Hey, gang! Let’s get into it real quick: I’ve got a dweeb to dunk on and I don’t want to waste any of your valuable time not dunking on that dweeb.
Leor Sapir. You know him, you hate him. He likes to insist that transgender people aren’t taking their own lives as a result of systemic oppression at colleges where transgender people have taken their own lives as a result of systemic oppression, he’s a senior fellow at the right-wing think tank Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and he’s besties with nauseating quisling Brianna Wu.
Talk about a storied rap sheet!
This guy sucks, and he’s proven it again just yesterday by publishing a brainless “gotcha” think-piece in City Journal, the Manhattan Institute’s insufferable publication, about a recent statement made by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health in a lawsuit. Based on a legal filing in a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission, Sapir says WPATH has stated that their stands of care are “merely one opinion in a debate over youth gender medicine.”
“This marks a dramatic change for WPATH,” he goes on, “which spent years promoting its approach as the only ethical one to help youth and adults who experience distress associated with their sexual embodiment.”
Just to get it out of the way: Leor Sapir is a buffoon and his assessment of this legal document is incorrect. Whether or not he has purposefully misrepresented the statements made in the document, I cannot say. Who truly knows what stirs in the hearts of reckless men who antagonize an underdog class of people maligned by a fascist government?
The document is a fifty-page motion to dismiss. In its introduction, it states that the FTC is trying to “radically expand” its regulatory purview with regards to non-profit organizations like WPATH. Their Congressionally-assigned power, the motion says, is to regulate deceptive statements that mislead consumers, and that WPATH makes no statements to consumers.
They are correct! As WPATH points out, they publish non-binding guidelines for doctors, who are not—in this instance—consumers. While Sapir would like you to believe WPATH is tacitly walking back their support of gender-affirming care, they also acknowledge that their current Standards of Care, SOC-8, provide a 69-page bibliography citing over 1,500 scientific studies to support the guidance the organization offers doctors working with transgender patients.
Sapir goes on to sort of just talk shit about SOC-8. He references a very pathetic Congressional hearing from June, which has questionable relevance to the topic at hand, and says WPATH’s current standards document says that “a systemic review for adolescent outcomes” is “not possible,” like it’s some sort of kill shot.
You know, unless you actually read SOC-8, where WPATH says that a systemic review for adolescent outcomes is not possible because, and I quote, “Despite the slowly growing body of evidence supporting the effectiveness of early medical intervention, the number of studies is still low, and there are few outcome studies that follow youth into adulthood.”
Here, WPATH is advocating for more studies, to ensure that a systemic review can cover a broad enough set of data to ensure scientific consensus. They are not saying that there is currently no data from which to draw conclusions, but instead suggesting that more would be better, which is… just how science works, I’m afraid. You’d figure a guy with a Ph.D. would know that, but his degree is in PoliSci, and I guess the soft sciences aren’t as concerned about the basic principles of scientific study.
Bummer!
Sapir references the Health and Human Services “review” of pediatric gender dysphoria and its treatments, which he contributed to. No surprise, then, that it’s garbage bunk science unworthy even of being used as toilet paper in an emergency.
Next, Sapir waxes at length about the influence WPATH and their Standards of Care document have on the treatment of gender dysphoric youth, quoting Admiral Rachel Levine for… some reason. I would argue that there are plenty of cisgender health professionals who could be quoted advocating for gender-affirming care as outlined by WPATH, but I suppose picking a transgender woman to rail against is more fun for Leor.
Sapir quotes, not for the first time, a phrase that WPATH uses in their motion to dismiss: “scientific and medical uncertainty.” He is, I believe, trying to suggest that WPATH is suddenly admitting that gender-affirming care is not necessary, which would be a huge 180 on their decades-long stance on the subject.
I don’t know if Leor, like many Americans, struggles with general literacy, but there’s a problem with this assertion: those aren’t WPATH’s words. They’re the words of the Supreme Court of the United States, as delivered by former Justice Anthony Kennedy in a 2006 case about abortion and quoted again in United States v. Skrmetti. Justice Kennedy said, specifically, “The Court has given state and federal legislatures wide discretion to pass legislation in areas where there is medical and scientific uncertainty.”
WPATH quotes the Supreme Court, here, to make it clear that their recommendations to physicians are non-binding and non-actionable. The organization has collated the professional opinions of many doctors and organizations, including members of WPATH, and issues best practices based on experience and evidence where possible. These are not consumer recommendations that could even be fraudulent.
WPATH is not selling a product. They are providing guidance. The FTC’s lawsuit is frivolous and driven by malicious political ideologies, and nothing else.
Here’s the thing: I don’t care about WPATH. Not really. Further, no transgender person I’ve ever spoken to about WPATH or their Standards of Care gives a shit about the organization. Sure, there are some good people working in WPATH, and I generally appreciate what they do… but if they did pull a 180 on their recommendations, I wouldn’t suddenly change my mind about gender-affirming care. I’d tell them to eat shit and keep injecting exogenous estrogen into my body every week.
There are dozens of organizations besides WPATH that advocate for gender-affirming care. The vast majority of physicians and professional medical associations recommend the gender-affirming care standards as defined by WPATH, because they are very certain that puberty blockers work for adolescents, and cross-sex hormone therapy is safe and effective.
So, once again, I am inviting Leor Sapir to shut up and stop denigrating the concept of written word and the sciences in his shitty little journal. Thank you in advance, Leor.
