“We’re agreeing with the lie,” therapist Stephanie Winn says, “that these vulnerable young people really have no other ways of coping than to make life-altering decisions with a lot of negative ramifications for their health.”
In a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek talked with Stephanie Winn, a licensed marriage and family therapist who’s currently treating detransitioners and parents of gender-questioning youth. Winn is also featured in “Affirmation Generation,” a new documentary that critically explores the “gender-affirming” model, society’s suppression of detransitioners, the for-profit trans industry, and the many myths associated with being transgender.
This social affirmation by therapists is the first step in a process that leads to experimental hormones and surgeries that are very costly to physical health. We’re undermining people’s long-term health when we practice “gender-affirming” care. We’re agreeing with the lie that these vulnerable young people really have no other ways of coping than to make life-altering decisions with a lot of negative ramifications for their health.
If healthy people can pass through normal phases of life thinking they didn’t want children and then that changed for them, how can we assume that young, vulnerable, mentally unwell, impulsive teenagers and prepubescent teens could possibly know what they’ll want in the future?
There’s a dangerous presupposition that if you treat gender dysphoria by changing the young person’s body, all the other issues will go away. What I see is actually the opposite.
You’ll hear these youth refer to things as “my dysphoria.” When they say my dysphoria, they could be talking about anything. They could be talking about PMS or social anxiety or ADHD. We know that about 48 percent of the children referred to the Tavistock Gender Identity Clinic, which has now been ordered to shut down, were autistic.
Many of the vulnerable young people who are presenting with gender dysphoria are autistic, and many have trauma histories. They’ve been bullied, and they’ve been abandoned. We know these kids are overrepresented in foster care and adoption. The natural response to that is shame and inadequacy.
That shame can be painful and overwhelming. It takes a lot of maturity to learn how to integrate our shame and tolerate it. So there is this idea that “Nothing’s wrong with me, my identity, my mind, my psyche; it’s my body that’s wrong. That’s why I’m different.”
If you look at all the psychiatric comorbidities, as far as I’m aware, the rate of suicidal ideation amongst trans-identified youth isn’t higher than non-trans-identified young people with those same comorbidities. But we should also consider that a lot of these young people are being told on the internet and by their peers that they should threaten suicide to get what they want; therefore, we see a higher rate of suicidal ideation.
The threat of suicide has been grossly distorted and people have been intimidated in a way that’s really quite sick, because that’s truly every parent’s worst fear. The fact that people are using it in a manipulative way is just morally abhorrent.
And you’re right that these trans-identified young people are being set up to become medical patients for life. Once someone is on cross-sex hormones, for example, they have to continue taking those hormones. And if they don’t, if they physically “detransition,” then they’re going to encounter another host of medical problems. The detrans young people I’ve met are dealing with really complex and novel medical situations that a lot of doctors don’t know how to treat.
We need to start looking at what people are experiencing, being present with the pain and suffering we’ve caused them. Detransitioners have been medically and mentally harmed by the professionals who are supposed to help them, and now they don’t trust us, and that’s our fault. We need to earn back their trust, and that’s not a process that can be rushed.
We also need to start educating a new generation of professionals to deal with the aftermath, as well as making some societal shifts. For instance, medical care for detransitioners isn’t properly funded. Can you believe that in some cases Medicaid will pay for a confused, distressed young woman to amputate her breasts, but they won’t pay for reconstruction? Not that you can reconstruct breasts; you can’t restore the breast tissue if the mammary glands have been removed. But if she wants something cosmetic to help her feel like she’s restoring her dignity, they won’t provide that.