Gender Affirmation and Its High Price on America’s Children

Dr. Miriam Grossman, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, in New York on Sep. 23, 2022. (Blake Wu/The Epoch Times)

“They’re experimenting on the body, and people are paying a massively high price for these medical experimentations,” says Dr. Miriam Grossman, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and author of “You’re Teaching My Child What?”

In this recent two-part episode of “American Thought Leaders,” Grossman and host Jan Jekielek discussed the ideological movement behind the promotion of “gender-affirming care” among young people, the collaboration of the government and many in the medical field, the dire consequences of this, and ways parents are pushing back.

Jan Jekielek: Please tell us: How did you come to your expertise?

Dr. Miriam Grossman: I’ve been a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist for almost 40 years. As a psychiatrist for UCLA students for 12 years, I became aware that many students who were ending up in my office due to depression, anxiety, or insomnia were there because of the sexual decisions they had made.

I ended up writing two books. The first was called “Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student.” I explained how certain aspects of my profession, especially sexual health, were no longer about protecting health. They were about ideology.

Then, I wrote a book in 2009 called “You’re Teaching My Child What?” It’s mostly about sex education and targeting younger kids in the schools.

There’s a chapter, Gender Land, about gender identity being promoted to young children. I warned parents that they needed to have their eyes open about the ideology in sex education, that it was a dangerous ideology that kids and families will pay a high price for.

This gender ideology has now grown. The New York Times came out with a poll a few days ago that asked, “Do you believe that gender is a completely different thing than biology, than sex?” In the 65 and older group, I think 18 percent agreed. But in the 18-to-29 age group, 61 percent believed that gender is separate from sex.

They’re taught that those are facts. They’re told that gender is between the ears and that sex is between the legs and they’re not related, that you may choose to go on a wonderful gender journey exploring which sex you are and which gender you are. Should you decide you’re another gender, then options are open in terms of medical care. And the only option with that care is gender affirmation.

Mr. Jekielek: This “gender-affirming care” that you just mentioned is presented as the way to do things because it has been determined scientifically. You’ve made the case that this is absolutely not true. What’s “gender-affirming care”?

Dr. Grossman: “Gender-affirming care” means that whatever the child comes up with in terms of their identity, no matter how old they are or what other conditions they may suffer from, that’s their identity, and we must accept it. We affirm it, and we give them the treatment they want to get. If they’re feeling nervous about puberty starting, we give them blockers. Later, if they want to appear more like the opposite sex, we give them opposite-sex hormones and then surgeries later on.

We have to note the Orwellian manipulation of language when the term gender-affirming is used. They’re experimenting on the body, and people are paying a massively high price for these medical experimentations. All of this is just so upside down. I feel, Jan, like I’m living in a parallel universe. One universe is the whole gender industry, which includes Washington, D.C. The president himself and his assistant director of Health and Human Services came out not long ago instructing parents that if they have a child who’s questioning their gender, then it’s crucial that they get them “gender-affirming care” and basically put them on the path toward medical interventions.

Almost all the professional organizations are on board with this—The American Academy of Pediatricians, the American Psychological Association, the American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Association of Endocrinology. All these organizations have been captured by this ideology.

Mr. Jekielek: The numbers have gone through the roof. Does the combination of ideology, indoctrination, and peer pressure produce these results? Have there been studies done on this?

Dr. Grossman: Yes, there are studies, most notably from Dr. Lisa Littman, a physician researcher at Brown University. She came out with a study in 2018. She noted that there were now these parent groups online, parents of kids who, without any previous indication that they were uncomfortable with their sex—in fact, they might have been the most boyish of boys and the most girly girls—suddenly announce that they’re either the opposite sex or they’re non-binary, meaning they’re neither male nor female. And these parents were just blindsided.

They just didn’t know what the heck this was about. They would take their kids to gender therapists. The gender therapists would say, “Yes, we are going to affirm this. You don’t have a daughter; you now have a son.” When these parents would protest, the gender therapist would say, “If you’re not going to accept your daughter as your son, you’re the problem.” They would often say this after one or two meetings with the family, and they would say it in front of the child.

These parents would grab their child and run, but they didn’t know where to go. Then, they began to find one another online. They were anonymous online, because a lot of them were scared to put their name on this and admit they were questioning the process.

I’ve talked to a lot of these parents, and this has been, for most of them, the most difficult thing they’ve ever gone through. This destroys families and marriages.

And this is where transgenderism and the COVID lockdowns start to intersect. With the COVID lockdowns and kids not going to school and being online 24/7, they were exposed to these ideas about transgenderism. Hundreds of influencers on YouTube and other platforms were describing their transition from male to female or female to male.

But then you can look at the detransitioners, and we have thousands of them now, the kids who got all the “gender-affirming treatment” and whose parents did go along with it. They talk about feeling suicidal because of where they are now. They’re recognizing that their original mental health issues were never addressed. They still have their depression, anxiety, and trauma.

They were placed on an assembly line toward medicalization. Now, they don’t have their breasts any longer. They may not have the genitals they were born with.

Why are they being silenced? Why are they being canceled?

We need professional medical people who aren’t going to treat this as a civil rights issue, who see it instead as a medical, mental health issue.

And we have to listen to the people who have been through this process, the detransitioners. Their suffering is such that I can’t read it sometimes. To see what my colleagues have done to these kids and how they’re suffering is a nightmare.

Mr. Jekielek: What do you recommend for people facing this with family members or friends?

Dr. Grossman: If you have a child that’s changing in the way they present to the world and how they speak about themselves in terms of male and female, then you want to get educated about this topic. There are many resources online and many parent support groups.

And if your child comes to you with this very shocking announcement, you want to remain calm. You want to say: “Tell me more about this. I can see it’s really important to you, and whatever’s important to you is important to me. We’re going to learn as much as we can about this, and we’re going to start having conversations. It’s not going to happen in one conversation. It’s going to be an ongoing conversation.”

The research is very poor around these experimental therapies. On the other hand, all these people, the pediatrician, the guidance counselor, and the people at your kid’s school, are going to speak about it as if this is a done deal, and there’s no argument. And if you do have an argument, then you have your own issues. You’re transphobic.

We wouldn’t do this in any other field of medicine, but we’re doing it when it comes to so-called gender-affirming care. The goal of this movement is to erase the differences between male and female, to erase these fundamental truths, these biological truths that are eternal. They want to erase them. Now, I don’t have a question in my mind that in the end, they won’t prevail and that the truth will prevail. Mother Nature will prevail. She always does. The question is, how high is the body count?

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.