When Telling the Truth Means Reassignment
Several psychologists aren’t conforming to the transgender ideology — and for the VA, that’s a problem.
How do you know that the rot of transgender politicking goes incredibly deep? Because seasoned Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) psychologists faced major backlash from their superiors for pointing out the obvious in an effort to protect their female patients.
The VA is seeking to enforce a 2018 policy that allows men who identify as women to use women’s bathrooms and medical exam spaces. In the treatment of female veterans who are undergoing psychological care, men are allowed to share rooms with them if they are part of a residential recovery program, have men in their group therapy settings, or are present at “women”-only specialty clinics.
This is patently problematic. Many of the women who undergo needed psychological care as veterans are in that position due to sexual trauma. Most sexual-based trauma is inflicted on women by men.
That is why three VA psychologists — Catherine Novotny, Edward Waldrep, and Nina Silander — all spoke out against these changes. All three contributed to a January opinion article for The Hill detailing their concerns and urging the reinstallation of care dictated by biological sex.
Waldrep, who had already gotten into hot water with his peers for questioning DEI policies within the VA, was stripped of his training position for up-and-coming students. The VA is apparently afraid that his reasonable objections might infect the new stock of psychologists charged with helping hurting veterans. Silander was removed from her position and put under investigation, but she was ultimately restored.
These psychologists didn’t break any VA rules by their public objections, but they aren’t conforming to the ideology blob — and for the VA, that’s a problem. As Waldrep told National Review: “The environment of ideological conformity is palpable. People are afraid to speak up. This is not only bad because I don’t like DEI, but this is also bad because this has a potential negative impact for health care.”
They were not saying in their op-ed that all of the males who identify as female are bad actors. They were saying that the VA policy as it currently stands provides a prime opportunity for bad male actors to take advantage and infiltrate vulnerable female spaces. If healing and protecting female veterans is the primary objective, then keeping men and women separated based on biology makes sense.
These three experienced psychologists are seeing the same patterns of negative behaviors by the medical establishment and the governing political bodies that the rest of the world has been noticing for years now. Apart from the crux of their complaint — the failure of protection for their female veteran patients — they observed that when it comes to gender dysphoria, the rigorous standards for questioning and probing for other underlying comorbidities cease. When it comes to any other psychological disorder, psychologists are meant to do their due diligence and dig a little deeper because many of these disorders have similar symptoms. When it comes to gender dysphoria, however, the diagnosis is one and done, and down the transgender medical dependency hole they send these vulnerable vets.
In other words, not only is this pushing of males into female spaces bad for women, but the abject refusal to get to the bottom of the male’s underlying distress is bad for him as well.
As the VA psychologists put it: “Humans are a sexually dimorphic species, and this has medical consequences irrelevant to the metaphysical concept of gender identity. Sex is an immutable biological trait, carrying with it biological and medical consequences that doctors cannot overlook.”
Not only are humans dimorphic, but — wait for it — our brains work differently based on our sex. According to the New York Post, “A group of researchers from Stanford University demonstrated the differences between the brains of men and women by using artificial intelligence, which was more than 90% accurate in differentiating between sexes based on ‘hotspots’ shown in brain scans.”
In fact, the Post adds, one of the scientists who worked on this study noted that “‘overlooking sex difference in brain organization’ could hinder the treatment and diagnosis of neuropsychiatric conditions.”
Biological sex matters. It is absolute and defining from physique to DNA to brain architecture.
As the evidence continues to mount scientifically for what most of us already understand with our common sense, the real question is this: When will this transgender madness finally end? There is no upside to continuing to foster this ideology through political strong-arming.
(Edited)
Correction: Silander was restored to her original position, not demoted as originally stated.