Just over a month ago, I wrote that 2026 should be the year of the normie. The verdict in Fox Varian v. Kenneth Einhorn et al. shows why.

On Friday, January 30, 2026, a jury in Westchester County Supreme Court in White Plains, New York, awarded Fox Varian—a 22-year-old detransitioned woman—$2 million in damages in her malpractice suit against clinical psychologist Kenneth Einhorn and plastic surgeon Simon H. Chin. The case centered on the double mastectomy she underwent at age 16 in 2019. The jury found the defendants liable for departing from the standard of care, inadequate evaluation, and failures in informed consent. This marks the first time a detransitioner malpractice claim has gone to trial and resulted in a compensatory verdict in the U.S., signaling potential accountability for similar cases.

Varian’s story will be familiar to anyone acquainted with the playbook of so-called gender experts. Her doctors failed at every turn. Instead of investigating the source of her distress, they simply put her on a conveyor belt toward life-changing surgery—the consequences of which they assumed that she, a 16-year-old girl, understood. In other words, they offered the same slipshod treatment that affirmation-only clinicians always offer the young and the vulnerable.

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Because the court transcripts are sealed to protect Varian’s private healthcare information, we don’t have precise details about the harms she endured. But more than ten years into the medical scandal, it’s not hard to imagine what they might be. We have learned about them from the brave detransitioners who have testified in legislative chambers across the country and from stories such as this one and this one, which we have published here on Inspecting Gender. The question is, why has this been so long in coming?

The answer is that Varian’s case was the first to be decided by a jury—in other words, by normies: people with no skin in the game, just an idea of what constitutes reasonable behavior, or common sense.

They listened as Varian described lifelong physical disfigurement, chronic nerve pain, shame, and regret. They heard her mother testify about being pressured to consent because she was led to believe her daughter was at risk of suicide—a fear amplified by the psychologist (Einhorn). They listened as Einhorn gave damning testimony, in which he confused body dysmorphia with gender dysphoria and stumbled over inaccuracies and omissions in approval letters. They learned about the inadequate coordination and communication between the psychologist and the surgeon, about skipped psychological evaluations, unaddressed comorbidities (depression, ADHD, autism, anorexia), and rushed processes.

It was all damning.

And yet, unlike judges who defer to self-proclaimed gender experts or politicians who somehow manage to mouth their party’s line with a straight face, the jury listened and drew the obvious conclusion.

The case was also important because it established that “affirmation-only” or rapid-transition models are not protected from malpractice claims when clinicians bypass thorough assessments, informed consent, or coordination—even when they claim to be following WPATH or similar guidelines.

Such vulnerabilities may change how insurers view gender procedures, both from the perspective of providing coverage for individuals seeking them and from that of doctors who are now at risk of malpractice claims.

The verdict was a timely reminder that even in a deep-blue state like New York, most people, when presented with the evidence, grasp the problems with gender medicine immediately. This is also why it is always worth talking to anyone —friends, neighbors, family members —who will listen. While they don’t wield the power of a politician or a judge, together reasonable people will eventually make a difference.

Nancy McDermott is the director of Genspect USA

Detrans Awareness Day 2026

On March 12th in Washington DC, Genspect will host Detrans Awareness Day 2026: Life Beyond Transition.

Life Beyond Transition brings together leading voices to confront the realities of detransition and set in motion a long-overdue reckoning across law, medicine, and public policy. Please consider attending or sponsoring a detransitioner so that they can share their story.

Genspect proudly supports and co-signs a citizen petition to the Food and Drug Administration calling for urgent regulatory oversight of the widespread off-label prescription of estrogen to males in gender medicine practices.

The citizen petition requests that the FDA open a docket on this issue and hold hearings on the risks, benefits, and scientific uncertainties associated with this off-label use. The petition further recommends the FDA consider the following actions to protect patients: require a boxed warning on estrogen, conduct a comprehensive safety review and REMS evaluation, mandate enhanced adverse event reporting, and develop communications for medical providers regarding safeguards.

The petition cites mounting evidence of severe harms from this practice, including a 5x increase in risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE), a 10x increase in stroke risk, a 26x increase in testicular cancer, a 22x to 40x increase in risk of breast cancer, an 80% increase in the standardized all-cause mortality ratio, risks of decreased brain volume. It increases in suicidality (attempts, planning, and hospitalization). Critically, there remains no high-quality evidence that these interventions improve mental health outcomes or reduce suicidality in the long term.

“The evidence is mounting that prescribing estrogen to males in gender medicine carries profound and irreversible risks that far outweigh any purported benefits,” said Nancy McDermott, Director of Genspect USA.

“Vulnerable individuals, including many young people and those with neurodiverse conditions, are being assured these treatments are safe and necessary, when the science reveals serious harms and significant uncertainties. The FDA has a responsibility to intervene and uphold rigorous standards of patient protection.”

“No other medical practice involving such elevated risks—from blood clots and strokes to cancers and potential cognitive impacts—would be allowed to continue without thorough regulatory scrutiny,” McDermott added.

“Gender medicine must no longer be exempted from the evidence-based accountability applied to all other interventions.”

In addition to Genspect, the petition is co-signed by the LGB Courage Coalition, numerous clinicians, detransitioned individuals previously subjected to these interventions, and concerned citizens committed to evidence-based care. To see the complete list of supporters, see the petition.

FDA Citizen Petition

806KB ∙ PDF file

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A request for regulatory oversight of the off-label use of estrogen in males

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For more on Genspect USA, visit: https://genspect.org/international/usa/
Media inquiries: Contact Nancy McDermott, Director of Genspect USA, at Nancy@genspect.org

Dear Friends,

Before we all plunge into turkey, pie, and football, I want to say how grateful I am to each one of you for your engagement and support over the past year.

I particularly want to thank everyone who attended The Bigger Picture in New Mexico, whether as a speaker or an attendee. As Stella O’Malley wrote in her recent analysis of who attended, the specter of political violence in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination cast a pall over the conference. You stood firm and came anyway.

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I believe we will look back on this period of political turmoil as one preceding a historic reassertion of the classical liberal values that gave rise to the American experiment in the first place. This requires that we also engage in a moral project by asking fundamental questions such as: What kind of nation do we want to be? A nation that allows experimental medical procedures on children and vulnerable adults? Or one that recognizes and enforces the boundaries between men and women, children and adults, families and the state—boundaries that make life meaningful and civilization possible?

I am grateful that, when the stakes are so high, so many of you are so incredibly brave and willing to show up despite risks and doubts.

I am thankful that so many gender clinics have closed under pressure and even more pleased that a few, like Catholic hospitals, have ended gender-related procedures as a matter of principle. We are grateful to the clinicians, researchers, whistleblowers, detransitioners, lawyers, advocates, parents, politicians, and members of the administration who worked so hard to bring this about.

I am grateful for the long-awaited publication of The Gender Framework. (We’ll be doing a deep dive into the content in the months to come on Inspecting Gender.)

Let’s celebrate each victory. The Empire will inevitably strike back, but, thankfully, you are a fine bunch of rebels.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Nancy McDermott

Genspect USA

On October 7, 2025, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, a case challenging Colorado’s law, which subjects mental health providers to professional discipline should he attempt to help a minor address their sexual orientation or gender identity in any other way other than affirming the gay or transgender identity. Legal observers, including mainstream media, predict the Court will strike down the law. A 7-2 decision appears likely, with Justices Jackson and Sotomayor dissenting.

The Colorado Law

The case centers on Colorado’s 2019 law restricting therapeutic practice with minors. Colorado Revised Statute §12-245-202 defines “conversion therapy” as:

any practice or treatment by a licensee, registrant, or certificate holder that attempts or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.

“Conversion therapy” does not include practices or treatments that provide:

(I) Acceptance, support, and understanding for the facilitation of an individual’s coping, social support, and identity exploration and development, . . . , as long as the counseling does not seek to change sexual orientation or gender identity; or

(II) Assistance to a person undergoing gender transition.

The law permits counseling in only one direction —the counselor may approve of a child’s gender confusion and encourage and assist with medical transition but is prohibited from using any approach that may help that child become comfortable with his sexed body.

History of Therapeutic Speech Restriction Cases

Colorado was not the first state to restrict the speech of mental health providers who want to help children to accept their sex. California enacted the first such law in 2012, the same year it passed the FAIR Act requiring all schools to include instruction on transgenderism. Seemingly, the goal was to create “transgender children” and ensure that mental health providers cannot help any child who might wish to unchain himself from that identity. Twenty-five states followed.

First Amendment challenges to these laws have produced inconsistent appellate decisions. Some courts created a new category of “professional speech” subject to greater government regulation (i.e., with less First Amendment protection) than “ordinary” speech. In 2014, the Third Circuit held that therapeutic speech is still speech (rather than conduct), but that it could nonetheless be subject to greater restriction as “professional speech.” The Supreme Court declined to review that decision.

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Four years later, in Tingley v. Ferguson, the Ninth Circuit held that Washington State could prohibit mental health providers from offering therapy to help minors address unwanted same-sex attraction, characterizing talk therapy as “conduct” because it is medical treatment. Moreover, it found it was “professional speech,” which the court said is entitled to far less robust protection under the First Amendment. (Tingley contradicted the Ninth Circuit previous ruling in 2002 in Conant v. Walters, which held that prohibiting medical providers from discussing the benefits of marijuana as a treatment even though it was illegal at the time violated the First Amendment. In Conant, the court made clear that “[b]eing a member of a regulated profession does not … result in a surrender of First Amendment rights,” and that “professional speech may be entitled to ‘the strongest protection our Constitution has to offer.’”)

Shortly after Tingley, the Supreme Court addressed the “professional speech” distinction in an unrelated case, NIFLA v. Becerra. The NIFLA court held that the full force of the First Amendment applies to professional speech, though the government may regulate such speech when those regulations are incidental to conduct. Despite this precedent casting doubt on Tingley, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed its position in post-NIFLA appeal that talk therapy could be restricted because it was medical treatment. The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, but Justices Kavanaugh and Thomas dissented from the denial of certiorari, signaling that they would likely find a law muzzling a therapist unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, the Eleventh Circuit reached the opposite conclusion from the Ninth Circuit in Otto v. City of Boca Raton, striking down a local ordinance restricting so-called conversion therapy. The Otto court declared: “If speaking to clients is not speech, the world is truly upside down. These ordinances sanction speech directly, not incidentally—the only ‘conduct’ at issue is speech.”

The circuit split made it all but inevitable that the Supreme Court would finally address professional speech restrictions in the context of “conversion therapy” bans. Kaley Chiles, a licensed therapist, had already filed suit in Colorado challenging its ban, which brings us to today.

The LGB Dilemma

Neither Our Duty-USA nor Genspect support therapeutic interventions aimed at changing an individual’s sexual orientation, nor do we endorse any type of coercive, physically harmful, or psychologically damaging techniques employing guilt or shame to alter same-sex attraction or gender identity. Both organizations acknowledge that same-sex attraction is very often innate and unchangeable, whereas identity is malleable, as articulated in Our Duty’s amicus brief in Chiles.

The conflation of sexual orientation with gender identity in these laws is deeply ironic, given that transgenderism actually serves, in many cases, as an extraordinarily barbaric way of converting gay kids to appear as straight ones. Same-sex attracted individuals are disproportionately represented among those who identify as trans, and then often end up undergoing severe medical procedures with lifelong complications to attempt to mimic the opposite sex. Consequently, a ruling that ban therapists from exploring options other than transition will end up causing untold harm to gay and lesbian minors.

Understanding the Standard of Review

The outcome in Chiles hinges on which constitutional standard of review applies.

Strict scrutiny applies when a law infringes upon a fundamental constitutional right, such as free speech. Under strict scrutiny, the government must demonstrate that the law is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest using the least restrictive means possible. Few laws survive this demanding test.

Rational basis review, by contrast, requires only that a law be rationally related to a legitimate government interest. Laws regulating economic activity or making classifications based on age typically receive rational basis review. The government almost always prevails under this deferential standard.

Chiles argues that strict scrutiny applies because Colorado’s law restricts the content of her speech with clients. Colorado contends that rational basis review applies because the state merely regulates professional conduct, characterizing therapeutic speech as medical treatment (or conduct) rather than protected expression.

Analysis of the Oral Arguments

The oral arguments suggested a difficult day for Colorado. Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson faced tough questioning from most justices, with only Justice Sotomayor offering a lifeline. While Stevenson is clearly a skilled attorney, she struggled to overcome unfavorable facts and adverse legal precedent.

Justice Thomas opened the questioning by addressing a procedural argument advanced by the Solicitor General. Anticipating an unfavorable ruling, Stevenson argued for an extremely narrow interpretation of the statute, contending that the law prohibits only therapy explicitly aimed at changing a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Under this reading, counseling designed to help clients change behaviors or reduce unwanted sexual or romantic attractions would remain permissible, provided the ultimate goal was not to change orientation or identity itself. Stevenson argued that the activities - talk therapy to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction - could be performed so long as the therapist’s goal was not to change sexual orientation or the minor’s then-current “gender identity.”

With the exception of Justice Sotomayor, who attempted to support this interpretation, the justices appeared skeptical, particularly Justice Alito. This narrow reading by Colorado was designed to bolster a claim that Chiles faces no imminent harm and therefore lacks standing to challenge the law.

Sotomayor seemed to be searching desperately for a procedural ground to avoid reaching the First Amendment question. She emphasized that the law had not been enforced during the six years since enactment, undermining Chiles’ claim of imminent injury necessary for standing. However, Chiles’ counsel effectively responded that Chiles seeks to counsel children toward acceptance of their biological sex—counseling that even under Stevenson’s narrow interpretation would be prohibited—and that complaints have recently been filed against Chiles with investigations pending. (The likely culprits of the complaints are transgender activists who may have accidently ended up helping their adversary win in this case.) Justice Sotomayor also unsuccessfully pressed Stevenson to disavow the portions of the statute applicable to Chiles’ intended counseling. Ultimately, Sotomayor conceded that Chiles had established standing.

The central debate focused on the distinction between speech—which is protected by the First Amendment—and conduct—which is not. Justice Kagan offered a thoughtful question to Chiles’ counsel, asking him to explain when speech constitutes the sole form of treatment versus when the treatment combines speech and conduct. Justice Barrett raised the issue of medical malpractice to spotlight that therapists do not have carte blanche to provide therapy that harms patients. In other words, there are other ways of protecting patients from therapists’ harmful words besides statutory bans.

Justice Sotomayor made a notable misstep when she analogized therapy for gender dysphoria to treatment for anorexia. This comparison inadvertently echoed a common argument from critics of sex-rejecting interventions. Just as therapists would not affirm an anorexic patient’s distorted self-perception, affirming that she is indeed fat and encouraging her to starve herself, they should not affirm a child’s maladaptive belief that he is the opposite sex. This opened the door for Chiles’ counsel to discuss the harms of affirming a child’s rejection of his sex. Justice Sotomayor quickly interrupted before he could elaborate on these concerns.

Sotomayor continued to look for ways to rule in favor of Colorado, or at least remand the case back to the trial court. She shifted her questioning to Colorado’s evidence regarding harm to children caused by so-called “conversion therapy.” The Department of Justice attorney, who had intervened in the case, carefully identified the methodological flaws in the studies Colorado cited—deficiencies that Chiles’ counsel had previously highlighted. The Solicitor General countered that Colorado could provide much more evidence in support of the harms.

Justice Jackson’s questioning also showed a bias toward ruling in favor of Colorado, consistently trying to steer the court towards a finding that therapeutic speech is conduct rather than pure speech. But it is unlikely that the argument that Colorado may regulate counseling consisting entirely of speech because “the words are used to deliver medical care” resonated with the majority of the court.

Notably, Justice Alito challenged the Solicitor General’s reliance on the medical consensus and standards of care as the overriding factor in Colorado’s law. He pointed to historical examples where medical consensus proved tragically wrong, including the eugenics movement and the widespread institutionalization of children with Down’s Syndrome. His questions clearly implied that neither consensus nor established standards of care are infallible, suggesting that he probably also thinks hormonally and surgically altering children because they are deluded about their sex may eventually also be viewed as a shameful and scandalous practice.

The justices engaged in substantial questioning concerning “mirror image” laws—hypothetical statutes prohibitingtherapists from affirming a minor’s transgender identity (rather than requiring them to). Both Chiles’ counsel and the Department of Justice agreed that such laws would also be subject to strict scrutiny, unwavering from their argument that speech is speech, and restrictions based upon viewpoint or the content of the words need to be tied to a compelling state interest.

The Solicitor General, however, argued that the applicable standard of review depends on prevailing standards of care. Under her framework, if the medical standard of care establishes that “gender affirming care” harms children, a law prohibiting such care would also need only satisfy rational basis review. When pressed about competing views within the medical community, the Solicitor General deflected, asserting that Chiles had presented no evidence of treatment efficacy. The Solicitor’s contention that the standard of review depends on medical consensus lacks merit. The existence of medical consensus—which notably does not exist regarding medical interventions for minors who adopt transgender identities, and which, arguably, historically was “watchful waiting” and non-affirmation—has never been what determines whether rational basis or strict scrutiny applies. Instead, the applicable standard of review depends on the nature of the constitutional right at issue and whether the government regulation is content-based or content-neutral. Moreover, the Solicitor General’s position essentially rehashed arguments about restricting professional speech that the Supreme Court rejected in its 2018 NIFLA v. Becerra decision.

Should the Supreme Court rule that Colorado’s law prohibiting a licensed health provider is not constitutional, that ruling will extend to all states with such laws. This will, thankfully, provide a pathway for more therapists to conduct exploratory therapy with minors, without fear of losing their licenses, to help them understand the reasons for their newly adopted identities, rather than helping to push them down the road of lifelong medicalization and sterilization.

Erin Friday, a California attorney, actively champions parental rights, particularly regarding gender ideology’s influence in schools and medical practices. Driven by personal experience, she advocates vigorously for children’s safety and parental involvement. Erin serves as a Genspect USA board member, highlighting the necessity of cautious, evidence-based youth care. Her advocacy empowers families nationwide, promoting transparency, informed consent, and child-focused policies.

Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position. For more on Genspect, visit our FAQs.

Introduction

Transgender issues have shaped the governor’s race in Virginia in an atmosphere of violence during a period of intense early voting. To understand this complex situation, especially from outside Virginia, which involves multiple dimensions, requires a depth of detail. However, I have done my best to keep things simple and chart-free for the Genspect audience. This essay is the result of two requests for a briefing on the state of the race that I received during or immediately after the Albuquerque conference.

The last time I dove this deep into a statewide race, the memo that I wrote helped elect a United States Senator. I used Reid Hoffman’s money to do that. In 2020, I appeared in Andrew Rossi’s documentary After Truth to explain the “Dry Alabama” project. I had my critics, but they could never accurately explain my theory of the case in their summaries. You not only had to be from Alabama, and know Alabama, you also had to study the local changes in fine detail to know what had changed in Alabama in 2017. My curiosity had led me to discovery, and the formulation of an idea.

I am getting that same buzz from Virginia, though I do not live there, nor am I receiving the same level of funding these days. Oh well.

Past is prologue. In 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin unexpectedly beat Democrat Terry McAuliffe by nearly two points in the Virginia governor’s race. All the big polls had said the candidates were in a statistical tie. Everyone had expected a nail-biter, the kind of election that ends up in recount hell. Instead, the gap was wide enough that all the major press outlets called the race by early Wednesday morning.

Postmortem explanations focused on McAuliffe’s uninspiring establishment credentials, the effects of COVID-19, inflation, the economy, and Joe Biden’s loss of popularity following the debacle in Afghanistan, among other factors. One term stands out in that discussion: ‘parental rights’. Those of us in the fight against genderwoo recognize this euphemism.

During 2021, the consequences of “transgender inclusion” in school restrooms in Loudoun County were shocking to Virginians, especially after a father named Scott Smith was arrested for losing his cool at a school board meeting.

If You Are New to This Insane Story, Here Is the Briefest Synopsis I Can Offer

Mr. Smith’s daughter was raped by a boy in a skirt while both students were standing inside a toilet stall. A teacher witnessed their feet together under the stall door but took no action because of district policy. Later that day, the Loudoun County school district CEO emailed his executive team that “the incident at SBHS is related to policy 8040”, naming the exact policy which allowed the rapist into the girls’ restroom in the first place. The 14-year-old rapist was quietly moved to another school with a mere verbal reprimand while criminal investigation proceeded, whereupon he proceeded to rape a second female student while he still had an opportunity to live his dream.

When Mr. Smith addressed the school board to complain that he had not consented to a boy in his daughter’s school restroom, regardless of whether or not that boy wore a skirt and pronouns, Loudoun Superintendent Scott Zeigler denied that any rape had occurred at all. A grand jury later found this was “a bald faced lie” and Zeigler was fired, but the problem did not get resolved, because of course not. The school district refuses to change.

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In the heat of the moment, Mr. Smith was handcuffed and arrested for his understandable response to this odious gaslighting. Despite the best efforts of establishment media to filter out the details of this story, a political grassfire broke out before the election. Youngkin pardoned Smith, who filed a $30 million lawsuit against the school district. For obvious reasons, Democrats — and even some Republicans, for less obvious reasons — still want to minimize the salience of this issue four years later. Too bad for them, because Virginia is out of control. Democrats are out of control. If 2021 was a grassfire, 2025 is a massive political wildfire.

History does not really repeat, but it does rhyme. Today, the Trump administration is holding five Virginia school districts, including Loudoun County, in violation of Title IX for their policies allowing naked males of every age inside female restrooms and locker rooms meant for minor girls. The Department of Education has threatened to cut off federal funding to all five.

The school districts contend that they are merely obeying the notorious Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board decision, which applies only to them. They are holding out until the United States Supreme Court decides to tell them whether boys belong in female single-sex spaces. Taking advantage of this excuse for delay, the school boards refuse to change.

Now, a Mr. Richard Cox, 58, has poured gasoline on the smoldering embers of the old controversy. Perhaps you have heard of Mr. Cox’s naked adventures in three female locker rooms in Virginia’s public schools. Female witnesses have described his male gaze upon them and the associated discomfort they experienced. Here is his mug shot.

When Mr. Cox was finally arrested in Arlington, Virginia, looking at the children’s swim lesson schedules on his phone, he had been sitting fully exposed inside the Barcroft Sports and Fitness Center locker room for an hour. The thing that we have all been told would never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever happen was happening. A convicted pedophile was living his naked dream with women and girls in Virginia.

By that point, Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis had already declined to press charges against Cox for his previous adventures, blaming the policy of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and the park authority that had allowed Cox to access the facilities in the first place.

It would be a mistake to think that Chief Davis is “woke,” however. All of politics is local, and the political play Chief Davis seems to be making here has a name: ‘sandbagging’. In 2021, at the height of George Floyd mania, certain Virginia Democrats tried to have Chief Davis fired for alleged mistreatment of minority suspects. Of course, they failed to produce any evidence of said mistreatment. Now Chief Davis enforces a ridiculous policy made by Democrats so they can be left holding the proverbial bag, which, per the metaphor, is full of sand.

Sandbagging is hardly unusual in these sorts of circumstances. It is a typical tactic of bureaucrats and professionals when they want to be rid of ideological dictates from authoritarian idiots without directly engaging in dangerous partisanship. In fact, we recently witnessed another example with Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley of London when he pleaded powerlessness. Sir Rowley made it clear he expects the politicians in Parliament to fix the law that Graham Linehan’s harassers used to have the official court jester of Genspect arrested at Heathrow.

But I digress: let us fly back to Virginia and Loudoun County Public Schools, where the situation is actually far worse than it was before.

LCPS 2025 Tells LCPS 2021 “Hurr, Hold My Beer”

The same school system that tried to cover up the schoolhouse rapist because he belonged to the sacred class of boys in skirts also recently suspended two normal, well-behaved boys after a girl who ‘identifies’ as a boy recorded the actual boys asking her why she was in their locker room for not-imaginary boys. According to the inside-out, bizarro-world interpretation of Title IX used in Loudoun County public education, the boys are guilty of “sex discrimination.”

Normally, a student recording in the locker room is cause for suspension, but in this case, the boys were the ones who got recorded, and nothing happened to the recorder because she is special. She has reportedly resumed using female restrooms, because of course she has. The community is outraged. The board is unyielding. They do not want to change.

Predictably, new outrages continue. According to a letter from the Defense of Freedom Institute to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, “on September 2, 2025, a 14-year-old girl entered the girls’ locker room at West Springfield High School and changed into clothes for gym class, but as she was leaving the locker room, the girl encountered a male student who has ‘facial hair’ and was ‘wearing pants that were so tight they clearly outlined his genitalia’ standing inside the girls’ locker room and watching the girls preparing for P.E. class.”

Then it happened again. On the same day that Charlie Kirk was killed, and again the next day, “DFI says the girl was upset by the boy’s presence in the locker room, where she had just changed, and other girls were in various stages of undress as they prepared for their required gym class.” The boy has since been observed using the boys’ locker room. Because of course he has.

DFI says that when the girl told a teacher that there was a boy in the girls’ locker room, the “teacher told her daughter there was nothing that teacher could do about the boy’s intruding into the private facility reserved for females and watching girls as they changed.”

Something has clearly snapped in Virginia. When Mr. Cox asked the grand jury judge to use preferred pronouns, his honor declined. Strangely, the usual suspects did not express their dismay at this literal genocide of Mr. Cox’s alleged transgenderness. Perhaps they do not want to associate ‘the civil rights cause of the 21st century’ with his Tier III convicted sex offender status, which is applied to sexual crimes against minors under the age of 13.

Home to 147,000 federal workers affected by the current government shutdown, northern Virginia is one of the bluest areas in the nation. The culture is moving on from ‘transgender’ everything, yet Fairfax County’s board is still standing by their “inclusion” policy. It is the proverbial millstone around the neck of Virginia Democrats, for they refuse to change.

As a result, the Democrat running for governor in Virginia is stuck in denial, defending the indefensible, while her Republican opponent hammers away at her relentlessly with her own voting record, with her own words. The contrast could not be clearer and it is defining the race, whatever the outcome. A brief candidate comparison follows.

On September 26, just as the polls explained below were about to be taken, Winsome Earle-Sears showed up in Fairfax County and held a press conference outside the school board meeting. Sears called the transgender access policy “ridiculousness”, a set of “unsafe measures” that violate Title IX. Sears blasted the media for letting Abigail Spangerger “get away with a word salad where she says a whole bunch of nothing”, never saying a clear “yes” or “no” about her voting record against the rights of parents.

Spanberger does not want parents to know about violence in school, or transgender identification in their children, Sears said, and “that’s not love.” Virginia is for lovers: the state motto. The candidates are fighting over the motto: love. Sears is with parents who love their children, while Spanberger loves the policy that lets Richard Cox in the locker room with their children.

Sears does not love the school administrators who have their own restrooms and locker rooms and foist the cost of their luxury beliefs off on students. She loves privacy for everyone and the high social trust that accompanies clear social boundaries. Sears loves to fight on this issue. Agree or disagree, voters prefer strength. They prefer a fighter. “You cannot be cowardly on this issue,” she says. Really, an ideal candidate is never cowardly; they are always plain-spoken.

Democrat Abigail Spanberger, on the other hand, is earnestly avoiding the issue, projecting weakness, which voters despise. Put to the question, she spergs forth word salad on the subject of Richard Cox and his transgender access pass, just as Earle-Sears notes. Spanberger did it again when she was asked about the DFI story. Behold the abyss:

The circumstance as this legal case plays out is really one of we’ve had court cases settled or judged here in Virginia in the fourth district, the former Gavin Grimm case related to bathroom usage. And in fact, the argument is the assessment is there needs to be much clearer guidance in terms of what is an executive order’s binding assessment of Title IX versus what has been a decision of a court. But ultimately, the real impact here is, once again, it is the Trump administration taking dollars away from Virginia. Threatening education dollars to our public schools is an attack on Virginia’s kids. It’s an attack on our economy. It’s an attack on Virginians. And as governor, the important thing is, as a candidate for governor, the important thing, the important priority for me is to ensure that we have the best public schools in the entire country. And the reality is, when we have a president who is coming after Virginia, our education system, whether it’s K-12 or whether it is our public universities that is harmful to Virginia, our ability to educate our kids and ultimately our economy.

Her staffers prevented ABC 7 reporter Nick Minock from following up the question, because of course they did. Turning to friendlier outlets, Spanberger wants to breathlessly “recognize” that people are concerned about boys cheating at girls’ sports and hanging out in their locker rooms, but she also wants to stick by the tried-and-true method of “local” control by “communities” where such policy has been captured, so that as many boys as possible can be encouraged to cheat at girls’ sports and hang out in girls’ locker rooms for as long as possible, preferably until hell freezes over.

In these interviews, Spanberger attempts to elicit empathy for the “individual circumstances” of boys cheating at girls’ sports and hanging out in girls’ locker rooms. Can’t we all just get along and keep doing the policy that genderwoo activists captured ten years ago? It was all working so well for special boys who want to cheat at girls’ sports, and boys in skirts who enjoy raping girls in restrooms, and creepy men who enjoy hanging out naked in female public school locker rooms. What’s the harm?

There is a truism in politics that if you are explaining, you are losing. The more Abigail Spanberger explains her position on this issue, the more she stands to lose, so of course she would rather dismiss it and talk about the economy.

Sears on the other hand is not a natural public speaker, nor has she been shined to a finish by focus groups and coaches, like Spanberger. Sears is an angry grandmother speaking her mind, with occasional stumbles and struggles. Yet these characteristics, which would be considered flaws in the old media format of elections campaigning, now serve to make her authentic. Authenticity is the magic stuff that gives ‘influencers’ their social media clout, these days. When her digital ads say these things, people believe that she believes them:

Abigail Spanberger is hiding from voters because she’s sold out to extremist nonsense. You have my word I will always stand with you and with common sense. She is for nonsense and I am for common sense.

Abigail Spanberger thinks it’s ok for nude men to use the girls’ locker rooms. That is not normal.

Abigail Spanberger thinks the state should raise our kids — hiding curriculum, covering up violence, even helping kids transition without mom or dad knowing. As a mom, I know parents aren’t the problem — they are the answer.

Inside the Fairfax school board meeting in September, Sears let loose. “It’s dangerous, it’s insane, and it has to stop,” she said. “Here’s the truth. There are two sexes, boys and girls, and for generations who understood this, they deserve their own sports teams, their own locker rooms, their own bathrooms. That’s not discrimination. It’s common sense.” Her full two minute speech could have been written by any TERF in the last decade: “As Governor, I will not stand by while political correctness tramples over science, fairness, and safety.” Sears sounds completely normal, a median American, whereas the ‘inclusion’ policy in Arlington and four other Virginia counties is inexplicable and indefensible to normal, median Americans.

Hammering the point home, the Sears campaign has poured digital ad dollars into spots modeled on Donald Trump’s “They/Them” ads of 2024, which were the most successful of the entire election cycle. Despite earnest efforts to downplay their impact, the ads had a discernible effect, making Kamala Harris less acceptable to independents and young men, especially Black and Latino men.

Democrats believe they have the independent vote locked up in Virginia, that “independent” voters don’t care about transgender issues, and this may be true insofar as one defines the word ‘independent’. A radical communist would likely call themselves an independent; so might an ideological conservative who thinks the GOP is too liberal. Negative political ads work if they resonate with the ‘normie’, or low-engagement, voter to reduce their favorability towards the opponent. We shall see whose theory of the case is strongest.

Now let us discuss the state of the surveys in the state for lovers. It is not great, unfortunately. State-level races do not receive the same level of polling attention or survey quality as presidential races.

The Polling Is All Over the Map. A Campus Map

We have two comparable recent polls using two slightly different methodologies, which is important to understanding the difference (‘delta’) between their results. Of course, all polls are merely snapshots of opinion, but we have enough information over enough time to rough out a hypothesis.

During the last week of September, the A2 Insights Virginia Poll reported that Sears was behind Spanberger by 3 points, almost the margin of error. This is a new firm that appears to be independent. As noted below, this would be quite an improvement of 14 points compared to another survey in May by a different polling entity, illustrating the range of values making all these results uncertain.

This A2 Insights poll has been cast as an outlier. As one might expect, Sears’ supporters skew male, conservative, and less educated, while youth voters skew towards Spanberger, which is hardly surprising. By one metric — the comparative ratio of references to “constitution” and “social justice” in course catalogs — the three most ‘woke’ campuses in Virginia collectively enroll 60,000 students.

Another of the most woke campuses in Virginia, a place notorious for oppressive atmosphere, is Emerson College. In a poll with a similar sample size taken right after the A2 Insights poll, Emerson found Spanberger ahead by 10 points. The A2 Insights sample was slightly whiter, but otherwise comparable in demographics. Geography was the main difference. Various media outlets are framing the Emerson survey as an improvement for Spanberger, but I remain skeptical.

There is a discernible gap between collegiate polling and private polling. Last week, Trafalgar Group — which had some of the most accurate state-level surveys in 2024 — published a poll with higher sample sizes than either the A2 Insights or the Emerson poll. Using their “unorthodox” methodology, Trafalgar found Spanberger ahead of Sears by just 5.2 points.

Six weeks ago in August, Roanoke College — also considered quite “inclusive”, especially where male collegiate swimmers are involved — showed Spanberger with a 7 point lead, which is the current polling average. It was an amazing improvement since the previous Roanoke poll in May, which had given Spanberger a 17 point lead. Dr. Bromley-Trujillo, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, cautioned that Democrats were surprised before in 2021 by discounting the effect of ‘culture war’ campaigning on unlikely voters, and that it had happened again in 2024, and might be happening again now.

This improvement was widely interpreted as Trump voters “coming home” to Sears, but between May and mid-August, Richard Cox was a top news item in Virginia. More to the mathematical point, Emerson appears to weight their results by region. Political geography matters, and matters most when politics are changing. It is also worth noting that all of these polls measure “likely voters”, defined by every pollster as people who voted in 2024. Thus the polling will not capture ‘freshman voters’ — people voting for the first time, perhaps because of Charlie Kirk, or because of Trump.

New registration statistics are not available, and Virginia does not register by party anyway, but there is one campus organization that is registering new voters as fast as they can: Turning Point. The Charlie Kirk effect is already discernible. What Democrats dismiss as “culture war” is being perceived in the boonies of Virginia as an actual, shooting war against themselves. Sensing Spanberger as a threat, the normally-disengaged voter can be mobilized: this is the working theory of the Sears campaign.

Democrats, on the other hand, seem to have collectively entered a zero-sum mindset of voter mobilization. “Most polls showed us still stuck in a virtual dead heat” three days out, Kamala Harris writes in her risible election memoir. “In six of the seven swing states, polls had Trump and me within a point of each other, me with the slightest of advantages in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan; Trump with a similar razor-thin margin in Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina.” Set aside the fact that this is a very generous reading of the polling at the time: these surveys were all based on “likely voters”, the kind that Harris was focused on motivating.

Contrarily, the Donald Trump campaign chose to mobilize the low-engagement voter that Sears is now targeting. Tim Saler and James Blair in particular “thought the [Trump] campaign’s money would be better spent motivating infrequent voters who, if they showed up, would definitely vote for Trump”, Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Tyler Pager write in their own book on the 2024 election. Rather than a traditional, expensive get-out-the-vote campaign, “Trump Force 47” worked like “a multilevel marketing scheme.”

The campaign would recruit volunteers in battleground areas and assign them each twenty-five neighbors who, based on demographics and consumer data, looked like Trump supporters but didn’t reliably vote. Volunteers who completed their mission by converting ten of those twenty-five neighbors received a new list of fifty. Those who recruited twenty-five out of fifty received their next-level challenge: forty-seven out of a list of one hundred. Blair’s confidence in the strength of this system and the accuracy of the campaign’s data targeting withstood months of grousing from local-level Republican Party officials that they saw none of the usual signs of office openings and door knocking.

Frankly, having observed the close correlation between MLMs and conservative politics over the years, it is a wonder to me that this innovation took so long to get recognized. It is literally how the John Birch Society and the grassroots Tea Party movement happened. Political historians need to mark the 2024 election as the moment when ‘traditional’ GOTV models — the mobilizing activities that Democrats outsourced to their nonprofits many years ago — were proven less efficient at actually getting out the vote than the Amway model of organization.

Turning Point operates on the same basic software, by the way. And just who are these new voters that such organizing seems to work on most? Why, they live in the redder, whiter, more rural areas that elected Youngkin in 2021: the kind of places J.D. Vance writes about in Hillbilly Elegy, places where people adore Pete Hegseth. Flyover country. Bumpkins and rubes, to coastal elites. Demoralized by decades of Washington consensus, these voters are normally difficult to mobilize. It can be done, though. After all, Trump has them waving his flags and wearing his hats.

While all of this has been happening, the results of early voting were being ‘baked in’ since 23 September — and the early voting numbers are roughly double what they were in 2024. Both sides are focused on early voting. Both sides claim to be highly motivated. Charlie Kirk’s assassin’s transgender boyfriend has meanwhile upended the narratives of transgenderism and violence, finally punching through into public consciousness after a series of horrific headlines: the Covenant school shooting in Nashville, the Zizians death cult, and most recently, the man who tried to kill Brett Kavanaugh.

Normally, someone who flies to Washington, DC with a suitcase full of weapons and attempts to murder Supreme Court justices over their disagreeable legal opinions is called ‘a terrorist’ and receives a sentence of 30 years in federal penitentiaries. But Nicholas John Roske, the man arrested outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home, is special because he has claimed a sacred transgender identity. So last week, Judge Deborah Boardman, a Biden appointee, sentenced “Ms. Roske” to just 8 years in prison. This sort of exceptionalism is exactly what annoys the public most about transgender ‘identity’; it is what makes “They/Them” ads so darned effective. Sears will use it it in her ads.

For the first time, there is also an organization (Turning Point) with a massive potential voter base and a mobilization apparatus (churches, volunteers, funding, etc.), attuned to the threat of transgender violence, in an environment of total public awareness of abundant and exquisite examples of two-tier justice for the violent left. Never has the issue been so salient to so many. The only question is how many, and the Republican candidate seems to be convinced there are many such Virginia voters who can be mobilized by this galvanizing issue.

Which is why we all need to keep an eye on the Virginia governor’s race. It is giving us the best and purest test so far of what the electoral impact of transgender issues really is, right now. Virginia is deeply blue, and those federal employees are very anxious because of the federal government shutdown, so let us not be Pollyanna about our expectations. Still, the cultural backlash to ‘trans inclusion’ and associated violence is finally getting measured in polling results. We are emerging as a class of voter. Apologies to all while I untangle some political science threads.

How The Intervening Variables Will Intervene

By far, the number one issue cited by voters is the economy. Democrats use this to argue that transgender issues are meaningless ‘culture war’ distractions from greedy oligarchs ripping you off. They are both the party of the working class and also the party that rewrites the rules to empower pedophiles, rapists, tresspassers, and sports cheats in public schools with working class students. This is the current fashion in luxury beliefs held sacred by the American administrative and academic classes, which are strongly represented in Virginia.

As an organization, the entire Democratic party — electeds, rank and file, activists, donors, etc. — has convinced itself that regular people will listen to them about ‘kitchen table issues’ when their son is sitting at the kitchen table doing his in-home suspension homework for the crime of knowing what a girl is, or while their daughter’s grades are slipping as she struggles to recover from restroom trauma because there are no single-sex rape crisis support services, since boys in skirts are special.

Democrats also bet big on threats to abortion access to lift Kamala Harris to victory in 2024. They are doing it again in Virginia right now. Democrats are the party that wants to represent the human rights of women and also pretend they don’t know what an adult human female is, let alone protect girls from finding out what adult human men look like naked. Worse for Democrats, a Christopher Newport University poll in September found that only 4 percent of Virginia voters say they will make reproductive rights their top issue in November.

Keep that number in mind: four percent. “On the topic of transgender issues, a majority (31%) of those polled said it was “not important at all”, reads the Emerson poll. Which is a neat way of avoiding the shadow demographic of ~69 percent who apparently feel it is important to some degree. Emerson further insists that only 4 percent of voters say that female sports are their number one issue, making ‘gender critical’ views at least as salient with Virginia voters as abortion!

The execrable propagandist Erin Reed spins this data as proof nobody cares about women’s sports or single-sex spaces. He has a new Christopher Newport University poll which helpfully shows that no one cares about transgender issues. What ought to dismay Democrats still capable of rubbing brain cells together is that just four years ago, zero voters said this was their most important issue, and that four or five points is the margin of error in most Virginia election polls.

Democrats are clearly smoking some amount of Erin Reed’s copium instead of confronting their addiction to drag kids. According to the bipartisan nonprofit Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP), at the time of this writing, early ballot collection since 23 September 2025 is almost double the total at this point in 2024. Their map of results shows that early voting turnout is very high in Republican bastions, accounting for nearly half of all the early ballots.

As I have noted, Emerson College Polling weights the districts that favor Spanberger. Like magic, their survey reports that Spanberger leads early vote reporting 50-38 percent among their respondents. They furthermore report that voters who have not cast a ballot favor Spanberger 50-43 percent. “51% have a favorable view of Spanberger”, they say.

Getting high on your own supply is a bad habit among Democrats these days. On the other side of this very question is Impact Social, a media research company that recently shared their own results with Newsweek. Online, Spanberger sentiment is in the toilet, they say. In fact, they warn that Democrats “risk losing” the Virginia election if they do not shift their strategy. While they surveyed political expression and sentiment rather than voters, the results were notable.

Impact Social analyzed social media discussion about each candidate in the race, which revealed that Spanberger has a net sentiment of -28, while Earle-Sears’ sentiment is +18. The discrepancy is because the left is “venting against Trump while failing to support the Democratic candidate or attack their opponent,” according to the report.

“Relying on Trump as a mobilizing foil can only go so far. If Democrats cannot channel that oppositional energy into genuine support for their own candidates they risk losing these contests,” the report reads.

Overall, Americans prefer problem-solving to partisanship. This was the secret sauce of Donald Trump in 2016: he appealed most of all to the voters most disaffected from, and disappointed by, the Republican Party. MAGA still see him as someone who can fix everything. But elected Democrats refuse to compromise with Trump on anything, least of all this. They shut down the government for reasons that regular, normal, workaday American voters find utterly noxious, because Trump, because that is what the blue northern Virginia and campus leftist and professional activist Democratic base demands.

The Charlie Kirk effect, and the gut-punch motivating power of the ‘trans inclusion’ issue, will give us the best and purest test so far of what the electoral impact of our issue space is going to be. In such a febrile environment, expect new controversies.

Over the weekend, a new scandal drew even more attention to left-wing violence. Jerrauld Charles Corey “Jay” Jones, the Democratic nominee for Attorney General in Virginia, told a Republican colleague about his fantasy of murdering a Republican legislator and his children. Jones not only sent now-former Del. Carrie Coyner disturbing text messages, he called her afterwards to repeat what he had said in them about “pain” being necessary for change to happen, a point which he then repeated in a text message.

In 2022, “Jay Jones wished violence on the children of a colleague and joked about shooting Todd Gilbert”, Coyner said in a statement. “It’s disgusting and unbecoming of any public official.” Jones was convicted of reckless driving the same year. According to the court, he was going 116 m.p.h. in a 70 m.p.h. zone, because Jay Jones was an impulsive young man in his (checks notes) early thirties. His ‘community service’ appears to have been fraudulent. Jones is running for state attorney general.

Speaking of young liberal men with poor impulse control, here, at last, is a chart:

Sears is hitting at her opponent with ads about Jay Jones. Every new detail becomes a tweet. “Abigail Spanberger is standing by Jay Jones after he was exposed for saying ‘maybe if a few cops died, they’d stop shooting people’,” Sears says. “All this AFTER he fantasized about murdering a dad and his two kids.”

Following the Charlie Kirk assassination, Spanberger said that she watches the news and lets the resulting “rage” fuel her. Sears will not stop talking about that. “Every day Abigail Spanberger stays silent, she legitimizes Jay Jones’ fantasy about murdering a father and his two children,” Sears says: “Her rage politics are dangerous, cowardly, and everything Virginia isn’t.” Because Virginia is for lovers. The candidates will face off tomorrow night in the season’s only debate.

Again, as I write these words, the results of this hot campaign are being baked into the early ballot results that will only be known on the evening of 4 November 2025. Conservative and moderate voters are unhappy about civil disorder, interpersonal political violence, and propagandistic excuses for pedophiles and skirted rapists. They are likely to vote their frustrations, whereas the angry, radicalized males in extended adolescence who populate ‘the left’ are more likely to act out.

Opposition to transgenderism seems to stimulate tremendous ego-dystonic arousal in the ‘affirming’ population. More words or acts of violence, whether or not they come wrapped in a transgender flag, are likely to keep the sense of threat very high among what would normally be low-engagement Virginia voters. It is a febrile time. People have a heightened sense of danger — and the edge of the abyss has motivating power.

Virginia Democrats seem unperturbed. None of them has un-endorsed Jay Jones. They are the same Democrats who remain unyielding on ‘trans inclusion’ in public school facilities, and everyone seems to get that connection except Democrats.

The Real Story Will Be In The ‘Delta’

That chart above shows a ‘delta’, a discernible, therefore meaningful, difference. Looking towards the 2026 midterms, when Democrats hope to claw back a measure of power in Washington, it will matter what the final result in Virginia is, even if Winsome Earle-Sears does not win. The diverging trendlines of this conventional wisdom and the final outcome — the delta — will get all the attention.

If the Beltway-insider wisdom of the odd anonymous “GOP strategist” and the ivory tower academics are correct, then Sears will lose by double digits. To use a sports betting analogy, Vegas has Spanberger +7 and the Emerson make-a-wish poll has Spanberger +10. This leaves a dangerous amount of room for Sears to overperform. It also indicates just how partisan Virginia Democrats are, compared to everyone else.

In the unlikely event that Sears does actually win — it is an uphill challenge — then anguish will reach apocalyptic levels on the American left. Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehasi Coates will have to accept they are on the wrong side of a supermajority regarding these issues, that their marginal morality does not turn out voters. It repels voters, and increasingly mobilizes them against Democrats.

If Abigail Spanberger wins by a whisker, many more Democrats will remain stuck in the denial stage of grief for ‘gender identity’ as a civil rights project, but the writing will be undeniably on the wall. New voices will start asking questions about Democratic candidates blowing double-digit leads to Republican opponents. Thus the final margin — Spanberger +1 or +2, versus +5 — matters. It describes the salience of our issue as an emerging, growing electoral force, even in a place where genderwoo has maximum social and political power.

If you want to follow my analysis of the Virginia gubernatorial race, I am posting regular updates for premium subscribers at The Distance Mag. I am not promising a Virginia miracle. I do expect Sears to outperform the expectations of Democrats, likely even scare a bit of sense into some of them. Alternately, Virginia Democrats may just show us how immune to facts and rationality and lost to humanity they really are. Halloween is nigh. I will be watching the delta.

Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position. For more on Genspect, visit our FAQs.

Charlie Kirk was a husband, father, and citizen who dedicated his life to revitalizing American values of free speech, tolerance, and robust political debate. His murder today in Utah is the most significant political assassination since the 1960s. The loss of the man and his vision is a tragedy for the nation because he was charting a way out of our current polarized impasse.

Kirk passionately believed in the power of debate to transform disagreement into consensus, to transcend our differences and find common ground. He liked people and spent much of his time on college campuses teaching the next generation to transcend partisanship and engage in constructive dialogue. He was in his element at rallies surrounded by hundreds of students eager to argue with him, often telling them, “If you disagree with me, come to the front of the line!”

Whether the crowd was hostile or friendly, he never allowed it to descend into a mob. He listened attentively to those who challenged him, engaging in exchanges that were lively, respectful, knowledgeable, and remarkably free of personal animus. A devout Christian, he embodied the principle of loving the sinner while hating the sin. He extended goodwill to all, even those he fundamentally disagreed with, while still holding firmly to his beliefs. He might, for instance, decline to use preferred pronouns or to pretend that changing sex is possible, but he also took the time to explain why these lies are harmful to trans identifying people, too.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination leaves a void in the American political landscape, but his legacy endures in the countless young minds he inspired to think critically, speak boldly, and seek truth through reasoned debate. He showed us that conviction need not breed contempt, and that unity is possible even in the face of deep division. As we mourn his loss, let us honor his vision by continuing the work he began: fostering a culture of open discourse, grounded in mutual respect and shared humanity.

We are a nation yearning to be whole again. Kirk’s example reminds us that the path forward lies not in silencing dissent but in embracing it with courage and grace.

Rest in Peace, Charlie

Nancy McDermott

Director, Genspect USA

My hands trembled as I typed the email to Patch journalist, Michael O’Connell. It was late March 2025, and I’d just read his article, glowing with praise for a new LGBTQ+ NoVA Prism Center in McLean, Virginia. To him, it was a routine article about a new community center. But to me, it wasn’t just a community center—it was a symbol of a movement I feared was pulling kids like my son into a world of lifelong, irreversible, and harmful choices. In fact, it’s a center where youth can access a closet full of breast binders in all sizes, 1,000+ LGBTQ+ publications, and guidance for connecting them with affirmation therapists like the one who told my son he could be a girl.

In my message to O’Connell, I poured out my heart, begging him to warn readers about the risks of transgender procedures, the hormones, the surgeries, the lifelong consequences. His auto-reply—“Thank you for your feedback”—felt like a wall between us, but I couldn’t stay silent. My son was lost to me, and I felt I had to try to protect other families in Fairfax County from the same pain.

Losing My Son

Five years ago, my son walked out the door of our family home. He was 25 years old, wearing a dress, and set on joining a transgender “community” in Washington, D.C. He was my brilliant boy—comical, intelligent, a creative wiz at anything he did—but he’d struggled with depression, anxiety, bullying, and maybe autism. An affirming therapist — not even a psychologist — told him he could become a girl, and LGBTQ+ activists’ online voices cheered him on. He changed his name, his birth certificate, and lives in a world I can’t reach. I live with the daily dread of what he’s facing—hormones that will harm his health, surgeries that might leave him in pain and permanently disfigured, in a life I can’t imagine.

When I read about the Prism Center, with its crafts, books, its promise of belonging, and its guidance on finding affirmative therapists, like the one who enabled my son, and other trans-affirming clinicians, I saw a place that could draw in other kids searching for identity. I saw a place only too happy to steer them into making lifelong, harmful choices when they, like my son, were too young to understand the higher stakes.

Sunshine, Rainbows, and Medicalization

The Prism Center’s location is clearly strategic. It is within walking distance from locations where McLean teens hang out: McDonald's, Chesapeake Bagel, The Old Firehouse (a teen center), the McLean Community Center, McLean High School, and community parks. Parents think of these as safe spaces. To them, the Prism Center seems innocent, not a place where simple identity exploration is apt to lead on to a conveyor belt of life-long hormonal therapy, surgeries, the rejection of their past, and alienation from family members and friends

I sent a second email to O’Connell, then a third, each one more desperate. I sent the same emails to our local supervisor James “Jimmy” Bierman. I shared stories of detransitioners who regretted their transitions, suffered from serious health complaints, chronic pain, or were left sterile. I told them about my son’s semen storage bill, a haunting reminder of choices he cannot reverse. I urged O’Connell and Bierman to listen to experts like psychiatrist, Dr. Miriam Grossman, endocrinologists, like Dr. William Malone, of the SEGM (Society for Evidence Based Medicine), plastic surgeons like Dr. Patrick Lappert, whistleblowers like Dr. Eithan Haim, and the growing chorus of concerns from psychologists and psychiatrists. Most of all, I urged them to listen to parents like me, to report the other side of the story. But the auto-replies kept coming, and I felt unheard.

Frustrated, I turned to Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. I sent a message, through his website, pleading for him to see the Prism Center and Trans Visibility Day in Fairfax County schools as more than celebrations. To see them as invitations to vulnerable kids—artistic, awkward, maybe depressed like my son—to step onto a path of damaging lifelong consequences. I asked him to review the guidelines doctors follow to protect children, adolescents, and young adults from rushing into choices they can’t undo. I imagined speaking to him personally, sharing my family’s nightmare to save others in Virginia from the same fate. I received an auto-reply from his website, too.

I didn’t stop there. I reached out to some parents I know. I emailed neighbors and friends with kids in Fairfax County schools, opening up about my son for the first time. I told them about the Prism Center, about hormones that could cause sterility or liver tumors, or blood clots, and about surgeries that might leave kids in pain forever. I shared a Daily Signal article by Laura Hanford warning that schools were keeping secrets from parents about sex education. I volunteered to help connect parents with resources that helped me.

It was terrifying to be so vulnerable, but I couldn’t let another parent go through what I had: the shock of my son’s crossdressing, the bill from the semen storage facility, and finally hearing the front door slam shut as he left without saying goodbye, never intending to return.

I dream of a day when someone—maybe a senator, maybe a journalist— will ask the very hard questions that will bring an end to this living nightmare. Their voices could make all the difference in uncovering the truth. Why isn’t anyone listening to more detransitioners, or parents like me, or psychologists and psychiatrists who could help kids heal and learn to love themselves without harming their bodies? Could it be that they are only hearing one side of the story?

What We Should Be Saying

I understand the well-meaning support for the Prism Center and Trans Visibility Day in Fairfax schools, but I wonder how many parents would be okay with channeling vulnerable kids engaged in the normal identity exploration of the teen years down a one-way road towards medical transition? Experimentation is good. It’s okay to do body piercings, get tattoos, and dye hair in crazy colors. But it is not okay to encourage a young person to harm their mind and body based on the fantasy that they can change their sex. It is not ok to lure anyone into a make-believe world where they live a lie that cannot be sustained. It is not ok to pull youth away from their families. It is not ok to change birth certificates to say you are someone you are not. Instead, we should focus on creating healthy human beings who learn to love and accept themselves.

Kids need time to grow and learn who they truly are. We all have periods in life when we do not like ourselves or our bodies. Young people need healthy support as they go through the often difficult and confusing challenges and transitions that extend from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood. They should not be lured into a world that promises rainbows and candy but will likely also deliver very deep lifelong regret.

Clarity from Someone Who’s Been There

I recently read the article, ‘From Self-Hate to Self-Love,’ by Jonathan Blackwell, someone who detransitioned after living as a trans woman for 23 years. His book, From Transgender Pain To Inner Peace, describes his transition in a raw and heart-wrenching way that should make anyone think twice about going down the same path. He is a thoughtful commentator with a profound understanding of the insidious narrative being pushed upon our youth and the destructive movement behind it.

I asked him what he thought about Trans Visibility Day in the public schools and the Prism Center in McLean. In his opinion, these initiatives “‘shove’” trans ideology down your throat.” “It’s like the claim that drag queen story hour is ‘family and kid friendly.’ It’s porn meant to lure and indoctrinate vulnerable children and adolescents into the world of ‘queer kinship.’ They push gender ideology in bright colored books and parade people happily like it’s eating candy. Everyone, have a lollipop. You’ll only be reproductively infertile for the rest of your life, but no big deal.”

When I asked him about Virginia, he told me the chilling truth: “It is literally criminal what is going on in your state.” Jonathan believes the brutal truth is “that those promoting the gender narrative in our schools do not want educated, adjusted, balanced, and functioning children. They want TRANS children. Activists want so badly for kids to be trans that they are promoting the most ruinous thing our children could ever do with their lives — as if it were candy — and then giving it the hard sell with an irresistible dose of peer pressure.”

He also believes that the school systems have indoctrinated our children into the “victim mindset,” which creates “fertile mental soil where the idea of being transgender can easily grow. "Once children believe they are powerless against things that happen beyond their control, the idea that an accident placed them in the wrong body becomes so palatable that it goes down like a spoonful of honey, with no resistance or objection whatsoever.”

“Before anyone knows it (especially not the parents who have been left in the dark on purpose), children and adolescents have been hijacked into believing the unthinkable about themselves. And all around them are rainbow flag-waving peers celebrating their ‘bravery’ for declaring their new identity, when in reality, their lives are being stolen from them right under their feet.”

Jonathan told me:

In my own life, being transgender was a very real experience. I discovered years after my transition that it had a real and identifiable cause, and it had a real and definitive solution. I didn’t discover the solution until I had long gone down the path and created unfathomable destruction in my life. The solution wasn’t the one the world wanted me to believe, and it isn’t the solution that the world wants to sell to your child. It is the solution that preserves their own sovereignty over their life, that preserves their empowerment, and that preserves the sacredness of the body they were born with. Most importantly, it is the solution that preserves their future.

I am with Jonathan. We must protect these dear and precious children who are so under attack in today’s upside-down world. As we do, they will be able to rise above a failed society that didn’t serve them and become the architects and creators of a better world that will rise and take its place.

Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position. For more on Genspect, visit our FAQs.

Inspecting Gender recently reported on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) workshop, "The Dangers of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors," which examined potential unfair or deceptive trade practices related to "gender-affirming care" for minors.

This week, the FTC followed up with a Request for Information, encouraging public input. It seeks to evaluate whether consumers (in particular, minors) have been harmed and whether medical professionals or others may have violated Sections 5 and 12 of the FTC Act by failing to disclose material risks associated with “gender-affirming care” or making false or unsubstantiated claims about the benefits or effectiveness of “gender-affirming care.” Read the press release here.

Here’s How You can Help

Please share the following:

• Personal experiences related to “gender-affirming care.”

• Examples of advertisements or social media posts with false claims.

• Empirical research or disclosures showing risks to minors or consumers.

• Evidence of deception or harm in the application of these practices.

Read the entire request for information here

Comments and be shared via Regulations.gov or confidentially (See here)

Now is your opportunity to help safeguard consumers from misinformation, fraud, and irreversible harm.

The Deadline for Submissions is September 26, 2025

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Assessing the Harms and Finding Solutions

Join Genspect for The Bigger Picture Conference in New Mexico, September 27–28, 2025, for the latest information about the realities of medical transition — and where we go from here. Take stock with parents, professionals, activists, and concerned citizens grappling with the ‘big picture’ question of how to fix our broken culture.

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In late 2022, an envelope addressed to my son landed in our mailbox. Expecting a routine bill—since we covered his D.C. apartment, car, gas, insurance, college debt, career training, and credit card for food and clothing—I was stunned to find an invoice from a semen storage facility. My hands trembled as I realized he’d used our family credit card to preserve his fertility at a cryobank, a step toward gender-affirming treatments I barely understood and never saw coming.

I tried to reach out to him, but he wouldn’t answer my calls. I desperately texted him screenshots of the pages from Miriam Grossman's book, Lost in Trans Nation, describing the grim realities of so-called gender -affirming procedures. He responded, “YOU DON’T OWN MY BODY.” He insisted he was an adult who could make decisions for himself; seemingly oblivious to how his financial dependence on us undermined his argument. Yes, we could have stopped paying his bills, but with an extensive infrastructure of non-profits such as SYMAL, the DC LGBTQ+ Support Center in the DMV (District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia) metro area, geared up to offer transitioning young adults with everything from medical care to housing, I feared it might mean losing touch with him entirely. I was left staring at my phone and the cold reality: My son was on a dangerous path, and I was powerless to stop it.

Losing My Son

For five years, I’ve carried the ache of losing my son, who, at 25, left home wearing a dress to join a transgender “community” in Washington, D.C. My brilliant, comical, and creative boy—once a whiz at everything—is also fragile, grappling with depression, possible autism, childhood bullying, and trauma from his brother’s cancer battle.

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I blamed myself, feeling I’d failed him as a mother. But as I dove into research, reading books, watching interviews, and listening to podcasts, I began to see a bigger picture—one that scared me even more and showed me this was not my fault. The path my son was on, encouraged by therapists and LGBTQ+ activist voices, was out of my control and came with risks I felt no one was talking about.

I was horrified to discover how cross-sex hormones drastically alter the body, risking sterility that could prevent my son from ever having children naturally, even if he reconsiders—cryobank or not. They also carry dangers like liver tumors, heart issues, and lifelong health complications.

So-called “gender-affirming” surgeries can be devastating. I heard harrowing stories of young people left incontinent, in chronic pain, or robbed of sexual pleasure after multiple, agonizing operations to reshape their bodies. One detransitioner on Stephanie Winn’s podcast, You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist, sobbed as he described falling in love after detransitioning, only to learn his stored sperm had been destroyed when he missed a payment. I thought of my son, who could very easily forget to update his address, and my stomach churned.

The psychiatrist, Dr. Miriam Grossman, called this a “medical scandal as horrific as lobotomies.” She argued that affirming young people’s new identities without exploring their underlying pain—depression, trauma, or social struggles—rushes them toward irreversible choices. Walt Heyer, a long detransitioned man, echoed this, suggesting that many like my son might be grappling with childhood trauma, not a fixed identity. He believes therapy with a trauma specialist could help. I think he is exactly right, but I don’t know how to reach my son, who’s surrounded by a community that celebrates and enforces his new make-believe self.

One of a growing number of detransitioners speaking out

The Sound of Silence

The deafening silence infuriates me. My son was blind to the risks, as are countless vulnerable youth, because of this omission. The Patch article about the NoVA Prism Center I wrote about last month gushed over crafts, books, and a “safe” space for kids, glossing over hormones, surgeries, and the lifelong medical burdens medicalized youth endure. But they were anything but “safe.” For instance, the therapist who encouraged my son has a master’s degree in education, a master's degree in mental health, with experience working in college admissions. She is not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, yet she felt confident telling him he could become a girl. And my gullible son fell for it.

Schools, like those in Fairfax County, celebrate the Transgender Day of Visibility, but I wonder: Where are the voices of parents like me, or detransitioners who regret their choices? Why aren’t we hearing from psychologists who could help kids learn to love themselves as they are, instead of leaving their families, changing their names, pronouns, gender, and bodies to become someone they are not? Why are politicians so keen to promote transgenderism?

Finding Help

Desperate for family therapy, I consulted a psychologist through my health insurance, only to hear, “If you don’t affirm his identity, he’ll cut you off forever.” I left her office crushed, unwilling to erase my son’s true self for a fabricated one. Then a friend connected me with EnCourage, a faith-based group that understood my pain. They listened to my story, accepted and understood my distress and grief, and connected me with other forlorn parents who were having the same experience I was. I also found Genspect, and their support was another lifeline for me in a world that seemed to have turned against me.

The support helps, but I still live in fear, knowing that my son is in a “fantasy bubble,” as I call it, surrounded by people who cheer his new identity but may not see or don’t want to talk about the risks. It has been years since that envelope arrived in the mail. I don’t know if my son has had surgery, but the thought of how it will harm him haunts me.

I want to shout to other parents: Learn what I didn’t! My deepest wish is for families to have the chance I missed—to protect their children with eyes wide open, armed with the knowledge I now hold and strategies to shield them from the transgender cult’s grasp.

Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position. For more on Genspect, visit our FAQs.

A Compassionate Way Forward

Join the Genspect team this September at The Bigger Picture conference in New Mexico. After nearly a decade of well-intentioned but deeply damaging practices carried out in the name of kindness, we will address the stark realities of medical transition. With clarity and courage, we’ll explore how to navigate the path ahead with integrity—and why telling the truth, now more than ever, is essential to real progress.

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The washing machine stopped humming and our laundry room went quiet, a familiar rhythm in our Northern Virginia home. I tossed my son’s clothes into the dryer, expecting the usual tangle of T-shirts and jeans. But there, among his socks, was a black bra, delicate and unmistakably feminine. My heart skipped. Weeks later, I hugged my son goodbye, my hand brushing his back. I felt it again—a bra strap. My brilliant boy, so naturally talented in creative writing, debate, math, sports and more, who’d always been so distinctly himself, was changing in ways I couldn’t comprehend. I stood frozen, a mother blindsided by a world I didn’t yet understand.

My son was 25 years old in 2020 when these moments began piling up. Before heading to college, he’d been a varsity athlete, played in the orchestra, and acted in plays. He was a star at Improv Night, and aced the math SAT with a perfect score. Teachers called him “above his peers in intelligence.” But he’d also struggled—bullied at his competitive all-boys school, wrestling with depression and anxiety, often stressed out, maybe even on the autism spectrum, as a coach once suggested. I’d taken him to psychologists, worried about the times he’d hit his head against the wall as a child, saying, “I hate myself.”

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I blamed myself for his pain, for the many days and weeks I spent at the hospital with his brother during a 2.5-year battle with childhood cancer, leaving him with babysitters when he was just a toddler. Had I missed something crucial? Was this my fault? Could I have done something differently?

The signs kept coming. I found women’s makeup and nail polish in his bathroom drawer, colorful lace panties and bras in a box in his room, packages arriving from the Netherlands—likely clothing he’d ordered online. I was panicked, lost, with no one to turn to. My husband, swamped with work, tried warning him against “this path,” but our son wouldn’t listen. I begged him not to make ‘life-changing decisions,’ but he was already slipping into a world I couldn’t reach, influenced by online communities and a therapist I later learned was an “affirmation” specialist, not a psychologist. It felt like he was being pulled away, not by force, but by a promise of belonging I hadn’t realized he craved.

Then, one morning in March 2025, I opened my laptop, still half-asleep, and clicked on a Patch article from our local news site. The headline announced the NoVA Prism Center, a new McLean facility for the LGBTQ+ community, just miles from our home. My jaw dropped as I read about a vibrant space for youth, boasting a community fridge, a food pantry, a crafting area, and a library with “1,000 books on LGBTQ+ perspectives.” A large, captivating photo showed a bright display of colorful trans storybooks for kids and teens, promising a “fun and friendly” environment. To me, it looked like a trap. The space was so inviting and seemed to aim at pulling in vulnerable kids searching for identity. My heart sank, imagining my son—or other parents’ children—walking through those doors, drawn by the warmth and crafts, only to be swept into potentially harmful choices they could not fully understand.

The article went on, proudly noting that the Fairfax County School Board had unanimously declared March 31 as Transgender Visibility Day. The board chair, Karl Frisch, called it a place where “young people feel safe to be who they are.” Safe? The word stung like a serpent’s bite.

To me, safety meant protecting kids from rushing into irreversible decisions, not celebrating a path that could lead to harmful, lifelong consequences. I forwarded the article to a friend, who sent me another article from the Washington Blade, detailing the growing presence of LGBTQ+ initiatives in our schools and neighborhoods. I felt encircled, as if my community was shifting under my feet, cheering a movement that was taking over and that I now knew, after five years of research, could do serious, lifelong harm to the very kids it claimed to help.

Sitting at my kitchen table, I pictured my son at 20, witty and talented, but also moody and oppositional, struggling to find his place. The Prism Center, with its promise of community and creativity, felt like a magnet for kids like him: artistic, creative, highly intelligent, feeling a little lost as they try to find themselves. I imagined other parents in Fairfax County, unaware their children might be drawn to the same allure—arts and crafts, a welcoming kitchen, a place to “express themselves.”

But what if that expression led to harmful choices they couldn’t undo? What if, like my son, they were encouraged to redefine themselves in ways that cut them off from their families, their pasts, the individuals they always were, and their healthy, natural bodies?

I couldn’t shake the image of my son walking out the door of our family home five years ago, wearing a dress, heading to Washington, D.C., where he found a community that celebrated his new identity. He changed his name, his birth certificate, and stepped into a world of “artistic fantasy,” as I saw it, supported by people who believed in his delusion. They are all living in an all-encompassing mass psychosis. But I worried—still worry—about what lies beneath that false reality. Is he happy? Is he safe? And what about the other kids in our neighborhood, drawn to places like the Prism Center, searching for belonging? How do we protect them when the world seems to cheer them toward choices they cannot fully understand because of their youthful naivety? As a mother, I’m left with questions, not answers, and a longing to keep other families from the shock and pain I’ve lived through.

Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position. For more on Genspect, visit our FAQs.

Update: June 12, 2025
It was announced today that Children’s Hospital Los Angeles will shutter its longstanding healthcare program for trans children and young adults this summer.

In the early 1950s, the United States was gripped by a wave of fear known as the “Red Scare.” As post-World War II alliances crumbled and the Soviet Union emerged as a formidable rival, high-profile espionage cases involving figures like Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg fueled widespread paranoia. No one is more associated with the Red Scare of the 1950s than Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. As a prominent figure in the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, he led an aggressive crusade against alleged communists and sympathizers, using unsubstantiated accusations to target Hollywood studios, government officials, and others. In his fervor to root out the “reds,” he shattered democratic norms, left a trail of ruined reputations and civil liberties violations, and created the pervasive atmosphere of mistrust and conformity now known as the “McCarthy era.” Though he was far from the only zealot, he was so closely identified with the movement that his fate and that of the cause were completely intertwined—as McCarthy went, so went his cause.

Americans have been living through a similar period of conformism when it comes to trans ideology, in which we have been told that “people are who they say they are,” even, and perhaps especially, if they are gender-distressed children or adolescents. No one has been more vocal in favor of pediatric transition than Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy. Like McCarthy, one figure has come to symbolize this movement’s excesses.

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Who is Johanna Olson-Kennedy?

While she is not the only proponent of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for adolescents, she is arguably the most influential. She is the Medical Director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where she has overseen the medical transition of approximately 1,400 youth aged 3 to 25. She is President-Elect of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health (USPATH), the U.S. counterpart of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). Her research and opinions have influenced both organizations and the Endocrine Society. Her maxim, “children know who they are,” and infamous question, “Would you rather have a live daughter or a dead son?” are deployed in gender clinics across the nation. Now that long-silenced critics of the so-called “affirmative” model—a model prioritizing immediate affirmation of a child’s gender identity over psychological evaluation—and detransitioners harmed by these interventions are finally getting a hearing, Olson-Kennedy, the face of child-led transition, faces a reckoning. Her research is being exposed for not supporting her claims about the benefits of pediatric care, her child-led approach is being questioned in a new documentary podcast, and she faces a malpractice lawsuit.

She has been in the spotlight this week, and not in a favorable way. Her long-suppressed study on puberty blockers has finally been released into preprint, and she features prominently in an episode of The Protocol, The New York Times’ podcast about the Dutch Protocol, which has sparked debate among clinicians. The study shows that there is no evidence to back up the claim that puberty blockers improve the mental health of young people treated with them, and she doesn’t come across well in the podcast. Adding to these challenges, she faces a significant malpractice lawsuit from a former patient, Clementine Breen. Could her troubles be the beginning of the end for childhood transition? Let’s look at the story so far.

A Study Suppressed

Olson-Kennedy has been publishing on the subject of gender and minors since 2011. Her most recent study, Mental and Emotional Health of Youth after 24 Months of Gender-Affirming Medical Care Initiated with Pubertal Suppression, published in pre-print on May 16, 2025, has been a long time coming. Expected in 2020, the study was funded by a $9.7 million NIH grant as part of the Trans Youth Care United States Study (TYCUS) and was supposed to provide definitive evidence for gender-affirming care.1 As part of study she followed 94 transgender and non-binary youth over two years but found no significant mental health benefits from the use of puberty blockers. Specifically, the data showed that 25% of participants had baseline depression or suicidality, contradicting her 2020 NIH report’s claim that participants were “in really good shape.”

Olson-Kennedy’s excuses for not publishing sooner—ongoing data analysis and alleged funding cuts (denied by the NIH)—lack credibility. She admitted in a New York Times interview on October 23, 2024, that she feared critics would “weaponize” the findings to argue, “We shouldn’t use [puberty] blockers because it doesn’t impact them.” This delay, enabled by the NIH’s policy of leaving it to researchers to decide how and when to publish their work, as reported in the Washington Times, has allowed an unproven narrative of mental health benefits to persist, shaping treatment for thousands. Dr. Hilary Cass, whose 2024 UK review exposed the lack of evidence for mental health benefits from blockers, criticized such delays for misleading clinicians and families.

Broken Protocol

The Protocol is a six-part New York Times podcast series exploring the history and controversies surrounding medical treatment for gender-distressed youth. Olson-Kennedy appears in the third episode, which looks at how the protocol evolved in the United States. Though ultimately flawed the Dutch at least tried to vet their patients., screening for mental health issues. By contrast, Olson-Kennedy pushed for fewer barriers to transition. Unfortunately for her, she is positioned opposite Laura Edwards-Leeper, the clinician at Boston Children’s Hospital, which opened the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States in 2007. Edwards-Leeper expressed concern about a shift that occurred around 2014, when the population of gender-distressed youth began to change. As she describes it, “People were suddenly seeming to feel like it needed to be child-led entirely, and that there could never be complicating factors that needed to be looked at, that it can never be because someone experienced a traumatic event, or they’re just fed up with what’s expected of them as an assigned female.” Olson-Kennedy was at the forefront of this shift. She is unapologetic about eliminating assessments she sees as gatekeeping, even suggesting that therapists working with youth seeking to transition are, in her view, only conducting sessions to “make [themselves] feel comfortable about the gender that the young person is asserting.” The podcast then plays a clip in which she explains, “We often will ask parents, would you rather have a dead son or an alive daughter?” Like McCarthy’s overreach with baseless accusations, her dismissal of caution has drawn widespread criticism.

The Truth Will Out—In Court

The question—really a threat—that a child will commit suicide if they aren’t affirmed has become the weapon of choice for clinicians seeking to silence parents who express doubts about their child’s medical transition. The accusation that Olson-Kennedy used coercive tactics to gain parental consent is one of the central allegations in a lawsuit filed in December 2024 on behalf of Clementine Breen, now 20. Like McCarthy’s public hearings, which exposed his tactics to scrutiny, this lawsuit is bringing Olson-Kennedy’s practices into the open.

The complaint alleges medical negligence stemming from a single 2016 consultation when Breen was 12. Olson-Kennedy reportedly diagnosed gender dysphoria, recommended puberty blockers, and misrepresented them as “completely reversible,” despite risks like bone density loss and infertility. Ignoring Breen’s anxiety and depression, she allegedly used manipulative tactics, such as asking Breen’s parents the fateful question, “Would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter?”—this, despite Breen having no suicidal history. Her worried parents consented, and their daughter was given blockers at 12, testosterone at 13, and a double mastectomy at 14. Breen, who detransitioned at 18, now faces irreversible consequences, including infertility, chronic pain, and psychological distress, alleging that Olson-Kennedy dismissed therapy in favor of rapid medicalization.

Above: Olson-Kennedy in a leaked video from a "Professional Symposium" convened by "Gender Spectrum", 6 July 2018, Moraga, California.

It is hard to see how Olson-Kennedy will survive when she has been so outspoken in the past. For instance, a leaked video (above) shows Olson-Kennedy making light of the possibility of regret after a double mastectomy by saying that girls who miss having breasts can simply “go get them.” But the stakes are much higher than a single lawsuit.

Olson-Kennedy’s rejection of “gatekeeping,” her advocacy for rapid transitions for the very young, and her blithe dismissal of the permanent changes and complications brought about by these interventions have set the tone for a generation of gender clinicians. Her fate is inextricably bound up with pediatric transition itself. Her own research, the 2024 Cass Review, and the May, 2025 HHS comprehensive report on treatments for gender dysphoria care show that it never delivered the promised mental health benefits and that it carries significant risks, including infertility and cognitive impairment. Countries like Sweden, Finland, Norway, and France have restricted or rolled back such interventions for minors, citing weak evidence and growing concerns from detransitioners. Eighteen U.S. states have now banned the use of puberty blockers outright for the same reasons, and a further six have partial bans in place. Let’s hope her decline signals a shift toward evidence-based care.

Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position. For more on Genspect, visit our FAQs.

Join Genspect in Recognizing the Importance of Puberty

Since 2021, Genspect has exposed the harms of medical transition in young people and advocated for ethical, non-medicalized approaches to gender-related distress. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the Role of Puberty transforms this advocacy into collective action—uniting organizations worldwide to publicly commit to protecting children from experimental interventions that disrupt their natural development. To learn more about supporting MoU visit ProtectingPuberty.com

Imagine the nightmare: You learn that your 17-year-old daughter, with whom you’ve always shared a deep, loving bond, has embarked upon an intimate relationship with her female teacher—a deeply inappropriate situation under any circumstances. But instead of acting to safeguard your child, school officials secretly label her “homeless” to allow her to move in with the teacher, withholding the truth from you. Unfortunately, this is the harsh reality for one Jefferson County, Colorado, family. When the parent uncovered the deception and confronted the high school principal, they were met with a shocking defense: the teacher was simply “helping kids explore their sexual identity.”

Some 330 miles southwest, in Durango, Colorado, an LGBTQ activist teacher allegedly abducted a 17-year-old girl earlier this year, claiming she needed support to transition to a boy. Law enforcement backed the teacher, and the daughter, now 18, remains living with her. In a Daily Mail interview, the devastated mother said, “Smotherman, exploited my child, inserting herself into our family. I’m stunned she’s faced no consequences, and I’m powerless to fix this or hold her accountable.”

Tragically, numerous stories are emerging in Colorado of parents losing custody of their children for allegedly failing to support their child’s sexual or gender identity. Colorado’s laws and political climate are enabling those who promote an ideology claiming that children expressing their “true selves” are oppressed by their parents, with the state intervening to “protect” them.

What’s Happened to Colorado?

I’ve lived in Colorado most of my life, ever since my family arrived in the 1970s. For most of that time, the state was animated by a spirit of rugged individualism and a “live and let live” vibe. It was an easy place to make friends and attracted people who felt the same way. When I landed my first job in downtown Denver, I was one of the few “natives” in a lively office with a vibrant atmosphere, unburdened by entrenched class-based or political cliques.

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Raising my children in the early 2000s, I felt secure in Colorado’s respect for my fundamental right as a parent to, as the Supreme Court stated, “direct the upbringing and education” of my children. Other states might overreach, but Colorado, with its deep-rooted respect for individual liberty, seemed different. By 2010, however, the tide began to shift. The state’s political landscape transformed, driven partly by the concerted efforts of wealthy, left-leaning business figures like Tim Gill, Pat Stryker, Rutt Bridges, and Jared Polis (later Governor Polis) who funneled millions into political committees and nonprofit organizations to steer Colorado from staunchly conservative to firmly progressive — a California in the Rockies.

These organizations spent millions to elect progressive Democrats in low profile races, such as for school boards and the state legislature, to advance their social agenda. This was no organic, grassroots movement but a deliberate, strategic effort that culminated in Democrats gaining full control of Colorado’s state government in 2018. Following this shift, as if to consolidate their gains, ideologically driven foundations began funding local media outlets, many of which had recently changed ownership.

A New Climate

The first signs of trouble appeared in 2013 when the state took an energetic interest in children’s well-being. The Colorado Departments of Education, Public Health and Environment, and Human Services launched the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, offered free to school districts to “better understand youth health and factors supporting healthy choices.” The survey asked middle and high school students deeply personal questions—unrelated to academics—covering gender identity, sexual orientation, suicidal thoughts, sense of belonging at school, and parental involvement in personal issues. School districts used these results to expand on-site mental health counselors, implement Social Emotional Learning curricula that shape children’s emotions and behaviors toward collective goals, and promote close relationships between students and adult school staff as “trusted adults,” disturbingly echoing Mao’s youth indoctrination programs. In effect, the state began systematically undermining parents’ roles in guiding their children’s moral development.

Since Governor Jared Polis’s election in 2018, when Colorado Democrats secured full control of the state government for the first time since 1938, the state’s interference in child-rearing has intensified. The 2019 legislative session produced bills that: permit children over 12 to access mental health care without parental consent or knowledge; prohibit therapists from using exploratory therapy for gender-confused youth; and mandate that teachers introduce sexual orientation and gender identity to children as young as first grade in social studies classes. Unlike sex education, parents cannot opt their children out of these social studies lessons.

In 2024, Colorado’s legislature advanced its progressive agenda with the “Non-Legal Name Change” law, compelling teachers to socially transition students or face discrimination charges. The pinnacle came with HB25-1312, the “Kelly Loving Act,” which initially proposed that a parent’s refusal to use their child’s preferred pronouns or chosen name could be deemed “coercive control” in custody disputes. Supporters claimed that failing to affirm a child’s gender identity constitutes abuse. Parents and their allies argued the real harm lies in rushing vulnerable children into irreversible treatments without addressing underlying distress. Although the bill was heavily amended, with the “coercive control” definition removed before being signed into law, parents across Colorado and beyond remain shocked that such an erosion of parental authority was even considered by the State House of Representatives.

How Colorado Parents Are Coping

What is it like to be a parent raising children in Colorado now? Are they fearful of having their family’s values overridden by the government? Or has that already happened? I interviewed three mothers from different parts of the state to understand their experiences.

Amber

Drawn to Denver 25 years ago by its weather and outdoor lifestyle, Amber settled with her husband in a neighborhood with top-rated public schools to raise their now 13-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter. All seemed well until her then-13-year-old daughter wanted to attend a school-sponsored overnight camp. Aware of Colorado’s evolving laws and the school’s heightened focus on gender identity, Amber contacted the school, concerned about biological males potentially bunking with biological females. “They confirmed it could happen,” she said. “I wasn’t okay with my young, menstruating daughter sharing a room with a male at a school camp.” Fortunately, the school allowed Amber to review and approve her daughter’s roommates. Meanwhile, a boy at her children’s elementary school was socially transitioned to a girl by the school, sparking tough dinner-table talks. “As a parent, I saw it as abuse, but I had to model tolerance for my kids, teaching them to use their classmate’s new name and be kind. Elementary school is far too young for these concepts.”

Danielle

Danielle and her husband, who met in the Peace Corps in Zambia, moved to Colorado 20 years ago, settling in Frisco in 2018 on her husband’s recommendation. They didn’t expect Summit County’s public schools, where their 10-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son are enrolled, to prioritize certain identity groups over others. Yet, in October 2022, the Summit School District Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution declaring, “the Summit School District Board of Education officially reaffirms its commitment to policies that support and represent the diverse people and families in our communities and opposes any action by the Colorado State Board of Education to remove or limit the representation of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC people in K-3 grade-level standards.” This triggered widespread parental backlash, with many questioning why the school board emphasized immutable traits like race or presumed sexual orientation when teaching young children about historical figures.

Danielle rallied her community to challenge the resolution at school board meetings, and parents circulated a petition to repeal it. She ran for the Summit District school board in 2023, but progressive candidates championing equity, social-emotional well-being, and belonging overwhelmingly defeated those, like Danielle, focused on academic excellence. The election results stifled efforts to prioritize academics in public schools. Some families turned to homeschooling or left Colorado, but Danielle feels stuck—her husband’s job ties them to Frisco, where charter schools are absent, and private schools are unaffordable. To protect her children from the state’s emphasis on gender ideology, she opts them out of the Healthy Kids Colorado survey, fifth-grade “puberty week,” and Social Emotional Learning assessments. She fears her empathetic daughter is vulnerable to these narratives, as the school portrays social justice involvement as “kind.” “Fighting the system is hard to do,” says Danielle.

Phoebe

Phoebe (a pseudonym), a metro-Denver native now raising a two-year-old in Fort Collins with another baby due later this year, senses a shift in Colorado’s family-friendly reputation, though she’s unfamiliar with specific laws eroding parental roles. “Even though our local public school earns high marks for academics, many families in our neighborhood opt for charter or private schools, fearing public school teachers might tell kids they’re not who they’re meant to be,” she says. Nearly half of her friends with children in Colorado have chosen homeschooling. Phoebe anticipates tough decisions ahead: when should she shield her children from certain influences or let them grow through challenging experiences? For instance, if the public library displays a “Hate Is Not Welcome Here” banner when her kids can read, should she skip storytime or attend after discussing it with them? “How will I know when I’ve reached that point? I think about this all the time,” says Phoebe.

An Emergency for Parents

Colorado’s regulatory framework permits public schools to facilitate a minor’s gender identity transition without parental knowledge or consent, leaving no room for passive parenting. Parents are embracing “courageous parenting” by:

• Engaging in candid conversations with their children about social contagions and their risks;

• Teaching discernment by distinguishing between predatory behaviors and those of trustworthy adults;

• Challenging school policies, practices, and teacher actions that conflict with their values;

• Removing smartphones and access to social media, including video game chat rooms;

• Making tough, financially significant choices about schooling;

• Connecting with like-minded parents for support.

Colorado’s legislature may aspire to reshape the state in California’s image, but Coloradans—both newcomers and longtime residents—cling fiercely to their rugged individualism. I’m confident that this independent spirit will prevail, as most Colorado children mature into adults with keen skepticism, unyielding resilience, and the support of devoted, courageous parents.

Laureen is a mom, retired healthcare executive, active champion of classical liberalism, and is committed to saving the soul of her beloved home state Colorado.

Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position. For more on Genspect, visit our FAQs.

Genspect is excited to welcome Jennifer Sey, founder of XX-XY Athletics, to The Bigger Picture Conference. The Colorado-based athletic brand, established by Sey to advocate for women’s sports, is suing the state of Colorado over HB25-1312, also known as the Kelly Loving Act. This recent state law restricts the company’s ability to refer to transgender individuals by their birth names or biologically accurate language, a core component of its marketing message.

Buy Tickets Here

As of May 1st college-bound seniors in American high schools are breathing a sigh of relief — and so are their parents. They’ve accepted an offer, sent in a deposit and they know where they will be headed in next fall. But for parents of students who struggle with gender distress there is no such sense of relief. Adjusting to college life is challenging at the best of times, for for trans-identified young men and their parents the future is full of unknowns. There are no easy answers for how to proceed, but these observations from a parent who has been there can help.

Sending a child off to college is always slightly terrifying, but that terror increases by orders of magnitude when your child is dealing with gender dysphoria. Raising my son has taught me—sometimes on a daily basis—that control is an illusion. Sending him away to college was very difficult and only lasted one year, but I’m very glad for both of us that we tried it. Here’s what I learned.

Don’t Rush It

Like many parents of autistic or neurodivergent boys, I have learned my son moves at his own pace. He met developmental milestones at the outer edge of typical, often just when I feared he might not. He’d sometimes try to please me, but I realized nothing would happen until he was ready—college included.

His decision to take a gap year worried me. I feared he’d lose momentum after a tough high school experience, where accommodations fell short of promises. COVID disrupted his sophomore year, and in March of his senior year, he texted me that he identified as a girl.

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I suspected he saw his gap year as a time to transition, perhaps envisioning himself entering into a hormone-induced chrysalis stage ready to emerge in time for collage as a fully-formed and confident trans woman. I urged him to delay hormone therapy until he was older, but he accessed it through Planned Parenthood. To my relief, it wasn’t all bad. He also thrived in a part-time job he loved. He applied to colleges independently, was accepted to two, and chose a large state university three hours away.

A life coach supported him during the gap year, and I assisted with some logistics, but he largely managed the application process himself. I stepped back as much as possible. The gap year was not what I expected, but it gave him space to grow and gain perspective, proving he was ready when the time was right.

Take What You Can Get

My son kept his college application essays private. I have no idea what he wrote but it is entirely possible that is was about his trans identity. It is also possible that it was the essay that got him accepted — even at our conservative state school. That’s the reality of higher education today. His high school grades were uneven, and standardized tests were never his strength, so if sharing his identity helped him navigate the fiercely competitive admissions process, it was a successful strategy.

If that’s what launched him from home to the broader, yet still relatively contained, university environment—where he can explore new life experiences and grow—I’m grateful for it.

Let Them Drive

By the fall of his freshman year, my son had been on estrogen for a year. I wondered how much of this he’d share with his university and how he’d go about it. I don’t know, because I stepped back. My approach to his medical transition has been to stay out of it.

I’ve made it clear I think he’s too young to be certain about permanent changes to his body. These are adult decisions, best left for adults to handle without their moms stepping in. I’m not calling the gender clinic to book his appointments, informing grandparents about new pronouns, or making special housing requests to his school. If he wants those things, he needs to figure them out himself.

On hormones and housing, he called my bluff and took charge. He requested a single room in the apartment-style dorms, which made some sense since he’d taken a gap year and was older than most freshmen. I think he might’ve benefited from a roommate in a traditional dorm, with more chances to connect with other students, but I didn’t want to put another student in an awkward spot. So, I let it go. My only input was to say I didn’t think he should live in a women’s dorm.

Get Used to Not Knowing

Let me introduce you toThe Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). If you’re new to FERPA, brace yourself: it’s often the first hurdle for parents of college students in the U.S. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act safeguards student records, allowing parents of minors to review grades, request changes, or limit data sharing. But once a student turns 18, those rights vanish unless they sign a FERPA waiver. My son didn’t, leaving me locked out despite footing the bill. which protects the privacy of student education records.

I have mixed feelings. I am funding his education and part of me wanted some oversight, especially given his immaturity at 19. But FERPA left me no choice: I’m out of the loop, resigned to letting him navigate alone.

Colleges strive to help students succeed, offering tutoring, writing labs, study groups, counseling, and more. For students with learning differences, like my son, extra support exists. I urged him to use these resources, but I suspect he bypassed academic help, seeking therapy—and likely hormones—at the health center. Without FERPA access, I’m left in the dark.

Every Experience is a Learning Experience

Even though it was difficult, even though I knew he was probably terribly lonely and homesick, even though it was only one year—I’m so glad he went. He needed time on his own to understand that even though it was really, really hard, he could do it..

Admitting this as a mother is painful, but I desperately needed a break. I had begun to feel as if I was doing things for him, even when I wasn’t, as if nothing happened without my mental and emotional labor. It was draining. The year apart gave us both essential breathing room.

Now back home, he works a service job he says he dislikes but seems to quietly appreciate. Though tiring, it offers teamwork, praise from a supportive manager, and a sense of purpose. He’s considering community college while living at home, which I think suits him. Beneath his learning differences lies sharp intelligence, and he’d thrive with intellectual challenges.

Yet I wonder: what he will do for work, and is a college degree even necessary today? We’re in a strange era. I’d champion a trade like plumbing if it fit, but manual labor isn’t his thing Where does an extremely awkward young man belong? What lies ahead?

His future remains unclear —and it terrifies me.

Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position. For more on Genspect, visit our FAQs.

Want to know what to expect at your child’s college? Have an experience you want to share? Check out Genspect’s College Ratings Site.

For more candid insights from parents facing gender ideology, visit Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT), a Genspect-supported platform.

In May 2025, Texas passed Senate Bill 1257 (SB 1257) with an 87-58 vote in the House. This law requires insurance providers covering sex-trait modification treatments, such as hormone therapy or surgeries, must also fund complications, reconstructions, and recovery care. Genspect has worked on this bill since 2022, and we believe it should inspire similar legislation across the nation and the world. Why is this significant? How will it reshape Texas and potentially influence other regions? Let us explore.

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So called gender transition treatments and procedures—hormone therapy, surgeries, and related interventions—are often promoted as solutions for distress by organizations like WPATH, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Endocrine Society. However, recent findings, including the HHS report and the Cass Review, reveal weak evidence for the safety and efficacy of these treatments. President Trump’s Executive Orders on gender, which cut funding for institutions offering such procedures, will likely reduce their prevalence. Yet, as long as insurance providers and Medicaid cover these interventions, they will persist.

While insurance often funds medicalized sex trait alterations, it often excludes costs for addressing complications, reconstructions and on-going health monitoring. This gap is not merely a practical issue for tens of thousands of individuals; it conceals the crisis of iatrogenic harm caused by these procedures.

Proponents of sex-trait modification treatments have long dismissed detransition as a myth and claimed complications are rare. They sustain this narrative partly because the system operates like a conveyor belt: when initial interventions fail to deliver desired outcomes, further procedures are presented as solutions. For those seeking to reverse course, returning to the practitioner who initiated their path is often the last thing they want to do. Additionally, the medical system lacks diagnostic and billing codes for unique complications—like vaginal atrophy in a 25-year-old masculinized woman or fistulas in a surgically constructed anatomy—rendering these adverse effects invisible.

Senate Bill 1257 addresses this issue directly. It requires insurance providers covering such procedures to also fund care for complications or reconstruction and on-going health monitoring. Imagine undergoing surgery only to discover that insurance will not cover follow-up care if healing falters—that is a crushing burden. This bill prevents such scenarios, offering critical support for individuals who detransition, a group gaining increasing recognition. It ensures assistance is available, regardless of the path chosen.

How will this change the landscape? The legislation will likely encourage greater caution among physicians and insurers. Doctors may perform more rigorous evaluations before recommending medicalized sex alteration, ensuring patients understand the risks. Insurers may become more discerning about what they cover; however, they must continue to care for those who have already undergone these treatments. The bill will also reveal the true scope of post-medicalization complications, reducing cases of individuals facing unaffordable bills after procedures go wrong. Furthermore, it may foster more transparent discussions about the risks and benefits of these interventions, benefiting all involved.

What can we expect in Texas and beyond? In Texas, Senate Bill 1257 aligns with existing policies, such as Senate Bill 14 (2023), which restricts sex-trait modification treatments for minors. This new law extends some protection to adults, addressing a critical gap.

Could this approach spread? We hope so. Other regions, particularly those with similar healthcare perspectives, are observing Texas closely. If Senate Bill 1257 proves effective, other states may adopt comparable measures. Unfortunately, most insurance plans are regulated federally. To ensure protection for all citizens, similar policies must be adopted in Washington.

Ultimately, Senate Bill 1257 ensures individuals facing challenges are not abandoned. Though not flawless and likely to face opposition, it marks a vital step toward a healthcare system that supports people navigating gender distress.

The Trump administration has launched a sweeping overhaul of U.S. transgender policy in 2025, driving major changes across healthcare, the military, education, and public institutions. This timeline from Genspect USA outlines the key executive orders, agency directives, and legal battles that have followed—providing a clear, up-to-date look at the scope and pace of federal action.

Download in PDF Format

We will continue to update this timeline as further developments unfold. To stay informed, visit Genspect USA.

Trump Administration Actions (January-May 2025)

January 2025

• Executive Order 14168 -- "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government" (Jan 20, 2025)

Recognized only two biological sexes across all federal agencies; mandated sex-based language and facilities. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/

• Federal Agency Implementation of EO 14168: Initial Actions (Jan 20-31, 2025)

Federal agencies began immediate implementation with State Department suspending "X" gender marker passports (Jan 24), EEOC removing pronoun displays and LGBTQ+ workplace materials (Jan 28), multiple federal agencies ordering employees to remove pronouns from email signatures; and health agencies including CDC, FDA, and NIH purging thousands of transgender/LGBTQ+ health resources from websites by January 31 deadline. https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/24/politics/state-department-suspends-passports-x-gender-marker/index.html https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/removing-gender-ideology-and-restoring-eeocs-role-protecting-women-workplace https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/31/politics/us-government-agencies-order-employees-to-remove-gender-pronouns-from-email-signatures/index.html https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-health-agencies-scrubbing-websites-remove-gender-ideology-2025-01-31/

• Executive Order 14183 -- "Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness" (Jan 27, 2025)

Banned individuals who identify as transgender from serving in the military, declaring such identity conflicts with "honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle". https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prioritizing-military-excellence-and-readiness/

• Executive Order 14187 -- "Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation" (Jan 28, 2025)

Prohibited federal funding for gender-transition procedures for individuals under 19; directed HHS to publish evidence-based literature review within 90 days. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-children-from-chemical-and-surgical-mutilation/

• Executive Order 14186 -- "Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling" (Jan 29, 2025)

Directed federal agencies to eliminate funding for schools supporting students' social transition; defined "social transition" as adopting gender identity different from biological sex including name/pronoun use, restroom access, and sports participation. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-indoctrination-in-k-12-schooling/

February 2025

• Federal Agency Implementation of EO 14168: Continued Actions (Feb 1-15, 2025)

Implementation continued with Education Department eliminating nonbinary gender options from FAFSA forms (Feb 5), and EEOC moving to dismiss six gender identity discrimination cases (Feb 15), citing conflicts with the administration's binary-only sex policy. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/02/05/education-department-cuts-nonbinary-option-fafsa https://apnews.com/article/eeoc-trump-gender-identity-discrimination-alabama-73a065c8aa5e0060472e1cac1ecd8212

• Executive Order 14201 -- "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports" (Feb 5, 2025)

Required sex-segregated sports participation based on biological sex in educational institutions; threatened to revoke federal funding from non-compliant schools. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/keeping-men-out-of-womens-sports/

• Department of Defense Directive Implementing EO 14183 (Feb 7, 2025)

Defense Secretary Hegseth issued memo pausing all new accessions for individuals with gender dysphoria and halting gender transition-related medical procedures. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/transgender-us-service-members-separated-military-pentagon-memo/story?id=119239214

• DOJ Withdrawal from United States v. Skrmetti Case (Feb 7, 2025)

Trump DOJ reversed Biden administration's position, notifying Supreme Court that Tennessee's law banning gender transition-related medical procedures for youth does not violate equal protection. https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/07/politics/supreme-court-lgbtq-skrmetti-switch/index.html

• HHS Launch of Office on Women's Health Website (Feb 19, 2025)

Published biological sex-based health resources following EO 14168. https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2025/02/19/hhs-office-womens-health-website-launch-biological-resources.html

• HHS Civil Rights Office Rescission of Gender Affirming Care Guidance (Feb 20, 2025)

Formally rescinded 2022 guidance titled "HHS Notice and Guidance on Gender Affirming Care, Civil Rights, and Patient Privacy" as directed by EO 14187. https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2025/02/20/hhs-civil-rights-office-takes-action-support-president-trumps-executive-orders-protect-minors-restore-biological-truth.html

• Pentagon Orders Removal of Service Members Who Identify as Transgender (Feb 26, 2025)

The Pentagon ordered service members who identify as transgender to be separated unless granted waivers, under the policy implementing Executive Order 14183. https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/transgender-troops-will-removed-military-pentagon-says-rcna194023

March 2025

• CMS Medical Guidance on Pediatric Gender Transition (Mar 5, 2025)

Warned providers about lack of evidence supporting pediatric gender transition interventions. https://www.cms.gov/medicare/health-safety-standards/quality-safety-oversight-general-information/quality-and-safety-special-alerts/protecting-children-chemical-and-surgical-mutilation

• Federal Funding Suspension to University of Pennsylvania (Mar 19, 2025)

White House suspended $175M in federal funding over university's policies regarding males identifying as women in athletics. https://apnews.com/article/transgender-athletes-girls-sports-maine-7241a5d126d2df4368ffe115cc212252

• Education Department Title IX Finding Against Maine (Mar 19, 2025)

Found Maine violated Title IX by allowing boys in girls' sports; gave state 10 days to comply with ban or face Justice Department prosecution. https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/office-civil-rights-launches-title-ix-violation-investigations-maine-department-of-education-and-maine-school-district

• NIH and HHS Grant Cancellations Related to LGBTQ+ Research (Mar 24, 2025)

Trump administration canceled at least 68 research grants focused on LGBTQ+ health, including long-term studies at major institutions. https://apnews.com/article/lgbtq-research-grants-terminated-trump-5b2810312de1420ca3df875314b0a1e9

April 2025

• NIH Research Initiative on Detransition and Regret (Apr 10, 2025)

NIH announced funding for the first large-scale U.S. study of detransition and regret after gender transition, prioritizing research on causes, experiences, and outcomes of detransition. https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/10/nx-s1-5355126/trump-nih-trans-regret-detransition-research

• HHS Report on Implementation of Executive Order 14187 (Apr 28, 2025)

Reported eliminating 215 grants worth $477M and listed actions to end "chemical and surgical mutilation of children." https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/report-to-the-president-on-protecting-children-from-surgical-and-chemical-mutilation-executive-summary/

• University of Pennsylvania Title IX Violation Finding (Apr 28, 2025)

Ordered UPenn to revoke NCAA titles from Lia Thomas for women's swimming violations. https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-educations-office-civil-rights-finds-university-of-pennsylvania-has-violated-title-ix

May 2025

• HHS Publication of Systematic Review on Pediatric Gender Interventions (May 1, 2025)

HHS released a federally commissioned systematic evidence review on pediatric gender interventions as directed under EO 14187. The review found that the quality of evidence supporting puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for youth is "very low" and that such interventions are likely to cause harm. The report stated: "We can be certain in the ordinary sense of 'certain' that these interventions cause harm," and concluded that further systematic reviews are unlikely to yield new insights. The findings echoed and extended the UK Cass Review, emphasizing physiological risks and a lack of clinical justification for current treatment models. https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/gender-dysphoria-report-release.html

Legal Challenges and Court Actions Against Trump Policies

Prison and Housing Policy Challenges

• Moe v. Trump Lawsuit Filed (Jan 26, 2025)

Incarcerated trans-identified male represented by GLAD and NCLR challenged new Bureau of Prisons sex-based housing rules. https://clearinghouse.net/case/45974/

• Temporary Restraining Order in Moe v. Trump (Jan 30, 2025)

District Judge George A. O'Toole Jr. blocked transfer of trans-identified male inmate to men's facility. https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-blocks-transgender-inmates-prison-transfer-under-trump-order-2025-01-30/

• Federal Court Blocks Transfer of Trans-identified Males to Men's Prisons (Feb 5, 2025)

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction halting the Trump administration's executive order that mandated the transfer of trans-identified male inmates to men's prisons and the cessation of their "gender-affirming" care. https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-blocks-trump-sending-transgender-women-mens-prisons-2025-02-05/

Youth Transition Restrictions (EO 14187)

• PFLAG v. Trump Lawsuit Filed (Feb 4, 2025)

ACLU, Lambda Legal and other civil rights groups sued on behalf of gender-questioning youth and families over gender-transition care restrictions. https://clearinghouse.net/case/46028/

• Nationwide TRO in PFLAG v. Trump (Feb 13, 2025)

Judge Brendan Hurson issued temporary restraining order preventing withholding of federal funds from hospitals providing gender-affirming care to minors. https://pflag.org/resource/pvt-faqs/

• TRO in Washington v. Trump (Feb 14, 2025)

Separate court blocked EO 14187 enforcement in Washington, Minnesota, Oregon. https://www.feldesman.com/client-alert-updates-on-executive-orders-impacting-gender-affirming-care/

• Preliminary Injunction in Washington AG Lawsuit (Feb 28, 2025)

Blocked EO 14187 in Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Colorado. https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/02/28/seattle-judge-blocks-trumps-order-targeting-hospitals-that-treat-transgender-youth/

• Nationwide Preliminary Injunction in PFLAG v. Trump (Mar 4, 2025)

Judge Hurson extended nationwide block on enforcement of EO 14187. https://pflag.org/press/pflagvtrump/

Military Service Ban for Those Who Identify as Transgender (EO 14183)

• Preliminary Injunction in Talbott v. Trump (Mar 18, 2025)

U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes blocked military ban on those who identify as transgender, ruling it likely violated constitutional rights of affected troops. https://www.npr.org/2025/03/18/nx-s1-5332409/transgender-troops-ban-preliminary-injunction

• Nationwide Injunction in Shilling v. Trump (Mar 27, 2025)

Second nationwide block on Pentagon policy regarding those who identify as transgender. https://lambdalegal.org/case/shilling-v-trump/

• DOJ Appeals to Supreme Court on Military Bans (Apr 24, 2025)

Trump administration appealed to limit or dismiss injunctions against military ban on those who identify as transgender. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-asks-supreme-court-lift-block-transgender-military/story?id=121126776

Website Content and Passport Policies

• Court Orders CDC, FDA to Restore Websites (Feb 11, 2025)

Judge John D. Bates issued a temporary restraining order requiring CDC and FDA to restore health websites taken down under EO 14168's gender policy mandate. Lawsuit filed by Doctors for America remains pending. https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/02/11/judge-orders-cdc-websites-restored/

• Preliminary Injunction Against Passport Gender Marker Rules (Apr 18, 2025)

Court protected plaintiffs challenging Trump passport policy, requiring State Department to allow six people who identify as transgender to obtain passports with their gender identity. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-passport-policy-discriminates-against-transgender-people-judge-rules-2025-04-18/

Other Lawsuits

• Minnesota AG Lawsuit Challenging Sports and Education Directives (Feb 21, 2025)

Minnesota sued federal government over directives regarding sports participation by those who identify as transgender. https://www.ag.state.mn.us/Office/Communications/2025/02/21_GenderAffirmingCare.asp

Genspect USA advocates for evidence-based alternatives to gender-affirming protocols in the care of gender-distressed youth. Learn more: https://genspect.org/international/usa/

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The Importance of College

The four years students spend at college are among the most pivotal in their lives. Parents of gender-distressed young people send them to campus hoping it will provide a fresh start and opportunities to explore interests and identities beyond gender.

Sometimes, this is what happens, but not always. The campus environment may exacerbate gender distress or enable medicalization. In some cases, students with no prior history of gender distress become trans-identified. Where students study matters. Will they spend four years broadening their horizons, or will their college merely serve as a backdrop to their "gender journey"?

Let us know how it went.

Share Your Experience Here

About the College Survey

The Genspect American College Survey, launched in September 2024, is the first of its kind to evaluate U.S. colleges based on their engagement with transgender activism, from policies to health services to student organizations. We know that for parents of gender-questioning or gender-distressed teens, choosing a college isn’t just about academics—it’s about finding an environment that supports your child’s well-being without pushing medical interventions or activist agendas.

Our survey ranks colleges as “None,” “Moderate,” or “Strong” in their promotion of gender identity activism, providing clarity for families who want their students to thrive in a balanced setting. But this project depends on real-world insights from parents like you.

Help Other Families

By contributing to the Genspect survey, you’ll help us refine our evaluations and ensure they reflect the realities of today’s campuses. Simply visit college.genspect.org and share your feedback. If you’ve spotted misrepresentations or missing details, contact us to keep our data accurate.

Last week, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released its highly anticipated report, Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), led by President Susan Kressly, immediately dismissed it as “deeply alarming” and “misleading.” The AAP’s defensive reaction to the HHS report highlights the dangers of advocacy-driven policies in professional organizations.

The AAP’s stance is beyond misguided. Their 2018 policy, Ensuring Comprehensive Care and Support for Transgender and Gender-Diverse Children and Adolescents, recommends puberty blockers and hormones for minors with gender dysphoria, claiming these are “reversible” and backed by a “medical consensus.” No such consensus exists. Puberty blockers have been severely restricted or banned in the UK, Sweden, Finland, and Norway, with Italy and France likely to follow suit.

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The HHS report, which the AAP quickly dismissed, aligns with the 2024 Cass Review’s findings of “weak” evidence for gender-affirming care and notes risks such as bone density loss and neurocognitive impacts. Its systematic review of existing studies found no robust evidence supporting these interventions and highlighted potential irreversible harms. Instead, it emphasizes psychotherapy as a first-line treatment, in line with practices in the UK and Sweden.

The AAP’s recommendations have influenced policies at numerous U.S. children’s hospitals and gender clinics, illustrating the consequences when professional organizations prioritize advocacy over evidence. What happened to the AAP?

The American Academy of Pediatrics: Then and Now

The AAP, once a trusted authority on child health, was founded in 1930 by 35 pediatricians to professionalize pediatric care. It built its reputation on rigorous research and clinical guidelines, growing to 67,000 members by 2022. Early on, the AAP focused on elevating clinical practice through textbooks, professional references, and its flagship journal, Pediatrics. From the 1970s, however, it shifted toward public health and advocacy, launching campaigns like “Speak Up For Children!” to influence legislation and engage parents. While advocacy can amplify science, the AAP’s policies since the 1990s have increasingly drifted toward ideological priorities over robust evidence.

A Pattern of Questionable Advocacy

The AAP’s stance on pediatric gender transition is not its only controversial position. Its recommendations on breastfeeding, male circumcision, and adolescent abortion have also faced scrutiny.

• Breastfeeding Guidelines: The AAP recommends exclusive breastfeeding for six months and continued breastfeeding for two years. Critics argue this emphasizes feeding method over nutritional outcomes and offers insufficient support for mothers who cannot or choose not to breastfeed. A 2018 Lancet review found mixed long-term benefits of extended breastfeeding, yet the AAP’s stance remains rigid.

• Elective Male Circumcision: In 2012, the AAP endorsed elective male circumcision, citing benefits like reduced HIV transmission. However, the policy downplayed risks and cultural considerations, drawing criticism from European pediatric societies that view the evidence as inconclusive. A 2013 Pediatrics article noted the AAP’s reliance on studies with methodological flaws, undermining its objectivity.

• Adolescent Abortion Rights: In 2022, post-Roe v. Wade, the AAP opposed restrictions on adolescent abortion access. While framed as protecting youth autonomy, the policy sidestepped ethical questions about informed consent and parental involvement, relying on advocacy-driven rhetoric rather than comprehensive data on adolescent decision-making.

These policies share a common thread: they rely on selective evidence, present complex moral questions as simple matters of science, and sideline debate, alienating parents and pediatricians alike. Worst of all, they threaten to undermine the authority of all pediatricians in the process.

A Crisis of Credibility

The AAP’s policies lack the rigor once synonymous with the organization, and people are starting to notice.

• 2021: 80% of AAP members supported more debate on hormone therapies, but leadership ignored this call; The AAP rejected a booth from the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine at its 2021 conference, stifling critique.

• 2022: Resolution 27, proposing a review of the 2018 gender policy, was suppressed;Genspect’s open letter urging an evidence-based reassessment was ignored.

• 2023: A lawsuit filed by detransitioners alleged that the AAP and affiliated doctors harmed plaintiffs by promoting “gender-affirming” treatments, including hormonal interventions, without adequate mental health support, violating state deceptive-practice provisions.

• 2024: A letter from 22 attorneys general accused the AAP of misrepresenting puberty blocker safety.

• 2025: The AAP rejects the 405 page HHS report on the treatment of gender dysphoria within hours of its release.

This record raises doubts about the AAP’s fitness to guide pediatric care. Its recommendations, implemented at significant cost across hospitals, alienate members seeking evidence-based tools and confuse parents looking for advice, not advocacy. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) review of federal spending could limit the AAP’s influence if grants are cut. If the organization continues to turn a blind eye to the lack of evidence for pediatric transition this might not be such a bad thing.

To restore its legacy, the AAP must recommit to its founding mission: advancing child health through science and rigorous engagement with the expertise and experience of its membership, not by seeking to exploit its authority for advocacy.

Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position. For more on Genspect, visit our FAQs.

As the college application season ramps up, many parents are hitting the road with their prospective students, touring campuses, attending info sessions, and soaking in the vibe of potential schools. These visits are a critical part of the decision-making process, offering a firsthand look at everything from academic programs to campus culture.

If you’ve been on a college tour recently, your observations could help other families navigate this complex journey—especially when it comes to understanding how gender issues are addressed on campus. At Genspect, we’re inviting parents to share their experiences through our American College Survey, a unique resource designed to guide families of gender-distressed youth. Your input can make a difference.

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The Genspect American College Survey, launched in September 2024, is the first of its kind to evaluate U.S. colleges based on their engagement with transgender activism, from policies to health services to student organizations. We know that for parents of gender-questioning or gender-distressed teens, choosing a college isn’t just about academics—it’s about finding an environment that supports your child’s well-being without pushing medical interventions or activist agendas.

Our survey ranks colleges as “None,” “Moderate,” or “Strong” in their promotion of gender identity activism, providing clarity for families who want their students to thrive in a balanced setting. But this project depends on real-world insights from parents like you.

Tell Us About Your Experience

When you visited colleges, what stood out? Did the tour guide mention gender-related policies, like gender-neutral housing or pronoun usage? Were students encouraged to introduce themselves with their pronouns during info sessions? Perhaps you noticed a “Queer Resource Center” or posters promoting trans-related events. Or maybe the campus felt refreshingly free of such activism, focusing instead on academics and community.

Whatever your experience, we want to hear about it. By contributing to the Genspect survey, you’ll help us refine our evaluations and ensure they reflect the realities of today’s campuses. Simply visit college.genspect.org and share your feedback. If you’ve spotted misrepresentations or missing details, contact us to keep our data accurate.

We’re also curious: during your college tours, was gender referenced explicitly? We’ve created a quick poll to gauge how often these topics arise:

Your response will help us understand how pervasive gender ideology is in the college visit experience. For example, a parent recently shared on X that their daughter, after attending American University for just three months, began identifying as male—a shift they attributed to the campus’s strong trans activism. Stories like these underscore why your observations matter.

Tours Count

College tours are more than a checkbox in the application process; they’re a window into the environment where your student will spend formative years. By sharing your impressions with Genspect, you’re not just helping your own family—you’re empowering others to make informed choices. Whether you visited a small liberal arts college or a large state university, your perspective is invaluable. H

ead to college.genspect.org today to contribute to Volume 5 of our survey, covering the final states and Washington, DC. Together, we can build a resource that cuts through the noise and prioritizes student well-being.

Thank you for being part of this community effort. Let’s ensure every parent has the clarity they need to choose the right college for their child.

Since Trump's inauguration, there has been a whirlwind of activity with one of the most prominent being the aptly-named Executive Order "Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation."

The order was effective in targeting the ideology's institutional infrastructure, the most important of which was Medicaid funding. Because, consider that the country's largest transgender programs are run at hospitals that receive 50% (often more) of their reimbursements for patient care from Medicaid.

The risk is pretty clear then - no Medicaid funding, no hospital. Losing 50% of all insurance reimbursements is a recipe for financial insolvency. In the days following the executive order, I believe this was the driving factor behind so many children's hospitals announcing the closure of their transgender programs.

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This is worth celebrating as a major victory. However, it is still important to ask a simple question - will these children's hospitals really shut down these programs or will they just take the sign off the door?

I suspect the latter.

Duplicitous Institutions?

A similar thing happened in March 2022 when Texas Children's Hospital (TCH) in Houston, TX - the world's largest children's hospital and one of the most prestigious - released a public statement announcing they would shut down their pediatric transgender program to avoid "potential criminal legal ramifications." The timing of the statement made sense since it came a few weeks after an opinion from the Texas Attorney General that indicated that these transgender interventions could be investigated as child abuse.

Did TCH actually shut down their program?

Of course not.

In fact, it was only three days until they got back to it - they implanted a puberty blocking device in an 11-year-old who believed she was transgender. And they not only continued the transgender program but expanded it behind closed doors into a large multi-disciplinary clinic.

I am intimately familiar with all of this since I was the anonymous whistleblower who exposed it with Christopher Rufo in May 2023. The reason I bring it up is because if a hospital in Texas was willing to do this, wouldn't hospitals in blue states follow the same template?

1. Legal threat arises from state or federal authorities.

2. The hospital releases a public statement to demonstrate outward compliance.

3. The misconduct is continued behind closed doors.

But how far are these activists really willing to go now that Trump is in office? Would they really violate federal law to continue these interventions?

It is my belief that, yes, they would. What happened at TCH offers insight into this as well.

After our initial story came out in May 2023 detailing the hospital's deception, a few days later, another whistleblower reached out to Rufo. This time it was a nurse who worked in the transgender clinic. A year later, in June 2024, Rufo and the same whistleblower released another even more explosive story, and this time she elected to go public with her identity.

Vanessa Sivadge alleged that not only did TCH continue their transgender program - now limiting it to patients 18 years and above - the doctors in the transgender clinic were manipulating patient data and billing Texas Medicaid for "gender affirming care-related" hormone interventions.

The last point, billing Texas Medicaid, is especially important because it is illegal - State law explicitly excludes Texas Medicaid funds from being used for interventions related to "gender affirming care."

When the story came out, I remember people asking that if this was true, how was it that no red flags were raised by Texas Medicaid? As a doctor myself, I knew how easy it would be. All you have to do is change the patient's gender on their medical record and then use a false diagnosis that covers the same intervention.

Since this is a way for activist doctors and hospitals to bypass Trump's executive order and red state legislation, it is worth digging into this further.

How They Hide it.

Whenever a doctor treats a patient they 1) diagnose a problem, and 2) provide a treatment. Both are associated with a specific code (diagnosis codes are defined by the ICD system) and are submitted together to insurance. As long as the treatment code makes sense for the diagnosis (i.e. appendectomy for appendicitis) you won't have a problem. If they don't add up (i.e. appendectomy for depression), a red flag is raised to the insurance company whether private or public.

In order to avoid raising any red flags, all a doctor has to do is manufacture a clinical situation centered around their intended intervention. For example, if a doctor wanted to prescribe a 16-year-old girl testosterone while concealing the fact it was for "gender affirming care," it could be done in three simple steps:

1) Change the sex of the patient from female to male.

2) Instead of entering the true diagnosis of "gender dysphoria," submit a false diagnosis like "endocrine abnormality unspecified."

3) Enter the treatment code for supplemental testosterone injections.

By changing the patient's sex in the medical record (female to male) and combining this with a broad, but reasonable sounding diagnosis (i.e. endocrine abnormality, unspecified), the doctor can manufacture a claim that appears perfectly normal to insurers. As a result, the patient gets poisoned, the doctor gets paid, and the insurance company and/or taxpayers have no idea they're getting scammed.

To really bring this point home, consider that this exact scheme was detailed in a lawsuit filed by the Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, against Dr. Brett Cooper, a Dallas-based endocrinologist specializing in "gender affirming care."

In Paxton's lawsuit, he alleges that Dr. Cooper changed a 16-year-old patient's sex from female to male and used the diagnosis of "endocrine abnormality, unspecified" as justification for testosterone injections. Paxton alleges this was done to circumvent the passage of SB-14 - the state law that bans gender interventions on children. At the time of this article's writing, two other Texas physicians have been sued by Paxton for similar schemes meant to continue gender interventions for children in violation of SB-14.

And it's not like the concept of using fraudulent diagnosis codes is foreign to these radical healthcare providers. Quite the opposite actually. If you google "gender affirming care diagnosis codes," one of the top five results is from the Campaign for Southern Equality. It is a resource to educate healthcare providers about what false diagnoses are most likely to get covered without raising any red flags from insurance companies.

This is essentially an online guidebook for how to commit medical fraud and not get caught. This is pretty remarkable when you consider that unlike online manuals for cooking meth or manufacturing explosive devices, which are generally confined to the dark web, this resource is one of the top five results generated from a basic google search.

This highlights a recurring theme within transgender medicine - the most blatantly criminal is not hidden from public view but rather placed front and center. The most depraved, the most fraudulent, the most harmful, is presented with the greatest confidence as the most beneficial, the most lifesaving, the most essential.

Reconsider the question from before - how far are these activists willing to go now that Trump is in office? Would they really violate federal law to continue these interventions?

Of course, they would.

Code Enforcement

This will represent one of the new frontiers going forward. We have largely won the intellectual debate, we are continuing to win on the legislative front, and we scored a huge political victory with the election of President Trump.

Now we have to win on enforcement. If major children's hospitals are lying about shutting down their gender program and fraudulently billing insurance companies to conceal the existence of their programs, they have to be exposed, their public funding withheld, and the doctors prosecuted.

The good thing is that this is much easier than convincing hearts and minds. All state and federal governments have to do is follow the law. And usually, it's very obvious who these activist doctors are since they will often advertise their criminal intentions publicly.

Once a doctor is identified as a target, their billing codes can be evaluated for any suspicious changes. For example, if a doctor was frequently using the ICD code for "gender dysphoria" prior to January 20, 2025 and then they start using "endocrine abnormality, unspecified," you can be confident that you just uncovered a scheme to conceal a gender program and scam insurance companies.

And the databases for these insurance codes already exist. They provide a remarkably granular view into the billing practices of nearly every physician in the country. Do No Harm utilized this type of information to generate their Stop The Harm database. State and federal authorities can work with the private groups who utilize this data to narrowly tailor their investigations and surgically target the most likely offenders.

Major hospital systems and activist doctors have come to believe they are immune from legal consequences because they have gotten away with blatantly criminal conduct for the last decade. Since these doctors are not hardened criminals, all that is required is maximum aggression in a few high-profile cases to send a clear message.

The day their actions are brought back into line with the reality of existing criminal law is the day that children will no longer be mutilated and sterilized in our country's largest hospitals.

Simply Amazing

It would take a heart of stone not to smile at the sight of a room full of girls and women gathered to witness President Trump sign his executive keeping men out of women’s sports. Imagine a similar breakthrough for Detransitioners.

The Right Time and Place

THANK YOU to everyone who has so generously contributed to making Detrans Awareness Day in Washington D.C. on March 12th possible. Because of you, this event is positioned to be a game changer for Americans who have been harmed by “gender medicine”.

Help Genspect make the most of this unprecedented opportunity by bringing the maximum number of detransitioners and desisters to Washington, D.C. to share their powerful testimonies, educate policymakers, and raise awareness about the irreversible harm of gender ideology.

Lifting More Voices

We are seeking to raise $25,000 to cover their travel and lodging costs. To put this into perspective, the minimum cost is approximately $1000 per attendee.

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What to Expect on the Day

Detrans Awareness Day features:
✔️ Panels with detransitioners and medical experts exposing the medical harms of gender ideology.
✔️ A press conference amplifying voices that mainstream media often ignores.
✔️ Meetings with members of Congress, their staff on Capitol Hill, and agency heads to push for real policy change.

Why is This so Important?

Detransitioners are living proof of the dangers of experimental gender medicine. They challenge the narrative that so many institutions refuse to question. Despite Trump’s recent executive orders, thousands of vulnerable children and young adults are still being subjected to irreversible medical interventions. The fight isn’t over—but it starts with getting detransitioners in the room.

Will you stand with them? Every dollar counts. Donate* today and help make their voices impossible to ignore.

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