Babs’ (Unpublished) Letter to The Wall Street Journal
A Wall Street Journal op-ed by radical psychiatrist Paul McHugh bluntly cast transgender people as delusional and disordered, while willfully ignoring widespread modern medical consensus and arguing that transgender patients should be denied medically necessary treatment.
In the June 13 edition of The Wall Street Journal, McHugh appeared to lament the growing attention to transgender people and transgender rights in public policy and the media, while warning that these developments signal a troubling trend toward affirming transgender identities rather than treating them as “confusions” and illnesses:
Yet policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or…
Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women.
Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.
Modern and contemporary expert consensus no longer reflects McHugh’s depiction of trans people as mentally ill. As the American Psychological Association notes, experts now acknowledge transgender identities as “part of the human condition,” with many individuals’ gender identities established by the age of four.
Increased awareness of the realities of the transgender experience led the American Psychiatric Association in 2012 to stop classifying being transgender as a mental disorder, replacing the previous diagnosis of gender identity disorder with gender dysphoria, the distress that often comes from “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender.” But that didn’t stop McHugh from using some form of the word “disorder” 10 times to describe transgender people.
Furious, I wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal, hoping that there was some sense of business balance within the Jewel in the crown of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. There was none, but this is what I had sent:
It is true that gender affirming surgery is not appropriate or desired by all transgender people. I’m sure that some might disagree, but there is no silver bullet, no panacea in life for all people. Everyone is different and unique, some simple, some complex with all the shades and nuances in between.
The American psychiatrist Paul McHugh in a Wall Street Journal op-ed conveniently ignored the American Psychiatric Association policy in 2012 to stop classifying being transgender as a mental disorder. As we learn, as we educate as facts hold true, things change. The Earth is not flat, even though the findings by Eratosthenes were conveniently lost for about 1800 years. The Earth, moon and planets revolve around the Sun and although the Vatican arrested Galileo for espousing his scientific findings almost 400 years ago, there still has not been a full apology.
I’m not sure is there is a word to describe a physician who actively professes and works to deny a whole class of people what the AMA considers medically necessary treatment.
McHugh uses the WSJ platform to cast transgender people as confused, delusional and disordered. Perhaps he has not met the CEO who last year made $38,000,000 in compensation after leading a medical company that actually saves and improves the lives of the many while returning billions in added value to its shareholders? Has McHugh met the billionaire Army veteran, investment manager and philanthropist form Chicago? I’m sure McHugh did not meet the engineer who developed the code that enabled the development of personal computers and smart phones, although I will take the chance and assume that McHugh uses and takes that technology for granted? Is the WSJ confused for publishing articles by a world famous travel writer and chronicler of the conquest of Mt. Everest?
I’m not sure if it McHugh’s agenda is based on willful ignorance or is form of transphobia that is often related to a person’s insecurity about their own gender identity. I frankly don’t care about his demons, I do care about the demonization, bullying and societal stigmatization of innocent and at-risk transgender people.
Category: Transgender Opinion
About the Author (Author Profile)
Babs at 76 passed away in 2019. She was a member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee, Deputy Vice Chair of the NJ Democratic State Committee and Political Director of the Gender Rights Advocacy Association of NJ. She served on the Executive Committee of Trans United 4 Obama. She has served as Vice Chair of the DNC Eastern Caucus, was President of NJ Stonewall Democrats, Co-Chair of National Stonewall Democrats Federal PAC Board, Vice-Chair of Garden State Equality, Executive Board member of National Stonewall Democrats as Chair of the DNC Relations Committee and a member of the NJ Civil Unions Review Commission.Subscribe
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