Monsters

The Cruelty of Those Who Set Out To Harm Children Who Are Different

Can you imagine the unspeakable viciousness of those who target a small, vulnerable group in society – kids who are distressed about their bodies and need medical care? Can you imagine anything more barbaric than enacting legislation to prevent those children, who are suffering and tortured by suicidal thoughts, from accessing the healthcare they need? Forcing their desperate families to consider relocating out of state? These are clearly evil bigots, driven by reactionary adherence to stereotypes of what girls or boys ought to be. They are far right religious extremists and other diehard MAGA flag-wavers who hate the progress we have been making on equality in our society and want to reverse it.

That is more or less the message you get if you watch or listen to an MSNBC show covering the Supreme Court hearing on December 4th to decide whether Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children is constitutional. Known as the Skrmetti case, after the name of Tennessee’s Attorney-General.

Listening to Chris Hayes these days is like meeting up with an old friend who has become a committed Jehovah’s Witness and beams with an inner certainty that he has access to higher truths. And who definitely wants to share them with you.

So, in the last six minutes of “All in with Chris” on Wednesday December 4th, he had a guest on to discuss the Skrmetti case. Introducing the topic, Hayes had told MSNBC viewers and podcast listeners: “Not surprisingly, at least some of the justices in the conservative minority seemed to be champing at the bit to uphold the ban.” To those of us who have been studying these issues for years – including many lifelong progressives, Chris – what stood out, sadly, was that only the conservative justices had taken the trouble to get informed. They knew that there are serious concerns about the drugs concerned and about the emotion-laced disinformation surrounding them.

Hayes’s guest was Jace Woodrum, Executive Director of the ACLU of South Carolina. Woodrums’s spiel was a run-through of every possible tug on the heartstrings of those who have swallowed the “evil bigots targeting a vulnerable minority” narrative that all mainstream media have been churning out for years now. It included lines such as “Parents have watched their children have their health care stripped away,” leaving these parents with the choice: “Do I uproot and move to a state where my child can get medically necessary healthcare? Or do I stay and watch my child suffer?”

“Such incredible harm that these families have experienced,” says Jace, in a tone of despair.

Yes, they have, Jace.

They have been harmed by the profit-hungry surgeons and clinicians of WPATH, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, and by Democratic leaders such as Admiral Levine, who have been feeding them pernicious lies – and suppressing the evidence disproving them -- for years. They have been harmed by the ACLU, by former gay rights organizations such as the HRC and GLAAD that now promote gender identity instead, and they have been harmed by MSNBC shows like “All In With Chris,” which continues to host spokespersons for the false narrative, allowing them to repeat their tired soundbites without challenging them.

Incredibly, Chris Hayes even muses at the end that the state bans infringe parents’ rights. Yet I don’t hear him complaining about moves by some states to allow transition against the parents’ wishes.

These kids are suffering because they and often their parents have been misinformed. The truth is that no one is “born in the wrong body.” A couple of decades ago, most progressive people agreed it was absolutely fine that some girls are “masculine” and some boys are “feminine” — according to society’s traditional, stereotypical ideas of such things. No one sane was packing their “gender non-conforming” kids off to a clinic.

Puberty is the path through which children mature into adults. It is an essential part of human development. All children – including those who are “different” – deserve to go through puberty, as this little British video, made by my friend Malcolm Clark, makes clear.

Puberty is sometimes difficult, even traumatic, especially for teens who are struggling with their gay or lesbian sexual orientation, or who are on the Autism spectrum, or who have numerous mental health conditions. Which applies to the vast majority of children seeking “transition.”

I am guessing that Chris Hayes would not invite a guest on his show to argue against measles vaccinations. Why? Because that would be promoting dangerous nonsense. But he or his producers are happy to give air space to the garbage that people who are trying to protect children from harmful drugs are monsters -- hateful bigots who are preventing children from getting “medically necessary healthcare” and causing mayhem and misery in families.

If a child threatens suicide unless you give them something, the mature response is not to assume the something must be obtained at all cost. The mature response is to explore — lovingly, carefully — what’s going on. Threatening suicide is part of the script kids learn online if they want “gender medicine.” These drugs are not “medically necessary healthcare.” Puberty blockers undermine bone density and cognitive function and lead to cross-sex hormones. They do not buy “time to think”. Girls who take testosterone are incurring multiple increased health risks and putting their fertility at risk. Boys who take estrogen are at risk for testicular atrophy and even testicular cancer. And “trans kids” are not a discrete group. Many, many children change their minds, if not surrounded by an ecosystem that celebrates their “trans identity” and locks them into it. All this is documented and evidenced in numerous well-researched books and articles, though the US medical establishment has done its best to bury the facts.

Bob Ostertag’s must-read book Sex Science Self, with its grisly historical account of abuses of estrogen and testosterone, concludes: “We adults may experiment with these technologies as we wish. Deciding on their behalf to administer these technologies to children is wrong. I strongly suspect that in the near future it will be the next item to be added to the long list of ‘sex hormone’ medical catastrophes.”

So, if you’re looking for monsters, you should not be eyeing the conservative justices who read the amicus curiae briefs in Skrmetti with their sobering factual information. You should not be looking at the 24 states that have banned puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors. You should be looking squarely at Admiral Rachel Levine, at WPATH, at surgeons such as Sidhbh Gallagher and Johanna Olson-Kennedy – now finally being sued – at the ACLU, and all the media hosts who continue to invite guests onto their shows to describe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors — unchallenged — as “medically necessary healthcare.”