A Teen, a Diagnosis, and the Escape From Transgender Ideology
00:04In recent years, detransitioners have emerged as some of the most compelling voices questioning the medical system's treatment of kids with gender dysphoria.Despite growing concerns and warnings from these former patients, America's most influential medical associations still advocate medical transition in response to gender confusion.In this episode, we sit down with a father and son duo to discuss their harrowing journey from gender confusion to clarity and freedom.I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley.and this is a special edition of Morning Wire.This episode is sponsored by Brickhouse Nutrition.By the time the average person reaches 60,they've likely cycled through numerous fad diets
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03:00price. Gareth and Simon, thank you for coming on. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you.Now, I understand you both are participating in a documentary series for the IndependentWomen's Voice regarding transgender ideology. So for listeners who want to hear more about thatstory, we're going to include a link for that in the description. But first, Simon, tell us,how old are you now and when did you begin having confusion about your gender? Yeah, so as of June 2nd,I am 21 years old. I first started having doubts about the whole gender issue when I wasabout halfway along the year of being 14. And what kind of things were going through your mindat that time that planted doubts? Where did that come from? Yeah, it was kind of a culmination
03:46of a number of factors. In middle school, I had been the target of homophobic bullying for about twoyears straight, which included death threats and regular slurs. That fall, I had also, andof ninth grade, so when I was 14, I had also recently lost my whole friend group, and I wasa couple weeks after that, sexually assaulted by an older boy. And in my sex ed class, they taught usabout the gender unicorn, and I had joined what I thought to be the gay straight alliance,which really ended up being a gender ideology indoctrination club. And so that's kind of what wasgoing through my mind at the point. You know, I didn't fit in with other boys. I was having alldifferent social difficulties, discomfort with my body, and I thought that the answer was,
04:28you know, that I was secretly a girl inside. Now, you mentioned that you were experiencing a lot ofbullying and homophobic type comments. Were you openly gay at this time? Is that what peoplewere honing in on or how did that come about? I didn't come out as bisexual until the end of eighth grade.They bullied me just because I looked and I acted gay.I wore buttoned down shirts and long pants every day, which is very different than the sports casual wear that boys my age bore.And I talked in a little bit, I enunciated a bit more than my classmates, which is oftentimes seen as being an indication of sexuality for some reason, which I think is absurd.Now, you said when you were in the GSA, and when I was in high school, that stood for gay straight alliance.You said you thought it was going to be one thing, but it turned out to be totally another.
05:19What did you experience there?Yeah.So I really was expecting to get some support for the struggles that I was having after being bullied for my perceived sexuality as perceived by others.In reality, what I found is we would oftentimes have conversations about what gendered dysphoria and being trans and queerness and all of these kind of.exotic identities you may have heard of, like asexuality and pansexuality and being a non-binaryand whatnot. And one of the regular activities as well was watching YouTube videos by thistransgender male to female YouTuber named ContraPoints, which is where I learned aboutthese concepts of gender identity, gender dysphoria, and transition. Now, Dad, Gareth, what were
06:05you observing at this time? Did you notice any red flags or did you notice anything was off duringthis period when he was about 14? Well, you know, Simon was an unusual boy and we didn't knowmaybe he'd grow up to be gay, maybe he'd grow up to be straight and didn't make much differenceto us. We knew that he acted different from the way the other boys acted. He was very intellectual,much more driven towards music and math than he was driven towards sports. He wasn't going to becaught dead wearing a red socks jersey and athletic shorts at school.That just wasn't going to happen.And so when he complained about the other boys treating him badly when he was in middle school,
06:55we thought, you know, that's pretty much par for the course.And we hope to support him as best as we could when he did go to high school,which was a different high school.I wish I had known some things then that I know now, for example,to tell children, if they see a group called GSA, they should ask what GSA stands for.Because I've heard you saying, gay straight alliance, and I can tell you right now that's not what's going on.It's gender sexuality alliance, and it's all about the gender.And there's been a sort of what I call a pokeymonization of gender and sexuality identities,
07:36where there are hundreds of them.and the children are pushed, beginning in elementary school, really, to pick one little flag and one little acronym for their particular brand of, you know, attraction to other people or caring about romance or how they feel about their body.It's a completely different thing than the situation of kids who grow up and have to deal with the idea that maybe they're male and attracted to us.other males are female and attracted to other females, those kids aren't going to get a lot ofhelp in a GSA these days.Now, Simon, you mentioned you were at a very small, at least middle school, maybe high schoolas well.Just regionally, where are you from?
08:23And were these private schools or public schools?Yeah, I was born and raised in Boston.And so for middle school, I actually went to Boston Latin school where there are abouta 450, 500 thereabouts kids per grade.And then for ninth and tenth grade, I went to a very small private school in Chestnut Hill kind of Newton area, which is just outside of Boston.So that's where I was about and, you know, two very different circumstances for sure.Oh, okay. So you were 14 and a half and you started having these doubts that maybe you were the wrong gender.You mentioned the gender unicorn. I believe that's what they call that.
09:02how long did that transition period take?Or was it a period of months when you were just playing around with this idea and it progressed?How quickly did it all happen?And what was that experience like?Yeah.I think if you asked my dad that question, he'd say it happened almost overnight and he wouldn't be entirely wrong.I think probably I only thought about it for a couple of weeks.And then I told my therapist at Boston Children's Hospital about it.
09:32and she immediately affirmed me, and I said to myself, well, I must be completely right about this,since I have a trained medical professional, actually two medical professionals,and then eventually three medical professionals backing me up unconditionally.So it was really, you know, zero to 100 thing and not quite a long period of time.So you mentioned there were three medical professionals.How did you get in front of those medical professionals?How did you become involved with the system?Yeah.
10:04So I was, my dad and my parents saw that I was having some significant mental health struggles in the winter of ninth grade.And for kind of just a time frame, this was, I believe, 2018, 2019 that winter.And so they brought me to Boston Children's.And I saw a therapist, a psychologist at Boston Children's Waltham and a, a, uh, a psychologist at Boston Children's Waltham and a, uh,psychiatrist there as well who prescribed me medication. And then the third medical professionalwho affirmed me was my pediatrician. So, you know, I came in and I was like, hey, I think I'm reallya girl inside. And they're like, oh, amazing. You're so brave for coming out. Here's all of thesedifferent resources. Here's the gender clinic. You should go here as soon as you can. You know,
10:52you should sneak out behind your parents' backs to go to this transgender support group, all of thissort of stuff, and it really came to a head, I think around my 15th birthday, maybe a month or twobefore, sometime around then, I had my yearly checkup with my pediatrician, and I told himabout my gender dysphoria and how my dad wasn't taking me to the gender clinic, and I rememberquite distinctly, he asked my dad in front of me, would you like a dead son or a living daughter,and an effort to basically blackmail my dad into bringing me to the gender clinic where I'd get hormones.So, Dad, it sounds like you had doubts about this or maybe just doubts about the pace of it.What was going through your mind when these medical professionals were encouraging a physical transformation?
11:42You know, I think doubts might be downplaying what I thought about this.Certainly among my thoughts were that...Why am I bringing my son to these people when he's having mental struggles if they'recrazier than he is?This honestly was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard.I remember telling my doctor saying to that pediatrician, I said, look, I brought my son toyou because he was cutting himself.And I did that because I wanted the cutting to stop, not because I wanted a professional
12:19to do it.It was absolutely the most absurd thing I've ever heard that I brought a child to you who is struggling, who is depressed, who is anxious, who is unsure what's real or what's not real.He was really having a lot of trouble.And he says this magic word, I think I'm a woman inside, and all of a sudden everything he says is clear as a bit.has to be true. And I must take him to the gender clinic where, honestly, I don't think they'veever seen a kid they didn't agree was trans. I think it's a policy. And I thought, again,who's the crazy person in this picture? Comparatively, it wasn't him. So it sounds like you werevery clear from the start about how you felt. Were you open about that with the doctor? And if so,
13:17how did that confrontation go? I know there are some kids that willget removed from their homes in certain states over things like this. What was that like?Well, with the pediatrician, I think I might have spoken a little too openly. And I pretty much wentup one side and down the other of him. We never saw him again, which was good. We switched pediatricians.With the psychiatrist, I felt like I had to be very careful about what I was saying.because, again, they kept recommending I'd take him to the gender clinic.And, you know, I thought, I know that there are people who in adulthood persist into this idea that they're really the opposite sex.But this is a 14-year-old boy.
14:03It's preposterous to say that because this unhappy suffering 14-year-old boy says, I think I'm a woman inside that that's what we need to work on right now.We don't need to work on the, we don't need to work in the depression.We don't need to work on the anxiety.We need to work on putting more drugs into his system.How could that possibly dispel the kind of confusion that he was suffering with?Now, Simon, how did this affect your relationship, at least with your dad?I don't know about other family members.You can elaborate on that.
14:40When you announced that you felt like you were trans and it sounds like you didn't havemuch affirmation in your home. How did that affect your family relationships or your life in general?Well, it was rather deleterious to our relationship. I hated my father for about three or four years.And that takes a toll on a young man. And on an old man. And on an old man. And on an old man.And that my mom didn't really talk about it a lot. I didn't really talk about it much with my other family members.and it was really something I kept to the medical professionals in my life and my friends and the people at school.And so it just, I actually, I think I ran away from home like once or twice, three times.And, you know, my, I met my first girlfriend when I was 15, so in 10th grade.
15:41and she was very, you know, accepting and affirming.Hey, you can't call her she anymore. That's misgendering.Yeah, she ended up, oh, it's so sad.She ended up transitioning after we broke up.And unfortunately, I wish I could say that was the only case of that happening.But anyways.Now, would you say Boston Latin and.Brimmer in May is a hotbed of this?
16:14Or would you say that all the schools in the area have a lot of this?Yeah, Boston Latin School, it was a hotbed.I mean, even while I was there and keep in mind, over the pandemic,the rate of transgender identification to my generation jumped like three times from like 1% to 3%.But even back in 2016, 2017, I was at Boston Latin School and I had.I had classmates who were going by male names.I was almost all the girls going by all girls who were doing this,who went by male names or he-him pronouns.
16:52I knew one who went by it-it's pronouns.And so I can't imagine that it's gotten any better since then.And Brimmer, for sure.I mean, after I left,my graduating class ended up being about the boys.One six of them ended up,identifying as transgender, so it's only gotten worse since I've left. And again, I'm going to say3% of a generation again is identifying as transgender. This is an epidemic of really monumental
17:27proportions, which I think that people do not understand that this is everywhere. You might thinkyou're the only person you know who has like a granddaughter who is transgender or whose friend has as adaughter who's transgender or a son, but everybody knows somebody at this point.So did you pursue some of the medical treatments or how close did you come to doing that?I was, I attempted to pursue them, but fortunately, COVID happened. And I actually went tocollege two years early when I was 16 at Bard College at Salmon's Rock, another hotbed forthis. And this is out in western Massachusetts and the Berkshires quite far.for many gender clinics. So that made it rather difficult for me. What I did do, and this is something
18:18that is a very serious issue, there are lots of places that are gray or black market whereadults on the internet will give children. I was a child at 16, legally speaking in the state ofMassachusetts, hormones, sometimes even for free. And I quite nearly did that, but I,I decided against it because I was afraid of internet strangers.Yeah, those are some of the very worst ones.So how did things turn?You sound very clear-minded about this now.What changed and snapped you out of it?
18:54Yeah, I wish I could point at one particular thing,but it was really kind of a series of fortunate, unfortunate events.So actually the summer before my first year of college,my dad recommended me the book woke racism by John McWhorter, who you may have heard of.He's actually one of the, probably the most preeminent African-American alum from Bard College atSimon's Rock, which is where I was, yeah, which, and that's where I was my first year.And I had my freshman seminar and the topic of affirmative action came up and my turn to speak came.And I was like, you know, I think this is stupid and racist and actually doesn't work.
19:35And people got really mad at me for that.my professor demanded I apologize, and of course, me being the kind of, the nice way to put thisas persistent individual, I am. I refused. I failed the class, and I started getting threatsfor my classmates, and I actually, it got so bad I had to move dorms. And I realized, wow,all of the kind of social support I got for being a, living as a quote unquote, trans woman,instantly disappeared the moment I thought something different than the people around me.And this led me to hang out with some boys my age who were the only people who would talk to me.Some of them were even a Republican, you know.
20:19And at this point of my life, that was quite scandalous from my point of view.But they didn't really care that I disagreed with them.And it was like the first time in my life I'm hanging out with people my age who don't hate me for being different.And that was a really different experience, and I ended up transferring to Berkeley College of Music,which, where I graduated last December, Kamala.And I there, my first year there, I joined a sexual assault survivor support group where I was able to kind of really process the trauma of what had happened to me when I was 14.And I'd probably say that was the last nail in my coffin, in the coffin of my transgender identity.And that coincided with my girlfriend, the second one.
21:02who transitioned after breaking up with me, breaking up with me.So, yeah.Now, dad, Gareth, did you rekindle your relationship at this point?What was that like?Well, you know, it took a while.You know, he was really mad at me.He was mad at me because I wouldn't use whatever pronouns he was like.And I wouldn't call him she.
21:23And I certainly wouldn't call him they because that always confused the heck out of me.I remember one of the times he ran away and he was at his girlfriend's house.And I called up his girlfriend's,dad and I'm like is Simon over there and he's like they're here and I'm like you meanSimon and his girlfriend or just they or just Simon Bay which they is it you know it's justunnecessarily confusing and I don't think Simon appreciated my sarcasm and flippant attitudetowards these questions because I'm just not a very reverent guy what can I say and when I wasconfronted you know I didn't have a lot of reverence to the religion's
22:02surrounding me when I was a kid, and now this new religion has been shoved in my face,I've even less reverence for it. So, yeah, it was difficult for us to find our way backin terms of the things that we both believe and the things that we both love, but wegot there. And it sounds like you had some clashes with other adults over this socially,particularly with the girlfriend's dad, I'm going to guess, he was very affirming.What was it like being the parent who wouldn't affirm and wouldn't use the correct pronouns?Was that challenging?Well, you know, let's just say he only came over for dinner one time.
22:51True story, true story.Now, Gareth and Simon, what motivated you to get involved with this documentary?Independent Women's Voice is an explicitly conservative organization.It sounds like you weren't at least initially warm to Republicans or at least people with more of a conservative worldview.How did you get teamed up with them?Yeah.So about a year ago now, right before I was getting ready to graduate from Berkeley, I took this class with my favorite professor called songwriting and social change.And for the final project, we were supposed to put on an event about a social change topic that we were passionate about.
23:32I wanted to do mine on desisters and detransitioners.So I actually got a grant from the DEI department for up to $1,000.I reserved a room through the normal Berkeley system.I contacted public safety to make sure that they were aware of it happening and would send out an officer.But it ended up being canceled by the, I believe it was the provost, the dean,Ron Savage. And that was a mistake on his part, let's say. The Daily Signal picked up my storyand fired it as well. And by the end of the month, or by the end of December, I had written anop-ed for the Boston Globe, given the event, put on the event at MIT to a combined audience of
24:15both in-person and virtual of over 100 people. And then I got invited to the Heritage Foundationin January to a private, they have like a year.private conference summit to end gender ideology that I was invited to. And I met all of these reallylovely people from really across the political spectrum. So, you know, lesbian, radical feminists,all the way to like Christian nationalist types. And I was like, wow, this is really what America isabout. We can set aside what we disagree about and come together and work on the things we really doagree on. And look, you know, I'm still kind of fundamentally,I believe in the dream of classical liberalism, but I do understand that in order for that dream to be tenable and to thrive, you need to have a healthy, cohesive, and unified society, and that's something we don't have right now.
25:13And so my disagreements with the conservatives really aren't applicable to the point we are in society right now, and so I have no reservations working with them.I'll talk to anybody who'll talk to me.For me, Simon is a little more conservative than I am at this point.We have a bunch of arguments about this topic or the other topic.I was raised as a liberal.I'm still a liberal.Sorry.But you know what?
25:39This is not a liberal versus conservative issue.It just isn't.This is an issue of common sense in reality versus insanity.and insanity that's oppressive to people and harmful for children.I really don't care who I am going to go talk with and agree with.I don't care where they're coming from on other issues.You and I, we could have a conversation about another issue that we would very much disagree about.That's not relevant to the point.
26:13The point is that all of us, conservatives, liberals, you know, gay people, straight people,men and women, we have to get together and just see the reality and agree that it's terrible to tellchildren that they're born in the wrong body and that they need medical intervention to change theirbody to fit their feelings. Now, do you sense there's more space for those conversations now thaneven just a few years ago? Are you feeling more optimistic? I want to say that I am and I don't know aboutyou know, really politically active people,but I can tell you the number of peoplethat I've had a conversation with in person
26:56who've said, you know what,you're completely right about this.I absolutely agree that this is terrible for children,and I'm really glad it hasn't visited my family.I don't think we're seeing a lot in the media right now,but when this first started for us,I did feel very alone on the left, as it were,and I can tell you right now,
27:20I don't feel so alone anymore because I know that most people on the left, if they really look inside themselves and ask themselves seriously, is this really what we want to be telling children?The answer is no.I just wanted to touch on really the people who are being sucked up into this and why they're being sucked into it.A lot of these people are having identity struggles.So a lot of them can be, I've found, are actually children of first generation immigrants, for example.A lot of them are autistic.A lot of them are same-sex attracted.And I think a really big reason why boys, at least, are getting sucked into this, is because of the really negative messages we have in our culture right now about masculinity and this indoctrination that we receive in school telling us that, you know, all men are bad and that men are, you know, complicit.
28:16in the sexual assault of women and our eternal oppressors and all these different sorts ofreally negative narratives. And so as a young boy, when you notice in yourself your masculinity andthis vitality, you start to see that, oh no, I'm becoming the thing I've been taught to fear.And so instead of turning that into productive action, you turn it inwards and it becomes a verydestructive force. So we really need to be helping these young sensitive, oftentimesautistic boys have a place where they can be with their peers, where they can get the helpthey need in a way that doesn't tell them that they're wrong. Yeah, I totally agree with that.Simon Gareth, thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you for having us. Thank you.
29:05That was Simon and Gareth Amaya Price. And you can hear more about their story in the newdocumentary series Identity Crisis put out by the Independent Women's Voice. And this isa weekend edition of Morning Wire.
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