Therapists are Finally Recognizing the Self-Harm they Promote by "Affirmation Therapy."

As I’m wont to do, my comments are in this bold italic font between Mr. O’Neil’s paragraphs.

Tyler O’Neil@Tyler2ONeil

Tyler O’Neil is senior editor at The Daily Signal and the author of two books: “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” and “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”

Therapists who try to treat people with gender dysphoria—the painful and persistent identification with the gender opposite one’s biological sex—often recommend patients undergo medical interventions to make a man appear female or vice versa. This represents a lack of hope, Dr. Jennifer Bauwens told The Daily Signal.

(Ute’s note: I see my sons’ rejection of me, the devoted mother who got them through college with no loans, who was there to pick them up after school, who paid for all of the Little League fees when Neddy would not consider helping out, as a continuation of his self harm. I see Neddy’s early childhood abuse manifesting as self harm as he struggled with becoming a father himself. His substitution of me for the target of his anger at the time has now morphed into our sons’ complete rejection of me, their complete no-contact policy as harming themselves more than me. They’ve lost the right to inherit my assets. They’ve lost the memories of my parents’ love of them, the times when they were too young to remember.)

The decision to “medicalize” a patient, rather than trying to treat underlying psychological trauma, traces back to a therapist’s lack of faith in his or her own abilities.

(Ute’s note: the doctors decided to change laws without consent of the people, writing letters to local government for name changes post surgeries, going back into the 1980s. “It’s so rare,” they claimed, ignoring Janice Raymond’s 1979 book, The Transsexual Empire. The therapists used their shock and impotence to urge and promote patients with this ideation to choose these radical, irreversible surgeries. Psychologist Ray Blanchard, eager to get away from his prison work with convicted sex offenders, developed his famous and famously ignored “Blanchard Protocols.” The rules involved a falsehood called “The True Life Test” whereby a dude dresses as a woman full time for 2 years, gets letters from his shrinks to take to the surgeons and “be transformed.” The fact that a high percentage of post surgery emergency treatments are necessary for keeping the bladder and urinary tract functioning is never emphasized. Blanchard has publicly stated that seeing a crossdressed duck in the Elmer Fudd cartoons, a duck hiding from Elmer’s blunderbuss, could be the moment his patient suddenly understands he’s “really female inside.” The fact that this isn’t recognized as discomfort with homosexuality is what should be shocking.)

“I was trained to think that if I don’t have hope for a client, that’s time for a referral,” the former clinician explained.

“Goals of therapy should be, first and foremost, let’s reduce the distress that people are feeling over their bodies,” Bauwens argued. “It should not be, ‘Let’s transform their bodies to look like something else.’ We need to be about helping people to form their identity in what their biological sex is.”

(Ute’s note: It’s very hard for me to live with the malpractice here. These therapists should be asking about addictions to illegal drugs, pornography and alcohol. They should be asking about childhood history, learning if the patient was abused, abandoned or neglected. They should be learning if the patient had opposite sex siblings who were favored by the parents. They should be helping the patient to plan a few mind/body sessions, breathing to forestall panic attacks, movement for wellbeing and focused time outside in nature. The therapists should be recommending a journal of nature observations. The therapists should be determining if this patient believes that wrong sex hormones change chromosomes and make sure the patient has the real information that nothing changes chromosomes. I’m pretty annoyed about this.)

The Department of Health and Human Services has concluded that there is little evidence for positive impacts from transgender medical interventions on minors, but it found many documented harms.

Even so, Bauwens expressed skepticism that therapy will follow this trend.

“When I went for tenure track positions, one of the things that I was told was that we want you to take your students out and do protests,” she recalled. While most of the protests at that time centered on the Black Lives Matter narrative after the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, her experience revealed the activist bias in these schools.

(Ute’s note: while a broader discussion of “woke” therapy curricula pretending social engineering is the answer, I’d rather that Bauwens kept the theme on the flaws in “gender affirmation.” Do the political stuff in a different interview. She diffused the point, making it about her tenure track efforts, a completely valid criticism, but distracting from the very pointed, serious damage that “gender affirmation” is doing.)

A 2012 survey found that liberals outnumber conservatives in psychology by a ratio of 14-to-1. Studies in 2019 and 2021 found a similar overall bias. According to OpenSecrets, health professionals contributed $35.3 million to Democrat Kamala Harris and only $11.5 million to Republican Donald Trump in the 2024 election cycle. The three top contributors gave 100% of their donations to Democrats and left-wing groups.

(Ute’s note: instead of this political right/left business, I’d critique the terrible studies, the fact that the “Dutch Protocol” is based on an unbelievably small study with no credible follow up.)

Bauwens noted the profession’s political slant, saying, “that gives you an idea of the research that’s coming out of the field, and what the worldview is that drives it, and also the practice and the training.”

“It needs to be dealt with, so that people can actually get help in their time of crisis and not be led astray,” Bauwens said.

Last week, Bauwens released model legislation to protect children from “social transition,” the process of using female pronouns for a boy who identifies as a girl and treating him as a girl—or vice versa.

(Ute’s note: I’d work on preventing secret social transition in schools, and somehow make the therapy programs present the mind/body options in the training of therapists.)

Bauwens cites research showing that without this intervention, 65% to 94% of minors who suffer from gender dysphoria will ultimately grow to resolve their discomfort with their sex.

Her draft legislation would designate social transition “a psychological intervention that lacks empirical evidence demonstrating effectiveness or safety as a treatment for gender dysphoria and has been documented to cause psychological and physical harm.”

The legislation would forbid adopting names or pronouns inconsistent with a minor’s sex; permitting access to sex-segregated spaces of the opposite sex; modifying school records or identification documents to contradict a minor’s sex; and providing resources to encourage a transgender identity.

In part by forbidding social transition, Bauwens aims to empower therapists to actually help patients resolve gender dysphoria, rather than encouraging them to go under the knife, altering their bodies to resolve what really is a mental struggle.

Giving therapists hope that they can resolve these problems for patients would go a long way toward a larger goal, she argued.

“We need to make therapy great again,” Bauwens said.

1. SEISMIC: A Detransitioner’s $2M Jury Verdict Threatens Child Mutilation Pipeline

2. EXCLUSIVE: White House Weighs Executive Action to Prevent Government From Taking Kids From Parents Who Oppose Gender Transition

3. State AGs Hold AMA’s Feet to the Fire on Gender Transitions for Children

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