When it comes to the staying power of evil, it would be naïve to declare the grotesque push to mutilate and sterilize America’s youth under the guise of “gender-affirming care” completely dead. Evil doesn’t take coffee breaks. But if, five or 10 years from now, we’re identifying the moment when the trans movement hit a brick wall, the year 2024 will be the clear frontrunner.
Why? Because this year, the most unlikely allies started giving pushback: legacy media outlets. Yes, the same outlets that usually carry water for progressive propaganda began to call out the madness.
And when The New York Times and The Washington Post decide they can no longer ignore the glaring cracks in your ideology, you know the house is collapsing.
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The gray lady turns on the gender agenda
Let’s start with the progressive bible itself, The New York Times, which had long accepted and even pushed the “science” underlying transgenderism.
Cue Dr. Hilary Cass, a highly respected pediatrician in England and former president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health. In 2020, the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) tasked Dr. Cass with conducting a review of its “youth gender treatments and international guidelines of care.” The catalyst for this intervention was mounting allegations that the country’s “youth gender clinic” was recklessly prescribing puberty blockers to children and only conducting “superficial” evaluations with patients.
Dr. Cass’s four-year investigation was exhaustive. She interviewed “young patients and their families, transgender adults, people who had detransitioned, advocacy groups and clinicians.” The result? A scathing report that amounted to one big, loud, “Stop the insanity!”
Okay, that’s my paraphrase, but the Times’ coverage, to everyone’s astonishment, wasn’t far off.
Here’s how they put it in May:
“Her final report, published last month, concluded that the evidence supporting the use of puberty-blocking drugs and other hormonal medications in adolescents was ‘remarkably weak.’ On her recommendation, the N.H.S. will no longer prescribe puberty blockers outside of clinical trials. Dr. Cass also recommended that testosterone and estrogen, which allow young people to develop the physical characteristics of the opposite sex, be prescribed with ‘extreme caution.’”
And the Times didn’t stop at merely reporting her findings. They gave her a platform to shred America’s trans-industrial complex. During the one-on-one interview, Dr. Cass rebuked the American Academy of Pediatrics for “misleading the public” and said that their position was animated by politics rather than science. She even described the AAP as a “fairly left-leaning organization.”
The Washington Post piles on
As if that weren’t enough, The Washington Post — the Times’ ideological twin — likewise weighed in. Their editorial board recently addressed the U.S. Supreme Court’s consideration of a Tennessee law that bars gender transitions for minors.
The paper rightly identified the core question as follows:
Are so-called gender-affirming protocols “lifesaving,” as the Biden administration claims, or is the evidence “too thin to conclude that they are beneficial and the risks are not well-understood?”
Contrary to expectations, the Post didn’t endorse the “lifesaving” claim. Instead, they zeroed in on the problems with the data behind these findings. They noted that several European health officials have criticized the pro-trans evidence as being of “very low certainty,” “lacking,” and “limited by methodological weaknesses.”
And in a direct slap to the American medical establishment, the Post outlined how the initial Dutch studies that sparked the craze to medically “transition” young people were hopelessly flawed:
“Early studies from a Dutch clinic seemed to show promising results, but the research started with only 70 patients (dropping to 55 in a follow-up study) and no control group. Treatment results that look impressive in small groups often vanish when larger groups are studied. That’s why the Food and Drug Administration generally requires large, randomized controlled trials of drugs: to ensure that encouraging initial results aren’t mere statistical noise.”
The blows kept coming. They also slammed the lack of transparency among the trans activist researchers. They pointed to U.S. physician Johanna Olson-Kennedy, who, despite receiving taxpayer funding to study the effects of puberty blockers on minors, refused to release her findings, arguing she feared the data would be “weaponized.”
As the Post emphasized: “Medical progress is impossible unless null or negative results are published as promptly as positive ones.”
In short, the Post conceded that “in the absence of clear data — and with the possibility of significant publication bias or researchers massaging their results — parents might not have adequate information” to make sound decisions for their kids.
Ya don’t say.
The backlash is long overdue
The truth is progressives overplayed their hand. If this were simply about adults donning wigs and fake breasts, most Americans might have shrugged and gone about their business. But the moment the “gender unicorn” started popping up in schools, with educators conspiring to trans kids behind their parents’ backs and doctors fast-tracking irreversible procedures onto confused children, the public’s tolerance evaporated.
And now, not even the most dependable progressive newspapers are in the left’s corner.
This doesn’t mean conservatives can declare victory and pack it in. Far from it. Evil, particularly when it targets children, will always regroup and find new avenues. It does show us, however, that smart mobilization can yield results. The nation’s mood has shifted, and the Biden administration’s stance on this issue is increasingly untenable.
Looking ahead, an incoming Trump White House has the chance to drive the final nails into the coffin of this unhinged agenda, stripping it of taxpayer support and protection. If that happens — and let’s pray it does — 2024 will go down as the year the trans radicals lost their grip on the country.
Or, to put it in terms they’d understand, the year their arguments got chopped up and sterilized — just like what they want to do to kids.
Originally published at the Standing for Freedom Center.
Jason Mattera is a New York Times bestselling author and Emmy-nominated journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
