‘Liberal’ Author of Federal Report Rejecting Trans Treatment for Minors Slams ‘Activists’ for Silencing Critics

(Photo by Robyn Stevens Brody/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

The co-author of a federal report on the efficacy of gender treatments for minors — including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and reassignment surgeries — revealed themselves to be a liberal frustrated by “aggressive activists” in a new op-ed for The Washington Post.

MIT philosophy professor Alex Byrne observed that critics of the review, which was initiated by an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, believed that the anonymously published report may be influenced by politics before assuring readers that it wasn’t.

“The review was prompted by an executive order signed by President Donald Trump at the end of January, which set for us a May 1 deadline. The order’s inflammatory and tendentious language understandably roused suspicions among liberals. But the review wasn’t written by zealots busily grinding axes. In fact, liberals were in the majority. Some of us were paranoid that the White House would try to control the content of the review or even alter it pre-publication; that worry proved unfounded,” wrote Byrne, who observed that he himself is “hardly a fan of the current administration: I have never voted Republican, and as an academic from Cambridge, Massachusetts, I hold many of the liberal beliefs of my tribe. That includes support for the right of transgender people to live free from discrimination and prejudice.”

After noting that the report argues that the evidence for “gender affirming care” is “very weak,” Byrne went on to lay out its case in more detail before blaming “aggressive activists” for the pressure they’ve put on medical professionals.

“Many adults in the room were driven to prudent silence by aggressive activists,” he submitted. “The price of speaking out no doubt contributed to the collapse of medical safeguarding in the United States,” before enumerating the word games used by trans activists, as well as some of the smear that have come his way.

“I wish I could say my own profession has modeled rational debate about these controversies. After the report was published, a philosopher who runs a popular blog reported that my name appeared in the metadata of the appendix. He called my presumed involvement “appalling.” On social media, a prominent senior philosopher accused me (‘Herr Byrne’) of contributing to a ‘project of extermination,’ to the approval of other senior philosophers,” observed Byrne, who concluded:

There is much to admire about modern health care, but it has taken some gravely wrong turns, from lobotomies to the pathologization of homosexuality and the opioid epidemic. More wrong turns are inevitable. What we should do is promote a culture which makes it easier to turn back.

Such a culture is animated by the scientific spirit — a willingness to question assumptions, to seek new evidence, and to resist pressure to conform from our in-group. That is exactly what has been missing from the debate over youth gender medicine, and we liberals must take some blame. The more liberals who can rise above tribal loyalties and publicly dissent, the better.

— —