In the fall of 2022, Jon Stewart had an argument with the Attorney General of Arkansas about that state’s ban on using drugs and surgeries in an effort to change the gender of children and adolescents.
“You’re suggesting that protecting children means overriding the recommendations of the American Medical Association, the American Association of Pediatrics, and the Endocrine Society,” said Stewart.
Jon Stewart was right. Those major medical organizations had indeed endorsed what’s called gender-affirming care.
But the attorney general of Arkansas was also right when she said there was never sufficient evidence for them to do so.
It’s true that gender dysphoria and gender distress are indeed serious psychological and psychiatric problems
But there has long been strong evidence that other things, including autism, anxiety, and just being gay, are being misdiagnosed by children, parents, therapists, and doctors as gender dysphoria.
And now there are the newly released internal discussions from the World Professional Association of Transgender Health, known as WPATH.
They show that trans activists aggressively pressure doctors and therapists for the medicalization of gender dysphoria with drugs and surgeries before first attempting to address autism, anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders.
The question now turns to why the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Endocrine Society advocated drugs and surgery for gender distress despite the lack of evidence.
There’s a short and a longer answer to that question.
