You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 88. James Linehan.mp3
James Linehan: They're just stumbling along in the dark. It just breaks my heart to see this. All these people who had perfectly healthy endocrine systems manipulated into this medicalization, which they can never leave. They can never opt out of the medicalization. I was born with this disorder and they gave me the best medical treatment they could for my disorder. But to take a child an adolescent and to induce any sort of intervention or hormones is not absolutely necessary. It's a human rights violation. It's beyond abuse. And it's beyond abuse to the parents, too, to manipulate them into thinking this is some sort of thing that's going to remedy their psychological issues. It's just heartbreaking. It bothers us every single day that this is going on.
Stephanie Winn: You must be some kind of therapist. Today I am speaking with James Linehan on disorders of sexual development. I originally met James a few years ago through what was then called Twitter and was now known as X, through Spaces, which are a remarkable feature that allow people from all kinds of backgrounds and places to talk. And I've spent many hours talking with James in the past about his experiences with his own disorder of sexual development and what he's learned through that process. In addition to raising awareness on this issue, James has a background as an instructional resource specialist and an adjunct lecturer in sociology. He now works in IT and AI consulting. Some of you may have read a recent article that was published on Lisa Selin Davis's Substack. written by James as a guest article called My Body is a Puberty Blocker, which describes his background beautifully. Now, anyone who's been following this podcast and is aware of the work that I do around the issue of gender is familiar with the fact that those on the other side of the culture war with regard to gender frequently like to inflate statistics about the prevalence of disorders of sexual development, as well as lump people like James in with their activist causes. So, I have really benefited from talking with James and other people who have disorders of sexual development about their own experiences as people with that condition, people who have navigated the medical system. Really grateful to have James' expertise here on the podcast with us today. James, welcome and thank you for being here.

James Linehan: Thank you for having me.

Stephanie Winn: All right, so I think a lot of people who've heard of intersex or DSDs don't know that there are over 40 different conditions. Now, we briefly talked about that with Zach and Cynthia of the Paradox Institute, also with Leonard Sachs in a recent episode. But here you are, first person I've spoken with on this podcast who has one, and yours, I believe, is hypogonadotropic hypogonadism. Did I get that right?

James Linehan: Yes, yes, that is the technical scientific term that they use to describe my condition. Actually, they called it a sleepy pituitary gland, which is back when I was diagnosed around 16. That's a kind of a shortcut to say that there's something wrong with your pituitary gland, it's not functioning properly, and they just call it a sleepy pituitary gland. It's also called secondary hypogonadism, which means My pituitary gland is a problem. It's not functioning correctly compared to something like primary hypogonadism where the gonads are not functioning. Everything from endometriosis to Kleinfelder's disease people tend to have primary hypogonadism. So that's where my condition fits in. My condition as far as DSDs can It's not, we don't really have a community before like three years ago or five years ago when they came out with this intersex. It was primarily considered a medical condition, much like any other condition, like rheumatoid arthritis, like diabetes. Mine's closest to diabetes because it's a lack of a hormone. So we never even considered it a part of our identity other than the fact that it was just something that that caused us a lot of issues and other problems.

Stephanie Winn: And then it became politicized. So what was that like for you? I am going to have you tell your story from the beginning, but just picking up where you kind of left off there. What was it like for you to go from being a person with a medical condition to being a person whose medical condition is now politicized and made into this identity group?

James Linehan: It was quite jarring because what they talk about as far as being identity is nothing what it's like to have one of these conditions. They take a small segment of the myriad of 40 different conditions, they narrow it down to only two, and they only talk about the frustrations of those two conditions that have, you know, sometimes they have, you know, problematic surgeries or unnecessary surgeries with these two conditions, and they just simply take that small, small percentage, and they blow it way out of proportion, because it's, I guess it fits into their their political aspirations. And then, of course, they smear everybody like that. And if we if I go or anybody else goes to tell them, hey, man, we have health care problems, we have this, we have that. Are you going to address any of these? And there's it's it's there's no no. They just simply go off and they just keep repeating the same talking points. So it's very frustrating.

Stephanie Winn: Sounds like you feel used.

James Linehan: Yes, that's a very good, we feel exploited is what it is. It's an exploitation of both our pain, the fact that most of us are infertile, and our fact that we don't experience those things and they just simply exploit us to raise money and to cause outrage and to claim that we're somehow not another sex or in between sex. And, you know, it's gotten into school curriculum, which is like, it's insane with all this politicking.

Stephanie Winn: So let's go back to the beginning, and you talked about this in your blog with Lisa Sellen Davis, but I want you to take as much time as you need here to sort of walk us through your process of developing as a child and an adolescent, some of the behavioral problems, maybe mental problems that, or excuse me, academic problems that at first you didn't know had anything to do with your pituitary gland, and then how you were eventually diagnosed and treated.

James Linehan: Okay, so, a lack of development anyway. So, my condition is called, again, there's another, both secondary and there's also a genetic condition called Kalman syndrome. And usually with our condition, we are born with this condition. And it causes the pituitary gland not to produce the GNRH hormones that causes our pituitary gland to start our normal maturation of puberty and hormones related to sex hormones. So often we, for instance, you're just born with this condition. When I went through development, I just simply maintained kind of like a boyish appearance and I was very underdeveloped. And as in the beginning, why everybody else is underdeveloped because they're all pre-adolescents, it's not a big deal. Up until around probably around 11 or 12, I started, I never started maturing. I stayed in sort of that pre-possessant state. While my peers started developing, they started, you know, women started developing breasts, boys started lowering their voice, they started getting taller, they started getting stronger. My school and academic performances were always held back by other development issues like learning disabilities. I think I was diagnosed with several learning disabilities in fifth grade, which are very common with DSDs. Learning disabilities and other neurologic problems are very common. because they are ultimately developmental disorders, first and foremost, and secondary, they affect sex characteristics. With mine, it just never happened. I never started developing. So, as the other kids started developing, I maintained a sort of a group of friends who were much younger than me, which were much younger than I was, I played with dolls, which were appropriate to my age, but still younger with me. So I basically was being slowly excluded out of my peer group. For some reason, my mother, she never really noticed it as much because I was her little kid. And my father, as I started maturing and I started, other boys started, you know, I used to be a good swimmer, but I couldn't keep up anymore because they just got stronger than me and I just couldn't, you know, my muscles weren't as strong. So, um, as that progressed, um, I began to hide. I began to become very ashamed of my appearance. I wouldn't change and I wouldn't go to locker rooms. I would avoid P.E. I would go home to shower. I would do all these things to avoid any sort of appearing as, you know, naked because I realized that I was just, you know, was like, like I was some other type of person other than, you know, they were much, you know, They were maturing, and I was not.

Stephanie Winn: And you had no explanation for this at the time?

James Linehan: At the time, no.

Stephanie Winn: So you were just left to feel like there's something wrong with me, there's something different about me, but I don't know what it is.

James Linehan: Yes. Yeah. I never had any sort of… um, reference because I never knew anybody like me. There was no one else like me in school. I mean, other than the real kind of, um, you know, people had other disabilities and, and, uh, these people were very, uh, you know, they had other problems. So I hung out with them. So I just never found, no, there was no, um, you know, no, uh, other people, person like me. So I felt really alienated and excluded from my own, uh, peer group.

Stephanie Winn: And so how long did this go on? How far did it go before you were finally diagnosed?

James Linehan: So it went up to around 16. I was 16. I think I was. This was during the satanic panic of the 80s, which caused professionals to become very paranoid about any kind of inappropriateness with minors. So, when I would go for checkups, doctors would tend to kind of check my blood pressure and listen to my heart and just send me home. They didn't do a full, you know, they didn't tell me to drop my drawers or check out the, which they used to do. You know, I got many comments, well, they used to do this all the time. They didn't do that with me. So they didn't notice until around 16, until an intern noticed that I had a, I had a, I had very long legs and a very short statue. And then he kind of looked at me and he said, why don't you, let me see you nude. And he looked at me and he said, you, you, you've not developed at all. And so there's something, a development issue with, with me. So at that point he told my father and my mother is you, you got to, go up to, at the time, it was a University of California, San Francisco, child endocrinology department, the best endocrinology, child endocrinology, pediatric endocrinology department in the world at the time. And they started performing tests. And this starts the process of figuring out what was going on with me at the time.

Stephanie Winn: And so eventually you were given this diagnosis and what was that like to be told what the cause of the issues was?

James Linehan: What did they do? They put me through, well, the doctors at the time were very, because when somebody does, when their pituitary doesn't start or the pituitary gland, the first thing's always a tumor. They always think, oh boy, he's got a tumor in his brain or something. And that was kind of frightening, so they put me through an MRI machine, and they didn't see anything. And then they put me through chromosome testing to see if I had chromosome abnormalities like Kleinfelder's or anything else, and that came back negative. So, after all that, they finally narrowed it down through process of elimination, and putting a hormone called gonadotripid hormone in me to check my testosterone levels then, they narrowed it down to the fact that my pituitary gland never started the GNRH process of puberty. It never went into what is called the sinusoidal release, where puberty starts, it's like a sine wave that pulsates. and this pulsate starts the pituitary gland to produce an LH and FH, which stimulate the gonads, my intestines to produce testosterone and of course sperm production. So that never started. So I was stayed in that state pretty much like until they started advising me that we're going to try to start your pituitary gland. So they didn't want to turn me into a medical patient. You know, they were very, they were from the type of medical school saying we do the least amount to the child as possible. So the minimal amount of treatment to get the result. We don't want to over-treat them.

Stephanie Winn: We don't want to- The good old days, huh?

James Linehan: The good, yeah, the good old days when we didn't over-medicalize people. So they were very paranoid about, you know, they told me, well, we don't want to start you on hormones, androgen, to replace your hormones that you have because then you'll be stuck with those for the rest of your life and you have to keep injecting those and it's a real pain. Plus that they told me it was guaranteed infertility and other problems because the, The hormones are not regulated by your body. They're regulated by injections, and injections are, they're erratic. They're not like the body can produce them. I mean, I remember my endocrinology said, well, you know, the pituitary gland is like the conductor. It's like the main conductor of the orchestra. And puberty is like the orchestra. And, you know, you start up the orchestra and you go through puberty. And we can We can hit your marks, but we can never mimic what nature would do. So, we can get you through puberty, but they, you know, they warned me that the outcomes can be not as favorable as if you went through a normal puberty, even though I'm just getting androgen back. I'm just, no androgen, we just replace his androgen. It's all, it's a simple, You know, it's a simple thing to diagnose once you've isolated everything else.

Stephanie Winn: And just to be clear for listeners who are maybe hearing these terms for the first or second time, you've mentioned GNRH and you've also mentioned what that stands for, which is gonadotropin-releasing hormone. So the treatment that they gave you, I mean, later we're going to talk about puberty blockers because, you know, you wrote this article, My Body is a Puberty Blocker, right? And puberty blockers are GNRH antagonists, right? So were they able to give you basically the opposite of that, like GNRH agonists, or they had to give you testosterone? What was the chemical cocktail they gave you?

James Linehan: Okay, so the first thing they injected me through was called… It's another long term. It's what pregnant lady, pregnant people, it's HRC, it's human glomer, something human, it's like HRC, which is HR, it's what pregnant ladies produce. And what it does, they inject it into you and it mimics the LH and FH of your, of your pituitary gland. They said, this is going to check to see if it's, this is if your gonads are not being stimulated by LH and FH. So they would inject that into me, and then they would test my adrenal levels. And if my adrenal levels started going up, they understand, oh, I see, so you're not, so your proteotoxic ant is not producing the LH and FH. Now, the actual cure, or actually the remedy, would be just to put a pump on me, which is a small pump, and it would just pump LH and FH, and that would mimic my my pituitary gland. The problem with that is I have to wear a pump and it's a $40,000 a year. Wow. Yeah. Any kind of this kind of stuff is very expensive as far as that's concerned. So what they do is they go, okay, well, we're just going to skip that whole section, that whole, you know, we don't skip your, and just simply give you the androgen, which your testes are supposed to produce. at a gradual rate, which is called, they will put you through a medically induced puberty, which means they would just simply start you on a low level and they would just check and you have to go to your doctor every, I think I went to see him every three months. And he would just look over my body, would check facial hair. They have this big checklist. And they say, OK, so this is where you're at. So we need to give you a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more through puberty. So through puberty from around 16 till, I think, around 18, I think it took only two years. It's very, it's very quick. That's when I went through puberty. And they, of course, had to start me. They said, if we don't start you soon, then you may lose all sexual function. You may lose all sorts of other bone development. Your bones won't develop. Your neurological won't develop. You're stuck in a childlike state with all these learning disabilities because you have not developed, because the neurological underpinnings of, because men and women and boys and girls are actually biological separate categories. Once you go through puberty, you get into the realm of adults, and now you're stuck as a child. So, for instance, I, You know, I was, I was fond of girls. I was, you know, I thought, but, but I had no sexual interest at all in, in, in girls. They hung out with me because I would look at them and go, Oh, you're nice. But I would just, I wouldn't know what to do. I would just go, yeah, hi. So, I didn't understand sex or have any comprehension of that because you have to go through puberty to understand what sex is. Again, they're separate biological categories. And of course, the endocrinologist explained this to my mother and said, you know, this is why your son's an eternal child, is because he just stopped developing. And this is something that is, in today's day and age, is completely lost about how this works.

Stephanie Winn: I recently told you about a group called Do No Harm, who's working to do just that. Eliminate the harm that so-called gender-affirming care for minors and political ideologies in medicine are causing. Do No Harm is made up of thousands of members across the country, from doctors to nurses to policymakers to concerned parents who see what's happening at practitioners around the country and are waving a red flag. Membership is free, and you get unlimited access to information from experts, on-the-ground updates from people working in medicine or state houses to take a stand, and collaboration with other thinkers. Learn more and sign up at do-no-harm-medicine.org slash sometherapist to learn more. That's do-no-harm-medicine.org slash sometherapist. Your maturation process was delayed not just in terms of sex drive and the development of a deeper voice, facial hair, all of that kind of stuff, but there was like a psychological immaturity too. You preferred younger kids, you preferred, it sounded like a younger style of play. And I'm curious, did you learn anything in the process about whether your pituitary gland was also not functioning with the release of I don't know, melatonin or whatever else the pituitary gland does. I'm not a doctor, but I know it's probably got a lot of responsibilities.

James Linehan: Yes. So the pituitary gland does do a lot of other stuff. And what they do is they test for all of those hormones. So they verify that every other hormone is being produced. which wasn't a, a issue with me particular, but when you bypass that natural, uh, uh, you do induce a certain level of, because you're particularly going to actually shuts down that whole process because you're doing it yourself. Um, I think this is a type of, uh, medical terminology. It's like when you put chapstick on, you've got to keep putting it on. Your body just stops producing whatever you're replacing it with.

Stephanie Winn: Like neurotransmitter downregulation, like how the body kind of creates its own homeostasis. So people who take SSRIs might have some neural pruning of serotonin related neurons, like that sort of thing. And that's one of the risks associated with the type of treatment that you had. It's like, well, you need to go through puberty. So, we're going to have to induce it medically, but it's not without its drawbacks.

James Linehan: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the major drawbacks is that you have a… First thing, you're basically infertile because your testes never produce sperm. So, they just stay in a kind of like a baby size testes, and they never produce sperm because testes are mainly full of sperm. That's where they get their size. And so, they said that that's infertility that can be started later, but it's hit or miss sometimes. And so, they warned me of all these things. And also, I have to inject myself. And, you know, they went from injections, which I keep hearing people do. It's just horrible. They're oily injections, and they go into the muscle. And you know, you have to go right into the muscle. And most of the time, the whole muscle just, you know, it's like, it's like someone stabbed you. It's, it's terrible. I've, it was, and then they develop patches which cause, which caused these welts on your skin, and that was horrible. And then they went to gels, and that was a mess. It got over everything, and they just discontinued those four, except for the rare, the minimal cases. And now they go through, like, EpiPens, kind of injectable things about so big, they just, that's what I do now. And then they went to pellets. So they've tried all sorts of things to try to see if they can't, You know, it's such a pain.

Stephanie Winn: Claire, you have to do this on a regular basis for the rest of your life, ever since you were a teenager.

James Linehan: Yeah, I've been, yeah, I've never known not being a medical patient. I've been, so yes, I have to inject myself once every week with androgen. And I used to have to go in there for pellets, but the pellets got so, I just, it just, they put a, it's like a little surgery, they stick a pellet, but it was painful and it just, it was a mess.

Stephanie Winn: So- There was a horrible story about that from Brian, this detransitioner, that episode was a while ago, it was called Surviving Gender Malpractice, and he had estrogen pellets under his skin, and they were taking forever to move through his system. Like, after he desisted, he was just still going through the waves of estrogen. And with regard to the gels and creams, I've heard, I read a horror story about a child that went through very rapid growth as a toddler, and it was because dad had testosterone cream that was passing to the kid through skin contact. And so it actually like impacted the kid. So yeah, those testosterone gels and creams are scary. You have to be really careful that nobody else ends up touching you.

James Linehan: Transference. They warned me of that. Oh, God, no. If you nexus someone, it could just get all over them. And females, and particularly kids or pregnant ladies, can get birth deforms with this kind of gel. It's a real mess, yes. But one of the key points is when they talk about development, The disorder I have, the symptoms of the disorder are the underdeveloped genitalia and underdeveloped mental cognition abilities. So, these go hand in hand. These are reflections of each other. So, the physical underdevelopment reflects the mental underdevelopment. There's no separation between physical and mental. And this is one thing that I keep hearing people, I hear medical professionals talk about it and they're just so wrong. When you talk about a child, I hear a lot about jazz, for instance, or someone, they don't have enough flesh to do the penile inversion. Have you heard of that? Yeah.

Stephanie Winn: Actually, let's clarify that though for listeners who might not know about this.

James Linehan: Okay. Because it's hard. It's harder to go in order. When you have a development disorder like I do… It can be caused by three ways. Mine is congenital, means I'm born with it, with an unknown cause, means I don't have any sort of genetic predisposition. There's Kalman syndrome, which is a genetic inherited condition. It also features things like missing kidneys and the inability to smell. So that's a genetic condition. The other time is you can get, You know, you can, military, you can get your, you know, get brain damage or whatever, or stroke can cause this. And the other thing is you can take Lupron. Lupron is a disease-causing drug, and it causes my condition within That's just mechanism for action. That's because when it was developed, it was specifically developed to help adults who had prostate cancer and they needed this, which are androgen sensitive. So they needed some way of shutting down the pituitary gland rather than going in and castrating them physically. They wanted to temporarily shut them down. So they developed this mechanism. this medication to do that, to induce my condition in the men so then they don't die of cancer, which makes perfectly sense. Moving forward. So, that's where Lupron came from. So, when they give Lupron in a, usually around 11 or 12 with a male, that's the first instance of puberty, they essentially stop the development. So, the body never develops. And then when doctors say things like, we don't have enough penile tissue, means the genital, the genital region has not matured, and we have to do all these other, like, go through colon, I think they're doing stomach, it's all sorts of very Frankensteinian, very experimental procedures.

Stephanie Winn: I'll just fill in a couple gaps for people who might just be hearing this for the first time. I know you and I have had a lot of these types of conversations. So Lupron is, as we were talking about earlier, a GNRH antagonist. So Lupron is one of the main name brands. And so this is the most popular puberty blocker. And like you were saying, it's used in certain conditions. I think you said prostate cancer. I know it's also given to women with endometriosis, I believe. And it's often called chemical castration. It's been given to sex offenders to stop them from being able to act on their inappropriate expression of urges. And so when you talk about inadequate penile tissue in the case of Jazz Jennings, What you're talking about is that someone like Jazz Jennings, who went on puberty blockers, also known as lupron, also known as GNRH antagonists at an early age, doesn't go through that normal development. And then there's not enough penile tissue for the penile inversion vaginoplasty, right? So someone like Jazz, you know, thinks he's female, thinks he's going to be better off having a neo vagina rather than the phallus he was born with. And penile inversion is a very complicated surgery that we've heard many horror stories about. And so it can't be done properly without enough penile tissue. And then as you were saying, they might use colon tissue. I've even heard of tilapia skin, like actual fish skin being used. So that's just a little bit of context for those who aren't familiar with little shop of whores that is so called gender affirming care. So when you talk about mental development, you're partly talking about your intellectual and cognitive capacities, but you're also talking about social and emotional development. What have you learned through your own experience as well as your research about the impact of either a condition like yours or the sort of iatrogenic equivalent, right, the chemical castration of the use of puberty blockers in terms of things like emotional maturity, perspective taking, emotional regulation, self-discovery?

James Linehan: When you have a pituitary gland that's been blocked, and which can be caused by both my condition and, you said, puberty blockers, is the development stops to the point that when they induce puberty blockers at 12 or 11 or 10 with females and males, their development freezes at that point. So, I and the people who have been put on puberty blockers are frozen basically at a developmental stage in time. So, the developmental stage stays at that point while the child chronologically ages. So, it's It's interesting that they've, I don't think they've ever had this type of, you know, where they actually induce this type of developmental, stopping a child development. But when you do that, their mental state stays as a pre-adolescent or an adolescent. So, they don't have any, they're emotional, psychosocial. other developments, including learning and other cognitive, like the ability to reason, certain cognitive abilities you develop in puberty, as well as their physical manifestations. Their genitalia does not mature. In women, they don't get breasts and they don't go and males, their genitalia doesn't mature and their voice doesn't lower and their hair doesn't, facial hair doesn't increase. So that happens and the child basically gets stuck. So even I was chronically going through a chronologically aging, and this is what the endocrinologist told my mother, I was stuck in that, that I was stuck at a certain age in development. And he said that your child needs to go through, get androgen treatment. We need to start him for puberty soon because he could lose sexual function. There could be neurological damage. There could be more permanent neurological underdevelopment, he said. And there could be the bones don't develop, they don't calcify, and there's various other things that happen with a child that is not going through puberty. And you only have a certain time. There's a window where puberty remains effective, where the body is ready to mature and you only have a certain amount of time before the, I guess you said that the the cells or something freeze and they don't develop anymore. So you could be permanently stuck in that state for the rest of your life. If you don't, it's not like this, you can start it or stop it whenever you want. It starts when the body starts and stops when the body stops. So it doesn't there's a very small window for you to do that. So, and that the development is both psychologically and sexually. So I was, so like before I, you know, I had a fondness or a interest in girls, but it wasn't sexual at all. It was very platonic. I did, you know, they were pretty, but I wasn't, you know, boys would talk about their breasts and stuff like that and all that with boys, you know, objectifying women and all that. And I didn't understand any of that. I was like, why would you do that? Why would you say that? So I wasn't at all until around 16 or 17 until I started going through treatment. at all aware of that part of male and female, you know, because I was, again, you know, I just played with girls and boys as, you know, as like brothers and sisters. I didn't see them as objects.

Stephanie Winn: So emotionally, what was that like for you, given that you were basically in this childlike state until the age of 16, at which point there was finally a diagnosis and a treatment plan and you went through this medically induced puberty? So then your body started to develop. You developed mentally and you developed sexual feelings. Since your experience of puberty was so different from the average boy's, I can imagine that it was like, oh, this is what they've all been going through. What was that like emotionally?

James Linehan: Um, so, that was, because, yeah, most people when they go through puberty don't even notice it. You don't even notice a change until it's, it, it, the major one. But, but there's a lot of little changes you, that you don't even notice. And I went through, like, snap. I mean, the aggression, I mean, you know, my body, when, when they injected me with androgen, it was, like, night and day. I mean, my body, like, oh, okay, now we start. You know, it's, like, it's been weighing around for, since it's, like, And then it was like I became very aggressive. It was very, very hard for me to control my emotions. Back during the 80s, they didn't, I don't think they had, they had psychotherapy, but.

Stephanie Winn: It wasn't usually as prevalent as it is today.

James Linehan: No, no. I never saw a psychologist. I only saw neurologists, a bone specialist, an endocrinologist, a urologist. Those were the five specialties they sent me to. And they all had a portion, and unfortunately they should have had a therapist to talk to me about these things, but that wasn't part of it. So it was very abrupt and it was very sudden. And then it's like, it's hard to scream. It's like, it's like, you know, it's like, you've been, look, you've been in this state, like you're swimming in water and suddenly you come on land. It's like, wow, this is a different, this is a completely different world. It put me into a completely different world very quickly and very suddenly. And, um, But the problem was, is I got there at around 18, 17 or 18 years old, and I was never, I never matured with my peers. So one thing I sent you a study, that this maturation by peers, that means your peers go through puberty and you go through puberty with them. So you're changing as they change, you're learning about relationships with them, you're learning about, you're fumbling around, you're doing all these stuff to learn about how to now operate or become adult-like relationship with the opposite sex. I missed all that. I was completely left out. So I still maintain today a part of me that thinks I'm still adolescent. So, you know, like, even though when I used to not change in front of other men, I still have difficulty doing that. I still can't go into locker rooms. I still have that adolescent part of me. It's not… it's just, it stays with me for the rest of my life because I never got that mature with, I had to sort of learn it all my own in my 20s, which is very awkward and strange because I, you know, you just had to fumble through it. So, um, that was, uh, a lot of the development I missed. It's very, it's, it's very hard to get back. It's not impossible. So, um, If that makes sense.

Stephanie Winn: And you sent me a study about people with your condition and there were high rates of singleness, which another unpopular truth is that there are also high rates of singleness amongst people who have gone through social and medical transition to try to live as though they were the opposite sex. Now, you mentioned before we started recording, though, that you're married. So congratulations, because I understand that your condition is a risk factor. So how did you, I mean, I don't know how much you want to share about your personal life or your relationship with your wife, but how did you kind of eventually find yourself where you are today?

James Linehan: Yeah. So how did I do that? Since I had a, since my parents were middle, upper middle class, I was able to spend a lot of time in like, I think I went to a junior college or a community college for like four years. I mean, it was like a record, not a record, but there's people that have been there for 20 years. But I went there for four years and I just basically shadowed, uh, you know, tried to learn from my peers and I had a lot of, uh, time because I didn't really have to work at that time to make up a lot of that stuff. So, um, and I was always very outgoing already because my father's very outgoing, my mother's very outgoing. So I already had that going for me. And, um, Uh, it's just like, I started, I think, in serious relationships around 26 years old. It was very, still very embarrassing. I would not share anything with my, at that, at that time, you know, people would talk about relationships and I would just be like leaving the room because I've, I found a whole uncomfortable. So, the other thing that people don't talk about is the fact that infertility is something that you start with. So, when you talk to people about infertility, they're talking about they get married, and then they want to have kids, and then they find out they're infertile. And then they work through that as a couple, and they go for infertility treatment. Well, when your infertility starts at age 16, you have to let future partners go, let them know about this about you. And it's very traumatic. And often they are, they're never, ever rude or mean. They're kind of like, okay, you know, they kind of drift away because they don't want to deal with that because you have to deal with that up front. You know, if they want to marry me, they have to understand that Having a child with me is like extra, extra work. It's medical work. It's not just you get pregnant, everybody's happy. There's already, they know that there's going to be some medical intervention required for me. And my current wife, I think is Chinese. I don't think she really understood. I think she explained it to her like 20 times.

Stephanie Winn: So the language barrier is responsible for your marriage.

James Linehan: Exactly, exactly. I just found… The prince's bliss. Yeah, I said, I told you five times. It's like, you know, it's, I don't know. And yeah, if you read that story, I mean, both, I don't have any biological children, and I know my wife wants some, and we're still, my wife's younger than me, but we're still working on that. I have to go, basically, because she's having signs of intermittent oceans, the term, where the ovaries become inflamed, starts with an E. Endometriosis? Yes, yes, yes. She has that running in her family. So she had one of her ovaries removed already, so became inflamed. So it's heading into a, I have to call up her doctor and try to explain this, and I don't exactly know how this is going to work. So that's what you have to go through. And it's all unknown. It's all mysterious. It may work, it may not. This fertility treatment may work, this fertility treatment may not. And a lot of these detransitioners It's the same thing with them. They don't know. They have to explain to their future partners, well, maybe, I don't know, I was on androgen for three years, we don't know. So that's a real toll on relationships, particularly the starter relationship, let alone all the hormone side effects and stuff like that.

Stephanie Winn: And it sounds like another dimension of the emotional rocky transition you had into adulthood and you wrote about this in your article on Lisa Sullivan Davis's blog was that you went from being immature for your age to suddenly dealing with the harsh reality of being a medical patient and having to navigate, you know, things like understanding your future issues with fertility and that you're going to have to go through these painful injections for the rest of your life. And that must have been a really heavy way to start out adulthood.

James Linehan: Yes. Yeah. So with the injections, like for instance, I would date and they would figure out I'm injecting myself with things like.

Stephanie Winn: Oh no. Yeah. Red flag.

James Linehan: Yeah, it's a red flag, by the way. It's a red flag. And like, why are you rejecting this stuff? Well, it's this. And it's like, what? It's not what you think. No, no, it's not that. It's this other thing. Do you have diabetes? They thought I had cancer. Just all sorts of things. It's like, okay, let me explain how the pituitary gland, I'll get graphs up and we can discuss this thing. It's like, no. So, I don't know. You just have to find some partner, woman, it just doesn't matter to them anymore.

Stephanie Winn: People who are gracious and maybe from a different culture apparently.

James Linehan: Apparently, yes, that works. It works. Let's just go over to the other pond, like China or Japan. They're a little bit more accepting because they don't understand this stuff. They're never taught this stuff. So you're dealing with a lot of prejudice and a lot of misunderstanding already when you start out relationships with all this medicalization and all this You know, I also have sleep apnea, which is common, and all this other stuff. I have these machines. Basically, you just stop caring. It's like, yeah, I know, I have this machine. I don't know what else to do. I have to put this machine, I have these injections. There's needles everywhere, because I have to go through not only adrenaline treatment, but I also go through HGC treatment, too, so I don't, because it causes, oh, it causes other, so I have to go through this other treatment, too, to make sure that I don't, it's atrophy or something like that. but because there's side effects to the androgen, even as a male. And, you know, I can talk a bit about what I think is going on, like with cross-sex hormones that

Stephanie Winn: Let's transition to that and so at what point, because you said that you were going through this originally in the 80s and for a long time you were just a person with a medical condition. And obviously that medical condition had a lot of impacts on your life. But it's only recently that you understood how your own condition was being made into this whole other thing by people who didn't necessarily have your best interests at heart. So at what point did you become interested in and aware of the gender culture wars and the misinformation that was being spread about people with DSDs and then learning that youth were being prescribed puberty blockers that basically induced the illness that you have. How did you come to all that?

James Linehan: Okay, so what I was peacefully searching YouTube, and you know YouTube, it just throws things in your face. I started seeing all these videos from these, like, basically young 20s talking about hormones they're taking, and I'm listening to them, and they're talking about, you know, these are just like antihistamines and stuff like that. I said, no, no, they're not like antihistamines. And then I would search for my condition online, and I found it on a trans website. And I'm like, what is transgender? So, I did not know what transgender was like five or six years ago. It's hard to remember when I didn't know. I feel like I've always known, but I actually did not know what it was. I understood transsexuals, and I've actually known quite a few because they kind of hang around people with hormones for some reason. Um, so I knew transsexuals and I've known a few and they've always been very shy and out of, you know, they've never been very, um, aggressive. They've always been very nice and courteous. And, but there's this new thing called transgender and they're taking hormones. And then I found out that they were blocking puberty. And then I said, well, why are they blocking puberty? And it's like, well, to figure out what people's gender are. I said that, that, Why would you block a person's puberty and then ask them about their gender? That seems like, you know, that seems like, you know, like, you know, bloodletting and wondering why they're getting so weak. You know, it sounded like some kind of wacko thing. So I kept looking into it and finally I found a video which explained to me that this, this Lupron actually does induce my condition." I said, oh my God, these people are just freaking wacko. So I'm listening to the endocrinologist, the gender affirming care endocrinologist and the physicians, and I'm reading all this stuff about how period blockers don't cause infertility. No, that's what's on a package. It says it on a package. Why are you saying this mad stuff? So I got more and more interested and then finally I found Twitter. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I'm not sure. Um, which sucks you right in. And, um, I started debating with them and I, you know, I eventually found myself into gender critical space. And, uh, then I finally found a few endocrinologists who explained to me what was going on. And I decided, well, uh, since I'm one of the rare people who actually have this condition, maybe I should talk about it a bit more. Maybe I should let people or parents know that these are developmental disorders. They're causing a developmental disorder to fix a psychological issue. And not only that, but the adolescents were complaining about gender dysphoria, which is body discomfort, discomfort in their developmental, and it's like, No, if you pause at puberty, that also causes problems, as I went through before, causes problems with my body image. So you're not only stopping development, inducing a developmental disorder, and causing body dysmorphia, what they call gender dysphoria, all to fix gender dysphoria, I wasn't And that's where I finally started realizing that they were actually causing the very condition they're trying to treat. And it's been like that ever since. It's still, it's like, if I can use an analogy, it's like if you had diabetes type two, I believe, And you woke up one day and you turn on the television, you just learned a bunch of people were getting their children's insulin blocks and their pancreas removed. You'll be like going, wait a minute, you don't want diabetes. That's a lifelong medical condition. Why would you want to give kids diabetes? I don't want diabetes. I don't like this condition. I want someone to fix me. You know, it's like, it's a very, very bizarre thing that I still don't understand why they are doing this. I still don't quite understand.

Stephanie Winn: I love sleep. Sound sleep is a crucial foundation of good mental and physical health, from mood and concentration to metabolism and cellular repair. And I sleep very well thanks to my Eight Sleep Pod Pro Cover. My side of the bed is programmed to be warm when I get in and cool down to a neutral temperature in the middle of the night so I don't wake up overheated like I used to. How would you customize your bed temperature? Visit 8sleep.com and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST to take up to $200 off your purchase. Even if they're already running another sale, this code will get you an additional $50 off. 8sleep currently ships not only within the USA, but also to Canada, the UK, select countries in the European Union, and Australia. Thanks for considering purchases that support the show. It sounds like right from the beginning it all just seemed so wackadoodle to you.

James Linehan: Yes.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah. And you understood that this is iatrogenic carb right from the beginning.

James Linehan: Yes, yeah, it's extragenic harm. And, you know, I just kept, and then they say they give them cross-sex hormones, you know. So, and I watched a jazz special as we all, that Nightmare special with that poor kid. And I'm watching them, I said, I see what they're doing. They are under the assumption that there's a trans something or other, or a trans soul in these children. And they're actually using cross-sex hormones. And remember, when you put cross-sex hormones into a child, the hormones, you're looking at the side effects of the hormones. So if I put androgen in you, you would get facial hair, and your voice would lower. But that's the side effects of androgen. That's not the development of androgen. Androgen only goes into males, and estrogen only goes into females. These two hormones are, as the endocrinologists kind of, they kind of went over this, they're the generals that only work as the proper sex. So you have to be a male for androgen to work on you, and you have to be a female for estrogen to work on you. Now, we do have some overlap in hormones, but that's not Hormones are sex-specific, and when you inject cross-sex hormones, it makes the child appear like they're female. Like, if you give Jazz a hormone, it causes a child to mature and look like they're female, but developmentally, Jazz is still an adolescent. Jazz is still an adolescent. And how you know that is when they say, we did that horrible surgery because their genitalia did not mature. That's a symptom of that child's underdevelopment. So there's a portion of that child is still underdeveloped. And the cross-sex hormones, the estrogen, has fooled you into thinking you're looking at a female mature, but you're not. And furthermore, when they say, when Marcy Bowers, which was the surgeon that did the operation on Jazz, she is also the she, he, or they, depending on what your perspective is, is also the WPATH head, WPATH is the medical organization that oversees transgender health care when she's the, or they, says that Jazz doesn't have any sexual function and she's repeated numerous times on shows saying that she's done hundreds of these surgeries and they're not orgasmic. That's another symptom of a development that hasn't properly, the child has not properly left their adolescence behind. They're still an adolescent. They're stuck in adulthood. They're taking cross-sex hormones. They are given surgeries that are highly experimental and have a fatality rate, unusually high fatality rate. And as I have experienced, because I have, you know, I've had Since I take androgen, my prostate has enlarged, like I would have already gotten BPH, which is when the prostate enlarges and starts squeezing the bladder and the neck, and men can't empty their bladder. I got that much earlier. I got that in my 30s. Now, my father and my grandfather got that in their 60s. But because I have to take androgen, that just happened to me a lot earlier. So I've had over five surgeries on my prostate because of it. And when people talk about not being able to empty their bladder, they're having pain, I was, you know, all this stuff is symptomatic of that area being completely which is a whole nother problem, because the bladder, I mean, this is kind of, the bladder, if it doesn't empty properly, that whole area is fraught with inflection. Inflammation. Inflammation. It's just, for both men and women, for different reasons, it's just an area that you do not want to touch with surgery. Even minor surgery can cause long-term consequences. And so they're stepping into most invasive experimental surgeries and things that could eventually lead to kidney failure, bladder failure, because the bladder wears out, it can't keep squeezing, infections that cause kidney damage, infections that can cause all other stuff. So when you're hearing those symptoms, those symptoms never go away. My symptoms never have gone away. And I'm 56, 55. I don't know. I stopped counting around 45. But I mean, I'm fine because I'm well within the medical establishment. But when somebody does these transitions, they're stepping outside into an experimental zone. And that's why they can't get care. So I

Stephanie Winn: Earlier, we were talking about how since this was happening to you in the 80s, there was a much more cautious approach to care at that time. And the endocrinologist or whatever specialist you were working with said, well, we can give you these hormones to mimic the ones that your body should be producing but isn't. But we'll never be able to exactly replicate Mother Nature's precise cocktail. And so you are going to basically have some impacts from this condition and from our best attempt at treating it. And I just see that in such stark comparison with what's happening these days, where not only are medical professionals recklessly inducing in physically healthy people this condition that you've had to live with, that's not fun and that's been expensive and had a lot of ripple effects for you, not only are they inducing that, but then Instead of telling people we'll never be able to exactly replicate a healthy condition, they're giving people cross-sex hormones. And as you were explaining earlier, there's a complex symphony happening in the body whereby every cell of your body, whether XX or XY is sort of programmed to respond to the hormones of your sex so that there are things that estrogen and progesterone and female hormones do in a female's body that they can't do in a male's body, and there are things that, you know, vice versa. So it's just such a stark comparison. And I'm wondering, since you are somebody who has been working with endocrinologists since you were a teenager, what's it been like for you to witness this shift in that community of medical professionals from being so careful to being so reckless?

James Linehan: It's kind of bizarre because I listen to them, because since I've had this condition, I've talked to over 40 different specialists, I would say from Stanford, from University of California. neurologists, bone specialists, just all sorts of people. So, when I walk in, they just basically tell me what's going on and tell me what they can do. And, you know, they're very upfront and they're very frank. I mean, when I was going through this, I didn't understand what they're really saying because they would talk about like fertility and all that to somebody who's an adolescent. They don't understand fertility. I mean, you're having You don't understand fertility until you want to have children. Well, why are you talking to an adolescent about that? But the amount of disinformation and basically fabrication they're telling people is just extraordinary. I mean, if they were correct in the fact they delivered cross-sex hormones, then they would simply give cross-sex hormones and the kid would magically magically turn into a female and that's not what happens just they simply stop the development and they Just simply change the like a Revlon product. It's like covergirl or something. It's just they're just this is like a makeover and And then they have to go through all these hoops and ladders because they have to convince the family, and they convince the parents, and they convince the kid that this is some sort of medical, like established science or something like that. And it's far from established science. It's not even in that area. What it is, is it used to be in extremely experimental procedures that were done with adult endocrinologists who were a little bit more risky, who had a patient who may want to transition or become a transsexual at the time. But those people were very rare, and they would get a lot of warnings, and they would put a lot of roadblocks because they knew they were going off the beaten path of established science and into the kind of the experimental area. But now they're actually telling people that this is established science, and it's not. And you could tell it because there's all these bad outcomes, including jazz.

Stephanie Winn: Earlier in the conversation, we talked about how you're, well, that it's not necessarily fair to say that there is such a thing as a DSD community, DSD standing for disorder or difference of sexual development, that, you know, any more than there is a diabetes community. But that being said, I know from previous spaces we've done together that you have connected with other people who have also been active, who have various DSDs. So in your exploring how other people with DSDs feel about trans activism and how they've co-opted and distorted intersex narratives, what are some of the sentiments that you've run into in talking to other people?

James Linehan: So, yes, we now have this small but growing community of people with all various forms of development, including chromosome disorders, Kleinfelders. We actually have the legendary XX males who have XX chromosomes yet are fully male. It's because one of the X chromosomes just behaves like a Y chromosome. And they all tell a similar story of health conditions, impacts on life, impacts on relationships, having difficulty maintaining relationships, infertility, lack of children. And we all have a similar story. you know, they throw these conditions out on the web, and this is mainly to confuse people. I mean, they're using the conditions primarily to distort biological sex, saying that these conditions exist, therefore biological sex is not a binary, but a spectrum. And that's not what's happening. What's happening is, We have these conditions that sometimes you have duplicate chromosomes or things that don't work right, or androgen receptors that don't function. And these cause all these other health problems throughout life, including infertility and learning disabilities and ADHD, emotional problems, depression. I've heard one person with mosaic Kleinfelder's, which is that XXXYYY condition, had heart surgery when she was 12. So, they have all had these horror stories of dealing with medical problems that were very difficult to treat or untreatable, basically. And to watch these people be used to basically badger people into thinking that their children are not really like boys and girls, but they, you know, born in the wrong body. It's just, it's really demeaning. It's really, It's really bothering because it's one thing to, you know, if you want to, some of the people are probably, you know, people with Androgen Sensitivity Syndrome, with complete Androgen Sensitivity Syndrome, are more likely to buy into gender ideology because they have XY chromosomes and they feel a little excluded by society. But that's about all. And the rest of us are just stuck with those people as people who talk about all these conditions. And it's really demeaning. And the other thing I want to say is my condition specifically, I sent that study to you, like 85% of the men with this condition don't have their own biological children. And I'm that the easiest to fix, the rest of the DSTs are much harder to fix. But I'm like, they can actually, in most, in like 80% of the people, they can actually induce sperm production, have you father children. But the trauma of growing up like I did and the expense and the medicalization takes a toll and people just don't, there's just too much to go through, to go through another fertility, to go through more medical treatment, I mean, I've even, you know, they've talked about, well, we can slice up your testicle and take the sperm out. I said, I don't want to do that because what happens then? It's just pain all my life. I don't quite. So there's all these things that they are just either glossing over or not even talking about, which these poor people who are going through these transitions these transitioners are just going to keep stumbling into as they get older. They're going to go, they're going to stumble into something else. And you can, you can talk to them. They could, well, this has happened to me. I said, oh yeah, that's right. That's the side effect of the hormone. Or like, no one's dating me because I sound like a man, but I'm a woman. I said, yeah, that's the side effect of androgen. So they're just stumbling along in the dark. And it's just, it just breaks my heart to see this, all these people who had, who, who, who had perfectly healthy endocrine systems be manipulated into this medicalization, which they can never leave. They can never opt out of the medicalization, okay? I was born with this disorder, and they gave me the best medical treatment they could for my disorder. But to take a child, an adolescent, and to induce any sort of intervention or hormones, not absolutely necessary. It's a human rights violation. It's beyond abuse to have, and it's beyond abuse to the parents, too, to manipulate them into thinking that this is some sort of thing that's gonna remedy their psychological issues. So, again, it's just heartbreaking. It's just it just it just it bothers us every single day that this is going on. I hope that answers your question.

Stephanie Winn: It does. And you say that it's demeaning. And it also strikes me that there's a real irony to the whole situation, which is that the trans rights activists, you can't really separate them from social justice warriors. Often there's overlap, right? They're the same people. And we know that some of the beliefs associated with so-called social justice, which I think is really anti-social and unjust, but the, you know, so-called social justice mentality, There's a lot of talk and concern about things like privilege versus oppression. And it strikes me that they're taking for granted one of the greatest privileges of all, which is to be healthy. That, you know, not only are they demeaning you and other people with conditions like yours who you didn't choose it, and if you could choose to be Well, let me put it this way. There's this whole idea of being born in the wrong body, right? Now, you accept the body that you were born with and the unique struggles that come with it. But if you could have chosen to be born in a healthy body, that sure would make life a lot easier, right? So this idea that there are people who reject the healthy bodies that they were given and then lump themselves in together with people like you who have faced I would say not oppression, but disadvantage, misfortune, hardship, and in the process display such disregard for the health of their bodies and to act like it's something that can be thrown away. It's like the ultimate flaunting of privilege. You can now watch No Way Back, the reality of gender-affirming care. This medical ethics documentary, formerly known as Affirmation Generation, is the definitive film on detransition. Stream the film now or purchase a DVD. Visit nowaybackfilm.com and use promo code SUMTHERAPIST to take 20% off your order. Follow us on Twitter at 2022affirmation or on Instagram at affirmationgeneration.

James Linehan: Yeah, yes. It's a, you know, it's, I was reading up on the lobotomy scandals of the 40s and 50s. And, you know, there's books on it. It's like one book was 700 pages, trying to go through all this stuff. It's a very, very complex thing. But the one thing that they were clear about is one thing that fewer lobotomies, even if a lot of the physicians at the time, even at the time, were like, I don't think we should, this is very experimental, we should do more experiments, or we should do more testing. And a lot of them even said, this is awfully invasive to destroy a portion of the brain. And this is a time when psychiatry was in its infancy, and it seems it's never been out of its infancy, but that's another story. So, one thing that they said would fuel it is ambitious doctors and ambitious hospitals and ambitious professionals who wanted to gain status and gain prestige because this procedure was so quick and it seemed to deliver such quick results. It was very quick. And the fact is most of the, like mental health was viewed as very, it was very, people didn't like people with mental illnesses and there were a lot of stigma around them. So they took advantage of these patients. And they took advantage of them to actually improve their careers, to get money, to promote them. And they left a lot of them unable to function anymore, have to be taken care of. You know, they were functional people. And they were just, after the lobotomy, they lost all their ability to even take care of themselves. And it was such a tragedy because these people were manipulated and taken advantage of for doctors. And you see that going on today. You see the doctors with the same sort of evangelical, getting positions, getting paid, appearing on CNN, getting promotions. on the backs of parents and kids and adolescents who they're destroying their lives. They're destroying the rest of their lives. They can go off and they can get extra positions and go to Stanford, medical boards. And these kids are just going to deal with problems and tragedy and health issues ranging from rheumatoid arthritis to diabetes to, as I said, worse, complete sexual dysfunction, not being able to enjoy sex at all. No children. It's just, it's just devastating. And that's, that's the ultimate portrayal is a professional who should know better, take advantage of their patients. So, you know.

Stephanie Winn: Sounds like there's this common theme in both what you've seen with the lobotomies and, oh, I learned something interesting today, actually. I just interviewed Heather Hying, and so your interview will be coming out the week after hers. And she told me that about 100 years ago, there was a brief trend of doctors removing people's large intestines because they They didn't know what they were for, and they thought we didn't need them. They thought they were in the way. In the way of what? I don't know. But I mean, doctors have removed large intestines. They've sliced the corpus callosum with the lobotomies. And now this, right? Removing healthy body parts from vulnerable young people. And there's this kind of common theme in your observation of the psychology around it, this sort of attraction to fame and wealth and to being an innovator or a pioneer or being seen as having this magical cure-all, this quick fix. And it's a real I think cautionary tale against those parts of our own psyche that are drawn to making sort of deals with the metaphorical devil, if you will, to succumbing to temptation. And I say this not in any particular religious framework, but just that evil can take many forms and it can lure us and bait us in all kinds of ways, just with our own sort of human drives if we're not, you know, circumspect and introspective about them.

James Linehan: Yeah, so yeah, from my perspective, it's called, what is it called? Primary ignorance, or primary ignorance. People are ignorant of their own motivations, and they become obsessed with fame and fortune, and they become obsessed with their own identities and self. And this causes in like Eastern traditions, an obsession with their own self-importance. And this causes great suffering. So this is another aspect of this is the obsession with the self and self-realization and finding your real self. And it's merely a fabrication of a bunch of ideologues in education who have come up with, somehow there's these people born in the wrong body and they need to be fixed and cured with medical interventions. And there's also, when I was going through my treatment, there was actually another scandal. Endocrinologists, I mean, they're like the mad scientists of medicine. But endocrinologists for like 30 years, they were given growth hormones. I mean, they offered me growth hormones, but it was toward the end, so they just stopped. They didn't offer it to me. But they were giving growth hormones to males, and they were actually using some sort of puberty blocker on females to mess with their height because they thought that, you know, that if the woman gets too tall, they couldn't find mites, and if men were too short, they would have problems fitting in or something like that. There's a book called Struggle to be Normal, or Normal at All Costs, that's what it calls, and it talks about growth hormones in the 40s and 50s that they took out of cadavers and all this kind of stuff to experiment with people's hormones. And it left a lot of people, it was like, it was kind of like a mini version of what's today. Today is pubi blockers and cross-sex hormones. Then it was hormones and trying to get people, messing with people's heights to fit into gender categories, ironically. And this went on for 30 or 40 years until they stopped it. And again, no research, just simply, let's try and do this thing to see what happened. And it was, again, the person who talked about it was about a bunch of physicians who were just just indoctrinated into the fact they wanted to make history, they wanted to get in the record books, they wanted to promote their careers, they wanted to, you know, get, you know, the boards, and they used these experimental procedures on patients who didn't know better. So, that's another scandal. It's a lot of scandals, I'm telling you. Particularly in endocrinology and psychiatry. These two are some of the most… likely you are to see scandals in these areas. And I think it's because of the power of the hormones. Because androgen was created originally to treat people like me who couldn't mature and treat Kleinfelders. So it was developed specifically to treat diseases. Now, as soon as they developed it, they simply started abusing it. They used it for conversion therapy on gay and lesbians at one point.

Stephanie Winn: But it always starts… Wait, so you're going to have to explain that a little bit. At one point, they were using androgen and estrogen to attempt to convert people's sexuality?

James Linehan: Yes, yes, yes. So when they invented in the 40s, they created it specifically to treat conditions because they understood that people were castrated in war or they had, you know, accidents or they just were like me. They were born with either bizarre, they were born with Kleinfeld or other conditions. So they wanted to develop, they understood that the testicles produced androgen and or produced a chemical that causes maturity, and they understood the reverse in females. So they developed it, and they thought they found, and people used it, and they started injecting it into gay males. I think they did this to Turner, the great scientist, when they found out he was gay. They actually injected it, because they figured that these men were, somehow feminine and they could masculinize them with hormones. So they actually used it as an attempt to convert gay males into, you know, of course it doesn't work, it just increased their, increased their desire for some reason. But they did that. I mean, there's all sorts of stories about them giving androgen out on the streets of San Francisco to lesbians to make them more masculine.

Stephanie Winn: There's a story in our film No Way Back, Joey Bright, she's older lesbian de-sister who has stories I believe in the 80s of what she believed were big pharma reps going to lesbian bars and saying, I have something that you want, testosterone and showing them little vials. So yeah, I guess this has been known for a while, just like we've actually known for a while that, big surprise, cutting off your genitals is not good for mental health.

James Linehan: Who knows? Who would predict that? Who would predict that? They're also doing, I mean, I was like, for instance, you know, they've been doing mastectomies on young girls at age 12 to remove their breasts. That's just, I mean, that would be, in my day, in the 80s, would be absolutely absurd. I mean, they would They wouldn't even give, like people, like women who wanted their tubes tied, they would say, no, we don't want to do that. Even if they had kids, they said, no, we don't want to do that. They would never intervene. And I think it's because they were coming off the scandals I said before about the growth hormone and the lobotomies and all that were going on. So there was a brief period of time when the physicians were like, okay, we're just going to do what minimum amount of intervention possible just to fix the problem. And we're not going to go down this road of messing with people's hormones or trying to use energy to create heterosexuals or anything like that. We're just going to do our minimum. But unfortunately, we left that in the in the dustbin of history, and we're back experimenting, and this time doing extraordinary experiments. I mean, this is just absolutely, it's the most, the biggest medical scandal ever in at least 100 years, because lobotomies were based on the fact that there were no treatment for heavily schizophrenic people. So there was a small, you could understand why they would develop lobotomies, because they had no other treatment for these people. But this is just like they denied known science around puberty. Puberty has been known since the 40s. They've known this for quite some time, and it would require a level of denial, unprecedented, to just reject all the established science and just go off on this other path. It's extraordinary.

Stephanie Winn: Well, James, we're very fortunate to have your voice speaking out on this issue as someone with that lived experience of your body, as as in the title of your blog post on Lisa Sullen Davis's Substack, that your body functions as its own puberty blocker. So really grateful for your perspective. I'll make sure to include the link to that article in the show notes. And is there anything else you'd like people to know about where they can find you?

James Linehan: You can reach me on Twitter and I'm always willing to talk or go on podcasts or whatever you want. You can just find that and you can email me and I'll be as biggest, best assistance I can. But thank you very much for your time.

Stephanie Winn: My pleasure. So I believe your handle on X is at XYDMU, is that right? Yes. I put that in the show notes as well.

James Linehan: I can send that to you, yes.

Stephanie Winn: Okay, such a pleasure having you. Thank you for your time today. I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast. To check out my book recommendations, articles, wellness products, guest episodes on other podcasts, consulting services, and lots more, visit sometherapist.com or follow me on Twitter or Instagram at sometherapist. If you'd like to go deeper, join my community at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. Members can dialogue with other listeners, post questions for upcoming podcast guests to respond to, or ask questions for me to respond to in exclusive members-only Q&A live streams. To learn more about the gender crisis, watch our film, No Way Back, The Reality of Gender-Affirming Parents, at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to my producers, Eric and Amber Beals at Different Mix, and to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, Half Awake. If you appreciate this podcast and want more people to find it, kindly take a moment to rate, review, like, comment, and share on your platforms of choice. Of course, just because I am some therapist doesn't mean I'm your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. If you need help, ask your doctor or browse your local therapists online. And whatever you do next, please take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, move your body, get outside, and tell someone you love them. You're worth it.