Latest article from the Substack Public, by Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag

For those of you mad at him for appearing to take credit for breaking the WPATH files, he gives a tip of the hat to feminists for being ones fighting against it for years, as well as stating the WPATH files should be put into context of a broader disclosure by whistleblowers. (Also, Alex Gutentag is a woman on his Public team. Mia Hughes writes for the Public on the topic of trans, so he might have commissioned her work on this.)

They don't seem to know Erica Anderson is a man though. Of if they do, they didn't point it out.

Link to article: https://open.substack.com/pub/public/p/the-end-of-the-transgender-craze?r=erajp&utm_medium=ios

Subtitle: The backlash against “gender-affirming care” and trans-identified males in women’s sports and prisons is accelerating

Text:

To support "gender-affirming care” is to be on the right side of history, millions believe. To be pro-transition is basically the same as being pro-gay, they believe. Whether one is attracted to people of the same sex or believes oneself to be of the opposite sex, it’s just how people are born. Trans people, including children and vulnerable adults, deserve medical care so they can assume their correct gender and deserve to compete in the sports competitions of their preferred sex.

But it’s quickly becoming apparent that “gender medicine” is on the wrong side of history.

Last week, millions of people read stories at X, the Washington Post, the Economist, the Telegraph, and even the Guardian about internal files of the leading transgender health organization, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), showing widespread medical mistreatment of children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults.

And yesterday, the UK government’s National Health Service England (NHSE) announced that it was halting the prescription of puberty blockers in government hospitals.

Of course, most Americans haven’t heard of the WPATH Files or the UK government’s decision. And, the UK government will still allow puberty blockers in private clinics, and some people in Europe had already anticipated its decision.

But the UK’s decision was far stronger than had been expected. “It’s bombastic for sure,” Dr. Erica Anderson, a former President of WPATH,” told Public. “Everyone was expecting severe limits. Total ban? No.”

Nearly 15,000 children and adolescents were in line for puberty blockers in the UK. Now, it’s likely that just a handful will receive them.

And puberty blockers aren’t the obvious first thing one would expect the UK government to ban. Far more controversial are genital surgeries on minors, which are irreversible, resulting in sterilization, and likely also cause a significant, if not total, loss of sexual function or hormones.

And because over 90% of children put on puberty blockers continue with “transition,” a ban on puberty blockers will strictly limit hormones and surgery for youth. Some adults will continue to use radical medical interventions, but the effective ban on them for young people is likely to reduce the number from tens of thousands to a few hundred.

As such, the decision by the UK government to issue far more sweeping restrictions suggests the existence of a stronger cross-party consensus within the UK government than the glitzy pro-transition PR of recent years had suggested. There is a sense in which, after years of irresponsible healthcare teenagers having a wild party, drugging kids, and experimenting on their bodies, the adults have come home and started to impose order.

Before the backlash against gender medicine was the backlash against putting transwomen/natal males in women’s prisons. Around the world, men who are caught committing crimes, including violent and sexual ones, are using“gender self-identification” to claim that they are actually women and demand to be put in women’s prisons. Many Americans are unaware that this is even occurring, much less that it brought down the Scottish government in mid-February of last year, just two weeks after its Prime Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said she had nothing to apologize for.

In terms of trans policies that cause real-world harm, women’s sports are also still an issue. Yet here, too, the backlash against natal males in female sports is gaining momentum. Former college swimming champion Riley Gaines has a new book out and is on the warpath. On Joe Rogan, Gaines told the story of how, despite having tied transwoman/natal male swimmer, Lia Thomas, the NCAA decided, on the stop, to give the one trophy to Thomas.

And the leader of the British Labour Party, Keir Starmer, said on Monday that “common sense has to prevail in terms of safety and integrity of sport” and that biological males should thus not be allowed to participate in women’s sports. Starmer pointed to the fact that some elite sports leagues are already restricting the involvement of transwomen/natal men.

As such, it’s only a matter of time for liberal-minded Americans and Democrats to hear about the changes in Europe and start to impose reforms. That may happen as early as this year if Republicans turn gender medicine and boys and men in girls and women's sports into political issues. But even if it doesn’t happen this year, it will happen soon. Every day brings more writing on the wall.

Why is that? What, ultimately, set off the chain of events leading to the end of the trans craze?

Gender Pseudoscience

A big part of the reason for the end of the trans craze is the accumulation of scientific studies, patient testimonies, and the testimonies of gender clinicians themselves.

The WPATH Files themselves should be seen in a broader context of revelations and confessions from the whistleblowers and employees of the gender medicine industry itself. The UK government shut down its leading gender clinic at Tavistock Hospital after its own employees blew the whistle. A St. Louis gender clinician last year similarly blew the whistle. One of the founders of gender-affirming care in Europe recently denounced the overuse of drugs and surgeries. Dr. Erica Anderson has argued for years that too few guardrails protect children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults.

Meanwhile, medical journals are publishing a growing number of scientific articles debunking the leading trans myths. A major Finland study found gender medicine to offer no benefits in terms of reducing suicide and suicidal feelings among people with gender dysphoria. And earlier this week, journalist Ben Ryan resurfaced a 2021 study that found that trans women who underwent genital surgery had twice as many suicide attempts after the surgery than before.

Defenders of gender medicine are responding to these revelations. In response to the WPATH Files, StatNews claimed we had exaggerated the link between hormones and cancer in trans-identified natal females.

But even a cursory review of the evidence shows that testosterone has already been linked to cancer. A 2020 paper in the Lancet found that a 17-year-old trans-identified natal female had developed liver tumors in connection to testosterone use. Although the research has been inconclusive (as we noted), another 2023 paper found multiple cases of liver tumors linked to testosterone use.

What’s more, we were not the ones to make the cancer link from the WPATH Files – it was suggested by WPATH-affiliated doctors themselves. And it turns out that testosterone can cause far worse damage to livers than we had realized. The liver is a sexually dimorphic organ, meaning it exhibits major differences in males and females.

Testimonials from medicalized trans-identified natal females suggest that the testosterone they received was associated with a risk of liver damage, including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The irony of this will no doubt be lost on activists and their allies who deny and downplay the significance of biological differences between males and females.

One of the main reasons the trans craze is coming to an end is because of the coalition of feminists, conservatives, liberals, and non-ideological professionals, intellectuals, and activists who fought for years against it. We should feel gratitude toward these individuals, particularly those who suffered greatly for their service. Trans activists destroyed the careers of journalists, academics, administrators, and anyone else who stood in the way of their agenda to transform medicine, sports, prisons, and much else. People lost their jobs in universities worldwide, particularly in North America and Europe. And many of those same people fought heroically.

While there are medical and political reasons why transgenderism is coming to an end, the underlying reason is that gender-affirming care has no basis in science. The idea that someone can change their biological sex is ungrounded from reality.

Trans activists attempted to hoist their wagon to broad public acceptance of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals. Still, homosexuality is a genuine phenomenon of same-sex physical attraction. In contrast, transgenderism is an ideological movement based on the false belief that one can transform bodies, either one’s own or other people’s, into the opposite sex, or some new sex entirely.

What we are left with are people of various sexual preferences who genuinely believe, or at least partly believe, that they are the opposite sex. The desire to impose this belief on the wider society, with the help of major medical and political institutions, resulted in a spiritual cult known as “the trans movement.” Its gods are humans and our ability to perform miraculous transformations of bodies through some combination of thinking, drugs, and surgery.

To some extent, this is not new; we regularly indulge in each other’s fantasies. All around us are people who hold spiritual beliefs that many of us believe are just fantasies, while they believe the same about us.

The problem arises when those fantasies hurt others. We allow religious faiths to believe they are following the one true religion, but we don’t allow them to hurt and abuse children.

We similarly allow people to believe they are the opposite gender and to dress and live how they like, but societies will soon stop, or severely restrict, the ability of people to impose this view on others and to permanently harm the bodies of children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults. And we will soon prevent people claiming to have changed their sex from entering women’s prisons and sporting competitions.

After The Craze

Given that the transgender craze is rapidly coming to an end, it’s reasonable to wonder whether anything should be done to accelerate it. The backlash to transgenderism, after all, is gaining steam.

But something should be done because it’s not guaranteed to end quickly, completely, or well. Biden and the Democrats could resist efforts to rein in gender medicine, the destruction of girls’ and women’s sports, and the continued sending of transwomen/natal males to women’s prisons, even ones convicted for sex crimes.

We are thus faced with important questions about how to end the gender medical mistreatment scandal in the United States, and protect girls and women.

It is likely that some combination of lawsuits by regretful “detransitioners” and attorney generals, state and federal legislation, executive branch regulations, and decisions by health insurers and health care providers will all contribute to halting gender medicine and the attack on girls and women’s sports.

It could take many years and even a decade for the worst aspects of the transgender craze to be rolled back. Or, the end of transgenderism could happen quickly. Former President Donald Trump last month denounced gender medicine and may campaign on it. Already, nearly half of the states in America have banned gender medicine for children. Polls show the public turning against allowing natal males into girls’ and women’s sports. As polls continue to change, so will what politicians say.

The news from the UK hasn’t yet penetrated the cognitive bubbles of liberals, progressives, and Democrats, but it will. MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, and Washington Post may find ways to break the news gently to their readers. Over time, the media may help progressives to feel that they have always agreed with the coming reforms.

To be sure, there will likely always be people who claim to be transgender. But the mass cultural phenomenon of transgenderism, including the craze of young people claiming to be the opposite sex, and demanding drugs and surgery to change their bodies, along with the right to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, or go to women’s prisons, is coming to an end. As such, those who continue to defend it are on the wrong side of history.