Thread by @LeorSapir

BREAKING from @DailyMailUK: FOIA requests by @DefendingEd reveal staff at St. Louis pediatric transgender clinic advised local school district in 2021 to "affirm" the trans ID of a group of 5th grade girls who all declared themselves trans together. 🧵

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…

The teacher who reached out to clinic staff for advice told staff there "we're... suspecting there could be other reasons [the girls] are doing this [other] than that [they are actually trans]."

After assuring the teacher that research suggesting "social contagion" might be a pathway to trans ID especially in girls is "invalid," the staffer acknowledged that social influence may play a role and that s/he has seen this happen with mental health diagnoses.

The staffer wrote that there is a "middle ground" between blindly accepting & outright dismissing the girls' trans ID. "In general, I'd recommend as much support and discussion as possible around their gender exploration."

There was no mention in the email of notifying parents.

The staffer then sent the teacher a follow-up mail after talking to pediatrician Dr. Sarah Garwood, one of the two leading doctors at the clinic now under investigation.

(Garwood would later advise the school district not to tell parents of female students that they were wearing chest binders, which are known to cause health problems like difficulty breathing, lightheadedness, and longterm tissue and ribcage damage.)

foxnews.com/politics/child…

The clinic's staffer told the teacher that she spoke with Garwood, who said that while identifying as trans can be a temporary phase, "the best we can do" for all kids who ID as trans is "affirm." Meaning, the school should "affirm" the all girls who came out as trans.

The kids, Garwood is reported to have said, can always revert to identifying with "their sex assigned at birth," and "no harm was really done in affirming them before."

Research over the years has shown that the vast majority of children with cross-sex ID will come to terms with their bodies during adolescence if not affirmed, but are much more likely to persist in their sex/body self-rejection if affirmed.

segm.org/early-social-g…

Researchers and medical groups, including the U.S. Endocrine Society, have acknowledged there is no way to reliably predict which child will persist and which will desist by adolescence/adulthood, and have recognized the high risk of false positives.

academic.oup.com/jcem/article/1…

It's just for this reason that the Dutch researchers who pioneered pediatric gender transition discouraged social transition (new name, pronouns, dress as opposite sex, etc.) in children.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21373942/

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21216800/

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18564158/

Late last year, NHS England issued draft guidelines based on the Cass Report acknowledging that social transition "should not be viewed as a neutral act" but rather as an "active intervention" with potential affect a child's "psychological functioning."

engage.england.nhs.uk/specialised-co…

NHS thus rejects the notion, promoted by American affirmers and @AmerAcadPeds, that prepubertal "trans kids" can "know who they are" or that a "consistent, insistent, and persistent" cross-sex ID is sufficient evidence of lifelong dysphoria/trans status.

Social transition increases the chance of body self-rejection persistence, and by extension of the potential for the child to go down the path of life-altering hormones and surgeries.

A recent study by Kristina Olsen et al., uncritically cited by proponents of "gender affirmative" medicine as proof that "trans kids know who they are," inadvertently lent credence to the iatrogenic risk of social transition.

publications.aap.org/pediatrics/art…

So, not only is the St. Louis clinic suspected of rushing kids into hormones and surgeries, but its staff is advising @ParkwaySchools on how to create more patients down the road.

And all this, remember, while deliberately keeping parents in the dark.

#SchoolToClinicPipeline