Stephen B. Levine M.D. on the Science of Gender-Affirming Care
The United States has become the world’s most adamant promoter of what is now called “gender-affirming care” for children and adolescents who identify as being other than their born sex. This approach ranges from “social affirmation”—the use of preferred pronouns, for example—to “medical affirmation,” such as puberty blocking, to radical “surgical affirmation,” meaning mastectomies, facial feminization or masculinization cosmetic procedures, and, in a few cases, even genital removal and refashioning.
Beginning to “transition” youth while they are still immature remains intensely controversial. But the increasingly woke medical establishment and Biden administration claim that the gender-affirming approach is “settled science” and the only efficacious approach to treating these children, calling those who disagree “science deniers.”
My expert guest today says not so fast. Psychiatrist Stephen B. Levine has co-authored an important paper that details the paucity of reliable data establishing the benefits gender transitioning during a patient’s youth, calling into significant question the current approach to caring for anguished children diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Stephen B. Levine is a psychiatrist known for his work in human sexuality, particularly, sexual dysfunction and transgenderism. Levine earned his MD from Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and serves as a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry there.
He was co-editor for the section on sexual and gender identity disorders in the professional text Treatments of Psychiatric Disorders. Although much of his work is written for other clinicians, Levine has also written books for a lay audience, including Solving Common Sexual Problems and Sexuality in Mid-Life (2004). Levine also served on the American Psychiatric Association DSM-IV Subcommittee on Gender Identity Disorders.
Current Concerns About Gender-Affirming Therapy in Adolescents (springer.com)
Informed Consent for Transgendered Patients – PubMed (nih.gov)
Illuminate Life Processes by Taking a Sexual History (psychiatrictimes.com)
https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2046221
https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2136117
https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2150346
‘Gender-Affirming Care’ Approach Undercut by New Scientific Study | National Review