Sidewalk Steve

No Such Thing as a Transgender Child

There is no such thing as a transgender child—only girls and boys who have been deceived, exploited, and funneled into irreversible medical interventions. Activists and clinicians cannot define “transgender child,” “boy,” “girl,” “gender,” or “gender identity” without collapsing into circular reasoning and regressive sex stereotypes. Healthy boys and girls do not require chemical castration, opposite-sex hormones, or the removal of healthy body parts.

Medical and mental-health providers are targeting vulnerable children—those with autism, trauma, PTSD, depression, and other psychiatric conditions—by telling them they were “born in the wrong body.” Data from the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service, formerly the world’s largest pediatric gender clinic, showed that the overwhelming majority of referred children had one or more co-occurring conditions that better explained their distress. Autism rates alone were dramatically elevated relative to the general population, alongside high rates of trauma, anxiety, and family dysfunction.

Longitudinal evidence shows that most children with gender-related distress resolve it if allowed to proceed through natural puberty with their bodies intact. A 2024 Dutch study of 2,772 adolescents found that 11% reported “gender non-contentedness” (“I wish to be of the opposite sex”) at age 11. That figure declined with age, falling to 4% by ages 24–26. Three trajectories emerged: most never reported it, a substantial minority experienced decreasing distress, and only a small minority (2%) showed increasing non-contentedness. Allowing puberty is protective, not harmful.

The Suicide Myth

The claim that untreated gender-distressed children face a high risk of completed suicide is false. During oral arguments before the Supreme Court, ACLU attorney Chase Strangio conceded that “completed suicide, thankfully and admittedly, is rare” and that the evidence does not show these interventions reduce completed suicide. The “dead daughter or living son” line is emotional blackmail, not medicine. The inflated statistics that sustain it come from non-representative, self-selected online surveys conducted by advocacy organizations such as the Trevor Project.

A review of outcomes from the world’s largest pediatric gender clinic found a suicide rate of approximately 0.03% (4 known or suspected suicides among roughly 15,000 patients over a decade). While higher than the general adolescent population, this rate is consistent with the elevated suicide risk among children who share the same psychiatric comorbidities commonly seen in gender clinics. Interventions do not eliminate that risk.

No Reliable Evidence of Benefit

Systematic evidence reviews commissioned by health authorities in England (Cass Review), Sweden, and Finland found the evidence for these interventions to be weak or of very low quality. They do not reliably improve mental health and carry substantial risks of harm. A large Finnish register study tracking roughly 2,100 gender-referred youth found elevated psychiatric morbidity both before and after referral; among those who received medical interventions, the need for further psychiatric treatment rose sharply during follow-up. Psychiatric needs did not subside after medical transition.

Children deserve protection from experimental, sterilizing interventions driven by ideology rather than robust evidence. They deserve the chance to grow up with their bodies intact.