#laura edwards-leeper

[zinniajones]

Florida House of Representatives Office of the Speaker 

Paul Renner  Speaker 

MEMORANDUM 

To: The Honorable Randy Fine, Chair, Health & Human Services Committee From: Paul Renner, Speaker Date: April 23, 2023  RE: Authorization to Commence Investigation 

Dear Chair Fine, 

According to correspondence from the Florida Chapter of the American Academy Of Pediatrics (FCAAP) to the Florida Board of Medicine, “gender-affirming care is the widely accepted standard of care for treating transgender adolescents with gender dysphoria.” Many medical organizations are said to endorse “gender-affirming care,” although FCAAP’s statement indicates that the standards of care are actually developed by just two organizations — the Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). 

Last year, Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) adopted a rule excluding from Medicaid coverage certain treatments for gender dysphoria. That rule is the subject of ongoing litigation in federal court, where the plaintiffs rely extensively on WPATH’s and the Endocrine Society’s standards of care and guidelines and describe them as “widely accepted best practices.” AHCA sought to probe that assertion by serving subpoenas on those entities and others that endorse “gender-affirming care” for minors in order to determine whether this purported medical consensus was truly the result of an intellectually rigorous and open process — as any medical consensus should be. Those entities — including WPATH, the Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychiatric Association — responded by fighting vigorously to avoid any meaningful inquiry or disclosure. And they did so notwithstanding their knowledge (and likely, their intent) that their own standards and endorsements are being cited in litigation as a basis to effectively veto state law.

Similarly, in an ongoing legal challenge to Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, which prohibits the use of puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgical interventions as “gender-affirming care” for minors, the plaintiffs have likewise relied extensively on WPATH’s guidelines. But when the State of Alabama sought discovery regarding WPATH’s development of those guidelines, WPATH’s response once again was to seek judicial protection from any disclosure. When the federal court ordered WPATH last month to respond to Alabama's subpoena, WPATH’s reaction was to seek extraordinary appellate review rather than comply. 

Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper, the first psychologist at what has been described as the first major gender clinic in the U.S. (at Boston Children’s Hospital), has publicly expressed concern about the “irresponsible” treatment being administered to minors with gender dysphoria. Referring to her fellow practitioners, she stated that “everyone is very scared to speak up because we’re afraid of not being seen as being ‘affirming.’” And Dr. Marci Bowers, a transgender gynecologic surgeon who has performed more than 2,000 “sex-change” operations and who served as president of WPATH, has commented regarding the state of open discourse and debate: “There are definitely people who are trying to keep out anyone who doesn't absolutely buy the party line that everything should be affirming and that there's no room for dissent.”

Although these leading practitioners (and others) have sounded alarm bells regarding contemporary treatment of minors with gender dysphoria, organizations including FCAAP apparently maintain that there is medical consensus that “gender-affirming care” is the appropriate treatment. The foregoing (and other) indicia of widespread self-censorship in the medical profession suggest that the purported consensus may be little more than a mirage. 

WPATH's own published standards of care at least acknowledge what we all know through common experience to be true: that the human brain continues to develop well into early adulthood, that “adolescence is often associated with increased risk-taking behaviors,” and that adolescence is commonly characterized by “a heightened focus on peer relationships, which can be both positive and detrimental.” Dr. Erica Anderson — a transgender psychologist, a former president of WPATH’s United States chapter (USPATH), and a member of the American Psychological Association (APA) task force that writes the APA guidelines for transgender care — has publicly acknowledged that “teenagers influence each other” and that “to flatly say there couldn't be any social influence in formation of gender identity flies in the face of reality.” Concluding that “it's gone too far,” Dr. Anderson asked rhetorically, “What happens when the perfect storm — of social isolation, exponentially increased consumption of social media, the popularity of alternative identities — affects the actual development of individual kids?” It appears that those responsible for developing and endorsing the purported consensus of gender-affirming care for minors may not have engaged with that question in any serious way. And it appears that they wish to avoid any inquiry into their possible failures to do so. 

As our courts and the Supreme Court have long recognized, “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Yet it appears that the medical organizations who create and endorse guidelines on a contentious issue fraught with scientific uncertainty have gone to great lengths to avoid scrutiny and to keep the public (and their duly elected representatives) in the dark regarding the process by which these "consensus" guidelines were developed.

Therefore, I now authorize and direct the Health and Human Services Committee to investigate whether the adoption and endorsement of “gender-affirming care” as the standard of care for minors have been the result of rigorous medical and scientific analysis and consideration, or whether the integrity of the medical profession has been compromised by a radical gender ideology that stands to cause permanent physical and mental harm to children and adolescents. As part of this investigation, the Committee may look into any relevant matter within the scope of the House's constitutional investigative powers. The Committee may also issue any necessary subpoenas for documents and testimony, including from Florida-based organizations that recommend, endorse, or otherwise promote the standard of care described herein. 

Respectfully, 

Paul M. Renner, Speaker of the House 

cc: Kathleen Passidomo, Senate President  Ron DeSantis, Governor

[harrypotterfuryroad]

in last week's b&r katie mentioned that the whole "would you rather have a dead son or an alive daughter" line of manipulation is being pushed not just by the kids but by the clinicians

when does that cross into outright extortion

"i’m not saying you have to buy lupron from me, i’m just saying that if you don’t, something bad may or may not happen to your son, capisce?"

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Ben Appel

Published: Jun 13, 2023

As a gay man, I have no pride in Pride month. Radical LGBT bullies have captured it – and threaten to 'fix' us by medicalizing and transitioning us. But gay people will NOT be erased again.

Everywhere around me, I see Pride flags. 'It's time to celebrate the LGBT community!' I'm told. But, this year, as a gay man, I'm not proud of my so-called 'community.'

In fact, I'm horrified by it.

Two decades ago, when I attended my first Pride parade, the LGBT world truly needed it. Pride is the opposite of shame. And for decades, even centuries, gay people had been told to be ashamed of ourselves, of our same-sex attraction, and our supposed inability to behave like 'normal' people.

We were harassed and oppressed. Homosexuality was criminalized. If a man was convicted of having consensual sex with another adult man, he was given two options: imprisonment or chemical castration.

Gays were forced to be something we were not. We were erased.

And that's why I am so heartbroken that 20 years later, the LGBT community supports a new practice that threatens to erase gay people.

It is benignly called 'gender-affirming care.'

Today, LGBT Pride marches arm in arm with radical ideologues who contend there is no such thing as biological sex.

Their extreme doctrine claims that men can simply decide to become women, and, most disturbingly of all, that children can actually change their sex.

Educators, policymakers and physicians are telling young boys that if they like wearing dresses or playing with dolls, they might be girls; young girls are told that if they prefer football to ballet, they might be boys; and that with some experimental pills and high-risk surgeries, they can all finally be 'normal.'

Magically transformed, forever.

But what if a young person struggling to be 'normal' is not trans, but gay? What would have happened to me?

In the course of research for my forthcoming memoir, 'Cis White Gay,' I interviewed a wide range of experts and people within the LGBT community on this troubling, evolving ideology. 

I spoke with Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper, the founding psychologist for the first hospital-based pediatric gender clinic in the U.S. 

'There are definitely cases when I strongly suspect sexuality is the issue with young teens,' Dr. Edwards-Leeper explained of her work with gender diverse and transgender people. 'I wonder about it with children, too.' 

I told Dr. Edwards-Leeper about my own gender-nonconformity in childhood and my concern that if I were growing up today, I would have been erroneously affirmed as a transgender girl. 'I'm sure you would have,' she said.

Dr. Erica Anderson, a transgender clinical psychologist who treats children, shares the same fear.

'I'm afraid too often, [gay boys are] consuming social media that says, "If you are uncomfortable in your body when you hit puberty, if you don't quite fit with your age mates, well, maybe you're trans,"' she told me. 'I think it's a terrible message to kids, that there's no place for variance. And I think it is the foundation under which, in some circles, there is some transing of the gay.'

Can the LGBT community truly be proud of this?

I cannot overlook the devastating reality that the same pills offered to distressed adolescent boys to feminize their bodies and stave off male adulthood are the same pills, just decades ago, that were used to render gay men asexual.

I cannot turn a deaf ear to the words of former gender clinicians at a U.K. clinic, who told The Times U.K. in 2019 about a dark joke among staff, that soon 'there would be no gay people left,' that what happened in their clinic felt like 'conversion therapy for gay children,' or that 'for some families, it was easier to say, this is a medical problem, "here's my child, please fix them!"'

'Fix them'? 'Fix' children?

I also cannot ignore the testimonies of the detransitioners — adult gay men who sought escape from homophobia in a trans identity and have come to regret it. Some tell me that they were coerced to believe that their atypical femininity meant that they were trapped in the wrong bodies.

'Michael' told me, 'The reason why I felt so happy [after transition] was because I got a break from being seen as a gay guy; I was just this normal, hetero-appearing girl.'

Brian confessed that, 'With estrogen, my libido just kind of died, and it felt so great because I always viewed my sexuality as something bad, and [transgenderism] kind of appealed to me because my dad always hated gay people.'

'Steven' said, 'I felt like I'd rather be a trans woman than a gay man because that was like the lowest and most disgusting thing you could be.'

There are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people who are horrified by what is being done.

So, we write, we talk, we tweet. We phone our friends and our relatives and neighbors. We tell them that what is being done to children is medical malpractice.

We explain that recklessly administered 'gender-affirming care' is nothing less than the experimental medicalization of homosexuality that carries significant risks. It leads to infertility and loss of sexual function, and no child can adequately consent to it.

To advocates of these practices, I ask you: Is this what you mean when you say you're on 'the right side of history?'

I cannot shrug off the feeling that in the name of the so-called 'LGBT community' a great injustice may be happening before our eyes. But when gay people speak out – we're called bigots.

Lesbians are told they're hateful if they don't want to date males, who identify as women. And gays are told they're hateful if they don't want to date females, who identify as men.

I've had the term 'cis' spat at me with the same venom that I was once called homophobic slurs on the playground, all because I am 'cisgender.'

I am a male that is exclusively attracted to other males. Is that no longer allowed?

Is this what my 'community' has become – the bullies that we once fought against?

If I am proud of anything this Pride Month, it is my new 'community' of LGBT heretics.

Those of us who stand up in the face of ridicule to say: This is not us. This is not who we are.

I am proud every time we're shouted down by authoritarian activists. I remain proud even as we're called 'evil,' 'right-wingers,' or 'transphobes.'

To that community, I say: Happy Pride.

==

Note: links added by me to preempt deniers: "LiTeRaLLy nO oNe iS sAyInG tHaT!" "tHaT nEvEr hApPeNs!"

[scruffy-boy]

I'm remembering my therapist's office and the view out the window. I can hear her voice and feel the texture on the couch. The stacks of books on the windowsill and the clocks are still in the same place. The painting of the crane is still on the wall and there's boxes of tea by the door again. I miss her, like a long time friend who moved away. She quite honestly saved my life and I don't know how to thank her besides living my best life.

[elpres]

Earlier this month the High Court in London looked at the case of one detransitioner, Keira Bell, who had brought a judicial review against the Tavistock clinic, England’s only specialist youth gender-identity centre. She claimed that the clinic should not have allowed her to take puberty blockers and later undergo testosterone treatment and a double mastectomy. The court ruled that it was “highly unlikely” that a 13-year-old and “doubtful” that 14- and 15-year-olds are mature enough to consent to such a procedure, and that doctors treating 16- and 17-year-olds may also need to consult a judge before starting. Trans activists argue that a long-marginalised group is now finding its voice in popular culture. Their critics retort that vulnerable teenagers are losing themselves in an online world which adulates anyone who comes out as trans. --- Society is struggling to strike a balance. Some children who feel they are in the wrong body will always feel that way and might benefit from altering their bodies. Others will change their minds—many of these will simply turn out to be gay. No medical test can tell these two groups apart. --- Plenty of doctors fail to observe even WPATH’s guidelines. Laura Edwards-Leeper, a professor of psychology at Pacific University in Oregon who helped found America’s first transgender clinic for children and teens in Boston, says she gets many emails from parents “desperate to find a therapist who will not just blindly affirm that their child is trans”. Ideally, she said, an adolescent with gender dysphoria would have been regularly seeing a therapist, who encouraged them to explore other possible causes for their feelings and had a comprehensive psychological assessment before being put on blockers or hormones. “It is very rare that even one of these things happens,” she says.

“An English ruling on transgender teens could have global repercussions”

[ericfruits]

A new push to ban medical treatments for transgender children

Feb 1st 2020

WASHINGTON, DC

JAMES YOUNGER’S mother believed he should wear dresses and grow his hair long because he considered himself a girl. His father claimed the seven-year-old was perfectly content with trousers, short hair and being a boy. Almost every detail of the couple’s vicious custody battle was fought over their child’s gender identity. After his mother won, culture warriors piled in.

Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas, said the child was “a pawn in a left-wing political agenda”. A host of Republican politicians shared posts from a #ProtectJamesYounger social-media campaign. In October a judge awarded James’s parents joint custody, barring them from speaking publicly about the case. Since then its effects have rippled beyond one unhappy family. Lawmakers in a number of states say the Youngers’ row has prompted them to try to pass laws banning medical interventions that bring transgender children closer to the sex with which they identify.

On January 29th South Dakota became the first state to vote for such a bill in its lower chamber. It needs to be approved by the Senate and governor to become law. At least five others have drawn up bills which would make it illegal to perform gender-reassignment surgery on children and to prescribe puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for them.

The chief motivation of such lawmakers is political. Some cite the Texan custody case as an inspiration for their bans. But no seven-year-old child is prescribed puberty blockers or undergoes gender-reassignment surgery. To suggest as much—as some right-wing commentators have—is more rallying cry than reality check.

The danger of making trans rights an issue in the culture wars is that it prevents a discussion of the dangers of prescribing blockers and sex hormones for children who suffer from gender dysphoria, the distress caused by feeling that one’s sex at birth and gender identity do not match.

Data on all aspects of transgender medical interventions are poor. No one knows how many children have been prescribed these drugs. Little is known about how they have fared since. But in the past decade there has been a surge in the number of children treated as trans. Clinics serving them have mushroomed. In 2007 there was one. Today there are perhaps 50. Waiting lists at many are long and lengthening.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that standards of care have failed to keep pace. The biggest concern is that children put on blockers—first prescribed between the ages of 9 and 14 to suppress the action of sex hormones—and later, testosterone or oestrogen, do not first undergo sufficiently comprehensive evaluations.

Guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health say such interventions should follow “extensive exploration of psychological, family and social issues”. That seems elementary. There is no medical test for gender dysphoria. Research suggests that most children who identify as the other sex eventually grow out of it. They are also more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression. Untangling all of this and establishing whether a child is likely to go on feeling that they are in the wrong body—a guess, at best—poses significant challenges for children, parents and their doctors.

Laura Edwards-Leeper, a professor of psychology at Pacific University in Oregon who helped found America’s first transgender clinic for children in Boston, reckons the “vast majority” of children on blockers or sex hormones have not undergone proper assessments. This, she says, is because of a shortage of mental-health professionals with the necessary training and the desire of doctors to provide care for a group that has long been denied it.

This carries the obvious risk that patients will regret transitioning. No one knows how many people fall into this category. A small number of those put on blockers and sex hormones have since “detransitioned”. The most outspoken among them are lesbians who say that had they been encouraged to explore gender non-conformity—the idea, for instance, that women can be butch—rather than transgenderism, they would not have taken testosterone. Others say mental-health problems caused their gender dysphoria and cross-sex hormones were prescribed as the solution.

A second, related problem concerns the way blockers are sold to patients and their families. Developed in the 1980s to treat premature puberty, they have transformed transgender health care since they were first used for this purpose in the late 1990s. Doctors attest that they save adolescents who feel desperate about developing the “wrong” sex characteristics from enormous distress. Blockers can forestall more traumatic interventions later: the removal of breasts, or the shaving of an Adam’s apple. Their effects are largely reversible. Doctors who prescribe them routinely refer to blockers as a “conservative” measure.

Yet few children seem to step off the treatment path that blockers set them on. The great majority go on to sex hormones. Given the inadequacy of many pre-treatment evaluations, this seems unlikely to be wholly the result of sound diagnoses.

Puberty blockers also have other side-effects. Over time, they can affect bone density. This means that doctors are keen to move patients who want to continue treatment onto sex hormones within a few years. But many of the effects of these are irreversible, including infertility. Paul Hruz, an endocrinologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, says interrupting puberty may have other harmful effects. A surge of hormones during puberty may help put adolescents at ease with their birth gender. Puberty blockers would prevent that process.

Few doctors worried by these problems are prepared to speak about them openly. That is unsurprising given how inflammatory the issue has become. When Lisa Littman, a professor of behavioural and social sciences at Brown University, published a paper in 2018 in which she noted that most transgender children were teenage girls with no history of gender dysphoria—a phenomenon she called “rapid-onset gender dysphoria”—she was denounced as transphobic.

In such a polarised environment, bills proposing blanket bans of puberty blockers are likely to be counterproductive. They may push advocates for early intervention to further extremes. A better approach would be twofold. A neutral assessment of the existing data on the use of blockers, hormones and their effects would help patients and their families make decisions. Most existing research has been undertaken by those working in the field. At the same time, clinics should ensure that children in transgender clinics undergo comprehensive mental-health evaluations.

For all this to happen there needs to be an acknowledgment of the dangers of starting children on often irreversible treatments. At present, that is unimaginable.■

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "A new push to ban medical treatments for transgender children"

https://ift.tt/2tRVcpz

[mariowil]

Therapists are taking notice, too, of the increasing prevalence of people detransitioning and going back their birth sex, and suggesting a need for comprehensive psychological assessments, rather than fast-tracking children to transition. An article in The Atlantic shares interviews with Scott Leibowitz, a psychiatrist who treats children and adolescents in Columbus, Ohio, and Laura Edwards-Leeper, a psychologist at Pacific University and Oregon's Transgender Clinic. Both believe as Edwards-Leeper shares, "that comprehensive assessments are crucial to achieving good outcomes for TGNC [transgender and gender non-conforming] young people, especially those seeking physical interventions, in part because some kids who think they are trans at one point in time will not feel that way later on."

[guerrillaangel]

Red-voting conservative father of transgender child embraces changes

Red-voting conservative father of transgender child embraces changes

LEXIE CANNES STATE OF TRANS — And in the embracing of their transgender daughter Lynne, the parents, Albert and Leigh, relocated to Portland, Oregon primarily for the resources offered to trans kids in the area.

The family’s story is told in an in-depth article in Portland’s Willamette Week titled “Transgender at 10″. While I did share this story on my social media sites, I wanted to make note of…