Several years ago, my Twitter account was suspended for an article I linked to about the dangers of hormones and puberty blockers being prescribed for children suffering from gender dysphoria.
In fact, it was far worse than anyone had imagined at that time. The drugs, sold as "safe and reversible," were in fact extraordinarily harmful and, in most cases, left the child who wanted to detransition with irreversible damage.
These facts are now part of the growing number of suits being brought by dozens of parents and detransitioning adults against the snake oil salesmen, child abusers, and other charlatans who were either too stupid to realize what they were doing, or prescribed the drugs knowing the dangers.
In March 2024, the group Environmental Progress published a cache of documents and videos obtained from the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) that proved that clinicians engaged in treatment for gender disorders knew the risks in medicating kids as young as nine years old and, in many cases, knew that the treatments were doing harm.
Some of the revelations in the WPATH Files included:
- Clinicians internally discussed whether young adolescents and children have the developmental capacity to provide informed consent regarding life-altering and irreversible consequences, such as lifelong infertility and sexual dysfunction.
- Providers frequently discussed "improvising" treatments as they go, with some members acknowledging they do not fully understand the long-term impacts of cross-sex hormones and surgeries.
- During subsequent legal proceedings in state-level lawsuits over youth care bans, unsealed documents revealed that WPATH leadership attempted to suppress systematic evidence reviews from Johns Hopkins University that did not align with their pro-medicalization policies.
"In the WPATH Files, members demonstrate a lack of consideration for long-term patient outcomes despite being aware of the debilitating and potentially fatal side effects of cross-sex hormones and other treatments," says the press statement from Environmental Progress accompanying the release of the files. "Messages in the files show that patients with severe mental health issues, such as schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, and other vulnerabilities such as homelessness, are being allowed to consent to hormonal and surgical interventions."
Incredible.
The warnings came too late for 23-year-old Jonni Skinner, who grew up in a fundamentalist Christian town in rural Michigan. Young Jonni also suffered from a form of Asperger's Syndrome, which made it difficult for him to form friendships. The kids bullied him for his effeminate personality, and his own family rejected him.
When he was 13, he told his mother that he might be transgender. This is after reading online testimonies from trans influencers and having a lesbian as a private tutor. His mother seemed relieved. He had a girl's brain and was trapped in a boy's body. She took him to a quack psychologist who diagnosed him with gender dysphoria.
He began to take hormones and a drug that stopped the production of testosterone. Thus began a nightmarish existence for Jonni that continues today, even after his decision to detransition.
The psychologist was a piece of work. After telling her about his difficulties as a gay kid in a small town, she jumped to the conclusion that he was, in reality, a girl.
Rather than helping me work through any of it, she affirmed all of my fears. She said she could see why I was afraid of the discrimination I would face. She told me that nowhere would be a good place to be gay for someone like me, because I had a “feminine essence” and gay men wanted men, and that just wasn’t who I was. She said I could transition and fly under the radar as a woman in my hometown. And I could find a man to love me that way.
"She then told my mom that if I matured through male puberty, the prejudice and worsening mental health would be so crushing that around 60 percent of kids in my position would choose to kill themselves rather than live that way," Jonni writes. The dishonesty alone should send that quack to prison.
After hearing that suicide warning, his mom, like all parents would have, panicked. "My mom had watched me struggle for years — coming home from school in tears, and withdrawing more and more into myself," Jonni writes. "And here was a professional, in a clinical setting, telling her that the alternative to medical transition was her child’s death."
"She just wanted to keep me alive," said Jonni.
The therapist referred me to an endocrinologist, who was also, as it happened, a gay man. At that first appointment my mom asked the question: How do we know Jonni isn’t just gay?
The endocrinologist wheeled over a whiteboard. All embryos start female, he explained. The brain develops first. Sometimes there’s a delayed testosterone release and the brain feminizes—but then the body masculinizes. I was simply born in the wrong body.
My mom began to push back. She said she wanted no permanent changes until I was old enough to consent. The endocrinologist told her, matter-of-factly, that if I wasn’t living in a supportive home, he could find one for me. She’s told me since then that at that moment, she went completely blank. She didn’t want me taken from her.
Within two weeks, Jonni was put on the female hormone estrogen and spironolactone — a diuretic originally developed to treat heart failure that also suppresses testosterone. The drugs made his life miserable. He was in constant pain and suffered seizures.
"Just after I turned 14, I got a puberty-blocker implant—histrelin acetate, inserted under the skin of my arm—and returned to school shortly thereafter, where the bullying was worse than anything I’d known before," Jonni writes. "I had a pixie cut, was using she/her pronouns, and was wearing feminine clothing. Kids threw food at me and taunted me relentlessly."
The pain in my sides grew worse, and I watched what little muscle mass I had disappear entirely. I would get full-body muscle spasms in the hallway — charley horses in my arms and legs and torso that would drop me to the floor mid-stride. I would lose control of my bladder at the same time, convulsing on the ground. I began peeing blood. The Mayo Clinic has listed some of these side effects for spironolactone or histrelin acetate. My endocrinologist cast doubt that any of it was related to the medication I was taking.
He developed breasts that discharged a fluid into his bra and soaked his shirt. "When my mom asked my endocrinologist about this, he said, 'Welcome to womanhood and explained it away as lactation," said Jonni.
Note: No one born male has ever "lactated" anywhere for any reason.
Jonni found out at 17 that the hormones had made it impossible for him to experience a climax. "What none of them [doctors] ever told me was that the combination of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones had effectively chemically castrated me," Jonni wrote.
And then, in early 2024, I came across the WPATH files—leaked internal documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the organization whose guidelines had governed my entire treatment. What I found inside was devastating: documentation that the people setting the standards for pediatric gender medicine had serious internal doubts about the evidence base for what they were recommending—and had never disclosed those doubts to patients or families like mine.
A third of my life was a lie. And my body, permanently altered, was the proof.
"Every single one of these consequences was caused by 'treatment' I received as a child. Somewhere right now there is another child who feels alone. He’s finding the same content online that I found. He’s being told the same thing I was told: that the only way to survive is to become someone else," Jonni said.
How many times has Jonni's story been repeated in the last 20 years? How many young people are still trapped in a world they didn't create and were imposed on them by so-called "medical professionals"?
This is a national tragedy being covered up by WPATH and their acolytes in the media, who reject the science because it shows how wrong they've been. They would rather people die than them be wrong.
A good start would be the medical community calling these charlatans out, taking their professional licenses, and banning them from touching another child.
Since the medical establishment is complicit in these crimes, we shouldn't expect any action anytime soon.
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