The new film called “Trans Mission: What’s the Rush to Reassign Gender?” sheds light on the issue of children with gender dysphoria and the rise in treating them with puberty blocking drugs and surgery. The film also highlights the role medical professionals play in encouraging such practices.
“There are doctors in the U.S. who will go to work today and oversee the chemical castration of little boys, who will put 14-year-old girls into menopause and give troubled young girls cosmetic mastectomies,” one woman says in the film.
The 52 minute documentary features interviews with health experts, activists, parents, and educators discussing the medical and surgical transitioning of children.
The film’s producer Jennifer Lahl of the Center for Bioethics says trans men are helping to fuel the trend.
“They aren’t happy that they had to transition after puberty because after puberty you have an Adam’s apple, you have a deep voice, you have big hands and feet, you know you’re large,” Lahl told CBN News. “But this notion within the trans activists is, ‘ah ha, we can fix this by blocking puberty in these young boys and girls.'”
Lahl also responds to the push to allow children to make their own decision to transition from their biological sex without parental approval.
“How on earth could a 7 or 8 or 9-year-old young person say, ‘Yes I’d like to have my uterus removed or I’d like to be put on wrong sex hormones so I don’t develop sperm or grow facial hair,'” Lahl asked. “When we think we can willy-nilly stop that and block that, that there’s not going to be any short and long term harm, it’s unfathomable.”
Doctors who oppose such treatment point out how transgender pediatric medicine lacks long-term data on how hormones, puberty blockers, and gender surgeries affect the body throughout a lifetime.
“The reality is we don’t have any long-term studies in children and there is very good reason to be concerned about the outcome,” said Dr. Paul Hruz, a pediatric researcher at the Washington University School of Medicine.
The film, which is now available on YouTube, features parents talking about medical professionals who pressured them to support their children’s gender confusion.
“The pediatrician she said that if I didn’t affirm my daughter’s identity and I didn’t get the help she needed and she killed herself, I was going to feel awfully guilty,” said one mother.
Some patients who regret transitioning share their stories in the film, describing how it only masked and exacerbated deeper psychological problems.
“I was such a pretty girl, such a good girl and then I just ruined it basically,” said one patient. “I turned myself into this hairy man and I’m stuck looking and sounding like this forever.”
Lahl said, “Many of them have said we wish the doctor had said this is not the route we’re going to take. ‘We’re not going to put you on this gender reassignment track and put you on that fast track to cross-sex hormones and surgeries. We’re going to find out what’s really going on here.'”
Lahl went on to say that such conversations don’t fit the narrative of the transgender movement.
“They want to shut us down,” she explained. “They don’t want to talk about risks and harms. They don’t want to talk about the lies that these families and these children are being offered,” said Lahl.
