As America Goes, So Goes the World: 2025 Year in Review
By Nancy McDermott
“This is not medicine. It is malpractice.”
This is how Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., described transgender — or more accurately, “sex-rejecting” medical procedures on minors in the December 18, 2025, HHS event announcing actions to protect children from such procedures. It felt like a pivotal moment, the capstone on a year of extraordinary progress.
A Year of Wonders
It began on the first day of the Trump administration with the Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which defined sex strictly as an immutable biological classification of male or female, and began the long process of undoing the Orwellian takeover of language and the state promotion of gender ideology started by the previous administration. The December HHS event was just the latest demonstration of the administration’s resolve.
No hospital carrying out sex-rejecting procedures on minors will receive federal dollars; no more funding for poorly designed research aimed at propping up the illusion of sex-rejecting procedures as medicine; no grants to medical associations promoting dangerous interventions, such as puberty blockers, as ‘safe, completely reversible, and medically necessary,’ for children distressed about their developing bodies. Though the full enforcement of these intentions will depend on completing the rulemaking process and surviving expected legal challenges, it was the clearest sign yet that real, lasting change is in the offing. (For a complete blow-by-blow of the past year, see the links at the end.)
Now is a good time to reflect on the lessons of the past year and how this should influence what those seeking to end the medical scandal and promote a healthy, holistic approach to the problem of sex and gender should prioritize going forward. Here are some of the crucial things we have learned over the past year.
Politics Matters; Sectarianism Could Sink Us
The limitations of viewing politics through the anachronistic prism of Left versus Right became clearer than ever in 2025. None of the progress we have seen would have been possible but for the election of Donald Trump. For some, this is a bitter pill, but what appears to be a “right-wing” victory, bringing with it a familiar list of cautions about hidden or not-so-hidden agendas, turns out to be more complicated.
It is undeniable that power matters, that the federal government can do what no other power can to change the course of events. The policy changes the Trump administration has pursued are the product of years of hard graft by individuals and organizations who are, the slurs of trans activists notwithstanding, like the makeup of Genspect’s Bigger Picture Conference, decidedly moderate.
They are the responsible middle. What they share is more akin to commitment to engaged citizenship, in which doing what is right for children and vulnerable adults, defending the rights of LGB people, and historic achievements, such as single-sex facilities, female sports categories, and childhood innocence, comes as second nature. This outlook is the fruit of an increasingly rare political and moral outlook that seeks to integrate the needs of the self with those of society. Balance is its watchword, and it is only through such good-faith efforts and the inevitable conflicts and negotiations that accompany them that we can restore the promise of the American republic.
Evidence of Harm
Evidence in science is essential, but if the past year has shown us anything, it is that even “evidence” can become a meaningless platitude without genuine, good-faith engagement. The HHS review of the evidence showed that the “evidence base” for the benefits of sex-rejecting medicine is extremely weak. Not only are we missing proof of its effectiveness, but we are also missing evidence of the effects it does have. We must ask different questions in 2026.
Our work in Beyond Trans has shown us that such interventions take a toll on physical and mental well-being. At Detrans Awareness Day 2025 on Capitol Hill, we heard from detransitioners who were suffering the aftereffects of the interventions they received. When it comes to evidence, we must resist going down the route of the UK’s ill-conceived NHS puberty blocker trial, as if there aren’t already thousands of people whose experiences could effectively answer outstanding questions. The US should prioritize gathering data from those who received such interventions. As part of this, we must prioritize post-medicalized healthcare by requiring insurance companies and Medicaid to cover it and by funding research into its effects.
No Means “No”
If we have learned anything this year, it is that trans rights activists do not understand limits and boundaries. Just as gender clinics finally began closing, alternative services such as Plume, Folx Health, and others began offering consumers a way to circumvent the local law. So lucrative is this emerging market that the UK’s notorious Gender GP announced its intention to start practicing gender “medicine” in the US via the internet.
Meanwhile, 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 — something the HHS proposes to address but which persists for now.
The states seem not to have read the memo on federal policy shifts. For instance, earlier this year, Michigan added 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.” In New York State, Attorney General Tish James issued guidance in May 2025, warning school boards against allowing discussion of policies relating to trans-identified students’ participation in sports or access to single-sex spaces under threat of losing their funding.
While it will almost certainly result in a humiliating defeat for James in court, her efforts, along with those of trans activists in other states, tell us something important: Activists will not stop until they are made to stop. Just because a law is passed does not mean it will get through the courts, and if it does, it does not mean those on the ground will follow it. Sometimes it feels like we are playing a very high-stakes game of whack-a-mole. We must accept that defeating gender ideology means being in it for the long haul — until the majority of Americans consider gender medicalization intolerable.
Make 2026 the Year of the “Normie”
As heartening and even thrilling as it was to hear FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary speaking at the recent HHS event say that “pushing transgender ideology in children is predatory, it’s wrong, and it needs to stop,” it remains the case that many Americans are only dimly aware of what has been going on.
They have bought the convoluted claims that sex isn’t binary or that it is possible to change sex. Just this month, the anthropologist Michael P. Masters, speaking on the Joe Rogan Experience, claimed that “we all start out as females” and pointed to an “island in the Pacific” where children are supposedly born female and then turn into males at puberty. He claimed these “girls” spontaneously transformed into boys, and that their “ovaries descend as testicles.” Both these assertions are spectacularly wrong, as biologist and friend of Genspect, Colin Wright, explained on X, but they point to widespread deep confusion.
More worryingly, the partisan nature of American politics means that otherwise sensible and humane people are willing to dismiss any criticism of trans activism as a right-wing talking point. It takes courage and patience to have frank conversations, even among close friends and family — and the stakes are high. Like the issue of slavery during the Civil War, gender ideology is splitting families.
Through our YouTube channel, Inspecting Gender, the Beyond Gender podcast, and by organizing webinars and in-person events, Genspect aims to foster those difficult but necessary conversations, reach everyday people with clear, compassionate information, and help bridge the partisan divide so that more “normies” can see the issue for what it is: a matter of child protection, women’s rights, and basic biological reality, not left-versus-right politics.
Hope for the Future
Genspect USA is committed to doing everything in our power to change the landscape around gender in the United States so that the promises of the past year become reality. Part of this is popularizing a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to sex and gender through our recently launched book, The Gender Framework. But this is only part of the picture. The truth about this episode in our history is etched in the flesh of a generation. Genspect, through Beyond Trans, Detrans Awareness Day 2026, and other initiatives to be announced, is determined to make 2026 the year when that evidence and those stories take center stage.
Nancy McDermott is the Director of Genspect USA
Image: FDA Head, Marty Makary, HHS Secretary, Robert F.Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz of CMS and Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the NIH
Learn more about Detrans Awareness Day 2026
