Sometimes, transgender advocates‘ own words form the best argument against them. A Democrat’s recent argument for a bill combating “conversion therapy” actually made a strong case against his measure, which would effectively prevent counseling to help young people come to terms with their biology. This counseling may be the only real solution for gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent condition of identifying with the gender opposite one’s sex). Scott Wiener, a Democrat in the California Senate, testified Tuesday in favor of SB-934, a bill to extend the statute of limitations for people to sue for damages if they claim to have been subjected to sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts. Wiener explained his bill this way: “Let’s say a parent has a 15-year-old who was born identified as a girl and now identifies as a boy, and if the parent says ‘I’m going to send you to this camp where a ‘therapist’ is going to convert you to being a girl through therapy.’ That would be subjected to this bill.” Let’s not get distracted by transgender gaslighting. A person who was “born identified as a girl and now identifies as a boy” is, in fact, a girl. No use of pronouns, injection of cross-sex hormones, or surgeries to remove her healthy body parts to experimentally make her appear male will change the basic fact of her nature. Yet, according to Scott Wiener, therapy to help her come to terms with her nature involves “converting” her to “being a girl.” In the Orwellian upside-down world of transgender topsy-turvydom, it isn’t considered a form of “conversion” to subject a person to experimental drugs and surgeries to force their body to resemble something it’s not, but it is a form of “conversion” to help someone come to terms with her sex. ‘Conversion Therapy’ Wiener attempts to maintain this utterly fatuous idea by using the term “conversion therapy.” The term historically refers to efforts to suppress same-sex attraction through controversial methods like electroshock therapy. Mainstream therapy has rejected such methods in favor of patient-directed talk therapy—and the Supreme Court recently upheld the free speech rights of a therapist to address same-sex attraction and gender identity through talk therapy with patients when a Colorado law banned this. “When a child’s like, ‘I’m gay, I’m trans,’ and the parent says, ‘I’m gonna make you not gay or trans,’ by sending you to that person who’s going to inflict severe harm,” Wiener explained. Yet the case that patient-directed talk therapy to resolve a gender mismatch inflicts “severe harm” is rather hard to prove. Such therapy does not leave any physical sign. By contrast, the scars of “gender-affirming care” are much more concrete. Wiener himself witnessed evidence of this in the same hearing, when the brave detransitioner Jonni Skinner got up to share his story. “When I was young, I was a feminine child and I discovered trans influencers online,” he recalled. “They said, ‘Change your body and your life gets better. Don’t, and it gets worse.’ Or, as my doctors told my mom, I would commit suicide.” “The medical and mental health providers didn’t bother to ask why I felt the way I did,” Skinner added. “They poisoned my body with blockers and hormones, arresting my puberty and messing with my development. The result? I’m a 23-year-old gay man who’s never had an orgasm and may never experience one.” “I was rendered inorgasmic because once you say you could be trans, that’s it, full stop,” he added. “No exploration as to why is allowed, even if you are a struggling kid.” Science Exposes Transgender Lies A recently published study found that young people diagnosed with gender dysphoria in Finland were more likely to receive specialist-level psychiatric care—both before and after diagnosis. “Gender-affirming care” made them far more likely to seek specialist-level care more than two years afterward. This study suggests two things: that those who identify as transgender are more likely to have psychological problems and that “gender-affirming care” makes those problems worse. Wiener is fighting a losing battle. The Department of Health and Human Services has concluded that there is little evidence for positive impacts from transgender medical interventions on minors, but it found many documented harms. A jury awarded a detransitioner $2 million, finding that the medical professionals who carried out sex-rejecting procedures on her were liable for medical malpractice. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons released a statement recommending against transgender surgery for minors under 19, leading other medical associations to follow suit. Americans really are waking up to the destructive harms of transgender ideology, but activists like Wiener are unlikely to throw in the towel. Those of us who really want to help people struggling with gender dysphoria should champion patient-directed talk therapy that helps patients resolve their gender mismatch, not medical experiments that enflame it. Unfortunately, we first have to make the case against Democrats like Wiener, who want to make such therapy radioactive, and therefore unavailable. That’s the true ugliness of transgender ideology: people like Wiener are seeking to remove the one potential solution that might actually resolve gender dysphoria. Rather than resolving underlying psychological issues, they want to trap gender dysphoric people in the gender mutilation pipeline, where they will subject their bodies to medical experiments and become perpetually reliant on Big Pharma. The post Democrat Unwittingly Reveals the Ugly Truth of Transgender Ideology appeared first on The Daily Signal.