What happens when the world's most influential newspaper spends two years investigating youth transition but refuses to ask what gender identity actually means? Leor Sapir dissects the New York Times' "Protocol" podcast, revealing how they avoided every foundational question while positioning unscientific assessment as the "reasonable middle ground." He shares explosive revelations from his own interview with Laura Edwards-Leeper (who admitted gender identity is based on stereotypes), exposes why detransitioners got 30 seconds while Jamie Reed got attacked, and explains the strategic choice ahead: let medical leaders blame WPATH for misleading them, or face Trump administration investigations. His verdict: "Imagine endocrinologists treating a condition they can't define without circular reasoning. That's what's happening here."
About Leor Sapir
Leor Sapir (@LeorSapir on X) is a Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and regular contributor to City Journal, specializing in pediatric transition policy and bioethics. His investigative work has exposed fundamental flaws in youth transition research and institutional failures. His recent critique of the New York Times' six-episode "The Protocol" podcast reveals how mainstream media avoids the field's most troubling questions while creating an illusion of balanced coverage.
The Protocol's Disappointing "Veneer"
After two years of reporting, Azeen Ghorayshi's six-episode series left Sapir "quite disappointed." The podcast interviews two original Dutch patients—FG and Manon—decades after treatment. The red flags are obvious: FG lives alone with cats, hasn't sustained relationships, experiences "transgender dysphoria," feels shame about hygiene. Manon mourns lost fertility: "All my friends are having babies and I'm now understanding what I gave." Yet Ghorayshi and narrator Austin Mitchell never pause to note these outcomes mirror exactly why the Dutch started treating kids—because adults weren't doing well despite reported satisfaction. Stella calls it "the veneer"—skating over depth while pretending to go deep, "which is more insidious."
The Edwards-Leeper Interview: Admitting the Contradictions
Before the podcast aired, Sapir interviewed Laura Edwards-Leeper, who the Times positions as the responsible middle ground. Her admissions stunned him. Sex is "assigned at birth" because of intersex conditions (irrelevant to 99.9% of trans-identified youth). Gender identity? A "social construct" lacking clear definition that "relies on stereotypes." Her 30-40 hour assessments can't predict who'll persist but make everyone "feel better." Despite lengthy therapy, her model remains "informed consent"—if the kid wants it and one parent agrees, they get it. Mia notes Edwards-Leeper essentially admits: "It's society that won't accept gender nonconforming behaviour, so we better medicalize their bodies."
The Golden Mean Fallacy
The Times positions itself between two extremes: Johanna Olson-Kennedy ("if assessment could show who'd persist in 20 years, I'd be all for it, but it can't—so let's medicalize everyone") and Republican bans (dismissed as purely political). Edwards-Leeper represents the supposedly reasonable middle. Sapir's critique: "It can't be true that there's a middle ground simply because you don't like the other two options." The assessment model provides cover without accountability. Meanwhile, the Dutch protocol's core rationale—puberty blockers as "time to think"—has collapsed. Yale clinicians now call blockers and hormones "two parts of the same intervention." The ethical foundation? Gone.
Missing Voices, Buried Scandals
The podcast's omissions are staggering. Detransitioners? Two 30-second clips after "frantic" last-minute calls for submissions. No sit-down interviews with those harmed. Jamie Reed, the whistleblower who reported bleeding teenagers at St. Louis Children's Hospital, gets grilled about one parking lot confrontation while her substantive concerns—the endocrinologist saying "we need to stop but can't afford to"—go unmentioned. Her spouse detransitioned six months before the podcast aired. Never mentioned. Medical associations filing briefs with "blatantly false claims"? Ignored. WPATH suppressing systematic reviews? The AAP's position being "Exhibit A of disinformation"? Silence. "That's journalistic malpractice."
The Foundational Questions Never Asked
What are we treating—gender dysphoria or transgender identity? The Cass Review found the DSM-5 criteria lack diagnostic specificity. What's the condition's natural history? The core concepts—sex assigned at birth, gender identity, transgender—lack scientifically valid definitions. Even gender incongruence (the new term) is defined identically to transgender. Follow the logic: if we're treating gender incongruence by aligning body with identity, aren't we eliminating transgender identity? "That would be their own definition of conversion therapy." These aren't academic curiosities—they're central to the field. The podcast never shows curiosity about any of it.
The "Transgender Child": How Psychiatry Created Its Most Destructive Diagnosis - Stella O'Malley & Mia Hughes
What if the most destructive concept in modern psychiatry emerged from men lying to get hormones? Mia Hughes traces the shocking origins of childhood gender dysphoria back to the 1960s, when researchers studying effeminate boys were actually chasing ghosts—transgender children who didn't exist. Meanwhile, Stella O'Malley shares her harrowing personal jo…
The Broken Chain of Trust
Medicine operates on trust—specialists say something works, generalists defer. "There's self-interest woven in: when you defer to my colleagues in gender medicine, I expect you to defer to me in my specialty." Medical leaders could blame WPATH: "They misled us." But they don't realize "the Titanic has hit the iceberg yet." Sapir sees two paths: the "nice way" where medical associations acknowledge the evidence vacuum and follow systematic reviews, or the "hard way" with Trump administration investigations. Medical leaders must "grow a spine" despite pushback from LGBT committees and colleagues "who make a living off performing double mastectomies on 14-year-old girls."
Strategic Crossroads
Looking forward, Sapir advocates pragmatism: "I'm more interested in how can we minimize the most amount of damage as fast as we possibly can." The solution requires offering medical leaders a "golden bridge"—acknowledge broken trust, blame WPATH, follow evidence. But internal politics paralyze them: "small numbers of extremely vocal, highly motivated" activists versus diffuse opposition. If internal debate emerges, reformers face a dilemma: continue pressing or back off to let medicine self-correct? "Are we going to continue pressing, possibly to our own detriment?" The stakes: kids facing "the syringe and scalpel" need help now, not in 15 years when the Times finally admits the scandal.
Genspect will be digging into these same questions—diagnosis, evidence, media narratives, and the silencing of dissent—at The Bigger Picture: Albuquerque, September 27–28.
Join us for two days of bold, evidence-based conversations with clinicians, researchers, parents, and detransitioners.
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Leor’s talk at The Bigger Picture Denver:
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