An Open Letter to the Florida State Surgeon General
Medical policies should be evidence-based, not activist-driven.
I was invited to speak at a meeting with officials from the Florida State Department of Health on Friday, July 8 to advise them on policy decisions regarding the healthcare treatment of trans identifying people. Unfortunately, due to health challenges, I am unable to speak there in person. In lieu of attending, I am asking the Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, to read this letter and watch a brief excerpt from my interview with Helen Joyce. The letter follows.
Dear Dr. Ladapo,
I regret being unable to attend this morning’s meeting due to health issues. I understand each participant is allotted 10 minutes to speak. In lieu of being there, I’m requesting that you instead use my time slot to watch this 8-minute video clip in which I share the heart of my concerns as to why “affirming gender identity," particularly in youth, is dangerous, misguided, and a far departure from the normal standards of care for how clinicians treat any other mental health issue.
The clip is an excerpt of this two-hour interview with author Helen Joyce in which I shared my story. Helen is the Director of Advocacy at the UK-based organization Sex Matters, and the author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality. I am a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT) based in Portland, Oregon, licensed for 6 years and practicing for 9. I was trained in the “gender-affirming” therapy model, and adhered to it, working with many transgender-identifying youth and adults. After noticing some consistently concerning patterns about the beliefs, behaviors, and mental health patterns associated with transgenderism, though, I began to question, research, and examine the issue in depth. In September 2021, it felt necessary to speak out publicly about my concerns, and I found the courage to do so. Three months later, in December 2021, online trans rights activists (TRAs), strangers to me, found my work online, accused me of “conversion therapy,” threatened my career, and reported me to my licensing board. In February 2022, a mentally unstable parent attended a single session of the support group I run for parents who are concerned about their trans-identifying teens, then proceeded to harass me and filed a board complaint. I was notified that I was under investigation in April. After responding to the investigator’s questions and working with my lawyer, the case was reviewed by the board and dismissed in June. The conversation with Helen took place shortly thereafter. I recommend listening to the full story if you can find the time. But fortunately, Sex Matters extracted what they believe to be the most crucial part of the message, and that can be found in this succinct 8-minute clip I am asking you to watch at Friday’s meeting.
Adolescents are highly susceptible to social contagion and not developmentally capable of consenting to the life-altering, permanent decisions involved in so-called “affirming care.” Activists will intimidate you with poorly conducted studies about suicide risk in trans-identifying youth, conflating prevalence of suicidal ideation with behavior (two very different things) while ignoring the substantial factor of suggestibility and their own egregious act of telling vulnerable youth that they will kill themselves—or should threaten to do so in order to get what fellow gender cultists on TikTok and Tumblr have convinced them they want.
Meanwhile, though, the actual numbers tell you a much different story about suicide risk factors vs. protective factors. It is well established that puberty blockers impair bone development, leading to chronic pain and disability, which are well established risk factors for suicide in adulthood. Compare this with the protective factors of being able to exercise and enjoy sports, hobbies, and leisure activities with minimal physical impairment. We also know that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries limit, complicate, or eliminate altogether the potential for sexual pleasure and reproduction. Sexual pleasure is an important aspect of wellbeing and mood regulation for the vast majority of adults, and having a healthy, happy romantic relationship is among the greatest protective factors when it comes to mental health. Likewise, responsibility to loved ones, most importantly children, is a huge protective factor for those otherwise at risk of suicide. When we take away youth’s future abilities to enjoy sex without pain, form loving relationships, and have families, while inducing permanent disabilities and reliance on the medical system, and experimenting on their brains through powerful mood-altering substances, we are setting the next generation up for the worst suicide epidemic the last century will have seen.
When it comes to parenting, as well as how we collectively rear our society’s children through other supportive adult familial and professional roles, safeguarding and boundary-setting are important components of showing children that we care about their long-term wellbeing and scaffolding their development until they are able to make healthy decisions for themselves. Allowing immature people to make decisions they are not ready for and are likely to regret will be experienced for the rest of their lives as abandonment and betrayal, permanently damaging their abilities to trust their families, therapists, and doctors—and therefore, once again, elevating their risk of suicide.
Even adults who medically transition often regret it and face devastating consequences. Consider reading the blog of Michelle Alleva. I especially implore you to listen to the stories of males who have had orchiectomies, penectomies and vaginoplasties that have permanently damaged their entire pelvic region. Take, for instance, this interview between Blaire White and Shape Shifter, or the story of Ritchie Herron. These men are entering adulthood broken, devastated, permanently dependent on the medical system (here’s but one example), and worst of all—blaming themselves. Medical professionals should have known better, should have protected them. Even without surgeries, cross-sex hormones are well known to induce endocrine, neurological, bone, and cardiovascular disorders. Plus, a few years on testosterone will force many women to undergo hysterectomies due to painful vaginal atrophy, so avoiding surgery may not be an option for many people once they have begun cross-sex hormones. Extensive data on this can be found at statsforgender.org.
It is well known that this ideology is driving painful wedges between families: between children and their parents who are concerned for them, and between parents who have differing opinions on how they should treat their trans-identifying child. By allowing these medical technologies to be available to minors at all, the healthcare system triangulates parents who love and want to protect their children into being the bad guy. Please see, for instance, the heartbreaking stories at Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans, or listen to The Witness Podcast. The medical system needs to stop enabling this breakdown in the family. As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, I believe it is our job as mental and physical health care professionals to restore harmonious functioning and healthy communication to family systems whenever possible, and we should question any ideology or trend that threatens to undermine the relationships that have the potential to be the most stable, loving and supportive of an individual’s long-term wellbeing.
In case this and the other testimonies you will hear today are not enough information, I’ve also compiled this YouTube playlist of episodes of my podcast that focus on the issue of gender. I also have a blog, online resource list, and recommended reading list. You can follow me on Twitter for articles, interviews and retweets on an ongoing basis.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Stephanie Winn, LMFT
July 7, 2022
