Sasha Ayad's Newsletter, February 2025

More false assumptions about gender medicine, Michael Bailey's latest study, my conversation with desister Simon Amaya Price, how to be a tourist in your own town, and more...

Taking some time to attend a car show and be a tourist in my own town!

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What’s on my mind…

You can either watch or read this section. The video is embedded below, followed by a text version.

The False Assumptions of Pediatric Gender “Medicine” - Part 2

One of the most prominent pediatric gender doctors is being sued for medical negligence and today’s post is the 2nd in a 2-part series which began in January. Today, we’ll continue to examine details of the lawsuit and the behavior of the defendants, including Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, which reveal several false assumptions that are common in pediatric “gender medicine.”

To recap last month’s post—the plaintiff, now 20-year old Clementine Breen, had been struggling with her mental health and the impact of past trauma when she first became confused about her gender identity around age 12. Within one 28-minute appointment with Dr. Olson-Kennedy, Clementine got diagnosed with gender dysphoria and puberty blockers were recommended. Soon after this she was prescribed testosterone and later, when she was 14, she was referred to a surgeon who removed her breasts. Today we’ll look at the bizarre justifications for these interventions, what happened for Clementine after these procedures took place, and how her providers made sense of her ensuing decline. I highly recommend you read Part 1 before reading this post.

False Assumption #1: Gender-related medical interventions prevent suicide

The lawsuit states that Clementine’s parents were very much against the idea of medical interventions, but Olson-Kennedy spoke to them privately, without Clementine around, several times. For example, when she was recommending testosterone, she told Clementine’s parents that Clementine was suicidal and asked them if they’d “rather have a living son or a dead daughter,” according to the suit. It’s worth noting that Clementine claims she was never suicidal until after she started hormones, but we’ll return to this shortly. Apparently in tears, upon hearing Olson-Kennedy’s terrifying ultimatum, the parents agreed to giving their daughter testosterone. In Jesse Singal’s story in the Economist, he reported being unable to get in touch with the parents for further clarification about this.

However, to anyone following the ethical dilemmas in pediatric gender medicine, the use of the suicide threat won’t be surprising. Indeed, there are many examples of Olson-Kennedy and others making the claim that “Gender Affirming Care” is medically necessary suicide-prevention. Even in last month’s video, you can hear a clip of Olson-Kennedy stating that removing the breasts of dysphoric girls is “critical” and “absolutely life-saving”.

It has become well-recognized that the suicide threat is a manipulation tactic used by some gender doctors when pressuring reluctant parents to sign off on risky medical interventions like puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries. In fact, while preparing references for this post, I compiled several examples in both video and text format of gender activists using the suicide threat. But after much reflection, I decided not to include them in either my written post or video. The suicide myth is not true. It’s misleading. It’s unethical for anyone to use this false and threatening claim, and I didn’t want to bring more attention to the clinicians who do. And the truth about this has been coming to light…

There was a remarkable moment at the Supreme Court in December 2024 in US vs Skrmetti. This is a case about the constitutionality of state bans which protect children from medical interventions like puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery. In the oral arguments, ACLU attorney Chase Strangio was questioned about this exact topic by Justice Samuel Alito. There are too many details to cover the oral argument here, however here’s the gist: Alito asked Strangio about the fact that there’s no evidence that gender-affirming medical treatments actually reduce suicide. Of course, Strangio had to admit that Alito was correct. Strangio even acknowledged that completed suicides in gender dysphoric populations are, thankfully, very rare.

So, here is what we know today about the relationship between gender-related distress and death by suicide.

• There’s a difference between completed suicide and suicidality, which means thoughts about suicide or the desire to attempt it. These are completely different phenomena and many more people think about suicide without ever attempting it at all, thank goodness.

• It’s worth noting that only one study (that I know of) has looked at the relationship between gender distress and suicide while also controlling for other psychiatric issues. This important study from Finland followed over 2000 individuals between 1996 and 2019. They found that other mental health issues can explain any elevated rates of suicide and that these behaviors follow the male/female sex ratios that we might expect, rather than gender identity. Of course when studies like this attempt to separate variables to determine what really caused what, there’s much we can learn from them. In the conclusions section, the study authors emphasize the importance of treating adolescents’ other mental health issues if they are also experiencing gender dysphoria.

• The UK data from GIDS between 2010 and 2020 shows a suicide rate among youth referred to their gender clinic was 0.03%, which is elevated compared to the general age-matched population. However, this elevation we see in suicide rates, again, is best explained by psychiatric co-morbidities, and not the gender dysphoria itself.

• And lastly, long-term studies of people after genital surgery for gender dysphoria show elevated risk for suicide.

So all this tells us that gender dysphoria alone isn’t what causes suicide and that medical gender interventions do not necessarily prevent completed suicide.

With this in mind, we can understand why in this suit Clementine and her family claim they were misled by the suicide threat. They also claim to have been unable to provide informed consent for the medical treatments recommended for Clementine. The suit says the defendants failed to provide necessary information required to obtain consent: such as discussing alternative treatments, the risks and effects of these interventions on the female body, the risk to Clementine’s fertility and how to preserve it, and of course, the lack of reliable clinical research for hormones and surgery to treat gender distress in minors.

Of particular interest was a handout given to Clementine and her family by Dr. Mosser, the surgeon. In a packet they were handed on surgery day, there was an information sheet (that didn’t require a signature). One line on the sheet stated that “transgender mastectomy is an elective operation.”

So which is it? A life-saving, medically necessary treatment, or an elective procedure?

What happened to Clementine’s mental health after hormones and surgery gives us clues and leads to the next false assumption of gender medicine.

False Assumption #2: If medical transition isn’t helping, the answer is… even more medical transition

Ok, so at 13, Clementine was prescribed testosterone to try and make her look like a boy. The dosage of the prescription was increased several times to approximate normal testosterone levels for biological males of Clementine’s age. Her mental health began to decline and in the lawsuit she describes thinking about suicide for the first time in her life at this point.

Sadly, around that time, another sexual assault took place, which Clementine disclosed to Susan Landon, the gender-affirming therapist she was referred to by Olson-Kennedy. Despite these difficulties and traumas, both Landon and Olson-Kennedy encouraged the then-thirteen-year-old Clementine and her parents to pursue a mastectomy. The suit alleges Clementine and her parents were hesitant about the prospect of surgery, but that Olson-Kennedy said they needed to act soon if Clementine wanted a “cis male” looking chest.

If medical transition isn’t helping, the answer is… even more medical transition.

Dr. Mosser performed the surgery when Clementine was 14 years old, and the suit indicates that her mental health soon drastically worsened. Her body image further deteriorated, she had difficulty focusing, experienced severe bouts of anger, and began to self-harm. She also began obsessively working out and following a very low-calorie diet. Five months after her mastectomy, her parents became very concerned about her declining mental health and took her to a psychiatrist at UCLA Health. His report indicates that Clementine was suffering from psychosis. She was hearing voices and having hallucinations: she was seeing bugs, corpses in her bed, blood on her own face, and a recurring shadowy dark figure. At one point, Clementine hadn’t slept for 3 days straight. She reported losing her memory for large chunks of the school day and peers reported she’d become “unresponsive” during these blocks of time. She started to dissociate, to feel like she wasn’t real, and to have strange and paranoid delusions. She began suffering from motor tics, OCD behaviors, and engaged in self-harming just to see if she had blood, according to the suit. Clementine reports that she attempted suicide by hanging herself. Throughout the time that she was seeing the psychiatrist, several medications and doses were tried and adjusted.

Meanwhile, she continued to see Olson-Kennedy, who knew about Clementine’s outside psychiatrist and the medications she had been prescribed. Olson-Kennedy notes that Clementine still struggled with anxiety and panic attacks, but also reported that she was exhibiting “normal judgement” and was “in good mental health.” She did not document the self-harm, suicidality, suicide attempt or any of the other devastating mental health struggles described by the psychiatrist.

Is it possible that Olson-Kennedy didn’t know all the details about Clementine’s mental health spiral? Certainly. But she herself has insisted that inquiring about the mental health of “trans patients” is unnecessary gatekeeping.

However, Olson-Kennedy was very concerned about one thing: Clementine’s difficulty keeping up with her testosterone injections. She documented in her notes that Clementine didn’t want to keep going with injections and asked to switch to a testosterone gel instead, which Olson-Kennedy prescribed. She also noted, remarkably, that Clementine “would probably benefit from an increased dose of testosterone”.

If medical transition isn’t helping, the answer is… even more medical transition.

Certainly, there are things in life that require you to feel worse before you feel better:

• Chemotherapy when it’s successful

• Exposure treatments for anxiety disorders

• Strength training

These experiences are deeply unpleasant but people endure the initial decline for the long-term improvements.

But pediatric gender transition is nothing like this. We don’t know that these medical interventions will ultimately make people feel any better. We do know they have real negative consequences for the human body (and I would argue, for the mind, in many cases). So when physicians and therapists recommend interventions that are this high-stakes and consequential, they should be extremely concerned whenever patients start to feel worse or decline, like Clementine did.

Clementine saw these gender-affirming providers from age 12 to 19. As she approached her 17th birthday, she was encouraged by Olson-Kennedy to have a hysterectomy, as she would have been on testosterone for nearly 5 years at that point. This discussion caused Clementine to think about whether or not she wanted children in the future - this may not even be possible with years on testosterone, but it made her wonder about possibilities for her life. Additionally, she and her parents had lost trust in Olson-Kennedy and luckily, Clementine never had the hysterectomy.

You may be asking yourself about the role of her therapist, Susan Landon. Wouldn’t they have been discussing in therapy all of these mental health difficulties and the deterioration she experienced during her “transition?” How did Landon make sense of these troubling developments? How did she plan to help Clementine?

False Assumption #3 Colluding with the trans fantasy improves mental health

Clementine had been talking to Landon about her difficulties and psychological distress. But in the suit, Clementine explains that her mental health problems were always attributed to her gender identity. Her body hatred, she was told by Landon, was a completely normal thing that trans people experience. Olson-Kennedy even told her she was just “jealous of cis men” and struggling because she doesn’t fit in as a trans person. In other words, Landon and Olson-Kennedy believe minority stress theory can explain all of Clementine’s post-transition difficulties.

Perhaps you’re wondering, “if many of these issues started after the gender transition, why wouldn’t these providers pause to consider that the testosterone or the mastectomy might be contributing to her worsening mental health?” The whole idea of gender affirmation is built upon the false assumption that colluding with the trans fantasy improves mental health. If a young woman is suffering because she wishes she were a boy or thinks she is a boy, then the way to make her feel better is to emphatically agree!

“Oh, honey! Of course you’re a boy! Please don’t cry….Look, I see you as a boy! Anyone who doesn’t is just wrong and mean and transphobic. And we’re going to do everything we can with the power of medicine and the power of language to make everyone else believe you’re a boy too.”

Of course, this is the most generous interpretation of what “gender affirmation” is really about. Pretending, along with the gender dysphoric patient, that they can become what they wish, is a way to assure and pacify a person in the immediate moment. It’s a way of saying, “of course I believe you.” And it’s a way of saying, “yes, we can bend all of reality to collude with your desires.”

Perhaps in this twisted utopian world, according to the gender revolutionaries, bending reality itself is just a matter of language manipulation and the power of modern medicine. But that’s not the way I see it. It’s just a matter of time before reality will come back and create a painful rude awakening. So is it really good for people’s mental health to pretend reality is malleable? How long can this last? How insulated does someone have to be for this to be sustainable, long term?

What about Johanna Olson-Kennedy? I’ve never met her but have followed her work since the mid 2010s and I’d guess that she lives, eats and breathes gender. Not only has she treated over 1200 youth, professionally, but she is a strong advocate for this particular worldview of gender identity. However, another potentially important factor is that she’s married to Aydin Olson-Kennedy, a clinical social worker, executive director for the Los Angeles Gender Center, and a transman. My aim in sharing this point is not to discuss or analyze the personal life of Dr. Olson-Kennedy or her partner. I’ve never met them and, of course, I can’t know what role their relationship plays in either of their beliefs about gender. But when you have an up-close and personal intimate long-term relationship with someone, this inevitably has an impact on how you think about the world, as it should! So if your partner’s explanation of their own gender distress is grounded in a certain worldview, or interpretation of its causes, that will shape how you think.

For example, in a 2019 interview, Olson-Kennedy relayed a conversation she’d been having with Aydin. They were talking theoretically about gender dysphoria and Aydin described micro and macro aggressions that amount to a kind of trauma. He explained, “What people don’t understand is the time that you’re walking around not in your true and authentic self, you are wounded. And the longer that time goes on, the longer you are wounded.” Olson-Kennedy goes on to tell the interviewer, “and if ever there is an endorsement for early access to care, that was it, right? We are talking about should we let people walk around wounded because of our own uncertainty?”

Is this why colluding with the trans fantasy is thought to improve mental health? Because of extreme empathy? The kind of empathy that makes us blindly agree with something untrue just to make someone else feel better?

Olson-Kennedy seems to have precisely this type of empathy. I’ve been following this medical scandal for many years and have come to believe that some people are genuinely motivated by what they believe are good intentions, while I’ve observed that others have sadistic or narcissistic motivations. Everyone who bought into this false assumption is unique and likely motivated by a variety of complex drivers: 100 people may reach the same strange conclusion, but for 100 different reasons. Olson-Kennedy is a human being, after all, and likely has both conscious and unconscious motivators driving her work in this medical gender revolution.

What fascinates me is the desperation to believe trans people, but only the trans people that have the same ideological narrative about their experience: that their “authentic self” needs to be set free, allowed to express itself, through being trans and by believing in trans. When trans-identified people or medically-transitioned people give other interpretations of their experience, they are often dismissed by these gender activist doctors. If people cite internalized homophobia, a trauma response, autogynephilia, or social contagion as the reason they wanted to transition, then they’re called self-hating. They are said to suffer from “internalized transphobia”. In the process of dismissing these other perspectives, gender affirming clinicians, like Olson-Kennedy, Susan Landon, and Scott Mosser, see the world through trans-colored lenses and fail to entertain any other possible explanations for gender dysphoria. That’s why mental health assessments are dismissed as transphobic gatekeeping.

But those different perspectives, free from ideology, grounded in reality, are exactly what patients need when they’re in distress and stuck on a superficial solution. For example, after losing her faith in Olson-Kennedy and Landon, Clementine began seeing someone outside of “gender affirming care.” While working with a provider who specializes in DBT, or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, for the first time, Clementine had in depth conversations about earlier abuse she suffered. She slowly came to understand that she was never actually a boy. She was a girl who was scared of growing into an adult woman. She was a girl who sought out transition to side-step an uncertain future. In hindsight, Clementine believes that if she’d had this kind of therapy earlier, she would not have pursued medical transition.

Clementine tapered her testosterone use, then eventually stopped taking hormones all together. The suit alleges that her mental health greatly improved soon afterwards. It states that the psychosis, hallucinations, depression, attention problems, anxiety, and body image issues all went away. At age 19, Clementine returned to identifying with her birth sex. Accepting reality is an indispensable start to the process of healing. This is actually triumphant, considering all the pressures and forces on Clementine and her family to remain in these false assumptions.

However, just because Clementine has re-grounded in reality, it doesn’t mean everything will be smooth sailing from here. In addition to the physical changes Clementine will live with, there are also the less-obvious psychological distortions that she and her family had developed for so many years. It takes deliberate and patient effort to recalibrate and rebuild after such a profound identity crisis and medical trauma. I wish her and her family the best as they navigate the aftermath of this entire gender affirming care project.

Let’s conclude with the final false assumption.

False Assumption #4: Advocating for medical transition is more important than facts or ethics

In 2015, Olson-Kennedy received nearly six million taxpayer dollars from the NIH to study the impact of puberty blockers on dysphoric youth. This was part of a larger 10 million dollar project on “trans youth.” In October 2024, she spoke with The New York Times’ reporter, Azeen Ghorayshi about this study, which had begun nine years earlier. Ghorayshi reports that Olson-Kennedy and her team could not find any improvements in the cohort’s mental health after puberty blockers. According to Ghoraysi, when asked why they hadn’t yet published the data, Olson-Kennedy said that the findings may fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of gender interventions for minors in more than 20 states. Olson-Kennedy is quoted saying, “I don’t want our work to be weaponized. It has to be exactly on point, clear and concise. And that takes time.” However, in a sworn statement under oath approximately one month later, Olson-Kennedy denies having said this and claimed that Ghorayshi misrepresented the status of her research: that it was actually a lack of time and resources that were causing the delay in publication.

Another contradiction from her NYT interview can be found when Olson-Kennedy attempted to explain why the data didn’t show any mental health improvements. She told Ghorayshi that study participants are “in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years.” However, in an academic paper she co-authored in 2021, Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues state that 25% of these adolescents were suicidal or depressed before the interventions were started.” In her sworn statement, she also claimed that puberty blockers aren’t really meant to improve mental health, but simply prevent the worsening of gender dysphoria and prevent deterioration of mental health.

We see it clearly here: advocating for medical transition is more important than facts or ethics.

WPATH has been found to operate on this same false assumption. WPATH is The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, an advocacy group that largely controls (or used to control) medical standards in trans healthcare across many continents. Unsealed WAPTH documents in a number of state cases about pediatric gender medicine severely undermine the group’s credibility. Here’s what we’ve learned recently:

1. WPATH has always claimed that its standards of care guidelines are based on evidence, but their own documentation tells a different story. Johns Hopkins was hired by WAPTH to conduct a systematic review for their 8th Standards of Care. Like every other agency or group to look at the evidence, Johns Hopkins found no proof of benefit for gender affirming care. So instead of reassessing their recommendations, WPATH leadership got to work suppressing the publication of the systematic review. They continued to insist their recommendations are based on the most rigorous evidence.

2. One of Biden’s HHS top level officials, Rachel Levine, who is a trans woman, pressured WPATH to remove age minimums from their standards of care 8 adolescent chapter. This request was made, not because of some new evidence or proof-of-benefit, but because age minimums might affect “access to care” for trans youth and possibly for adults too. So after the SOC 8 was published, it was quickly taken down, age minimums were removed and it was put back online after the “correction” was issued. Amy Tishleman, the lead author of the chapter on children, said that removing the age minimums helped to bridge the considerations between the need for insurance coverage and the desire to ensure doctors wouldn’t be held liable for malpractice if they deviated from the standards. Essentially, age minimums were removed so doctors could blithely recommend any intervention to teens of any age and get insurance to cover it.

3. In the adolescent chapter of SOC 8 we find a remarkable statement: a “key challenge in adolescent transgender care is the quality of evidence evaluating the effectiveness of medically necessary gender-affirming medical and surgical treatments (emphasis mine).” What? If there's no good quality evidence, how can you call them “effective” and “medically necessary?” Calling these standards of care “evidence-based” is absolute nonsense. It’s Orwellian double-speak. “Evidence-based” has become a term gender revolutionaries throw around when they know there’s no good evidence.

The last WPATH debacle I want to share may seem silly and inconsequential, but it highlights that WPATH and its leadership are chiefly political activists, rather than professionals who prioritize ethics or science.

• When the American Medical Association declined to endorse the SOC8, in a pretty hysterical email, WPATH’s incoming president Walter Bouman, referred to the AMA as “probably some white cisgender heterosexual hillbillies from nowhere” then wrote “please delete this quote.”

It’s noteworthy that several European countries have completely distanced themselves from WPATH and prioritized psychological support for youth with gender dysphoria. But here in the US several major medical associations endorse WPATH. And the subject of our analysis today, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, is the president-elect of WPATH. It’s no surprise by now that she seems to prioritize advocating for gender interventions above other considerations. Olson-Kennedy’s clinical notes on Clementine included several contradictions, perhaps outright lies: that Clementine had endorsed a male gender identity since childhood (when other notes she documented stated otherwise) and that Clementine had no psychiatric contraindications. Landon, in her letter recommending Clementine for breast removal, wrote that the surgery would remedy the persistent and unwavering dysphoria related to her chest, improve her congruency, and improve her quality of life. This sounds like a tall order!

This strange field of so-called medicine puts such an emphasis on proselytizing about these interventions, it’s almost evangelical. In an interview, Olson-Kennedy said “I feel like this piece of medicine is such a beautiful amazing combination of social justice, human rights, and science, but it’s also the ongoing day-to-day, incredible gift of sitting in a room with a human being who will sacrifice everything to be who they are. And what kind of world would we live in if everybody was available for that journey?”

This is a twisted utopian, patient-led revolution - one that involves bodily sacrifice and an obfuscation of reality. The “science” follows the desired outcomes and the priority is expanding the project: more gender medicine, for more patients, with less barriers. Advocating for medical transition is more important than facts or ethics.

At times, of course, we can all be guilty of picking and choosing the examples, anecdotes, and stories that fit our beliefs. However when advocating for interventions with serious and long-term permanent effects, based on an esoteric theory, the burden of proof is on you. What we learned today about Clementine’s lawsuit show us precisely how reckless and damaging it is when gender doctors elevate utopian fantasies and false assumptions above reality itself.

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What’s on my radar…

Researcher and sexologist, Michael Bailey is studying public attitudes about Autogynephilia

Here is Dr. Bailey’s announcement:

I am studying common beliefs that people have about autogynephilia (AGP), their attitudes about AGP, and what they would like to know about AGP.

You are invited to participate in my research study: Beliefs, Attitudes, and Questions Concerning Autogynephilia (STU00223398), Principal Investigator: Michael Bailey, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University (jm-bailey@northwestern.edu).

You must be at least 18 years old to participate. You will not be compensated for participation. Participation involves completing an online survey that will take approximately 15 minutes to complete.

To participate, or to find more information, click the link to the survey: SURVEY LINK

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What’s new in my Parent Membership Group on SubscribeStar…

Essential Topics Video: Understanding the Online Persona, Influence, and High-control Groups

I cover:

• adolescent social media behavior as performance

• trans ideology and thought control - manipulating one's sense of self/identity

• how adolescent development maps onto ideology + social medial performance

Live Q+A: I was joined by Simon Amaya Price and his dad to discuss Simon’s experience of a non-binary identity and subsequent desistance. We talk about the overlap between autism and gender dysphoria, the willingness to critically self-examine, and how his family supported his eccentricity and exploration while setting boundaries for his safety.

To hear this conversation, you can join the Q+A tier of my Parent Membership Group here.

Don’t forget that you can always view short clips of Topic Videos and other educational videos on my YouTube Channel.

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What’s on my nightstand…

Despite our best intentions, digital technology often fosters disconnection and a sense of placelessness. While we may have accounts in digital “spaces,” they simply cannot produce the embodied three-dimensional experience of being in a real life capital P place. I’ve reflected much more on this idea after a book called Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America. It offers a compelling reminder of the importance of physical place in our lives. The essays in this anthology delve into a variety of topics including GPS navigation, transportation, poverty, civic engagement, and “cosmopolitan temptation.” The book explores the consequences of losing our connection to specific geographical locales. It encourages us to embrace the significance of real places to counteract the isolating effects of our increasingly virtual world.

Every now and then I love delving into topics which are quite distant from my regular daily musings, so this book serves as a palate cleanser with both intellectual substance and practical application.

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What’s on our podcast…

Our January episodes covered, ROGD Boys, detransition, the politics of gender, and an update on what’s happening in the Netherlands.

• Gender Clinicians Should Take the Family's Input Into Account, with Marieke den Ouden: Our guest last Friday was Dr. Marieke den Ouden, a medical biologist and psychologist. We discussed pediatric gender medicine in the Netherlands and the idea that the Dutch Protocol is believed to ensure thorough mental health evaluations, when in reality, there are inconsistencies in its application. Marieke also discusses a new survey gathering input from extended family on a child’s mental health and gender identity.

• Detransitioned After Three Decades as a Trans Man with Jessi: We welcomed Jessi, a 69-year-old detransitioned butch lesbian, who shares her extraordinary life story. Jessi challenges misconceptions about detransitioners being predominantly young confused people who transitioned in adolescence. She shines a light on older individuals who made these life-altering decisions in vastly different cultural and social contexts. Her life as a gay rights advocate, shaped by threats and hardships, reveals the complexities behind her decision to transition during a time when living openly as a gender non-conforming lesbian carried significant risks.

• “Mercilessly Attacked” for NOT Wanting to Transition Children, with Rep. Shawn Theirry: Former Democratic State Representative Shawn Thierry reflects on her role in advocating for Texas Senate Bill 14 (TX SB14), which established 18 as the minimum age for gender transition procedures. Despite sharing concerns about the medicalization of minors with her fellow Democratic colleagues, Shawn was warned that her seat would be at stake for sharing her position on the record or voting for this bill. Her steadfast commitment to integrity led her to take a stand, even though it ultimately cost her re-election. Shawn discusses the two-year research process that shaped her decision, the personal risks she faced, and the pressures she encountered from within her own party. Throughout the conversation, she highlights the importance of principled leadership, unwavering dedication to doing what is right, and standing firm in the face of political and social pressures.

• ROGD Boys Exist! with Lydia: Mother and advocate, Lydia joined us to discuss the emotional and relational dynamics impacting boys who develop gender dysphoria. ROGDBoys.org is a parent-run website dedicated to raising awareness and providing vital information about the specific contributing factors and medical considerations for males with gender identity confusion. For many of these deeply sensitive boys, adopting a female identity offers them access to intimacy and belonging, particularly within female friend groups, where tenderness and acceptance are more easily found. Lydia is the mother of such a son and in this episode she also discusses her own upbringing in a high-control religious environment and how this shaped her understanding of the complex control tactics at play with gender. She also highlights the nuanced complexities of sexuality and identity, and cautions against reducing AGP to a simplistic conclusion, framing it instead as a complex experience rooted in shame and the struggle to integrate. Finally, she recognizes the diversity of families affected by gender dysphoria and challenges the misconception that parenting style alone dictates a child’s experiences and outcomes.

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I am available for one-on-one parent consultations. You can learn more about what these sessions entail, plus view my availability on my Substack.

Often I am booked quite far in advance, but if you are a Founding Member of this Substack, you will get priority booking.

In the meantime…

Here’s one thing to try…

Be a Tourist in Your Own Town

In the spirit of the new book I’m reading, immerse yourself in the local culture and history with your child. I’ll share some ideas for those of you with teens living at home or young adults who’ve already moved out, but some suggestions can apply to both.

If your teen still lives at home:

• Build a local routine with your child by regularly visiting nearby historical sites, parks, or hiking trails. See if your teen can use a digital map and remember the directions before you hit the road rather than navigating your way there.

• Take a ‘heritage tour’ where guides teach about the migration history of different ethnic populations and how their presence contributes to the locale.

If your child lives away from home:

• Take a guided architectural tour in your child’s city.

• Take an tour of your teen’s campus (my husband is an architect who designs university buildings, so we often tour universities while traveling and on vacation).

• When visiting, look for historic Bed n Breakfasts.

I was recently persuaded to join some friends on a ghost tour in downtown Phoenix. While this isn’t usually “my thing” it was really fun to indulge in all the mystery and rumors surrounding the historic buildings in the oldest parts of town.

Some other ways to engage with the local environment:

• Food tours

• TV + Movie filming location tours

• Train voyages

• Botanical + tree tours

• Street art + mural tours

• Bike tours

• Urban planning tours

• Urban exploration of forgotten and abandoned places

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