Autism and the Transgendered

Clearly, this is the horror story of the day. It shows what can happen when transgendered individuals become the latest, greatest oppressed class… deserving of every consideration and attention. And of course, receiving of the full protection of the Obama administration.... which tends to see everything through the lens of civil rights.

Beyond the question of whether or not these individuals are suffering from a psychiatric disorder or whether God made a mistake in giving them the wrong body, the current mania is not only allowing boys to shower in girls locker rooms. More importantly, it is producing more transgender individuals.

One knows, because one has read Ethan Watters’ book Crazy Like Us, that it is possible to produce epidemics of different mental illnesses. During the Victorian period there was an epidemic of hysteria, in England and on the European continent. The epidemic stopped, on its own, in the 1920s.

In Hong Kong, before 1997 there was no anorexia. Then a girl died of self-starvation and the media became saturated by stories about the dangers of anorexia. The result of this enhanced consciousness of anorexia was an epidemic of anorexia. Girls who were troubled but who did not know what was wrong lit on the idea that they were anorexic. They stopped eating.

Physicians often have difficulty dealing with people whose problems are ill defined. Anyone who is troubled and who needs medical attention might very well select an illness or symptoms that have been publicly recognized as worthy of care.

The same applies to those who want to become culture heroes. If they select a symptom that the nation is focused on, they are more likely to receive the kind of public adulation that has befallen one Caitlyn Jenner.

It is nearly certain that the current national conversation about transgenderism has produced more cases of transgenderism. It is most easy to see in cases of the disabled, people who are relatively easy to manipulate.

Consider the case of the daughter of social work professor Kathleen“Kelly” Levinstein. Both mother and daughter are autistic. They are on the spectrum. The daughter believed that she was a lesbian until she saw a television show that suggested another interpretation: she was really a male trapped in a female body.

Allow Levinstein to explain:

My daughter, who is on the autism spectrum, as am I, is now 19 years old. She had felt (and told others) that she was a lesbian most of her life. When she was 16, she began watching a TV show called “Degrassi,” which featured an FtoM character. After a few weeks, she announced that she was not actually a butch lesbian, as she had previously said, but was in fact trans. 

The daughter started going to meetings of a group called PFLAG—short for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. The meeting functioned like a cult that recruited people by convincing them that they were trans.

Levinstein continues:

She started attending a local PFLAG meeting, where she met many trans people, including a number of FtoM trans teenagers who were raving about a certain “gender therapist.” Although the APA recommends a minimum of one year of “gender counseling” before surgery, this gender therapist (whom I consented to, before really understanding what I was doing) gave my daughter the go-ahead to have a bilateral mastectomy after only two sessions. This gender specialist never reviewed any of the Special Ed records or spoke to my daughter’s previous therapist, who had known her for a decade. And, crucially, she never asked my daughter, “Might you be a lesbian?”

The gender therapist (whom I believe has an unholy financial alliance with the surgeon) gave my daughter (then 18 and one day) the go-ahead for the $30,000 surgery (covered for all university employees and their families where I work). My daughter is now on testosterone (which she clearly is unable to evaluate the risks and consequences of).

How well did the girl understand what was happening to her? Not very well at all.

Levinstein explains:

To give you some sense of my daughter’s level of understanding of what it means to transition, she told me recently that she believes that the testosterone “will grow her a penis.” I had to break the news to her that, although this is the mythology in the PFLAG meetings (where a number of the other young trans people are also autistic), this is not the case.

In any rational and moral community this would easily be recognized as criminal activity. Levinstein implies that the people involved in this scam ought to be prosecuted:

She has been taken advantage of. Healthy organs were amputated. This is insurance fraud, poor clinical practice, a violation of APA standards, unethical and unjust. It is a crime not just against women, but particularly against disabled women. So many of these young women who are “transitioning” are also autistic.

My daughter has a representative payee on her SSDI [disability] check, as it was felt that she was unable to handle her own money. This was of little concern to the gender therapist. I believe that once the therapist realized the “treatment” would be covered by the University of Michigan insurance, it was full speed ahead.

The girl was unable to handle her own money but was allowed to consent to radical surgery that mutilated her healthy female body. And then, to consent to hormone therapy.

How is Levinstein’s daughter doing? Sorry you asked:

She had a legal name change in Dec of 2014, a bilateral mastectomy in April 2015, and started testosterone in Sept 2015.  My daughter has severe Crohn’s Disease, and currently, she is having grave reactions to the testosterone. She has been hospitalized three times now for complications.

And naturally, given the current state of American culture, you will understand that Levinstein has been attacked for questioning these dogmas.

How many times have we heard that anyone who is anti-trans is indulging in hate speech. In New York City you can get fined for using the wrong pronouns. In Canada they are proposing laws that will incarcerate people who say the wrong thing about the transgendered.

Levinstein explains:

Instead, there is a vilification of anyone daring to ask questions about these issues, including the evidence of MtoF physical, sexual and psychological violence against women. Women who publicly question receive death threats, threats to rape us and our children, burn us to death with gasoline, decapitate us, and so on. This all coming from people who claim they are our “sisters.”

Even health care professionals have been silenced.

She continues:

I have found no health professionals willing to go on the record against this. Everyone is afraid of professional suicide and threats of violence. I am standing alone.

My daughter’s latest hospitalization has been described by doctors as due to “absorption issues.” She now has a full beard but still has her period. The testosterone is wreaking true havoc on her system.

Autistic women (again, I am one) frequently have a difficult time, sensory-wise with their periods. But rather than attempting to help us with this difficulty, our problems get labeled  “gender dysphoria” and the answer has become to remove our periods from us.

We will find out in 20 years the effects of testosterone on our young women. I am confident that it will not be a pretty picture.

Making this a civil rights issue ought to be a crime, in and of itself.