To the Honorable Senator;
I am writing to plead with senators to hold committee hearings into Bill C4 and to send this bill back to the House of Commons for clarification and amendments on conversion therapy.
I am the parent of a trans-identified child and I am deeply concerned about emerging data and information about an extremely dangerous and toxic phenomenon that we are seeing in Trans-Identified girls (Biological Females): That of online grooming, manipulation, coaching and encouragement by predators on vulnerable kids, and intense peer pressure to identify as trans and to seek medicalization.
There are thousands of anecdotal accounts from girls all over the world who have been swept up by this and who have DE-Transitioned. In addition, a study released in just the last few months, by internationally recognized researcher, Dr. Lisa Littman of Brown University, shows that contrary to the claims made in the Policy Framework Documents used to create Bill C6 (showing 11% of trans people had faced pressure to not medically transition); that children are actually being pushed towards medicalization resulting in trans-regret and the consequences of irreversible medical treatments:
Sources of transition encouragement and friend group dynamics. Participants identified sources that encouraged them to believe transitioning would help them. Social media and online communities were the most frequently reported, including YouTube transition videos (48.0%), blogs (46.0%), Tumblr (45.0%), and online communities
AND;
Twenty-eight participants (of 100 sic.) provided open-text responses…
…Clinicians, partners, friends, and society were named as sources that applied pressure to transition, as seen in the following quotes: “My gender therapist acted like it [transition] was a panacea for everything;” “[My] [d]octor pushed drugs and surgery at every visit;” “I was dating a trans woman and she framed our relationship in a way that was contingent on my being trans;” “A couple of later trans friends kept insisting that I needed to stop delaying things;” “[My] best friend told me repeatedly that it [transition] was best for me;” “The forums and communities and internet friends;” “By the whole of society telling me I was wrong as a lesbian;” and “Everyone says that if you feel like a different gender…then you just are that gender and you should transition.”
AND;
36% of detransitioned girls reported that: “Someone else told me that the feelings I was having meant that I was transgender and I believed them”
The results of exposures to these toxic environments online are that these young girls, who are trained in online groups to deceive therapists, doctors and parents, are getting puberty blockers, testosterone therapy, and bilateral mastectomies as teenagers in their quest to become boys.
It should not need saying, but girls cannot actually become boys; and boys cannot actually become girls. What we are doing with trans-medicalization is performing irreversible hormonal manipulation and cosmetic surgeries; followed by the inevitable and necessary interventions to compensate for the side-effects of gender transition.
For example:
After 4-5 years on Testosterone, a girl’s vagina and uterus have atrophied so much they become a health risk, and she will likely have a hysterectomy.
Testosterone therapy for girls dramatically increases risk of Diabetes, and raises the risk of heart attacks substantially above the risk-rate for natal males.
We are becoming aware that many child and teenaged transitioners will never be able to achieve orgasm or even ever be able to become sexually aroused.
We have 100 years of medical, psychological and psychiatric research on the phenomenon of what we now call Transgender;
It’s important for legislators to understand that Medical Transgender is a NEW human phenomenon only emerging in the last fifty years - as such we cannot possibly entertain the claim that concerns expressed by loving family members and conscientious medical practitioners amounts to conversion therapy; or to accept that this experimental technology with unknown long-term medical outcomes would be defended in law as a right.
We must also understand that the phenomenon of cross-sex/trans identification of natal girls leading to the medicalization is a phenomenon NOT DOCUMENTED ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD prior to 1990.
In 2007, according to Tavistock Trust in the UK and their Gender Identity Disorder Services, in 2007, seventy-nine natal girls presented to the Tavistock with Gender Dysphoria.
In 2017 there were more than 2,300 girls who presented to the clinic. This is a 4,400% increase over ten years; mountains of data confirm this exponential rise in epidemiological prevalence - including references to skyrocketing numbers in Washington Post, National Post and many other publications.
This is correlated to three things:
First, to the rise of the smartphone and online access, which we know has contributed to overwhelming increases in anxiety, depression, eating disorders and self-harm phenomenon;
Second, to the availability and the willingness of doctors and therapists to use new medical technology to attempt to relieve the mental aguish associated with Gender Dysphoria using experimental drugs and surgeries;
Third, the failure of legislators. This failure is not only a failure to understand the problem, but to act enthusiastically to support for legislation that ENCOURAGES and EMPOWERS girls to self-harm.
My plea with legislators is to give this issue deeper consideration. To take the time needed to understand that banning conversion therapy may actually more deeply entrench, and concretize harmful conversion efforts to make cis-kids into trans kids.
Shannon Douglas Boschy
Loving Dad
Ottawa
References:
”Trans, When Ideology Meets Reality” 2021 - Helen Joyce - Executive Editor - The Economist
”The End of Gender” - Debrah Soh - Canadian Sexologist, Phd Neuroscience, Sex Researcher
”Irreversible Damage” - Abigail Shrier - Journalist - Wall Street Journal
Dr. Lisa Littman: Brown University
“Individuals Treated for Gender Dysphoria with Medical and/or Surgical Transition Who Subsequently Detransitioned: A Survey of 100 Detransitioners” - 2021 - Archives of Sexual Behavior (2021) 50:3353–3369 - Littman
Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria - 2018 - Plos One - Littman