Thank you so much for such a well-researched piece. As a parent of an adult "non-binary" child on testosterone I can confirm that the grief is deep and never ending. Why does the medical profession not "affirm" people who say they are Jesus or Napoleon? There is a personality type susceptible to this contagion, and it is some of our most creative, intelligent and sensitive youth. I fear, constantly, for her future medical and mental health. I have to see the awful fluff growing on her face and listen to the grating testosterone voice. But it is the likely liver damage, uterine atrophy, atherosclerosis, incontinence that really trouble me, together with the damaging mental health consequences of trying to deny reality. So thank you - we parents suffer in silence, trying to avoid estrangement. But more of us are seeing the absolute urgency of being heard somehow.
Can I please suggest an edit: Re the paragraph "Australia’s trans health doctors argued that our child and adolescent gender services already aligned with Cass’ recommendations, which included embedding the services within mainstream paediatric health settings, initiating long-term research on patient outcomes, and decentralising care. All of which is true." It is in no way true that Australia's system overall adheres to Cass' recommendations. Maybe only the siting of the clinics within pediatric care. But that does not solve anything. The actual practice in our clinics is radical and completely against what Cass recommends. And there is no requirement for patients to be enrolled in research studies. There may be some studies ongoing, but you can bet that the Melbourne clinic is not going to publish anything that amounts to bad news for them.
My daughter (now 15) ID'd as trans during covid lockdowns (like so many other kids). We got referred to the Qld gender clinic and we saw them via telehealth for about 18 months. We thought, being good left-wing progressive parents, that the specialists would dig deep and realise that she'd never, not once, had any kind of interest in anything masculine. She was always the kid in princess dresses, obsessed with horses and cats. But during lockdown, with unlimited internet access she came across people who said if you question anything you must be trans. If you're a little different you must be trans. If you're "not like other girls" you must be trans.
Even when she then got diagnosed with autism the gender clinic expressed zero interest in the possibility that being autistic could make someone "not like other girls".
Oh, and she's gay too - the gender clinic didn't care about that. I'm so worried for our young lesbians, transing the gay away. Trans is so misogynistic.
They offered binders (with a trans identified man). They said they had very little risk. They offered us a very small list of "research" consisting of about 12 articles, all pro-transition, nothing about risks. They said that testosterone only had a slight risk of her thinning her hair.
All the time I researched and read and researched and read. Nothing of the scientific evidence matched up with what we're being told in the media or at the gender clinic. There is zero evidence that transitioning kids is safe. There are growing numbers of detransitioners. It seems that about 8 years is the average time it takes for detransitioners to realise they made a mistake. And with most medicalising at around 16-17 that makes sense when we know that brains mature at about 25 years old.
Last year she said she didn't want to see the gender clinic anymore. She still calls herself non-binary. She's back to appearing very feminine.
So we may have dodged a bullet, or she might change her mind again as she gets older and mixes with more pro-trans communities in real life.
Every single country that has done a systematic review of the evidence has stopped transitioning kids (or has said they will). Every single one. The only people who want to transition kids are the ones who have not properly read the science or have been swayed by the misleading summaries of the science and deliberate misinformation.
I am confused and concerned as to why The Age would not publish a detailed and well researched article that is respectful of the challenges and issues around the treatment of this vulnerable group of young people. I will be interested to hear if and when The Age publicly explains this deeply troubling stance after it commissioned the work.
What stands out for me is this statement from AusPATH:
In a published response, AusPATH alleged that the Westmead clinicians’ research “fits with misleading claims of gender diversity being something other than a very normal variation in human experience.”
It is precisely the view of gender critical feminists that diverse expressions of behaviour are normal, and that gender non-conforming children should not be medicalised to make their non-stereotypical behaviour align with their body through extreme body modification. It is the gender ideologues who are pushing a heteronormative world view where if a child plays with the 'wrong' toys, or is romantically and sexually attracted to the opposite sex, they are told that they're born in the wrong body. And to those who are now talking about 'gender diverse' and 'gender expansive' young people, they are still putting them on medical pathways to 'affirm' these identities.
Young tomboys and feminine boys who would likely grow up to be lesbian or gay are being sucked into believing they need to modify their bodies and live as the opposite sex. And those who find the whole thing overwhelming are being told that they're non-binary.
Gender ideology falls apart once there is any level of honest, intelligent, interrogations. It is totally illogical.
Thanks for a great article. The Ages loss. I did my thesis 30 years ago on children’s acquisition of gender and every article I read then and since, alongside what I discovered from children themselves, was that by age 5 children are solid in their unchanging gender identity which in almost all cases is a fit with their biological sex. The DSMV states that gender dysphoria is a psychiatric condition which is present from early childhood. Which means the current tsunami of troubled youth - all the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria 10-15 year olds - have fallen down the trans social media rabbit hole, being convinced that ‘changing gender’ will solve all their problems (it won’t) and give them street cred (sadly it does that). “There’s a good girl” by Marianne Grubecker is a great, easy read book by a lovely feminist mum and her attempts to bring up her daughter as gender-neutral. By age 3 it was clear to her mum that it was not going to work. We don’t fall in with the anorexics body dysphoria belief that at 32 kegs they are too fat and so offer them liposuction, so why do gender clinics have this appalling approach to troubled kids; we need to respectfully challenge their delusions, and work with them on what is behind it, rather than fall in with them.
I would bet a large sum of money that some influential person at The Age has a trans relative. Helen Joyce has spoken of this fact causing her to have several articles ‘spiked’ and an interview not aired.
“Being trans is not a disease or mental illness. Trans people are trans because gender diversity is a normal part of the human experience" — then why does it require radical medical and surgical 'treatment'?
Thanks Julie for this well researched and thoughtful article. It is essential that this topic is examined and discussed and developments overseas show us that more and more questions are being asked about 'gender affirming care'. Norway now the latest to cease using this model for minors. Very disappointing that the Age refused to publish this. As an Age subscriber I will be complaining about this 'censorship'.
Thank you Julie for this great piece. Sorry The Age wouldn’t publish. That’s very sad for me given my long connection with the paper. But great to see you here! I’m in the cart! This is a terrific piece. Can’t wait for the whole series!
Thankyou Julie for writing this. I have watched you turning rocks on this subject and cheered you on. It is so important and we need writers like you and Bernard Lane to continue fighting for our kids. If we can't get it out into our MSM then we are lost. I am devastated The Age would not publish your balance piece but not surprised. I thought with the recent Chip le Grand articles maybe we were moving forward; but now I see the battle is not nearly won.
This is copied from somewhere else, but it seems relevant:
Words from a lesbian teacher.
"Omg, she was SO beautiful (read: 'feminine'). Omg, she expressed no discomfort with her ‘gender’ as a child! Omg, she didn’t even play with ‘boy’ toys growing up!
So, are all the girls who never liked dresses and dolls fair game for the gender abattoirs??
Seems like so many articles and parents of girls (of the ROGD variety) who disassociate from being female are just SO shocked because these ones were stereotypical ‘girly’ as a child. She was our beautiful princess and NOW she wants to be a boy??
This leaves space for the idea that, well, with *some* girls, we can understand why THEY want to cut off their breasts and ruin their bodies with testosterone. We can see that they were 'boyish' from the start so THAT would make more sense for them to pursue lifelong medicalization and barbaric surgeries.
We all know the majority of *those* types of girls would grow up to be lesbian or bisexual. Rightfully so, that there’s an awful lot of grief and despair for the stereotypical ‘feminine’ girls who embark on a path of destruction but, the others...?
The implication is that because some girls were always ‘non-conforming’, some stridently and persistently, their desire to escape womanhood makes more sense to (homophobic) adults, parents, teachers, doctors--SOCIETY.
These non-conforming girls have parents, teachers and doctors around them who automatically AFFIRM they must REALLY be boys--it all makes sense now!
The old 'lesbians really want to be men' (read the comments about Dr. Stock) trope is alive and well. Except, this time, the butchery of our future lesbians is somehow 'understood', as their 'masculine' interests and behaviours indicate TRUE gender dysphoria on sexist questionnaires which lead them on a path to irreversible harm.
It's ALL a horror, but if you're not a lesbian you do not understand the special kind of horror it is seeing, day in and day out, young lesbians who are encouraged to destroy themselves in their deluded belief that they must really be boys because, by and large, they rebelled against sexist expectations throughout their childhood."
Questioning received wisdom should be a core part of journalism, and this particular "wisdom" is crazy.
There's no doubt that a few - very few - people become happier if they are allowed to - as gender believers would say - "present as" (or as I would say "successfully roleplay as") the other sex. People do make assumptions about what personality you "ought to have" as either a man or a woman and for some of us those assumptions are wildly wrong.
To go from there to thinking that some people *literally are* the other sex than they were born as is outright reality denial - the fact that this is being promoted and enforced at the highest levels is very concerning.
I have now read this again. It is a terrific piece. Fair and nuanced and deeply reported. Looking forward to the next piece. Pity it was not published in The Age.
Excellent well researched article. I dropped my lengthy subscription to The Age in March this year due to unbalanced coverage. I rarely watch the ABC anymore for the same reason. I'm so glad to be able to read your article on substack, please keep investigating these issues and write more.
Thanks for this Julie. I know this is not the driving factor, but you and a handful of other journos here in Australia will be regarded as brave whistleblowers with regard to this issue. I think all of us commenting here know of the risks associated with speaking up.
Folks-- you're all fabulous. I think we're going to be quite the heterodox community. Stay tuned. Huge thank you for your support.
Thank you so much for such a well-researched piece. As a parent of an adult "non-binary" child on testosterone I can confirm that the grief is deep and never ending. Why does the medical profession not "affirm" people who say they are Jesus or Napoleon? There is a personality type susceptible to this contagion, and it is some of our most creative, intelligent and sensitive youth. I fear, constantly, for her future medical and mental health. I have to see the awful fluff growing on her face and listen to the grating testosterone voice. But it is the likely liver damage, uterine atrophy, atherosclerosis, incontinence that really trouble me, together with the damaging mental health consequences of trying to deny reality. So thank you - we parents suffer in silence, trying to avoid estrangement. But more of us are seeing the absolute urgency of being heard somehow.
Can I please suggest an edit: Re the paragraph "Australia’s trans health doctors argued that our child and adolescent gender services already aligned with Cass’ recommendations, which included embedding the services within mainstream paediatric health settings, initiating long-term research on patient outcomes, and decentralising care. All of which is true." It is in no way true that Australia's system overall adheres to Cass' recommendations. Maybe only the siting of the clinics within pediatric care. But that does not solve anything. The actual practice in our clinics is radical and completely against what Cass recommends. And there is no requirement for patients to be enrolled in research studies. There may be some studies ongoing, but you can bet that the Melbourne clinic is not going to publish anything that amounts to bad news for them.
My daughter (now 15) ID'd as trans during covid lockdowns (like so many other kids). We got referred to the Qld gender clinic and we saw them via telehealth for about 18 months. We thought, being good left-wing progressive parents, that the specialists would dig deep and realise that she'd never, not once, had any kind of interest in anything masculine. She was always the kid in princess dresses, obsessed with horses and cats. But during lockdown, with unlimited internet access she came across people who said if you question anything you must be trans. If you're a little different you must be trans. If you're "not like other girls" you must be trans.
Even when she then got diagnosed with autism the gender clinic expressed zero interest in the possibility that being autistic could make someone "not like other girls".
Oh, and she's gay too - the gender clinic didn't care about that. I'm so worried for our young lesbians, transing the gay away. Trans is so misogynistic.
They offered binders (with a trans identified man). They said they had very little risk. They offered us a very small list of "research" consisting of about 12 articles, all pro-transition, nothing about risks. They said that testosterone only had a slight risk of her thinning her hair.
All the time I researched and read and researched and read. Nothing of the scientific evidence matched up with what we're being told in the media or at the gender clinic. There is zero evidence that transitioning kids is safe. There are growing numbers of detransitioners. It seems that about 8 years is the average time it takes for detransitioners to realise they made a mistake. And with most medicalising at around 16-17 that makes sense when we know that brains mature at about 25 years old.
Last year she said she didn't want to see the gender clinic anymore. She still calls herself non-binary. She's back to appearing very feminine.
So we may have dodged a bullet, or she might change her mind again as she gets older and mixes with more pro-trans communities in real life.
Every single country that has done a systematic review of the evidence has stopped transitioning kids (or has said they will). Every single one. The only people who want to transition kids are the ones who have not properly read the science or have been swayed by the misleading summaries of the science and deliberate misinformation.
I am confused and concerned as to why The Age would not publish a detailed and well researched article that is respectful of the challenges and issues around the treatment of this vulnerable group of young people. I will be interested to hear if and when The Age publicly explains this deeply troubling stance after it commissioned the work.
What stands out for me is this statement from AusPATH:
In a published response, AusPATH alleged that the Westmead clinicians’ research “fits with misleading claims of gender diversity being something other than a very normal variation in human experience.”
It is precisely the view of gender critical feminists that diverse expressions of behaviour are normal, and that gender non-conforming children should not be medicalised to make their non-stereotypical behaviour align with their body through extreme body modification. It is the gender ideologues who are pushing a heteronormative world view where if a child plays with the 'wrong' toys, or is romantically and sexually attracted to the opposite sex, they are told that they're born in the wrong body. And to those who are now talking about 'gender diverse' and 'gender expansive' young people, they are still putting them on medical pathways to 'affirm' these identities.
Young tomboys and feminine boys who would likely grow up to be lesbian or gay are being sucked into believing they need to modify their bodies and live as the opposite sex. And those who find the whole thing overwhelming are being told that they're non-binary.
Gender ideology falls apart once there is any level of honest, intelligent, interrogations. It is totally illogical.
Thanks for a great article. The Ages loss. I did my thesis 30 years ago on children’s acquisition of gender and every article I read then and since, alongside what I discovered from children themselves, was that by age 5 children are solid in their unchanging gender identity which in almost all cases is a fit with their biological sex. The DSMV states that gender dysphoria is a psychiatric condition which is present from early childhood. Which means the current tsunami of troubled youth - all the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria 10-15 year olds - have fallen down the trans social media rabbit hole, being convinced that ‘changing gender’ will solve all their problems (it won’t) and give them street cred (sadly it does that). “There’s a good girl” by Marianne Grubecker is a great, easy read book by a lovely feminist mum and her attempts to bring up her daughter as gender-neutral. By age 3 it was clear to her mum that it was not going to work. We don’t fall in with the anorexics body dysphoria belief that at 32 kegs they are too fat and so offer them liposuction, so why do gender clinics have this appalling approach to troubled kids; we need to respectfully challenge their delusions, and work with them on what is behind it, rather than fall in with them.
I would bet a large sum of money that some influential person at The Age has a trans relative. Helen Joyce has spoken of this fact causing her to have several articles ‘spiked’ and an interview not aired.
“Being trans is not a disease or mental illness. Trans people are trans because gender diversity is a normal part of the human experience" — then why does it require radical medical and surgical 'treatment'?
Thanks Julie for this well researched and thoughtful article. It is essential that this topic is examined and discussed and developments overseas show us that more and more questions are being asked about 'gender affirming care'. Norway now the latest to cease using this model for minors. Very disappointing that the Age refused to publish this. As an Age subscriber I will be complaining about this 'censorship'.
Thank you Julie for this great piece. Sorry The Age wouldn’t publish. That’s very sad for me given my long connection with the paper. But great to see you here! I’m in the cart! This is a terrific piece. Can’t wait for the whole series!
Thankyou Julie for writing this. I have watched you turning rocks on this subject and cheered you on. It is so important and we need writers like you and Bernard Lane to continue fighting for our kids. If we can't get it out into our MSM then we are lost. I am devastated The Age would not publish your balance piece but not surprised. I thought with the recent Chip le Grand articles maybe we were moving forward; but now I see the battle is not nearly won.
This is copied from somewhere else, but it seems relevant:
Words from a lesbian teacher.
"Omg, she was SO beautiful (read: 'feminine'). Omg, she expressed no discomfort with her ‘gender’ as a child! Omg, she didn’t even play with ‘boy’ toys growing up!
So, are all the girls who never liked dresses and dolls fair game for the gender abattoirs??
Seems like so many articles and parents of girls (of the ROGD variety) who disassociate from being female are just SO shocked because these ones were stereotypical ‘girly’ as a child. She was our beautiful princess and NOW she wants to be a boy??
This leaves space for the idea that, well, with *some* girls, we can understand why THEY want to cut off their breasts and ruin their bodies with testosterone. We can see that they were 'boyish' from the start so THAT would make more sense for them to pursue lifelong medicalization and barbaric surgeries.
We all know the majority of *those* types of girls would grow up to be lesbian or bisexual. Rightfully so, that there’s an awful lot of grief and despair for the stereotypical ‘feminine’ girls who embark on a path of destruction but, the others...?
The implication is that because some girls were always ‘non-conforming’, some stridently and persistently, their desire to escape womanhood makes more sense to (homophobic) adults, parents, teachers, doctors--SOCIETY.
These non-conforming girls have parents, teachers and doctors around them who automatically AFFIRM they must REALLY be boys--it all makes sense now!
The old 'lesbians really want to be men' (read the comments about Dr. Stock) trope is alive and well. Except, this time, the butchery of our future lesbians is somehow 'understood', as their 'masculine' interests and behaviours indicate TRUE gender dysphoria on sexist questionnaires which lead them on a path to irreversible harm.
It's ALL a horror, but if you're not a lesbian you do not understand the special kind of horror it is seeing, day in and day out, young lesbians who are encouraged to destroy themselves in their deluded belief that they must really be boys because, by and large, they rebelled against sexist expectations throughout their childhood."
Thank you so much for writing this
Questioning received wisdom should be a core part of journalism, and this particular "wisdom" is crazy.
There's no doubt that a few - very few - people become happier if they are allowed to - as gender believers would say - "present as" (or as I would say "successfully roleplay as") the other sex. People do make assumptions about what personality you "ought to have" as either a man or a woman and for some of us those assumptions are wildly wrong.
To go from there to thinking that some people *literally are* the other sex than they were born as is outright reality denial - the fact that this is being promoted and enforced at the highest levels is very concerning.
I have now read this again. It is a terrific piece. Fair and nuanced and deeply reported. Looking forward to the next piece. Pity it was not published in The Age.
Excellent well researched article. I dropped my lengthy subscription to The Age in March this year due to unbalanced coverage. I rarely watch the ABC anymore for the same reason. I'm so glad to be able to read your article on substack, please keep investigating these issues and write more.
Thanks for this Julie. I know this is not the driving factor, but you and a handful of other journos here in Australia will be regarded as brave whistleblowers with regard to this issue. I think all of us commenting here know of the risks associated with speaking up.