This Is The Thing That We Have To Do.

Not by complaining, not by gripping but by action. In the New York Times Letters-to-the-Editor

To the Editor:

Re “Gender Dysphoric Kids Deserve Better Care,” by Pamela Paul (column, Feb. 4):

I’m an L.G.B.T.Q.+ teenager. Ms. Paul cites stories of detransitioners as if they are damning to the practice of gender-affirming care as a whole. Not all detransitioners regret their transition, and not all transgender people will medically transition. An overwhelming 98 percent of people who started their transition care as youths continue into adulthood, per a 2022 study from the Netherlands published in The Lancet.

Speaking from experience, my peers and friends who have undergone medical transitions have never “regretted” it, and after beginning care, their quality of life greatly improved. If Ms. Paul wants to demonize a procedure with a high rate of regret, she should look toward knee replacement, where one in five people end up dissatisfied.

By writing this article, Ms. Paul further stigmatizes health care for transgender people. Transition care may be good for some people. It may not be for others. This is a basic premise of medicine — people must have the right to make decisions with their doctors on what is right for them.

What we do know is that transgender youth are under attack across the nation. Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, last month demanded records from providers outside his state to single out hospitals or clinics that have treated transgender youth from Texas.

I fear for my future. I fear for my friends and their futures.

By continuing to harbor this dangerous rhetoric in her pieces, Ms. Paul makes it harder and harder for trans people to get the care that they desperately need as lawmakers across the country clamp down on our rights. I understand her concern, but it is misplaced.

Charles Yale
Omaha

We cannot let any anti-article go unanswered, we have to get the truth out there, in another Letter-to-the-Editor in the NYT…

To the Editor:

I was a trans child. From 12 to 17, I identified as male and was entrenched in the online world of radical trans activism. And, like many other female detransitioners, I am a lesbian, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and on the autism spectrum.

My doctors knew all these things, and prescribed me testosterone at 15 anyway with minimal questioning. When I was approved for “top surgery,” I had just been released from a two-month stay in a teen rehabilitation facility after suffering severe suicidal ideation.

Now, I’m 17, and I feel as if my adolescence was taken from me. When I decided to detransition, it felt like leaving a cult. I was quickly forced into the role of “outsider.”

Detransitioners are viewed as just a rare minority who made a mistake. It’s all our fault for not thinking our transition through, despite doctors and trans activists assuring us every step of the way that this was the only way we could ever be happy.

I was officially diagnosed with gender dysphoria and was in many ways the textbook presentation of transgender identity, and I still ended up growing out of it. If it can happen to me, it can certainly happen to the thousands of teenagers who get on hormones after identifying as trans for significantly shorter periods of time.

Our stories have to be listened to and taken seriously, and I am grateful for people like Pamela Paul who are willing to give us a chance.

Maxine Doak
Doylestown, Pa.

To the Editor:

As the father of a healthy, thriving late 20s trans and nonbinary child who transitioned in their teens, I’m appalled at the lack of credible, large-scale research in Pamela Paul’s column.

We parents notice the media’s drumbeat of detransition stories, with no similar focus on the overwhelming majority of trans people who lead healthy, fulfilling and successful lives — thanks in large part to their ability to access proven and affirming health care.

The research done to date on whether the majority of people who received gender-affirming medical care have any regrets is crystal clear — overwhelmingly good, positive news.

In a meta study across 7,928 people in 13 countries who had received gender-affirming medical care, only 1 percent expressed regret.

We are begging you to cover positive and affirming stories of trans people who are leading “normal” happy and comfortable lives thanks to the care they’ve received.

Tom Murphy
Long Beach, Calif.

There a number of other Letters-to-the-Editor most of them are positive but a few negative Letters-to-the-Editor one was by coordinator of the Women’s Declaration International USA Desisted and Detransitioned Women’s Caucus whatever that organization is.

We cannot let these lies go unchallenged, we have to get the truth out there, we have to be strong to stand up in opposition to fake news out there. We need to be strong to protect our rights because they want to criminalize us and force us back into the closet.