Pediatrician group blocks gender-transition critic from conference, women share transition horrors

Much of the scrutiny on so-called gender affirming care in the U.S. was made possible by the American medical establishment's own public recordings of practitioners candidly discussing the gruesome and lucrative nature of surgeries, hormone therapy and the lifelong medical management they require, and how to overcome parental opposition to child transitions.

Perhaps the most oft-cited authority promoting puberty blockers, which the Food and Drug Administration has known increase suicidality since 2017, belatedly ensured a vocal critic of the organization couldn't get further ammunition to stir up trouble at its annual conference last week in Orlando, where the featured speaker was the nation's top transgender federal official.

The American Academy of Pediatrics revoked a $695 virtual attendance pass for pediatrician Nikki Johnson, who in April became director of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism's medicine project, without explanation "just hours before the conference began," three weeks after she registered, Johnson wrote in a FAIR essay Wednesday.

The Sept. 27 email notice posted by Johnson said her "request … has been denied" and she would be refunded. Johnson said she had already received a registration confirmation, "AAP identification number to access the conference schedule and event information" and numerous email updates, including to download the conference app.

Johnson told Just the News the AAP registration committee hasn't responded to her Sept. 27 and 29 requests for an explanation and AAP's board hasn't responded to a letter from FAIR's legal team earlier this week.

She has "no idea what the virtual pass would have given me access to other than viewing the live sessions and possibly posting questions in a live Q&A," but Johnson wanted to "connect with any attendees who may have had similar questions," she wrote in an email. 

"I never intended to act unprofessionally by spamming Q&A sessions or pushing a particular message" and the mobile app itself limits contact to individuals based on their "permissions," she also said.

AAP has not responded to three days of Just the News requests, all sent after its conference ended, to explain the revocation and what exactly it feared Johnson might do virtually.

Johnson suspects it's either due to her wide-ranging public criticism of the group or newly revealed communications related to FAIR's presence at AAP's 2023 conference. One attendee claimed AAP apologized for letting the "transphobic racist group" table in its exhibition hall and "sneak into lectures."

Two black public intellectuals, Columbia linguist John McWhorter and Brown economist Glenn Loury, served on FAIR's inaugural advisory board, which has also included transgender social worker Zander Keig, who was named 2020 distinguished educator of the year by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).

Challengers to academic trends in gender and sexuality appear to be recurring targets for deplatforming and cancellation. 

A National Institutes of Health-sponsored online symposium this summer on sex as a spectrum booted prominent critics of gender ideology for violating its "code of conduct" with allegedly unrelated questions in a group chat. North America's largest annual gathering of anthropologists removed a panel on the necessity of sex to their field last year, comparing the idea to eugenics.

The Mayo Clinic threatened to fire a professor in part for his comments on the inherent athletic advantage of males over females regardless of cross-sex hormones. This summer a Minnesota judge greenlit the bulk of professor Michael Joyner's lawsuit, funded by the Academic Freedom Alliance, for breach of contract and retaliation.

FAIR protested an academic publisher's retraction of a peer-reviewed study on rapid-onset gender dysphoria by social scientist Lisa Littman, while it was facing a threatened boycott from academics, on the basis that her survey participants didn't give "written informed consent."

Littman herself left Brown after it falsely implied her first paper on ROGD, marked by "social or peer contagion" in friend groups or online communities, had been discredited by its publisher.

Johnson, who left clinical practice two years ago, said she was "very curious" to hear AAP's political agenda especially on gender affirming care, given that Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine was speaking and AAP had yet to follow through on a promise more than a year ago to conduct a systematic review of the evidence, as several European countries have done. 

While Johnson has repeatedly criticized AAP's COVID–19 policy recommendations on school closure, masking and vaccines, and its "unscientific" policy on gender affirming care, she also used her FAIR email address to register, which may have gotten her flagged, she said.

The New York Sun published journalist Ben Ryan's yearlong investigation of AAP on the eve of the conference, including disputed encounters at the 2023 conference's FAIR booth, which hosted outspoken detransitioners including Chloe Cole and Camille Kiefel.

The booth operators, including St. Louis pediatric gender clinic whistleblower Jamie Reed, said many pediatricians "expressed surprise and concern when told of the shakiness of the science" and the harm reported by detransitioners, but one attendee made Kiefel cry, the Sun reported. 

Seattle Children’s Gender Clinic co-Director Gina Sequeira accused FAIR of "verbal harassment" against a trans member, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported, and similar complaints were made on an internal AAP listserv, according to the Sun.

In an appendix in his own newsletter, Ryan published "in their entirety scores of the internal emails" on which his investigation is based. Johnson singled out an email from a "visibly queer/genderqueer" attendee who threatened to boycott the 2024 conference if FAIR came back and claimed that AAP said FAIR's inclusion was an "accidental oversight." 

Her FAIR affiliation or criticism of AAP are the only plausible culprits for revocation, and if the latter, "that is a troubling sign for the future medical advancement and restoration of public trust in health professionals," she said. 

It would show AAP "is more interested in protecting its own self-interest than in advocating for the health of children through educating health professionals," Johnson wrote.

While legislation against gender affirming care and government reviews of the evidence base for medical treatments that create a stronger resemblance to the opposite sex tend to focus on minors, two middle-aged women who lived as men for years are sharing their transition regret.

Tiger Reed, who is married to whistleblower Jamie Reed and now changing her name back to "Roxxanne," explained her decision to wean herself off "weekly testosterone injections" that worsened her health after 13 years of living as a man in a Free Press essay Sept. 29. 

"I realize the thing that threatened me the most about Jamie going public was something I didn’t want to face," Reed wrote – the danger in the "message, especially to young people, that a swift gender transition was a safe, all-purpose solution to profound problems." 

Gender medicine is comparably dangerous for adults, Reed said she now realizes. No one warned her about the "emotional consequences" of testosterone at 31 and breast removal at 36, decisions influenced by the reality show TransGeneration but also Reed's dysfunctional family history, sexual abuse and bullying due to her "more masculine appearance."

Reed had the sense that "becoming a woman would mean subjecting myself to a lifetime of assault and abuse, and experiencing relentless mental and physical pain," especially the "debilitating endometriosis" that gave her painful periods. "It turns out transitioning couldn’t bring me the sense of comfort and inner peace I was seeking," Reed said.

Scott Newgent, an activist against medical transition who formerly lived as Kellie King and featured prominently in the Matt Walsh documentary "What Is a Woman," self-published a memoir this summer about suddenly identifying as a man at age 42 after watching the reality show about teenager Jazz Jennings' gender transition.

Gender-critical organization Genspect reviewed "Lesbian Devil to the Straight Man Saint - a trip through trans HELL & back" on Wednesday. Newgent started a lesbian relationship with "Jacqueline" while still married to a man but only met her family, described as practicing "homophobic Christianity," after being able to pass as a man, in their mind "saving Jaqueline from her sinful past."

"Newgent points to the critical role that gay shame from spiritual abuse by otherwise loving and well-meaning families has played in the spread of transgender identification among" lesbian, gay and bisexual youth, the Genspect review says.

Newgent shared "my deepest regret" in The Dallas Morning News last year, going into eye-popping detail about the physical and financial consequences of transition. WPATH's own members acknowledged internally that some young patients or colleagues developed life-threatening medical conditions or even died after years of treatment.