The Era of “No” Begins

It has been a year like no other, and the Genspect Bigger Picture reflected as much. The momentum in the U.S. has shifted in a way that was scarcely imaginable at the Lisbon conference just a year earlier. Over the past 9 months:

• President Trump’s executive orders, in January and February, mandated binary sex recognition, banned transgender military service, restricted single-sex spaces, and defunded puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgeries for minors
• At least 21 gender clinics, including the notorious Center for Transyouth Health and Development at LA’s Children’s Hospital, have closed their doors.
• The Supreme Court’s ruling in U.S. v. Skrmetti upheld Tennessee’s youth care ban. It ensured that laws in 27 other states will stand, and the Court looks set to rule against Colorado’s so-called ban on ‘conversion therapy’, which outlaws anything short of full-throated trans affirmation.

• The FTC launched inquiries into “deceptive” marketing in gender medicine.
• Hospitals around the country are under investigation by the Department of Justice for allegedly administering puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and performing surgeries on minors, and hiding it under false billing codes.
• Twenty-two states have passed 70 laws regarding healthcare, sports, bathrooms, and IDs
• Detransitioners are more visible than ever, testifying in Congress and state legislatures across the country.Share

Signs of Self-Awareness?

At this point, we might expect at least a few trans advocates to examine their beliefs. But while it is true that there have been some qualified breakthroughs, such as the NY Times series, The Protocol, which addresses flaws in the Dutch Protocol, in an apparent attempt to save it, the vast majority of those deeply invested in trans ideology are not reasonable people.

On the contrary, they are true believers with no intention of stopping. For instance, Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the former head of the now-defunct Center for Transyouth Health and Development at LA Children’s Hospital, simply decamped to Prosilio Gender Care in Pasadena, where she will continue to ply her trade, though not, thankfully, on children. In the U.K. clinicians from the Tavistock are still prescribing pubery blockers and cross sex hormones to young people via the new ideologically entangled, closed-loop system of Kelly Psychology and Gender Plus, American hospital systems that have formally backed away from “gender affirming care” have continued to perform procedures on minors, by coding puberty blockers and cross sex hormones as treatments for unspecified endocrine disorders or double mastectomies as “breast reduction” procedures.

Parents are still forced to fight to keep biological males out of their daughters’ sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms. And politicians like Virginia Gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger continues to waffle on about local communities, while missing that these same local communities believe that allowing boys to compete in girls ‘ sports is deeply unfair, and potentially dangerous.

Meanwhile, states like Michigan are continuing — even now — to add gender identity to the curriculum for 11-year-olds. And school libraries carry deeply inappropriate, sexually explicit books and pass them off as ” LGBTQ+ inclusion” — much to the consternation of LGB parents.

More sobering, threats of violence by trans activists have proven not to be mere hyperbole. has become all too real, as all the conference attendees who had to pass through security were all too aware.

The “Hard No”

At this point, very few people are under any illusions about the totalitarian nature of trans ideology, and this created a new, “no nonsense” mood. Almost no one believes that simply providing the data or exposing the harms of the medical scandal is sufficient to stop the juggernaut of trans ideology, and this has resulted in a new willingness to say “no”.

• No. We do not need more evidence to stop gender procedures.
• No. Children are not capable of informed consent.
• No. Extreme body modification treatment and procedures (puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgeries) should not be routinely performed at any age, and they most certainly shouldn’t be made available at public expense.
• No. There are no circumstances under which it is fair for males to compete as women.
• No. Men do not belong in women’s private spaces: not toilets or locker rooms, and especially not prisons.
• No. Children do not need lessons about gender.
• No. We will not affirm self-hatred or enable self-harm of adolescents (or anyone) experiencing distress.

Mia Hughes cut to the heart of the matter in her speech, The Upstream Battle: Challenging the False Belief Fueling Medical Harm.

“The actual monster, she told us, is an idea. A false belief. It’s the belief that being transgender is innate, healthy, something to celebrate.”

Hundreds of people from across the political spectrum, representing parents, detransitioners, doctors, therapists, lawyers, activists, artists, comedians, and filmmakers, all working in different ways, rose to their feet as one for a standing ovation.

It felt like, at long last, the beginning of the end. We have said as much before about one breakthrough or another, but this time the difference is us. We have seen enough. We have suffered enough.

Our answer is “no”.

Nancy McDermott is the Director of Genspect USA, author of The Problem with Parenting (2020)

Image credit: Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

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