When public school counselors meet with parents to discuss cases of gender identity confusion, they often warn that a transgender child is better than a dead child. This is not just a weaponization of kindness and sympathy. It is extortion.

When Kobe was 13, for example, adults online reportedly told him to “play the suicide card” to get chemical trans interventions. He explains, “I started using, like, ‘the suicide tactics,’ because that’s what they are. That’s what they tell us all to do. … I don’t want to use the word ‘groom,’ but we are, like, taught.”

Kobe followed the instructions of his handlers, and it worked. His tragic journey resulted in castration and a heart full of regret. Like many other detransitioners, Kobe cautions against wrongly named “gender-affirming” care for children: “I was expecting it to help me, help my mental health, and it didn’t do anything. I just wasted so much time, and all I did really was become a medical patient for life.”

Kobe’s story shines a light on the pervasive problem of the so-called “transgender rights” movement. Activists are using children to weaponize the kindness of well-meaning parents and adults.

Many experts disagree with the premise of this emotional extortion. For example, 21 clinicians and researchers from nine countries published a letter in The Wall Street Journal on July 13, arguing that transgender medical interventions do not increase well-being and reduce suicide, contrary to the claim of Stephen Hammes, president of the Endocrine Society. The medical experts write:

Dr. Hammes’s claim that gender transition reduces suicides is contradicted by every systematic review, including the review published by the Endocrine Society, which states, ‘We could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide.’ There is no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide-prevention measure.

American public school officials would do better to look away from the lucrative medical establishment preying on children in the United States and focus instead on this international expertise.

All the “do-good” public school administrators and teachers might do better to consider that many young teens are uncomfortable in their bodies and do not adhere to gender stereotypes. After several years had passed and he underwent castration, Kobe, in hindsight, realized he was having issues with his sexuality and had insecurities about being an effeminate boy. Instead, the pro-trans advocates in our children’s public schools too often make that first leap to mislabel students’ sex on paper, mandate pronouns in the code of conduct, and sound the suicide alarm….

From the Federalist

Watch Kobe’s story here.