TWIBS: WPATH defeated… or is it?!
Publisher of the absolute nothingburger “WPATH files,” Michael Shellenberger, was briefly duped into thinking the trans healthcare organization had deposed its leader and undone its most recent guidelines… and Jesse Singal was somehow the voice of reason?!
by Alyssa Steinsiek
Oh, no! WPATH’s website is down! And they deleted their Standards of Care! They fired President Marci Bowers! They’re mutilating children!
Plus they detonated a nuclear bomb in New York City! And they used their time machine to delete pizza from the timestream! My pepperoni! Mama-mia! 🤌
I don’t know, I guess we’re just making shit up about WPATH now.
If you’re not a superfan of transgender healthcare, you might not know much about the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, an international group who set the standards of care guidelines for endocrinologists and other clinicians who diagnose and treat transgender patients. Though they can be a touch paternalistic at times, as their leadership is composed primarily or entirely of cisgender healthcare professionals who sometimes like to think they know best what trans people need, they are as close to the good guys as we’re gonna get. Their eighth Standards of Care document, released in September of 2022, continues to support gender-affirming care as the only evidence-based treatment for gender dysphoria in youth and adults, and many of their board members are vocal advocates for our community.
On March 4th of this year, Michael Shellenberger, climate change denialist and founder of non-profit group Environmental Progress, published The WPATH Files. Spooky, ominous, thrilling… and a total fucking lemon, all things considered. Fact checks from multiple sources revealed that the content of these “leaks”—which anyone can access by simply paying a membership fee to get into WPATH’s forums—was an absolute bust. Zero scandalous information worth reporting on.
Well… there was one bit of scandalous news, which I got to discuss at length with my dear editor Evan on the podcast I cohost, but I can’t get too deep in the weeds on that shit. Suffice it to say, it’s days like these that I curse New Jersey for inventing Ray Blanchard!
On Tuesday, Shellenberger elbowed his way back into the spotlight after being ignored over his dud of a “leak” by losing his absolute shit when WPATH’s website briefly went down, only to come back up as what appeared to be an older cached version of the website. The cached page predated the publication of SoC 8 or Marci Bowers’ presidency, and Shellenberger was quick to spread rumors that there had been a secretive WPATH meeting in the dead of night during which they may have axed Bowers and disavowed their latest Stands of Care guidelines, for… reasons.
Shellenberger has since deleted these conspiracy theories, at the urging of annoying evil hobbit Jesse Singal, but each of his tweets—and the hilarious kneejerk reactions of most frontline anti-trans activists—have been immortalized by Erin Reed, thank fucking goodness. From Graham Linehan to Jamie Reed, anybody who’s anybody in the stupidosphere was celebrating the downfall of WPATH like the Death Star had just been blown up.
Imagine their shock when the website was updated to reveal the far less interesting truth.
What was described on their website as an “internal system issues,” was, more specifically, the result of a ransomware attack. At any rate, WPATH fully restored their website and provided a statement about the outage in under 24 hours, much to the dismay of transphobic buffoons everywhere. Truly, it should come as no surprise that the anti-trans brigade are incapable of critical thought or due diligence. Anybody who’s reported on them knows just how cartoonishly inept they are.
But it must be said, when Jesse Singal is your measured voice of reason, you have fucked up tremendously. This is a measure of shame you simply should not be able to recover from, and if any of these people were capable of experiencing embarrassment over their foolish behavior, we’d never hear from them again.
Most of these people are not journalists, much less good journalists who meticulously fact check the things they say and write, such as your humble narrator and the good people at Assigned Media. To my knowledge, there is no scary internal schism at WPATH, and there’s absolutely no reason to believe they’ll stop promoting gender-affirming care any time soon, and there was never any evidence to suggest they would.
Look, it’s obviously too much to expect transphobes to experience shame and self-doubt like normal human beings. But if we’re lucky, maybe Michael Shellenberger will shut his cake hole for at least a couple months.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer and video games nerd who hails from Appalachia but lives, laughs, loves in South Dakota.
