The subject is one of the most fraught of our time—and it is one we’ve covered extensively in our pages, from Jonni Skinner’s firsthand account of the permanent damage done to him by youth gender transition to Jamie Reed’s whistleblower account from inside a pediatric gender clinic. After years in which many institutions treated skepticism of gender medicine as heresy, more voices have gradually begun challenging that consensus. Maeve’s is one of them. Below is an edited version of her remarks. —The Editors

Somewhere along the way, the movement that fought for gay liberation decided that gay people were the problem. 

The original struggle for gay and lesbian rights was not misguided. Progress has been made. But the activist movement that was built to protect those same people has, in significant and measurable ways, abandoned them. And those paying the highest price for that abandonment are, increasingly, also, children. 

After founding the Cambridge University Society of Women—the only single-sex women’s organization at Cambridge, advocating women’s sex-based rights—I have been shouted at in the street, dubbed a fascist, spat at, insulted for my appearance, and contacted online with rape and death threats. You want to talk about hatred? I can tell you all about it: A woman trying to assert her sex-based rights gets abused for doing so. This is one of the many predictable consequences of LGBTQ+ activism—a movement that has lost its way.

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The legal system is still catching up. In February, we exclusively reported on the first malpractice suit brought by a de-transitioner to go before a jury—a case that ended with a $2 million verdict for Fox Varian, a 22-year-old who sued the providers who oversaw her gender transition as a minor. Legal experts say the verdict could open the floodgates. Then the Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that conversion therapy bans—which can penalize therapists who encourage kids to see gender dysphoria as a treatable disorder rather than an identity—violate the First Amendment. California has proposed a civil loophole through SB 934, a bill that would give patients whose therapists had questioned their gender identity more latitude to sue their providers for malpractice.

Jonni Skinner, 23, is a critic of the bill. He spent almost a decade on puberty blockers and hormones, because when he was 13, he says, a therapist told him he was in the wrong body. He’s now de-transitioned, but after this treatment, he says, his body will never be the same again. That’s why Jonni traveled to California to testify against the bill, and why he told The Free Press his story—so the next vulnerable child who walks into a gender clinic looking for answers doesn’t have to endure what he did.

—The Editors

I’m a gay man who testified last month against what has been called a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender-rights bill. I was there because I believe the proposed law could silence the one kind of help that could have saved me from years of anguish and a future permanently marked by what was done to me as a child.

I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian town in rural Michigan with 2,500 people, one red light, and a pervasive drug problem. My parents split when I was a baby: My biological father was a deadbeat I’ve met only a handful of times; my mom worked constantly as the primary breadwinner for our family, building multiple small businesses in the car world.

From my earliest awareness, I knew I was not like other kids—and certainly not like other boys. I moved and spoke in ways others called “girly.” I loved dress‑up games, butterflies, and anything pink. I was obsessed with The Princess and the Frog and looked up to Disney princesses more than any male character. I also knew, from a very young age, that I liked boys. I didn’t have words for it then, and in the world I grew up in, it was considered sinful and shameful. But the feeling existed long before I had any name for it.

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Katie Miller, a podcast host and the wife of top Trump staffer Stephen Miller, warned her followers that “AMERICA IS IN A FULL-SCALE BIRTH RATE COLLAPSE,” saying that women’s “biological destiny is to have babies—not slave behind desks chasing careers while our civilization dies.” Emma Waters, author and policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, posted that “Girlboss feminism has a body count—in birth rates.” At First Things, Inez Stepman of the Independent Women’s Forum argued that the rise of the professional woman is the result of taxpayer subsidies and policies that discriminate against men. Get rid of those “unjust incentives and penalties,” she suggests, and more women will pursue “traditional family life.”

These critiques of professional women are part of a broader shift in attitudes about how young women choose to live. The age of millennial feminism, which emphasized work as the core of one’s identity, was dominant from about 2008 to 2020. But that era is coming to a close with few defenders. Take the reaction to a new memoir by the writer Lindy West, a leading light in the movement whose recent defense of polyamory was greeted by a near-universal shrug of disinterest, even disapproval. Many women are now searching for a better balance of work and home life—some satisfying middle ground between the sourdough-baking trad lifestyle and the 60-hour-a-week grindset mentality.

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While the days of gay people being forced to undergo institutionalization, electroshock treatment, or chemical castration to “correct” their homosexuality are thankfully over, a form of talk therapy claiming to help individuals “eliminate unwanted sexual attractions” and “grow in the experience of harmony with one’s physical body” persists. However harmful such ideas may be, Justice Neil Gorsuch was correct when he wrote in his majority opinion that outlawing their expression constitutes an “egregious assault” on the First Amendment.

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The uproar began on February 3, when the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) became the first major U.S. medical association to issue a policy statement recommending against gender-transition surgeries for minors. The surgeons’ statement cautioned that there is little quality research on the long-term consequences of performing transition surgeries on young people, such as double mastectomies and genital alteration. The society cited “emerging evidence of treatment complications and potential harms” of such interventions.

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Identities and behaviors changed along with attitudes. For a decade, an increasing number of Americans—especially young adults—identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and more reported same-sex behavior. Recently, however, some of those trends have begun to reverse. But the reversal is not as broad as it first appears: It is mostly due to a steep drop among bisexual young women. Patterns of behavior diverge even more: Women report much less same-sex activity in the last two years, while men report slightly more.

So what’s going on?

When I was writing my book Generations a few years ago, I was curious whether there had been any changes in people’s self-reported sexual orientation and in their sexual behavior. Would more people identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB)? And would more people have sex with someone of the same gender?

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At 15, she began questioning her gender during sessions with her psychologist. She changed her birth name, Isabella, to Gabriel, which she saw as androgynous. Over the next two months, she cut her hair short, began binding her breasts, switched her name again, to Rowan, and started telling people she was transgender.

In December 2019, 11 months after she started this public social transition, Varian underwent surgery to remove her breasts. She was 16 years old.

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In one of the videos, obtained exclusively by The Free Press, from the 2021 conference of the US Professional Association for Transgender Health, Amy Penkin, a social worker with the Transgender Health Program at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) spoke about one such case. Penkin told the audience about Sky, who she described as an 18-year-old recent high school graduate who was living on his own for the first time.

Penkin explained that Sky expressed a desire to look like “a Barbie down there.” Sky, Penkin said, reported “being asexual, never having had sex, and having no desire to have sex in the future.” Indeed, Sky did “not want to feel any pleasurable sensation and hope[d] removal of all erogenous tissue [would] be possible,” according to Penkin.

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The plaintiff, licensed therapist Kaley Chiles, claims that by restricting what therapists can say, the law violates freedom of speech. The state of Colorado, meanwhile, says the legislation regulates professional conduct, not expression.

The legal components are complex. But, as River wrote, “here’s what we know for sure: If it’s struck down, it will enable registered therapists to psychologically torment gay teenagers without fear of losing their licenses.” His conversations with survivors of conversion therapy painted a stark picture: “Conversion therapy ruins gay kids’ lives.”

The argument sparked intense discussion online, with some people parsing the constitutional issues, others sharing their own experiences, and many debating the distinctions between gender and sex. It’s a subject that implicates some of our country’s most urgent cultural and political tensions, which is why we asked our readers to continue the conversation.

Here’s what they had to say:

River Page’s article inadvertently shows why Kaley Chiles—who is represented by my organization, Alliance Defending Freedom—should prevail before the Supreme Court in Chiles v. Salazar.

Page’s article is built on a flawed premise. Kaley doesn’t ask for Colorado’s law to be “struck down.” She challenges only its application to the kind of voluntary, compassionate counseling she provides to young people struggling with issues of gender or sexuality. That counseling occurs only when those young people and their parents consent. And it consists only of talking and listening—a caring back-and-forth dialogue.

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Kaley Chiles, a conservative Christian counselor who brought the case, says that the law encroaches…

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That’s how Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, described the Trump administration’s decision to end a federal partnership with the LGBTQ+ activist organization.

Since 2022, a federally funded suicide prevention hotline known as the 988 Lifeline has routed LGBTQ+ youth callers to The Trevor Project and other nonprofits to receive specialized support. Last Tuesday, the government announced that the hotline would, instead, serve anyone seeking help directly, through a single point of contact. The decision was met with howls of outrage.

For the last week, mainstream outlets like NBC News and PBS have breathlessly reported that the White House plans to “shut down” the national “LGBTQ youth suicide hotline.” By “pull[ing] the plug,” the administration has imperiled the lives of countless kids across the country, they say.

“Is cruelty the point?” mused CNN anchor Sara Sidner.

Reporter Katelyn Burns wrote for MSNBC that “this administration does not seem to care if trans children die.”

It would be a deeply disturbing story. If it were true.

In reality, nothing is being “shut down.”

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Since the earliest days of The Free Press, we have been documenting this movement that claimed it was providing lifesaving medical treatments to young people suffering from gender dysphoria—that is, distress at their biological sex. In less than two decades, what was once an extremely rare diagnosis became so common that at least 100 clinics in the U.S. opened to provide medical interventions intended to help children pass as members of the opposite sex.

The number of young people in the West seeking such treatments has exploded. And, in a break with history, in which a small number of boys expressed the desire to change sex, this rise was fueled by adolescent girls, many who had never expressed previous gender distress. In the U.S., between 320,000 and 400,000 minors received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria or related diagnosis between 2017–2023, according to an analysis by the Manhattan Institute. The UK reported a twentyfold increase over a decade.

In its decision in United States v. Skrmetti, the Court concluded that restricting the ability of minors in Tennessee to get medical transition treatment “does not violate equal protection guarantees.” “The ruling effectively establishes a path forward for states to restrict practices their legislatures regard as harmful and inadequately regulated,” said Leor Sapir, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “A second-order effect, one can hope, is that the ruling will draw more attention to the flimsy evidence base, lack of reasonable clinical rationale, and ethical problems in the provision of these interventions to minors.”

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The report, published Thursday, was commissioned by President Donald Trump in one of his early actions as president, a January 28 executive order titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”

Don’t let the incendiary title of that order mislead you. It has resulted in a sober and scholarly 409-page document, “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices,” recalling similar surveys done in other Western countries.

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In an exclusive interview with The Free Press about the settlement, Josephson said when he heard the offer, he was stunned.

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Newsom is simply bowing to political reality. Take the case of Payton McNabb, who was left with a traumatic brain injury after a male volleyball player spiked a ball at her head. Or the female swimmers exposed to male genitalia in their changing facilities. Or the many high school girls who have experienced heartbreak and frustration, training for months only to have scholarships, opportunities, and trophies stolen by members of the opposite sex.

Almost 80 percent of Americans, and 67 percent of Democrat voters, disagree with allowing males in female sports. That leaves Democrats with two choices—jump ship or double down. In my home state of Maine, Democrats are choosing the latter.

For the past four years, as a representative of Maine House District 90, I have fought for the rights of women and girls. But last month, Democrats in my state prohibited me from speaking and voting in the chamber, trampling on my constituents’ rights to representation. And all because I dared to say that boys shouldn’t play on the girls’ team.

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Another entry, from June 2020: The New England Journal of Medicine, America’s platinum medical publication, published a piece explaining that biological sex is actually “assigned at birth” by a doctor—and not a verifiable fact, based on our gametes, stamped into every one of our cells. In fact, biological sex ought to be deleted from our birth certificates—the authors claimed—because a person’s biological sex serves “no clinical utility.” Breaking news to gynecologists.

Public schools began asking elementary kids whether they might like to identify as “genderqueer” or “nonbinary.” Any dissent from this gender movement was met with suppression. The American Civil Liberties Union’s most prominent lawyer, Chase Strangio, announced his intention to suppress Irreversible Damage, my book-length investigation into the sudden spike in transgender identification among teen girls. “Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on,” he tweeted. Weeks later, Amazon deleted Ryan Anderson’s book criticizing the transgender medical industry.

I could go on. But as of January 28, 2025, I don’t have to.

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Watch the mayor get his eyebrows done here:

A few months earlier, locals had complained that this wasn’t the kind of block you’d want to set foot on, let alone visit for a spa treatment. The only massage parlors and salons open for business seemed to be fronts for the neighborhood’s booming sex trade, with police estimating as many as 50 brothels operating in the area. The neighborhood had even developed a nickname: the “Market of Sweethearts.”

“It was anarchy outside,” said Ramses Frías, a second-generation Queens native. “People were scared to leave their homes.”

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“When they initially arrive, they have long hair and look like they’re trying to wear makeup,” Fleming told The Free Press. “But after they have achieved the goal of getting into a women’s prison, they start letting their beard and their mustache grow out, they get a haircut like a man, and they’re walking around like a guy.”

In January 2023, Fleming filed a lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons to end the policy of putting trans-identifying males in women’s prisons. Though many similar lawsuits have dropped over the past decade, Fleming’s is the first to make it to trial. On Tuesday in Tallahassee, Florida, a judge will hear her argument that the conditions of her confinement violate her constitutional right to bodily privacy.

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Shrier is the author of the groundbreaking 2020 book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. It is a meticulous, humane, and harrowing account of the sudden and explosive rise in teenage girls declaring themselves to be males. The book is also an examination of a new branch of medicine that has encouraged, and profited from, swiftly putting these distressed girls on powerful hormones, and performing double mastectomies and other surgeries on them.

In working on the book, Shrier found that the claims that daughters could be, and should be, turned into sons was reckless, and that transgender medicine was functioning more like a cult than a scientifically based specialty. The truth of what she revealed has been comprehensively substantiated.

She documented how devastated parents were lied to and coerced. A favorite tactic of gender clinicians was to tell parents that if they didn’t consent to life-altering treatments with a long list of side effects, including sterility, their girls were likely to commit suicide. Parents were routinely asked, “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son?”

This kind of rhetoric was not limited to fringe activists pushing an extremist agenda. Over the past decade, it became the standard trope—from human rights organizations, to the legacy press, to the Democratic Party. President Biden himself declared: “Affirming a transgender child’s identity is one of the best things a parent, teacher, or doctor can do to help keep children from harm.” Numerous federal documents encouraged medical intervention.

All this is how the transition of minors came to be seen as a necessity that could not be questioned. Those who dared challenge this orthodoxy risked social and professional ostracism.

Which is exactly what happened to Abigail Shrier.

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Haim’s alleged crime? That he violated HIPAA, a patient privacy law, when he revealed that Texas Children’s Hospital was providing gender transition treatments to minors after it announced that such services had been “paused.” The U.S. Department of Justice has charged him with four felonies, which could land Haim in prison for the next decade.

I met Haim recently at his house east of Dallas, where he lives with his wife and their newborn daughter. That afternoon he had just returned from removing someone’s gallbladder and was still dressed in his green scrubs. Haim is quick to launch into a story, whether it’s explaining how you massage a patient’s heart after it’s stopped beating, or describing his days as an aspiring musician before he decided to become a doctor.

The story of how he was indicted begins in 2022, when Haim was a surgical resident. He discovered then that Texas Children’s, the largest children’s hospital in the country, was inserting puberty blocker implants in young patients with gender dysphoria—that is, distress at one’s biological sex. After studying the medical literature on the subject, Haim came to the conclusion that delaying puberty in gender-questioning children was not only unwise, but unethical.

“Kids come into the hospital because they’re sick, and you make them better because they want to live a normal life,” he told me. “But then here’s this other situation where, in the same operating rooms, they’re taking healthy children and they’re making them sick for the rest of their life.”

He wasn’t the only one at Texas Children’s who was concerned. A small group of fellow resident doctors had whispered conversations in what Haim calls “the dark corners of the hospital.” One resident told Haim about feeling uncomfortable when asked to assist in the insertion of a puberty-blocking device in a patient’s arm, but felt that—as a mere resident—he couldn’t object. “We rely on the hospital’s good graces in order to graduate,” Haim says. “You know if you challenge that, they will destroy you.”

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