An author of the leading transgender health association’s new guidelines for adolescents revealed that they have called Child Protective Services on uncooperative parents who did not affirm their child’s newly chosen transgender identity. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) held a session on the “Adolescent” chapter during their annual conference on Monday that was livestreamed online.
🚨BREAKING: Ren Massey, an author of WPATH's new Guidelines, says "there are at least some Child Protective Service workers who are willing to enforce the need for affirmation by parents," which can be used to threaten hesitant parents into affirming their child's trans identity. pic.twitter.com/388IxSoFjq
— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) September 20, 2022
Dr. Ren Massey, a trans-identified female Clinical Child Psychologist from Atlanta, Georgia, revealed during a Q&A session that calling Child Protective Services is a “resource” for clinicians to “enforce the need for affirmation by parents.” Massey goes as far as to suggest that merely informing parents that a call to CPS can be made might be enough to pressure them to cooperate.
The Daily Wire previously reported that the 8th edition guidelines released last week indicated that the state may be enabled to intervene in order to assist with the child’s transition if parents do not affirm their child’s newly chosen identity.
“I had to make a call to Child Protective Services on a case and the Child Protective Services worker asked me about if some of the issues I was calling about were about the parents not being supportive or being emotionally abusive around gender identity issues,” said Massey.
Massey appeared pleasantly surprised to learn that CPS workers in Georgia had intervened in instances where parents were hesitant to accept their child’s new transgender identity. “And that was educative for me to learn that in my conservative state there are at least some Child Protective Service workers who are willing to enforce the need for affirmation by parents at least with social transition needs, names, pronouns et cetera,” said Massey. “So that may be a resource in states, provinces, regions, countries around the world.”
Massey suggests that threatening to call Child Protective Services on a parent who doesn’t affirm their child’s transgender identity may be all that is needed for the parent to cooperate with socially transitioning their child. “Even before making that call, letting parents know that if that’s true where you are practicing that might get their attention a little bit,” said Massey.
WPATH’s new guidance also suggests that parental consent for minors to obtain medical treatments are recommended, but not required, and that the state may intervene when a parent refuses to affirm their child’s transgender identity.
“6.11- We recommend when gender-affirming medical or surgical treatments are indicated for adolescents, health care professionals working with transgender and gender diverse adolescents involve parent(s)/guardian(s) in the assessment and treatment process, unless their involvement is determined to be harmful to the adolescent or not feasible.” (emphasis added).
Statement 6.11 in Chapter 6 on adolescents further elaborates: “Helping youth and parent(s)/caregiver(s) work together on important gender care decisions is a primary goal. However, in some cases, parent(s)/caregiver(s) may be too rejecting of their adolescent child and their child’s gender needs to be part of the clinical evaluation process. In these situations, youth may require the engagement of larger systems of advocacy and support to move forward with the necessary support and care (Dubin et al., 2020).” (emphasis added).
The Appendix contains a “Summary Criteria for Adolescents” that further demonstrates that parents should be involved unless their involvement is deemed “harmful” or “not feasible” to their child’s medical transition. “Involvement of parent(s)/guardian(s) in the assessment process, unless their involvement is determined to be harmful to the adolescent or not feasible.”