WPATH Lies Revealed: Thank you, Michael Shellenberger, for speaking the truth so many have willfully ignored

Gender affirming care is homophobia, repackaged and rebranded by LGB "allies"

On February 4, FAIR Board of Advisor Michael Shellenberger released the WPATH Files, a treasure trove of insider emails and documents that expose the pseudo-science underlying the practice of transgender medicine advocated by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). If you can find time to explore this material, I highly suggest you do so. If you can share with friends or family who have been affected, please do so.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other mainstream media outlets that regularly tout the benefits of gender affirming care have yet to acknowledge or “fact check” the WPATH Files. Their silence is absolutely deafening — and for good reason. We are living in a time in which truth exists in a reality vacuum; if truth is ignored, then it simply does not exist.

Don’t let this happen. Please get the word out. Let’s put an end to the lies.

I’m still combing through the WPATH files that Michael Shellenberger and his team at Public just released, but I just want to thank him for acknowledging an uncomfortable truth that many well-intentioned people have been ignoring for too long.

The truth is that while the LGTBQ+ umbrella includes gays and lesbians, it doesn’t always support our interests. Right now, it’s actually marginalizing us.

For decades, gay women fought to be acknowledged in a society that dismissed our relationships — because no relationship was “real” unless it involved a man. But over time minds evolved.

When Mariel Hemingway kissed Roseanne Barr on primetime television 30 years ago, it was the lesbian equivalent of Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon. We’d entered a new era. Gay women were no longer just tolerated; we were encouraged to embrace and even celebrate our identity.

Now everything’s changed. We’ve taking a giant step backwards.

Now we’re expected to believe that if we don’t fit the “traditional” definition of how a woman should look, dress, and act, then we’re probably a man — and we’re encouraged to undergo hormone therapy and surgery to affirm our male identity.

Now we’re told that preferring a relationship with someone who is also a woman by birth — and not by choice — doesn’t make us a lesbian; it makes us transphobic.

And as all this is happening, gay women are expected to stay quiet — and say nothing.

Last year, I wrote an article on Medium expressing my concerns. Within 24 hours, it was removed for violating community guidelines prohibiting “hate speech.” Think about that. In 30 years, lesbians have gone from being supported for celebrating our sexual preference to being shamed as haters when we express our preference.

I can’t imagine being a young girl now — feeling uncomfortable with your body during puberty, not wanting to wear dresses, preferring toy trucks instead of dolls — and being told these are signs that you’re not really a girl; you’re a boy. To be told that if you’re one of these girls and you grow up liking other women, then you’re not a gay woman; you’re probably a man.

Instead of empowering girls by broadening their sense of identity — what they can look like and how they can act — we’ve regressed to an outdated, binary mindset that urges non-conforming girls to think they’re boys.

Instead of being encouraged to explore their attraction to other girls, they’re urged to become “straight” in a male body. Let’s be honest: this mindset doesn’t support the gay and lesbian community. This is actually homophobic.

It’s ironic that so much of the progress that gay women have made is now being undone by the very people who helped us make progress. But what’s truly painful is that these same people refuse to see what’s happening to us. They’re denying our experience, gaslighting us, and refusing to face the uncomfortable truth.

I am hoping, with all my heart, that the WPATH Files will change this. I am praying that the people who have ignored what young girls and women like me have been experiencing will finally open their eyes. That what’s in those pages, from the mouths of doctors treating our children, will get them to pay attention.

We can and we should live in a world where every person is treated with respect, regardless of what they look like or the gonads they were born with. We should encourage all children to embrace their bodies and not feel compelled to change them simply because they feel uncomfortable or don’t fit a stereotype. We all deserve to be accepted for who we are now, not for who others think we should be.