When blundering doctors removed one of Hurshell Ralls’ most private parts in 1999, unnecessarily as the story goes, he could never be “made whole” but did get a monetary settlement. Yet youth genitally mutilated in the name of doing the impossible — switching sexes — get nothing but broken bodies, broken promises, broken spirits, and broken dreams. This will change, however, if Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) has anything to say about it.
As the New York Post reports:
DeSantis called for doctors who perform gender reassignment surgeries on minors to be sued at a Wednesday press conference.
“They talk about these very young kids getting gender-affirming care,” DeSantis said, who used air quotes while using the phrase. “What they don’t tell you … is that they are giving very young girls double mastectomies, they want to castrate these young boys — that’s wrong.”
Several of DeSantis’ press reps have questioned the “gender-affirming care” phrase in recent months, arguing that it doesn’t specify the procedures being performed in some cases. And in April, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said minors experiencing gender dysphoria should instead receive counseling to address their concerns.
“You don’t disfigure 10-, 12-, 13-year-old kids based on gender dysphoria,” DeSantis added Wednesday. “Eighty percent of it resolves anyways [sic] by the time they get older. So why would you be doing this? I think these doctors need to get sued for what’s happening, I’m sorry.”
Those who support access to the procedures — which also include puberty blockers — assert that they improve the mental health of transgender children.
This can be asserted, of course, but it’s an assertion divorced from science. As The New American has illustrated repeatedly, there’s no valid research whatsoever to support the claim that “gender dysphoria” — the strong sense that, colloquially put, you’re “stuck” in the body of the “wrong” sex — is a biological condition. There is no brain scan for gender dysphoria. There is no genetic, hormonal, or blood test for it. There are no physiological markers of any kind indicating its existence. Rather, the “biological” diagnosis is made on the basis of psychological criteria (feelings).
As commentator Andrea Widburg put it Thursday, she has “yet to see a medical study proving even a little that gender dysphoria is more than a tragic (or learned) mental illness.” Yet this doesn’t deter doctors such as Jack Turban, M.D., an Ivy League–trained child and adolescent psychiatrist who now works at the University of California, San Francisco, who, Widburg points out, is obsessed with facilitating MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status, aka “transgender”) interventions.
In fact, while he has “authored or co-authored 34 articles over the past six years,” Widburg explains, “what’s interesting about them is that none of them addresses whether transgenderism is an actual physical condition that requires surgical and medical intervention, as opposed to being a mental illness for which mutilating surgery and destructive drugs should be a last resort, not a first. If you scan his articles, you’ll see that all accept the premise that intervention is the answer.”
“When I last checked the pediatric medical literature in April 2022, the same was true,” she continued, “no articles questioned the premise that ‘transgenderism’ is physically real.” Widburg then writes, “Turban does boast that there are 15 studies showing that ‘gender-affirming medical care’ improves mental health in so-called ‘trans youth.’ The real question, though, is whether there are even better approaches that the medical field ignores. One might be actual therapy for children who often have troubled relationships with their parents.”
What should be noted about Turban’s “15 studies” argument, however, is that since much research today is fraudulent (just consider this recent Big Pharma story), any such claim should be viewed with suspicion. What’s more, if one is to cite studies, note that rates “of suicide are twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery, even in Sweden which is among the most LGBQT–affirming countries,” pointed out the American College of Pediatricians in 2016. So do these MUSS interventions really improve psychological outcomes — or worsen them?
Yet a perhaps even more outrageous Hall of Shame MUSS enabler is Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a pediatrician. She actually said about performing mastectomies on healthy adolescent girls at a 2018 symposium, here’s “the other thing about chest surgery: If you want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them” (video below).
One commenter under the video notes, “Wow. As she acts out how mature and thoughtful teens are, her own demeanor is that of an immature and thoughtless teen.” Yet is Olson-Kennedy’s position surprising? If she believes turning a girl into a simulacrum of a boy equates to being a boy, why wouldn’t she believe that creating simulacra of breasts equates to having actual breasts? (Since Olson-Kennedy also likely holds motherhood and its attendant functions in low esteem, that manufactured breasts lack the utility of actual mammary glands may be irrelevant to her.)
MUSS regret is a real and tragic phenomenon. Yet as long as there’s money to be made, no impeding laws, and sociopaths in existence, the MUSS mutilation enablers (i.e., the entire medical establishment) will continue their wholesale child abuse. So it’s long past time for some courtroom-enabled incorrectness-affirmation procedures to help these quacks transition from prosperity to penury. There is no other option with people who only see dollar signs and never reason.
