Living Under An Intolerant Religion

 You knew this was going to happen.

I am a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders. My worldview has deeply shaped my career. I have spent my professional life providing counseling to vulnerable populations: children in foster care, sexual minorities, the poor...

All that led me to a job in 2018 as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital, which had been established a year earlier. 

The center’s working assumption was that the earlier you treat kids with gender dysphoria, the more anguish you can prevent later on. This premise was shared by the center’s doctors and therapists. Given their expertise, I assumed that abundant evidence backed this consensus...

I left the clinic in November of last year because I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to “do no harm.” Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.

Today I am speaking out. I am doing so knowing how toxic the public conversation is around this highly contentious issue—and the ways that my testimony might be misused. I am doing so knowing that I am putting myself at serious personal and professional risk.

The author, Jamie Reed, goes on to quote case after case of transing gone very, very wrong. Here's one.

How little patients understood what they were getting into was illustrated by a call we received at the center in 2020 from a 17-year-old biological female patient who was on testosterone. She said she was bleeding from the vagina. In less than an hour she had soaked through an extra heavy pad, her jeans, and a towel she had wrapped around her waist. The nurse at the center told her to go to the emergency room right away.

We found out later this girl had had intercourse, and because testosterone thins the vaginal tissues, her vaginal canal had ripped open. She had to be sedated and given surgery to repair the damage. She wasn’t the only vaginal laceration case we heard about.

She and a colleague attempted to collect data on the adverse effects and then warn the other professionals at the hospital. They were first silenced and then fired.

This isn't science. This isn't ethical behavior. These are the actions of intolerant, religious fanatics. In fact, given the choice between evangelical young-earthers and these secular progressives, it would be hard to argue that the science and ethics would be worse under the evangelicals.

What we're living through is a religious revival of sorts. By that I mean the sort you really don't want to experience.

I'll take the hellfire and brimstone preachers over the people who willingly poison and mutilate children.