The Patriot Post® · Dissecting 'Gender-Affirming Care'

As this author has mentioned again and again, “gender-affirming [read: gender-denying] care” is a treatment method without sufficient or even credible scientific evidence for people who claim they have gender dysphoria. It seems more and more obvious that it’s only in the U.S. and Canada that this treatment method is doggedly defended as a “right” for “transgender” people. Europe is largely starting to abandon this model.

To recap, the “gender-affirming” model of treatment starts with the psychologist validating the patient’s delusion that he or she is, in fact, the wrong gender. That typically leads the person who is under such a delusion down an ever more extreme treatment path: social transition, puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones, and then ultimately bodily mutilation. These individuals are encouraged throughout this process in the fruitless effort to be something they are not, wasting time and money and causing mental anguish. It’s the opposite of affirming gender.

The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak has now reported on even more evidence that “gender affirmation” or the “Dutch Protocol,” as it is known in Europe, is baseless and an illegitimate form of treatment. The American College of Pediatricians (ACP) and the legal group that represents it have analyzed 60 studies regarding probably the most crucial aspect of this entire debate: Does the process of “gender affirmation” actually improve the mental health outcomes of these gender dysphoric individuals, particularly youth?

Their findings have several important factors. First, none of these studies that support the notion that “gender affirmation” is effective has any data tracking patients’ mental health beyond a year after “transition.” European doctors have sought to remedy this, and their findings aren’t good for suicidality three to five years post-transitioning.

Other important analysis found that many people who have the rapid-onset/social contagion variety of gender dysphoria tend to attract those with dark tetrad personality traits, or were autistic, or had serious underlying mental illness comorbidities.

Perhaps the biggest bombshell of all is that the justification for “gender-affirming care” and thus transgenderism — i.e., if you don’t allow your child to transition they will commit suicide — is a lie. The Heritage Foundation had already conducted a study that disproved the lie of decreased suicidality post-transition. However, the ACP itself analyzed several studies.

Rosiak writes: “When activists cite studies that state that affirmed transgenders do better than non-affirmed ones, a look at the actual available data show[s] that the slight difference in suicidality between the two groups is far less notable than how unacceptably high the figure is for both groups. For example, in one study billed as promoting how essential it was to give puberty blockers to youth, 42% of those who received care still tried to kill themselves.”

Rosiak also points out: “A study using Denmark’s national database, reviewing 6.6 million individuals over four decades, found that transgender people were 3.5 times more likely to kill themselves compared to normal people. If accommodating and supporting transgender people was a sufficient treatment, then that disparity shouldn’t exist.”

It’s not a matter of society treating gender dysphoric people badly that leads to suicidality. Rather, it’s preexisting mental illness that is being masked by the gender dysphoria diagnosis or having dark tetrad personality types that contribute to this level of suicidality. One could also argue that the claims of suicidality, particularly among young people, are a socially constructed manipulation that preys on the fact that minors don’t actually understand what they are threatening to do when they say they are suicidal. They have no concept of long-term planning because their prefrontal cortexes aren’t fully developed until age 25. Moreover, they don’t fully understand that death is final and that they are being fed this storyline (one that all too many try to follow through with) in order to manipulate the adults in their lives into submission.

On a side note, political pundit Matt Walsh made the astute observation in a podcast earlier this week that threatening to commit suicide unless you give someone what they want in any other circumstance would cause people to classify that person as dangerously narcissistic and emotionally abusive. Transgenderism uses that threat as a political weapon. It’s probably not a coincidence.

The ACP is the conservative answer to the political American Academy of Pediatrics. Though the arguments that the ACP is trying to combat deals with children, its analysis is applicable to the greater transgender population. Its findings couldn’t have had better timing if it tried. Just last week, a story broke that the entirety of the justification possessed by the Department of Health and Human Services for its long-held stance that “gender affirmation” is the way to treat people with gender dysphoria was a two-page-long PDF brochure written by HHS itself. No long-term medical evidence, and certainly no specifics.

The only reason “gender affirmation” has so much power over our children and the medical establishment is because it’s a political, financial (hello life-long patients), and social fad. Transgenderism’s “gender-affirming care” model is a pernicious and destructive one that is going to leave behind a string of broken people and ultimately help no one.