I Told You So: It WAS Junk Science
I mean, I did. Are you as shocked as I that I turned out to be right on the topic of modern-day gay conversion therapy? An opinion on the WPATH Files.
There are many things that came to my mind when I had a look at the WPATH files. Yes, I know I’m late to the party on them - I did read them on release, but I was also trying to parse out an article that did not come across as insufferably smug. I have a right to be insufferably smug about this, dammit! I was right! I told you so! You said I was crazy and I was right and———
Alright, rewind. Let’s try again.
Back to what I was talking about. Many things came to my mind when I had a look at the World Professional Association of Transgender Health internal forum leaks dubbed the ‘WPATH Files’. Firstly, I was totally unsurprised. That these medical professionals would be casually talking about knowing their patients were getting liver cancer from exogenous testosterone usage is revolting, but it did not shock me. These days, I am hard to shock. Especially when it comes to this topic. Remember, the original study for the ‘Dutch Protocol’ that originated these ‘treatments’ very casually disclosed that a young subject in that study died of necrosis as a result of sex reassignment surgery.
Anyone who had read the ‘research’ and ‘work’ this collection of individuals had produced on the topic would have been not particularly shocked. What is shocking, on some level, is that knowing for sure that these people are aware on some level that they are, in fact, charlatans and irredeemable quacks, even as they present a united front to the public and the media insisting that their ‘treatments’ are, in fact, science, like a retro futuristic flashback to L. Ron Hubbard and Dianetics. We know from these internal files that they know nothing about what they’re actually doing. Though again, looking at the research, including longitudinal studies that repeatedly come with the endless caveat that ‘we do not know the future’ (my favorite in this genre is always wholly inadequate research papers on how to preserve fertility in a child never allowed to sexually mature), it was very, very obvious that these people knew absolutely nothing.
They were making it up as they went along. Now that’s science!
All the Orwellian yet cloying language like ‘gender affirmation’, ‘gender journeys’, ‘child guided medicine’, ‘top surgery’, ‘bottom surgery’ that they spouted like a recently flushed toilet with a blocked drain, it was all to cover up they were making it up as they went along and knew nothing. Oh, except females using high doses of cross-sex hormones could get cancer. That was casual conversation (yet not to be disclosed to the public). Or that none of their child patients could sexually mature in any fashion. Or blood clots. Or death. Or I don’t know, it turned purple. Wouldn’t surprise me if that happened at this point.
Anyone pointing out these studies were horseshit of the highest order were told they couldn’t understand advanced medical research as a layman (something I heard personally, even though even an idiot like me can read an abstract, understand a p-value or know what a ‘double-blind study’ is.), or that they weren’t the right kind of expert (something the right kind of experts were told), or that this was just so cutting edge it justified poorly designed studies, ever-changing goalposts, and turning gay children into facsimiles of straight people. The future will be brighter, built on the backs of the child sacrifices now, or something. I don’t know. My eyes rolled so hard they circumnavigated the earth long ago. I can no longer find them. This topic has worn me out.
This insistence must have been because even the authors of these studies knew they were peddling total horseshit. All the WPATH Files confirm it to the wise observers who suspected that already.
Why? There are many popular motivations to ascribe to WPATH, from the weird consultation surveys with a eunuch fetishist forum full of child sex abuse material for their standards of care (no really) leading people to call them pedophiles, to autogynephiles trying to justify their behavior (to be fair, this is probably what is motivating a good chunk of these people nowadays). Me? I keep it simple, stupid. There is no great pedophile conspiracy.
See, the demographic of ‘transgender kids’ is disproportionately (solely) same sex attracted to a ridiculous degree. This issue was raised repeatedly in the reviews and whistleblowing of British ‘transgender children’ services, it’s something that’s obvious in every survey and research study ever done on this demographic since time immemorial, and don’t forget, much of this stuff started off in the realm of ‘gay conversion’ in the 20th century anyway. Much of the rhetoric (and aesthetic) around ‘transgender children’ could be more or less repurposed from the hilariously blue-and-pink toned ex-gay camp in But I’m A Cheerleader - in fact, a lot of popular trans iconography in general looks like the ex-gay camp in But I’m A Cheerleader. All they’re doing now is insisting that you’re not a straight woman in a lesbian’s body, you’re a straight man in a lesbian’s body. Sounds a bit homophobic, doesn’t it?
What does that tell us? That homophobia was never solved. It tells us that a lot of middle and upper class ‘progressive’ families really don’t actually want a gay child. They need to be fixed with expensive treatments. Enter WPATH, they’ll rescue you. It is no coincidence that the rise in ‘transgender children’ occurs as gay rights begin to be achieved, isn’t it? Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. I’m no expert, they tell me. I’m just an angry woman (or five) with a Substack blog and a banned Medium account.
But I still have to say it: I told you so.
Lots of people told you so. I wrote roughly five years ago a lengthy description of why, in fact, the chase for the authentic self through drugs and surgery might be a bit inauthentic. That the science behind it might be suspect. That the only reason this shit appeared to be flying was a) its inherent sexism and misogyny, b) its inherent homophobia and c) gobs of money. I wrote five years ago I anticipated a wave of detransitioner lawsuits because all of this was exploitative, homophobic bullshit - these are now happening. I told you so!
S’cuse me. Just bathing in it. Anyway. I told you so. Also, I told you so. Am I self-congratulatory or what? Yeah, I am, but I did tell you so.
My advice if you went along with this? Wise up now and start saying you opposed all this crap all along, or something, or I don’t know, you’ll end up on the wrong side of history or something. That’s bad, I’m told, especially since I was apparently on the wrong side of history for smelling a rat with this pile of steaming cow shit.
My advice if you smelled the rat too? Four words to use on your enemies, allies, and long-suffering life partner: ‘I told you so.’ Enjoy the bittersweet taste of being right on the most horrendous medical scandal since someone decided removing the frontal lobe could cure mental illness.
Damn, yes! You deserve every "I told you so" you got in that brain of yours, and then more.
Maybe this has fast-tracked us toward the day where everyone publicly opposing a eugenics project isn't labeled Super-Hitler and put in the burn pile. Let's hope.
A pleasure to see your "name" in my inbox. You were right. And I have been right for a long time thanks to your old Medium articles. I have a list of people I want to give an "I told you so" to, but I'm waiting for them to come to me. I might die first.
I'm left with the feeling that many on the "left" are in a cult. How does a lesbian not see this? Even as I tell her over and over again.
I feel sad. Let's hope this doesn't drag on forever. The waiting sucks.