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MARCH 2, 2023

Cooper on TAP

The Useful Idiots Fueling the Right-Wing Transphobia Panic

Prominent center-left journalists were swindled by obvious nonsense
about a St. Louis gender clinic.

Former

**New York Times** columnist Bari Weiss recently founded a publication
called The Free Press, and several weeks ago it published an account
<[link removed]> from a woman
named Jamie Reed. Reed, who worked as a case manager at a Washington
University gender clinic in St. Louis, made inflammatory accusations
(with more in a sworn affidavit
<[link removed]>)
that numerous children at the clinic were being carelessly shoved into
irreversible gender treatment en masse.

Reed's article went viral on social media, and was cited by numerous
conservatives <[link removed]>
and transphobes
<[link removed]> as conclusive
proof
<[link removed]>
that too many kids are getting transition care. A couple of prominent
liberals joined in as well. Matthew Yglesias cited it as credible on
Twitter <[link removed]>
and Substack
<[link removed]>. "The
picture she paints of the clinic's treatment of children is ghastly.
The affidavit she signed is even worse," wrote Jonathan Chait
<[link removed]>
at

**New York** magazine. (It's of a piece with an ongoing trend
<[link removed]>
in liberal and centrist publications of writing anxious articles raising
questions about youth transition care.)

There is just one problem. Reed's account is a pile of garbage.

Even when it was first published, any sensible person should have seen
some obvious red flags. Reed was not involved either in treatment or
management, and her lawyer founded an openly transphobic organization
<[link removed]>.
As Evan Urquhart pointed out at Assigned Media
<[link removed]>,
she made several wildly mistaken claims about the side effects of some
gender treatments. In her affidavit, Reed claimed that children came
into the clinic identifying as "mushroom," "rock," or "helicopter," only
to be quickly given puberty blockers or hormones. This is not only
facially preposterous, but in the last case suspiciously lines up with a
common right-wing transphobic "joke."

Sure enough, subsequent reporting has demolished Reed's story. A woman
named Danielle Meert whose child worked with Reed told a local NBC
affiliate
<[link removed]>:
"Saying that kids walk in and get hormones right away has not been our
experience. It was about nine months until we had a puberty blocker
implanted." Another trans boy treated at the clinic contradicted
<[link removed]>
her assertion that hormones were prescribed after just a couple of
meetings with a therapist: "That's not possible at all because a
therapist has to see a patient for six months consistently, before they
can even start writing the letter [of recommendation]." The Missouri
Independent also interviewed numerous patients
<[link removed]>,
who reported "any treatments were only undertaken after long
consultations with doctors and mental health professionals." Finally,
the

**St. Louis Post-Dispatch** recently interviewed numerous parents
<[link removed]>
whose children had gone to the clinic, who "reported a well-defined,
step-by-step approach that could be halted at any time."

Reed's intention, which she admitted on the record
<[link removed]>,
was to shut down the gender clinic entirely. Indeed, the outrage
prompted the Missouri attorney general to demand that the university
shut down the clinic pending several state investigations
<[link removed]>,
though it refused
<[link removed]>
and is doing one itself.

As our recent Left Anchor podcast
<[link removed]>
with Michael Hobbes and Urquhart goes into in detail, the United States
is currently in the grip of a full-blown transphobic moral panic.
Dubious, unrepresentative, or entirely made-up anecdotes are trumpeted
across right-wing media, prompting conservative legislatures to place
strict limits
<[link removed]>
on transition care for minors, or ban it entirely-or in the case of a
bill that recently passed
<[link removed]>
the Oklahoma House, ban transition care entirely even for adults. They
are attempting to shove trans people back into the closet, if not
prevent them from existing.

Many centrist and liberal journalists are doing the same thing, only in
a passive-aggressive fashion. The repeated front-page investigations in

**The New York Times** over the past year are, just like Reed's
article, based almost entirely on anecdotes
<[link removed]>-some
of them from openly transphobic organizations that are not identified as
such <[link removed]>-rather than actual studies, which have
overwhelmingly found that transition is quite rare
<[link removed]>,
detransition
<[link removed]>
relatively unlikely
<[link removed]>, the regret rate
of gender affirmation surgery low
<[link removed]>, and treatment
difficult and expensive to access
<[link removed]>.

There are always risks and trade-offs with any health treatment,
transition care included. But hyper-focusing on unrepresentative or fake
stories in the context of a frenzied political assault on trans people
is gravely irresponsible journalism.

~ RYAN COOPER

Follow Ryan Cooper on Twitter <[link removed]>

[link removed]

[link removed]
Progressives vs. Corporatists in the Battle for Chicago
<[link removed]>
With the incumbent and the early front-runner out in Chicago's mayoral
race, the remaining combatants represent a contrast of styles. BY LUKE
GOLDSTEIN

[link removed]
The Climate Time Bomb in the Atmosphere
<[link removed]>
Cleaning up air pollution might increase global temperature by as much
as an entire degree Celsius. BY RYAN COOPER

Chemical Reaction Spreads Out From East Palestine
<[link removed]>

Pennsylvania residents are increasingly anxious about health impacts and
water contamination after the East Palestine derailment. BY GABRIELLE
GURLEY

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