Advocacy Group Tells Medical Societies to Ditch Transgender Ideology

Protesters hold placards during a rally against gender-affirming care at the War Memorial Plaza in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 21, 2022. Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images

A transgender advocacy group is calling out the medical establishment for allowing ideology, rather than science, to drive health care for people suffering from gender-related distress.

The Gender Dysphoria Alliance (GDA) has released an open letter aimed at more than 30 medical organizations.

“It’s institutionalized medical negligence,” the GDA said in its Feb. 18 statement. “We are asking for quality, honesty, and safety.”

GDA wants “an independent, systematic review of the evidence,” “regulatory oversight, based on that evidence,” and thorough psychological assessments before using hormones and surgeries on people of any age.

The group particularly worries about children being vulnerable to “unnecessary harm.”

“The debate over transgender health care has recently escalated to a fever pitch,” the GDA pointed out. In recent months, some laws have attempted to curtail or outlaw gender-related procedures for minors, while other proposals would ensure access to gender-altering hormones and surgeries.

Emotions and ideology seem to be propelling arguments, rather than facts, the GDA says. That’s because activists attempt “to shut down any critical inquiry,” coercing or censoring people who try to share concerns about the push to medicalize gender-questioning patients.

“We, as members of the transgender community ... wish to disavow these tactics and to request our health care be as safe, rigorously researched, and apolitical as every other health care field,” the GDA said.

Attorneys push a cart laden with files in the complex case of Brandt v. Rutledge, which challenges the constitutionality of an Arkansas law banning transgender medical treatments for minors, as a trial begins on Oct. 17, 2022. Janice Hisle/The Epoch Times

‘Political Narrative’ Blamed

Major medical societies in the United States and across the globe have given stamps of approval to “affirming” a person’s stated gender identity, rather than exploring whether underlying issues could be at work.

Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association were among the medical societies that spoke out against lawmakers’ attempts to outlaw or restrict “gender-affirming care” for minors.

Both of those large medical groups say the government should stay out of the doctor-patient relationship, and both say the gender-affirming model is accepted as the gold standard for patients with gender dysphoria.

But the GDA says a “political narrative” attempts to deny biological realities and has obscured attempts to ferret out core issues and facts.

“Gender Dysphoria is not a philosophy or a political agenda. It is a psychological condition whereby a person perceives the sex characteristics of their body to be incorrect,” GDA says.

Multiple “pathways” can lead to gender dysphoria, and all of them need to be better researched and better understood, the group says. But activists are blocking attempts to ask questions and seek answers.

A children's book on gender in Irvine, Calif., on Sept. 7, 2022. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Lack of Understanding

GDA is concerned about a “social contagion” that appears to be circulating among adolescent girls. “The scale of that problem is being minimized by those who either don’t understand the actual condition ... or don’t want to understand it,” GDA says.

The health care system is failing these young people and others with gender dysphoria “by robbing us of evidence-based information about what our condition is,” GDA says.

“Is there any other area of clinical practice that willfully denies patients meaningful information about their condition?” GDA asks. “There can be no such thing as ‘informed consent’ or ‘bodily autonomy’ if clinicians can’t tell us what the evidence says about our condition. We consider that gross negligence on the part of the medical establishment.”

Not Conversion Therapy

If anyone attempts to impede “immediate access to hormone therapy and surgeries,” that person is often accused of supporting conversion therapy. That practice seeks to “cure” a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or another characteristic. It’s considered unethical and damaging, and in some places, it’s illegal.

“What we are advocating for is not conversion therapy, despite what many trans activists often claim,” GDA says, calling that position “an absurd view of psychosocial evaluations.”

Trans activists clamor for “inclusion,” but “we’re seeing more hostility, not more acceptance, as people are compelled to adopt an ideology they do not believe in,” GDA said.

“We don’t believe there can be competent, safe, evidence-based care when the condition can’t be named, researched, and understood by patients and clinicians,” the GDA said, accusing clinicians of being “willfully ignorant.”

Founded in 2021, GDA includes researchers, mental health professionals, and laypersons, some of whom are transgender. The group also includes people who have disavowed their former transgender identity.

“For the safety and well-being of all trans and gender dysphoric people, we need our health care, especially our mental health care, disentangled from a well-meaning yet misappropriated academic philosophy,” GDA says.