And, there we have it. Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued a 409-page report stating what we knew all along. Before gender-transition, youth with gender dysphoria require therapy.

Washington Post says the report, which “conceals authors”, attacks many medical professionals who have been cashing in on hormone therapy, puberty blockers and bodily mutilation poeticized as “gender-affirming care”.

Suffice to say, people are freaking the heck out that it may not be as easy to mutilate the children.

This administration is full of people who are anti-science anti-common sense, anti-American … the list goes on.

— Tom. (@ThosChamberlain) May 1, 2025

From the report:

Over the past decade, the number of children and adolescents who question their sex and identity as transgender or nonbinary has grown significantly.”-HHS, Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria, Review of Evidence and Best Practices

Yeah. Those numbers have grown significantly because of a social contagion. Be that social contagion between junior-high students who have been locked up and isolated, longing to belong or the social contagion between celebrity and “commoner” parents, alike-grasping for relevance and using their child in a sick ploy as the latest dinner party conversation piece of status.

But, this report, according to some, is anti-common-sense and…wait for it…anti-science.

Health authorities have also recognized the exceptional nature of this area of medicine.
That exceptionalism is due to a convergence of factors. One is that the diagnosis of
gender dysphoria is based entirely on subjective self-reports and behavioral
observations, without any objective physical, imaging, or laboratory markers. The
diagnosis centers on attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that are known to fluctuate
during adolescence.”-HHS, Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria, Review of Evidence and Best Practices

Subjective-self reports without any objective physical, imaging or laboratory markers. A diagnosis based on attitudes, feelings and behaviors that-wait for it again-fluctuate.

Mood swings? Hormonal swings? In adolescence? Say it isn’t so!

Additionally, the natural history of pediatric gender dysphoria is poorly understood, through existing research suggests it will remit without intervention in most cases. Medical professionals have no way to know which patients may continue to experience
gender dysphoria and which will come to terms with their bodies.”-HHS, Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria, Review of Evidence and Best Practice

This is where we all need to think about how we felt as adolescents on the brink of, or going through, puberty. Were there days as a young woman, going through the throes of early menstrual cramps that I wished I was a boy and did not have to go through the pain or the embarrassment of excusing myself to the ladies’ room? Was I embarrassed to change in front of my peers because of my increasingly developing body? Was it awkward? Heck yeah! Did that mean I wanted to be a boy and transition? Hell, no. But, in this day and age, a young woman who is uncomfortable in her body and its natural progression into womanhood, may be deemed as “confused”, as a person with “gender dysphoria”, by the logic surrounding some in our medical communities at this time.

Nevertheless, the “gender-affirming” model of care includes irreversible endocrine and surgical interventions on minors with no physical pathology. These interventions carry risk of significant harms including infertility/sterility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density accrual, adverse cognitive impacts, cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders, psychiatric disorders, surgical complications, and regret. Meanwhile, systematic reviews of the evidence have revealed deep uncertainty about the purported benefits of these interventions.”-HHS, Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria, Review of Evidence and Best Practice

Doubt about sterilizing kids? Who'd'a thunk?

— quodscripsi is doing grand, how about you? (@thoughtsofquod) May 1, 2025

What would former HHS Admiral, Rachel Levine say?

The tables have turned. PBS dubs this new report a “best practices” (in quotes) because it calls for psychotherapy of adolescents with gender dysphoria before jumping into hormone injections, puberty blockers and reassignment surgery. I know, it’s outrageous. A call for significant and meaningful inquiry and conversations with young men and women before cutting off their genitals. This, according to political ideologues, defies “science”, defies “common sense”.

Duh. How many other mental illnesses do we treat by indulging delusions? The gay lobby is a cancer.

— Geoffrey Chaucer (@GeoffreyCh49032) May 1, 2025

Psychotherapy, not experimental drugs and invasive surgeries, is necessary to treat underlying mental issues like anxiety and depression.

Activists have mischaracterized psychotherapy as ‘conversion therapy,’ the HHS report notes — yet Britain and the Scandinavian countries now recommend these non-invasive treatments as the primary intervention.”-Dr. Stanley Goldfarb and Roy Eappen

Putting a person under the knife does not rid the person of a mental health issue. If one needs to look any further, look no further than grown adults, the cosmetic surgery industry and the excessive measures some individuals take for their “perfection”, for their “happiness”. The fact is, they are never happy with their appearance. They would benefit from talking to someone about their insecurities and their childhood trauma before another boob job or bigger lip injections but, instead, they turn to their plastic surgeon, who will gladly take their credit card. The left is arguing for cosmetic surgery for children, whose frontal lobes are not yet fully developed, BEFORE any counseling. HHS states what we knew all along; and returns us to sanity.

featured image original graphic by Darleen Click using Adobe Firefly