Media outlet calls child gender transition ‘health care’
November 10, 2022
NowThis News amplified activists promoting childhood gender transition last week, with one profiled individual pleading with Texas lawmakers to “accept more transgender children.”
According to NowThis senior correspondent Alejandro Alba, the state is “outlawing gender-affirming health care” in order to “try to deny them of their health care, dignity, and basic opportunities.” He further referred to childhood gender transition procedures as “basic human rights.”
In a Nov. 3 tweet, NowThis wrote that activists are “fighting back as state legislators nationwide pursue anti-LGBTQ+ & anti-trans legislation.”
‘We just want to exist’ — Trans youth, their families, and allies are fighting back as state legislators nationwide pursue anti-LGBTQ+ & anti-trans legislation pic.twitter.com/jCVdKhahot
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) November 3, 2022
In the video, “non-binary” student Indigo Giles, who uses “they/xe” pronouns, is profiled. She claims that she wants to protect “trans kids.”
“Trans kids are being targeted specifically because it’s an easy issue to rally around,” she said. According to Giles, Republican lawmakers who say they want to “protect the children” are being disingenuous. She calls the concern over child safety a “tactic” that includes “fear-mongering.”
Giles further claims that gender transitioning procedures can save children from crippling depression and anxiety, telling lawmakers that the alternative is child funerals.
However, the University of Birmingham’s Aggressive Research Intelligence Facility found that results were inconclusive regarding the benefits of gender reassignment operations. It assessed more than 100 follow-up studies on post-operative individuals to make the determination.
Studies indicating procedures and medications may benefit individuals have further been discredited by many for design flaws and biases in favor of gender affirmation.
To say the least, a claim that “gender affirmation” is beneficial to depression and anxiety is wildly premature.
Discussing her own procedure, Giles said, “It changed my life. I don’t know where I would be if I hadn’t been allowed to have that.” She said, I “received a chest reduction when I was 17.”
After denouncing “Texas’s nasty laws,” Attorney General Ken Paxton’s declaration of puberty blockers and gender transition surgical procedures as child abuse, and Gov. Greg Abbott’s direction to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate instances of this abuse, Giles declared her support of gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke. O’Rourke will face off against Abbott on Tuesday in the midterm elections.
Also profiled were Giles’s parents, who claim to support their two “non-binary” children “in every way.” According to Neil Giles, “trans kids’ rights” are very important to his family.
He poses a hypothetical of a seven-year-old transgender child, whose rights he claims are under attack.
There is an obvious slant to NowThis’s reporting on the hot-button childhood transitioning issue in Texas, made abundantly clear by the choice to shut out the Republican side. Not only does it avoid including Republican points of view, but the senior correspondent adopts the language of activists, even declaring childhood transition as a human right.
As a result, NowThis acts more as an arm for some of the Democratic Party’s most radical interests, rather than a medium for information and analysis.