Loving, naive parents believed medical science was above politics and beyond question. Now, with the stroke of a pen, a destructive ideology has been eliminated.
About damn time. As a plastic surgeon who has looked askance at the science and logic behind the entire enterprise of gender-affirming care, especially for minors, I have remained in disbelief at the alacrity with which medical professionals have embraced radical ideological notions such as the non-binary nature of sex. While accepting that some poor souls may suffer from psychic discomfort due to their conviction that they are in the wrong body, until uncritical trans affirmation, I had never seen medicine affirming delusional thinking with medical treatments and even surgery. Even though sex reassigment surgery has been performed since at least when I was a medical student (Class of '78) this has been rare and almost entirely confined to adult men who believe themselves to be women. Renee Richards, a physician, professional tennis player, and trans-woman comes to mind. Nowhere else in medicine is affirming a delusion considered standard of care. Not in anorexia nervosa. Not in body dysmorphic syndrome. Not in body integrity disorder. I viewed with dismay the rush by my own professional organization, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, to offer courses in sexual reassignment surgery, as though this is something any surgeon can just add to their practice after a short course. While I was proud of the fact that the ASPS was the first major medical organization to refuse to endorse gender-affirming care in minors, I was disappointed by what I felt was a milquetoast statement of non-endorsement, rather that a full blown disavowal of this in the absence of credible evidence for its safety and efficacy. It is telling that such a weak comment sent shock waves through the medical establishment. I remain amazed, yet delighted, that it took a polarizing, bombastic businessman/developer/TV entertainer cum politician to restore some sanity into the lunacy of trans gender medicine. About damn time. R. Bosshardt, MD, FACS
If I told a doctor I was Van Gogh and wanted him to cut off my ear, he'd refer me to a psychiatrist. But if I told him I was a woman, he'd start me on drugs and refer me to a "gender-affirming care" surgeon. The medical profession needs to remember its first principle: Do no harm.
Legally chopping off a penis, healthy breasts etc. is ethically and morally reprehensible. Covid and this BS gives us every reason to question “the science.”
Excellent statement, Richard. Thank you for your concise words. Oh, if more doctors like you would speak up honestly about this genderwang atrocity done to young teens, and children, in the name of “being kind.”
thanks for your comments. i agree with you, i wish many groups gave stronger statements against ideas based on gender ideology. still, the asps statement was very important. and comments from its president well received.
First Do No Harm. If someone's face has been injured in an explosion, they need cosmetic surgery. But surgery on healthy body parts for the sake of vanity should be considered malpractice. That includes nose jobs, face lifts, tits&ass, etc. If that had already been established, "sex-change" operations would never have been considered.
Eleanor, I must gently correct you. If someone's face has been disfigured by an accident, cancer surgery, or an accident of nature, e.g. cleft lip, fixing that is not cosmetic surgery. It is reconstructive surgery. A good plastic surgeon will always try to obtain the best possible cosmetic result but the surgery is still reconstructive. Insurance companies recognize the difference...most of the time. Cosmetic surgery is to alter or enhance a normal feature at the behest of the patient. It is by its very nature medically unnecessary. Where it gets tricky is when the cosmetic and reconstructive elements of an operation seem to meld. Breast recontruction, for example, does not produce a functioning breast- can't lactate, usually pretty numb- only a reasonable facsimile of one, but the effort is to make the reconstructed breast as close a match to its mate as possible. Hope that clears it up. My specialty is the most fascinating yet misunderstood in medicine. Check out my book, The Making of a Plastic Surgeon. Cheers.
The commands of human freedom mean we can be whatever we want to be, and we can follow the whims of our zaniest LSD trips. I for one consider myself a pedicule pantiest. Obviously this means I am a pedicule -- a pedicule is either an individual lice (louse) or crab that is affixed to pubic or body or scalp hair. A pedicule pantiest is a type of louse or crab that has shifted its attentions from the human body to elegant, scrumptious pairs of panties. I for one prefer Blooingdales panties as they are so Bette Midler and Barbara Steisand.
The preceding is just horsing around and having a good laugh. HOWEVER, I READ THAT IN SOME ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS CHILDREN ARE ENCOURAGED TO FANTASIZE ABOUT HAVING VARIOUS GENDERS AND BEING ANIMALS TO BOOT. UTTERLY INSANE. WHAT HAPPPENED TO THE 3 Rs.
I am a statistician and medical researcher. I have worked with many psychiatrists over the years. I am appalled at the inability of psychiatry to assert their medical authority on the delusion of trans. It's the single most appalling failure of proper medical thinking that I am aware of. In addition, pediatricians are at fault here. Currently, for the moment, I am Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics. I asked my chair how she can reconcile the breast removal surgeries with the emphasis on breast feeding. No response.
I hope you only mean that she believes people can become the opposite sex and that she is not pursuing this tragic course. If she is "transitioning" slip her a copy of Mary Margaret Olohan's book "DeTrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult." Godspeed.
Slipping a black and white thinking 19 year something isn’t that easy. It’s a risk to a challenging relationship. Plus, I think it was Helena K who once said sending resources to your own kids wasn’t helpful.
I will also do anything in my power to stop my daughter from harming herself by doctor. However, you cannot really reason the girls out of this. It is one of the things that makes it feel like a cult. I do blame the pushers. GI is preached and the medical organizations forgot about "Do No Harm."
When you tell the girls that testosterone is harmful they say it's "fear mongering". Where is the FDA?
Working on the loving relationship is always good. They might listen at some point.
Unfortunately that's a false choice. Often parents DO EVERYTHING, and still lose their child to transition. With young adult kids, they have to experience a desire to change. Funny enough just this week 2 completely unrelated sets of parents emailed me about their daughters stopping T after 2 years of being on it. And these parents had been precisely the kind who tried desperately to stop them from transitioning in the first place. The young adult just has to be ready and willing to change course.
The Democratic Party is tripling down on gender ideology (watch clips of the DNC member elections circulating on X), and will go all-in on fighting for it. They fully control half the states. New York made gender ideology part of the state constitution, by popular vote last November.
If Trump badly messes up the economy (and early signs are not good), most people won't care that the Democrats are all-in on gender ideology, they will vote them back into power anyway.
And President Taylor Swift will reverse all of Trump's EOs on January 20, 2028.
I quite agree. For goodness sake, Abigail, in what world are you living? Yes, Trump's executive orders are a major step forward, but the "spell of pediatric gender medicine" has not "ended." It persists in all of the solidly Blue states like California, Washington, New York and my own state of Illinois. It persists in the corporate legacy media -- just tune in to NPR on any given day and you will still hear the same false ideology about "gender affirming care," "trans children," and "pregnant persons," etc., ad nauseam, being propagated just as before. Gender madness has suffered a huge blow, but it is far from over. We still have a lot of work to do.
You are right, it's too early to declare victory but there is hope now. My hope is that with all the lawsuits and more whistle blowers, enough people will wake up so whoever comes to power in 4 years won't have to deal with it. Once the scientists are not afraid to speak up, hopefully more of them will tell the truth and people will open their eyes. (or so I hope)
The most important thing about the EO is that is a direct attack on the entire insane delusion. It may not end it, but it stops the "trans is the way" shit. Plus it gives cover for the enemies of the trannie delusion, people like me, to openly indicate how wrong this is.
This is true, and important. My point is that we must keep the pressure on, speak up when and where we can; and I now feel much safer in doing so than I did before, thanks to Trump and those EOs.
But if we just think, OK, problem solved, now we can move on, then we may find ourselves losing again later if/when Democrats come back into power.
We should prepare for that by (1) trying to move the Democrats to our side as much as possible, and (2) keeping them out of power as much as possible.
You may not remember the hundreds of millions farmers received from the tariffs on China. Or the 1.4% inflation rate at the time. Tariffs are a one time tax not an escalating tax like inflation and can be reversed. You can choose to buy California avocados or for go your avocado toast. Buy African coffee. Clothing from Vietnam Pakistan etc. Or buy American. Things may get a little worse before they get better but he's in office 2 weeks, give him a minute. It took four years to destroy EVERYTHING. The obvious point is their economies will feel far more pain than ours. If you want to solve the problems you must apply some painful pressure.
Or we can save a buck on avocados and yell why didn't you do anything when your teen dies of a fentanyl poisoning at a party or your kid gets raped by someone that shouldn't even be in this country. And your taxes go up to fund the 10's of millions pouring over the border.
When the last fentanyl pill comes across the southern border, the tariff on Mexico will be lifted, and if it doesn’t, who cares? During the campaign, President Trump repeatedly said he’d apply tariffs to countries that didn’t play fair; did Kamala and Jazz Hands Walz push back furiously? No. Of course, does anyone remember what those two idiots campaigned on? But, but…the ‘experts’ say tariffs will increase prices!!! Yawn. These are the same ‘experts’ who said inflation was transitory. Segue into transition… the trans/gender identity bullshit is the hill that apparently the Democrats wish to die on. They have tripled down on this nonsense since November. The left screeched to high heaven when Trump signed the EO declaring that there are only TWO sexes. TWO!!! Oh, the horror!!! How the fuck did we even get to this point in the first place??? When the President of the United States has to declare that there are only two genders, male and female? Not 64 as the Democrats insist. No more pronouns!!! You want pronouns? Go to LinkedIn, pronoun central. Enough is enough. And if the Dems continue to push this garbage, the party will never win the Presidency again and go the way of the Whigs. One can only hope.
You don't see an upside to rehoming the auto parts industry which has largely moved from the USA to Canada and Mexico over the last few decades? Why should American auto assemblers buy parts from Canada instead of make them domestically? Same with Mexico. Remember Ross Perot and his "giant sucking sound" due to Bill Clinton's NAFTA?
You seem to think the loss of American manufacturing jobs (not everyone can hack college or "code") is unrelated to the social dysfunction found in the American working class: fentanyl, male "failure to launch," and crippled fertility due to female substitution employment and hypergamy. https://www.axios.com/2025/01/31/marriage-gap-women
Canadian news outlets , like most, are looking to make big headlines and get people worked up.
The reality is,Canada can’t “win” a trade war. But the consequences for The USA would be catastrophic nonetheless.
The USA better get that deal with Ukraine for their rare earth metals, because if you push Canada too hard, you lose out on theirs.
Canada can also, essentially, turn off the lights to states like Michigan, as the Premier of Ontario says he will do if pushed too hard.
And if you make trade too difficult with Canada, who will Canada have to turn to for trade? God forbid you force Canada to increase trade with China!
So Canada puts on a song and dance to increase Border security to stop the 1% of the fentanyl that crosses there into the USA, most of which was already planned while the Democrats were in control, and in the meantime Canada tells Trump to do bettter at the 95% of illegal guns that come from the USA.
Treating your closest and best neighbour like a bully, pushing around a smaller kid, won’t be forgotten for a long time. It is already clear that any deal that Trump signs isn’t worth the paper it’s written on as he just tears it up whenever he wants. Fastest way to drive “customers” away to make deals elsewhere.
Thanks for telling it like it is. We need more of it. Lets see these charlatans named and shamed, and help their victims to sue them. Mister Prez how about using some of the money you haw clawed back to set up a legal support fund for these poor kids.
Lawsuits are fully inadequate to redress the crime. Any butcher doc who has mutilated children needs to be hanged. That instead today they walk free shows the wickedness of our courts.
Please consider an alternative. Since no science, or common sense for that matter, backstops hormonal or surgical transitioning, let us enable the ones most injured by this brain dead group-think, the ones who detransition, sue the pants off the therapists and surgeons who maimed them in mind and in body. Several multi-million dollar settlements will spike the heart of this monster.
Doctors who supplied Thalidomide to pregnant women as an anti-depressant walked free too. And the ones who gave women faulty breast implants and pelvic mesh. And earlier, the ones who performed Lobotomies on perfectly healthy non-gender-conforming women.
Our war with the male medical profession continues in ever-changing forms. All that happened this time was that they threw on frocks, to try and fool us.
Lobotomy can be compared ( not sure about thalidomide) but the rest is apples and oranges. Bad medicine and faulty supplies are one thing and they were ended without all the societal destruction. This is a political issue masquerading as medicine with activists and opportunist butchering children unable to understand the ramifications of " their choices".
Correction: Thalidomide was terrible, I agree. However it was not prescribed for depression. It was prescribed for morning sickness. I knew a guy whose Mother had been given thalidomyide. He was the most pitiful person I had ever seen. His deformities could make you howl in shock.
In a civilized society, we can't hang people whose actions we don't like, even if they deserve it. Because there is no law against drugging and mutilating minors, doctors will do those things when professional associations advocate it, gender-confused patients and their parents ask for it, and it generates revenue. Absent proper laws, litigation can make these practices unprofitable, which will help stop them.
Lawsuits are highly effective. You can hang them all you like in your mind, but that's not how modern civilized societies function and we need a plant that actually can work.
my daughter was taken by this cult. i blame her of course and i blame all the complicit democrats. i am grateful to president trump and hope no other family has to be shattered like ours.
Children and adolescents have no idea what they're doing. It takes both humiliating failures and intoxicating successes (i.e., living) to create a dependable knowledge base upon which to make decisions. It takes years to understand oneself. It takes a lifetime to see ones choices objectively. I'm 72 years old and still have revelations about some of the dumb-ass decisions I made 50 years ago.
How can children and adolescents possibly give "informed consent" when they aren't informed about their own motivations, when they don't yet know themselves?
And regardless of age, we humans are always susceptible to group-think and the desire for popularity and belonging, especially when fear is introduced into the mix.
In other words, your daughter, although a sentient being, is probably not entirely to blame, even if she was past the age of consent when she transitioned.
However, along with you, I do blame the Democrats, with their shameful sucking up to powerful institutions and refusal to separate from the herd and tell the truth. A party of sheeple is what they've become.
im sorry to hear about your daughter. fwiw, i dont blame ppl personally affected. gender ideology is a very targeted scam, based on 1000 lies. like the internet itself, it showed up seemingly out of no where, something weve never seen before, unless one looks at past political misinformation campaigns. part of this misinformation campaign strategy has been to keep gender ideology claims on the down low, so no one could counter them. hopefully that will start to change now
I always think about the 100 years of Chinese foot binding. How could you break your own babies feet? And yet they did this to millions of women. That is society
Many tribal societies still routinely mutilate children at a young age. We live in the modern Western world so that is where our struggle is. We can't hope to speak for our Sisters elsewhere, if we lie down for our abusers here.
I think the hubris for us is thinking that we are modern and western and somehow immune to our tribal tendencies because of science or enlightenment or whatever. We can never be complacent to this I guess
Great overview of this absurd phase in medical history, Abigail!!
Thank you, once again, for being one of those “oddball” journalists who has the ability to think independently and who refused to go along to get along at cocktail parties. The obstinate, reality-based advocacy cohort is so lucky to have had a writer/person of your pedigree marching out in front of the battle line. I am sure we will never know the difficulties you encountered along the way. You will be forever honoured in the annals principled journalism when the history books are written. God Bless You!
The same can and must be said about you, Dr. Blade, in the world of women’s competitive sports. Both you and Abigail Shrier belong on the Mt Rushmore of gender sanity. 🙏
Agree with you, Linda. What I get frustrated with is the lack of any Canadian media coverage of the Cass Review, and/or the WPATH Files.
All kudos to Abigail (I have read both her books), and to Mia Hughes who now is involved with the MacDonald Laurier Institute. Mia interviewed Abigail and Coleman Hughes recently. That was possibly the first time I have seen any Canadian exposure to this genderwang atrocity. Jonathan Kay also does a good job. It is the MSM that won’t touch this topic. No one I speak with knows about Cass, nor WPATH. I feel it is submerged by our censored, g’vt bought and controlled media.
One way to fight the transgender madness is to use the pronoun that corresponds with someone’s biological sex, and not their sexual fantasy. Chase Strangio is a woman. All the surgeries and hormones in the world can’t change that. That was also my only disappointment with this post.
We need to remember that when so many key decision makers pushed this insanity, you stood firmly with clarity and courage. For a while you were almost alone. When they try to hide from their culpability, I want to make sure this record is unmuddied not out of retribution (alone) but because we need to remember who did this so that you're not so alone when they move onto their next scheme.
Abigail, you are one of our society's great and courageous heroes. I just subscribed to your Substack.
I don't see myself as a contrarian. Indeed, I am a liberal Democrat, but I never fell for the trans nonsense. Right from the get-go I could see how ridiculous it was. However, why it became a social force that couldn't be stopped, I will never know. There have been several areas of share insanity in our society: lobotomies, facilitated communication (that practice that turned retarded people into geniuses), and transgender ideology. Why those bad ideas developed so many followers, we may never know. In the case of transgender ideology, I think it has a lot to do with trans activists portraying transgender people as the ultimate group to be pitied. They are so pitiful that they MUST be given everything they want, even if it is completely unattainable.
When I was young, there was a house down the road which my family would stare at and debate. Some of us thought it was olive green, while the others thought it was mustard brown (you know, gourmet mustard brown). But transgender ideology isn't one of those confusing colors. It is black and white, and sensible people should have no problem telling them apart.
I've been studying near-death experiences recently, and I believe that phenomenon provides proof that human beings survive death. If it's true, that's good. It means all those confused teenaged girls will have a do-over, and you can be sure that the second time around, they'll use better judgement.
Oh, I just had another thought. There is a lot of SHALLOWNESS to the trans community. What they are all fighting for is cosmetic surgery. Now, if a girl's body could be turned into an ACTUAL boy's body, all of this would make more sense. But that's not the case. Trans activists are fighting for the right to change their appearance, and that's all -- and to have it done at the government's expense. Now, we can all agree that a child with a hair lip should be able to get it fixed because true deformities can cause real psychological damage, but the insistence of teenaged girls that they must have hairy bodies or they will be psychologically damaged doesn't have much credibility. Whatever happened to accepting yourself as you are?
Presidential EOs are important but Congress needs to enact legislation so that gender ideology can't be reinstated by the next Democrat President. Medical treatment should be evidence-based, and there is little to no evidence that "transition" helps people with gender dysphoria or other mental health issues. Drugging, sterilizing and mutilating minors should be illegal and certainly should not be done in a facility receiving federal funds. Women's competition in many sports was instituted because males and females have different physiologies. Men or boys in dresses should not be allowed to compete with women and girls.
Not to nit-pick, but men or boys in pants also should not be allowed to compete with women and girls. Clothes don't make the woman.
And for a bit more nit-picking, "competition" in sports implies fairness, which requires a level playing field. Even world-class female athletes like Martina Navratilova oppose men in women's sports, because the presence of males demolishes the level playing field. It is simply unfair.
Men and boys, in dresses, shorts, or onesies, are not "competing" against women and girls. They're cheating.
Hopefully it is the end of the bizarre and cruel movement….these kids need competent counseling and that they can be straight or gay, lesbian without mutilating their bodies and their minds.
About damn time. As a plastic surgeon who has looked askance at the science and logic behind the entire enterprise of gender-affirming care, especially for minors, I have remained in disbelief at the alacrity with which medical professionals have embraced radical ideological notions such as the non-binary nature of sex. While accepting that some poor souls may suffer from psychic discomfort due to their conviction that they are in the wrong body, until uncritical trans affirmation, I had never seen medicine affirming delusional thinking with medical treatments and even surgery. Even though sex reassigment surgery has been performed since at least when I was a medical student (Class of '78) this has been rare and almost entirely confined to adult men who believe themselves to be women. Renee Richards, a physician, professional tennis player, and trans-woman comes to mind. Nowhere else in medicine is affirming a delusion considered standard of care. Not in anorexia nervosa. Not in body dysmorphic syndrome. Not in body integrity disorder. I viewed with dismay the rush by my own professional organization, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, to offer courses in sexual reassignment surgery, as though this is something any surgeon can just add to their practice after a short course. While I was proud of the fact that the ASPS was the first major medical organization to refuse to endorse gender-affirming care in minors, I was disappointed by what I felt was a milquetoast statement of non-endorsement, rather that a full blown disavowal of this in the absence of credible evidence for its safety and efficacy. It is telling that such a weak comment sent shock waves through the medical establishment. I remain amazed, yet delighted, that it took a polarizing, bombastic businessman/developer/TV entertainer cum politician to restore some sanity into the lunacy of trans gender medicine. About damn time. R. Bosshardt, MD, FACS
If I told a doctor I was Van Gogh and wanted him to cut off my ear, he'd refer me to a psychiatrist. But if I told him I was a woman, he'd start me on drugs and refer me to a "gender-affirming care" surgeon. The medical profession needs to remember its first principle: Do no harm.
I wanted to be a pirate. Thank God no one gifted my eye out, cut off my leg and pulled out my teeth.
Legally chopping off a penis, healthy breasts etc. is ethically and morally reprehensible. Covid and this BS gives us every reason to question “the science.”
Excellent statement, Richard. Thank you for your concise words. Oh, if more doctors like you would speak up honestly about this genderwang atrocity done to young teens, and children, in the name of “being kind.”
thanks for your comments. i agree with you, i wish many groups gave stronger statements against ideas based on gender ideology. still, the asps statement was very important. and comments from its president well received.
Thank you for this wonderful statement, Dr. Bosshardt.
We could really use the FDA or SOMEONE to assert that testosterone is harmful to the female body. The girls never think about the internals.
I’m always curious as to what the Hippocratic Oath means to these who believe “affirming care” with destructive surgery is doing no harm.
First Do No Harm. If someone's face has been injured in an explosion, they need cosmetic surgery. But surgery on healthy body parts for the sake of vanity should be considered malpractice. That includes nose jobs, face lifts, tits&ass, etc. If that had already been established, "sex-change" operations would never have been considered.
Eleanor, I must gently correct you. If someone's face has been disfigured by an accident, cancer surgery, or an accident of nature, e.g. cleft lip, fixing that is not cosmetic surgery. It is reconstructive surgery. A good plastic surgeon will always try to obtain the best possible cosmetic result but the surgery is still reconstructive. Insurance companies recognize the difference...most of the time. Cosmetic surgery is to alter or enhance a normal feature at the behest of the patient. It is by its very nature medically unnecessary. Where it gets tricky is when the cosmetic and reconstructive elements of an operation seem to meld. Breast recontruction, for example, does not produce a functioning breast- can't lactate, usually pretty numb- only a reasonable facsimile of one, but the effort is to make the reconstructed breast as close a match to its mate as possible. Hope that clears it up. My specialty is the most fascinating yet misunderstood in medicine. Check out my book, The Making of a Plastic Surgeon. Cheers.
Thanks for the correction. I believe you understood (and agreed with?) what I meant even if I used the wrong term.
Maybe you should have spoken out about it publicly. Too few in the medical profession were too scared to speak out.
Oh really, Daaahling, you are being such a bigot
The commands of human freedom mean we can be whatever we want to be, and we can follow the whims of our zaniest LSD trips. I for one consider myself a pedicule pantiest. Obviously this means I am a pedicule -- a pedicule is either an individual lice (louse) or crab that is affixed to pubic or body or scalp hair. A pedicule pantiest is a type of louse or crab that has shifted its attentions from the human body to elegant, scrumptious pairs of panties. I for one prefer Blooingdales panties as they are so Bette Midler and Barbara Steisand.
The preceding is just horsing around and having a good laugh. HOWEVER, I READ THAT IN SOME ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS CHILDREN ARE ENCOURAGED TO FANTASIZE ABOUT HAVING VARIOUS GENDERS AND BEING ANIMALS TO BOOT. UTTERLY INSANE. WHAT HAPPPENED TO THE 3 Rs.
Nonsense .. gender affirming care has been part of mainstream medical thinking since Dr. Josef Mengele's successful publicity campaign.
Bob, OMG! LOL!!
Thank you for taking the time to give us what I consider an expert opinion.
I am a statistician and medical researcher. I have worked with many psychiatrists over the years. I am appalled at the inability of psychiatry to assert their medical authority on the delusion of trans. It's the single most appalling failure of proper medical thinking that I am aware of. In addition, pediatricians are at fault here. Currently, for the moment, I am Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics. I asked my chair how she can reconcile the breast removal surgeries with the emphasis on breast feeding. No response.
Sanity must be restored, but it hasn’t yet.
We must start educating kids ( and their parents !) in schools about human biology and evolution.
Brilliant article thank you for being 100% right! I just wish my 19 year old daughter could be convinced.😩
I hope you only mean that she believes people can become the opposite sex and that she is not pursuing this tragic course. If she is "transitioning" slip her a copy of Mary Margaret Olohan's book "DeTrans: True Stories of Escaping the Gender Ideology Cult." Godspeed.
And connect with PITT if you haven't already:
https://www.pittparents.com
Slipping a black and white thinking 19 year something isn’t that easy. It’s a risk to a challenging relationship. Plus, I think it was Helena K who once said sending resources to your own kids wasn’t helpful.
My relationship with my kid would be seriously challenged already. I'd do anything to stop my kid from harming herself.
I will also do anything in my power to stop my daughter from harming herself by doctor. However, you cannot really reason the girls out of this. It is one of the things that makes it feel like a cult. I do blame the pushers. GI is preached and the medical organizations forgot about "Do No Harm."
When you tell the girls that testosterone is harmful they say it's "fear mongering". Where is the FDA?
Working on the loving relationship is always good. They might listen at some point.
Unfortunately that's a false choice. Often parents DO EVERYTHING, and still lose their child to transition. With young adult kids, they have to experience a desire to change. Funny enough just this week 2 completely unrelated sets of parents emailed me about their daughters stopping T after 2 years of being on it. And these parents had been precisely the kind who tried desperately to stop them from transitioning in the first place. The young adult just has to be ready and willing to change course.
I tried that one.
So did mine when it came to pain meds and addiction. I needed the 18 years to learn what everyone else already knew.
Thank GOD for Abigail Shrier whose book shed light on this "stain on our Nation's history."
I remember contributing to the appeal to send copies of her book to members of congress.
I caution against declaring victory too soon.
The Democratic Party is tripling down on gender ideology (watch clips of the DNC member elections circulating on X), and will go all-in on fighting for it. They fully control half the states. New York made gender ideology part of the state constitution, by popular vote last November.
If Trump badly messes up the economy (and early signs are not good), most people won't care that the Democrats are all-in on gender ideology, they will vote them back into power anyway.
And President Taylor Swift will reverse all of Trump's EOs on January 20, 2028.
I quite agree. For goodness sake, Abigail, in what world are you living? Yes, Trump's executive orders are a major step forward, but the "spell of pediatric gender medicine" has not "ended." It persists in all of the solidly Blue states like California, Washington, New York and my own state of Illinois. It persists in the corporate legacy media -- just tune in to NPR on any given day and you will still hear the same false ideology about "gender affirming care," "trans children," and "pregnant persons," etc., ad nauseam, being propagated just as before. Gender madness has suffered a huge blow, but it is far from over. We still have a lot of work to do.
You are right, it's too early to declare victory but there is hope now. My hope is that with all the lawsuits and more whistle blowers, enough people will wake up so whoever comes to power in 4 years won't have to deal with it. Once the scientists are not afraid to speak up, hopefully more of them will tell the truth and people will open their eyes. (or so I hope)
The most important thing about the EO is that is a direct attack on the entire insane delusion. It may not end it, but it stops the "trans is the way" shit. Plus it gives cover for the enemies of the trannie delusion, people like me, to openly indicate how wrong this is.
This is true, and important. My point is that we must keep the pressure on, speak up when and where we can; and I now feel much safer in doing so than I did before, thanks to Trump and those EOs.
But if we just think, OK, problem solved, now we can move on, then we may find ourselves losing again later if/when Democrats come back into power.
We should prepare for that by (1) trying to move the Democrats to our side as much as possible, and (2) keeping them out of power as much as possible.
Not sure exactly what Trump could do to make the economy worse than the Biden depression.
25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico are an excellent start.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/trump-starts-to-break-things
You may not remember the hundreds of millions farmers received from the tariffs on China. Or the 1.4% inflation rate at the time. Tariffs are a one time tax not an escalating tax like inflation and can be reversed. You can choose to buy California avocados or for go your avocado toast. Buy African coffee. Clothing from Vietnam Pakistan etc. Or buy American. Things may get a little worse before they get better but he's in office 2 weeks, give him a minute. It took four years to destroy EVERYTHING. The obvious point is their economies will feel far more pain than ours. If you want to solve the problems you must apply some painful pressure.
Or we can save a buck on avocados and yell why didn't you do anything when your teen dies of a fentanyl poisoning at a party or your kid gets raped by someone that shouldn't even be in this country. And your taxes go up to fund the 10's of millions pouring over the border.
When the last fentanyl pill comes across the southern border, the tariff on Mexico will be lifted, and if it doesn’t, who cares? During the campaign, President Trump repeatedly said he’d apply tariffs to countries that didn’t play fair; did Kamala and Jazz Hands Walz push back furiously? No. Of course, does anyone remember what those two idiots campaigned on? But, but…the ‘experts’ say tariffs will increase prices!!! Yawn. These are the same ‘experts’ who said inflation was transitory. Segue into transition… the trans/gender identity bullshit is the hill that apparently the Democrats wish to die on. They have tripled down on this nonsense since November. The left screeched to high heaven when Trump signed the EO declaring that there are only TWO sexes. TWO!!! Oh, the horror!!! How the fuck did we even get to this point in the first place??? When the President of the United States has to declare that there are only two genders, male and female? Not 64 as the Democrats insist. No more pronouns!!! You want pronouns? Go to LinkedIn, pronoun central. Enough is enough. And if the Dems continue to push this garbage, the party will never win the Presidency again and go the way of the Whigs. One can only hope.
What a bigot! There are at least 72 genders :https://www.medicinenet.com/what_are_the_72_other_genders/article.htmA. Another source says there are 81: https://helpfulprofessor.com/types-of-genders-list/. Admittedly, it's hard to keep up these days.
You don't see an upside to rehoming the auto parts industry which has largely moved from the USA to Canada and Mexico over the last few decades? Why should American auto assemblers buy parts from Canada instead of make them domestically? Same with Mexico. Remember Ross Perot and his "giant sucking sound" due to Bill Clinton's NAFTA?
You seem to think the loss of American manufacturing jobs (not everyone can hack college or "code") is unrelated to the social dysfunction found in the American working class: fentanyl, male "failure to launch," and crippled fertility due to female substitution employment and hypergamy. https://www.axios.com/2025/01/31/marriage-gap-women
How blind and uncaring of you.
Wonder why Canadian news outlets are saying the tariffs will be catastrophic for Canada, or should I say, Tranada's economy, then?
Canadian news outlets , like most, are looking to make big headlines and get people worked up.
The reality is,Canada can’t “win” a trade war. But the consequences for The USA would be catastrophic nonetheless.
The USA better get that deal with Ukraine for their rare earth metals, because if you push Canada too hard, you lose out on theirs.
Canada can also, essentially, turn off the lights to states like Michigan, as the Premier of Ontario says he will do if pushed too hard.
And if you make trade too difficult with Canada, who will Canada have to turn to for trade? God forbid you force Canada to increase trade with China!
So Canada puts on a song and dance to increase Border security to stop the 1% of the fentanyl that crosses there into the USA, most of which was already planned while the Democrats were in control, and in the meantime Canada tells Trump to do bettter at the 95% of illegal guns that come from the USA.
Treating your closest and best neighbour like a bully, pushing around a smaller kid, won’t be forgotten for a long time. It is already clear that any deal that Trump signs isn’t worth the paper it’s written on as he just tears it up whenever he wants. Fastest way to drive “customers” away to make deals elsewhere.
The tariff threat has produced some early results. Trump does not always do what he says he will do.
You’re as delusional as the “trans” brats
Plenty
Thanks for telling it like it is. We need more of it. Lets see these charlatans named and shamed, and help their victims to sue them. Mister Prez how about using some of the money you haw clawed back to set up a legal support fund for these poor kids.
I'm pretty sure many lawyers are chomping at the bit to take these cases under contingency fee agreements.
For once I am in favor of those parasites. I hope everyone who can be, will be sued into oblivion!
Lawsuits are fully inadequate to redress the crime. Any butcher doc who has mutilated children needs to be hanged. That instead today they walk free shows the wickedness of our courts.
Please consider an alternative. Since no science, or common sense for that matter, backstops hormonal or surgical transitioning, let us enable the ones most injured by this brain dead group-think, the ones who detransition, sue the pants off the therapists and surgeons who maimed them in mind and in body. Several multi-million dollar settlements will spike the heart of this monster.
Doctors who supplied Thalidomide to pregnant women as an anti-depressant walked free too. And the ones who gave women faulty breast implants and pelvic mesh. And earlier, the ones who performed Lobotomies on perfectly healthy non-gender-conforming women.
Our war with the male medical profession continues in ever-changing forms. All that happened this time was that they threw on frocks, to try and fool us.
Men suffer from bad medicine as well. And plenty of gender "doctors" are women.
Lobotomy can be compared ( not sure about thalidomide) but the rest is apples and oranges. Bad medicine and faulty supplies are one thing and they were ended without all the societal destruction. This is a political issue masquerading as medicine with activists and opportunist butchering children unable to understand the ramifications of " their choices".
Correction: Thalidomide was terrible, I agree. However it was not prescribed for depression. It was prescribed for morning sickness. I knew a guy whose Mother had been given thalidomyide. He was the most pitiful person I had ever seen. His deformities could make you howl in shock.
In a civilized society, we can't hang people whose actions we don't like, even if they deserve it. Because there is no law against drugging and mutilating minors, doctors will do those things when professional associations advocate it, gender-confused patients and their parents ask for it, and it generates revenue. Absent proper laws, litigation can make these practices unprofitable, which will help stop them.
Lawsuits are highly effective. You can hang them all you like in your mind, but that's not how modern civilized societies function and we need a plant that actually can work.
great article summarizing this madness.
my daughter was taken by this cult. i blame her of course and i blame all the complicit democrats. i am grateful to president trump and hope no other family has to be shattered like ours.
Children and adolescents have no idea what they're doing. It takes both humiliating failures and intoxicating successes (i.e., living) to create a dependable knowledge base upon which to make decisions. It takes years to understand oneself. It takes a lifetime to see ones choices objectively. I'm 72 years old and still have revelations about some of the dumb-ass decisions I made 50 years ago.
How can children and adolescents possibly give "informed consent" when they aren't informed about their own motivations, when they don't yet know themselves?
And regardless of age, we humans are always susceptible to group-think and the desire for popularity and belonging, especially when fear is introduced into the mix.
In other words, your daughter, although a sentient being, is probably not entirely to blame, even if she was past the age of consent when she transitioned.
However, along with you, I do blame the Democrats, with their shameful sucking up to powerful institutions and refusal to separate from the herd and tell the truth. A party of sheeple is what they've become.
im sorry to hear about your daughter. fwiw, i dont blame ppl personally affected. gender ideology is a very targeted scam, based on 1000 lies. like the internet itself, it showed up seemingly out of no where, something weve never seen before, unless one looks at past political misinformation campaigns. part of this misinformation campaign strategy has been to keep gender ideology claims on the down low, so no one could counter them. hopefully that will start to change now
😰
I always think about the 100 years of Chinese foot binding. How could you break your own babies feet? And yet they did this to millions of women. That is society
Many tribal societies still routinely mutilate children at a young age. We live in the modern Western world so that is where our struggle is. We can't hope to speak for our Sisters elsewhere, if we lie down for our abusers here.
I think the hubris for us is thinking that we are modern and western and somehow immune to our tribal tendencies because of science or enlightenment or whatever. We can never be complacent to this I guess
Yerina — I think you meant to say “1000 years of Chinese foot binding.”
Great overview of this absurd phase in medical history, Abigail!!
Thank you, once again, for being one of those “oddball” journalists who has the ability to think independently and who refused to go along to get along at cocktail parties. The obstinate, reality-based advocacy cohort is so lucky to have had a writer/person of your pedigree marching out in front of the battle line. I am sure we will never know the difficulties you encountered along the way. You will be forever honoured in the annals principled journalism when the history books are written. God Bless You!
The same can and must be said about you, Dr. Blade, in the world of women’s competitive sports. Both you and Abigail Shrier belong on the Mt Rushmore of gender sanity. 🙏
Thank you, Jenny! 🙏🏼
Agree with you, Linda. What I get frustrated with is the lack of any Canadian media coverage of the Cass Review, and/or the WPATH Files.
All kudos to Abigail (I have read both her books), and to Mia Hughes who now is involved with the MacDonald Laurier Institute. Mia interviewed Abigail and Coleman Hughes recently. That was possibly the first time I have seen any Canadian exposure to this genderwang atrocity. Jonathan Kay also does a good job. It is the MSM that won’t touch this topic. No one I speak with knows about Cass, nor WPATH. I feel it is submerged by our censored, g’vt bought and controlled media.
You misgendered Chase Strangio
My only criticism of the entire article
One way to fight the transgender madness is to use the pronoun that corresponds with someone’s biological sex, and not their sexual fantasy. Chase Strangio is a woman. All the surgeries and hormones in the world can’t change that. That was also my only disappointment with this post.
Dear Abigail, thank you for fighting for our girls.
and boys
We need to remember that when so many key decision makers pushed this insanity, you stood firmly with clarity and courage. For a while you were almost alone. When they try to hide from their culpability, I want to make sure this record is unmuddied not out of retribution (alone) but because we need to remember who did this so that you're not so alone when they move onto their next scheme.
Abigail, you are one of our society's great and courageous heroes. I just subscribed to your Substack.
I don't see myself as a contrarian. Indeed, I am a liberal Democrat, but I never fell for the trans nonsense. Right from the get-go I could see how ridiculous it was. However, why it became a social force that couldn't be stopped, I will never know. There have been several areas of share insanity in our society: lobotomies, facilitated communication (that practice that turned retarded people into geniuses), and transgender ideology. Why those bad ideas developed so many followers, we may never know. In the case of transgender ideology, I think it has a lot to do with trans activists portraying transgender people as the ultimate group to be pitied. They are so pitiful that they MUST be given everything they want, even if it is completely unattainable.
When I was young, there was a house down the road which my family would stare at and debate. Some of us thought it was olive green, while the others thought it was mustard brown (you know, gourmet mustard brown). But transgender ideology isn't one of those confusing colors. It is black and white, and sensible people should have no problem telling them apart.
I've been studying near-death experiences recently, and I believe that phenomenon provides proof that human beings survive death. If it's true, that's good. It means all those confused teenaged girls will have a do-over, and you can be sure that the second time around, they'll use better judgement.
Oh, I just had another thought. There is a lot of SHALLOWNESS to the trans community. What they are all fighting for is cosmetic surgery. Now, if a girl's body could be turned into an ACTUAL boy's body, all of this would make more sense. But that's not the case. Trans activists are fighting for the right to change their appearance, and that's all -- and to have it done at the government's expense. Now, we can all agree that a child with a hair lip should be able to get it fixed because true deformities can cause real psychological damage, but the insistence of teenaged girls that they must have hairy bodies or they will be psychologically damaged doesn't have much credibility. Whatever happened to accepting yourself as you are?
That’s only if you’re fat. Cause who wants to eat healthy and exercise? Duh 🤦🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
Irene, you really need to find a way to get more sleep. It will help your thought processes.
I'd reply but I see that sarcasm is wasted on you.
You can add recovered memory therapy to the list.
Presidential EOs are important but Congress needs to enact legislation so that gender ideology can't be reinstated by the next Democrat President. Medical treatment should be evidence-based, and there is little to no evidence that "transition" helps people with gender dysphoria or other mental health issues. Drugging, sterilizing and mutilating minors should be illegal and certainly should not be done in a facility receiving federal funds. Women's competition in many sports was instituted because males and females have different physiologies. Men or boys in dresses should not be allowed to compete with women and girls.
Not to nit-pick, but men or boys in pants also should not be allowed to compete with women and girls. Clothes don't make the woman.
And for a bit more nit-picking, "competition" in sports implies fairness, which requires a level playing field. Even world-class female athletes like Martina Navratilova oppose men in women's sports, because the presence of males demolishes the level playing field. It is simply unfair.
Men and boys, in dresses, shorts, or onesies, are not "competing" against women and girls. They're cheating.
Lord have mercy. 🌹🕯️❤️🩹 🕊️
Thank you Abigail,
FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! 🌐 🇺🇲 ✨
BS"D
Great! Thank you! On a lighter note, this is from Babylon Bee, Feb. 1, 2025
"Adam Seen Wearing 'THERE IS ONLY ONE GENDER' Shirt In Garden Of Eden"
Hopefully it is the end of the bizarre and cruel movement….these kids need competent counseling and that they can be straight or gay, lesbian without mutilating their bodies and their minds.