I was having dinner with a childhood friend (also an immigrant) a few weeks ago. She’s a female and about as liberal a person that I know. She was telling me about her stepson, who decided a couple of years ago that he was trans, and being a good progressive couple, she and her husband immediately sought to get the boy some help. Thankfully that help did not come in the form of gender reassignment surgery – something that British psychiatrist Bob Winters has recently described as “one of the darkest chapters in medicine.”

My friend doesn’t remember the dark days of our childhood because she and her family escaped when she was tiny, so she and I have very different perspectives on life. This is probably why she is very much progressive – she doesn’t remember our childhood in our nation of birth, or the hell we went through trying to escape that socialist shithole. She and I have a great relationship, and we can actually talk politics without wanting to throat punch one another, but I will admit that when she was telling me about her stepson, I feared they would be making a decision that would destroy that child’s life.

So when I read Dr. Winters’ column, I thought about this poor kid, and I was grateful that my friend and her husband’s reaction wasn’t to snip off the boy’s giblets, but rather to get him into counseling.

Not everyone is that lucky – especially in Britain, where Dr. Winters describes a system that is headed for catastrophe where transgender people are concerned.

For everyone’s sake, I believe that surgery – which is irreversible – should only ever be a last resort. We should always begin by working to help the mind fit better with the body before we start altering the body to fit the mind.

Yet in today’s NHS, professionals are enabling hundreds – possibly thousands – of teenagers to have major surgery to change their gender.

It is being done, almost unchallenged, in the name of transgender rights. But in 20 years’ time, I believe we will look back on this folly as one of the darkest periods in the history of modern medicine.

One of the darkest chapters in medicine, indeed.

In the name of transgender “rights,” the British national health system is castrating numerous otherwise healthy individuals, because the political environment of the day demands it. Doctors are ignoring obvious mental issues in favor of mutilation on demand to virtue signal their progressive cred, rather than working to help desperate, ill people who are in dire need of medical expertise.

You can’t diagnose a patient with a mental issue, because you’re implying that transgenderism is a mental illness.

You can’t work to help a patient through therapy or relieve their suffering in ways other than chopping them up on the operating table, because you’d be denying their “right” to have others accept their delusions.

You can’t advocate for other ways to address the patient’s anguish, because you’ll be labeled “transphobic,” even though these supposed advocates of science refuse to acknowledge basic biology and try to destroy anyone who challenges their “progressive” dogma.

And you will be branded a bigot for wanting to give a patient as many options to relieve their misery as possible.

One major problem in today’s blinkered reality is that, if you don’t ‘affirm’ a patient’s claim to be transgender, you can run the risk of being accused of practising ‘conversion therapy’.

Conversion therapy is the practice of trying to convince a homosexual person that they are really straight. It’s abhorrent, and is rightly banned. Now, powerful bodies including the NHS and major counselling organisations have signed a Memorandum of Understanding – an agreement on how to practise – which extends the definition of conversion therapy to cover patients who might be transgender.

And this well-meaning memorandum is being used by trans activists to stop therapists, psychologists and others from asking rigorous questions about whether or not a patient does, in fact, have genuine ‘gender dysphoria’.

A therapist might have good cause to believe that the trans-identifying teenage boy in front of them hates his body because he was abused as a child and feels vulnerable. But they can’t explore that possibility.

Care to guess what happens to any doctor who tries to help a patient in ways other than mutilation?

Think about this.

Recently, in Britain 650 trans activists signed a letter published in the house magazine of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, calling on anyone not practising “affirmation therapy” to be expelled. Their career would be ruined, and their efforts to help genuinely suffering patients would be destroyed. And if the government that controls the health care of every man, woman and child in Britain allows people to “self- identify” as any gender they want in the name of transgender “rights,” the mandate for doctors to do no harm and to help suffering patients will take a backseat to government genuflection at the altar of the transgender agenda.

Meanwhile, kids who may or may not have gender dysphoria will receive puberty blockers to stop normal development.

They will receive medications that will impact their strength, their bones, and their organs, including increasing the chance of certain types of cancer.

They will be mutilated in the operating room without exploring what causes their issues with no way to reverse the damage.

And although research shows that reassignment surgery brings short-term relief to some patients claiming gender dysphoria, long-term effects show the exact opposite.

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.

This is just one side effect of allowing politicians to control health care and dictate to doctors how to best treat their patients. Instead of allowing doctors to use their expertise to best care for suffering people, they impose political agendas driven by their quest for support from advocacy groups to shore up their political power.

Politicians do not have the expertise to mandate to doctors what treatments to provide to their patients. Politicians do what politicians do best: kiss the asses of whining social justice zealots who are seeking to normalize their inadequacies rather than work to overcome them and to ennoble their oozing sores by punishing those who don’t worship them rather than fix them.

There are people who are genuinely suffering out there who will not get the help they need because progressives would rather force everyone to accept said suffering and victimhood as a virtue than see them get treatment. They glamorize the real suffering and confusion kids feel and romanticize their quest for acceptance by advocating that everyone around them accept their identity by couching it as kindness as opposed to indulging what many times is mental illness and trauma.

Now, let me say this: there are individuals with very real gender dysphoria out there. I know a couple, and I understand and appreciate their struggle. They wrestled with this problem for years, if not decades, and they have sought help where sometimes no help other than acceptance is possible. These are not individuals who try to impose their views on others. They do not attempt to claim that gender reassignment surgery is their right – especially at the expense of the taxpayers. They live their lives in peace as men or women – whatever they identify as – and don’t try to shove their giblets in other people’s faces while trying to reprogram their thinking.

I give these folks the respect they deserve by using the pronoun they prefer. It costs me nothing to be kind to my friends.

My friend also got her stepson help. She and her husband took the boy to a counselor who specializes in gender dysphoria, who upon doing some extensive testing on the boy, told the parents that he was not transgender and that he does not recommend hormone therapy or gender reassignment. After numerous sessions, the counselor determined that the boy probably was influenced by school fads that made transgenderism popular.

Thankfully, the counselor did not immediately jump to surgery, but rather explored other options.

The day when doctors indulge the demands of the moment for patients suffering from what could be anything from autism to post traumatic stress after sexual abuse and placing them under the knife will truly be one of the darkest chapters in medicine.

Featured photo courtesy of: Lifesite News