Stella O'Malley: “The trans phenomenon was imported from America and is based on a consumer-oriented health logic”

The founder of Genspect was in Lisbon during the organization's congress and spoke to SÁBADO. The Irishwoman warns of the risks of gender transition being carried out on young people who may regret it

Every week, 11 people change their name and gender on their Citizen Card in Portugal and two sex reassignment surgeries are performed through the National Health Service. These numbers have been growing since the pandemic began, in line with most Western countries, where issues of gender identity have been widely debated. One of the most controversial points is that some of these numbers go beyond the fair visibility that the trans community has achieved and also include young people who are part of the phenomenon of social contagion, which has led authorities around the world to back away from more medicalized approaches to these people. Genspect, an organization founded by Stella O'Malley and which brings together gender medicine specialists from around the world, recently held a conference in Lisbon with the aim of raising awareness of the dangers of the so-called affirmative approach, based on the administration of hormones and sex reassignment surgeries for those suffering from gender dysphoria.
 

Lisbon hosted dozens of gender medicine specialists for three days to raise awareness of thetransphenomenon , which is widely discussed in the Western world. The phenomenon has also taken hold here, although there has not yet been much public debate, but every week there are 11 people changing gender in Portugal.
It is important to note that thetransphenomenon was imported from America and is based on a consumer-oriented and profit-motivated healthcare logic. In thetransphenomenon , the patient becomes a client and whatever the client wants, the client gets. We are talking about very, very vulnerable people, deeply stressed and depressed, and yet they are the ones who influence doctors and subject themselves to irreversible interventions that cause great harm, sterilize them and condition their sexuality forever. And these decisions are made when they are at the lowest, most vulnerable point in their lives… And yet, this affirmative approach to gender dysphoria followed by doctors with great responsibilities has no scientific evidence whatsoever.

That’s why you formally created Genspect in 2021 to raise awareness about this phenomenon, is that it?
Yes. I worked for many years with teenagers and their families and suddenly I discovered this huge wave of pain and suffering that was happening to families due to young people’s sudden gender self-identification and no one was talking about it… I realized that no one was giving a voice to parents and to these children and young people who are extremely vulnerable, often suffering from autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, severe depression… And I know what that’s like. When I was a child, I also had my identity issues, I suffered from gender dysphoria and it was a very difficult period of growing up… It’s important for people to understand that you can have gender dysphoria (distress caused by gender incongruence) but that doesn’t mean that the person has to be medicalized. There are other ways to help these people deal with it. In 2018, I made a documentary about the subject – “ Trans kids: It’s time to talk ” and what followed was shocking: every day I received a huge number of emails from parents whose children had suddenly come out as trans . When the pandemic started, I had time to stop and schedule online meetings with these people and discovered a world of devastation... I will never forget that moment when I realized that we were facing an unprecedented medical scandal…

And today you welcome parents and trans people from all over the world to your (free) online sessions.
Yes, we started with one session a week and now we have seven sessions a week with people from all over Europe, Australia, the US, Canada…

In Portugal, news such as the closure of Tavistock , the largest gender clinic in Europe due to rapid gender transition processes, and the subsequent investigation that gave rise to the Cass Report , went completely unnoticed. And yet the Cass Report had and is having a huge impact in several countries precisely because it categorically concluded that the "affirmative approach" based on self-diagnosis of young people and advocated by the WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) has no medical evidence and is imbued with "ideological toxicity". And yet, in Portugal, the Health Strategy for the trans community in public hospitals follows the precepts of the WPATH.
What would you say to our Minister of Health, to our Government?
The Portuguese government, if it is wise, can learn from the mistakes made in other countries in relation to gender identity issues and thus prevent these same mistakes from happening in Portugal, with terrible consequences for young people. Just stop, ask yourself a question and think for a moment… Who were the pioneers of transitional pediatric medicine and what are they doing now? Countries like Sweden and Finland are putting the brakes on the affirmative approach to gender medicine and have drastically reduced all the clinics that existed… If the Portuguese government is wise, it should look at what happened in England, where the largest study on gender medicine ever was carried out (the Cass Report ). It took four years to complete, it is an independent study and the conclusion was quite clear – there is no scientific evidence to support this type of radical intervention with children and young people. This cannot continue to be done on children and young people who are too vulnerable to make these types of decisions. If the Portuguese government is aware, it could look at America and the polarization that exists there and all the devastation caused by the affirmative approach model.

The rhetoric of suicide is often used by doctors and trans activists who support the affirmative approach. And this argument is obviously very powerful for parents whose children suddenly identify as trans , who are quick to give them this validation. What is your opinion?
Any suicide is a devastating tragedy for the family and so when talking about suicide there must be, above all, rigor. It is too serious a subject to be discussed lightly. That is why we must look at the numbers. The data show, for example, that at GIDS, which was the largest pediatric gender medicine clinic in the world, between 2010 and 2020, out of a sample of 15,000 patients, some on the waiting list, others in treatment, four people died by suicide in that decade. This is actually an average below that associated with mental illness in adolescents, since the risk of suicide is highly associated with anxiety, severe depression, consumption of toxic substances, etc. And here’s another incredibly important point: post-sex reassignment surgery, trans people have a suicide risk that’s about 19 times higher than the general population. Trans activists need to stop using the rhetoric of suicide, it’s simply not the appropriate way to approach the issue.

What do you say to those who argue that there are a small number of dropouts and people who have decided to detransition?
The dropout rate is very difficult to determine because most detrans people do not return to the clinic where they were treated. A study of detrans people involving about 1,000 people revealed that 76% did not inform their clinic that they were detransitioning. At Genspect we deal with a lot of detrans people and they are traumatized, they simply do not want to return to the place where they were attacked. So we do not have those numbers.

However, I can say that since we started following this topic in 2019, there were less than 1,000 people adhering to detrans reditt , today there are more than 55 thousand (an annual average of 11 thousand people)… People should read these stories of those who received irreversible interventions.

Recently, the Ministry of Education provided training to teachers at all levels of education (including kindergarten) where, among other things, they were made aware of the need to accept the social transition of students, even without their parents’ consent… What impact could social transition have in this way?
Social transition is a significant clinical intervention that cannot be carried out lightly, much less in schools by teachers and principals. They are carrying out a psychological intervention that has no medical evidence whatsoever. We do not know what impact it will have on the child or young person who is questioning their identity and/or what kind of conflicts it will trigger. And we do not know because there is no medical or scientific evidence for this. School principals and teachers do not have any expertise in dealing with this, so it is incredibly arrogant that these people think they can deal with such an important issue, which has such an impact on the lives of these children and young people and whose psychological interventions require extensive supervision.

What advice would you give to parents of young people with ROGD (rapid onset gender dysphoria is a controversial hypothesis that claims that some adolescents experience gender dysphoria due to peer influence and social contagion)?
I would advise parents to be very gentle with their children, to ask them lots of questions, to get them to talk. Then, it is essential to set limits. If the child was anorexic, the parents would not agree to stop eating, they would fight to get the child to eat, right? So yes, sometimes fighting is necessary. It is necessary to say "I am going to draw a line that is impossible to cross because you are vulnerable, you need help and I am not going to give you something that could possibly make you happy at the moment but in the long run will make you miserable". Parents should also reduce access to mobile phones and social media and connect their children with the real world. These children and young people are very lonely. And then I would tell the parents to seek psychological help too... All of this is extremely difficult and they need strength.

This is the third time that the Genspect conference has been held at the same time as the WPATH conference. Why the simultaneous conference?
WPATH has identified itself as an authority on gender medicine and has recently gained popularity, but for a long time it was a fringe organization. WPATH is a lobbying group , close to the authorities, but it has no credible medical evidence to show. And when this evidence is questioned, the response is no debate and any issue is labeled as transphobic when the aim is to obtain the best results, the best approach for these people. That is why we decided to start holding our conferences at the same time as WPATH. We have been in Ireland and Denver, in the USA and now also in Lisbon.

And in the meantime, WPATH members are deserting… It went from 4,119 members in January 2023 to 1,590 this year…
Yes, when the news about the WPATH leaks came out they lost a lot of credibility as an organization and they lost a lot of respect. And quite honestly, I'm happy about that because I don't think WPATH is a good organization…

Can you highlight a story of someone who detransitioned that touched you in a more impactful way?
We work with many young people who decided to detransition and it is very hard to realize that many of them live a very isolated life, many women, due to high doses of testosterone, become bald, their voices become masculine, boys the opposite...

Their ability to revert and achieve the physical characteristics according to their gender is not always enough and their lives become very isolated, lonely... It is very sad because they want to go back, they want to reintegrate themselves but they cannot because of baldness, the trauma of the mastectomy and the voice... The voice represents much more than one thinks... Whenever they speak on the phone, these people are mistaken for the opposite sex, so this "legacy" of the transition process continues to haunt them for a long time and all of this is extremely difficult...