Does Social Transition Lead to Surgery?

Until the early 2000s, medical professional organizations and psychiatry textbooks consistently stated that there two sexes-male and female-and those identities after the first thirty months are “firmly established and resistant to change”.

Today, Poudre School District students are taught the opposite.

Beginning in elementary school, PSD students are taught that gender is an internal sense of how you feel and it can change from day to day. The idea of gender as a spectrum of possibilities is promoted by the stories read to elementary students…

​

…and the concept is further driven into students’ minds through the lessons taught in middle and high school health classes. In those classes, students are taught that people may identify as a myriad of genders or no gender at all. The gender identity possibilities are endless, the kids learn.

“Gender and Identity are continuously evolving.”

PSD administration backs up this educational philosophy with district policies which provide for the social transitioning of children. Social transitioning occurs when someone transitions to a new identity by way of changing names and pronouns.

PSD students are fully supported by the district in this process. District children of any age may decide for themselves to socially transition. Parental knowledge or consent is not required. The district justifies keeping the information from parents based on their belief that the trust between the minor child and public-school employees is paramount. District policy mentions no concerns regarding the maintenance of a trusting relationship between parents and their children.

School Opinion Trumps Parents

Access to social transition without parental consent is fully embraced by newly elected PSD Board of Education members Jessica Zamora and Conor Duffy. Both recently expressed their support of this social transitioning process during a Board of Education candidate forum sponsored by Out Boulder County in early October.

“…we can’t negate a child’s rights for the sake of a parent’s rights.” -Zamora

“…parents may be upset by this, but at the end of the day, if a parent’s right is upsetting that safe spot for that student to be able to learn the very best that they can, then the child is first.” -Duffy

PSD leaders promoting the concept of gender fluidity and social transitioning of students say they are doing this out of compassion and care for children expressing their “true” identities. They believe that the children know their internal “authentic” selves and the district wants to do all it can to support those children. We have no reason to doubt their motives.

And it seems simple enough: take a potentially upset, confused, distressed child, allow the child to choose a new name and pronouns that suit how he or she feels, and...VOILA! You now have a happy, safe, stable child ready to spend his or her day successfully learning at school.

But What if PSD is Wrong?

Is it possible a seemingly harmless social transition is more significant than they realize?

We wonder if PSD leadership understands that what they gloss over as a simple act of compassion is actually quite complex?

According to experts in the field, social transitioning is NOT simple. Social transition of children is a major, experimental, and controversial psychotherapeutic intervention that profoundly impacts the child’s future. When the district asks teachers and fellow students to socially transition students in their classrooms, the district is having them perform a significant mental health intervention. Teachers are trained and licensed to teach, not to perform complicated psychosocial interventions with their students.

Before the broad use of social transitioning of children, many studies demonstrated that most children diagnosed with gender dysphoria would return to identifying as their natal sex by puberty or adulthood. Recent studies indicate that children who are encouraged to socially transition at a young age drastically changes those outcomes. When children are socially transitioned at an early age, a substantial number of them who would otherwise have reverted to identifying with their natal sex, do not and instead persist in a transgender identity.

In plain terms, the early social transitioning of a child:

• increases the likelihood of the child identifying as the opposite gender into adulthood

• increases the likelihood of the child receiving puberty-blocking hormones

• increases the likelihood of the child receiving cross-sex hormones

• increases the likelihood of the child going through complicated genital and cosmetic surgeries

• increases the likelihood of the child never having biological children

​Dr. Stephen B. Levine, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and founder of the Case Western Reserve University Gender Identity Clinic summarizes it this way:

“…therapy for young children that encourages transition cannot be considered to be neutral, but instead is an experimental procedure that has a high likelihood of changing the life path of the child, with highly unpredictable effects on mental and physical health, suicidality, and life expectancy. Claims that a civil right is at stake do not change the fact that what is proposed is a social and medical experiment. (Levine, Reflections, at 241.) Ethically, then, it should be undertaken only subject to standards, protocols, and reviews appropriate to such experimentation.”

What Questions Should We Ask?

Social transition is truly a profound intervention with lifelong impacts. It is not just basic kindness. When a young child’s gender identity confusion is affirmed, the district confirms that his body is wrong and should be rejected. The district confirms the disconnect between his mind and his physical reality. Each time a new name and pronoun is used, the child’s brain is rewired to believe it. It is an active intervention that profoundly affects a child’s psychology. It is a psychosocial intervention that likely leads to biomedical treatments.

• Do PSD leaders know that while using new names and pronouns seem harmless, they are leading children down a path that may result in painful surgeries, infections, and infertility?

• In affirming children's gender identities, PSD leadership desires to make kids safe and happy. But considering all the complicated ramifications, are they truly being kind?

• PSD leaders do not have to live with the potential lifelong complications for their students who they socially transition, but the parents of the children will. Is it fair for the district to perform psychosocial interventions without parental consent or involvement?

• Gender dysphoria is complicated—have PSD leaders truly understood the issue and implications of their policies from all standpoints? Have they actively pursued dissenting opinions? Sought the opinions of experts?