A deception exposed

The Atlantic, a major voice of the elite left, has dealt transgenderism’s dark lies a devastating blow. Few thought we would ever see this because leftists have dutifully carried water for this anti-scientific ideology. But that has now changed with the Atlantic’s staff writer, Helen Lewis, cutting the legs out from under transgenderism’s most powerful deceptions. The article is titled, “The Liberal Misinformation Bubble About Youth Gender Medicine” and wonderfully subtitled, “How the left ended up disbelieving the science.” That is precisely the story she tells and it’s a remarkable development to be sure.

Right out of the gate, she bludgeons the wholly evil “Would you rather have a living ‘son’ or a dead daughter?” slogan peddled to cautious parents by manipulatively misinformed health professionals. Lewis bluntly asserts, “There is a huge problem with this emotive formulation: It isn’t true.”

She then boldly indicts the Biden administration’s solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, as a slick purveyor of this baseless manipulation. Prelogar wrongly told the Supreme Court in last year’s Skrmetti oral arguments that if Tennessee’s law protecting kids from dangerous “gender affirming care” stood, it would definitely “increase the risk of suicide.”

Lewis then explains how trans leaders can’t keep their story straight because in the same oral arguments, ACLU attorney Chase Strangio, when questioned hard by Justice Alito, “conceded that there is no evidence to support the idea that medical transition reduces adolescent suicide rates.” Whoops.

Strangio well knew the widely respected British Cass Review had just concluded, “It has been suggested that hormone treatment reduces the elevated risk of death by suicide in this population, but the evidence found did not support this conclusion.”

The Atlantic explains with refreshing honesty,

Here was the trans-rights movement’s greatest legal brain, speaking in front of the nation’s highest court. And what he was saying was that the strongest argument for a hotly debated treatment was, in fact, not supported by the evidence.

Lewis continues her demolition, noting how British psychologist Louis Appleby was asked by his government to determine whether suicide rates rose appreciably “as claimed by campaigners” when England restricted the use of puberty blockers in 2020. Professor Appleby’s first conclusion in his July 2024 report was “the data do not support the claim that there has been a large rise in suicide in young gender dysphoric patients.” Appleby added, “The claims that have been placed in the public domain do not meet the basic standard for statistical evidence” because “the evidence on suicide risk in children and young people with gender dysphoria is generally poor.”

Lewis then adds insult to injury by demonstrating how liberal Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor employed this debunked lie in her June 18 dissent in the recent Skrmetti decision, which affirmed Tennessee’s (and all other states’) right to protect their children from medical gender experimentation.

Sotomayor falsely claimed, “Access to care can be a question of life or death” because “if left untreaded, gender dysphoria can lead to … suicidality.” Lewis aptly corrects the ill-informed liberal justice: “Claiming that this is true of medical transition specifically—the type of care being debated in the Skrmetti case—is not supported by current research.” She contends Sotomayor utilized “zombie facts,” calling them “popular soundbites that persist in public debate, even when they have been repeatedly discredited.”

Then this bomb was dropped: “Many liberals are unaware of this however, because they are stuck in media bubbles in which well-meaning commentators make confident assertions for youth gender medicine—claims from which its elite advocates have long since retreated.” Lewis herself confesses, “I regularly used to write that medical transition was ‘lifesaving,’ before I saw how limited the evidence on suicide was.”

Lewis also carefully details what she calls “the sketchiness of the evidence base” of gender medicine, explaining, “Perhaps the greatest piece of misinformation believed by liberals … is that the American standards of care … are strongly evidenced based.” They are not. She explains the present evidence “is weak and inconclusive” and the oft-touted claim that many major medical associations support it is deceptive because “consensus is not the same as evidence … and that consensus is politically influenced.”

The Atlantic ends with this important point,

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s oral questioning in Skrmetti, and [other legal inquiries] …we now have a clearer picture of how youth gender medicine has really been operating in the United States, and an uncomfortable insight into how advocacy groups and medical associations have tamped down their own concerns about its evidence base.

The New York Times also published a very long expose the day after Skrmetti was handed down on the weaknesses of “trans” medicine, reporting that as numerous “lawsuits made their way through federal courts, some central medical claims girding the legal case for pediatric gender treatments … began to unravel amid growing scrutiny by other doctors and experts.” The Gray Lady admits the current gender regime is grounded, not in science, but in ideology “rooting gender identity in bodily autonomy” as activists argue “all people have the right to determine their own gender.”

So, there we have it. The elite hegemony long backing gender ideology is now in retreat. Let us pray other voices join, admitting just how wrong the “trans” lie has been.