This is the scariest thing I have ever read. Thanks so much for doing this work. I have a 12 YO daughter that is great, confident, and doesn't have any issues right now. But, I know I read these stories that other girls were fine and one day, then they are bullied, or just lack confidence and get sucked in......and I now I at least feel informed. I am older mom, I grew up in the 80's, this was not even remotely on the radar of being an issue. I really cannot believe how/what/why this is occurring. But I blame Pharma and our lawmakers for NOT protecting our children. This needs to stop.
“They were trying to create a customer for their gender clinic . . . and they seemed to absolutely want to push us in that direction,”
The cynic in me absolutely thinks that big pharma is pushing this on purpose to create new clients. Post-op trans people have to spend thousands of dollars a month on healthcare.
This and meds in general for depression, ADHD. pain. A friend of mine years ago, daughter was doing drugs more casually but typical teenage stuff. They grounded her...she , threatened suicide, they immediately took her to a clinic/hospital to be evaluated. They took her in, "evaluated" her, placed her on several pills and sent her home. This was their answer. More pills but RX instead of street drugs. Luckily, my friend, took her to rehab....for 4 weeks and got her clean and turned out she didn't need any medication whatsoever. They had some other tough years but it really opened my eyes to what an industry this has all turned into. FYI.....I work in Clinical research industry (indirectly, not a clinical person or researcher) and really had no idea this is how this is all going because unless it actually impacts you directly...you would never know. And NO ONE really reports this. But how many parents go to these state run hospitals, or other dr's and think they are being given good advice or helping their child. Just reading this essay, it just really, truly upsetting. Our lawmakers have sold us out to Pharma. And the beast just keeps growing.....
I thoroughly agree. I have three kids who are all quite smart, and I've had multiple "therapists" trying to push them into ADHD medication. For the crime of being slightly awkward in their younger years, which they all grew out of! My parents recently told me that they were pressured to put me on ADHD meds as well.
I'm grateful for the genius of western medicine, but much of it has definitely turned into a racket.
I'm not entirely sure. I think it goes deeper than that, but I feel like a tinhat for saying it.
I mean, does it strike anyone else as weird that pedophilia and associated things like blocking puberty in kids is suddenly all over the fucking place? That we had a major globe-girdling billionaire pedophile ring busted a few years after Hillary Clinton was accused by most of the people implicated of running one from a pizza joint? (Accuse the other side of that of which you are guilty, part 4 million.)
That suddenly well-known billionaires are flinging the word "pedo" around like insults at one another where people can hear them? That we're hearing about trans male pedophiles buddying up with tech billionaires? That Bill Gates was attending parties thrown by Epstein? That Prince Andrew got caught on fucking kids?
Holy shit, it's everywhere now. I am convinced that it's all over the place because these billionaires are being blackmailed to step aside for it. I'm convinced that's why you're not allowed to question trans dogma in Twitter, for example. Those people provided fuckable kids to Dorsey, I am convinced of it.
The communications pathways of the entire world, thanks to the boom of big tech, are under the control of people whose greatest secret -- that they will do anything to keep hidden -- is that they have been trafficking kids. Seriously, show me a billionaire and I'll show you a kid-raper who will bend the knee to ANYONE to keep a bunch of photographs hidden.
This is why we're hearing about all of this. This is why suddenly the whole world is about keeping children frozen in pre-pubescence, why the high level management of Reddit and Twitter all have ugly men in cheap wigs on their boards, and why you can't talk about the dangers of transing kids on those platforms without risking being shut down. This is why Matt Gaetz is suddenly scared shitless, along with most of his colleagues. This is why -- again -- Hillary Clinton was the one who was accused of it before it all broke, to shut down any reasonable accusations that would be made later on. This is why Melinda Gates is divorcing her husband -- she knew he'd fucked adults before, but he's a billionaire. He fucked kids, too. This is why Elon Musk threw the slur "pedo" around -- because in the billionaire circles he runs in, that's nothing more than a funny locker-room accusation to make, and he forgot for a second that he wasn't supposed to say it beyond those circles.
Sorry, this was a seriously long comment, but I stand behind all of it even though it makes me sound like a tinhat. This is where this trans garbage is coming from -- blackmailed kid-raping billionaires who control the communications pathways of the entire planet. It goes WELL BEYOND mere pharma.
These are very interesting connections you’re making. Doesn’t Epstein’s “suicide” reek to high heaven? And the extraordinary lack of interest in the shady circumstances of his death in the mainstream media? And the “confession” of Epstein’s guards that they falsified the records concerning their whereabouts when they were supposed to be preventing Epstein from killing himself? And how they’ve conveniently been granted immunity from having to testify about that time period? Cover-up complete. Too many famous and powerful friends of Epstein, i.e., pedophiles, to protect.
Another hypothesis regarding the enthusiastic support of transism on the left is that it’s a huge source of donations for Democratic candidates. The Human Rights Campaign in particular has been highlighting transism as a fundraising tool for Dems for many years.
What was on the radar in the 80s was anorexia and cutting. This is just the latest incarnation of self-destruction marketed to girls, only now it gets them applause. Starve yourself of slice your body up, and the world recognizes it as bad. Use the right woke lingo to insist your body is wrong, and surgeons will do the g/d cutting for you.
Amputating the breasts from young girls with dysphoria is like performing liopsuction on an anorexic. Doctors who do it should be struck off and in fucking jail for the rest of their lives, and people who defend it should be condemned.
Related, though not exactly: Many therapists are a threat to even young adults' relationships with their families. There is a vast therapeutic trend to simply destroy intergenerational, family relationships and easily tens of thousands of young people, with vague accusations of abuse, now estrange themselves from loving parents. Therapists are guiding these estrangements, often helping young, adult children write letters, permanently cutting parents out of their lives.
This was in WA state before the trans movement. We had a granddaughter who live with us after being removed from her fathers home from made up abuse accusations from her unstable mother, my husbands daughter. By the time we were able to have her put in our home the Cps psychiatrist had that poor kid on 8 psychotic drugs not even approved for children. They led us to believe we were all in the same page handling her issues. She didn’t like our rules & ran from school, ended up pick up by police & taken to a youth shelter, they informed her she at 13 had a right to an attorney & that attorney told her she didn’t have to return. She ended up living at in & out of foster homes until aged out. Got herself a felony. Barely finished high school. Now 10 years later she agrees there was no abuse with her father & lived with him, regrets her actions she took on advice of that attorney I
& at 30 still struggles with her life after being removed from family. We ended up with her sister in our home, we handled Cps differently this time as we had our own attorney & a private counselor not thru the state
for advice by then. State law doesn’t always have the best interest in children & avoided the pitfalls that happen with state law second time around.
Thank you for advocating for confused teenage girls.
I just listened to your interview with Jordan Peterson. At 16:45 you ask “Where are the women in their 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's who were denied the opportunity to come out as transgender? They should be coming out too but they're not.”
About that: Thank God I was a teenager in the 1970's rather than today! If this had been something available then, I would have gone this route and it would have been a big mistake! What I needed was healing and self acceptance- healing from sexual traumas from my female vulnerability (there's this drive to obliterate that which made/makes me vulnerable), and self acceptance of aspects of myself that were not typically female (math geek).
I see this movement as deeply anti-woman- encouraging teenage girls to eliminate their femininity as a route to peace. Genital mutilation is indeed irreversible harm.
Erikson's stages of development Stage 5 Psychosocial Crisis/Task for teens is "Identity vs Confusion- Teenagers work at refining a sense of self by testing roles and then integrating them to form a single identity, or they become confused about who they are." The culture is pushing girls to embrace the confusion rather than navigate the surging hormones into a powerful and joyful female identity.
Funny to come across this today because I recently resigned my position as director of a youth shelter in part due to these exact issues. As an insider in the field I can confirm Abigail’s reporting here 100%.
Have you considered trying to get interviewed so your side of this hour story can be told? I think having been a director of one of these clinics your voice would be more likely to be listened to.
As always, the truth is worse. Grace Lavery (a UC Berkeley professor) has actually called for the book ('Irreversible Damage') to be burned (safely of course). See https://www.rt.com/usa/506758-uc-berkeley-lavery-book-burning-trans/ for an image of Grace Lavery calling for the book to be (safely) burned.
This is very important for parents and teachers as well as anyone who says they care about our kids. I know this is in the US context, but I am concerned that it will go the same way here in the UK. As a teacher of kids with SEN I was disturbed when I heard the numbers a few years ago because in 15 years teaching some very complex kids,I have never met a child that wanted to be another gender. I am also a parent of two girls aged 24 and 21 and a son aged 10. I'm an aunt to several others kids and also never heard it from them or any kid in the community, even when I was a child. I grew up and had most of my experience in "difficult" or "troubled" neighbourhoods and schools. I met gay children but never trans kids. I just couldn't understand where they all came from all of a sudden. Seeing your interview with Jordan Peterson today I totally understand now. I don;t have a huge audience (which prbaby helps given the censorship going on) but I plan to cover it in my podcast in coming weeks after listening to your interview and talk on Youtube. What else can we as parents, teachers and citizens do to raise more awareness of this?
Abigail I would like to get in contact with you. Regarding the gender confusion. I want to share something with you I have come across. How do I get in contact?
Thank you for doing this piece Abigail, very difficult to read but more people need to understand what is at stake here and how quickly people we should be able to trust, medical practitioners, are willing to press the 'I believe button" and send them off to gender affirmation therapy.
All this time later and the most obvious cause for concern! I write about how we humans are prone to being herd-minded and can easily fall into irrationality but when I read your common sense approach from so far away and see how slowly change is coming it is like watching people choosing to sit in a burning movie theatre.
It's clear why fairy tales exist - pied piper, dark-mother witches, smothering winter worlds, see no evil, speak no evil and all that. It's also clear that it's a deeper rot because 'progressives' have actually been hacking further back into the roots of culture via post-modern academia and wielding undue influence throughout institutions to get us to the point where we have forgotten the things we were supposed to remember.
Yes—this is absolutely happening in Canada too, especially here in British Columbia. And tragically, most parents have no idea it’s even possible, let alone already happening.
Here in BC, children as young as 12 can make medical decisions—including gender-affirming treatments—without parental consent, and medical professionals are legally prohibited from disclosing this information to parents if the child objects. Families are being blindsided. Some parents have even faced threats of incarceration or had their children removed for failing to “affirm.” A father I know has been incarcerated as well. It is horrifying.
Thank you for the courage and diligence in researching and writing this. More parents urgently need to know how fast and quietly their parental rights are being eroded. This isn’t a political issue—it’s a human rights crisis cloaked in compassion
Where are the FGM warriors? Why isn’t anyone fighting against mutilation of American children and arresting the surgeons?
In the flip side, and sick side...do you think that social justice warriors think they are really saving these children from their parents? I believe they have unresolved childhood trauma that they are trying to resolve by “ saving” future children from the rejection they experienced. So many of them!!!
Hi all, I was reading through these stories yesterday and can't remember where I saw a comment suggesting that the teenager girls discussed here have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The reasoning seemed to be that the young girls had a fragile or changing sense of self, so they might have BPD. I understand the reasoning there but it really is not appropriate for teenagers, especially young teenagers. Kids this age have an unsure sense of self by definition. During adolescence, teenagers experiment with different identities. That's normal in our culture and also why swift gender transitions can be so dangerous. The child involved may simply be exploring an identity that she will later discard.
This is the scariest thing I have ever read. Thanks so much for doing this work. I have a 12 YO daughter that is great, confident, and doesn't have any issues right now. But, I know I read these stories that other girls were fine and one day, then they are bullied, or just lack confidence and get sucked in......and I now I at least feel informed. I am older mom, I grew up in the 80's, this was not even remotely on the radar of being an issue. I really cannot believe how/what/why this is occurring. But I blame Pharma and our lawmakers for NOT protecting our children. This needs to stop.
“They were trying to create a customer for their gender clinic . . . and they seemed to absolutely want to push us in that direction,”
The cynic in me absolutely thinks that big pharma is pushing this on purpose to create new clients. Post-op trans people have to spend thousands of dollars a month on healthcare.
This and meds in general for depression, ADHD. pain. A friend of mine years ago, daughter was doing drugs more casually but typical teenage stuff. They grounded her...she , threatened suicide, they immediately took her to a clinic/hospital to be evaluated. They took her in, "evaluated" her, placed her on several pills and sent her home. This was their answer. More pills but RX instead of street drugs. Luckily, my friend, took her to rehab....for 4 weeks and got her clean and turned out she didn't need any medication whatsoever. They had some other tough years but it really opened my eyes to what an industry this has all turned into. FYI.....I work in Clinical research industry (indirectly, not a clinical person or researcher) and really had no idea this is how this is all going because unless it actually impacts you directly...you would never know. And NO ONE really reports this. But how many parents go to these state run hospitals, or other dr's and think they are being given good advice or helping their child. Just reading this essay, it just really, truly upsetting. Our lawmakers have sold us out to Pharma. And the beast just keeps growing.....
I thoroughly agree. I have three kids who are all quite smart, and I've had multiple "therapists" trying to push them into ADHD medication. For the crime of being slightly awkward in their younger years, which they all grew out of! My parents recently told me that they were pressured to put me on ADHD meds as well.
I'm grateful for the genius of western medicine, but much of it has definitely turned into a racket.
I'm not entirely sure. I think it goes deeper than that, but I feel like a tinhat for saying it.
I mean, does it strike anyone else as weird that pedophilia and associated things like blocking puberty in kids is suddenly all over the fucking place? That we had a major globe-girdling billionaire pedophile ring busted a few years after Hillary Clinton was accused by most of the people implicated of running one from a pizza joint? (Accuse the other side of that of which you are guilty, part 4 million.)
That suddenly well-known billionaires are flinging the word "pedo" around like insults at one another where people can hear them? That we're hearing about trans male pedophiles buddying up with tech billionaires? That Bill Gates was attending parties thrown by Epstein? That Prince Andrew got caught on fucking kids?
Holy shit, it's everywhere now. I am convinced that it's all over the place because these billionaires are being blackmailed to step aside for it. I'm convinced that's why you're not allowed to question trans dogma in Twitter, for example. Those people provided fuckable kids to Dorsey, I am convinced of it.
The communications pathways of the entire world, thanks to the boom of big tech, are under the control of people whose greatest secret -- that they will do anything to keep hidden -- is that they have been trafficking kids. Seriously, show me a billionaire and I'll show you a kid-raper who will bend the knee to ANYONE to keep a bunch of photographs hidden.
This is why we're hearing about all of this. This is why suddenly the whole world is about keeping children frozen in pre-pubescence, why the high level management of Reddit and Twitter all have ugly men in cheap wigs on their boards, and why you can't talk about the dangers of transing kids on those platforms without risking being shut down. This is why Matt Gaetz is suddenly scared shitless, along with most of his colleagues. This is why -- again -- Hillary Clinton was the one who was accused of it before it all broke, to shut down any reasonable accusations that would be made later on. This is why Melinda Gates is divorcing her husband -- she knew he'd fucked adults before, but he's a billionaire. He fucked kids, too. This is why Elon Musk threw the slur "pedo" around -- because in the billionaire circles he runs in, that's nothing more than a funny locker-room accusation to make, and he forgot for a second that he wasn't supposed to say it beyond those circles.
Sorry, this was a seriously long comment, but I stand behind all of it even though it makes me sound like a tinhat. This is where this trans garbage is coming from -- blackmailed kid-raping billionaires who control the communications pathways of the entire planet. It goes WELL BEYOND mere pharma.
These are very interesting connections you’re making. Doesn’t Epstein’s “suicide” reek to high heaven? And the extraordinary lack of interest in the shady circumstances of his death in the mainstream media? And the “confession” of Epstein’s guards that they falsified the records concerning their whereabouts when they were supposed to be preventing Epstein from killing himself? And how they’ve conveniently been granted immunity from having to testify about that time period? Cover-up complete. Too many famous and powerful friends of Epstein, i.e., pedophiles, to protect.
Another hypothesis regarding the enthusiastic support of transism on the left is that it’s a huge source of donations for Democratic candidates. The Human Rights Campaign in particular has been highlighting transism as a fundraising tool for Dems for many years.
What was on the radar in the 80s was anorexia and cutting. This is just the latest incarnation of self-destruction marketed to girls, only now it gets them applause. Starve yourself of slice your body up, and the world recognizes it as bad. Use the right woke lingo to insist your body is wrong, and surgeons will do the g/d cutting for you.
Amputating the breasts from young girls with dysphoria is like performing liopsuction on an anorexic. Doctors who do it should be struck off and in fucking jail for the rest of their lives, and people who defend it should be condemned.
Related, though not exactly: Many therapists are a threat to even young adults' relationships with their families. There is a vast therapeutic trend to simply destroy intergenerational, family relationships and easily tens of thousands of young people, with vague accusations of abuse, now estrange themselves from loving parents. Therapists are guiding these estrangements, often helping young, adult children write letters, permanently cutting parents out of their lives.
I have heard this too.
This was in WA state before the trans movement. We had a granddaughter who live with us after being removed from her fathers home from made up abuse accusations from her unstable mother, my husbands daughter. By the time we were able to have her put in our home the Cps psychiatrist had that poor kid on 8 psychotic drugs not even approved for children. They led us to believe we were all in the same page handling her issues. She didn’t like our rules & ran from school, ended up pick up by police & taken to a youth shelter, they informed her she at 13 had a right to an attorney & that attorney told her she didn’t have to return. She ended up living at in & out of foster homes until aged out. Got herself a felony. Barely finished high school. Now 10 years later she agrees there was no abuse with her father & lived with him, regrets her actions she took on advice of that attorney I
& at 30 still struggles with her life after being removed from family. We ended up with her sister in our home, we handled Cps differently this time as we had our own attorney & a private counselor not thru the state
for advice by then. State law doesn’t always have the best interest in children & avoided the pitfalls that happen with state law second time around.
It's a terrifying piece, but it needs to be read far and wide. You are invaluable Abigail!
Thank you!
Excellent work, as always, AS!
Thank you!
Thank you for advocating for confused teenage girls.
I just listened to your interview with Jordan Peterson. At 16:45 you ask “Where are the women in their 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's who were denied the opportunity to come out as transgender? They should be coming out too but they're not.”
About that: Thank God I was a teenager in the 1970's rather than today! If this had been something available then, I would have gone this route and it would have been a big mistake! What I needed was healing and self acceptance- healing from sexual traumas from my female vulnerability (there's this drive to obliterate that which made/makes me vulnerable), and self acceptance of aspects of myself that were not typically female (math geek).
I see this movement as deeply anti-woman- encouraging teenage girls to eliminate their femininity as a route to peace. Genital mutilation is indeed irreversible harm.
Erikson's stages of development Stage 5 Psychosocial Crisis/Task for teens is "Identity vs Confusion- Teenagers work at refining a sense of self by testing roles and then integrating them to form a single identity, or they become confused about who they are." The culture is pushing girls to embrace the confusion rather than navigate the surging hormones into a powerful and joyful female identity.
Any advice for finding a good therapist?
Yes. For an adolescent?
Yes for an adolescent, it is very difficult to find one that acknowledges this :(
Yes please, also thank you for your research into this, I’m reading your book now.
Good Will Hunting -- library card and a few hours a night reading.
Funny to come across this today because I recently resigned my position as director of a youth shelter in part due to these exact issues. As an insider in the field I can confirm Abigail’s reporting here 100%.
Have you considered trying to get interviewed so your side of this hour story can be told? I think having been a director of one of these clinics your voice would be more likely to be listened to.
As always, the truth is worse. Grace Lavery (a UC Berkeley professor) has actually called for the book ('Irreversible Damage') to be burned (safely of course). See https://www.rt.com/usa/506758-uc-berkeley-lavery-book-burning-trans/ for an image of Grace Lavery calling for the book to be (safely) burned.
This is very important for parents and teachers as well as anyone who says they care about our kids. I know this is in the US context, but I am concerned that it will go the same way here in the UK. As a teacher of kids with SEN I was disturbed when I heard the numbers a few years ago because in 15 years teaching some very complex kids,I have never met a child that wanted to be another gender. I am also a parent of two girls aged 24 and 21 and a son aged 10. I'm an aunt to several others kids and also never heard it from them or any kid in the community, even when I was a child. I grew up and had most of my experience in "difficult" or "troubled" neighbourhoods and schools. I met gay children but never trans kids. I just couldn't understand where they all came from all of a sudden. Seeing your interview with Jordan Peterson today I totally understand now. I don;t have a huge audience (which prbaby helps given the censorship going on) but I plan to cover it in my podcast in coming weeks after listening to your interview and talk on Youtube. What else can we as parents, teachers and citizens do to raise more awareness of this?
Abigail I would like to get in contact with you. Regarding the gender confusion. I want to share something with you I have come across. How do I get in contact?
Thank you for doing this piece Abigail, very difficult to read but more people need to understand what is at stake here and how quickly people we should be able to trust, medical practitioners, are willing to press the 'I believe button" and send them off to gender affirmation therapy.
Can you advise about laws in Indiana please?
I'm sorry, I haven't looked into the law in Indiana.
All this time later and the most obvious cause for concern! I write about how we humans are prone to being herd-minded and can easily fall into irrationality but when I read your common sense approach from so far away and see how slowly change is coming it is like watching people choosing to sit in a burning movie theatre.
It's clear why fairy tales exist - pied piper, dark-mother witches, smothering winter worlds, see no evil, speak no evil and all that. It's also clear that it's a deeper rot because 'progressives' have actually been hacking further back into the roots of culture via post-modern academia and wielding undue influence throughout institutions to get us to the point where we have forgotten the things we were supposed to remember.
Yes—this is absolutely happening in Canada too, especially here in British Columbia. And tragically, most parents have no idea it’s even possible, let alone already happening.
Here in BC, children as young as 12 can make medical decisions—including gender-affirming treatments—without parental consent, and medical professionals are legally prohibited from disclosing this information to parents if the child objects. Families are being blindsided. Some parents have even faced threats of incarceration or had their children removed for failing to “affirm.” A father I know has been incarcerated as well. It is horrifying.
Thank you for the courage and diligence in researching and writing this. More parents urgently need to know how fast and quietly their parental rights are being eroded. This isn’t a political issue—it’s a human rights crisis cloaked in compassion
Where are the FGM warriors? Why isn’t anyone fighting against mutilation of American children and arresting the surgeons?
In the flip side, and sick side...do you think that social justice warriors think they are really saving these children from their parents? I believe they have unresolved childhood trauma that they are trying to resolve by “ saving” future children from the rejection they experienced. So many of them!!!
Hi all, I was reading through these stories yesterday and can't remember where I saw a comment suggesting that the teenager girls discussed here have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The reasoning seemed to be that the young girls had a fragile or changing sense of self, so they might have BPD. I understand the reasoning there but it really is not appropriate for teenagers, especially young teenagers. Kids this age have an unsure sense of self by definition. During adolescence, teenagers experiment with different identities. That's normal in our culture and also why swift gender transitions can be so dangerous. The child involved may simply be exploring an identity that she will later discard.