Comlex would be allowing boys to marry their mothers. It's all making sense.
Oedipus complex
Freud based his theories on Geek literature and the family dramas of the Bible. If you want to know about the human condition, you’ll learn more from the classical sources than from a psychologist. They’re not smart.
Gender "fluidity"
If transgenderism is so good and so right and so healthy, why are suicide rates 20% to 40% higher among these groups than among the normal population?
Your ideology, Herr Doktor, is as sick and twisted as you are, and straight from the twisted mind of your father the devil! We're living in modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, and we know their reward...
The National Socialists were
The National Socialists were right to banish jewish perversion.
Nazi-esque?
There are far more harmful medical treatments than HRT. We don't know the exact cause of many diseases that are treated. Is it best to wait until those with diseases we dont know the cause of all die before we try to treat them. Trans people have experiences torturous and grotesque psychological treatments for 150 years trying to match the mind to the body. They didn't work. Matching the body to the mind is the only treatment that works effectively so far. I would be dead if not for HRT. Every trans person I've ever talked to says the same of HRT.
The real child abuse is not supporting Trans children and allowing their mental health suffer when there are effective treatments. The same hormone blockers have been given to cisgender kids with precocious puberty for many years. Its not new.
Trans children are not confused. The suffering comes from their fear of going through the wrong puberty and unsupportive, ignorant people, not the medical treatments themselves. There are so many studies that prove the efficacy of HRT with trans people and an improvement in quality of life for us. Surgery does too, but not everyone wants or can have surgery.
What groups are more credible? A group of a few hundred hyper religious physicians who think Trans kids are delusional as opposed to every major medical organisation with hundreds of thousands of clinicians who say they arent delusional and that they aren't confused? You seem to side with anti science.
Nazi conspiricies.
Nazi and Illuminati conspiracies abound amongst the radical acolytes of patriarchal dogma. It's sad, but people go to almost any lengths to justify the oppression of another.
Speaking personally HRT has helped safe and enrich my life, and the life of my family, as I've come to be known and live a fully authentic life.
Anonymous wrote:There are far more harmful medical treatments than HRT. We don't know the exact cause of many diseases that are treated. Is it best to wait until those with diseases we dont know the cause of all die before we try to treat them. Trans people have experiences torturous and grotesque psychological treatments for 150 years trying to match the mind to the body. They didn't work. Matching the body to the mind is the only treatment that works effectively so far. I would be dead if not for HRT. Every trans person I've ever talked to says the same of HRT.
The real child abuse is not supporting Trans children and allowing their mental health suffer when there are effective treatments. The same hormone blockers have been given to cisgender kids with precocious puberty for many years. Its not new.
Trans children are not confused. The suffering comes from their fear of going through the wrong puberty and unsupportive, ignorant people, not the medical treatments themselves. There are so many studies that prove the efficacy of HRT with trans people and an improvement in quality of life for us. Surgery does too, but not everyone wants or can have surgery.What groups are more credible? A group of a few hundred hyper religious physicians who think Trans kids are delusional as opposed to every major medical organisation with hundreds of thousands of clinicians who say they arent delusional and that they aren't confused? You seem to side with anti science.
This anonymous poster has it right.
If you wan't to look at science, look at Bill Nye's "Save the world" Episode on gender and sexuality. He puts it all so plainly and simply and uses SCIENCE!.
There is not really a binary or single set of chromosomes and hormones that works for everyone, and all living things. Trying to convert everyone to vanilla ice cream is a holdover from the cultural oppression we have experienced as we have ascended from our tribal and xenophobic cultures and industrialized and learned to subjugate each other for the evolution of our current state of affairs.
I'm a lay person. However I am a happy trans women who would never chose to live as a man. HRT helps me live a better and more authentic wholesome life as a woman.
An atrocious abuse of children in the service of ideology.
Agreed. What the medical establishment is doing is simply child abuse of a most serious nature. You'd think they'd have learned after the original disaster at Johns Hopkins.
Humility in Medicine and Science
We should be careful not to denounce a group of doctors or scientists as a hate group because its views on medicine or its interpretations of scientific evidence conflict with our own.
Science is not like math. Math is (for the most part) certain, constant, replicable. Science depends so much on subjective observations, causation problems, and unknown factors in general. Respectable scientists will tell you that science cannot prove anything.
We credit Socrates with the statement, "All I know is that I know nothing." He encouraged his students to be open-minded and question the commonly held beliefs of the day. I worry about the current lack of diversity of thought in the academic world.
We should not assume to know the motivations of people whose views differ from ours--nor should we assume they are wrong, though it is human nature to do so.
Acp
You have to realize that the members are catholic and using their religion as science. It is extremely prejudicial to the LGBTQ+ community. They are not scientific in any sense. I deal with the harassment and insults every day from this group. You can not ever support a group of bigoted morons like this that puts beliefs before humanity.
Keep up the good work!
I am very GLAD that mainstream publications are catching on to these religious right astroturfed groups.
Agreed.
Anonymous wrote:You have to realize that the members are catholic and using their religion as science. It is extremely prejudicial to the LGBTQ+ community. They are not scientific in any sense. I deal with the harassment and insults every day from this group. You can not ever support a group of bigoted morons like this that puts beliefs before humanity.
Agreed, they aren't using science, they are using religion to justify a psuedoscientific viewpoint that has been smashed by their peers in peer review or not at all because it's only been released on fundamentalist hateful media syndacates like breitbart.
I don't think it's appropriate to feed debunked pseudoscience to a bunch of angry supremacists who claim their being victimized by "tranny commy overlords usurping traditional white christian male values". And are threatening to punch, kill, maim, and murder trans people. That is not medicine, that's hate. I'm for one very very grateful for all the hard working psychologists and scientists working hard to educate others, as well as Bill Nye, and Morgan Freeman, covering the facts, and allowing the discussion to move forward into the realm of science rather than belief and misguided, exploited, misused faith in the name of politics.
ACP
Ms. Thompson,
You should probably learn more about the American College of Pediatricians (or any group) before making such comments. The College is made up of board certified pediatricians and others working in children-related medical fields and it's membership has a broad representation of faiths (and no faith at all). It's position statements are based on SOUND science though the outcome of such studies do not always correspond to the socially acceptable (and ever changing) positions of the day. Rather than bigots, they are men and women with a single-minded goal of promoting what is BEST for children, without exception. In a day and age when studies and viewpoints are considered not simply different but "right" and "wrong" (or even "accepting" and "hateful") it's unfortunate that such complicated conditions such as gender dysphoria cannot be discussed in a calm, reasonable manner. Such an approach would be most welcome in this polarized world we live in.
Let's look at the evidence against them.. does it add up? No.
If I were a careful searcher after the truth of claims being thrown about here , like the college being anti LGBQ for instance, I'd also look at the "studies" being used against them and their analysis ... pretty telling. I didn't find anything but a sincere, informed and principled rejection of this ideology du jour. And children are the guinea pigs. Check out their site for yourself and don't rush to judgment. Biology really has a role to play here.
A few medical professionals I know are Catholic and the sanest.
What a bizarre accusation to make against Catholic scientists. Catholics simply have a rational foundation for rationality and a moral foundation for human rights.. sanity all the way through. And all the science I've seen agrees with them not this hatchet job of an article. What I find here is really just an imposition of '60's hedonistic values being imposed upon innocent children. It seems that to postmodern hedonists, the only organs in the body that don't have perfectly natural healthy and dare I say OBVIOUS purposes biologically.. just happen to be the sex organs.... It's 2018, not 68 AD. We are very fortunate to have brave organizations that dare to speak the obvious. Reality is hard to hide.
John Hopkins.
In the late 70's? early 80s? John Hopkins lead a series of experiments on infants who suffered some form of trauma in order to try and make them change sex and gender.
These people were practicing doctors and adminsistrators and new full well they weren't healing, but taking the choice away. It let to the suicide of one young man, and has created many dissolutioned patients, numbering 20 or a bit more, as near as I can remember. Many babies who were born with a condition that would have otherwise forced them to live with mangled disfigured genitles according to their birth sex. These studies have been cited also many times to claim "trans people are insane because those cis people couldn't cope with their reasignment".
The reality is one or two good doctors, or a slew of doctors backing a study without knowing or reading the facts just because they signed on to a publication that fits their religious views can do a great deal of damage. When these studies and groups specifically target radical groups of people calling for the murder and incarceration and conversion of trans women who blame the "so called left" for every political ill. This isn't medicine, again like I've stated before. It's a war on science, medicine, compassion, rationality, and trans women because a group wants power, not because they want to help LGBT people, but because they want to dupe and control a segment of prejudiced irrational supremacists into following their words blindly.
On Breitbart particularly it's a processes of appealing to a basic binary world view and using it to slowly brainwash and create a false belief in a mob about a segment of the population who is constantly on the verge of being criminalized and is barely escaping oppression from an angry and regressive set of Patriarchs from the last century who cannot acknowledge the truth of human nature.
Being used on a site or cited on Breitbart should be a horrifying prospect for any compassionate kind human being, none the less a doctor that upholds medicine and science. They should be vehemently be denouncing the use of any of their studies on these publications.
If for example, Neil Degrasse made a study that tangently was picked up by the KKK, would he not immediately seek to discredit the use of his work in such a way? Thankfully for him, his work with aerospace has little bearing on race or sociology.
Basic, crude, ideas about, gender and sexuality does have sadly a lot of power in the fundamentalist extremist nativist circles that a site like Breitbart caters to. As well do some of these misguided practitioners think that they are doing right by attempting to argue a dead horse to death based on the thinnest philosophical questions that do not belong in fact based medicine.
Neil Degrasse Tyson’s major
Neil Degrasse Tyson’s major contribution to science was reclassifying a planet, Pluto, that is still a planet. How is his career not about his race?
reply to Nathan
Nathan very good post, thank you for your insight. While you have a solid foundation on what medical science should be, you are unaware of the fact that the very first SRS surgery performed by Magnus Hirschfeld on Einer Wegener in 1930 was done without ANY previous research or medical training or medical technique trials. When they did their five surgeries on Wegener they did not know how his body would take the uterus transplant. He died from that experimental surgery. It would take 80 more years , hundreds of related surgeries, research, trials and errors to be able to perform that surgery in 2014. When Alfred Kinsey referred a boy with gender identity problems to Harry Benjamin in 1947, Benjamin began treating the lad with female hormones with no psychological exams, no attempts to find the root cause of the condition, NADA. No previous clinic trials, no lab rats growing titts..;nothing. Hormones and then off to Denmark for sexual mutilation. This medical industry niche is rife with such examples. Turban's promotion of these treatments is just another example of it. Nathan, let me ask you, If you go to a doctor and tell him that you have green spots on your arm, pain in your kidneys and have constant anxiety, wouldn't you think it prudent for him to figure out what is causing all these symptoms before giving you radiation therapy? Or are you okay with him saying, "Well, I don't know what causes it, I don't think it can be cured, so I will have to cut off your arm and treat you with massive doses of radiation." These gender doctors are prescribing treatments for a condition they don't know the cause of. WHAT IF THEY ARE WRONG?
Wow??? @ Rene
Anonymous wrote:Nathan very good post, thank you for your insight. While you have a solid foundation on what medical science should be, you are unaware of the fact that the very first SRS surgery performed by Magnus Hirschfeld on Einer Wegener in 1930 was done without ANY previous research or medical training or medical technique trials. When they did their five surgeries on Wegener they did not know how his body would take the uterus transplant. He died from that experimental surgery. It would take 80 more years , hundreds of related surgeries, research, trials and errors to be able to perform that surgery in 2014. When Alfred Kinsey referred a boy with gender identity problems to Harry Benjamin in 1947, Benjamin began treating the lad with female hormones with no psychological exams, no attempts to find the root cause of the condition, NADA. No previous clinic trials, no lab rats growing titts..;nothing. Hormones and then off to Denmark for sexual mutilation. This medical industry niche is rife with such examples. Turban's promotion of these treatments is just another example of it. Nathan, let me ask you, If you go to a doctor and tell him that you have green spots on your arm, pain in your kidneys and have constant anxiety, wouldn't you think it prudent for him to figure out what is causing all these symptoms before giving you radiation therapy? Or are you okay with him saying, "Well, I don't know what causes it, I don't think it can be cured, so I will have to cut off your arm and treat you with massive doses of radiation." These gender doctors are prescribing treatments for a condition they don't know the cause of. WHAT IF THEY ARE WRONG?
This hyberbole and Anecdote is just horrible. This is not the current state of affairs, and the same could be said for almost all state of affairs. Look, Thorazine was used to treat everything. When the medical profession was in it's infancy with our humanity, along with all the prejudice and lack of scientific methodology, people did horrible exploitative things.
This is not the scope of medicine now. And this is just abhorrent you would use this to justify attacking trans people for wishing to receive fair, unbiased, and contemporary treatment.
It's proven that conversion therapy does more harm. It's proven that not affirming a persons gender increases their suicidal ideation. Beating someone up and bullying them for not conforming to your ideals or world views doesn't make them whole or heal what's wrong with them.
If you wan't to look at human history it's rife with doctors and leaches. You can use this horrific history to justify almost anything including torture.
No one is asking for doctors to "cut their arm off because they want to". I won't argue with you further, but I do implore you to, rather than be reactionary and demeaning, look at the real cases. I am one of these success stories. Please don't preach falsehoods because of an internalized belief that gender and sex is some archaic binary concept. Society has already demonstrated a plethora of hormones and chromosomes in all life, including humans. Educate yourself before you irrationally step up and claim "trans" "medicine" is some kind of barbaric torture.
You have it wrong
No one is saying trans people should be treated poorly. No one is questioning a trans persons humanity. All the scientifically literate people are saying is men are men and women are women. Biology is a thing and truth can not be sacrificed just because some people are offended by the truth. With that being said, do what you want if your 18+. I don't care, and not many other people do either. When we start caring is when you say that *we* must start ignoring biology to humor delusion. And as was previously stated in other comments, their is no evidence that your solution to this problem is the best way to help trans people... If a person is suffering from schizophrenia and thinks their toaster is talking to them the kind and helpful thing to do is not to hummer their delusion. It's to medicate and treat them.
ACP
The American College of Pediatricians is one of many fake rightwing groups. there are fake medical journals, and even faked national organizations. 3 of them are just one man's fax machine. The rightwing never funded a peer-reviewed study, just hired a couple guys who work for evangelical schools to create faux studies. Liars for the Lord are still liars.
Sad but true.
I have personally reviewed several of these stories and on the front page of their misleading headlines they post pictures and names of some extreme and insanely disturbing outliers and than proceed to claim that because of this study it's "proof we are all out to get them". In simple terms, they are inciting fear and violence in people who are uneducated and easily targeted. It's the worst behavior humanity has to offer. It has turned me away from all of my conservative friends who preach the second coming of King Trump and the cleansing of all the "lesser snowflake dregs of society".
Further more these fake stories do not belong on biased political websites. They are there to garner the attention of the hateful and prejudiced and use them to prop up and control others through fear and division.
As opposed to the APA, which
As opposed to the APA, which is totally full of real science.
See, once you start a pseudoscience, you don’t get to criticize others for doing the same thing.
Some perspective
I am a third year medical student and this issue comes up quite a bit in the medical community. First, before I rant I want to say that I agree with the premise of this article and believe that we should offer the best support for the physical and mental well being of LGBT youth. I am on your side.
That being said, I am very disappointed with the click bait title you have chosen for this article. As a commenter above me said, it is dangerous to label a group of professionals as a hate group because you disagree with some of their ideologies. That will do nothing to change their minds but only drive them further away.
The thing you have to understand about medicine is that the profession, for the most part, tends to be slightly conservative. Overall this may be a good thing because doctors require a large amount of evidence before they shift the way they practice, in order to make sure that a new approach is truly more beneficial than what they have been doing. There have been many instances when new recommendations turn out to be harmful but the effects are not noticed until years of practice. While not every doctor has a research lab, they do base their recommendations off of experience and knowledge of the human body.
I'll take the example of transitioning sexes that you posed in your article. While it may be beneficial for mental health to support transitioning, giving someone hormones poses several health risks. It is completely understandable that a collection of physicians who treat children would be wary of this, and hold out for better evidence and perhaps better treatments for gender dysphoria in the future. The fact that you used this to label the ACP as a hate group is irresponsible and underscores the reason why psychologists are not always taken seriously by other scientific bodies. You owe it to your profession to not misrepresent or sensationalize your argument and allow the facts to speak for themselves. This is not the first time I read an article on psychology today and questioned whether I was reading buzzfeed.
Of course
This is exactly the type of homophobia and cis-normative sentiment that I would expect from someone in med school. Perhaps if you peered outside of bubble of privilege and looked at the lives of people who aren't trying to join the upper-class of the world, you would see the damage that these types of views can cause. If we sit around and wait for years of "evidence" before we try to help people, then how many trans and LGBT people are going to suffer marginalization, their entire lives? Did you ever think about that? The so-called experts are always throwing the word "evidence" around, acting like we need 20 years worth of studies before we can make meaningful change in the world.
Ironic
Hi Corinne,
So you're telling me I should be more open minded? Fair enough. But then you might want to not make sweeping generalizations about people in medical school because it makes you sound like a hypocrite, and honestly you are shooting yourself in the foot because there are a lot of people in medical school who would whole heartedly agree with you. Now that that's out of the way, I want to make sure you understand the point of my argument. I was saying that it is far better to argue "you are wrong because studies have shown x" than "you are wrong because cis normative hate speech blah blah blah." You risk becoming part of the problem.
So finally, I ask you this. Imagine a healthy child comes to you and asks for help transitioning. YOU have to decide whether to give this kid hormones that will increase their risk of cancer, heart disease, and other things. This completely violates "do no harm." Imagine that reality where you are the one responsible for that and try to have some empathy.
Acp validity
First off I appreciate your adherence to the scientific method. I do understand what you are saying about letting opposing views stand until proven invalid. However you have to understand that ACP is not a scientific organization. There may be some medical professionals in the organization but it also consists of people who support their opinions. Plus not invalidating but they are pursuing a path of attack and false accusations against LGBT Q+ people. This is the problem with their pursuit. Also others are using their opinions as fact to attack and defame the community. That is why it is claimed by the southern poverty law center as a hate group. What is commented in the article is that professionals need to pursue facts and validity of information in the treatment of LGBT Q+ individuals. I hope that helps.
Homophobia?
Transitioning children who are more than likely gay - is homophobic.
And what is "cis-normative?" Stop with your made up words.
Not everyone is buying your progressive BS agenda - some of us know the money driving the trans lobby and big pharma and medicine seeing a cash cow.
Leave children alone! Stop turning them into lifetime medical patients.
Cash cow? Not.
Ummm... Big pharma is completely uninterested in trans people. The hormones and blockers we use are pretty cheap and low-margin. Try again.
reply to Corrine
Corrine. Homophobia is not a social condition. It is a biological response. Our species has built into it the sole purpose to breed and create to survive. As a transsexual, as the first TS to become a police officer in 1980 in SF. I have seen first hand how foolish attempts to curb these attitudes are. Do you realize that in China, eastern doctors do not recognize gender? Only male and female sex. Gender is an American/Western concept. So there are 3 billion people that will not come on board with the LGBT socializing of this condition. Then there are 23 Muslim countries, and only one, Iran, tolerates TS. That's another 1.6 billion. So now we are looking at roughly 4.6 billion out of 6 billion of the world's population that are in direct odds with Jack Turban's utopian transsexual love fest world. And I personally don't need 20 years of studies. I would like 4 or five, scientifically conducted, double blind, well researched studies to find the cause. Once it is agreed upon, then figure out a treatment plan and agree upon it. Corrine, would you accept surgical mutilation for a medical condition that they didn't know what caused it?
SRS
SRS isn't some cavalier decision to mutilate ones self. It's hard for most transsexuals to cope with and deal with and attain. It's not something a doctor just "proscribes' and never should be approached cavalierly. As for the "LGBT Agenda" (yes scare quotes"!!! It's pretty scientifically grounded.
I doubt your integrity and voracity, as sincerely, any trans woman wouldn't approach this topic about SRS with such a cavalier and dismissive attitude and bring in fear mongering from foreign powers.
Refine your argument. Religious groups and the government has no business in medical science or in HRT or in SRS. That's something patients and doctors have been figuring out and will continue to figure out on a rational, personal, case by case basis.
I personally have many anecdotes, postive and negative, about SRS being a trans woman in the community, who lives as a cis female.. It's more prevalent than you would think and the success rate amongst my aquaintances is much higher than the failure rate. Even those with complications rarely consider their SRS a failure, if they so chose.
Many do not.
I personally have undergone an orchiectomy, and it's made a massive improvement in my well being, ability to function, and cope with my dysphoria (something not even every trans person faces). I do not have access to SRS due to political and financial reasons currently. I have been at the mercy of prejudice my whole life. I am well versed in what's fair and just and rational. Denying me SRS on the grounds that YOU or a politically motivated or fundamentally religiously motivated party believes it is mutilation, or against god is false.
These studies are patently false. No one is mutilating children aside from a few quacks who refuse to acknowlege the overwhelming body of evidence REAL HONEST INTEGRAL GROUPS like the AAP (NOT THE ACP) provide. It is also up to individual parents and guardians int he situation of a child. This no one is challenging, or should be challenging. SRS won't help a child. Should not be considered until someone has transitioned and lived on hormone blockers and understands the social roll they are fullfilling.
As for muslim or Chinese medicine or cultures? What bearing does that have on my right to have free access to medically necessary and scientifically sound gender affirming care? it has none. Should not be a consideration, unless perhaps I am a muslim and traveling abroad. In that case I would hope I would have the proper ID and privacy to not be outed as trans anyway.
Get real.... please. I implore you to stop falsely propogandising this issue and look at it from a philosophical and humanitarian perspective.
Of course
Condescending, self-righteous, prejudiced comment containing words like "cis-normative sentiment" and "privilege." You're such a cliche.
Grow up snowflake
Classic insane leftist. How about you grow up and stop pretending to be a victim. Your not. Your the kind of immoral monster that calls anyone who disagree's with you a nazi. You try to shut down speak that threatens your delusional subjective reality. Your not a moral arbiter. Your a fascist mouthpiece. Here's how you know your argument is a load of crap... You first have to attack a person's charterer by saying their a "cis-gender, white, privileged male," so that everything they say is wrong compared to your opinion. First, that's pretty discriminatory actually. Making assumptions about people based on sex, gender, race, and sexual preference is evil. Thought we were past that in the U.S. Sometimes I forget how bigoted the left is. Second, come up with an actual fact based argument. Attacking character only shows you have no argument so all you can do is try to discredit others.
Hate group
The clickbait title is a problem? Because it calls the group a hate group? False. The title does not use that language.
Add new comment | Psychology Today
Hi there! I realize this is kind of off-topic however I had to ask.
Does operating a well-established blog like yours take a lot of work?
I am brand new to blogging however I do write in my journal daily.
I'd like to start a blog so I can share my own experience
and views online. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or tips for brand new aspiring bloggers.
Thankyou!
Yes
Anonymous wrote:I am a third year medical student and this issue comes up quite a bit in the medical community. First, before I rant I want to say that I agree with the premise of this article and believe that we should offer the best support for the physical and mental well being of LGBT youth. I am on your side.
That being said, I am very disappointed with the click bait title you have chosen for this article. As a commenter above me said, it is dangerous to label a group of professionals as a hate group because you disagree with some of their ideologies. That will do nothing to change their minds but only drive them further away.
The thing you have to understand about medicine is that the profession, for the most part, tends to be slightly conservative. Overall this may be a good thing because doctors require a large amount of evidence before they shift the way they practice, in order to make sure that a new approach is truly more beneficial than what they have been doing. There have been many instances when new recommendations turn out to be harmful but the effects are not noticed until years of practice. While not every doctor has a research lab, they do base their recommendations off of experience and knowledge of the human body.
I'll take the example of transitioning sexes that you posed in your article. While it may be beneficial for mental health to support transitioning, giving someone hormones poses several health risks. It is completely understandable that a collection of physicians who treat children would be wary of this, and hold out for better evidence and perhaps better treatments for gender dysphoria in the future. The fact that you used this to label the ACP as a hate group is irresponsible and underscores the reason why psychologists are not always taken seriously by other scientific bodies. You owe it to your profession to not misrepresent or sensationalize your argument and allow the facts to speak for themselves. This is not the first time I read an article on psychology today and questioned whether I was reading buzzfeed.
Could not of said it better my self. Please reach out to me, I would love to talk and ask some questions.
Are kids "LGBT?"
I do not believe there there is any bona fide interpretation by adults of a child's core gender identity. Most parents would gladly go right along with this group, hating even their own child. Just go to the PTA meeting and say, "My child is transgender." Out come the pitchforks, the white hoods, and burning crosses. Are children lesbian, gay, bisexual? Not relevant at that age. Respect their bodies, teach them appropriate boundaries, teach them that hate crimes are not acceptable, and teach them they have to wait until they are eighteen. In history class, teach them about WWII hero Alan Turing, who was forcibly castrated as punishment for his alleged homosexuality, teach them about the Stonewall riots, etc.
YES, SOME KIDS ARE LGBT. You
YES, SOME KIDS ARE LGBT. You can be a 12 year old virgin and know you are LGBT.
Thank you!
Thank you Jack for doing this. Breitbart is such a sick and deceitful group. I've personally been affected by family members who read this stuff and used it to attack me and try to "scare" me into conversion and fear of reprisal for expressing myself.
We need more of this kind of journalism and integrity as it's almost impossible for individuals like me to fight back against these censored and poorly moderated sites peddling hateful dogma backed by the thinnest fiction of a source.
It really helps to see people fighting for whats right, who are capable of doing so, and doing so in an effective way.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you!
I agree with Some Perspective
I agree with Some Perspective and labeling other professionals who disagree as hateful. We can disagree by using scientific perspective, information, facts, etc. However, the name-calling and automatic assumptions makes the argument sound trivial. The response of many who commented immediately equates these types of groups as "bigoted right wing, Brietbart-loving, cave-man thinking, Bible thumping, KKK Jesus freaks". And I'm sorry, but that sort of rhetoric will not help anyone's cause. The problem with so many in this country is that EVERYTHING is politicized. Anyone who disagrees is automatically a Nazi, a fascist, a racist, and every other 'ist' term out there. You want to show the world how things really are and prove your point, then PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH. Spitting out hate is a hell of a lot easier than taking the higher road...but I guarantee the latter will win over a lot more hearts and minds. And isn't that the whole point...Changing people's thoughts and beliefs about the LGBTQ community?
I see no evidence it works
Hating the haters is not the same as hating human diversity. That's a false equivalency.
Yes, the "ist" name calling is SOP in political forums. But that doesn't mean the "ists" don't exist. If we can't use words to label things when the label is actually true, then what are we supposed to do, make up words?
Do you really think the indirect conciliatory humble approach works in countering right wing extremism? Do you think a troll advocating ethnic cleansing for example is going to change his mind because your choice of words was more diplomatic?
Using science, information and facts is pointless in an argument with people who reject science and evidence as liberal elitist lies.
We are past the point where reasonable arguments have any impact whatsoever. Even obvious observable concrete facts such as the number of people standing in a public area no longer have an objective consensus. The high road loses, and the low road loses too. The winning path in today's political climate is the sewer pipe.
reply to Sph
I fully agree with you on let's use science, information and facts. But then you, like Turban go onto denigrate those who disagree with your world view. He started out this article with not one, but two slanders against ACP. And then went into regurgitating old studies of old studies. Had he simple posted his viewpoint, and opened it up for discussion he would have done what professionals do, here is my proof, my research, my conclusions. What do you think? But by starting his hit piece with slander, immediately makes me question his medical vantage point.
@potnkettle
No one is advocating here, other than a few comments claiming conspiracy theories about big pharma and trans medicine ... that we politicize this.
The fact is though that these groups exist to politicize this, and that this is what this is all about.
LGBTQ+ people... we do not want to be politicized. We have no choice. The facts are there. We can't do anything about the politicization of our movement if groups like Breitbart chose to use astroturf like the ACP and politicize us.
There is no rational argument against these people, and any rationality is immediately moderated on private sub forums of publicly run or pivate ISPs that host this information.
I can link to the National Health Institute NIH (gov, web, advocates HRT, has white papers on HRT, and gender affirming care) all I wan't. It will simply be ignored. Under our current administration wiping out all factual information and climate change is the defacto standard. The National Forest and Parks services which are well respected aren't even allowed to debate in a scientific way or inform the public about climate change.
These strategies are useless for Breitbart. A medical professional that subscribes to the ACP is violating their oaths, and is subscribing to the same kind of false propoganda that created the Nazi experiments many people "claim" transgender people are.
How do you fight Godwin, when Godwin is in charge?
Many times these organizations like the ACP are just used to disparage all the medical knowledge available and to justify an opinionated article. It's not about the science, never was, when it comes to astroturfing hate groups and fundamentalists willing to sell their soul for a few bucks and some fame or infamy.
hypocritical
Using the Southern Poverty Law Center as a source to criticize ACPeds as a hate group is pretty hypocritical, not to mention humorous. Attempting to discredit a source because of WHOM they are, instead of their science itself, is the definition of bigotry...not to mention not very scientific. Where are the adults?
response to article
The American College of Pediatricians is a professional organization confident in the science we present and in the traditional ethics we uphold. In the past, we have typically directed critics to the relevant content on our website. Mr. Jack Turban that is not only libelous, but also denies the fact that untold numbers of American children are being experimented upon, and many of them permanently sterilized, under the guise of treating a largely transient disorder known as Gender Dysphoria of Childhood. This warrants a more public response.
The American College of Pediatricians has held true to its founding principles summarized by its slogan, “Best for Children.” The College has also endured ad hominem attacks for making factual statements that threaten agendas which promote the wants of adults over the needs of children. Attacking the messenger is a tactic commonly used by those who cannot refute a truthful message. Labels, such as hate group, extremist, right wing, miniscule, Christian fundamentalist, and deceptively named, reveal desperate attempts to deflect attention away from facts that undermine a desired agenda.
The American College of Pediatricians is precisely what its name implies: a national nonsectarian organization of child and adolescent physicians and health professionals. We have never surveyed the religious identities of our membership, nor attempted to attract physicians of a given religion. In fact, members of our Board of Directors and various committees have identified themselves as Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist. We are physicians and healthcare professionals united by a commitment to traditional Hippocratic medicine; a medical tradition that respects life from conception to natural death and provides care to all patients, as delineated in our Statement of Inclusiveness. It is true that we are relatively smaller than other medical organizations; we have 500 members and counting. Ultimately, however, this is irrelevant to the veracity of our statements; sound science and ethics are not determined by majority vote.
Responsible journalism requires thorough investigation of the subject at hand. This appears lacking with Mr. Turban’s report on the ACPeds. He and others have expressed deep concern over our very legitimate name, yet they erroneously designate us as the “ACP,” which stands for the American College of Physicians. Our proper designation is ACPeds. Our web address, pretty much gives it away. Then again, most of our detractors have never bothered to give our website, position statements, let alone any of the hundreds of scientific references there, a careful read. Were they to do so, they would realize how easily their alternative facts would be refuted, particularly those regarding Gender Dysphoria in Children.
Yes, Mr. Turban, prior to the widespread promotion of transgender affirmation, 75 - 95 percent of prepubertal children with Gender Dysphoria eventually outgrew that distress. The vast majority came to accept their biological sex by late adolescence after passing naturally through puberty. The alternative fact, recently put forth by activists, that large numbers of children who desisted were actually “misdiagnosed” with Gender Dysphoria is debunked by data in Dr. Devita Singh’s doctoral thesis, and also by Dr. T.D. Steensma et. al., as noted in slides 23-25 of our Gender Dysphoria power point.
Yes, Mr. Turban, children diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria pre-pubertally are permanently sterilized when the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and Pediatric Endocrine Society Guidelines are followed. According to these Guidelines, children are placed on puberty blockers as early as Tanner stage II of puberty (as young as age 11) and then placed directly on cross-sex hormones by age 16. An article by Dr. A. Evan Eyler, referenced in our full position statement, confirms that children administered blockers beginning at Tanner stage II and seamlessly transitioned to cross-sex hormones are prevented from producing gonadal tissue (eggs or sperm) for cryopreservation. They will be unable to have genetic offspring of their own even with artificial reproductive technology.
There is an obvious self-fulfilling effect in helping children to impersonate the opposite sex both socially and pharmacologically. Logic leads one to predict that most, if not all, pre-pubertal gender dysphoric children treated in this way will lose the potential to identify with their biological sex, and instead go on to claim a transgender identity. As noted in our position statement, the single follow-up study of such children finds just that; 100% of the pre-pubertal children placed on the social affirmation/puberty blocker protocol failed to desist.
According to the APA Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology (2014), among those youth who did resolve their Gender Dysphoria prior to the present-day transgender affirmation ethos, 63 - 100% of boys would identify as gay adults, and 32-50% of the girls would identify as lesbian by young adulthood. Affirming pre-pubertal gender dysphoric children as transgender potentially translates into a significant percentage of LGB adults being sterilized. Consequently, some members of the LGB community stand with the ACPeds against this “transgendering of children” which they view as nothing less than the single greatest form of homophobic hatred, namely, eugenics.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that the elevated rates of mental illness and suicide among transgender-identified youth and adults are due solely, or even predominately, to societal prejudice or discrimination. At least one 2008 study by LGBT-affirming researchers, noted in our Gender Dysphoria position statement, found these factors not to be causative. Mr. Turban’s article also alleges that the College has ignored evidence that transition improves mental health in gender dysphoric children. The “evidence” consists of two small short term studies that contain methodological flaws, and therefore, prove no such thing. There is also no scientifically rigorous, large, prospective or sufficiently longitudinal evidence that transition of gender dysphoric children prevents suicide in the long term. However, there is long-term research on the mental health of adults who transitioned with Gender Dysphoria. This reveals that despite initial relief of the dysphoria, one or more decades after transition, they often present with worse mental health than that of the general population, including a suicide rate nearly twenty times greater. This observation raises more questions than it answers, and should, therefore, give pediatric health professionals great pause- at least those who value evidence-based medicine and are dedicated to ‘first do no harm’.
Some members of the transgender community recognize this and have expressed solidarity with the ACPeds. Rene Jax, a Male to Female Trans author, wrote:
"Dear Dr. Cretella,
Chemical castration, sterilization and surgical mutilation are more than just words to me. They are personal and brutal realities; no child should be subjected to this. Thank you."
The ACPeds has also been contacted by clinicians and academic physicians across the political spectrum, including LGB affirming clinicians. They have expressed their gratitude to the ACPeds for saying publicly what they cannot. Division chairs in psychology and sociology, and many pediatric endocrinologists have told us that to stand for science and go against transgender group think is professional suicide and often results in relentless harassment including death threats.
Belief is in the mind; not in the body. Everyone knows that thinking or feeling that something is true does not make it true. When people consistently and persistently insist something that is contrary to physical reality, they are, at best, confused, or at worst, delusional. According to the alternative logic of transgender experts, however, this is true in every instance except where biological sex is concerned. In this case alone, the persistent and consistent insistence of something contrary to physical reality is definitive proof of the metaphysical claim that an immaterial essence, or in the words of Dr. John Money, “[an] internal sexed identity” is trapped in the wrong body. This foundational claim of transgender medicine has far more in common with a quasi-religion than it has with evidence-based science. How much longer will society sacrifice the health of its children upon these altars?
Michelle Cretella, MD, FCP President
It won't work.
Dear Michelle,
You are not fooling anyone. Everyone knows the ACP for what it is:. An extreme social conservative fringe group cynically picking a confusing name so people get mixed up with honest pediatricians, and willing to throw LGBT children under the bus to ram your ideology down people's throats.
Where I live, so called reparative therapy is illegal. May it soon be so throughout the civilized world.
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