From the PITT Substack:
Our story is much like that of many parents who regularly visit this site. It all started with odd behavior, short haircuts, ill-fitting clothes, secretiveness and then, “the letter”. I’ve written about this before on PITT.
Because our daughter was away at college when we got “the letter” and because she was in such acute mental distress, we reached out to the University Health Care Service, desperate for some assistance. What could we do together to help her?
This is the response we received (emphasis mine):
For now, I’ll provide some general information. UHS [University Health Care] has a transgender health team and it is led by our medical director, (name redacted here but I hope to testify against him in court someday); its key members have advanced training in this area. The team does everything possible to function in accordance with the guidance of the Standards of Care set by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (version 7). It’s a gender-affirmative care model, and we do what we can to remove obstacles for care for transgender students.
Our transgender health team is continually assessing a student’s holistic readiness to begin treatment as well and this often includes, though is not necessarily limited to, consults with mental health clinician(s) prior to actual initiation of hormone treatment.
And thus began a nightmare from which we have yet to emerge. Our daughter was fast-tracked to transition, being prescribed testosterone one month after we received that email. The email arrived in late September, six years ago. She had returned to campus from summer break on Labor Day weekend. That means she began “T” less than two months after starting conversations with the University Health Care service. Talk about “removing obstacles”.
You’ve all heard this kind of story thousands of times before. You are living it every day. Why do I tell it again? Because now we know what we always suspected is, in fact, true. It was all a lie. It was all a house of cards built on successful efforts of activists to turn what purported to be a health organization into an advocacy group. What WPATH does is neither science nor medicine.
And what has acting in accordance with the guidance of the Standards of Care set by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (version 7) done for our daughter? Fast forward six years. She is still on T. She dropped out of that college a year after that email was sent. She spent a year estranged from us, working menial jobs, living God knows where. Her complexion is bad. She is overweight. She is balding. She has had a series of infections prompting visits to the emergency room. She takes 14 medications. Meds for depression. Meds to prevent infection. Meds to treat male pattern baldness. And, of course, T.
She IS getting better. But only as the grip of gender ideology loosens. She doesn’t talk about things “trans” any longer. She doesn’t talk about getting a double mastectomy anymore. She hasn’t legally changed her name. She’s moved home. She’s back in college. Our relationship is getting stronger every day. For now, she’s just a young, bearded woman who has lost her dream of graduating from a top school, years behind her peers, unable or unwilling to continue her transition but also seemingly incapable of walking away from it completely.
Where is the UHS medical director who cited WPATH standards of care while destroying my daughter’s health? He is the currently the attending physician in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Children’s Hospital of (city redacted).
