Protect Children Speech April 21, 2023 Washington State Capitol
On the harms of "gender affirming health care"
Given at a protest sponsored by the Conservative Ladies of Washington, Gays Against Groomers and Moms 4 Liberty on the passage of House Bill 5599 which supports children running away from home to get “gender affirming health care” in Washington state.
Hello, I am Candace Mercer.
This speech is dedicated to my friend Laura Becker, who is in Austin today DOINGTHEWORK too. She is a detransitioner featured in the excellent documentary Affirmation Generation.
I am going to talk about the danger of “gender affirming care,” something I used to believe in.
“Gender affirming health care” is presented as all glitter, rainbows and trans joy but the reality is anything but.
They really don’t want people to know the truth about “gender affirming health care.”
That is why they are here and making so much noise—because truth is what changes minds. It changed mine.
I have chose to listen to both the trans and the detransitioner communities about the reality of “gender affirming care.”
No child is born in the wrong body.
I am willing to be hated for this position.
Call me a BIGOT or a TRANSPHOBE.
I. Don’t. Care.
No. Child. Is. Born. In. The. Wrong. Body.
Social transition is the gateway drug which in almost every case leads to medical intervention.
“Gender affirming care” is presented as the ONLY alternative to suicide.
This reprehensible rhetoric is emotional manipulation which is extremely effective when weaponized against parents.
Children who need mental health interventions are being told the answer lies in disrupting the endocrine system at a crucial stage of development, which often increases emotional distress.
When social transition is done in schools, it is a violation of parental rights, especially when done in secret.
Any parental resistance is positioned as abuse—caring parents labeled “toxic.”
This is being used to justify state intervention. Bill 5599 sets up conditions that could increase youth homelessness at a time when we are not able to properly care for the ones we already have.
Puberty blockers are sold as “safe and reversible.” This is the same medication that chemically castrates sex offenders. Given to children!
Puberty blockers stop development of the genitals in boys, leaving them with a micropenis. They are sterile and can never experience orgasm.
Absolutely not reversible.
Cross sex hormones are given on demand by board licensed doctors who should know better. They went to medical school. They should know you cannot fight biology that has evolved over millennia.
When girls start testosterone, they go through menopause. Over time, their uterus, bladder and vagina atrophy, causing immense pain and requiring a major surgery most women want to avoid.
Girls also experience permanent changes to facial and body hair including male pattern baldness. Their voice deepens forever.
Radical double mastectomies and castration are tne next steps. Euphemized as “top surgery” and “bottom surgery,” they are being normalized, even in adolescents.
The plastic surgeries done on young adults are experimental, painful and gruesome in nature.
For vaginoplasty, the penis is cut off, turned inside out and inserted into the body. Remember what puberty blockers do? If the penis is not large enough, a section of the colon is used to fashion a faux vagina.
It is a wound. To prevent healing, it must be dilated daily in three painful thirty minute sessions for over a year. Does that sound like trans joy?
If a young woman gets a phalloplasty, her arm or leg is flayed to create a tube that is nothing like a real penis.
Complications are frequent and severe, often requiting repeated hospitalizations and further surgery.
Painful nerve damage, difficulty urinating, sexual dysfunction and recurrent infections are the reality trans rights activists don’t want us talking about.
This is uncharted territory, there is little science or medical knowledge around treating people facing long term consequences of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and disfiguring plastic surgeries.
There is a growing community of detransitioners whose stories are heartbreaking.
They are medical patients for life, often in pain. Their regret can be high.
Studies who suicides peak seven years after transition, once the gender euphoria wears off and the glitter is tarnished. They wish someone would have stopped them.
My message to the young people here today is not one of hate but one of extreme love.
You are perfect as you are.
You do not need a synthetic sexual identity that leaves you dependent on Big Pharma.
You are perfect as you are!
Loving yourself is the ultimate liberation.
Thank you.
Candace Mercer is an artist/writer/activist based in Olympia, WA. She ran for Olympia City Council in 2021. She lost, but she tried when nobody else did. Her art can be bought at candio.com.
