Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters

by Abigail Shrier

In order to justify the peculiar mandate that therapists immediately accept patients’ self-diagnosis when presented with someone claiming gender dysphoria, we must answer two questions: 1) Is the gender dysphoria causing the suicidal ideation? And 2) Do we have any evidence that affirmation ameliorates mental health problems? The answer to both questions, it seems, is no. In a recent academic study, Kenneth Zucker found that the mental health outcomes for adolescents with gender dysphoria were very similar to those with the same mental health issues who did not have gender dypshoria. In other words, we have no proof that the gender dysphoria was responsible for the suicidal ideation or tendency to self-harm. It may have been the many other mental health problems that gender dysphoric adolescents so often bear. Still, even if the gender dysphoria were not responsible for the suicidal ideation, it might be worth “affirming” these youths if doing so would cure their depression and lift their suicidal fantasies. Unfortunately for proponents of affirmative therapy, there is no evidence that this is the case. There are a few important studies on point, though none is definitive here, since the current craze is so new. One is a long-term study of adult transsexuals (the term in use at the time) showing a rise in suicidality after sex reassignment surgery.18 Another, more relevant to today’s gender-crazed girls, comes from a leaked 2019 report from the Tavistock and Portman Trust ...