Guest post: Transition is mandatory
Originally a comment by Papito on Boston Children’s Hospital.
In many American states (I haven’t added up which ones lately), therapy for kids identified as suffering from gender dysphoria, which does not affirm their transition, is considered to be “conversion therapy,” and is illegal.
In Massachusetts, the law is HR 140, passed in 2019.
The law has specific exceptions for therapists who are encouraging children to change their gender identification to the opposite gender. It only prohibits providing therapy to children that affirms their actual sex.
This law, similar to laws in dozens of other states, all passed in the last decade, makes it possible that a therapist could not only lose his license to practice, but be sued or prosecuted for providing therapy to a child that does not confirm and cement the child’s stated belief of being transgender.
In practice, this means that almost no therapists want to go anywhere near kids with gender issues, except for those therapists who most enthusiastically “affirm,” such as the ideologues hired by gender clinics. It’s hot potato with these kids until they get to a place like Children’s, which fits them in the surgical disassembly line.
What could the state do if the therapist treats the children and doesn’t use the words “Trans” or “gender” but helps them identify and resolve the issues that lead them to believe they are trans? What would happen if a therapist treats a child for issues related to sexual abuse and the child desists? Can the state prove that there is a de facto mens rea?
I don’t see how this law can be upheld in a state supreme court. It interferes with privileged and confidential treatment.
Mike, not every law has to go to court to have an effect. There are therapists who will work with kids with gender issues, without talking about the gender issues. The main problem that autistic kids have (and autistic kids are an outsized proportion of the kids caught up in the gender cult) is anxiety. A therapist could treat such a kid for anxiety. Or for depression. Or for social skills deficits.
In practice, though, very few therapists will, just because of the threat to their livelihoods it is to get anywhere near a gender dysphoric child. As you know, it doesn’t have to be proven or adjudicated for someone to lose his job over this trans stuff. It just has to be asserted.
Imagining that there’s a therapist out there who likes to live dangerously and wants to walk right up to the edge of a law like this and dare someone to sue him is being entirely too imaginative. Therapists have mortgages and student loans to pay too.
Catholic Reactionary Matt Walsh had a calm, clear eyed examination of this issue in which he asks gender therapists these kinds of questions.
This is like a religion. They cannot answer simple questions. Asking the questions in itself is phobic and forbidden. It is awful to watch.