When nonbinary teen Nex Benedict committed suicide a day after allegedly being beaten up at school, the tragedy was quickly hijacked as a textbook case of anti-LGBT bullying.
The president and the first lady weighed in with a “heartbroken” White House statement.
“Nex Benedict, a kid who just wanted to be accepted, should still be here with us today. Nonbinary and transgender people are some of the bravest Americans I know . . . In memory of Nex, we must all recommit to our work to end discrimination and address the suicide crisis impacting too many nonbinary and transgender children . . . No one should face the bullying that Nex did.”
Hatemongering Nancy Pelosi went further: “The anti-trans fervor fueled by extreme Republicans across the country is having deadly consequences for our children,” posted the former House speaker.
“We must stand up against anti-trans hate.”
The New Republic was just one media outlet that blamed the death on conservatives: “Oklahoma Republicans Passed a Bathroom Bill. Now a Trans Kid Is Dead.”
Story was untrue
But as usual with news stories that slot too neatly into a favored political narrative, it was a lie.
The truth was equally tragic but had no electoral payoff for Democrats wishing to paint their opponents as cruel bigots and Neanderthal book-banners.
The Oklahoma medical examiner who ruled Benedict’s overdose death a suicide said the 16-year-old “did not die as a result of trauma” from the fight at school and nor did handwritten notes at the scene make reference to difficulties at school.
Benedict suffered from “bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, self-harm (cutting), chronic tobacco abuse and chronic marijuana abuse.”
No wonder.
Her short, sad life had been marred by an evil far more real than the politicized victimhood of cynical activists.
According to court records first reported by Red State, Benedict had been anally raped by her father from the age of 9 to 11, at which point he was discovered and thrown in jail.
He was released in January and has been re-arrested for failing to report as a sex offender.
Benedict’s history of mental illness, trauma and abuse fits the profile of so many poor children who have been categorized as nonbinary or “trans kids.”
Instead of being treated for their underlying problems, they are caught up in the gender-transition industry that promises the world and turns out to be a betrayal of their innocent trust.
But there is hope on the horizon.
The most comprehensive review of the evidence for transitioning children, the landmark Cass Review released in the UK Wednesday, has found “no good evidence” for the interventions after all.
It is a staggering rebuke to the medical-malpractice industry that fed children sex hormones and surgically butchered them at the altar of gender ideology.
Irreversible harm
The modish medical experiment embraced by celebrities, the media and cynical politicians has caused irreversible harm to tens of thousands of children around the world.
Shame on the medicos who betrayed their primary duty to “do no harm” and cashed in on the pain of troubled children, many of whom, like Benedict, are mentally ill, autistic or are abuse victims.
Dr. Hilary Cass, a British pediatrician, has courageously laid bare the shocking toll on children, many of whom come to regret changing gender, and has recommended that nobody under 18 should get hormone drugs — while “great caution” should be exercised with the under 25’s.
“Gender medicine for children and young people is built on shaky foundations,” she says in the 388-page report that was four years in the making.
“The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress . . . “There are few other areas of health care where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media, and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behavior. This must stop.”
Cass criticizes the guidelines for transitioning children, developed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Healthcare (WPATH), as being “highly influential in directing international practice” despite lacking “developmental rigor and transparency.”
A single Dutch study, now disputed, that claimed puberty blockers improved the psychological well-being of gender-questioning children had “spread at pace to other countries [and created] a greater readiness to start masculinizing/feminizing hormones in mid-teens,” she writes.
“Some practitioners abandoned normal clinical approaches.”
Clinician complaints
The Cass Review was commissioned by Britain’s National Health Service after the country’s main pediatric gender clinic, Tavistock, was beset by complaints from clinicians that it was not helping but harming children with an ideological approach that rushed kids onto a medical pathway that invariably led to cross-sex hormones and, in some cases, amputations of breasts and penises.
Whistleblowers claimed the clinic was operating effectively as “a new form of gay conversion therapy,” and if left alone, the children would simply grow up to be gay adults.
The Tavistock clinic closed last month.
The move followed restrictions on childhood gender treatment in Finland, Norway and Sweden, and in at least 20 American states, like Florida and Texas, that have implemented bans or restrictions that have been vehemently attacked by the Biden administration.
But now that the Cass Review has signed the death warrant for the malign gender pediatrics industry, there should be a federal reset here, too.
As children’s author J.K. Rowling puts it, “The bandwagon you hopped on so gladly is hurtling towards a cliff.”
But the chances of the president seeing sense on the issue are slim.
After all, it was Joe Biden who issued an executive order last year calling on federal agencies to increase access to “gender-affirming health care” for “transgender kids” in response to red state actions.
“My message to all the young people: Just be you,” he said at
the time.
Good advice, but not in the way he intended.
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Miranda Devine
