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In this episode, we dive deep into the shifting landscape regarding youth gender medicine. The conversation follows a thread of controversial developments and court rulings affecting the trans movement, including emerging critiques from left-leaning publications like The New York Times and The Atlantic. The discussion highlights statistics and studies that reveal the lack of evidence supporting the efficacy and safety of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for minors. It also touches on the persistent misinformation surrounding the topic and the implications it has on the broader societal and political discourse. Join us as we explore the revelations and the future of gender-affirming care amidst increasing scrutiny.
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Something really shocking happened because we often discuss sort of the ebbs and flows of the trans movement.
And we have talked for a while that it is insignificant retrograde at the moment, whether it's the Supreme Court case or the case ruling in the uk. But now we are seeing even mainstream leftist newspapers. The New York Times did a number of trans critical stuff, but the Atlantic, and if people are like, well, is the Atlantic really a leftist newspaper?
So I decided to ask an ai, just be like, what does AI think? Left or right, political leaning.
So it says The Atlantic leans left politically, its coverage often emphasizes progressive issues like social justice, climate change, and critiques of conservative politicians.
Okay. So very left-leaning publication. Okay. So they had a piece titled The Liberal Misinformation Bubble about Use Gender Medicine, how the Left Ended Up Disbelieving the Science by Helen Lewis. And so mainstream leftist publication allows this piece to be published. And this happens immediately after. Now, normally when the trans movement historically had suffered major defeats, the leftists would all come around to rally around it.
Mm. Yeah. So, you know, you had this with recently the, the court ruled that Tennessee's law, which prohibits hormone therapies and puberty blockers for transgender minors with gender dysphoria, does not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. And in fighting this, very interestingly, because a lot of papers were unveiled and sort of the best trans.
Arguers, like the people who are protran got against the best anti-trans arguers in a, a very recorded stage where all evidence had to be counted and you couldn't just make stuff up.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. They
Malcolm Collins: basically had to concede that they had made up a bunch of the arguments that people had accepted as fact.
And you might be surprised by some of the arguments that even the top tier of the trans community now admits are just fictional. And this also comes downstream of not just the cast report, but the UK in law now making it so that if you are a company in the UK now, and you let a trans woman use a woman's bathroom, you can be sued by your female staff.
Simone Collins: Really? Yes. The, oh,
Malcolm Collins: okay. So this is some serious stuff. So this is significant in terms of how things are changing. Yeah. But I wanna dive into the article here.
Allow children to transition or they will kill themselves for more than a decade. This has been the strongest argument in favor of youth gender medicine, a scenario so awful that it stifled any doubts or questions about puberty, blockers and cross sex hormones. We often ask parents, and this is a quote here, would you rather have a dead son than a live daughter?
Joanna Olson Kennedy of Children's Hospital Los Angeles once explained to a BC News. So this is somebody who is working at a children's hospital in a major city. Says, we at the hospital often go to parents and say, , would you rather have a dead son or a live daughter? Variations on this phrase crop up in innumerate media articles and public statements by influencers, activists in LGBT groups, the same idea that the choice is transition or death appeared in the arguments made by Elizabeth Pel Prager, the Biden Administration's solicitor General before the Supreme Court last year.
Tennessee's law prohibiting the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat minors with gender dysphoria. Would she said, quote, increase the risk of unli. Quote. But there is a huge problem with this emotive format. It isn't true. When Justice Samuel Alito challenged the A CLL lawyer, chase Drago on such claims during oral arguments, Drago made a startling commit.
Commit admission. He conceded that there was no evidence to support the idea that medical transition reduced adolescent unloving rates. And this is a really, really big deal because this is in, if, if you're looking at like media, when these people go on media, nobody can with any sort of legal justification say.
Hey, does the evidence actually say this? Like, they're not actually forced to tell the truth, and this is why this case has been so damaging to the movement because it forced their top advocates who have more knowledge of all of their arguments and all of the research than anyone else to tell the truth on issues that we just didn't have a public forum to pin them down on before.
And the truth is, there is not evidence. And, and there's even more evidence now because the UK banned this. And now we have studies that have looked at the unliving rates post ban versus the unliving rates pre-and which we'll get into later here, and there's no difference. Oh. So we now know that this is fictional.
Wow. Okay. And potentially that things like puberty blockers actually increased unliving rates, and we'll get into evidence of that as well. But the, the, it's not from this paper, it's from other evidence that she doesn't appear to be aware of. At first, strateg ego dodged the question saying that the research shows that blockers and hormones reduce, quote, unquote, depression, anxiety, and unloving.
That is unloving thoughts. Even that is debatable according to reviews of literature literature research. So, here are the two reviews that she cites are pediatric gender medicine. Longitudinal studies have not consistently shown improvement in depression or unliving rates, hormone therapy, mental health, and quality of life among transgender people.
A systematic review. But when Alito referenced systematic review conducted in the CAS report in England, Stratego concede at the point quote, there isn't,
Simone Collins: are you, are you talking about chase, strang,
Malcolm Collins: strang, whatever you wanna call him, Strang. Strato strang. It can be called whatever.
Simone Collins: Most people say str
Malcolm Collins: strang.
Okay? There is no evidence. Some in, in the studies that this treatment reduces completing unliving rates, he said, and the reason for that is, is that completing unli, thankfully and admittedly, is rare, and we're talking about a very small population of individuals, which the studies that don't necessarily have completed rates was in them.
So note, he's, he's, he's, but the actual rates, are they higher? He was forced to say, no, they're not higher. Wow.
Simone Collins: And note
Malcolm Collins: here that he, because this is something that would show up, like there's big studies on this. These aren't like small studies. He's forced to admit that this is just not in the evidence.
And, and it's not just the studies that she's noting here that showed that he was lying when he said that you have higher rates of for example, self-harm. Because, for example, we know from the TRA stock clinic, which we'll go into mm-hmm. After it was shut. Or during the process of shutting it down, it was found that they had done a study that showed that puberty blockers were increasing ideation.
They were increasing self-harm, they were increasing a lot of this other stuff, really. And that they had decided not to publish this. Understand, you know, obviously those against their narrative, they said it was because the data was poor. Yeah. The data's poor because it doesn't support what you want it to support.
But that's not the way science works normally. You know what I mean? And so, we're, we're seeing that that you know, even the evidence he's citing here is no longer backed by like the big meta studies as she was citing. Here was the trans rights movement's greatest legal brain speaking in front of the nation's highest court.
And what he was saying is that the strongest argument for a hotly debated treatment was in fact not supported by the evidence. Even then, his admission did not register with the liberal justices, and I find this really like messed up right when the court voted six three to uphold Tennessee law, Sonya Soda Moor claimed in her dissent that access to care can be a question of life or death.
Which is she heard the arguments and the data that that is factually untrue. And yet what you see from this liberal perspective is facts. When they go against their reality appear, unable to pierce the veil of their world perspective, they have an intensely theocratic and religious world perspective that prevents them from interacting with an external narrative.
That honestly reminds me a lot of when I, because I grew up in Dallas, Texas the extremist Evangel, evangelical, evangelical, evangelical. Hmm. Which was actually, if you talk to like educated evangelicals today, or educated like extremist Catholics today, they're familiar with all the counterarguments.
Like they're, they're, because they're now not a dominant cultural force within any particular region of the United States Hmm. In a way where they're not exposed to the other side, they're forced to learn the other side. Whereas people like Sonia Soda Mear just are not forced to engage with an external perspective.
And so they are able to sort of petrify their brain and harden themselves to external information sources.
Simone Collins: Interesting.
Malcolm Collins: If she meant any kind of therapeutic support that might be defensible, but claiming that this is true of medical transition, specifically the type of care being debated in the scope.
In the ctti case is not supported by current research. Advocates of the open science movement often talk about zombie facts, popular sound bites that persist in public debate even after they had been repeatedly discredited. The one that Simone always loves is the number of straws that go in the ocean, which came from a sixth graders science report for like a fair project.
It was like a science fair project. Yeah. But
Simone Collins: a new one that I just read about from Scott Sanders, July or June link round up was that chest Grand Masters burned 6,000 calories a day, which is based on some really crazy speculation that weirdly involves Robert Polsky.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, she is wild. Yeah. Because they don't, many common political claims made in defense of puberty blockers and hormones for gender dysphoric minors meet this definition.
These zombie facts have been flatly contradicted, not just by conservatives, but also by prominent advocates and practitioners of the treatment, at least when you're speaking to them. Candidly. Hmm. Many liberals are unaware of this. However, because they are stuck in media bubbles in which well-meaning commentaries make confident assertions for use gender medicine claims for which it's elite advocates have long since retreated.
And this is really, and I think this point is really interesting because I have. You know, trans friends. I have friends who are very educated like ultra progressives and stuff like this. And there is a class of them that you can engage them about these facts and been like, Hey, like, you know, this fact isn't true.
And they're like, yeah, I know that fact isn't true. You know, this fact isn't true. Oh yeah, I know that fact isn't true. And they're like, yeah, but I still, you know, when I'm arguing publicly, sometimes I'll, you know, retreat to them to make big you know, dramatic claims. But it is remarkable to me how many of the elites will in private when I am speaking with them, be like, oh yeah, I know all that stuff isn't true.
But, you know, this is my team basically. Or what am I supposed to do publicly say there isn't evidence for this. And, and you've seen this too, right? Simone? One, one of the ones that I found most interesting to me that was coming to me from a, a trans friend at one of our parties who we were talking to.
Was, they were like, you know, I was like, candidly, like within the communities, how much is this like, just like a sex or arousal thing, right? Like not a gender. And they're like the, the reason why talk that talk of that gets shut down so heavily publicly is because within the community. Everybody knows that when we're behind closed doors, this is predominantly a, an arousal thing.
Simone Collins: Oh
no. Oh,
Malcolm Collins: no. Or at least a chunk of the community, right? Yeah. Like, not everyone, but at least a big chunk of the community. Oh. And I, and the, the community mostly admitted this when they had the fight between the true Scums and the two cutes. For people who don't know there was a portion of the community that said, you are born this way.
And that was the true scum. And they were named the true scum by the two Cutes who said, well, if you say you're born this way, then that medicalize it. And really it's just a choice. And so the mainstream perspective in the community is this is just a choice now. And so the, like, this is what the educated people, and you'll go out and you'll, oh, progressive.
And they'll say they don't have a choice over this, and they won't realize that this isn't what the mainstream trans community is arguing anymore. But they think that this is the position, right? They think, oh, these people will, you know, which I find really interesting. Perhaps the existence of this bubble shouldn't be surprising many of the most fervent advocates of use transition are also on the record, disparaging the idea that it should be debated at all. Str, who works for the country's best known free speech organization once tweeted that he would like to scuttle Abigail Schreyer book, irreversible Damage, A Skeptical Treatment of Use Gender Medicine.
Abigail Schreyer is fantastic, by the way. We've, we've chatted with her. She's so cool. Um, Yeah. Uh, Stratego declared stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill, all diod. Wow. These works. For free. The, the country, the United States is number one free speech organization, and he advocates for He'll Die on the Hill stopping a book of this book, right?
I mean, it's a book that if you read it, is, is not like a, a spurious attack. It's a list of facts and studies.
Simone Collins: Wow.
Malcolm Collins: Macia Bowers, the former head of the World Professional org, association of Transgender Health, WAS the most prominent organization for gender medicine providers has likened skepticism of child, gender, medicine to holocaust denial.
There are not two sides of this issue. She once said, according to a recent episode of the Protocol, a New York Times podcast and you've seen this as well, it's not surprising that if they say questioning, this is the equivalent of participating in the Holocaust. And this is normalized within places like the New York Times and stuff like that.
You, you've seen this, Simone, I mean, talk, talk to your experience.
Well, I mean, you grew up in San Francisco, you grew up likely believing that, you know, this is not at a thing that should be discussed or talk about.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, I can, I can speak to that. Yeah. It definitely blew my mind when I met you and I discovered that it was allowable to express it is
Malcolm Collins: not allowable.
Simone Collins: Or at least not okay. Well, no. That like, okay. That outside the progressive bubble, it was allowable because there were a lot of things that I just thought, I, I don't know how to articulate it well.
I literally thought, I couldn't believe them. It wasn't about even expressing certain views, like, oh, well, you know, behind closed doors, I think and say this, but in public I would never say it. It's more that actually. It was like a thought crime, like literally a thought crime that I, I didn't think in your own brain,
Malcolm Collins: like you wouldn't consider it, your brain wouldn't allow you to.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't allow myself,
Simone Collins: myself to think these things, and it made me less mentally healthy, and it made me very uncomfortable because I was forced to do and engage with things that I really didn't feel comfortable doing and engaging with because I wasn't allowed to not be okay with those things.
Malcolm Collins: Where you felt uncomfortable. What
Simone Collins: do you
Malcolm Collins: mean? Well, you said it forced you to do and engage with things that made you feel uncomfortable. Can you say? Yeah, like, like
Simone Collins: working in homeless shelters like, you know, going to certain parties and being okay with what was happening there. Like being okay with sex parties
Malcolm Collins: and stuff, and you were just like, eh,
Simone Collins: yeah.
Yeah. Like, just not super, like not being okay with it and not being comfortable with it, but having to act like it's okay and having to go along with it and. Act like everything was fine. And it wasn't, it wasn't fine, at least not for me but not feeling allowed to not be cool with it, which was,
Malcolm Collins: yeah.
You you talked about like a cuddle party or something, or you Yeah,
Simone Collins: yeah. Like if, yeah, if, if I hung out with friends and everyone was like, okay, we're all gonna like, cuddle on the couch now. I'm like, well, yeah, I'm supposed to be okay with this. Imagine
Malcolm Collins: nightmare is worse for an autistic woman like you. It
Simone Collins: really was nightmarish and beyond that because.
I felt like I had to be okay with it. It also gave people like super the wrong idea about me.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that many people, I mean, this is how this culture and I think how some sex pass males weaponize this culture to get past progressive lesbians, like natural resistance to them. Mm-hmm. And attempt to when people are like, you couldn't actually force someone to believe that they were aroused by something they weren't aroused
Simone Collins: by.
Oh, you, you can absolutely. Yeah. Because yeah, there were, there are absolutely things that you're allowed to be aroused by and that you're not allowed to be aroused
Malcolm Collins: by when you're not allowed to say, I don't want this, this pursuit. I don't want hundred percent. I don't want to. And they basically learned like it wouldn't
Simone Collins: be okay for me to, to, to say, don't touch me.
I mean, I know that like, it, a progressive person would argue and like, no, of course you need to express how you feel, et cetera. But like, I didn't feel like it was okay. I. To express my desire to not be touched by other people.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and we see this with trans individuals complaining about lesbians and, and how they're transphobic if they're not interested in them and stuff like that.
And you see them weaponizing this discomfort which I think is really horrifying, that people have been basically treated as like ideological slave cast. Yeah. For anybody who's willing to predatory the system.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: But to continue boasting about your unwillingness to listen to opponents probably plays well in some crowds.
IAEG Greta Thornberg, not even being willing to watch Hamas propaganda about what they did during the October 7th attacks that the Israelis tried to show them. She's like, I will not expose myself to this information. And apparently this plays well in her, her crowd. I, I want my knowledge to be entirely one-sided which is, is
Simone Collins: really scary.
I mean, like, if you're not willing to even. Entertain opposing views in any way. That implies to me that you, you are so threatened by them that you just assume that your mind won't be changed if you're exposed to them. Yeah. Like it is just so weird to me. I, I even at one point for, for Lemon Week, the, the month where we, for our technical puritan holiday engaged with ideas that we consider to be offensive.
And an idea that I consider to be offensive is this idea that there are certain ideas that you shouldn't engage with, or that there are certain people that you shouldn't engage with because of their ideas. 'cause this is a very, like, progressive idea. And I was presented with some arguments that I found to be convincing.
But it's only really un under specific scenarios. Like let's say you're having a public debate where you're holding, you know, you're presenting one argument and the other person is presenting the other argument. And that argument is a really harmful argument. And they're also more like attractive and charismatic than you, than by debating them.
You are platforming a
Malcolm Collins: Well, that's, that's why progressive shouldn't debate conservatism public 'cause they're so often like that. 'cause we're more charisma.
Simone Collins: Well, but like, yeah, I mean like when, when there are exogenous factors, it will make other people believe someone's argument. Not because they have a better argument, but because they're more charismatic.
Like, I could see that kind of being a place where it's not worth it to have the debate and to engage with them. But you know, just her watching that content is not one of these scenarios. Like I agree Now after, after trying to really engage with this concept that some ideas should not be engaged with that.
It's, there are some scenarios where, okay, maybe we should back off, not have the debate, whatever, but this was not one of them. And like, what was she thinking? I mean, I wish, I wish I could have a conversation with her about that to understand. How she justifies that.
Malcolm Collins: But it left str badly exposed in front of the Supreme Court where it became clear that the conservative justices had read the most convincing critiques of hormone and blockers and had some questions as a result.
Simone Collins: Some
Malcolm Collins: questions. Questions. I have questions. Trans rights activists like to accuse skeptics of use gender medicine and publications that dare report their views as fermenting a quote unquote moral panic. But the movement has spent the past decade telling gender non-conforming children that anyone who tries to restrict access to puberty blockers and hormones is effectively trying to kill them.
This was false and strand's answer tacitly conceded. It was also irresponsible after England restricted the use of puberty blockers. In 2020, the government asked an expert psychologist Lewis Applebee to investigate whether the unli rate for patients at the country's use gender clinic rose dramatically
as a result, it did not, in fact, he did not find any increase in unliving rates at all despite the lurid claims made online. No. The way that this issue has been discussed on social media has been insensitive, distressing, and dangerous, and goes against guidance on unsafe reporting on Unli Applebee reported.
One risk is that young people and their families will be terrified by predictions of unli as inevitable without puberty blockers. And this study that's referenced here that showed that the rates didn't go up is review of unli and gender dysphoria at the Travis Duck and Portman NS Foundation Trust.
And then BBC also did an article. Puberty blocker Curb has not led to an increase in unli. And I, I note here. All of this. And note here, I just always change out that one word for Unli because YouTube is incredibly strict about that word. So just, you know, when you're trying to find these studies, use your brain here, people.
But I would note here
Because we know that unli talk is incredibly contagious. In, in media you're typically not even supposed to report like cases where it happens because it leads to huge rises in the rate that it happens because we know it's contagious. And because we know that talk is so heavy within these communities, the fact that the rates haven't gone up is uniquely striking and it shows likely an inverse total effect.
If you could remove this discussion in these narratives from the public,
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: When Red State bans are discussed, you will also hear liberals say that conservative fears about the medical transition pathway are overwrought because all children get extensive personalized assessments before being described.
Puberty blockers and hormones. This too is untrue. Although the official standards of care recommended through assessment over several months, many American clinics say they will prescribe puberty blockers at first visit. Yeah. I only have seen this in honestly, the majority of detransition cases.
I've heard about the, the majority and we've heard
Simone Collins: this from parents, which. You know, is, is I've
Malcolm Collins: heard this from parents. The doctors will lie to the parents and give it to the kids. That happened to one of our friends. Yeah. They'll say, oh, we didn't give it to the kids. Actually we need to do a follow-up study.
And by the time the follow-up study happens, because the kid doesn't actually book it, the parent assumes that, hey, the phase is over. But the kid has been on puberty blockers and sterilize themselves six months ago. The kid doesn't realize they've done it. They don't realize they sterilize themselves.
The parent doesn't realize the kid has done it. They were prescribed this under the table because the parent did the. Very silly thing of try taking their kid to a psychologist, which again, we are radically against like the modern psychologist movement and psychiatrist movement, especially gender.
You know, the psychologists do not, do not, do not engage with, they are very dangerous. They cause way more harm than help at this point. I mean, when people talk about like the mental health problem of our society and they're like, well, we need more psychologists. I'm like, it seems to have risen in correlation to the number of psychologists, the amount of money we're spending on psychologists.
That should tell you something. But you could look at any of our videos on psychologists of how that happened. Because you, you actually see this in the numbers. It's not. Not necessarily healthy, and especially the ones that focus on the gender stuff. But here we see the, the, the sighting that I had above where I was like, many psychologists will give this to 'em on their first routers discusses this as more transgender children seek medical care.
Families confront many Reuters.
Simone Collins: You mean like the new service?
Malcolm Collins: The new service, yes. Mainstream news service. Silence yourself. I love when
Simone Collins: you mispronouncing so much.
Malcolm Collins: It isn't just a matter of US health providers skimping on talk therapy to keep costs down. Some practitioners view long evaluations as a necessary and even patronizing quote, I don't send someone to a therapist when I'm going to start them on insulin. In quote Olson Kennedy told the Atlantic in 2018, her published research shows that she has referred girls as young as 13 for double mastectomies.
13 and for the
Simone Collins: surgery. Wow.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. What if these children later regretted their decisions? She says, quote, adolescents actually have the capacity to make reasoned logical decisions. She once told an in industry seminar quote, if you want breasts at a later point in life, you could always just get them in.
Quote, just,
Simone Collins: I mean, she's there. There's some things about this that I love. I think that, broadly speaking, progressive culture, infantilizes youth, it's funny that there's this select selective dein. Infantilization. Like kids aren't allowed to be grownups in any way. You know, they're helicopter parented.
They're not allowed to walk home from school. But then in this one place. This one area, they can consent.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They're adults and there's one to whatever they want. Right. No matter how crazy, no matter what their parents think because the alternative is that they will unlive themselves even though we know that that is factually untrue.
It is really comforting
Simone Collins: to
Malcolm Collins: see
Simone Collins: though, that like, 'cause part of me worried that even if there, there was not, I guess a medical or body dysmorphic reason why people would ultimately be more likely to, to, to end themselves if they didn't get gender affirming care. I worried that the narratives around that would be enough.
Basically this, that, because so many people said, you will want to end your life if you don't get this care. That when people started being denying it, being denied it, that they would. More likely, but it appears that that's not happening. So I'm just, I'm relieved. 'cause I thought there would sort of be this, this no SIBO effect.
I think
Malcolm Collins: it's important to note what a phase this is. We know from the research, it's funny that she doesn't cite this in her paper, but there is a study gender discontentedness and gender nonconforming youth that came out in 2023. That showed of 13 year olds who are not satisfied with their birth gender over nine in 10 of them are completely satisfied with it by the age of 23.
That it's, yeah. So this woman who is assigning a 13-year-old, a double mastectomy, we now know from the researcher was over a 90% chance that she would not have wanted that mastectomy if she had waited. She would not have wanted to convert her gender if she would. Well,
Simone Collins: that's because, I mean, I think most people can, well, not most maybe, but at least many people can relate that kind of just having a human body during puberty sucks.
And it's very easy to think, oh, the problem is that I'm male slash female. Whereas it's like, no, the, the problem is that you're going through puberty and it sucks, and
Malcolm Collins: once you get through puberty, you're gonna be comfortable, you're gonna be fine. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Regardless of whether you're male or female. It, it's, it's the, it's the change itself that is not fun.
It's not what you're changing into.
Malcolm Collins: But the, the point here being is that now that we know from the evidence from peer reviewed studies, over 90% of these people are going to, that this is a phase for them. And, and keep in mind for the, the final 10%, we can't even say that it's not a phase because of other things, but you can look at our other episodes that go into more research around the trans community and everything like that.
This episode's primarily about this article, which I found really fascinating because it shows a changing progressive mindset around what you're allowed to say and what the new mainstream narrative is about this. And I think we might be seeing the damn bursting, basically was in mainstream Democrat culture.
And what happens to the crazies, I think they may be pushed aside in the same way that conservatives push aside, you know, your actual racists. And I think that that's what's, or, or you know, that we pushed our actual anti-Semites to the Democratic party. You know, who, who knows where these people are gonna go, they're gonna go to some, you know, extremist party, but whatever.
Perhaps the greatest piece of misinformation believed by liberals, however.
Is it the American standards of care in this area are strongly evidence-based. In fact, at this point, the fairest thing to say about the evidence surrounding medical transition for adolescents, the so-called Dutch protocol, as opposed to talk therapy and other support, is that it is weak and inconclusive.
A further complication is that American child gender medicine has deviated significantly from this original protocol in terms of linked up assessments and a number and demographics of minors being treated. Yes, as activists are keen to point out, most major medical associations support the Dutch protocol, but consensus is not the same as evidence and that consensus is politically influenced and it obviously is at this point and not politically influenced, but influenced by people risking losing their jobs.
If I at a mainstream organization or medical organization historically, and I said, I have a problem with this, I could lose my job. And if people are like, well, that's not true, look at how hard, mainstream. Not even just trans organization, but leftist organizations have tried to get, you know, the people who constructed the CAS report fired for just doing science.
Yeah. Right. That, that if, if you, if you were right about what you're saying, that you wouldn't try to get these people fired. Look at every instance in which somebody has defected and you have tried to get them fired. Right. And the evidence isn't on your side anymore, so now it's like a big problem.
Right. Rachel Levine, president Joe Biden's, assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services successfully lobbied to have age minimums removed for most surgeries from these standard Care up by wpath. That was a deeply political decision. Levine, according to emails from her office, reviewed by the times, believed that listing any specific limits under the age of 18 would give opponents of use transition, hard targets to exploit.
That's really psychotic.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. They,
Malcolm Collins: the White House was promoting this to stick it. To what they saw were, were people who were critical of used transgender stuff. Despite that they knew that the evidence wasn't on their side on these issues. And the amount that this happens, I think is something that people really need to wrestle with internally because it is chilling if you are wrong.
When you look at the evidence of what happens to these people who commit to this and the 50% to 40% attempted unliving rates within the transit community
if this community is. Something that people are being railroaded into when they otherwise wouldn't. You need to seriously consider with what you have imposed on these individuals' lives with those sorts of unli rates.
Yeah. It is a form of, of horror and self hatred above, I think really anything else you can imagine. And I think if you wanna learn what happens to even the individuals who feel like this has been successful to them, what their daily life becomes check out our, the day in the life of a Cina Byte episode about Anna VA's life from her own personal blog.
This is a, the trans woman, spoiler alert. It's, it's dark, it's dark, it's it's very dark. Even among the people who think that everything went well for them. More recently, another court case came case over Vanning. Blockers and hormones this time in Alabama has revealed that WPATH members themselves had doubts about their own guidelines.
In 2022, Alabama passed a law criminalizing the prescription of hormones and blockers to patients under 19. After the Biden administration sued to block the law, the state's Republican attorney general subpoenaed documents showing that WAS has known for some time that the evidence base for adolescent transition is thin.
All of us are painfully aware that there are many gaps in the research. To back up recommendations, quote, Ellie Coleman, the psychologist who chairman the team, revising the standards of care, wrote to his colleagues in 2023. So the guy who, who chairman the committee, who handled these revisions in linked emails, said, and I quote.
All of us are painfully aware that there are many gaps in the research that back our recommendations and these recommendations could lead to children committing to a life path that leads to a 50% on a living rate. You understand that, right? Do you understand how horrifying that is a life path that we know?
Nine out of 10 from gender, disco contentness, and gender non-conforming youth? 2023, no. Over nine in 10 of them are going to desist from naturally. Yet the organization did not make this clear to the public. So he didn't say that that wasn't, that they, like, when they released the, the report arguing for this, they didn't say, and the evidence is, is thin in this Laura Edwards leper who helped bring the Dutch protocol to the us but has since criticized it in a Washington Post op-ed.
The unquestioning gender affirming care model has said that the specter of red state bands made her and her op-ed co-author reluctant to break rigs. So the very person who brought this model into the United States has since said this was a mistake. That's where we are, by the way, in terms of like, what do the expert thinks?
The experts that told you to start doing this have said, oops, you guys went crazy with this. We shouldn't have done this. But because so many people have committed to this. And I think a way that causes so much cognitive dissonance. If you look at our John Money episode on the individual that sing like sexual orientation and the concept of gender is different than sex come from.
And we look at the horrifying research he did, that he lied about for a long time to people where he, you know. Said, oh, well, you know, if you're raised a different gender, you're actually gonna be that gender for the rest of your life. And then it turns out that not only is this not true, but it turned out he was likely a PDA file because he made these people, like two brothers sleep with each other and then filmed it.
And then per
Simone Collins: perform, they did more, more like sexual foreplay in this case, but as children while he watched and when they tried to resist, he like berated them. But what happened specifically with long story short, there was a, there was a, a baby who had had a, a botched circumcision and he advised the parents to just raise the baby as a girl.
And, and he wasn't told, he didn't find out until he was a teen that he was actually a na male. So he genuinely like had been told all his life that he was a girl, raised to be a girl like Performatively told to be a girl. And he det transitioned after that, which I think really does go to show that even if all you ever knew was being a girl.
And you went through and I mean, he underwent additional surgical and hormonal interventions under this man's under John Money's intervention. He still desisted. So just to clarify your point, but what's
Malcolm Collins: really important here is John money hid for decades that this person had had detransition, which led
Simone Collins: to thousands more parents to when their children had some kind of, you know, genital problem as, as, as babies raise him, as, as the I guess well
Malcolm Collins: get surgical intervention to try to make them conform to a specific gender and then raise.
Yeah. So
Simone Collins: basically he, he did an experiment. The experiment failed and he lied about the failure of his experiment and many, many, many more people. Anything when
Malcolm Collins: you, why did he lie about this? I think that this is important to this context because it's the same thing happening again, is that he would have to admit the horror that was downstream of his original mistake.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And I think if you're looking at the existing movement, it's why don't they accept that the evidence now says you are mutilating kids destroying their lives and leading to a really high unli rate that wouldn't otherwise exist. Hmm. It's because if they admit that, then they've been the bad guys all along.
Worse than that, it means that many of these trans individuals who never really intended to fully pass and are just doing this to sort of force themselves on other people, but now they can't look like anything other than trans individuals. When they walk out in public, they're like that guy from the end of whatever that movie is about Nazis, where he, they, they carved the swastika into his forehead.
So, you know, e everybody knows for the rest of his life that he, because he was being let free, right? And, and he, and they're like, we're not gonna let you live the rest of your life as a truly free person. People are gonna know what you stood for in the harm that you caused for the rest of your life.
When you get to your little place on Nantucket Island, I imagine you're going to take off that handsome looking SS uniform of yours, ain't ya?, so I'm going to give you a little something you can't take off.
Malcolm Collins: And being a poorly passing trans person, being an Alec Vade menon for the rest of your life is gonna be like having a swastika carved in your forehead.
As the public begins to normalize to this more and more when they realize that even when the evidence said this stuff is wrong, you were still sending 13-year-old girls to have double mastectomies. And, and we'd note from the WPATH files, the other thing that leaked, did they admit, they go, the kids do not understand this.
Is wpath the main organization pushing for this in the United States? The in internal emails, they've said, these kids don't, they haven't had biology classes yet they don't understand the implications of what these puberty blockers mean of what it means to never have an orgasm, which is one of the potential effects of he do blockers of what it means to, to be sterile, of what it means to have these complications for your entire life.
Well, and you know what bothers me
Simone Collins: is not only are they not being told about this, but also even if they were told about it, they're in a phase in their life where they'd be like, yeah, I mean, remember when I was a virgin? I fantasized about despite having no plans to have sex, having my uterus removed, having a hysterectomy.
'cause I was just so enthusiastic about the idea of not having children. Yeah. But the, and I mean now I have almost, you know, five kids, you know. But the point I'm making
Malcolm Collins: here is that the people who run the organizations promoting this in internal memos note. These kids definitely don't know what they're consenting to.
Yeah, absolutely. And we don't even try to explain to them what they're consenting to because we understand they don't have the mental capacity to understand it.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And they as well know that over nine out of 10 of them desist. So we're also gonna talk about that just, just going forward here. I can't stop mentioning that statistic.
The Alabama litigation has also confirmed that WPAs has commissioned a systemic review of the evidence for the Dutch protocol. However, close to publication the John Hopkins University researcher involved was told that their findings needed to be, quote, scrutinized and reviewed to ensure that the publication does not negatively affect the provision of transgender healthcare in quote, which obviously it would if it showed that that healthcare was harming people.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: This is not how evidence-based medicine is supposed to work. You don't start with a treatment and then ensure that only studies of support that treatment are published in a legal filing. In the Alabama case, Coleman insisted quote. It is not true. In quote, that WPAs guidelines quote turned on any ideological or political considerations in quote, and that the groups dispute was John Hopkins researcher concerned only the timing of the publication that is factually untrue.
We now know from the leaks of the organization, so the people who run the mainstream organization and Ws has tried to frame itself as like a non-partisan. We are just trying to get to the science mm-hmm. On transgender medicine. Mm-hmm. We now know that they lie publicly. They, they, they internally know that this is a major problem.
They internally know they don't have the science behind them and they just lie.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, it's enough that, I mean, this is an issue that permeates academia and, and medical research as well and psychological research, a lot of research that like there is a big problem that null results just aren't published and that, you know, only, you know, sort of notable results that also favor people's desire to conclusions end up getting published.
But this is just a next level worse because they knew. Well, they knew
Malcolm Collins: to understand how much they're lying here. When they said it only concerned the timing of the dates of publication.
Simone Collins: Mm.
Malcolm Collins: Yet the Times has reported that at least one of the manuscripts they sought to publish, quote, never saw the light of day end quote.
So they did quash manuscripts that showed that this was hurting people. Yeah. Yeah. It's one thing
Simone Collins: to not publish no results. 'cause I get it. Like it's, it just, there's the, the, the incentives aren't well aligned, but this is, this is really next level. Yeah. Actively irresponsible.
Malcolm Collins: But this is really big because if you come to me and you say to me quote, well look at all this research that showed that this you know, that this doesn't hurt people.
And I'm like, yeah, except I can list like these three studies that weren't allowed to be published here, here, and here, right? Like mm-hmm. So your evidence doesn't matter. A load of squat. Because you were killing other studies and, and, and more important not killing them due to methodological reasons.
Because we can see here this wasn't killed for methodological reasons. It was killed because of how it could affect people getting access to these treatments.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: So we know that that's a lie. Now we know that that's a lie. Like the world know. Everybody who looks at the evidence knows that's a lie now.
So they're framing this as like just methodological problems or something, but when you have filtered evidence for a period of decades and note that this filter is now dropping, that's why we're seeing all of these studies that come out now, like the nine and 10 number and everything like that, because this filter has dropped.
But for a period of decades, you could lose your career for publishing a study in this space, and people did.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: You know, so if you give me data that, that came out, you know, I'd say like up to the past three years for that decade, I, I basically can't use it. I can't look at it. Yeah. It's bad data, right?
Yeah. Like it has clearly been filtered and we see the results now of this filter.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And so if you're actually interested in what the science says, if you're actually a person, you've gotta look at the more recent studies, which all show this is. Does. It's, it's, it's, it's doing the opposite of what people say it's doing.
It is not a good intervention. And is that any surprise when, when we look at other forms of body dysmorphia like, like anorexia, you do not intervene by being like, well, I bet I could get your weight down by removing your uterus. And then say, well, the anorexic person said they liked it. Like, of course the anorexic person would like that.
They wanna get their weight down no matter what. Right? But that's, that's not something that you should be indulging, right? But to continue the Alabama disclosures are not the only example of this reluctance to acknowledge contrary evidence. Last year, O Olan Kennedy said that she had not published her own broad study on mental health outcomes for use was gender dysphoria because she was worried about its results being, quote, unquote weaponized that raised suspicions that she had found only sketchy evidence to support the treatments that she had been prescribing and publicly advocating for over many years.
To this woman. This is the woman who, who said like the devil mastectomy for kids. The, oh, well you can just get this changed later. Even she, even as biased, as scientist as her in terms of how, you know, she was constructing, her studies got evidence that said that this was hurting people and decided not to publish it.
Even she, that degree of bias was unable to find a way to manipulate the data to make it look like these procedures are helping people.
Simone Collins: Not ideal.
Malcolm Collins: Last month, her study finally forced appeared as a preprint a form of scientific publication where evidence of not to yet to be peer reviewed.
Formalization is finalized a it's titled Mental and Emotional Health of Use. After 24 months of gender affirming medical care initiated with puberty suppressant, its participants demonstrated no significant changes in reported anxiousness or depression, withdraw or depressed somatic complaints, social problems, thought problems, attention problems, aggressive behavior, internalizing problems, or externalizing problems.
What
Simone Collins: are
Malcolm Collins: thought problems? I feel like I have a lot of thought problems in the two years after starting puberty blockers, I have requested comment from Oslo Kennedy via a children's hospital in, in Los Angeles, the one who was saying, oh, you know, it's either you do this or your kid dies.
She hasn't heard back from them because they're, they're unwilling to engage with the new evidence, which, which just says this does not help. If anything, it increases the rate of unli.
Simone Collins: Well, this is just one of those things where I think it's just so difficult for a clinic or a researcher to admit to being wrong here after having advised so many families.
Yeah. I mean, when those families come back, they're like, wait a second. Well, just think about like the malpractice lawsuits, the liability you're subject to. I mean, I can understand the reticence Well,
Malcolm Collins: and the cognitive dissonance.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Of the horror. I mean, because you really believed that. So. I understand where they're coming from.
I, I do kind of wish the Atlantic piece were a little bit more like, and this has been covered up for a long time. 'Cause that's an interesting, they're pointing
Malcolm Collins: that out. They are pointing that out. I think, you know, they, they're reaching out to these people and they're saying, oh, blah. I don't, I don't know about that study.
I don't okay, so you think they're doing a fair
Simone Collins: enough job? It seems to me more just like, Hmm. Turns out maybe we had an
Malcolm Collins: episode where, you know, we admit that now when you look at the research, the majority of the research and the majority of educated people know that gender transition is largely speaking, especially in youth.
A bad idea, likely in adults, a bad idea are a way to treat this. The Dutch treatment, as it's called Dutch treat. And we have an episode where we look at how long it took lobotomies to be phased out of society after basically educated people knew it was a bad idea. And it's about 50 years. And that, that's really sad.
But we, we, you can look at our episode on that, but when we published that episode, a Blue Sky user one of the, the posts that went viral on Blue Sky about us was like worst take of the year that that prenatal is couple had this to say about trans individuals comparing it to lobotomies. And I'm like, well, it's, it's actually super comparable.
What a lot. Oh, I forgot about that.
Simone Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: Phlebotomies is that a lot of the people, like the last person who got it where their surgery went really bad were requesting it themselves. Yeah. If you, if you look at later lobotomies there, people think that this was something that was forced on people and in, in cases it was, but a lot of the later cases, WW, was actually sought out by individuals.
Simone Collins: Absolutely.
Malcolm Collins: And it, it bears a lot of structural similarities. To, you know, what we're seeing was the transgender movement. But anyway being overly adopted by progressives, like the Kennedy family doing it to their daughter and stuff, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's about staying in with polite society and not looking weird.
And that's, you know, if you say this is a bad thing, you look like a weirdo, you're killing trans kids, even though we know that's not true and you are killing trans kids, literally, and by the facts. But anyway, or the kids you have labeled as trans. The Travis stock puberty blocker study, 2011 to 2014, published in 2020.
So this isn't from the article, but this is something that I think is important to note.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Kelli Etal published a. Preprint on Med Xi in December, 2020 after a high court ruling in the Bell and travis.case. So, Travis do had tried to cover up these findings and they were forced to publish them during the investigation of their clinics.
This was the gender transition clinic.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: This study involved 44 children, age 12 to 15, who receive puberty blockers, G-N-R-H-A to delay puberty. It aimed to assess psychological outcomes including mental health and gender dysphoria. The study was conducted by Travis Docs, GIDS, university, college Lesbian Hospitals.
The preliminary findings, so these were reported from 2011 to 2014. They weren't forced to publish them until 2020. They, they treated Thousand forced to
Simone Collins: by whom?
Malcolm Collins: In that, that kid by the UK court system.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay.
Malcolm Collins: Tried to cover this up
Simone Collins: because it sounds like they were never gonna publish them. That, that's a sort of weird delay.
Okay.
Malcolm Collins: They, they tried to cover this up, but the study in 2015 by the Travis Stock Board of Directors cited by transgender trend indicated a statistically significant increase in self-harm after one year of puberty blockers. Based on responses to the statement quote, I deliberately tried to hurt or kill myself in quote, so that is what we call unloving ideation behavior, right?
You can say self-harm. That's what they tried to reframe it as. Mm-hmm. That is not self-harm. Look at the question. It's
Simone Collins: highly
Malcolm Collins: effective
Simone Collins: self-harm.
Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind that this, this and the effect was stronger in girls, by the way. It was, it had more of a negative effect in young girls. Interesting.
Which are doing it interesting more now than they did historically. And I, I, I, I'd point out here that this was done by the Travis Doc Clinic, which had every reason to attempt to bias the results in their favor. In the way that they asked the questions, in the way that the the data was recorded, the fact that despite that they showed an increased risk, should tell you something.
Wow. Especially when we now know that when this was disallowed across the uk, it did not lead to a spike in these roots.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Really, really chilling stuff. The, the reliance on elite consensus over evidence helps make sense of WPAs flatly hostile response to the cast report in England, which commissions systemic reviews and recommended extreme caution over the use of puberty blockers and hormones.
The review is a direct challenge to WPAs ability to position itself as a finer arbiter of these treatments. Something that had become more obvious when the conservative justices referenced the British document in their questions and opinions on sct. One of WPAs main charges about Hillary Cass, the senior pediatrician, who led the review, was that she was not a gender specialist.
In other words, that she was not part of the charmed circle who already agreed with these treatments being beneficial. So they defined gender specialists as people who already agreed and had published that these treatments were beneficial.
Simone Collins: Hmm. Oh.
Malcolm Collins: Which is I, and I I just want to note here, people are like, why do you care so much?
Why do you talk so much about this if you want to? It's almost like
Simone Collins: saying like, well, you're not an electroshock therapist because you don't believe that electroshock therapy is the correct therapy for various Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Whereas your long list of electrocuted patients. Yeah. Like, come on, you don't know anything about this.
We even know the person who brought this message to the United States has been like, yeah, this was a mistake. You know? So, so the experts are against you guys at this point? You just define them as not experts at this point. Yeah. Which is really horrifying. Really horrifying. But the, the, the reason when people are like, why do you guys talk about this, given how controversial it is, given how one in five to 10 years time, I hope that our society has a good memory about the people who didn't talk about this when they had the chance.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Because if you look at the harm that is being done to children. And we're gonna see the harm. We're, we're already beginning to see a flood of detransition in online spaces, but they're not gonna be confined to online spaces the same way that you know trans people. You're gonna know de transitioners.
The same way that you have that transferring, you're gonna have that detransition friend and you're gonna feel for them. I will say that to me, the moment where I really began to feel strongly against this was in, I began to make friends with Detransition. And I began to know these people and see them not just as statistics of like, you know, oh, they were killed in this conflict or whatever.
These are real people who were manipulated and lied to by doctors and psychologists and told things that were not true. They were told things that weren't true about the surgeries that they undertook. Usually they told things that were not true about the medicine they took. And they, they were told things that were not true about what happened if they didn't engage with us.
And, and you guys are not gonna look like the good guys in history. You guys are going down and history will have a long memory about what you did and the scale at which you committed these atrocities. But to continue. Any thoughts there, Simone, before I, I continue here Just wolf. Because of WPAs hostility, many on the American left now believe that the CAS review has been discredited.
Quote upon first reading, especially to a person with limited knowledge of the history of transgender healthcare. Much of the report might seem reasonable. End quote, Lydian Ri wrote at the times in late August. However, after quote, pouring over the document and quote, interviewing experts at gender affirming care, quote, which means people who already agree and have performed the procedure at, at Lings Polgar realized that the cast review was, quote, fundamentally a subjective political document, which anyone who has engaged with it or knows the circumstances of its creation created by progressives within the United Kingdom, which is already more progressive than our country.
It was, it was a, if it was a political document, it was a progressive political document. It was a feminist political document and it did not agree with what they wanted it to. Advocates for use gender medicine have reacted furiously to articles in the Times and elsewhere that take Cass's conclusion.
Seriously, indeed, some people inside the information bubble appear to believe that if a respected publication would stop writing about the story, all the doubts and questions and Republicans attempt to capitalize on them, electorally would simply disappear. Whenever the Times has published a less than cheerleading article about use transition.
Supporters of gender medicine have accused the newspaper of manufacturing a debate that otherwise would not exist After the committee decision, Stratego was still describing media coverage of the issue as quote unquote insidious adding quote. The New York Times especially has been fixating on casting the medical care of.
As being of insufficient quality quote. And, and that's really messed up that he's like, the New York Times is too conservative on this stuff with the information they're airing. Well, just nobody should be talking about it. I'm like, bro, if it's making it through the New York Times editorial point,
Simone Collins: I'm implying that there's some kind of Yeah.
Insidious that What a word to we to use
Malcolm Collins: about something. And, and I I, I've read some of the attacks on the New York Times, they say seven anti-trans gender articles. So the New York Times apparently is totally okay with publishing this stuff. Now The Atlantic is okay with publishing this stuff. Now you have lost the centers of elite society, at least in terms of the media, how long till you lose it within academia as well.
I mean, now that we're seeing these publications get through. Mm-hmm. And then what happens then to the people who basically crowded swastikas onto their foreheads it's not going to look good. And I think a lot of people don't understand the, the consequences. And I repeatedly see this. People are like, oh, I've just been on a little bit of like hormonal medicine.
Surely this hasn't affected my fertility. And I'm like, what? Who told you that? We hear that
Simone Collins: way too much.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I'm like no, that would have a severe effect on your fertility, my friend. You should look into that. If, if you underwent that through any window of your life now, now some people are able to get through this and, and reclaim their fertility and, you know, even some of our fans have been able to do that.
But it is, it is, it is chilling to me the number of people who just assume that there's not big, long-term effects of engaging with this stuff. Can this misinformation bubble ever be burst on the left? Support for use transition has been rolled together with other issues such as police reform and climate activism as a kind of super savo combo deal of correction options.
I I love that. The 33-year-old Democratic socialist, communist, Zhan Mohani. This is the New York Communist who got elected recently. Mom Donny made
Simone Collins: funding
Malcolm Collins: gender, gender transition, including of minors, part of his pitch to New York as its mayor. And then it's, oh, I didn't know that. Wow. Article here where it says even
Simone Collins: now, gosh, I figured we were past this at this point.
Malcolm Collins: Breakout. New York Mayor, oral candidate Contender Zohar Hamdi wants to spend Ani whatever, Zhan, ani 65 million on medical, gender treatments for minors and adults. But complicated issues deserve to be treated individually. You can criticize Israel, object to the militarization of America's police forces, and believe that climate change is real and yet still not support irreversible, experimental and unproven treatments for children.
So I love that the word the leftists are like broke and we like not on this issue. We are definitely the bad guys on this issue. The polarization of this issue in America has been deeply unhelpful for getting liberals to accept the sketchiness of the evidence base. When Vice President JD Vance wanted to troll the left, he joined Blue Sky where skeptics of use gender transition are among the most blocked users.
And immediately started talking about the TTI judgment. What, like that turn, accepting the evidence base into a humiliating climb down, which is true. It should be humiliating. You were messing with kids without any evidence that you believed people who lied to you. Totally. Totally. And you let sex pass into the movement and you let the sex pass abuse people, like lesbian communities.
And they, they were telling you the lesbians for a long time, Hey, they're our sex pests abusing our community. Can you please do something about this? And, and you guys just ignored them, right? A lot of the people who've been pushing this have been lesbian organizations. Acknowledging the evidence does not mean that you have to support banning these treatments or reject the idea that some people will be happier if they transition.
Cass believes that some youngsters may indeed benefit from the medical pathway, quote. While some young people may feel an urgency to transition, young adults looking back on their younger selves would often advise slowing down. Her report concludes, quote. For some, the best outcome will be transitioned, whereas others may resolve their distress in other ways.
This is not a conservative extremist who wrote this report. They're just like somebody who is pre-positioned to statements like that just found in the evidence their support for this. I have always argued against straightforward bans on medical transition for adolescents in practice. The way that these have been enacted in red states has been uncaring and punitive.
You know, this person writing this, who is saying this? Right? You know, again, not a conservative parents are threatened with child abuse investigations for pursuing treatments that medical professionals have assured them are safe. Yeah. But they should look into whether those medical professionals are lying.
But children with severe mental health troubles suddenly lose therapeutic. Therapeutic support. Clinics nationwide, including Oline Kennedy's, are now abruptly closing because of the political atmosphere writing about these subjects. In 2023, I argued that the only way out of the culture war was for the American Medical Associations to commission reviews and carefully consider the evidence.
Have an American cast review. Of course, however, the revelations from Sketti and the Alabama case have made me more. Sympathetic to the commenters such as Aliyah Sapiro of the Conservative Manhattan Institute, who supports the bans because American medicine cannot be trusted to police itself. Quote, are these bans the perfect solution?
Probably not in quote he told me in 2023, quote. But at the end of the day, if it's between banning gender affirming care and leaving it unregulated, I think we can minimize the amount of harm by banning it. Once you know that WPAs wanted to publish a review, only if it came out of the group's preferred conclusion, Shapiro's case becomes more compelling.
And this is something we've seen. The medical community could have self-regulated. It can still go out there and attempt to self-regulate, but anybody who makes this push risk their career at this point or at least for a period, did. Despite the concerted efforts to suppress the evidence, however, the picture on use gender medicine has become a clearer over the past decade.
It's no humiliation to update our beliefs as a result. I regularly used to write that medical gender transition was quote unquote lifesaving before I saw how limited the evidence on on A Alive was. And it took another court case brought by the British GT transition Keira Bell, for me to realize that purity blockers were not what they were sold as a safe and reversible treatment that gave patients, quote unquote time to think, but instead a one-way ticket to full transition with physical changes that cannot be undone.
And I note here almost nobody when the studies have been done, once you go on blockers, even though we know that nine outta 10 of these people, they didn't, wouldn't transition once you go on them, I think it's something like a 98 or 99% transition rate. Like it's hard to find anyone who doesn't transition afterwards.
Mm. So we know it is biasing people towards transition and it's basically forcing them to transition. Some advocates for the Dutch protocol as it's applied in the United States, have stake their entire career and reputation on its safe and effectiveness. Yeah. If you go out there and you say, with the evidence you have now that this is safe and effective, it can be proven that you've lied.
They have strong incentives to not concede the weakness of the evidence. In 2023, the advocacy group GLAD drove a truck ar, and this is in 2023. After a lot of this evidence had come out, after the study of the show, nine out of 10 people you know, to detransition Right. Around the office of the New York Times to declare that quote unquote, the sciences settled.
They said on the block, doctors such as Sly Kennedy and activists of Stratego unlikely to revise their opinions. What can you do when you as a group like LAD that was supposed to be looking out for lesbians, was supposed to be looking out for non-conforming use. When you know that you've now led them on a path that makes un alive themselves more likely,
Simone Collins: wow.
Malcolm Collins: But that's where we are as a society.
No. I mean, the horror of, of what's been undertaken, people should be held to account for this. And, and I think that when we, as a society, like as, as things continue to shift after the wave continues to shift, I think the only way we can make this right. Is court trials for people who clearly knew the evidence and went out there and pushed young children into this.
You know, when you [email protected] and we see them covering up evidence and we know that people in positions of authority within the clinic were actually arrested for going to local parks and attempting to chat up 15-year-old boys. You know, that they liked getting these kids on these blockers so that they would look underage for the rest of their, or for at least a longer period up until when they were legal.
And we've seen this talked about within these community forums you know, that this needs to be addressed and the people who, who covered for these individuals there needs to be some degree of punishment given that they have shown that people like strategic AEO have shown that they knew the evidence, that they knew that this was leading to worse outcomes for the people who were engaging with it and that they attempted to cover this up and increase the prevalence of these treatments.
Simone Collins: I mean, we couldn't even ask them to explain why they did this, because I don't even know if they could answer that. You know, like when you ask people why they do what they do, they really honestly dunno, most of the time No.
Malcolm Collins: They, they, to me remind me of like their religious extremists that like starved children because they think they're possessed or something.
Right. Like, they just be like, well, yeah, I saw the child was starving. I saw the child was increasing thera, that they hated themselves. You know, we saw this from the Travis doc leaked research. But I decided to not do anything about it. Right. I mean, I'll note here that they'll be like, well, that study didn't have a controller.
That study didn't have a Yeah, because you chose not to create one After you saw the data, it could have had a control. You chose to not collect that data. Mm-hmm. That's not that. It's like there, there you hid the control. You ensured that there wasn't one because you didn't like what you knew it would say.
Anyway, that's. We are gonna close out.
Simone Collins: I'm really glad this age is coming to an end. Because, you know, that's, that's fewer lives will be severely disrupted by this. I also wonder what the next thing's gonna be.
Malcolm Collins: And I think what we, we need to change the narrative when people are like, you are killing trans kids.
It's gonna be like you are, are killing gender non-conforming gifts. Which is factually true when you look at the unliving rates within the trans community. And we know that nine outta 10 of these people de desist from this behavior. So also like
Simone Collins: I think the very concept of gender non-conforming runs contrary to progressive ideology.
As we've discussed in the John Money Podcast, he is the man who in the 1950s and onward pioneered the concept of gender as a construct, distinct from biological sex as like a behavioral and cultural thing, right? But, but before that, like. It didn't like you could be gender non-conforming and people wouldn't be like, well, we need to medicalize this now.
Yeah. They'd be like,
Malcolm Collins: oh, you're a tomboy.
Simone Collins: Yeah, exactly. You're a tomboy or you're a bit of a girly girl. Like boy, like whatever. But like bit of a mama's boy. Yeah. You, it didn't mean that you needed to undergo some kind of life altering, like permanently, biologically shifting treatment. And I think it was a lot more healthy.
I, I am so excited to go back to that because we're all for like, fine, don't conform with, you know, be you. That's great. This reminds
Malcolm Collins: me of the meme I sent you that I loved. The next song is called, please Don't Make Me Cut Off My D because I like the color pink. There you go. And I note here ho Mass actually did a comment on this article where he said summary, they started saying, your children will kill themselves if you don't give them a sex change.
And they knew they didn't have the evidence. No one was allowed to argue. Is it because a hundred IQ. Q HR ladies would shut down your entire life. If you did, then the kids who got sex change hormones became more likely to kill themselves because it turns out that what they were going through was just a weird phase.
And that's, I, I, you know, I like that he's out there pushing this. We've had him on the show of before. Check out our episode with him. Have a great day, Simone. Love you.
Toasty, what are you doing?
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In this episode, we dive deep into the shifting landscape regarding youth gender medicine. The conversation follows a thread of controversial developments and court rulings affecting the trans movement, including emerging critiques from left-leaning publications like The New York Times and The Atlantic. The discussion highlights statistics and studies that reveal the lack of evidence supporting the efficacy and safety of puberty blockers and hormone treatments for minors. It also touches on the persistent misinformation surrounding the topic and the implications it has on the broader societal and political discourse. Join us as we explore the revelations and the future of gender-affirming care amidst increasing scrutiny.
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Something really shocking happened because we often discuss sort of the ebbs and flows of the trans movement.
And we have talked for a while that it is insignificant retrograde at the moment, whether it's the Supreme Court case or the case ruling in the uk. But now we are seeing even mainstream leftist newspapers. The New York Times did a number of trans critical stuff, but the Atlantic, and if people are like, well, is the Atlantic really a leftist newspaper?
So I decided to ask an ai, just be like, what does AI think? Left or right, political leaning.
So it says The Atlantic leans left politically, its coverage often emphasizes progressive issues like social justice, climate change, and critiques of conservative politicians.
Okay. So very left-leaning publication. Okay. So they had a piece titled The Liberal Misinformation Bubble about Use Gender Medicine, how the Left Ended Up Disbelieving the Science by Helen Lewis. And so mainstream leftist publication allows this piece to be published. And this happens immediately after. Now, normally when the trans movement historically had suffered major defeats, the leftists would all come around to rally around it.
Mm. Yeah. So, you know, you had this with recently the, the court ruled that Tennessee's law, which prohibits hormone therapies and puberty blockers for transgender minors with gender dysphoria, does not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. And in fighting this, very interestingly, because a lot of papers were unveiled and sort of the best trans.
Arguers, like the people who are protran got against the best anti-trans arguers in a, a very recorded stage where all evidence had to be counted and you couldn't just make stuff up.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. They
Malcolm Collins: basically had to concede that they had made up a bunch of the arguments that people had accepted as fact.
And you might be surprised by some of the arguments that even the top tier of the trans community now admits are just fictional. And this also comes downstream of not just the cast report, but the UK in law now making it so that if you are a company in the UK now, and you let a trans woman use a woman's bathroom, you can be sued by your female staff.
Simone Collins: Really? Yes. The, oh,
Malcolm Collins: okay. So this is some serious stuff. So this is significant in terms of how things are changing. Yeah. But I wanna dive into the article here.
Allow children to transition or they will kill themselves for more than a decade. This has been the strongest argument in favor of youth gender medicine, a scenario so awful that it stifled any doubts or questions about puberty, blockers and cross sex hormones. We often ask parents, and this is a quote here, would you rather have a dead son than a live daughter?
Joanna Olson Kennedy of Children's Hospital Los Angeles once explained to a BC News. So this is somebody who is working at a children's hospital in a major city. Says, we at the hospital often go to parents and say, , would you rather have a dead son or a live daughter? Variations on this phrase crop up in innumerate media articles and public statements by influencers, activists in LGBT groups, the same idea that the choice is transition or death appeared in the arguments made by Elizabeth Pel Prager, the Biden Administration's solicitor General before the Supreme Court last year.
Tennessee's law prohibiting the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat minors with gender dysphoria. Would she said, quote, increase the risk of unli. Quote. But there is a huge problem with this emotive format. It isn't true. When Justice Samuel Alito challenged the A CLL lawyer, chase Drago on such claims during oral arguments, Drago made a startling commit.
Commit admission. He conceded that there was no evidence to support the idea that medical transition reduced adolescent unloving rates. And this is a really, really big deal because this is in, if, if you're looking at like media, when these people go on media, nobody can with any sort of legal justification say.
Hey, does the evidence actually say this? Like, they're not actually forced to tell the truth, and this is why this case has been so damaging to the movement because it forced their top advocates who have more knowledge of all of their arguments and all of the research than anyone else to tell the truth on issues that we just didn't have a public forum to pin them down on before.
And the truth is, there is not evidence. And, and there's even more evidence now because the UK banned this. And now we have studies that have looked at the unliving rates post ban versus the unliving rates pre-and which we'll get into later here, and there's no difference. Oh. So we now know that this is fictional.
Wow. Okay. And potentially that things like puberty blockers actually increased unliving rates, and we'll get into evidence of that as well. But the, the, it's not from this paper, it's from other evidence that she doesn't appear to be aware of. At first, strateg ego dodged the question saying that the research shows that blockers and hormones reduce, quote, unquote, depression, anxiety, and unloving.
That is unloving thoughts. Even that is debatable according to reviews of literature literature research. So, here are the two reviews that she cites are pediatric gender medicine. Longitudinal studies have not consistently shown improvement in depression or unliving rates, hormone therapy, mental health, and quality of life among transgender people.
A systematic review. But when Alito referenced systematic review conducted in the CAS report in England, Stratego concede at the point quote, there isn't,
Simone Collins: are you, are you talking about chase, strang,
Malcolm Collins: strang, whatever you wanna call him, Strang. Strato strang. It can be called whatever.
Simone Collins: Most people say str
Malcolm Collins: strang.
Okay? There is no evidence. Some in, in the studies that this treatment reduces completing unliving rates, he said, and the reason for that is, is that completing unli, thankfully and admittedly, is rare, and we're talking about a very small population of individuals, which the studies that don't necessarily have completed rates was in them.
So note, he's, he's, he's, but the actual rates, are they higher? He was forced to say, no, they're not higher. Wow.
Simone Collins: And note
Malcolm Collins: here that he, because this is something that would show up, like there's big studies on this. These aren't like small studies. He's forced to admit that this is just not in the evidence.
And, and it's not just the studies that she's noting here that showed that he was lying when he said that you have higher rates of for example, self-harm. Because, for example, we know from the TRA stock clinic, which we'll go into mm-hmm. After it was shut. Or during the process of shutting it down, it was found that they had done a study that showed that puberty blockers were increasing ideation.
They were increasing self-harm, they were increasing a lot of this other stuff, really. And that they had decided not to publish this. Understand, you know, obviously those against their narrative, they said it was because the data was poor. Yeah. The data's poor because it doesn't support what you want it to support.
But that's not the way science works normally. You know what I mean? And so, we're, we're seeing that that you know, even the evidence he's citing here is no longer backed by like the big meta studies as she was citing. Here was the trans rights movement's greatest legal brain speaking in front of the nation's highest court.
And what he was saying is that the strongest argument for a hotly debated treatment was in fact not supported by the evidence. Even then, his admission did not register with the liberal justices, and I find this really like messed up right when the court voted six three to uphold Tennessee law, Sonya Soda Moor claimed in her dissent that access to care can be a question of life or death.
Which is she heard the arguments and the data that that is factually untrue. And yet what you see from this liberal perspective is facts. When they go against their reality appear, unable to pierce the veil of their world perspective, they have an intensely theocratic and religious world perspective that prevents them from interacting with an external narrative.
That honestly reminds me a lot of when I, because I grew up in Dallas, Texas the extremist Evangel, evangelical, evangelical, evangelical. Hmm. Which was actually, if you talk to like educated evangelicals today, or educated like extremist Catholics today, they're familiar with all the counterarguments.
Like they're, they're, because they're now not a dominant cultural force within any particular region of the United States Hmm. In a way where they're not exposed to the other side, they're forced to learn the other side. Whereas people like Sonia Soda Mear just are not forced to engage with an external perspective.
And so they are able to sort of petrify their brain and harden themselves to external information sources.
Simone Collins: Interesting.
Malcolm Collins: If she meant any kind of therapeutic support that might be defensible, but claiming that this is true of medical transition, specifically the type of care being debated in the scope.
In the ctti case is not supported by current research. Advocates of the open science movement often talk about zombie facts, popular sound bites that persist in public debate even after they had been repeatedly discredited. The one that Simone always loves is the number of straws that go in the ocean, which came from a sixth graders science report for like a fair project.
It was like a science fair project. Yeah. But
Simone Collins: a new one that I just read about from Scott Sanders, July or June link round up was that chest Grand Masters burned 6,000 calories a day, which is based on some really crazy speculation that weirdly involves Robert Polsky.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, she is wild. Yeah. Because they don't, many common political claims made in defense of puberty blockers and hormones for gender dysphoric minors meet this definition.
These zombie facts have been flatly contradicted, not just by conservatives, but also by prominent advocates and practitioners of the treatment, at least when you're speaking to them. Candidly. Hmm. Many liberals are unaware of this. However, because they are stuck in media bubbles in which well-meaning commentaries make confident assertions for use gender medicine claims for which it's elite advocates have long since retreated.
And this is really, and I think this point is really interesting because I have. You know, trans friends. I have friends who are very educated like ultra progressives and stuff like this. And there is a class of them that you can engage them about these facts and been like, Hey, like, you know, this fact isn't true.
And they're like, yeah, I know that fact isn't true. You know, this fact isn't true. Oh yeah, I know that fact isn't true. And they're like, yeah, but I still, you know, when I'm arguing publicly, sometimes I'll, you know, retreat to them to make big you know, dramatic claims. But it is remarkable to me how many of the elites will in private when I am speaking with them, be like, oh yeah, I know all that stuff isn't true.
But, you know, this is my team basically. Or what am I supposed to do publicly say there isn't evidence for this. And, and you've seen this too, right? Simone? One, one of the ones that I found most interesting to me that was coming to me from a, a trans friend at one of our parties who we were talking to.
Was, they were like, you know, I was like, candidly, like within the communities, how much is this like, just like a sex or arousal thing, right? Like not a gender. And they're like the, the reason why talk that talk of that gets shut down so heavily publicly is because within the community. Everybody knows that when we're behind closed doors, this is predominantly a, an arousal thing.
Simone Collins: Oh
no. Oh,
Malcolm Collins: no. Or at least a chunk of the community, right? Yeah. Like, not everyone, but at least a big chunk of the community. Oh. And I, and the, the community mostly admitted this when they had the fight between the true Scums and the two cutes. For people who don't know there was a portion of the community that said, you are born this way.
And that was the true scum. And they were named the true scum by the two Cutes who said, well, if you say you're born this way, then that medicalize it. And really it's just a choice. And so the mainstream perspective in the community is this is just a choice now. And so the, like, this is what the educated people, and you'll go out and you'll, oh, progressive.
And they'll say they don't have a choice over this, and they won't realize that this isn't what the mainstream trans community is arguing anymore. But they think that this is the position, right? They think, oh, these people will, you know, which I find really interesting. Perhaps the existence of this bubble shouldn't be surprising many of the most fervent advocates of use transition are also on the record, disparaging the idea that it should be debated at all. Str, who works for the country's best known free speech organization once tweeted that he would like to scuttle Abigail Schreyer book, irreversible Damage, A Skeptical Treatment of Use Gender Medicine.
Abigail Schreyer is fantastic, by the way. We've, we've chatted with her. She's so cool. Um, Yeah. Uh, Stratego declared stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill, all diod. Wow. These works. For free. The, the country, the United States is number one free speech organization, and he advocates for He'll Die on the Hill stopping a book of this book, right?
I mean, it's a book that if you read it, is, is not like a, a spurious attack. It's a list of facts and studies.
Simone Collins: Wow.
Malcolm Collins: Macia Bowers, the former head of the World Professional org, association of Transgender Health, WAS the most prominent organization for gender medicine providers has likened skepticism of child, gender, medicine to holocaust denial.
There are not two sides of this issue. She once said, according to a recent episode of the Protocol, a New York Times podcast and you've seen this as well, it's not surprising that if they say questioning, this is the equivalent of participating in the Holocaust. And this is normalized within places like the New York Times and stuff like that.
You, you've seen this, Simone, I mean, talk, talk to your experience.
Well, I mean, you grew up in San Francisco, you grew up likely believing that, you know, this is not at a thing that should be discussed or talk about.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, I can, I can speak to that. Yeah. It definitely blew my mind when I met you and I discovered that it was allowable to express it is
Malcolm Collins: not allowable.
Simone Collins: Or at least not okay. Well, no. That like, okay. That outside the progressive bubble, it was allowable because there were a lot of things that I just thought, I, I don't know how to articulate it well.
I literally thought, I couldn't believe them. It wasn't about even expressing certain views, like, oh, well, you know, behind closed doors, I think and say this, but in public I would never say it. It's more that actually. It was like a thought crime, like literally a thought crime that I, I didn't think in your own brain,
Malcolm Collins: like you wouldn't consider it, your brain wouldn't allow you to.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't allow myself,
Simone Collins: myself to think these things, and it made me less mentally healthy, and it made me very uncomfortable because I was forced to do and engage with things that I really didn't feel comfortable doing and engaging with because I wasn't allowed to not be okay with those things.
Malcolm Collins: Where you felt uncomfortable. What
Simone Collins: do you
Malcolm Collins: mean? Well, you said it forced you to do and engage with things that made you feel uncomfortable. Can you say? Yeah, like, like
Simone Collins: working in homeless shelters like, you know, going to certain parties and being okay with what was happening there. Like being okay with sex parties
Malcolm Collins: and stuff, and you were just like, eh,
Simone Collins: yeah.
Yeah. Like, just not super, like not being okay with it and not being comfortable with it, but having to act like it's okay and having to go along with it and. Act like everything was fine. And it wasn't, it wasn't fine, at least not for me but not feeling allowed to not be cool with it, which was,
Malcolm Collins: yeah.
You you talked about like a cuddle party or something, or you Yeah,
Simone Collins: yeah. Like if, yeah, if, if I hung out with friends and everyone was like, okay, we're all gonna like, cuddle on the couch now. I'm like, well, yeah, I'm supposed to be okay with this. Imagine
Malcolm Collins: nightmare is worse for an autistic woman like you. It
Simone Collins: really was nightmarish and beyond that because.
I felt like I had to be okay with it. It also gave people like super the wrong idea about me.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that many people, I mean, this is how this culture and I think how some sex pass males weaponize this culture to get past progressive lesbians, like natural resistance to them. Mm-hmm. And attempt to when people are like, you couldn't actually force someone to believe that they were aroused by something they weren't aroused
Simone Collins: by.
Oh, you, you can absolutely. Yeah. Because yeah, there were, there are absolutely things that you're allowed to be aroused by and that you're not allowed to be aroused
Malcolm Collins: by when you're not allowed to say, I don't want this, this pursuit. I don't want hundred percent. I don't want to. And they basically learned like it wouldn't
Simone Collins: be okay for me to, to, to say, don't touch me.
I mean, I know that like, it, a progressive person would argue and like, no, of course you need to express how you feel, et cetera. But like, I didn't feel like it was okay. I. To express my desire to not be touched by other people.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and we see this with trans individuals complaining about lesbians and, and how they're transphobic if they're not interested in them and stuff like that.
And you see them weaponizing this discomfort which I think is really horrifying, that people have been basically treated as like ideological slave cast. Yeah. For anybody who's willing to predatory the system.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: But to continue boasting about your unwillingness to listen to opponents probably plays well in some crowds.
IAEG Greta Thornberg, not even being willing to watch Hamas propaganda about what they did during the October 7th attacks that the Israelis tried to show them. She's like, I will not expose myself to this information. And apparently this plays well in her, her crowd. I, I want my knowledge to be entirely one-sided which is, is
Simone Collins: really scary.
I mean, like, if you're not willing to even. Entertain opposing views in any way. That implies to me that you, you are so threatened by them that you just assume that your mind won't be changed if you're exposed to them. Yeah. Like it is just so weird to me. I, I even at one point for, for Lemon Week, the, the month where we, for our technical puritan holiday engaged with ideas that we consider to be offensive.
And an idea that I consider to be offensive is this idea that there are certain ideas that you shouldn't engage with, or that there are certain people that you shouldn't engage with because of their ideas. 'cause this is a very, like, progressive idea. And I was presented with some arguments that I found to be convincing.
But it's only really un under specific scenarios. Like let's say you're having a public debate where you're holding, you know, you're presenting one argument and the other person is presenting the other argument. And that argument is a really harmful argument. And they're also more like attractive and charismatic than you, than by debating them.
You are platforming a
Malcolm Collins: Well, that's, that's why progressive shouldn't debate conservatism public 'cause they're so often like that. 'cause we're more charisma.
Simone Collins: Well, but like, yeah, I mean like when, when there are exogenous factors, it will make other people believe someone's argument. Not because they have a better argument, but because they're more charismatic.
Like, I could see that kind of being a place where it's not worth it to have the debate and to engage with them. But you know, just her watching that content is not one of these scenarios. Like I agree Now after, after trying to really engage with this concept that some ideas should not be engaged with that.
It's, there are some scenarios where, okay, maybe we should back off, not have the debate, whatever, but this was not one of them. And like, what was she thinking? I mean, I wish, I wish I could have a conversation with her about that to understand. How she justifies that.
Malcolm Collins: But it left str badly exposed in front of the Supreme Court where it became clear that the conservative justices had read the most convincing critiques of hormone and blockers and had some questions as a result.
Simone Collins: Some
Malcolm Collins: questions. Questions. I have questions. Trans rights activists like to accuse skeptics of use gender medicine and publications that dare report their views as fermenting a quote unquote moral panic. But the movement has spent the past decade telling gender non-conforming children that anyone who tries to restrict access to puberty blockers and hormones is effectively trying to kill them.
This was false and strand's answer tacitly conceded. It was also irresponsible after England restricted the use of puberty blockers. In 2020, the government asked an expert psychologist Lewis Applebee to investigate whether the unli rate for patients at the country's use gender clinic rose dramatically
as a result, it did not, in fact, he did not find any increase in unliving rates at all despite the lurid claims made online. No. The way that this issue has been discussed on social media has been insensitive, distressing, and dangerous, and goes against guidance on unsafe reporting on Unli Applebee reported.
One risk is that young people and their families will be terrified by predictions of unli as inevitable without puberty blockers. And this study that's referenced here that showed that the rates didn't go up is review of unli and gender dysphoria at the Travis Duck and Portman NS Foundation Trust.
And then BBC also did an article. Puberty blocker Curb has not led to an increase in unli. And I, I note here. All of this. And note here, I just always change out that one word for Unli because YouTube is incredibly strict about that word. So just, you know, when you're trying to find these studies, use your brain here, people.
But I would note here
Because we know that unli talk is incredibly contagious. In, in media you're typically not even supposed to report like cases where it happens because it leads to huge rises in the rate that it happens because we know it's contagious. And because we know that talk is so heavy within these communities, the fact that the rates haven't gone up is uniquely striking and it shows likely an inverse total effect.
If you could remove this discussion in these narratives from the public,
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: When Red State bans are discussed, you will also hear liberals say that conservative fears about the medical transition pathway are overwrought because all children get extensive personalized assessments before being described.
Puberty blockers and hormones. This too is untrue. Although the official standards of care recommended through assessment over several months, many American clinics say they will prescribe puberty blockers at first visit. Yeah. I only have seen this in honestly, the majority of detransition cases.
I've heard about the, the majority and we've heard
Simone Collins: this from parents, which. You know, is, is I've
Malcolm Collins: heard this from parents. The doctors will lie to the parents and give it to the kids. That happened to one of our friends. Yeah. They'll say, oh, we didn't give it to the kids. Actually we need to do a follow-up study.
And by the time the follow-up study happens, because the kid doesn't actually book it, the parent assumes that, hey, the phase is over. But the kid has been on puberty blockers and sterilize themselves six months ago. The kid doesn't realize they've done it. They don't realize they sterilize themselves.
The parent doesn't realize the kid has done it. They were prescribed this under the table because the parent did the. Very silly thing of try taking their kid to a psychologist, which again, we are radically against like the modern psychologist movement and psychiatrist movement, especially gender.
You know, the psychologists do not, do not, do not engage with, they are very dangerous. They cause way more harm than help at this point. I mean, when people talk about like the mental health problem of our society and they're like, well, we need more psychologists. I'm like, it seems to have risen in correlation to the number of psychologists, the amount of money we're spending on psychologists.
That should tell you something. But you could look at any of our videos on psychologists of how that happened. Because you, you actually see this in the numbers. It's not. Not necessarily healthy, and especially the ones that focus on the gender stuff. But here we see the, the, the sighting that I had above where I was like, many psychologists will give this to 'em on their first routers discusses this as more transgender children seek medical care.
Families confront many Reuters.
Simone Collins: You mean like the new service?
Malcolm Collins: The new service, yes. Mainstream news service. Silence yourself. I love when
Simone Collins: you mispronouncing so much.
Malcolm Collins: It isn't just a matter of US health providers skimping on talk therapy to keep costs down. Some practitioners view long evaluations as a necessary and even patronizing quote, I don't send someone to a therapist when I'm going to start them on insulin. In quote Olson Kennedy told the Atlantic in 2018, her published research shows that she has referred girls as young as 13 for double mastectomies.
13 and for the
Simone Collins: surgery. Wow.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. What if these children later regretted their decisions? She says, quote, adolescents actually have the capacity to make reasoned logical decisions. She once told an in industry seminar quote, if you want breasts at a later point in life, you could always just get them in.
Quote, just,
Simone Collins: I mean, she's there. There's some things about this that I love. I think that, broadly speaking, progressive culture, infantilizes youth, it's funny that there's this select selective dein. Infantilization. Like kids aren't allowed to be grownups in any way. You know, they're helicopter parented.
They're not allowed to walk home from school. But then in this one place. This one area, they can consent.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They're adults and there's one to whatever they want. Right. No matter how crazy, no matter what their parents think because the alternative is that they will unlive themselves even though we know that that is factually untrue.
It is really comforting
Simone Collins: to
Malcolm Collins: see
Simone Collins: though, that like, 'cause part of me worried that even if there, there was not, I guess a medical or body dysmorphic reason why people would ultimately be more likely to, to, to end themselves if they didn't get gender affirming care. I worried that the narratives around that would be enough.
Basically this, that, because so many people said, you will want to end your life if you don't get this care. That when people started being denying it, being denied it, that they would. More likely, but it appears that that's not happening. So I'm just, I'm relieved. 'cause I thought there would sort of be this, this no SIBO effect.
I think
Malcolm Collins: it's important to note what a phase this is. We know from the research, it's funny that she doesn't cite this in her paper, but there is a study gender discontentedness and gender nonconforming youth that came out in 2023. That showed of 13 year olds who are not satisfied with their birth gender over nine in 10 of them are completely satisfied with it by the age of 23.
That it's, yeah. So this woman who is assigning a 13-year-old, a double mastectomy, we now know from the researcher was over a 90% chance that she would not have wanted that mastectomy if she had waited. She would not have wanted to convert her gender if she would. Well,
Simone Collins: that's because, I mean, I think most people can, well, not most maybe, but at least many people can relate that kind of just having a human body during puberty sucks.
And it's very easy to think, oh, the problem is that I'm male slash female. Whereas it's like, no, the, the problem is that you're going through puberty and it sucks, and
Malcolm Collins: once you get through puberty, you're gonna be comfortable, you're gonna be fine. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Regardless of whether you're male or female. It, it's, it's the, it's the change itself that is not fun.
It's not what you're changing into.
Malcolm Collins: But the, the point here being is that now that we know from the evidence from peer reviewed studies, over 90% of these people are going to, that this is a phase for them. And, and keep in mind for the, the final 10%, we can't even say that it's not a phase because of other things, but you can look at our other episodes that go into more research around the trans community and everything like that.
This episode's primarily about this article, which I found really fascinating because it shows a changing progressive mindset around what you're allowed to say and what the new mainstream narrative is about this. And I think we might be seeing the damn bursting, basically was in mainstream Democrat culture.
And what happens to the crazies, I think they may be pushed aside in the same way that conservatives push aside, you know, your actual racists. And I think that that's what's, or, or you know, that we pushed our actual anti-Semites to the Democratic party. You know, who, who knows where these people are gonna go, they're gonna go to some, you know, extremist party, but whatever.
Perhaps the greatest piece of misinformation believed by liberals, however.
Is it the American standards of care in this area are strongly evidence-based. In fact, at this point, the fairest thing to say about the evidence surrounding medical transition for adolescents, the so-called Dutch protocol, as opposed to talk therapy and other support, is that it is weak and inconclusive.
A further complication is that American child gender medicine has deviated significantly from this original protocol in terms of linked up assessments and a number and demographics of minors being treated. Yes, as activists are keen to point out, most major medical associations support the Dutch protocol, but consensus is not the same as evidence and that consensus is politically influenced and it obviously is at this point and not politically influenced, but influenced by people risking losing their jobs.
If I at a mainstream organization or medical organization historically, and I said, I have a problem with this, I could lose my job. And if people are like, well, that's not true, look at how hard, mainstream. Not even just trans organization, but leftist organizations have tried to get, you know, the people who constructed the CAS report fired for just doing science.
Yeah. Right. That, that if, if you, if you were right about what you're saying, that you wouldn't try to get these people fired. Look at every instance in which somebody has defected and you have tried to get them fired. Right. And the evidence isn't on your side anymore, so now it's like a big problem.
Right. Rachel Levine, president Joe Biden's, assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services successfully lobbied to have age minimums removed for most surgeries from these standard Care up by wpath. That was a deeply political decision. Levine, according to emails from her office, reviewed by the times, believed that listing any specific limits under the age of 18 would give opponents of use transition, hard targets to exploit.
That's really psychotic.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. They,
Malcolm Collins: the White House was promoting this to stick it. To what they saw were, were people who were critical of used transgender stuff. Despite that they knew that the evidence wasn't on their side on these issues. And the amount that this happens, I think is something that people really need to wrestle with internally because it is chilling if you are wrong.
When you look at the evidence of what happens to these people who commit to this and the 50% to 40% attempted unliving rates within the transit community
if this community is. Something that people are being railroaded into when they otherwise wouldn't. You need to seriously consider with what you have imposed on these individuals' lives with those sorts of unli rates.
Yeah. It is a form of, of horror and self hatred above, I think really anything else you can imagine. And I think if you wanna learn what happens to even the individuals who feel like this has been successful to them, what their daily life becomes check out our, the day in the life of a Cina Byte episode about Anna VA's life from her own personal blog.
This is a, the trans woman, spoiler alert. It's, it's dark, it's dark, it's it's very dark. Even among the people who think that everything went well for them. More recently, another court case came case over Vanning. Blockers and hormones this time in Alabama has revealed that WPATH members themselves had doubts about their own guidelines.
In 2022, Alabama passed a law criminalizing the prescription of hormones and blockers to patients under 19. After the Biden administration sued to block the law, the state's Republican attorney general subpoenaed documents showing that WAS has known for some time that the evidence base for adolescent transition is thin.
All of us are painfully aware that there are many gaps in the research. To back up recommendations, quote, Ellie Coleman, the psychologist who chairman the team, revising the standards of care, wrote to his colleagues in 2023. So the guy who, who chairman the committee, who handled these revisions in linked emails, said, and I quote.
All of us are painfully aware that there are many gaps in the research that back our recommendations and these recommendations could lead to children committing to a life path that leads to a 50% on a living rate. You understand that, right? Do you understand how horrifying that is a life path that we know?
Nine out of 10 from gender, disco contentness, and gender non-conforming youth? 2023, no. Over nine in 10 of them are going to desist from naturally. Yet the organization did not make this clear to the public. So he didn't say that that wasn't, that they, like, when they released the, the report arguing for this, they didn't say, and the evidence is, is thin in this Laura Edwards leper who helped bring the Dutch protocol to the us but has since criticized it in a Washington Post op-ed.
The unquestioning gender affirming care model has said that the specter of red state bands made her and her op-ed co-author reluctant to break rigs. So the very person who brought this model into the United States has since said this was a mistake. That's where we are, by the way, in terms of like, what do the expert thinks?
The experts that told you to start doing this have said, oops, you guys went crazy with this. We shouldn't have done this. But because so many people have committed to this. And I think a way that causes so much cognitive dissonance. If you look at our John Money episode on the individual that sing like sexual orientation and the concept of gender is different than sex come from.
And we look at the horrifying research he did, that he lied about for a long time to people where he, you know. Said, oh, well, you know, if you're raised a different gender, you're actually gonna be that gender for the rest of your life. And then it turns out that not only is this not true, but it turned out he was likely a PDA file because he made these people, like two brothers sleep with each other and then filmed it.
And then per
Simone Collins: perform, they did more, more like sexual foreplay in this case, but as children while he watched and when they tried to resist, he like berated them. But what happened specifically with long story short, there was a, there was a, a baby who had had a, a botched circumcision and he advised the parents to just raise the baby as a girl.
And, and he wasn't told, he didn't find out until he was a teen that he was actually a na male. So he genuinely like had been told all his life that he was a girl, raised to be a girl like Performatively told to be a girl. And he det transitioned after that, which I think really does go to show that even if all you ever knew was being a girl.
And you went through and I mean, he underwent additional surgical and hormonal interventions under this man's under John Money's intervention. He still desisted. So just to clarify your point, but what's
Malcolm Collins: really important here is John money hid for decades that this person had had detransition, which led
Simone Collins: to thousands more parents to when their children had some kind of, you know, genital problem as, as, as babies raise him, as, as the I guess well
Malcolm Collins: get surgical intervention to try to make them conform to a specific gender and then raise.
Yeah. So
Simone Collins: basically he, he did an experiment. The experiment failed and he lied about the failure of his experiment and many, many, many more people. Anything when
Malcolm Collins: you, why did he lie about this? I think that this is important to this context because it's the same thing happening again, is that he would have to admit the horror that was downstream of his original mistake.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And I think if you're looking at the existing movement, it's why don't they accept that the evidence now says you are mutilating kids destroying their lives and leading to a really high unli rate that wouldn't otherwise exist. Hmm. It's because if they admit that, then they've been the bad guys all along.
Worse than that, it means that many of these trans individuals who never really intended to fully pass and are just doing this to sort of force themselves on other people, but now they can't look like anything other than trans individuals. When they walk out in public, they're like that guy from the end of whatever that movie is about Nazis, where he, they, they carved the swastika into his forehead.
So, you know, e everybody knows for the rest of his life that he, because he was being let free, right? And, and he, and they're like, we're not gonna let you live the rest of your life as a truly free person. People are gonna know what you stood for in the harm that you caused for the rest of your life.
When you get to your little place on Nantucket Island, I imagine you're going to take off that handsome looking SS uniform of yours, ain't ya?, so I'm going to give you a little something you can't take off.
Malcolm Collins: And being a poorly passing trans person, being an Alec Vade menon for the rest of your life is gonna be like having a swastika carved in your forehead.
As the public begins to normalize to this more and more when they realize that even when the evidence said this stuff is wrong, you were still sending 13-year-old girls to have double mastectomies. And, and we'd note from the WPATH files, the other thing that leaked, did they admit, they go, the kids do not understand this.
Is wpath the main organization pushing for this in the United States? The in internal emails, they've said, these kids don't, they haven't had biology classes yet they don't understand the implications of what these puberty blockers mean of what it means to never have an orgasm, which is one of the potential effects of he do blockers of what it means to, to be sterile, of what it means to have these complications for your entire life.
Well, and you know what bothers me
Simone Collins: is not only are they not being told about this, but also even if they were told about it, they're in a phase in their life where they'd be like, yeah, I mean, remember when I was a virgin? I fantasized about despite having no plans to have sex, having my uterus removed, having a hysterectomy.
'cause I was just so enthusiastic about the idea of not having children. Yeah. But the, and I mean now I have almost, you know, five kids, you know. But the point I'm making
Malcolm Collins: here is that the people who run the organizations promoting this in internal memos note. These kids definitely don't know what they're consenting to.
Yeah, absolutely. And we don't even try to explain to them what they're consenting to because we understand they don't have the mental capacity to understand it.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And they as well know that over nine out of 10 of them desist. So we're also gonna talk about that just, just going forward here. I can't stop mentioning that statistic.
The Alabama litigation has also confirmed that WPAs has commissioned a systemic review of the evidence for the Dutch protocol. However, close to publication the John Hopkins University researcher involved was told that their findings needed to be, quote, scrutinized and reviewed to ensure that the publication does not negatively affect the provision of transgender healthcare in quote, which obviously it would if it showed that that healthcare was harming people.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: This is not how evidence-based medicine is supposed to work. You don't start with a treatment and then ensure that only studies of support that treatment are published in a legal filing. In the Alabama case, Coleman insisted quote. It is not true. In quote, that WPAs guidelines quote turned on any ideological or political considerations in quote, and that the groups dispute was John Hopkins researcher concerned only the timing of the publication that is factually untrue.
We now know from the leaks of the organization, so the people who run the mainstream organization and Ws has tried to frame itself as like a non-partisan. We are just trying to get to the science mm-hmm. On transgender medicine. Mm-hmm. We now know that they lie publicly. They, they, they internally know that this is a major problem.
They internally know they don't have the science behind them and they just lie.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, it's enough that, I mean, this is an issue that permeates academia and, and medical research as well and psychological research, a lot of research that like there is a big problem that null results just aren't published and that, you know, only, you know, sort of notable results that also favor people's desire to conclusions end up getting published.
But this is just a next level worse because they knew. Well, they knew
Malcolm Collins: to understand how much they're lying here. When they said it only concerned the timing of the dates of publication.
Simone Collins: Mm.
Malcolm Collins: Yet the Times has reported that at least one of the manuscripts they sought to publish, quote, never saw the light of day end quote.
So they did quash manuscripts that showed that this was hurting people. Yeah. Yeah. It's one thing
Simone Collins: to not publish no results. 'cause I get it. Like it's, it just, there's the, the, the incentives aren't well aligned, but this is, this is really next level. Yeah. Actively irresponsible.
Malcolm Collins: But this is really big because if you come to me and you say to me quote, well look at all this research that showed that this you know, that this doesn't hurt people.
And I'm like, yeah, except I can list like these three studies that weren't allowed to be published here, here, and here, right? Like mm-hmm. So your evidence doesn't matter. A load of squat. Because you were killing other studies and, and, and more important not killing them due to methodological reasons.
Because we can see here this wasn't killed for methodological reasons. It was killed because of how it could affect people getting access to these treatments.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: So we know that that's a lie. Now we know that that's a lie. Like the world know. Everybody who looks at the evidence knows that's a lie now.
So they're framing this as like just methodological problems or something, but when you have filtered evidence for a period of decades and note that this filter is now dropping, that's why we're seeing all of these studies that come out now, like the nine and 10 number and everything like that, because this filter has dropped.
But for a period of decades, you could lose your career for publishing a study in this space, and people did.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: You know, so if you give me data that, that came out, you know, I'd say like up to the past three years for that decade, I, I basically can't use it. I can't look at it. Yeah. It's bad data, right?
Yeah. Like it has clearly been filtered and we see the results now of this filter.
Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And so if you're actually interested in what the science says, if you're actually a person, you've gotta look at the more recent studies, which all show this is. Does. It's, it's, it's, it's doing the opposite of what people say it's doing.
It is not a good intervention. And is that any surprise when, when we look at other forms of body dysmorphia like, like anorexia, you do not intervene by being like, well, I bet I could get your weight down by removing your uterus. And then say, well, the anorexic person said they liked it. Like, of course the anorexic person would like that.
They wanna get their weight down no matter what. Right? But that's, that's not something that you should be indulging, right? But to continue the Alabama disclosures are not the only example of this reluctance to acknowledge contrary evidence. Last year, O Olan Kennedy said that she had not published her own broad study on mental health outcomes for use was gender dysphoria because she was worried about its results being, quote, unquote weaponized that raised suspicions that she had found only sketchy evidence to support the treatments that she had been prescribing and publicly advocating for over many years.
To this woman. This is the woman who, who said like the devil mastectomy for kids. The, oh, well you can just get this changed later. Even she, even as biased, as scientist as her in terms of how, you know, she was constructing, her studies got evidence that said that this was hurting people and decided not to publish it.
Even she, that degree of bias was unable to find a way to manipulate the data to make it look like these procedures are helping people.
Simone Collins: Not ideal.
Malcolm Collins: Last month, her study finally forced appeared as a preprint a form of scientific publication where evidence of not to yet to be peer reviewed.
Formalization is finalized a it's titled Mental and Emotional Health of Use. After 24 months of gender affirming medical care initiated with puberty suppressant, its participants demonstrated no significant changes in reported anxiousness or depression, withdraw or depressed somatic complaints, social problems, thought problems, attention problems, aggressive behavior, internalizing problems, or externalizing problems.
What
Simone Collins: are
Malcolm Collins: thought problems? I feel like I have a lot of thought problems in the two years after starting puberty blockers, I have requested comment from Oslo Kennedy via a children's hospital in, in Los Angeles, the one who was saying, oh, you know, it's either you do this or your kid dies.
She hasn't heard back from them because they're, they're unwilling to engage with the new evidence, which, which just says this does not help. If anything, it increases the rate of unli.
Simone Collins: Well, this is just one of those things where I think it's just so difficult for a clinic or a researcher to admit to being wrong here after having advised so many families.
Yeah. I mean, when those families come back, they're like, wait a second. Well, just think about like the malpractice lawsuits, the liability you're subject to. I mean, I can understand the reticence Well,
Malcolm Collins: and the cognitive dissonance.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Of the horror. I mean, because you really believed that. So. I understand where they're coming from.
I, I do kind of wish the Atlantic piece were a little bit more like, and this has been covered up for a long time. 'Cause that's an interesting, they're pointing
Malcolm Collins: that out. They are pointing that out. I think, you know, they, they're reaching out to these people and they're saying, oh, blah. I don't, I don't know about that study.
I don't okay, so you think they're doing a fair
Simone Collins: enough job? It seems to me more just like, Hmm. Turns out maybe we had an
Malcolm Collins: episode where, you know, we admit that now when you look at the research, the majority of the research and the majority of educated people know that gender transition is largely speaking, especially in youth.
A bad idea, likely in adults, a bad idea are a way to treat this. The Dutch treatment, as it's called Dutch treat. And we have an episode where we look at how long it took lobotomies to be phased out of society after basically educated people knew it was a bad idea. And it's about 50 years. And that, that's really sad.
But we, we, you can look at our episode on that, but when we published that episode, a Blue Sky user one of the, the posts that went viral on Blue Sky about us was like worst take of the year that that prenatal is couple had this to say about trans individuals comparing it to lobotomies. And I'm like, well, it's, it's actually super comparable.
What a lot. Oh, I forgot about that.
Simone Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: Phlebotomies is that a lot of the people, like the last person who got it where their surgery went really bad were requesting it themselves. Yeah. If you, if you look at later lobotomies there, people think that this was something that was forced on people and in, in cases it was, but a lot of the later cases, WW, was actually sought out by individuals.
Simone Collins: Absolutely.
Malcolm Collins: And it, it bears a lot of structural similarities. To, you know, what we're seeing was the transgender movement. But anyway being overly adopted by progressives, like the Kennedy family doing it to their daughter and stuff, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's about staying in with polite society and not looking weird.
And that's, you know, if you say this is a bad thing, you look like a weirdo, you're killing trans kids, even though we know that's not true and you are killing trans kids, literally, and by the facts. But anyway, or the kids you have labeled as trans. The Travis stock puberty blocker study, 2011 to 2014, published in 2020.
So this isn't from the article, but this is something that I think is important to note.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Kelli Etal published a. Preprint on Med Xi in December, 2020 after a high court ruling in the Bell and travis.case. So, Travis do had tried to cover up these findings and they were forced to publish them during the investigation of their clinics.
This was the gender transition clinic.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: This study involved 44 children, age 12 to 15, who receive puberty blockers, G-N-R-H-A to delay puberty. It aimed to assess psychological outcomes including mental health and gender dysphoria. The study was conducted by Travis Docs, GIDS, university, college Lesbian Hospitals.
The preliminary findings, so these were reported from 2011 to 2014. They weren't forced to publish them until 2020. They, they treated Thousand forced to
Simone Collins: by whom?
Malcolm Collins: In that, that kid by the UK court system.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay.
Malcolm Collins: Tried to cover this up
Simone Collins: because it sounds like they were never gonna publish them. That, that's a sort of weird delay.
Okay.
Malcolm Collins: They, they tried to cover this up, but the study in 2015 by the Travis Stock Board of Directors cited by transgender trend indicated a statistically significant increase in self-harm after one year of puberty blockers. Based on responses to the statement quote, I deliberately tried to hurt or kill myself in quote, so that is what we call unloving ideation behavior, right?
You can say self-harm. That's what they tried to reframe it as. Mm-hmm. That is not self-harm. Look at the question. It's
Simone Collins: highly
Malcolm Collins: effective
Simone Collins: self-harm.
Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind that this, this and the effect was stronger in girls, by the way. It was, it had more of a negative effect in young girls. Interesting.
Which are doing it interesting more now than they did historically. And I, I, I, I'd point out here that this was done by the Travis Doc Clinic, which had every reason to attempt to bias the results in their favor. In the way that they asked the questions, in the way that the the data was recorded, the fact that despite that they showed an increased risk, should tell you something.
Wow. Especially when we now know that when this was disallowed across the uk, it did not lead to a spike in these roots.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Really, really chilling stuff. The, the reliance on elite consensus over evidence helps make sense of WPAs flatly hostile response to the cast report in England, which commissions systemic reviews and recommended extreme caution over the use of puberty blockers and hormones.
The review is a direct challenge to WPAs ability to position itself as a finer arbiter of these treatments. Something that had become more obvious when the conservative justices referenced the British document in their questions and opinions on sct. One of WPAs main charges about Hillary Cass, the senior pediatrician, who led the review, was that she was not a gender specialist.
In other words, that she was not part of the charmed circle who already agreed with these treatments being beneficial. So they defined gender specialists as people who already agreed and had published that these treatments were beneficial.
Simone Collins: Hmm. Oh.
Malcolm Collins: Which is I, and I I just want to note here, people are like, why do you care so much?
Why do you talk so much about this if you want to? It's almost like
Simone Collins: saying like, well, you're not an electroshock therapist because you don't believe that electroshock therapy is the correct therapy for various Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Whereas your long list of electrocuted patients. Yeah. Like, come on, you don't know anything about this.
We even know the person who brought this message to the United States has been like, yeah, this was a mistake. You know? So, so the experts are against you guys at this point? You just define them as not experts at this point. Yeah. Which is really horrifying. Really horrifying. But the, the, the reason when people are like, why do you guys talk about this, given how controversial it is, given how one in five to 10 years time, I hope that our society has a good memory about the people who didn't talk about this when they had the chance.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Because if you look at the harm that is being done to children. And we're gonna see the harm. We're, we're already beginning to see a flood of detransition in online spaces, but they're not gonna be confined to online spaces the same way that you know trans people. You're gonna know de transitioners.
The same way that you have that transferring, you're gonna have that detransition friend and you're gonna feel for them. I will say that to me, the moment where I really began to feel strongly against this was in, I began to make friends with Detransition. And I began to know these people and see them not just as statistics of like, you know, oh, they were killed in this conflict or whatever.
These are real people who were manipulated and lied to by doctors and psychologists and told things that were not true. They were told things that weren't true about the surgeries that they undertook. Usually they told things that were not true about the medicine they took. And they, they were told things that were not true about what happened if they didn't engage with us.
And, and you guys are not gonna look like the good guys in history. You guys are going down and history will have a long memory about what you did and the scale at which you committed these atrocities. But to continue. Any thoughts there, Simone, before I, I continue here Just wolf. Because of WPAs hostility, many on the American left now believe that the CAS review has been discredited.
Quote upon first reading, especially to a person with limited knowledge of the history of transgender healthcare. Much of the report might seem reasonable. End quote, Lydian Ri wrote at the times in late August. However, after quote, pouring over the document and quote, interviewing experts at gender affirming care, quote, which means people who already agree and have performed the procedure at, at Lings Polgar realized that the cast review was, quote, fundamentally a subjective political document, which anyone who has engaged with it or knows the circumstances of its creation created by progressives within the United Kingdom, which is already more progressive than our country.
It was, it was a, if it was a political document, it was a progressive political document. It was a feminist political document and it did not agree with what they wanted it to. Advocates for use gender medicine have reacted furiously to articles in the Times and elsewhere that take Cass's conclusion.
Seriously, indeed, some people inside the information bubble appear to believe that if a respected publication would stop writing about the story, all the doubts and questions and Republicans attempt to capitalize on them, electorally would simply disappear. Whenever the Times has published a less than cheerleading article about use transition.
Supporters of gender medicine have accused the newspaper of manufacturing a debate that otherwise would not exist After the committee decision, Stratego was still describing media coverage of the issue as quote unquote insidious adding quote. The New York Times especially has been fixating on casting the medical care of.
As being of insufficient quality quote. And, and that's really messed up that he's like, the New York Times is too conservative on this stuff with the information they're airing. Well, just nobody should be talking about it. I'm like, bro, if it's making it through the New York Times editorial point,
Simone Collins: I'm implying that there's some kind of Yeah.
Insidious that What a word to we to use
Malcolm Collins: about something. And, and I I, I've read some of the attacks on the New York Times, they say seven anti-trans gender articles. So the New York Times apparently is totally okay with publishing this stuff. Now The Atlantic is okay with publishing this stuff. Now you have lost the centers of elite society, at least in terms of the media, how long till you lose it within academia as well.
I mean, now that we're seeing these publications get through. Mm-hmm. And then what happens then to the people who basically crowded swastikas onto their foreheads it's not going to look good. And I think a lot of people don't understand the, the consequences. And I repeatedly see this. People are like, oh, I've just been on a little bit of like hormonal medicine.
Surely this hasn't affected my fertility. And I'm like, what? Who told you that? We hear that
Simone Collins: way too much.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I'm like no, that would have a severe effect on your fertility, my friend. You should look into that. If, if you underwent that through any window of your life now, now some people are able to get through this and, and reclaim their fertility and, you know, even some of our fans have been able to do that.
But it is, it is, it is chilling to me the number of people who just assume that there's not big, long-term effects of engaging with this stuff. Can this misinformation bubble ever be burst on the left? Support for use transition has been rolled together with other issues such as police reform and climate activism as a kind of super savo combo deal of correction options.
I I love that. The 33-year-old Democratic socialist, communist, Zhan Mohani. This is the New York Communist who got elected recently. Mom Donny made
Simone Collins: funding
Malcolm Collins: gender, gender transition, including of minors, part of his pitch to New York as its mayor. And then it's, oh, I didn't know that. Wow. Article here where it says even
Simone Collins: now, gosh, I figured we were past this at this point.
Malcolm Collins: Breakout. New York Mayor, oral candidate Contender Zohar Hamdi wants to spend Ani whatever, Zhan, ani 65 million on medical, gender treatments for minors and adults. But complicated issues deserve to be treated individually. You can criticize Israel, object to the militarization of America's police forces, and believe that climate change is real and yet still not support irreversible, experimental and unproven treatments for children.
So I love that the word the leftists are like broke and we like not on this issue. We are definitely the bad guys on this issue. The polarization of this issue in America has been deeply unhelpful for getting liberals to accept the sketchiness of the evidence base. When Vice President JD Vance wanted to troll the left, he joined Blue Sky where skeptics of use gender transition are among the most blocked users.
And immediately started talking about the TTI judgment. What, like that turn, accepting the evidence base into a humiliating climb down, which is true. It should be humiliating. You were messing with kids without any evidence that you believed people who lied to you. Totally. Totally. And you let sex pass into the movement and you let the sex pass abuse people, like lesbian communities.
And they, they were telling you the lesbians for a long time, Hey, they're our sex pests abusing our community. Can you please do something about this? And, and you guys just ignored them, right? A lot of the people who've been pushing this have been lesbian organizations. Acknowledging the evidence does not mean that you have to support banning these treatments or reject the idea that some people will be happier if they transition.
Cass believes that some youngsters may indeed benefit from the medical pathway, quote. While some young people may feel an urgency to transition, young adults looking back on their younger selves would often advise slowing down. Her report concludes, quote. For some, the best outcome will be transitioned, whereas others may resolve their distress in other ways.
This is not a conservative extremist who wrote this report. They're just like somebody who is pre-positioned to statements like that just found in the evidence their support for this. I have always argued against straightforward bans on medical transition for adolescents in practice. The way that these have been enacted in red states has been uncaring and punitive.
You know, this person writing this, who is saying this? Right? You know, again, not a conservative parents are threatened with child abuse investigations for pursuing treatments that medical professionals have assured them are safe. Yeah. But they should look into whether those medical professionals are lying.
But children with severe mental health troubles suddenly lose therapeutic. Therapeutic support. Clinics nationwide, including Oline Kennedy's, are now abruptly closing because of the political atmosphere writing about these subjects. In 2023, I argued that the only way out of the culture war was for the American Medical Associations to commission reviews and carefully consider the evidence.
Have an American cast review. Of course, however, the revelations from Sketti and the Alabama case have made me more. Sympathetic to the commenters such as Aliyah Sapiro of the Conservative Manhattan Institute, who supports the bans because American medicine cannot be trusted to police itself. Quote, are these bans the perfect solution?
Probably not in quote he told me in 2023, quote. But at the end of the day, if it's between banning gender affirming care and leaving it unregulated, I think we can minimize the amount of harm by banning it. Once you know that WPAs wanted to publish a review, only if it came out of the group's preferred conclusion, Shapiro's case becomes more compelling.
And this is something we've seen. The medical community could have self-regulated. It can still go out there and attempt to self-regulate, but anybody who makes this push risk their career at this point or at least for a period, did. Despite the concerted efforts to suppress the evidence, however, the picture on use gender medicine has become a clearer over the past decade.
It's no humiliation to update our beliefs as a result. I regularly used to write that medical gender transition was quote unquote lifesaving before I saw how limited the evidence on on A Alive was. And it took another court case brought by the British GT transition Keira Bell, for me to realize that purity blockers were not what they were sold as a safe and reversible treatment that gave patients, quote unquote time to think, but instead a one-way ticket to full transition with physical changes that cannot be undone.
And I note here almost nobody when the studies have been done, once you go on blockers, even though we know that nine outta 10 of these people, they didn't, wouldn't transition once you go on them, I think it's something like a 98 or 99% transition rate. Like it's hard to find anyone who doesn't transition afterwards.
Mm. So we know it is biasing people towards transition and it's basically forcing them to transition. Some advocates for the Dutch protocol as it's applied in the United States, have stake their entire career and reputation on its safe and effectiveness. Yeah. If you go out there and you say, with the evidence you have now that this is safe and effective, it can be proven that you've lied.
They have strong incentives to not concede the weakness of the evidence. In 2023, the advocacy group GLAD drove a truck ar, and this is in 2023. After a lot of this evidence had come out, after the study of the show, nine out of 10 people you know, to detransition Right. Around the office of the New York Times to declare that quote unquote, the sciences settled.
They said on the block, doctors such as Sly Kennedy and activists of Stratego unlikely to revise their opinions. What can you do when you as a group like LAD that was supposed to be looking out for lesbians, was supposed to be looking out for non-conforming use. When you know that you've now led them on a path that makes un alive themselves more likely,
Simone Collins: wow.
Malcolm Collins: But that's where we are as a society.
No. I mean, the horror of, of what's been undertaken, people should be held to account for this. And, and I think that when we, as a society, like as, as things continue to shift after the wave continues to shift, I think the only way we can make this right. Is court trials for people who clearly knew the evidence and went out there and pushed young children into this.
You know, when you [email protected] and we see them covering up evidence and we know that people in positions of authority within the clinic were actually arrested for going to local parks and attempting to chat up 15-year-old boys. You know, that they liked getting these kids on these blockers so that they would look underage for the rest of their, or for at least a longer period up until when they were legal.
And we've seen this talked about within these community forums you know, that this needs to be addressed and the people who, who covered for these individuals there needs to be some degree of punishment given that they have shown that people like strategic AEO have shown that they knew the evidence, that they knew that this was leading to worse outcomes for the people who were engaging with it and that they attempted to cover this up and increase the prevalence of these treatments.
Simone Collins: I mean, we couldn't even ask them to explain why they did this, because I don't even know if they could answer that. You know, like when you ask people why they do what they do, they really honestly dunno, most of the time No.
Malcolm Collins: They, they, to me remind me of like their religious extremists that like starved children because they think they're possessed or something.
Right. Like, they just be like, well, yeah, I saw the child was starving. I saw the child was increasing thera, that they hated themselves. You know, we saw this from the Travis doc leaked research. But I decided to not do anything about it. Right. I mean, I'll note here that they'll be like, well, that study didn't have a controller.
That study didn't have a Yeah, because you chose not to create one After you saw the data, it could have had a control. You chose to not collect that data. Mm-hmm. That's not that. It's like there, there you hid the control. You ensured that there wasn't one because you didn't like what you knew it would say.
Anyway, that's. We are gonna close out.
Simone Collins: I'm really glad this age is coming to an end. Because, you know, that's, that's fewer lives will be severely disrupted by this. I also wonder what the next thing's gonna be.
Malcolm Collins: And I think what we, we need to change the narrative when people are like, you are killing trans kids.
It's gonna be like you are, are killing gender non-conforming gifts. Which is factually true when you look at the unliving rates within the trans community. And we know that nine outta 10 of these people de desist from this behavior. So also like
Simone Collins: I think the very concept of gender non-conforming runs contrary to progressive ideology.
As we've discussed in the John Money Podcast, he is the man who in the 1950s and onward pioneered the concept of gender as a construct, distinct from biological sex as like a behavioral and cultural thing, right? But, but before that, like. It didn't like you could be gender non-conforming and people wouldn't be like, well, we need to medicalize this now.
Yeah. They'd be like,
Malcolm Collins: oh, you're a tomboy.
Simone Collins: Yeah, exactly. You're a tomboy or you're a bit of a girly girl. Like boy, like whatever. But like bit of a mama's boy. Yeah. You, it didn't mean that you needed to undergo some kind of life altering, like permanently, biologically shifting treatment. And I think it was a lot more healthy.
I, I am so excited to go back to that because we're all for like, fine, don't conform with, you know, be you. That's great. This reminds
Malcolm Collins: me of the meme I sent you that I loved. The next song is called, please Don't Make Me Cut Off My D because I like the color pink. There you go. And I note here ho Mass actually did a comment on this article where he said summary, they started saying, your children will kill themselves if you don't give them a sex change.
And they knew they didn't have the evidence. No one was allowed to argue. Is it because a hundred IQ. Q HR ladies would shut down your entire life. If you did, then the kids who got sex change hormones became more likely to kill themselves because it turns out that what they were going through was just a weird phase.
And that's, I, I, you know, I like that he's out there pushing this. We've had him on the show of before. Check out our episode with him. Have a great day, Simone. Love you.
Toasty, what are you doing?
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