The Parent Trap

Gender-affirming care for kids is becoming the norm. Genspect has other ideas.

Read the full article at Lux Magazine.

The landing page for Genspect.org, an Irish nonprofit founded in 2021, is cheerful and inviting. It promises “a healthy approach to sex and gender” over pictures of possibly queer women laughing and smiling at nothing. Scroll a bit further and you’ll learn that the organization is “an international alliance of professionals, trans people, detransitioners, parent groups and others” that includes 25 groups from 23 countries in Europe and North America. They advocate for “a society that supports gender non-conformity” but “doesn’t require the heavy burden of medical treatment.” They claim to welcome trans people and explicitly renounce transphobia, yet explicitly refuse to acknowledge that gender-questioning children might be trans.

Genspect claims to be nonpartisan. The organization’s founder, Stella O’Malley, describes herself as “generally liberal in [her] political attitudes” and claims that the parents in her support groups “generally skew progressive and left-leaning. They approve of same-sex marriage, often have marched for gay pride, and have happily waved LGBTQ+ flags.” She wrote these words for Quillette, a libertarian online magazine that endorses healthy, robust debate on subjects like whether there are “physical and psychological” differences between races and whether the overrepresentation of men in STEM can be explained by genetics. Quillette authors never come right out and say they believe that, for example, The Bell Curve is correct about Black people being less intelligent than white people. They just have a few questions.

Publishing an article in a magazine is no crime, but it did encourage me to ask a few questions of my own regarding the professed progressive politics of Genspect. What does Genspect’s “exploratory therapy” look like in practice, and is it really backed by science? Why do Genspect’s administrators and advisors chair so many different gender-critical organizations (“gender-critical” being the preferred term of those who do not wish to affirm trans identity)? And why do so many Genspect affiliates appear to be one degree removed from the forces pushing anti-trans legislation in states across the country?

Read the rest at Lux Magazine

Read the behind-the-scenes Substack commentary here