In a Friday night appearance on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Megyn Kelly addressed the irreversible damage being inflicted upon our children by “this trans insanity.”
Before a largely liberal audience, she boldly declared, “We are chopping off the body parts of young children.” After she was openly mocked by the crowd over this remark, Kelly turned to the audience and insisted, “100% we are doing that.”
Maher agreed with her. “We are definitely doing that. That’s what it is. I don’t know what the ooing is about.”
Undeterred by their disgust, Kelly finished her sentence. “Without any inquisition into what’s happening.”
Continuing her remarks, she said:
Pay attention, because I’m about to give you a truth bomb. Kids who are suffering from bullying or who have been sexually assaulted, or who are going through normal puberty and feel uncomfortable in their bodies will say to their parents, ‘I’m not sure, maybe I’m gender confused.'[The parents] will send them to a psychiatrist or psychologist who are told by our organizations, the American Psychiatry Association and all the others that run their licensing, ‘You must affirm.’ Affirm[ation] is our only standard.And so the child gets told, ‘You’re right. You are secretly a boy.’ Or vice versa. And the child gets put on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones which sterilize the child and deprive the child of any chance of sexual pleasure for the rest of his or her life. We’re talking about 9, 10, 11-year-olds who cannot give informed consent. Then they have body parts chopped off by a medical establishment and by parents who mean well, but believe in these doctors and they shouldn’t.And when they inevitably get past the awkwardness of puberty or what have you and they want to turn around and detransition, those who love bombed them on Reddit saying, ‘Come on in, the water’s fine,’ abandon them. They are depressed. They have changed their bodies forever in a way that is irreversible. And we are all sitting back saying, ‘It’s a remote issue,’ as Kamala Harris said. It’s not remote. It’s the issue of our time with respect to children and women’s rights.”
When her monolog was over, the audience, which moments earlier had openly jeered her, applauded Kelly.
She presented a compelling look at the dark side of childhood gender transition.
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) defines “transitioning” as “the process a person undertakes to bring their gender expression and/or their body into alignment with their gender identity.”
The Left has shamelessly celebrated the transgender movement with little regard for the devastation and hopelessness that often awaits patients after they transition. Gender ideology, the idea that gender is a fluid construct rather than an undeniable biological fact, has made its way into just about every part of our culture, from Hollywood films to public school curricula. And it has now made its way into our medical system, with potentially grievous consequences for young children and adults.
Because transitioning is a relatively new trend and the process itself takes a certain amount of time, there’s not much history available to gauge its success, or more likely, its failure. And this is especially true as it relates to children.
A 2023 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that “81% of transgender adults in the U.S. have thought about suicide, 42% of transgender adults have attempted it, and 56% have engaged in non-suicidal self-injury over their lifetimes.” If levels of unhappiness are this high among transgender adults who have presumably thought through their decisions to transition more thoroughly and more mindfully than a child would, how much worse are the statistics for children?
Yet, the Left embraces the trans movement. They praise gender-confused individuals for their courage. Woke Democratic politicians promote legislation to cement “gender identity” into our legal code. And many parents rush their children, whom they believe are suffering from gender dysphoria, to clinics to “fix” the problem.
But what if these children are instead struggling with trauma, depression, internalized homophobia, or something else? And what if they undergo hormone treatment or worse, an irreversible surgical procedure, and then realize they’ve made a terrible mistake?
We don’t allow children to vote, or to buy cigarettes, alcohol, or guns. Why would any parent allow their child to transition? Unfortunately, this scenario is playing out with increasing frequency, and the results are often heartbreaking.
The truth is that childhood gender-affirming care is ruining lives. The dark side of gender transition is just beginning to reveal itself. And Megyn Kelly is right to use her enormous platform to bring awareness to this issue.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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