When Molly Became Max

Social worker Lisa Marchiano has been offering consultations to parents whose teenaged children announce that they are transgender. If you want evidence of the horrors that the culture is visiting on helpless children, here it is. 

Allow Marchiano to explain what happens:

Most have 14 or 15-year-old daughters who are smart, quirky, and struggling socially. Many of these kids are on the autism spectrum. And they are often asking for medical interventions – hormones and surgery – that may render them sterile, affect their liver, or lead to high blood pressure, among other possible side effects.

She describes the attitude of parents whose children have been caught up in a cultural nightmare and who have nowhere to turn:

The desperation in their voices is palpable. They ask if they can fly to see me and bring their daughter. When I tell them I don’t do that, they ask if I can direct them to any therapist who won’t just affirm and greenlight their child for medical transition. Their voices are tremulous with relief at speaking with someone who doesn’t dismiss their concerns about unnecessary medical interventions. Each consultation lasts longer than the time I have allotted for it.

Here is Molly’s case. Read it and ask what responsibility the medical profession bears for this nightmare:

Claire’s daughter Molly had had a series of complex medical and psychological challenges as an adolescent. Though profoundly gifted, the teenager struggled with autism, dyspraxia, and anxiety, all of which made school challenging. At 13, Molly developed anorexia, for which she was hospitalized twice. “There were years in there where I felt like my job was just to keep her alive,” Claire explained. Thanks in part to intensive psychotherapy, Molly had mostly recovered from the eating disorder by age 16, only to face new medical problems – she was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Managing this condition required doctor visits and medications, some of which came with worrying side effects. It also added to Molly’s isolation and social struggles.

After graduating from high school and being accepted into her first choice college Molly announced that she was transgender:

She had been a fairly typical little girl in terms of interests and play choices, and had dated several boys in high school. Nevertheless, Jeff and Claire didn’t object when Molly traded her long hair for a buzz cut. They even purchased a binder for her that would flatten her chest and make her look more male. Hoping that a therapist could help Molly clarify her feelings about gender, Claire and Jeff accompanied her to an intake appointment at a gender clinic. Claire was shocked by what happened there.

After a 30-minute consultation with a physician’s assistant, Molly was given an appointment for the following week to begin testosterone injections. There was no exploration of her other physical and mental health issues, and whether these may have influenced her belief that she was trans. There was also no caution expressed about how hormone treatment might affect Crohn’s disease. Molly simply had to sign a consent form stating that she identified as male and understood the risks associated with testosterone.

The PA (physician assistant) also suggested that Molly schedule top surgery – a double mastectomy – within a few months. When Claire stated that she and Jeff wanted time to do research and consider alternatives before allowing Molly to begin taking testosterone or have surgery, the PA told her that their job as parents now was to support and affirm their ‘son.’ In front of Molly, he told Claire she ought to get her own therapist to deal with her issues so that she could be a better support person to ‘Max.’ When Claire and Jeff expressed concerns about Molly’s anxiety and isolation, the PA stated that these were likely a result of Molly being transgender, and would resolve once she began to transition.

As it happens, Marchiano explains, gender dysphoria in females did not really exist until ten years ago.  As I and others have suggested we are dealing with social contagion, driven by the media and by weak-willed professionals who are afraid to stand up against it… lest they be called bigots:

Although not much is known at this time about ROGD [rapid onset gender dysphoria], it appears likely that it may be a kind of social contagion in which young people – often teen girls – come to believe that they are transgender. Preliminary research indicates that young people who identify as trans “out of the blue” may have been influenced by social media sites that valorize being trans. In addition, researchers have observed a pattern of clusters of friends coming out together.

How did Molly’s parents react? They tried to deal with the situation:

In Molly’s case, Claire and her husband wanted to be tolerant and accepting of Molly’s exploration of gender, but were alarmed by the rush to medical intervention. As a medical professional with a research background, Claire was worried about the side effects of testosterone. Research quickly confirmed what she suspected – there are no studies on the long-term safety of testosterone in female bodied people, and little is known about how testosterone might affect Molly’s medical and mental health conditions. Furthermore, some of testosterone’s effects – such as a deepened voice and growth of facial hair – are permanent. Claire and Jeff were concerned enough by the lack of science supporting medical transition for someone in Molly’s situation that they asked their daughter to move slowly so that they could all do more research. At first, Molly agreed.

After Molly began college she became more withdrawn and incommunicative. A week before Thanksgiving vacation her parents were informed that Molly had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital:

When Jeff and Claire arrived the next morning after driving through the night, they were distraught by what they found. Molly seemed like a different person than the kid they had dropped off just a few months before. When she saw her parents, she became agitated. “She kept repeating that she didn’t want to see us, that we were the reason she had been hospitalized because we didn’t support her transition,” explained Claire. Eventually, hospital staff asked Jeff and Claire to leave.

Claire believes that Molly’s aggression and volatility were a reaction to beginning testosterone injections, which had commenced two weeks prior to the hospitalization. Molly had also changed her name and gender designation at school. A gender-affirming therapist at her college counseling center had referred her to an informed consent clinic for the testosterone prescription.

Note well, the college provided a “gender-affirming therapist” who colluded in a process that mutilated Molly’s body and damaged her mind. And yet, once she was at college, there was apparently nothing the parents could do. Here is what happened next:

The rest of Molly’s story is not a happy one. At the end of her freshman year, she had top surgery, paid for by student health insurance. She moved back home over the summer so that her parents could help during her recovery. By this time, Molly’s voice had deepened, facial hair had grown in, and she passed as male full-time. Molly had become Max.

In spite of having transitioned, Max did not blossom into his “authentic self.” In fact, his mental health worsened. He was more anxious and isolated than ever and rarely left the house, spending most of his time online. He told his mother that he feared people would know he was trans and try to harm him were he to go out in public. When Claire tried to reassure him by offering to accompany him, Max often refused, expressing a lack of trust for Claire and her motives because, in Max’s words, Claire was a “transphobe.” “I feel as though my child has been taught to be paranoid about me,” Claire told me.

By the end of that summer, Max had yet another diagnosis to contend with. He began experiencing symptoms of interstitial cystitis, a painful and often debilitating condition that affects the bladder. Claire was not able to find any discussion in the medical literature about testosterone use and interstitial cystitis, but she did find online accounts of trans men suffering from worsening IC symptoms after going on testosterone. Claire pointed out that we just don’t know enough about how these medications affect people long-term. “I would say these gender doctors are experimenting on people,” Claire told me, “but when you experiment, you keep data and track outcomes.”

When Claire and I last spoke, Max was still living at home. Between his anxiety and his symptoms of IC, he had been unable to return to college. The only times he left the house were to see his therapist or attend a trans support group.

Camille Paglia once said that the mania about transgenderism is a sign of cultural collapse. If our culture allows medical professionals and colleges to do this to a child… she was surely correct.

Of course, someone should sue the college and the mental health providers… which would be easier if what happened to Molly were not now accepted medical practice. The medical profession has a great deal to answer for.