The Patriot Post® · The Lie of 'Gender Affirmation'

Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala is a well-respected psychiatrist at Finland’s Tampere University Hospital. So well respected was she that in 2011 she was chosen to head up Finland’s first youth gender clinic. She has long been publishing her findings and documenting the various struggles of her patients, but now she is trying to get the attention of the American public.

Dr. Kaltiala has a piece in The Free Press that documents her experiences. Her tale is an echo of what sane and honest people have been reporting here in the U.S. too. Those other voices — which include journalist Abigail Shrier, whistleblower Jamie Reed, detransitioners, and even fellow medical professionals — have so far been largely written off by the wider culture as “bigoted” or “not a credible source.”

Dr. Kaltiala should be given more credence simply from the fact that the whole “gender affirmation” model of treatment was pioneered by her and others like her. She has watched as this relatively small psychiatric phenomenon — which generally manifests in boys — has turned into a full-blown culturally induced hysteria and craze.

It all started with the infamous “Dutch Protocol,” which introduced the idea of giving puberty blockers to prepubescent children suffering with the clinical condition of gender dysphoria. And it was off to the races from there: Activists declared this model a human right, politicians sprang on the idea of another victim group, and transgenderism ideology metastasized into a full-blown cultural cancer.

“Gender affirmation” as a model was adopted, but even so, Dr. Kaltiala was skeptical. This model went against her rigorous scientific and medical training. Right away, the “Dutch Protocol” model was proven to be the incorrect standard for universal care of youthful patients. First off, the majority of patients who were showing up at Dr. Kaltiala’s clinic were not gender dysphoric boys but girls.

In her own words, Dr. Kaltiala explains: “The ones who came were nothing like what was described by the Dutch. We expected a small number of boys who had persistently declared they were girls. Instead, 90 percent of our patients were girls, mainly 15 to 17 years old, and instead of being high-functioning, the vast majority presented with severe psychiatric conditions.”

She also notes that a fair number were on the autism spectrum (roughly 25%). Moreover, there was a significant number of young girls (many of whom were from the same towns and neighborhoods) coming in with the same backstory and buzzwords they had been told would get them the desired drugs and procedures (i.e., puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender mutilation surgeries). Hello, social contagion.

The worst part of all was that, no matter how affirmed they were or how many procedures or drugs the patients took, they got worse, not better. Their mental and physical health deteriorated. This was not the promised result outlined by the “Dutch Protocol.” Children were actively being harmed.

Dr. Kaltiala changed her standards for treatment at the clinic in 2016. Instead of the “gender affirmation” model, she adopted a policy wherein a patient’s most urgent issues need to be treated first before “gender transition” should be sought. This decreased the number of patients who qualified for the drugs and the surgeries to 20% of all patients.

Dr. Kaltiala began comparing notes with others in her field across Europe to see if they were seeing the same phenomenon. And they were. The United Kingdom and Sweden were also noting the same phenomenon.

Clearly, there was something desperately wrong with the “Dutch Protocol” and “gender affirmation” model. Like any good doctor, Kaltiala and her colleagues published their findings. So successful was she in proving her point scientifically and medically that, in 2020, the Council for Choices in Health Care in Finland declared that studies singing the praises of “gender affirmation” were “biased and unreliable.”

Dr. Kaltiala is extremely worried about the U.S. medical societies. Medical professionals here are so convinced by pseudoscientific philosophical nonsense — e.g., that children know their “authentic selves” — that they have been blinded to the reality of what these medical malpractices are doing to young children. The U.S. standard of care is even more lax than the “Dutch Protocol” model. It is now exceptionally easy for a child claiming gender dysphoria to obtain drugs and get a physician to sign off on the death spiral of “treatments” that ultimately sterilize them, mutilate them, or break them so utterly that they take their lives.

Dr. Kaltiala writes, “However, in the U.S. these groups — including the American Academy of Pediatrics — have been actively hostile to the message my colleagues and I are urging.” Her biggest worry is the reports she has been hearing about American physicians telling parents that their child will commit suicide if said parents don’t affirm their child’s delusion. She called it “dishonest and extremely unethical to pressure parents into approving gender medicalization by exaggerating the risk of suicide.”

What Dr. Kaltiala has documented, pioneered, studied, and lived through should be taken seriously. Sadly, we do not live in an age of reason. Ideology is more important than facts and reality. Queer theory (the umbrella that houses transgender ideology) is prime for the cultural Marxism that is dictating the radical left wing of society. After all, “trans” people are a perfect victim group for them to champion. In doing so, they are actually making the plight of the gender dysphoric/gender-confused person exponentially worse.

Do they care? No. They are getting cultural clout, political capital, money, and fame. The reality of struggling and hurting people who actually need competent medical help is a low priority to these vultures.