When public school counselors meet with parents to discuss cases of gender identity confusion, they often warn that a transgender child is better than a dead child. This is not just a weaponization of kindness and sympathy. It is extortion.
When Kobe was 13, for example, adults online reportedly told him to “play the suicide card” to get chemical trans interventions. He explains, “I started using, like, ‘the suicide tactics,’ because that’s what they are. That’s what they tell us all to do. … I don’t want to use the word ‘groom,’ but we are, like, taught.”
Kobe followed the instructions of his handlers, and it worked. His tragic journey resulted in castration and a heart full of regret. Like many other detransitioners, Kobe cautions against wrongly named “gender-affirming” care for children: “I was expecting it to help me, help my mental health, and it didn’t do anything. I just wasted so much time, and all I did really was become a medical patient for life.”
Kobe’s story shines a light on the pervasive problem of the so-called “transgender rights” movement. Activists are using children to weaponize the kindness of well-meaning parents and adults.
Many experts disagree with the premise of this emotional extortion. For example, 21 clinicians and researchers from nine countries published a letter in The Wall Street Journal on July 13, arguing that transgender medical interventions do not increase well-being and reduce suicide, contrary to the claim of Stephen Hammes, president of the Endocrine Society. The medical experts write:
Dr. Hammes’s claim that gender transition reduces suicides
