A transgender psychologist, who also personally identifies as transgender, has admitted that the surge in children who identify as their opposite sex is alarming, blaming quarantine and social media, in part.
Erica Anderson, a 71-year-old biological male who identifies as female, this week spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the explosion of gender-confused kids.
“I think it’s gone too far,” Anderson said. “For a while, we were all happy that society was becoming more accepting and more families than ever were embracing children that were gender variant. Now it’s got to the point where there are kids presenting at clinics whose parents say, ‘This just doesn’t make sense.’”
The Times noted that Anderson believes some gender-confused kids are “falling under the influence of their peers and social media,” adding that “some clinicians are failing to subject minors to rigorous mental health evaluations before recommending hormones or surgeries.”
“What happens when the perfect storm — of social isolation, exponentially increased consumption of social media, the popularity of alternative identities — affects the actual development of individual kids?” Anderson said. “We’re sailing in uncharted seas.”
“Giving over to hormones on demand will result in many more cases of poor outcomes and many more disappointed kids and parents who somehow came to believe that giving kids hormones would cure their other psychological problems,” the trans psychologist continued. “It won’t.”
From 2019 to 2020, the UC San Francisco adolescent gender center where Anderson works has increased its patient load by 162 kids, bringing the center to a total of 373 new patients by 2020.
Anderson has been sounding the alarm on the issue since at least 2018, when the trans psychologist bluntly admitted identifying as trans had become “trendy.”
“A fair number of kids are getting into it because it’s trendy,” Anderson told The Washington Post. “I think in our haste to be supportive, we’re missing that element.”
While Republican-led states are working to stop the mutilation of gender-confused kids, the White House and leading Democrats have made it clear they will challenge the efforts.
For example, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki last week said lawmakers who are working to protect minors from puberty blockers and transgender surgeries have been “put on notice” by the U.S. Department of Justice.
“Alabama’s lawmakers and other legislators who are contemplating these … discriminatory bills have been put on notice by the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services that laws and policies preventing care that health care professionals recommend for transgender minors may violate the Constitution and federal law,” Psaki said at a press briefing.
Psaki’s comments were in reference to Alabama banning doctors from mutilating children or putting them on puberty blockers if they “identify” as the opposite sex, and advancing parental rights by forbidding teachers’ “instruction” on sexuality and gender identity between kindergarten and fifth grade.
Anderson claims both sides of the aisle are wrong.
“The people on the Right … and on the Left don’t see themselves as extreme,” Anderson said during the interview. “But those of us who see all the nuance can see that this is a false binary: Let it all happen without a method or don’t let any pass. Both are wrong.”
Related: Teacher Suspended For Refusing To Affirm Children’s ‘Trans’ Pronouns Is Fighting Back
Related: Republican Lawmakers Protecting Kids From Puberty Blockers, Trans Surgeries ‘Put On Notice’ By DOJ