TRIGGERnometry - Trans Clinic Whistleblower Speaks Out - Jamie Reed

Episode Date: April 16, 2023

SPONSORED BY: ATHLETIC GREENS. Get a free 1-year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase. Go to https://athleticgreens.com/triggernometry/ SPONSORED BY: easyDNS - domain name registrar provider and web host. Use special code: TRIGGERED for 50% off when you visit https://easydns.com/triggered/ Jamie Reed is a life-long progressive and healthcare professional. For many years she has provided counselling to vulnerable populations including children in foster care, sexual minorities and young people with HIV. For four years she worked at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital, Missouri. What she saw in that time caused her to resign and turn whistleblower. Read Jamie’s disturbing account here: https://www.thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-was-saving-trans-kids Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc   Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Mental health was getting worse once they started the blocker. And that's against what the narrative tells us. The narrative says these interventions are supposed to make people better. We were pretty much putting anybody on testosterone at 13 and a half, if that's what they wanted. It was getting to the point where we were harming more patients that we were helping, just by the numbers. What I am not in agreement with is this push to rapid medicalization of children. and it got to the point in the center where there was an actual directive that we were no longer allowed to use the phrase, I have concerns about a patient.

And in medicine, that should scare anyone. Hello, and welcome to Trigonomics. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisholm. And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations. with fascinating people. Our very special guest today is a whistleblower from a transgender clinic in the United States.

Jamie Reid, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me. It's great to have you on the show. Listen, Francis and I have just both re-read your article for a second time. We're going to talk about all the stuff that you said in there. One of the most terrifying things that I've ever read, to be honest. And so I'm looking forward to speaking with you about it.

But before we get into that, just tell our audience who may not be familiar with you and the story that you shared. Who are you? What's been your journey through life? How did you get to the position that you got to? And what did you see there? And why did you decide to speak up? Thank you for those questions.

So I'm Jamie Reed. I have a Master's of Science in Clinical Research Management. And I was previously the caseworker in the pediatric transgender center at a clinic in St. Louis, Missouri. So in the middle of the middle of America. I started, well, I spent about four years and four months in that position. I worked at the university previous to working with trans kids. I was working with young adults who were HIV positive. I have a lot of experience in case management.

I worked with kids who are in foster care. And I've also worked in a lot of medical and health settings too. So I came into the clinic, really excited about the opportunity that I thought was going to be to help trans youth and their parents. And you mentioned in your article that, you know, you're very progressive, you're married to a trans man, like, or in a relationship with a trans man. Sorry, I don't remember which. But in any case, you're married. Well, congratulations. So very progressive, you know, you come into this place wanting to make a difference, I assume.

and then over a period of time, you start to have doubts and you try to express doubts and that doesn't go particularly well for you. And increasingly, you become very alarmed at what you're seeing. So talk to us, you know, just at the very beginning of that, Germany. You get there, you're all pumped, ready to go. And what happens? Right away, I was struck by the lack of organization. for the center. So there was no real written protocols. It seemed like it was kind of a fly by the seat of the pants kind of operation. They had already been open for a solid year before I got there. And yet it seemed like they were kind of operating outside of a lot of the normal structures that you'd see in medicine.

Most of the departments and divisions in medicine have a lot of layers. There's a lot of top heavy. there's a lot of, you know, administrative roles. And it seemed like the center was kind of off on its own, had this little pocket. And I was also struck at the very beginning because the administration of this hospital let this clinic open. And I was told that they originally thought that they were going to have about 50 patients total. And when I left, we were close to 2,000. Wow. Yeah, huge difference. And why do you think that was, Jamie?

What do you think were the reasons for that? I definitely have come to believe that in the United States there is an element of social contagion in play going on with young people who are seeking out care in gender centers. And I'm not the only one to believe that. I had lots of parents report very similar things. And there were even a number of patients in the center who would report and directly said, I only got this online.

Wow. So they only got this online because your article is very interesting because you talk about when you started in the center, it was mainly boys suffering from gender dysphoria. And then you started to see more and more girls come in. were they the ones who were particularly susceptible to this social contagion, as you put it? I think it's well known in medicine that adolescent girls are just more open and more susceptible to many different kinds of social contagions. That has to do with a lot of ways that girls are socialized, but also the way that girls interact. in kind of group settings and pick up things and show empathy with those in their group setting,

oftentimes by taking on attributes in those group settings. So I didn't just see that these kids were picking up gender as a social contagion. We have a lot of issues right now in my country with adolescents who are experiencing tick disorders. They think they have Tourette's. there's been a recent wave of young people believing that they have what they refer to as DID, so multiple personalities. You are seeing these things directly coming from social media.

And Jamie, can I ask you a question? And sorry to sort of appear picky, but before you started talking about how adolescent girls have certain problems, you kind of did like a little sigh, almost like you're resigning yourself to having to say, was part of your experience? that even that very idea was controversial in the environment that you were operating in? So, you'll have to

remember that in some ways I am deprogramming my language out of some cult-like conversations. So even for me, I still take pause in using the phrase adolescent girls.

Because when you work in a place like this, you don't say that. You say people are assigned female at birth. You don't say people are boys. You say they are assigned male at birth. So even the way that we spoke about everybody was in this framework of the gender ideology world. Wow. So I know that to you, this seems kind of like normal, but to a like a person outside of that space, just to clarify, in this transgender clinic, you would never refer to people as boys or girls or men or women. You would say assigned female at birth. That's transphobic to do so.

Wow. Okay. But even, yeah. So, yeah. So, but even though biological sex is obviously real. Oh, yes. Medicine, medicine is really interesting in this, right? interesting in this right now because in some ways all of the doctors would clearly acknowledge

biological sex. We would, you would say someone was assigned female at birth, assigned male at birth. Maybe you could use natal sex. They acknowledged its existence because if you're in the emergency room and you have somebody who's coding and you're trying to figure out, you know, what their lung capacity is, you know, there are definite medical needs in times when your biological sex changes the course of the treatment. But in our patient population, we, everyone was assigned female at birth, assigned male at birth. You heard the term cis a lot, who's cisgender. We talked about how all of our patients were probably, you know, would judge you if you walk in and they thought you were cis, those kind of things. It's, it's, it's constant.

And Jamie, how did this affect this type of language? How did this affect the way that you treated your patients? I do think that the staff were always sort of on edge because it wasn't just the concern that you were providing good medical care, but you also always had the concern has this patient's pronouns changed again? Their preferred names were changing frequently. Even the term preferred name, sometimes people would say that's not, you know, activists would push that that, you can't even say that because it's not their preference. It's their name, even though it's not their legal name.

A lot of the staff that are hired into the clinics like this, at least in the United States, are also activists and oftentimes directly, there's a push to directly hire trans and LGBTQIA people to work in these clinics as the staff. And so you join the clinic, you start working, you start noticing some of these things. And when did you start to get really concerned? Because you were the person responsible

for processing the intake of potential patients. So you're getting these people in and going, you go here, you go there. When did you feel like, whoa, oh, like this is not good. It was a slow process to get there. There definitely was a point where I went from 10 intakes a month, where there would be 10 newly referred young people

to the numbers being in the 40s and 50s every single month. And the cases were getting more and more out. landish or sometimes even completely bizarre. In the states, oftentimes if anything about gender gets brought up in a pediatrician's office, they immediately just refer you to the gender center. So I could be getting an intake where a kid maybe told their parent three days ago that they thought they were non-binary and asking for they them pronouns. and yet they're already landing in a specialized medical clinic that does hormones.

So there were some intakes where it was just, it made absolutely no sense. The entire concept of kids being allowed to explore their gender and explore these concepts have been almost wiped off the map. And what would happen? Let's say I bring my 12-year-old daughter to you. Three days ago, she said that she's non-binary. she wants, they, them pronouns. What happens to her from there? So initially, I would try to be encouraging you as a parent to find a therapist and start

working with a therapist for your kid. But the minute you're talking to me on the phone, you have already started on a pathway. Because the only therapists that I have to refer your kid to are therapists who are going to affirm their gender identity, not question it at all, and potentially as soon as I say, take your kid to that therapist, that therapist might see them for one or two visits and send them right back to the center to get started and seen by the people that prescribe hormones. So three days ago, my daughter said, I think I'm non-binary because she saw on social media, let's say.

I bring her to you, you send us to a therapist, therapist sees us a couple of times, sends us back to you in order to see a doctor to be prescribed hormones. Potentially, yes. Jesus fucking Christ, sorry for my language. Okay. Yeah. So I think this is a very important part of the conversation because someone I know very close to me had a double mastectomy, and that is a very, very serious operation.

It's a very serious operation. and you know this better than anyone. It can take months to recover from. And actually the risk of complications with such an invasive type of surgery, the risks are high, to put it mildly. So let's look at this. What do we mean by puberty blockers?

What do we mean by these drugs? And what are the potential side effects of these drugs? So the puberty blockers we were using were mostly their implant, that go into the arm or their injectables that are used on a monthly or three-month basis. In our center, you had to be at least in the very initial start of puberty to get a puberty blocker. But one of the things we were starting to see was that some of the kids put on the puberty blockers, mental health was getting worse once they started the blocker.

And that's against what the narrative tells us. The narrative says these interventions are supposed to make people better. And what we were seeing was parents calling and saying, my child has had the blocker in for a month. They're crying every day. They've had the blocker in for three months and they're now failing out of school. Things that were supposed to be getting better, were getting worse. In the center that I worked in, I started. there when we were still supposed to be operating under the W-Path guidelines,

standard of care seven, which had some age kind of ideas for when people were supposed to start hormones. W-Path-7 was supposed to be 16. And it said only in rare and, you know, kind of urgent cases should you be under the age of 16. we were pretty much putting anybody on testosterone at 13 and a half if that's what they wanted and they got to us in time. And what does that do to you if you are a young person who's been given testosterone? So young girl.

Well, it depends. So if you were on a block. Young female assigned at birth, sorry. Well, no. Even if you were given a blocker first. Okay. And we blocked you and then put you on a cross-sex hormone. We are potentially basically causing you to be infertile for life.

And testosterone, you know, the effects that kids reported that they wanted happened pretty quick. So we would permanently affect your voice and your voice would be dropped into a male pitch. You would see growth on your clitoris into what we would refer to as a micropenus. We would start seeing atrophy and your vaginal canal would start to have atrophic features. All of your body fat would start to move and shift around. You would have facial hair growth. A lot of our patients would start to start losing the hair on the top of their head. And then we would see mood changes.

We would see patients who were, again, they were supposed to be getting better. Their mental health was supposed to be getting better. A lot of times it was not doing what we thought it was going to do. And if you were on feminizing hormones, you would start growing breast tissue. Your fat would move. And again, if you were put on blockers first, it would render you potentially infertile for life. And now we also know for the kids, the, the, boys, if we block you and put you on feminizing hormones, we also are potentially making you

have sexual dysfunction for life. What do you mean by sexual dysfunction? So in the boys, blockers make it so that they never grow the penis or the testicles. If you never go through puberty and you never have those hormones affect that area, you are left with the same kind of penis size that you would have that kids have when they're little before they go through puberty. And then also we knew that the feminizing hormones would make it so you had a lot of erectile dysfunction. The testicles would shrink and atrophy. And we would be causing changes to that part of the body that were irreversible.

I hate to state the obvious, but those are some pretty major changes for a young person to undergo an experience. And the fact that a young person could have that start happening to them after seeing a therapist twice and an underchronologist once, to me, does not ethically line up. One of the other things that we should also talk about is it came to a point you talked about in your article that sometimes there were situations, particularly if they went to court, if parents disagreed about this, that you had a situation that you talk about where the mother, who was quite disturbed, based on your recollection at least, insisted that her daughter, who wasn't particularly a typical case of someone who was experiencing genuine desire to transition, was encouraged to transition by her mother against her father's wishes, and the center where you worked for

was essentially the one that was giving the recommendation to the judge and made the recommendation that it should be the mother's opinion that essentially comes out on top. So a parent was in a situation where the child was going through all of this without even consenting to it. Right. We had that happen quite frequently. And right now in the United States,

it seems like in the courts, the parents who want to give these drugs are the ones that are winning in the custody cases, which to me, it just oftentimes the parents who didn't want to give the drugs, all they were asking for was more time in therapy. And even they were losing. They're losing in court. And I think in part because doctors like the doctors that worked in my center would show up in court and testify on behalf of the parent who wanted to give the drug.

right away. Why is that? Why would they do that? Because it's the part of the ideological mindset that the thought is, is that we have to give these drugs right away or else these kids are going to be harmed somehow. And you say ideological, is there not evidence to say that, you know, if you get in there early, you can say, that's the argument that people make. You know, you get in there early, you save them the discomfort of later life developing, you know, the anatomy of their birth sex, et cetera. Is there evidence for this idea? Not in the kinds of patients that are presenting currently. And it depends. So if you look back at the original study, it's often referred to as the Dutch study. If you look back at the original study, they were

screening out patients who had mental health concerns because the goal of that treatment was, yes, to treat some dysphoria, but there's not evidence that this treats major depressive disorder, borderline personality disorder, autism. That's not what this is evidence to treat. And yet the argument is that if we can medicalize somebody, then all of the, that's, that's their other mental health issues will somehow be alleviated. And the reason you mentioned that, sorry, Francis, just to clarify this, is that a lot of the new cases that you saw over and above what you expected, these were very different profile. They were not boys.

There were young girls who were presenting with eating disorders, autism, autism-like symptoms, etc. Right? That's why you bring it up. Absolutely. And they are girls who oftentimes, there are. is a disagreement. So they will claim that, oh, I felt like this my whole life. And their parents initially will often say they had no gender issues at all as a child, that they were absolutely

normatively fine in there being a girl. And it onset at 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. What you were saying is completely antithetical to the creed that doctors are supposed to follow, which is do no harm. What you're saying and what I'm hearing is harm being inflicted on children, which is appalling. Yes, that's what I came to finally understand, that maybe, maybe, out of our huge, number of patients, there were a few patients that this model of care may be helped, but it was getting to the point where we were harming more patients that we were helping, just by the numbers. Wow. And so why, at that point, when girls with autism, I think you quoted the number of 30% are presenting themselves.

The 30% of autistic goals when people with severe psychiatric illnesses are presenting themselves and are being putting through transition, including some of the awful cases that you've spoken about. Why hasn't there been more people coming out and talking about this

or more people wanting to stop this? So I do think those people, I think that there are more people like me. and I know that I've spoken to a number of them since I have come forward. But if you even look at what has happened to me in my own local press, those basically the voice of reason, the voice of can we slow down, the voice of we need to actually look at who we're hurting, is being drowned out right now and we're being shouted down and screamed out by this idea

that the fact that I say anything is somehow is going to hurt and harm trans kids. So what has been the treatment that you've received from the local press? I can even count the number of articles and all they do is have vilified me. And they also vilify me in strange ways where I just wonder, a lot of America right now is liking to pretend like y'all in England don't exist or that Sweden doesn't exist or Finland doesn't exist or none of the countries like your country that's actually starting to have some kind of a dialogue around this, all the local media would like to think that America is in its own bubble and we know it's right on this topic and no one else exists. Well, I just, the reason I ask is we've spoken to a lot of people about this issue from all sorts of different angles, and the usual stuff is there a transphobic, whatever. But you were married to a trans man. How transphobic can you be? I also had identified as gender queer in the past, and I experienced a lot of gender dysphoria as a child myself.

I am I'm not opposed to adult transitioning. I do still think that adults who are transitioning would benefit by support of a therapist and a therapeutic process, but I am not in any way opposed to trans people. I also have an undergrad in anthropology. I fully understand that there is a lot of diversity in gender and gender presentation. but what I am not in agreement with is this push to rapid medicalization of children. And also, the current model doesn't even make sense if you're actually pro-diversity. Because if I am pro-gender diversity, why are we telling little kids that if they play with a toy that is not in their gender category, that somehow that means? means that they're trans.

Like I thought it's 2023. Shouldn't we be telling our children you can wear whatever you want, you can play with whatever toys you want, you can have whatever job you want. And instead we're in some weird 1950s thing where if a boy plays with a Barbie suddenly his parents think that he needs to go to a gender clinic and it means that they're trans. Do you know the thing that I find quite unusual as well

is that in a society like a marriage, which is so litigious, where people sued others at the drop of a hat, you have the minimum of medical checks. Fast-tracking not only people, but children, children, and some very young children at that, through to irreversible medical procedures, I mean, that's just a million-dollar lawsuit waiting to happen, isn't it? No, because unfortunately the institutions that are supposed to, okay, let me explain.

So if you go and try to file that lawsuit in the United States today, the doctors and the hospitals are able to say that the American Academy of Pediatrics says that this is right. The Endocrine Society says this is right. And they try to, they can just claim that they're just following all of, these medical guidelines. I did not believe that where I worked was following even these quote guidelines. But judges, I think thus far, have been taking that at that easy face value. I mean, you hear it in the news. Well, the American, you know, all of the American medical establishments agree with this

kind of care. And I, it doesn't line up. No, it doesn't. And I suppose just to give people an example of what you're talking about, you talk in your article about a case where there was a girl who had a double mastectomy, she had a breast removed. I think it's 16, if I'm remembering correctly, around that time. Sorry, go ahead and correct me.

No, I think if you're talking about the patient. who called a few months later and asked to have her breast to put back on. She was not a minor, but she was young. She was 18 or 19 when we did the surgery. So she has a breast removed. A few months later, she calls up and says, I'm a girl. I want my breasts back. I mean, a horrifying story in and of itself.

And she's pregnant, so she's not going to be able to breastfeed her child. The most horrific thing, I think, one of the most horrific things that could happen to a young woman. you're saying she can't sue the people who advised her and put her through that. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a lawyer. So I don't know. There is potentially a case there, but I know that the way that the surgeons and the way that the center responded was that she made the choice. Yeah.

And I think we see that with the detransitioners, and some of them are minors. and they will say, well, your parent made the choice. Your parent agreed. And that's kind of the question here, isn't it? Because one of the most mind-boggling things about this ideology, as you describe it, is, you know, I am myself not a progressive. I'm also not somewhere in the middle. But I thought one of the most central elements of progressivism was this increased attention

towards the idea of consent. People shouldn't do things to other people without their, consent. But I don't know about anyone, but it doesn't seem to me like a 15-year-old or a 16-year-old, frankly, even an 18-year-old from a very troubled background like this young woman, is really capable of consenting to those things with, you know, a full proper understanding of the impact. But these kids want these things. So in so in these family dynamics and in these centers, these kids show up and they were demanding this from their parents yesterday. And their whole household has been in chaos because this kid has decided that the best thing for them right now is to start testosterone tomorrow.

And I don't even know how you can, okay, part of medical ethics and part of actual consenting has to be that you're not, under any undue influence. So we think about that sometimes in really, you know, bad medical case. Like if you were just told you have cancer and you, and it's potentially, you know, a very bad cancer, we don't want to tell you 10 minutes later, would you like to be in this research study for this drug? because we're putting you in an undue influence. And sometimes we even say maybe you're, maybe the person who's going to treat your cancer shouldn't be the person who asks you if you want to do this procedure. It should be somebody neutral. So you're, you know, so we think about these things

in medical ethics. In medical ethics, those young people, I believe, are in a situation where they have undue influence. They are being influenced by, a socially mediated cultural phenomenon. And the only way that they truly could give consent to that treatment is if they have been out of that phenomenon and out of that social pressure for long enough, i.e., potentially an adult, to then provide that real consent. Or we could just shut off all social media and tell them they can't look at this stuff and then ask them, you know, if you have a 15.

year old girl who's in the middle of this belief and we put her in the middle of Montana with no internet access on a horse farm she potentially might not want testosterone 12 months down the line but that's the level they're they're under so much influence it's from their school it's from their peers it's from the social media and they want this right now that makes sense but jamie on top of all of that though it's a kind of basic principle of our societies that children can't consent to anything, really, right? You can't, you can't drink or take drugs or have sex, lots of other much more, much less significant things in terms of the impact on your life and the lives of other people around you. You can't get a bad tattoo and be stuck with it. You have to be

18 to get bad tattoos. So you can get a tattoo, you can't get a tattoo, but you can get, you can get hormones and potentially double mastectomy. Is that not, is that just, I mean, sorry, but is that not insane? It is to me now. It was not to me then. I'm not having a go at you. I'm trying to flesh out the issue itself. Do you see what I'm saying?

No, yeah. I get it. I get it. And Jamie, again, there is no blame attached to this. What we're trying to do is we're just trying to understand how these places work. And you say it wasn't obvious to you. Why was that?

So many of the people who worked, who I worked with, and I think that a lot of the people that work in these centers and in medicine and in pediatrics in general have a huge heart. They really do care and they really do think that this is the way to help these kids. And I also think that when you are faced with. So much distress. So much chaos. These kids are hurting. They are maybe saying that they're suicidal, that they're self-harming, that they are struggling. I think on some level it's easier to say, well, we'll give you what you want than to stand up and be the grown-up and say, no, we're not doing that right now.

And instead, we have to do other things. And then we also have to support the parents because if you, you have parents who have been trying to deal with their kid who's been demanding testosterone, demanding this new name, demanding these new pronouns, demanding these clothes and these, and these kids are telling their parents it's the only thing that's going to keep me from killing myself. How do we support those parents to also say, no, we need to slow down and we need to think about this? Do you think part of the problem is, and I'm going to go back to the litigious point, is that these clinics are worried that if they don't do something

and then let's say the kid does something rash or, you know, tries to kill themselves, that they are then going to be held responsible for not putting correct interventions in place because someone will come to them and go, look, this kid said they were suicidal, they said they were gender dysphoric, you chose not, you chose not to give the correct procedures,

so we just call it like that, in place. as a result, this kid attempted suicide. You're at fault. So my answer's complicated here. So I've worked with young people who are expressing suicidal ideations thoughts for a really long time. I am not trying to downplay

suicidal thoughts in trans kids. But I saw more suicides in... kids within the foster care system and kids who were HIV positive as a young person than we saw in the pediatric gender center. And a lot of the kids in the gender center, their suicidal thoughts are different. So oftentimes when we would send them, these are seen more as threats and not attempts. That's not to say that we didn't have patients who did have true suicidal ideations. But I think as a whole, the statistics do not show that there are that high. numbers of completed suicides in this.

And very much on that subject, and I know it's a tricky thing to ask you, but I feel like I should. We've heard from other guests that quite often, because this idea of being trans or whatever is social media driven, the kids are actually getting instructions on how to talk to somebody like you to get what they need. So when, you know, not all of them, but some of the are coming in and saying, oh, I'm suicidal because they know that's what gets the thing that they want. Is that happening? It is, but the thing that scares me a little bit too is that some of the parents are doing the

same thing. So I had some parents who would call to complete an intake with me and they would describe the situation and I would say, hey, from what you're describing, it sounds like your kid is just experiencing some normal gender questioning. It does not warrant the need to be seen in a gender center. And then they would sometimes press me and find out kind of, well, what are the things that warrant you being seen in a gender center? And then magically, mom would call me back a month later and now suddenly kiddo has expressed exactly what I told mom was needed to meet that criteria. We even had, I had parents even tell me things like, my kid likes to play with this toy.

And then they would tell me that they went and bought all of the kids' books they could find on Amazon about being trans, and that they had hidden and sprinkled the trans kids' books all throughout the house for their kids to find. And those were cases that just, there's something going on. And I know it's unfair to ask you to speculate about other people's intent. but do you have any sense of why a parent would want to do that? I think you had a guest on maybe before who talked a little bit about how, you know, to be a really,

to be a truly good liberal parent right now is to kind of allow your kid to, it's like gone so far in one direction where, you know, if your kid expresses the slightest, non-gender tight role, you know, you immediately need to start affirming and asking them. I mean, I had parents talk about how they would have all their kids close their eyes in like a circle in their house in some like weird seancey thing and then open their eyes and tell us what your inner gender is now. So this is parents literally seeding these ideas into the heads of their own children. Yes.

My question is, and by the way, just for clarification, I don't know if you know this, I was a teacher for a long time, and I taught across all sectors, and I taught in girls' schools as well. So I saw how social contagion work, particularly with young girls. When I taught in girls' schools, it was late naughty. So back then, there wasn't really any of the trans stuff. It was mainly anorexia. But I look at this, and I go, that's child abuse. that is child abuse because if I was a teacher and I heard that this was being done to a kid who I was teaching, I would report them to social services. That would be my duty as a teacher in the UK. And if I didn't do that, I would not be fulfilling my role. I would not be as we called in the UK in loco parentis. Yes, and there were a few cases where I would agree with you. And that is also part of the problem in the media right now

because oftentimes the parents that are so gung-ho to talk to the news about how this saved their kid's life and how their kid is doing so well are like these really hardcore activist parents who bought all the way in. And they're the ones drum beating this too. And why is this ideology so powerful? Why is it that it can take hold of people like this to the point that they do this to their own children and create significant long-term harm? So in the liberal view right now in the United States, there is this. huge kind of so to be a white person in the united states with privilege and to be middle class and to be able to afford things for your kids and um to be able to kind of to be in this privileged

position is seen as a negative for a lot of liberal people and so i do feel like being trans has become this thing that you can't question. So you can't really easily change. You can't say you're of a different race in the United States. You can't claim ethnic background if you don't have it. You can't, I mean, who's going to claim that they're poor? I mean, and if you identify as A or less being, you know, that gets uncomfortable pretty quickly.

if you if you're not really gay or lesbian. But for these young people, you can claim that you're non-binary and throw they-them pronouns up and suddenly you're in the you're in the group that's no longer the oppressor. You are in the oppressed group. And I think part of why this has such these strong tentacles

is nobody in my country ever wants to tell somebody who's in, you know, what we view as an oppressive group that they're not, and nobody wants to be seen as the oppressor. And but, and I accept that, and again, this is, there is no blame attached to this whatsoever. I'm just exploring. What about the adults? What about the medical professionals? Isn't it their job to make that decision? That's what you went to college for.

That's what you studied. why you put yourself through a medical degree. That's why you're in that position for you to make that choice. Do you see what I mean? And to me, but you, but the culture is so harsh right now that if they were to say no to a patient, then they were going to get, you're going to get blasted on social media that you're a transphobic doctor. That you, and what does that mean? Because On social media, your bland is a transphobic doctor. What does that mean for your career? What does that mean for your prospects?

What does that mean for the way people perceive you? I can speak from my own position, which is that I am the hated outsider. I was in a very interesting position to become a whistleblower. I'm basically a Luddite. I had no social. media to speak of. I had nothing to get destroyed or taken away from me. My Twitter, I had none of that. I'm an old school Luddite. And I also was an anarchist in the 90s. And, you know, I remember the black block and the WTO protests and I lived in an anarchist collective. Like, I kind of had a really thick skin, but I also

remember those kind of politics. And I remember standing up for something. something and and knowing that even if you're going to get, you know, everybody pile on you, that, that you'll find that, that the other activists are out there. They might be small and it might be a small group, but, but I felt firm enough in my own internal convictions. And I worry that we're in a culture right now because of the way social media has changed, that it's so external, the judgment is so external, not internal, that for so many people, even adults, it takes a lot of strength to go up against your dominant culture. It does. And that's one of the reasons I really want to thank you for coming out and talking about this because I think it's super important. And one of the things

we haven't yet talked about in detail is what happened internally when you started speaking up about this? Because you started to ask questions, didn't you? I did. I started. I started. I started at asking questions often, and it got to the point where I even was having conversations one-on-one with the doctor saying, we are harming children. We are doing this. And what would they say? So it's interesting because I only recently read the Hannah Barnes book about the Tavistock, and it was almost the exact same response, which I was told my tone was wrong, that I was, I shouldn't be directly challenging doctors in team meetings. that I was out of my lane, that I was, it was almost identical what happened at Tabistock.

And the way that I was kind of treated was I was the annoying squeaky wheel. Oh, we know Jamie's going to have another issue. And it got to the point in the center where there was an actual directive that we were no longer allowed to use the phrase, I have concerns about a patient. And in medicine, that should scare anyone. Because if your surgeon comes in and the nurse thinks that they're drunk, sure is how that nurse should be able to say, I have concerns about this patient right now and we need to stop. We need medicine needs people who are empowered by their medical institution.

to speak up, nurses, social workers, case managers, you think someone was given the wrong dose, you think they're going to cut off the wrong limb, like you have to have all of these layers in medicine, have to have people who are empowered and encouraged to stand up. And instead, it was routinely, be quiet, stop. You're wrong, be quiet, stop. And it got to the point finally where we were told, get on board or get out. And that was, that was the final you say we were the other people at the center who agreed with you

we didn't always agree for the same reasons but there were a few other people who agreed and all the same concerns yeah and you mentioned speaking directly one on one with doctors

so if you come to a doctor in that sort of clinic and you would say I think we're harming these children other than shut up and stop raising it. Did they have any counter arguments or any explanation for why what they were doing, what they were doing? Sometimes it would be, well, what do you want me to do instead?

Come up with a different solution then. And I think part of that is that the whole model of care is so upside down right now that it's like every, that the doctor, or even just a cog in the spinning machine. And they're like, the only way I know how to spin is this way. Like, you're telling me we're hurting people, but they would be like, how do I do differently? Because then it would have to stop the, it was almost like for them to actually stop and think, would have to stop the whole mechanism.

The whole machine would have to stop because it's not just their portion. It's the therapist portion. It's the parents' portion. It's the kids themselves. the hospital. It's like all this whole machine is spinning and and they were like, what do I do? And I guess in some ways, I just got to the point where I was like, you know, this whole machine just has to stop right now because the way that it's going is just, it's not. It sort of sounds, what you're describing is like a little bit like a conveyor belt where like it. Yeah. Right. And then you're going up to one person at one point and you're going, well, don't put this bit in.

and they're going, well, there's a whole machine here, there's a whole conveyor belt. You know, this is my job. I give form a or I do this or I do that, right? Yes, exactly. And this is what they call the affirmative model, where essentially the moment a kid says, I'm dysphoric, from that point on, they're just on the conveyor belt and there's no getting off. Unless they themselves have a change of up. Right.

As long as the kid is saying, I want that as the end, then that's what the kid's going to get. And you said upside down, and that really is upside down, because as we talked about earlier, a child cannot really consent, but they are driving this whole thing is what you're telling us. Oh, the language even in some of the activist groups is that you're supposed to be child led.

The child's supposed to be leading this. And here's the thing about kids. Kids who think that they're the ones who're supposed to make the decision are actually in more distress and are in more pain because they feel like

there's no grownups in the room who are in charge. And as a parent, I know for my own kids, they do better in life when I can say things to them like, hey, this is not your decision. We're the grownups. We've got this handled. We know what we're doing. You can go be a kid. Do not worry about these things.

And as they get older, you may be out a little bit more like, no, at Disneyland. You cannot buy the whole toy store because grownups only have this much money. And you slowly start giving them some senses of choice. But no, a 14-year-old does not want to think that they have to make the decision for what the whole rest of their life is, for their fertility and for their medical care. No. I mean, it's absolutely spot on. It's why all this child centered. I saw it towards the end of my time in education.

they called it child-centered learning where the child was in charge of their learning and I was like, I don't think an eight-year-old should be in charge of their learning. I don't think an eight-year-old should be in charge of my dinner choice for tonight because they're not going to choose. I mean, no.

Ice cream and jello for you tonight, Jamie. Listen, we joke, of course, but the one thing, look, I became a parent about 11 months ago, you know, and when I think about this, that's the prison through which I'm thinking about. I've got this beautiful baby boy. He's pure potentiality. He's growing up. He's wonderful. And then fast forward a few years and they fly by. And let's say he's been on TikTok or whatever, which he's not going to be at this right, but let's say that he was.

And he says that he's experiencing distress. The household is in turmoil, as you described. and we, the good parents, take them to professionals for help. And then three months later, he's on puberty blockers and estrogen. And in the case that you described, some of them are taking like cancer drugs. Yep. Yeah. I mean, the question I think parents would want to ask you, Jamie, is what should you do if that is what happens to your child? I think that's a really good question.

And first of all, there are a whole lot of parents out there who can answer this question also. And what I found frustrating with the media is there are a lot of parents who wanted to talk to my local media because they had a kid in that situation and they knew better than to take their kid to the center that I work at. They already figured it out. I cannot go there.

I cannot take my kid there unless I want excellent. Y and Z is the outcome. But again, parents can be a parent. One of the things as the caseworker in the center, I found really shocking for a lot of these parents is you do get to have some of the control and say over your child's social media use. There are parental controls. My poor kids, their cell phones still sleep in the kitchen. You don't have your cell phone with you in the middle of the night in your room at 12. That's insane. Nobody needs that. And the parents would be like, oh, well, they use sleep music. I'm like, no, get this, put some levers and controls back and being a parent. But also, these kids right now are under a lot of mental health stress and

issues. And you need to find a good pediatrician. If you think your kid is expressing, you know, anxiety or depression, regardless of the gender. Focus on those things. Focus on the basics. These kids are kids who are not going to school very well or often. Need friends groups. Need to go outside and get exercise. Need to sleep.

We are seeing that a ton of these kids had terrible sleep hygiene. Need to eat real food. I mean, some of these things are from, you know, the beginnings, the basics as parents, as do these healthy things from the start. And then if your kid does come to you and say they're experiencing X, Y, and G, things about their gender, my answer is normally normative gender exploration is fine. Wear whatever clothes you want within reason. You still have to be dressed.

I don't care what your hair looks like. I don't care if you're a boy and you want to wear makeup or nail polish. Who cares? Let those social gender things. Can we actually like be a little bit more flexible with those things? Let your kids explore. But no, you don't need to change everybody's pronouns. Your name cannot change 12 times.

If you want a nickname, fine. But no, you don't need a binder. You don't need to do all of these things. And you really do not need to be medically intervening. Let them explore and give them a way out. Tell them as the parent. explore this stuff, try this on. But if you try this and you don't like it, then we can change. We can go back. You can get different clothes. You can grow your hair back out. Don't pigeonhole your

kid into this thing. And Jamie, what about the detransitioners? What about the kids who've gone through the conveyor belt and they've had the, you know, the surgeries, the medicalization? They've come out the other side. They've realized that this has all been a horrendous. this mistake. What happens to them? The medical establishment right now is completely ignoring them and pretending like they don't exist. So the centers don't see them. There really is no care provided. And I think that part of my hope for centers like this is that not only do we actually pause this crazy experiment that's going on, but then also really focus on providing medical support and care for all of those kids.

And I also think we do need to recognize that there are going to be long-term outcomes that might need some legal financial support. Because if you are, like Chloe Cole and you had a double mastectomy at 13 and you're now just now 18, the financial damages for her could not even really be calculated probably. It would have to look at her whole lifetime. What is this done to her fertility? Her bonding with her child, her ability to breastfeed. Like those things deserve a financial answer.

and hopefully also that we stop doing this to anyone else. Well, Jamie, to read between the lines and to summarize it in the blunt Russian way as only I can, it sounds like what you're saying is this is a medical malpractice scandal on a large scale that is going to blow up in people's faces very soon, in your opinion, or at least should blow up in people's faces very soon. Yeah, I think you kind of nailed it. Well, you know what? When you get someone on the show to talk about it who's a journalist or they have an opinion for, you know, they talk for a living and whatever, you sort of go, well, you know, are you qualified to talk about it?

But, you know, talking to you about it is really clarified a lot of things in my mind because you've seen it from the inside and you were involved in, you know, working with this. I suppose the one counter argument people sometimes make is I have heard some people who are on board with this stuff say that, oh, detransitioners are a very small percent. You know, any medical treatment has some people who are not happy with the outcome. If you go and have some kind of, you know, if you go and get hip replacement, there's a whatever percent failure and people get upset that the hip didn't get replaced correctly. What say you do to them? Yes, there are definite medical interventions that are done that can have poor outcomes. however, this is systematic. This is almost universal.

And this is not even touching on the outcomes that we are also. So an outcome of somebody who's detransitioning, but the outcome of somebody who is 13 and put on testosterone, by 26, they are potentially going to also be on a cholesterol medication, a diabetes medication, have heart complications, have an early cardiac arrest. We know that these drugs just longitudinally are not healthy, good drugs. They're harsh. They're hard on the body.

These are hard things to continuously have to use. And so I think part of the reason why it's just a broader medical scandal is that even in the best case outcome where someone's happy with that transition, their body is still going to have medical problems and complications from the use of these drugs. And also, I think just as a society, I thought we had gotten to the point where we were done sterilizing kids. I just thought we were done doing that and recognize that to be its own kind of problematic thing that we weren't going to be doing that anymore. And I'm also a gay person,

and I just feel like we're also kind of, what are we doing to this whole group of kids that are potentially just gay kids? The phrase people use as you're transing away the gay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's been an uplifting episode anyway. But Jamie, thank you so much for coming on

and for speaking openly and honestly, everybody here salutes your bravery, and I'm sure there's going to be tens of thousands, if not hopefully hundreds of thousands of people who are going to be listening to your words, and they're going to be protecting kids, and they're going to be better informed to this situation. Before we let you go, the last question we ask all our guests is, what's the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? It's strange, but I'm going to say homophobia.

So I think that part of the trans epidemic is that kids did not feel and do not feel like it's okay to be gay. And a lot of the spaces and a lot of the support that I had as a gay kid has disappeared. So there was a gay coffee house. There were gay bars. there was a gay culture. And it was, I thought we were getting to the point as a society that it was okay to be gay. And now so many of these trans kids tell us directly in the center that it's not. And that they feel like it's almost better to be trans and have a lifetime of medical problems.

And that means we have to go back to square one and really deal with homophobia. Jamie Reed, thank you so much for coming on the show. We're going to ask you a few questions from our supporters that only they will get to see the answers to. We're going to make sure to put a link to the article that you published about this. And I really recommend everybody, you know, sorry to use this problematic phrase, but man up and read it because it's pretty difficult reading, frankly, but needs reading if you want to be informed about this issue.

And thank you for coming on. Is there anywhere other than the article that people should go to follow your work or anything like that? At this point, no. Good. You're the Ladi as you started as a Lada in. You're sticking to your principles. I love it. Well, listen, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you guys for watching and listening. See you on locals with the bonus questions very, very shortly. Annie says, what does Jamie think we need to do to stop this from continuing?

Where is the change going to come from?