Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist's Guide Out of the Madness

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MG:I was alarmed as a child psychiatrist. We want people, especially young people, to have a stable sense of identity. When you don’t have a stable identity, it’s a handicap. Part of the role of the psychiatrist is to help people develop and sustain that stability, which can be challenged in so many ways.

Anderson-Minshall, Diane (September 29, 2011). "Bookshelf: Banned Books Week". The Advocate. Archived from the original on July 4, 2021 . Retrieved July 1, 2021. MG:First of all, I’m at the end of my career. I’m not just starting off and having to worry about being rejected from job applications or being fired. So I don’t have that issue to deal with. Although I have been turned away from work because of my positions. But I survived. Money argued that chromosomes have next to no impact on femininity and masculinity. In other words, whatever interests or behavior or inclinations or personality a person might end up with—virtually all of it is socially constructed, divorced from biology. It is all imposed by society onto a blank slate of a baby, and it all happens within the first two-and-a-half to three years of life. After that, Money said, it’s fixed. There’s no changing it.

DG:What galvanized you to become more public with your views? What sets you apart from the many people who love and agree with what you’re saying but don’t feel equipped to speak out? Yet here we are, my own profession of psychiatry and psychology, endorsing a bizarre belief system that punctures something at the core of our humanity. Are we male or female—what could be more core to identity? Yet we are telling young people it is normal to question that established fact, over and over again. Money was a distinguished psychologist and researcher at Johns Hopkins in the fifties. His area of expertise was what was then called hermaphroditism, now called intersex. He was fascinated by these individuals born with ambiguous genitalia. This was at the time before ultrasounds, so we really did discover at birth whether babies were boys or girls. In certain, extremely rare cases, it was not clear from the genitalia whether the baby was a boy or a girl. Don’t be blindsided like so many parents I know,” warns Grossman, “be proactive and get educated. Feel prepared and confident to discuss trans, nonbinary, or whatever your child brings to the dinner table.” Whether it’s the “trans is as common as red hair” claim, or the “I’m not your son, I’m your daughter” proclamation, or the “do you prefer a live son or a dead daughter’ threat, says Grossman, no family is immune, and every parent must be prepared. Roan, Shari (November 29, 1999). "Guidance on Tapping Into That Girl Power". The Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on July 1, 2021 . Retrieved June 26, 2021.

But no matter what, they cannot actually relate to being brought up in a world without those clear definitions. So they can’t meaningfully understand what children today are experiencing when they’re taught, as “wet cement,” these incredibly strange ideas. DG:I’m glad you brought up these institutions. How have these and other medical associations across specialties, which represent people like you, been captured by extremists on this issue? How did Money’s bad idea capture the Western medical imagination? MG:My book is not only for parents dealing with this issue immediately in their own lives, but for people who want to prevent this. One key, which seems small, is to challenge the statement that sex is assigned at birth. Sex is established at conception, not “assigned at birth.” Children are permanently established as males or females many months before birth. I want kids to hear this from their parents before they are exposed to the “assignment” language elsewhere. I want them to recognize the idea of sex being assigned at birth as the bizarre, anti-scientific myth that it is. MG:Excellent. Yes, I’m glad more people are re-examining the research fueling these treatments; it’s become increasingly clear how little basis there is for them. She writes that "(f)or twelve years, she was on the staff of UCLA’s Student Counseling Services, where nearly all her patients were students in their late teens and twenties. Because of this demographic, and no doubt also because of what’s now called the 'hook-up culture', many students who ended up in my office had a history of genital infections, one or more abortions, possible exposure to HIV, and other troublesome consequences of sexual activity, whether “protected’ or not."

Dr. Grossman’s practice currently focuses on gender-distressed young people and their parents. She believes that every child is born in the right body. Dr Grossman has been vocal about the capture of her profession by ideologues, leading to dangerous and experimental treatments on children and betrayal of parents. DG:In the book, you quote Israeli child psychologist Haim Ginott as saying something like “children are like wet cement,” in that virtually anything can make a lasting impression. I wonder to what extent today’s gender activists appreciate or comprehend what they are doing to children, raising them in a world that is so different from the one in which they themselves were raised. Some of them feel they were wronged as children by being given fixed definitions of male and female, and they want to prevent that for coming generations. Shade, Leslie Regan (July 19, 2004). "Gender and the Commodification of Community". Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice. By Feenberg, Andrew. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. pp.151–160. ISBN 9780742529595. DG:Dr. Grossman, thank you so much for speaking with me. Your appearance in the 2022 documentary What Is a Woman?, by Daily Wirecommentator Matt Walsh, was striking, as is your new book. What drove you to write this book at this moment?