You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 93. Sara Stockton COMPRESSED.mp4
Sara Stockton: We were supposed to be telling these kids, like, you're making a decision that could alter your life, the length of your life, the treatment of your life, the medical necessities that you will need. The informed consent piece of it was an added part that we did focus on and tried to develop and tried to be able to assess with children. As we did that, the problems did come that How are we able to determine if a child was able to really make an informed decision, and were parents able to make an informed decision?
Stephanie Winn: You must be some kind of therapist. Today I'm speaking with Sarah Stockton, licensed marriage and family therapist. She is a lecturer, researcher, presenter, and clinical supervisor of a psychotherapy practice in central New York. In 2013, Sarah co-authored and published one of the first mental health assessments in the United States utilized to assess youth readiness for medical treatment and gender transition. In 2016, after the parent of a trans-identified youth patient committed suicide and Sarah met her first detransitioner, she stopped focusing on gender issues and refocused toward her original interest in sex therapy. Sarah waited six years, until 2022, before speaking out on what she saw and experienced during her time focusing on gender issues. And since then, she has appeared on Matt Walsh's documentary, What Is a Woman?, on Jordan Peterson's podcast, and on Gender, A Wider Lens. Sarah, thank you for joining me. It's great to have you. Thank you for having me. It's good to be here. So you've shared your story in a couple places, but one thing that you haven't shared before that you gave me permission to share is your age. We are the same age, and I think that's relevant to your story. Because when I listened to your previous interviews, and I was thinking about the timeline, I was like, I wonder how old she was when she was going through that. Turns out you were quite young. So you and I are both 38 as of the time of this recording. I graduated from, well, I started grad school in 2010 and graduated in 2013. You completed grad school in 2010. So you were 25 when you finished grad school. But you were involved in this gender stuff in grad school really in your early 20s. And I think that's part of the story that we need to focus on because early 20s, What a time in life. I talk to a lot of parents of people in their early 20s, and unfortunately, sadly, the parents of people in their early 20s I talk to, their kids are really not doing well. That's why they're so worried about them. But even for those of us who were accomplished and successful at that age, doing things like engaging in graduate school, for example, it's still a nerve-wracking time of life because you're a little baby adult and you're trying to prove your worth in the world and, you know, have faith that you can have a meaningful career, that you're going to be respected and liked, that you can do the things that you need to do to survive. And I really think this is an interesting part of your story, that the fact that You, as one of the authors and publishers of one of the first mental health assessments in the United States used for youth gender transition, this was coming from graduate students in their early 20s. This was not, I mean, I'm sure you had guidance from people who were older. And maybe you can kind of describe some of the social dynamics to the extent that you're willing to talk about your former colleagues. But the fact that you were so young, right, and that your interest in human sexuality had been immediately kind of channeled in grad school into the gender issue, I thought was super interesting. You also shared before we started recording that out of all the people you worked with, you were the only one to go on to have children. And that was part of what changed your perspective. So let's start there. Tell us about early 20s grad student Sarah and the social dynamics around that.

Sara Stockton: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I think about this a lot, what kind of happened, what is going on as I intern students now, and I think there's a variety of things to consider. One is When you think about going into a field, like even borderline schizophrenia when we were taught it, I think we were given a pretty good history of like when schizophrenia was coming out, you know, 70s, what was the treatment, what's happened, what's going on. And when I think back to gender, when we were presented at our first couple trainings, like we knew that this was a thing that was happening for a long time, but we were never presented with, OK, John Money is a big character in this. I had never heard of him before. We were not presented with, OK, here are the first trans surgeries that were done and here were the success of that here. What were the failures? It was almost as if it was completed science, I think. And that is where I started to learn to just trust people, right? I just thought that there's a group of people that had the best ideas and have thought a lot about this and have come to a conclusion based on a lot of evidence that this would be the best treatment possible. I also think we when we were being taught it back then that we were there was a real sense of how rare this would be like specialized treatment that would be not something that the general public would be so um known and and think about i i i tell you one of the biggest shifts that happened from when i started until now I mean, 10 years ago, you wouldn't have children and have a conversation be if my kid ended up trans, I would be OK. Now, that's a conversation that people have constantly now. And it's just like, where did that come? How did we even begin to think about it? So the fact that the general public is concerned about something that's supposed to be point zero zero one seven of the population is quite alarming of a shift.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, so you're talking about prevalence and so when you were in grad school, it was still the DSM-IV because when I was in grad school, which was right after you, we were being alerted, hey, you're studying the DSM-IV now in psychopathology class, but DSM-V is right around the corner. Then it came out in 2013, the year I graduated. And I've looked at the gender dysphoria section of the DSM-5, and if you look at the prevalence section, it's like, wow, okay, so these statistics are at least 10 years old, and it's all 0.0-something percent, depending on, you know, the age and sex, right? So at the time, you thought that you were becoming a specialist in a rare condition. And although looking back, you have this kind of 20-20 hindsight where you're like, wait a minute, the way that we were taught about this is different from the way we're taught about other things. We weren't taught the history of the diagnosis and treatment of this condition. But as a grad student, you presumed that you were being taught things with a solid evidence-based. So it must have been quite alluring to you as someone with a very particular interest in human sexuality, as someone who wanted to focus on matters of sexuality in your therapy practice, that you were becoming a specialist in this relatively rare condition.

Sara Stockton: Yeah, I mean, I think the peculiar, actually, I think that's always been kind of my lean towards sex in general or even the interest of kind of what wasn't typical or You know, when I was presented and taught in this, we were way more accustomed to seeing male to female transsexuals just in nature and just learning about that. We were presented with an underlying hypothesis around the brains being similar. Now, there was never a worksheet handed out that said that. I wish I could find something that said that. But I do think we were taught under this, like, subtle impression that there was something potentially going on with these kids that were different. We just haven't found out biologically, neurologically exactly what that is. So I still think it was under this impression of like there's something atypical around this person, not that it's just like a choice.

Stephanie Winn: So at what point in your graduate education were you sort of invited to participate in this project of writing these guidelines?

Sara Stockton: I believe like in the first semester you were introduced to our supervisor who was well known for working with the transsexual community at the time, that's the terminology we used, and she had just published a hormone assessment to utilize for adults. So that would be, you know, like 2005, 2006. And we have in 2007 in the Dutch Netherlands, they are coming out with the Dutch protocol, which really introduced the use of human hormone blockers being introduced to children at a younger age to sort of pause puberty in order for them to potentially figure out their identity, minimizing any risks of going through the quote-unquote wrong puberty. So with that introduction that came out and the WPATH guidelines changing for youth to be considered for these hormones and for these medical treatments, we did need to develop an assessment to use that. And I would say the biggest difference between the adult and the child assessment was first the systemic aspect of it of including the parents equally if not more in terms of understanding the narrative of the child's story and getting like school context in early early onset context because you have to understand in 2008, 2010, we do have to have the qualifier of an early onset of gender distress, whereas now that is not what is needed.

Stephanie Winn: I want to talk about the Dutch protocol a little bit. Yeah. And for those who aren't familiar, you can Google it, or maybe we'll break it down in this episode. Who knows? But what I do want to point out about the Dutch protocol is whenever I've thought about it, it strikes me like it's weird that the term protocol is used. Because what I actually think it is is a hypothesis. It's an untested hypothesis, right? So observation, male to female transsexuals don't pass as female easily. Why? Because the sex differences are in every cell of your body, and they're structural. You know, I see – I live in Portland, Oregon. I see a lot of transsexuals around town, you know, the shoulder to hip ratio, the angle of the face, the length of the fingers, I mean, all of these kind of things, right? So anyway, hypothesis. Male to female transsexuals who had set their sights on transition as something that would make them happy end up disappointed and unhappy. They're not satisfied. So, our hypothesis is that, you know, not that there's something wrong with the idea of becoming the opposite sex in the first place, but the hypothesis is, oh, it's that they don't pass enough, and they would be happier if they passed better. Now, I don't know what that hypothesis was based on. It seems like a wild guess to me. Like, it seems just as likely that you could say, well, maybe We're thinking about this the wrong way. But so the hypothesis is, well, the reason for the unhappiness is that they don't pass well enough. And that's because they went through male puberty, so they're tall and big-boned with broad shoulders and deep voices. And so, therefore, if only we could identify early in life who these people are who are likely to grow up to be these transsexuals, and we can block their puberty and stop them from going through these masculinizing features, and again, it was mostly males at the time, then they'll have a better shot at being happy transsexuals. Now, to me, that's all a hypothesis. It's based on a lot of hypotheticals.

Sara Stockton: and hypotheticals but I think personal opinion and that yeah the more I think about it and you're almost framing it and I think you're right that for a male to female but what I started to really see and and some people ask me like why do you think people are more apt to fall for this or fall for, you know, this ideology. And, you know, I've been considering it more of a cult recently. And my answer to that is I don't think I valued my own identity enough. Interesting. Because I accepted that it would be traumatizing for a born female to go through puberty and to go through a period. So it was all these things of like, yeah, I mean, the period is so distressing. Like, why would we, let's just pause it. Let's just stop it. Let's just not have it come. And that's because I valued discomfort more than the natural processes that our body's going through that's very healthy. Had I had a value for that in myself, I think I would perhaps think differently. You know, it's taken a lot of me hearing men report back to me what they think a female is to be like, oh, that's the value that you place on women for me to be like, well, if we really valued ourselves and what we're talking about, I don't know if I would have. fell for this as much.

Stephanie Winn: I want to kind of frame that in contrast to this idea of trans-exceptionalism, right? So when you talk about valuing your own identity in relation to the struggles of female puberty, well, when you were in grad school, female puberty was not that far behind you in the rearview mirror. And I don't know what it was like for you, but it was really rocky for me, and it was really rocky for a lot of women. And I think with this trans-exceptionalism that capitalizes on naivety and agreeableness, A lot of, I want to say, especially us white middle-class women who are in the helping professions more than anyone are kind of duped into forgetting our own so-called lived experience, which is ironic because lived experience is like valued so much in the woke ideology, but not the lived experience of white middle-class women, right? But, you know, it's like, well, wait a minute. I struggled, I had a really hard time, whether it was the pain or the embarrassment of periods, whether it was PMS, whether it was your boobs were embarrassingly big and grew too fast, or your boobs weren't big enough and you didn't feel good enough as a woman because of how the boys were talking about girls. You know, there are a million ways that puberty can be incredibly distressing for girls. And what you're saying, I hear, is that this trans exceptionalism sort of allowed this fog to come between you and the truth where you weren't able to see, wait a minute, I'm not that different from this 15-year-old girl in my office. She's not struggling with anything I didn't struggle with. It's not like there's this new separate class of humans called trans people that have problems that are wholly different from the rest of us. And then the same thing when it applies to autogynephilic males in particular, and we'll talk about autogynephilia because you said that you were not taught about this in grad school, which is super interesting. But what I want to bookmark just for now about that is that you had men, it sounds like, speaking about women in some pretty gross ways and reducing our identity down to body parts and mannerisms. you didn't value yourself enough as a woman to allow yourself to feel an aversion to the objectification there.

Sara Stockton: And we're taught not to. And that's my biggest fear of watching these new interns is that I keep hearing them say I'm just squashing my natural instincts. I know it's not right. It's not helping. But this is not what we're taught. So I was just like, what's the dangers of all of us squashing our instincts, our intuition. I mean, even that's what's happening with these hormones too, is innately, men and women have different evolutionary signals that they pick up on, and we could be in real danger if we're not attending to those.

Stephanie Winn: So autogynephilia, you were not taught about this in grad school. So this is, again, one of these very confounding elements of your story, where on the one hand, The desire in you that I'm sure so many young people feel at that age to be, you know, to be told that you're doing a good job by your professors, to be recognized as a therapist with potential. You know, that sort of seductive element of being encouraged that you're moving in a positive direction.

Sara Stockton: Everyone wants their niche from the beginning, right?

Stephanie Winn: Like, that's a big thing. So you're being sort of like groomed as a specialist, and you feel good about that. It's giving you a sense of competency and worth, which are important things to cultivate in your early 20s. And on the other hand, again, hindsight being what it is, you can look back and say, I was made to think I was an expert, but nobody even taught me about autogonophilia or John Money. So what were the missing things that you weren't being taught at grad school?

Sara Stockton: I mean, one of the things when I look back at what I told people and what was on our published article is that we state that puberty blockers are irreversible. and have no side effects, you know, and I'm embarrassed to admit that it's taken me this long. It took me a long time in life to be like, wait, what? There's no medications that have no side effects, including aspirin. So, I mean, my interns are still being taught that today, that that's irreversible and that there's no side effects. When you mean that it's reversible, Yes, excuse me. Yes, yes, yes. It's reversible. Yes, yes.

Stephanie Winn: It's completely reversible. So you were taught that then, and students are still being taught now. Still being taught that. And to be clear, we're talking about therapists, not medical professionals, so people who shouldn't be expected. to understand medicine are basically kind of being duped even though their role is also being co-opted and used to promote medical intervention. So it's sort of like the fact that therapists shouldn't be expected to know how like gonadotropin-releasing hormone blockers work, Or GNRH agonists, I believe it is, or antagonists, I would get it confused. But again, I get it confused. I'm allowed to get it confused. I'm a therapist, right? I'm not an MD. So anyway, the fact that therapists are naive about these things is sort of being used where they're given just enough information to sell therapists on this role of pushing the medical stuff.

Sara Stockton: Yeah, and I think that's a really important point of this, is that, yeah, I wasn't a medical doctor and I am suggesting this. Not only are we suggesting it, it is like, at this point, demanding it as the only way to treat suicidality, which is, you know, there's nothing in the market that you can prescribe for suicidality right now. But I didn't realize, and that's what really hurts me now, is I was a drug pusher, more or less. And if you are promoting one way of treatment, and again, I don't think in the beginning it was so clear. Your goal is to get them on hormones. That wasn't the goal from the beginning. It slowly became the goal because the kids knew that was the goal. So we didn't necessarily have an end goal in mind in the beginning. That was just an option. It quickly became, well, this is step one, this is step two, this is step three of treating this. And there's no other diagnosis that I treat that there's only one way of treating it, nor one medication that isn't FDA approved to treat something. So that was how I found out, was that a parent really came at me around, you really are mandating a non-FDA approved drug on a minor, on a 10-year-old, with what evidence?

Stephanie Winn: At that point, you were established as an expert and you felt so embarrassed to not know this.

Sara Stockton: Yes, because I assumed, again, from the higher-ups and FWPath and the DSM and APA and every endocrinologist that I'm working with is on board on this and we must know what we're doing here. This must have some sort of backing.

Stephanie Winn: But it didn't. Are you a therapist looking for a professional community that hasn't gone mad? Consider joining Critical Therapy Antidote. CTA provides a platform for clinicians, trainers, and supervisors who want to protect traditional therapy. This international network brings together therapists like you with a range of opportunities for networking and professional development, including talks by distinguished speakers, group peer consultations, webinars, trainings, and professional development seminars. Visit sometherapist.com slash cta to learn more. That's sometherapist.com slash cta. Now you said that this we we have reached a time that for you know if a youth utters the word trans or the word gender and there's any mention of suicidal ideation or in some cases shockingly even if there isn't That this is sold as the only way to treat it. Now, I'm curious, as someone who – because you specialized in grad school. I did not. I was given a more general education in marriage and family therapy, integral counseling psychology. So I don't know what it's like to go through grad school with a very specific focus. Were you given treatment, or excuse me, were you given training in suicide assessment that was separate from your training in gender issues?

Sara Stockton: Separate from gender issues, no. And I will say this is that, ironically, my transgender youth were not the highest risk clients, suicidality-wise. And I assume that later, and this is, again, just my observation, the more I start to see teens presenting on the spectrum, the less they were inclined to actually participate in self-harming behaviors other than maybe like eating stuff but they were not self-harming themselves or cutting or actually had suicidal attempts. So that was another thing that I didn't actually see a lot. So I wasn't seeing a uh if I can't transition or because of this I'm gonna kill myself at all that wasn't something that was

Stephanie Winn: Interesting. Okay, so on the one hand, you have experienced sort of contrary to the narrative that these youth are at such increased risk of suicide and if you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But at the same time, you weren't trained in suicide assessment and treatment separate from gender issues. So what were you taught in grad school about suicide?

Sara Stockton: Yeah, no, so we did have suicide training, so I just wasn't connected to gender in particular, like doing anything different with them. Got it. If anything, you know, like later we would have a lot more teens maybe utilizing that as blackmail now, right, that that's more of a a tactic, but no, we did have a great deal of training in suicide ideality. So I did feel pretty comfortable going into that. And just for context, we would like for adults, there were people with comorbidities that we did not approve for hormones. So even back then, someone that was severely bipolar or erratic or was not able to take care of themselves from an adult level, we did hold on recommending hormones for everyone. So that's another thing that I saw in the beginning. It wasn't just like a stamp on every single person. But eventually, it became the gatekeeper can't be the gatekeeper anymore.

Stephanie Winn: Well, one thing I think I hear you saying is that The landscape has changed for gender issues in a number of ways since you were doing this work. One is, of course, we've seen that exponential increase, we've seen the widespread use of smartphones, we've seen, you know, a lot more on the internet now. Porn, right? Okay, so you're talking about how there was a difference between the youth that you were seeing in the early 2010s compared to the youth now in the 2020s, and one of those differences is that they weren't especially suicidal and you, it sounds like, attribute some of that difference to the fact that nowadays youth are being told online and by their peers that if you're trans, which is such an important part of your identity, then you should have these suicidal feelings. It's proof of how bad your dysphoria is and your parents and teachers and doctors and therapists all need to hear that because that's how you're going to get affirmed and transitioned.

Sara Stockton: Absolutely. And I think, I mean, even though I was seeing the youth, I think I would not be here in this position if I did not have the adults that I had. Because I was introduced to so many adults with the autogynephilic end of it, which I didn't realize, but also just so many of the crossdressers, so the, you know, male to female tendencies. that did not want to ever transition and who would speak about like if i were was growing up now like that probably would have been promoted to me um and really having to grapple with almost like the self-hatred that they are receiving towards their own sex the more and more this gender stuff is coming out the more it's triggering to them but i was aware like oh like not everyone is I don't know, is trans, if that's a thing, right? If that's actually an end goal or an identifier someone can end up with. Well, obviously, if someone is picking or may pick not to go that way, what is that about? What are they struggling with? That's where I was like, okay, this is way more sensory related. I had infant people wearing diapers. They all seem to overlap, which didn't require a change of identity.

Stephanie Winn: You said diapers very casually there.

SPEAKER_01: It's very similar, it's very similar. You're talking about adult male fetishes now.

Sara Stockton: Correct, but what they talk about when they put on the diapers, the sensory feelings, like it's all ass people, like when you are experiencing You know the other gender or living as the other gender like what are you feeling and the words always come back to us like comfort myself peace Inner, you know, like those are the exact same things people who wear diapers Tell me so it's like it's really like they put on something and it transforms them and allows them permission to experience themselves in a way that they wouldn't when they and other you know, non-pretend play, I guess I would call it. And I was like, okay, this sounds so similar, but they're not. This isn't a trans-ageism scenario. This is almost like a sensory, this is how people are calming their nervous systems.

Stephanie Winn: I just, my brain starts to scramble when we talk about this stuff. I'm like, what? I mean, I'm thinking about, okay, there's the regression. So if you're talking about comfort, yes, well, some people feel comfort when they regress. But I also question the sincerity at this point. Unfortunately, I question the sincerity of what anyone with any gender-related ideation says to a therapist because of how much they're being groomed to say online. And we know that things like, you know, diaper fetishes, well, that's These are fetishistic males who are watching a lot of porn. There's probably high incidences of narcissism and sociopathy in this population. Immediately, my heckles go up.

Sara Stockton: Stephanie, I would understand if I didn't have such a bizarre clientele. Bizarre in not a bad way. Bizarre meaning these people don't masturbate. These are not sexual. actions. These are often, a lot of times, very spiritual men.

SPEAKER_02: So that was actual meaning of God, like in the communities.

Sara Stockton: Christians. Yes. Yes. Yep. So I have, I kind of feel people who do not watch porn, who do not masturbate, who never participate in a masturbation, almost as if it's like an aversion to themselves. So there are so many things that I have witnessed around like, oh, this isn't completely sexual in nature. I almost I wish it was. Why? What makes you say that? In the simple form, like, if it was completely sexual in nature, the sin frame would be really easy to reference and work through. But when it isn't necessarily like that, and it is like, I've been doing this since I've been five, and it gives me a relief like no other, okay, we're talking about a coping skill that is deeply connected into identity. Now, is humiliation a piece of this? Probably, right? Like this aspect of almost putting yourself at a lower position is definitely what the men are seeking out in this. And that's what is very confusing about this too, is just the men and women do it very differently, in my observation. Men, I say, they really want to fit the image that they're looking at. They want to fit in with women, whereas women always are telling me they don't fit in where they belong. So it's like, Women don't feel a connection to their group. And men is not talking about, I don't feel connected to my group as much as I just love women. I don't hear women say, I just love men. That's why I want to be a man. It's just I love them. But when I hear men wanting to be women, it's very much their affinity towards women that drives them towards that.

Stephanie Winn: I'm still hung up on the diaper issue, Sarah. Are these people struggling? Do they have incontinence? No. Do they? When they're when they're wearing the diapers, do they soil themselves?

Sara Stockton: That's that could be part of it. Yes.

SPEAKER_02: Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Sara Stockton: Oh, gosh. And imagine and imagine. So there's a lot of people in this who are trying to stay out of it being extremely fetish in nature and more of like, I'm a coping skill. I go home and I read a book. People look at it the same way. I go home and I put on a diaper and I feel really connected to myself. That is the same thing that I hear from whether you're cross-dresser or trans is like, this is why I feel most me connected to me.

Stephanie Winn: Are these typically people with a lot of like infancy trauma?

Sara Stockton: Infancy trauma? No, no. Divorce and stuff like that, yes.

Stephanie Winn: Which came first, the divorce or the diaper wearing? Because that is grounds for divorce, I just have to say.

Sara Stockton: No, divorce, like their parents got divorced. Oh, okay. Yeah. My assumption with a couple of people that I do have it is the constant that was always there.

Stephanie Winn: The diaper. Almost like a transitional object. So for those who aren't familiar, who are in the field of psychology, a transitional object is sort of our fancy term in psychology for something like a blankie, or a stuffy, or a binky, or something that a young child experiences as sort of carrying the essence of usually mom, but mom or dad, right? That sort of comfort object that extends beyond just being an object to something that's imbued with the significance of the attachment to the caregiver. So it's almost like the diaper is like a transitional object.

Sara Stockton: Absolutely. And again, it sounds very similar to my crossdressers who started wearing, you know, underwear at a very young age or their mothers or sisters.

Stephanie Winn: Okay, so when it comes to cross-dressing, AGP, all this, I mean, so you weren't taught in grad school about autogynephilia. What were you taught about cross-dressers and about, like, the differences between someone who cross-dresses and someone who is quote-unquote trans.

Sara Stockton: So I don't think we necessarily were taught like there was a difference or like here's a sheet of paper and one ends a cross-dresser and one ends trans and here is how we decide the difference, right? I think it was just cross-dressing was a kink. It was a fetish that some people participate in. a persona that someone puts on and then the transsexual identity would definitely be more of a permanent and again we were framed as it was a mental health concern that was happening whereas crossdressers not necessarily have a mental illness or weren't necessarily going to seek transition. We didn't have a case presentation where we were presented, hey, he's a cross-dresser, do you think they're more towards this or more towards the other one? That wasn't something that we were really sought and looked after.

Stephanie Winn: Did you just leave it to your clients to tell you what they wanted? Correct. So when you were involved in the development of the protocol for the youth, the letters and things like that, it was based on the Dutch protocol, which earlier, you know, we were sort of critiquing as more of a hypothesis than anything else. And as you pointed out, full of opinions. Um, what were the questions that were part of that assessment or what went into the writing process?

Sara Stockton: Yeah, I mean, so we did have, like I said, the adult one that was just written to kind of go over and then our jobs was really to look at systemically what would be important from our early childhood development, middle childhood development, first sexual relationships, and then informed consent, right? I mean, I think one of the things that was introduced back then that I don't think is talked about that much was I was really taught, or at least I really picked up on it, is that we were supposed to be telling these kids, like, you're making a decision that could alter your life. Like, the length of your life, the treatment of your life, the medical necessities that you will need. So the informed consent piece of it was an added part that we did focus on and tried to develop and tried to be able to assess with children. I think As we did that, the problems did come that how were we able to determine if a child was able to really make an informed decision and were parents able to make an informed decision that later poised a lot more issues. And that was when we kind of, and I don't know if it's WPATH as much as just like a general cultural understanding where we would be starting to get nailed for gatekeeping. Like I remember oh, this person wants to transition, but they don't want to transition until like, you don't want to present out socially until they start hormones because they don't want to even look a certain way. And there was some pushback of like, oh, how can we know this person's making an informed decision? Because we're supposed to talk to a child around their ability to handle like bullying or have they gone out in the gender that they want to be affirmed and are they aware of the repercussions that could happen and when we tried to push back on that it was like no we can't gatekeep who are you to say that you know someone should look a certain way or present a certain way so it was like oh wait a second everything that was the qualifiers before like that there is certain play that's typical sex play and there is typical pure development that's sex related now that was you know disregarded and told we shouldn't have any gatekeeping responsibilities.

Stephanie Winn: If you're looking for a simple way to take better care of yourself, check out Organifi. I start every day with a glass of their original green juice powder mixed with water. It contains moringa, ashwagandha, chlorella, spirulina, matcha, wheatgrass, beets, turmeric, mint, lemon, and coconut water. 100% organic with no added sugar. It's the best tasting superfood supplement I've ever tried. It's super easy to make, and it makes me feel good. Organifi also makes several other delicious and nutritious superfood blends, such as red juice, immune support, protein powders, a golden milk mix, and even superfood hot cocoa. Check out the collection at organifi.com slash sumtherapist. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com slash sumtherapist. And use code sumtherapist to take 20% off your order. Early in your career, you're sort of being led to believe that you're going to be seen as an expert. And then as soon as you're actually out there, your expertise is already being undermined, even as you're questioning the foundation on which your expertise is built for yourself. And when you talk about that informed consent dialogue with children, Did it ever give you pause when you're actually in that position? And I know you say that, you know, you have children. You said 11 and 6. You know, I also have an 11-year-old. And so from your perspective now as a mother, but also back then, did you ever have a moment of talking to a child thinking about – I'm thinking about an 11-year-old right now, like saying to an 11-year-old, you know, these could foreshorten your lifespan and thinking like, How am I, an adult, putting an 11-year-old or however many-year-old in the position to think about issues of longevity?

Sara Stockton: So, first of all, I wouldn't really encounter, like, so I was presented early on with, like, a two-year-old case that wasn't my primary case, but it was definitely, like, one of, um, like sort of our training was framed after. So I but just for age wise, it wasn't until the parent who killed themselves that I have my 10 first 10 year old case. Okay, so I was technically most more often than not meeting them at 13 to 15. So even as far as puberty blockers go, I probably was not involved with prescribing as many puberty blockers because they were already past that stage. So, I'm going directly to hormones. So, I'm not even really messing around with that. So, I would imagine that I would have a lot more difficulty talking to a 10-year-old about that than I was around 15 years old. So, 15-year-olds I was speaking to, sure, like when I think back about it, um especially around fertility right like when you're going through all that trauma like the last thing in your mind is i want kids you know so every single person's answer is like are you kidding me like i don't want kids i don't care about kids but these are all females and i didn't care about kids at 15 either even at 22 you know 23 so you know I do think like that's a difficult thing to acknowledge and and again this is just my personal experience I don't know it's like I was thinking I was dealing with the rare of the population. I guess I accepted that some things in life were not going to be sought out by this population. People ask me, did I worry about sports? No, they weren't wanting to play sports. I never had to fight for a kid to be on a sports team. and I don't want to say because they were a certain type of kid but that's kind of what it was like is that it was a certain type of kid that was seeking out this treatment.

Stephanie Winn: Well, it's a mixture of the fact that it was so much more rare back then. Yes. And that you had been taught. I mean, it was about to become less rare, but you've been taught that it was rare. And the lack of social media around that at the time, relative lack, combined with a sort of trans exceptionalism. So you're thinking about it as these are people with a very unique issue. And because they have that very unique issue, they're not along the same kind of normal developmental trajectory as their peers. They're not thinking about the same things their peers are. We have this unique gender issue to focus on. And that was your mentality at the time. You also said in the informed consent process, you asked them about their first sexual relationships. And you're talking about 13 to 15-year-old girls. What kind of things were you hearing?

Sara Stockton: I mean, it definitely varied, right? Like, in terms of… and I do think pop culture and cell phones changed it dramatically, too. So, 2014, 15, 16, I have my teens bringing in the Packers and, you know, you know, sometimes it's embarrassing to admit it, but, you know, like I'm being hit in the face with a dildo by a 14 year old, which seems completely normal under the frame of its LGBT work. But if like a typical kid was bringing that into session, that would be pretty problematic. Right. So there's already this odd normalization of like sexual kink in general, like they already knew they were part of a specialized population that did have differences. So like there was this emphasis on sex in certain ways now, not sex in terms of intimacy and close partnership and loving relationships. It was definitely more of like my body part does this and what am I going to do with that? And a lot of them assumed, because there is some research to suggest it, that going on hormones could change their sexual orientation in nature as well, or that it might shift along with that, because they were aware of that. Like, maybe the more I want to become a female, the more important it will be for me to want to be attracted to males or have that, you know, attraction to feel completely female.

Stephanie Winn: So it sounds like some of the red flags that were raised for you were this like over sexualization in ways that were somehow justified under the LGBTQ plus banner but wouldn't be normal in any other case like you talk about when you say Packers you're talking about Basically these specialized dildos that fit in girls' pants to make it look like they have a bulge. And so things like that. I take it when you said hit in the face with a dildo, you were talking metaphorically, right? No. No, you were literally hit in the face.

Sara Stockton: yeah like you know we're talking kids here that are joking around and bringing their things into session you know like there you go like not like mean but like that's the way in which it was talked about like want to see my dildo or want to see my again like amount of born female body parts I've seen in my clients. I've seen a lot of body parts of clients in person and in pictures, not only because they're trans. No, I haven't seen any other youth's pictures.

Stephanie Winn: Right. So you're saying like under normal circumstances, it would be completely inappropriate for an underage person to show their therapist naked pictures of themselves. But we but we see this with girls in and outside of therapy, right? These girls who would normally never bare their breasts, but they bare their top surgery scars. I take it you're talking about things like that. And so one of the red flags that this is raising for you is like, why is it okay for youth to be doing this sexualized stuff and having no boundaries with an adult around that stuff and Where are they getting this? There's partly that. Some of them are maybe interested in or worried about changing sexual orientation.

Sara Stockton: Then 90% had no sexual desire whatsoever.

Stephanie Winn: No sexual desire. Interesting. Out of those, do you have any rough guess on how many of those were on antidepressants or other psych meds? 80%. Whoa.

Sara Stockton: All right. Now I do not have one that are on medications.

Stephanie Winn: Okay. You're talking about youth.

Sara Stockton: People who have never had orgasms that want to transition.

Stephanie Winn: Okay. Youth whose brains are far from mature. 80, roughly 80% of them are on psych meds. We know psych meds can, among other things, interfere with libido. And now, a significant portion of these youth, the vast majority, according to you, are saying they have no sexual desire. Many of them have never had any type of sexual experience. And yet, they're also in this hyper-sexualized culture. So does it start feeling to you like this is their way of saying, I'm being vicariously traumatized by this hypersexual culture and I want out of it? I don't know how to connect to it. This isn't me. I don't have these sensations for myself. I don't have crushes. Like, get me out of here.

Sara Stockton: Yeah, I mean, there's definitely a piece of that. And then me being fearful of like, you're so uncomfortable with your private parts now. And then if you're going to add testosterone, you're going to want to be humping the furniture. Like, what are we dealing with here? Like, that's you know, you're not even prepared for that. In those conversations, that was definitely towards the end of like the people that were presenting way more on the spectrum that have no you know, asexual in nature, but any sort of sexual descriptions were from pornography or masturbation, understanding themselves in that way.

Stephanie Winn: Did you see a lot of youth saying that they were asexual? Yes. And in your training, were you taught to explore that, to inquire into this so-called asexuality, or do you just take it face value, like that's another sexual identity, it's just as valid as the rest, don't ask about trauma, don't ask about porn, don't ask about antidepressants, just, okay. So you were saying these are some of the things that were happening to you right before that tipping point where you said that I had to get out of here. So tell us about that tipping point. You said that there were two major events. One is that a parent lost a custody battle and committed suicide. Another was that you met a detransitioner.

Sara Stockton: and i mean i could look it up i i can't exactly recall who comes first i'm 90 sure the detransitioner comes first so the detransitioner was unique um because i had saw him several years ago and he was gay male and you know, basic anxiety that he was presenting with and he moved away to California and he comes back maybe like six, seven years later and he's completely transitioned to female and came to my office. I mean, I didn't recognize him. So he had complete facial reconstruction surgery, like all of it.

Stephanie Winn: You must have first met him, sorry to interrupt, but you must have first met him really early in your clinical practice.

Sara Stockton: Yes.

Stephanie Winn: Yep. Okay. So straight out of grad school, you meet him as a gay male. No talk of gender dysphoria.

Sara Stockton: Never. Never. Like a very proud gay male, you know, at that and in the community. And now, as far as I know, it's going to move to L.A. to seek out acting uh dreams and whatnot and he recalls that he moves to LA ends up in like an LGBT house and starts getting involved in prostitution and being told that like he would make a great deal of money way more money you know considering the transition and you know even his own After we searched a little bit, it's like internalized homophobia around himself and so completely transitioned. It was paid for. I mean, he talks about it happening, you know, all within like three months. and you know so just hearing that is like whoa someone let that happen knowing that he had no prior gender dysphoria and him completely regretting it and just being sent back and so that was my first like oh and there's no help there's no did you talk to the surgeon that did it yeah there's nothing they can help me with you know there's nothing to do To me being like, oh my goodness, there's a world that this happens to and there's nowhere to go if you did make a mistake. That was my first like, oh, obviously the culture is impacting these people a lot more because why did I never hear about gender dysphoria from this person?

Stephanie Winn: By the time he reached you, he regretted. his medical procedures. And it all happened in a short period of time when he was being sexually exploited, and he was doing this for financial reasons under pressure. And nobody questioned that.

Sara Stockton: And all the surgeries were paid for. By his Johns or? No, the insurance companies. Oh, right.

Stephanie Winn: I mean, that's a good question. I'd like to see the medical necessity documentation for that, right?

Sara Stockton: Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. And I mean, this is so, this is long ago. I have no, you know, even awareness that this happens to anyone else, right? And I think he kind of felt like, I made a stupid mistake, what an idiot I was. I'm 21, why didn't I understand? And that was the first time when I talked to him about informed consent where I was like, oh, people aren't getting that, especially when they're about to go under the knife.

Stephanie Winn: And for some of these people, it's the most vulnerable time in their life that they get caught up in all that. I'm just going to go on a tangent for a moment. Have you seen Escaping Twin Flames? Yes. Oh, I'm so glad you've seen it, because we can talk about it. So for those who have not seen Escaping Twin Flames yet, if you want to be surprised, you might skip past the next couple of minutes while we're talking about this, because I'm just, there's going to be spoilers. Escaping Twin Flames is a mini docu-series that recently came out on Netflix that's about a cult that started with a young man and woman who honestly aren't even all that charismatic from an outside perspective, preying on primarily women and a few trans people, a few trans males, desire for love through this like coaching group that's supposedly all about helping you find your twin flame, but it quickly becomes a high control environment, very culty, And when you look on from the outside, I mean, there's a reason I said they're not that charismatic. My fiance kept walking by while I was watching this documentary, and he's like, ugh, who would listen to those people? They're so unappealing and emotionally abusive and just awful. And they're young, so it's like they don't even come across as having a great deal of wisdom or anything like that. But it just goes to show that, People who are at a really vulnerable time in their life can be groomed into doing things that are incredibly stupid. And that's what you see in this documentary. It's not that these people are unintelligent people. And some of them are deeply remorseful about their time in the cult, and especially those who were groomed into abusing others. But it's that if you were just getting out of an abusive relationship, or a divorce, or you have some kind of, I don't know, I'm just going to speculate, like physical deformity that makes you really insecure about whether anybody's ever going to love you. I mean, there's all kinds of reasons that someone could be really insecure about, will I find love? And that is an easy place to get in and take advantage of people. So anyway, the spoiler that we're going to reveal here is that where this goes is that they end up convincing some people to trans. Why? Because it's a mostly female audience that they've attracted. These people are actually terrible at giving love advice, they're terrible at matchmaking, and they want to control people. They don't want people to be in happy relationships. They want people, you know, just like with all cults, there's an element of matchmaking where they put incompatible people together so that they're dependent on the leader rather than on each other. So anyway, they end up coming with this whole idea of divine masculine and divine feminine and some of you are actually divine masculine and your soulmate is actually in this group and you see people who had no previous connection to gender ideology, no previous history of gender dysphoria actually coming to believe that they're male, going through with you know, elective double mastectomies and things like that, as part of this cult. Now, of course, this is on Netflix, so it's told from a pro-trans perspective, and the person they have critiquing this is, like, a transgender studies professor who's like, nobody should ever tell anybody what their gender identity is. But, escaping twin flames. I can't remember now exactly what in our conversation motivated me to bring that up, I wonder if it had to do with the vulnerability factor.

Sara Stockton: Or just even the piece of being able to, like you said, believe that life would be better for you as something else. You're just so desperate for love or attention that it gets that far.

Stephanie Winn: Your client story, the detrans gay male, I mean, I obviously don't know who he is as a person, wouldn't ask you to share more information about him. But I do think it's important for anyone working in a helping profession like ours to remember that we are meeting people sometimes at like one of the most vulnerable points in their lives. And that means we're going to see the worst in them. We're going to see them make the dumbest decisions of their lives. We're going to see all their faults and foibles. And some of those are characterological, but some of them are situational. And they're impacted by a person's unique vulnerability at that time in life. And it's so important that we remember that as part of providing ethical care. And I think that means a certain amount of safeguarding. I think that means that we believe in our clients' higher capacity to heal and recover and become stronger. I'm thinking about, like, A couple's therapy session where, you know, the woman was very, very insecure and like spiraling into all of her insecurities. And I remember asking, if he provided you with the things that you need in order to feel secure, what parts of yourself do you feel like could flourish? And she immediately seemed so much more grounded just by being invited to think about, who am I when I have a secure foundation in life? Right? That is an element of our approach as ethical therapists is to remember, OK, this person is a crying, sniveling mess. And they're engaging in really self-destructive behavior right now. They're getting back together with their ex who broke their heart three times. But they're trusting me with their vulnerability and that this is not all of who they are. They are certainly capable of more and better than this. So the safeguarding part comes in where we don't try to, I mean, we don't try to influence our clients decision making more than is appropriate, but at the same time, like, If our client is turning to us for some kind of help during a really vulnerable time, we certainly don't encourage them to make, you know, potentially regrettable choices when they're not thinking their most clearly, you know? I mean, how many times have you experienced this as a therapist? I'll say this to you, Sarah, but I'll say it to any therapist in the office where you're like, okay, this person really has not been sleeping well, they're super emotionally destabilized by whatever it is going on, you know, the birth of a new infant or the husband left or whatever it is, this person's destabilized and they're trying to make all these decisions right now. My work as actually as a therapist is just kind of rein them in and be like, okay, actually, like, how do we help you just ground tonight? How do we help you have a low-key week? Because some of these decisions you're trying to make are not necessary decisions to make right now. Like, what are the things you absolutely have to attend to just to start putting yourself back together? Because there is a self in there that is resilient and wise and who can make good decisions, but she's not here right now because you haven't slept more than three hours this week, right?

Sara Stockton: Yeah, and I think he's just saying that, like, reflecting upon it now, I kind of feel bad because I recall my questioning almost to him being like, I don't want to call it victim blaming, but now I read comments that detransitioners get on Twitter. And I definitely came from it from like, why did you make this decision versus like, how could these medical professionals let you make this decision? and that thin line of understanding it, this is going to be tough moving forward of how much are they really informed around this and me being like, okay, whose decision is this and at what point do we take responsibility because we did tell them that these are the only decisions that they have. Why do they feel like they're trapped into these two options anyways?

Stephanie Winn: It just strikes me as incredibly cynical and Maybe kind of arrogant, too, for a person who's established in their career as a professional, whether as a therapist or a doctor, it takes a certain degree of stability to behave as a professional and go to work every day and take care of your patients. For a person who's established in a stable place in life, to see someone who's in such an unstable place and assume that this is really their best decision making and that this is truly what they need to do. Actually, no. Your patients will surprise you. You'll see someone. If you're wise and if you're humble, as a therapist, you recognize that there are people who might strike you one day as incredibly unstable or unwise. But actually, you are seeing them in a very particular context. That is not all of who they are. And your job is to help them uncover who they are capable of being. And yeah, I think, yeah. Anyway, there's so much we could talk about here, but I'm aware of the time and I'm aware that I had started to ask you about these situations that changed your perspective. So one was meeting this detrans male. I don't know if there's more you want to say about that or if you want to talk about the parent suicide.

Sara Stockton: Yeah, no, I mean, I just think in hindsight, yeah, again, like, it's been a while since I don't see him anymore. I don't, you know, I wonder, I kind of have a hypothesis being that I'm the first therapist he's seen since is that some of the questioning might have made him feel, I have no reason to know this for sure, that it was his fault or that he should have done something, you know, and that frame of like, I caused it to myself. So just like, putting that out there of accountability of just anyone who works with people like that to just watch the questions that you do ask people. And then, yeah, so one of the things that started happening originally when I started working on this the kind of step-by-step would be you would write, you would meet with the student or the kids and the parents, we do a thorough assessment, you'd write a letter of recommendation to an endocrinologist or primary care, then the primary care would continue on from there. And we all tended to listen to each other. I mean, even in this case, I would say that I was definitely in the transgender field of medicine longer than any of the primary care physicians that were prescribing these hormones or the endocrinologists that were prescribing these hormones, though they were referring to me for a great deal of things. So I encountered a situation in which I had parents who were going through divorce, who had very different opinions on the next step of gender transitioning their minor. And it was the first presentation in which I was presented gender dysphoria by the parent themselves, not the the child so I met the parent first who really like laid out the story and then I met the child and it was not all adding up this is again a 10 year old so I guess we are going towards the parent so I had a father who was very adamant that the mother was doing this under you know other pretenses and concern. And I really prided myself on walking through this with parents, no matter how long it took. So I really wanted to be able to have time to help this parent kind of get where they needed to be. So I in my letter, I did ask the courts to pause and not start hormones until I was able to work with them and get them on board. And the courts overruled that and started the kids on the kid on hormones. And the dad took his life a couple of days after. So heartbreaking. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And they got their letter so they didn't need to get any more treatment from me. So it was, you know, kind of irrelevant. I couldn't see the kid after to know, like, the care was done. I was, you know, part one of the care. But yeah, that was my first, like, wow. Like, no one's listening to me. Like, really, I have no… I'm not helping anyone here if I'm not being taken seriously. my words don't matter and that's still been the case even recently where I will tell a hospital like this person is highly autistic like they don't even understand what they're saying and their answer is to affirm a child and then keep them longer. So anyone that has gender dysphoria will not only be affirmed in the mental hospital but will be kept longer to be reprogrammed in this way. So that really made me think okay I'm done. I can't participate in this anymore.

Stephanie Winn: Yep. Yeah. And for an analysis on that situation, I recommend people listen to my recent episode with Bernard Lane where I explain that very phenomenon, how it works, how the hospitals keep youth longer whenever the magic word of gender is uttered. Okay, so I can kind of feel into that being the final straw because from the beginning of your journey, there was this kind of seductive messaging around you can be a real professional, like you can have this specialization and these qualifications and you can develop a protocol, you can be an innovator, like, and of course as a young person that's appealing to you, you're like, I'm gonna be respectable, I'm gonna make a name for myself, I'm gonna make a difference in the world. And then you're having all these doubts all along, And then by the end, it's like the mask of the gender beast just comes completely off. They're like, actually, we don't really care what you think about it as a professional. And here you are as a licensed marriage and family therapist. You're not just somebody who specializes in this issue. You're somebody who also understands systems. That's one of the key components of our training as those of us who specifically are licensed marriage and family therapists, LMFTs, we're trained to think systemically. And so here you are trying to balance the fact that you are a gender-affirming therapist with the fact that you're also trained in systems, and that you can see what's happening in the family system here. You can see that there might be some narcissism or cluster B traits in the mom. There might be a Munchausen dynamic. There is triangulation going on. You're seeing these family dynamics. And you're going, this is more than just a kid who needs so-called gender affirming care. There is a family picture. And so as a licensed marriage and family therapist, let me take a systemic view and make my professional recommendation of caution This is even coming from somebody who still believes that gender-affirming care is right for some people some of the time. And then the court throws out your opinion. They're like, well, you don't actually care what you think because the magical word has been uttered, this is one of these unicorn children, and none of the laws of physics or of family systems apply. And then you saw firsthand the impact that that took on the system. You saw the heartbreak of a parent. And by this point, you must have been a parent yourself too, right? I believe I was, yeah. So you know what it is to feel for yourself that love that a parent has for their child. And you see the heartbreak in the family. You see the father's suicide. And I can just see that being the last straw and how the whole thing crumbles.

Sara Stockton: and just culturally i'm like alone questioning this or at least in my understanding like now i know there's a lot of people secretly but at least around me, I'm like the only one that seems concerned about this. So that's even more of why I don't like speak up about it or really, you know, push back. I mean, I will ask questions. I'll continue to kind of poke and ask questions. And they're like kind of whistleblower way later. But I was made aware, like, just don't ask questions. Don't there's no you're wrong. So I was like, I'll just be quiet.

Stephanie Winn: I'll just go away. How did you back out of that? How did you go from being a gender specialist to just Because you waited six years, and I'm going to ask you in a moment about that decision. But at this point in your life, how did you switch gears and just focus on other sexual and marital issues?

Sara Stockton: Yeah. I mean, like I said, I was always still seeing the crossdressers, the other sexual, you know, to be honest pornography addiction was becoming so prevalent that like that's just kind of the natural way it went is that you know even now I have like four 20 year olds that have been addicted to porn for 10 years so I think I was naturally seeing that shift happen that I had a place to go and the fairs right so I really became like primarily like a fair oriented and pornography oriented so that's just naturally I just was quiet and there was enough people working on trans that it didn't matter. Wasn't like I was getting calls and saying, no, you know, that just that wasn't happening. Planned Parenthood was around. We have a lot of great gender clinics in this area. So I wasn't needed in the same way. I could just it wasn't like I revoked my name from a list or anything. It was just a natural walk away.

Stephanie Winn: And what made you choose to be silent about this issue for six years and then all of a sudden talk to Matt Walsh and Jordan Peterson?

Sara Stockton: Yeah. A variety of things. I mean, one is knowing the culture in which I work in and I'm employed by a university. I mean, I was working up until this year at a state university and I was the transgender mentor. So, I mean, I think as much as I had concerns with the youth, I mean, I dated a trans male. I've been in a relationship with someone for long term. I have many transgender friends, you know, so my life in terms of being around the LGBT community, I was still really active. So I don't think I was ever going to go out and be very vocal about it. What I did start to do was talk to my trans friends around the children thing, you know, like, When I would have a fifth kid in a friend group transitioning, I would just ask my friend, like, yeah, I think it's kind of odd, like if all your friends transitioned with you, would you think that's a little bizarre? And they would say, yeah, there's a lot of concerns. and it was really my son who started bringing concerns home that again at 10 that I didn't know oh like he's talking about transgender without knowing what transgender was and me being like I have to speak about this and then the days the non-binaries. It wasn't that they were presenting in my room. It was parents asking me, what does that mean? Like, can that person sleep over my daughter's house? And me being able to say, well, it depends. It doesn't really mean anything. It really depends on who we're talking to. For me to be like, okay, gender's coming back a lot. What am I supposed to do? And then finally, My client, she randomly sent me a clip of Matt Walsh on Dr. Phil. I never heard of Matt Walsh. And she was like, this is nuts. She was a teacher in school dealing with the furry, like furries and all that kind of things that were going on. And I on a whim DMed him and was just like, I have been in this field that I would be willing to talk to you. And they were actually already done filming the documentary. I was contacted that night by the producer. And within a week, I was sent out to be the final interview for the movie. That's why I'm not in the book that was written, because again, I was the final person. That was a quick thought of I had to talk to the producers around what was their aim and what was their goal. I talked to Miriam, which really solidified the importance of speaking out. Miriam Grossman. Yes. Yeah, she lives in New York, and she was the one that was telling me, like, it will be worth it for you. Because I was definitely worried about the pushback. I was not considered a right-wing person. I did not know The Daily Wire exactly what I was walking into. And I wanted to make sure that it was legitimate because of the population that we were talking about. I asked the producers, like, how have you changed since working and learning? And they were able to answer me was really valid answers. So I decided to do the documentary, which was a two hour interview. And I think I have like a minute and a half on the documentary. So that picked that. really changed my life as much as it didn't. So professionals started to really reach out to me. And then I really wanted to talk to Stella O'Malley from Gender Lens Podcast. And I tried to reach out to her. And I mean, obviously, she didn't really know who I was just being on Matt Walsh. And so I really thought, you know, if I do Jordan Peterson, she'll she'll talk to me. That will make her talk to me. So I ended up emailing Dr. Jordan Peterson because his and I's interview were very much connected in the documentary. So I would receive lots of emails talking to me about what Jordan Peterson said. I wrote him an email based on his essay called Budgers and Liars, calling for therapists like myself to be put away in jail for participating in the butchery of children. And I ended up doing a podcast with him.

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-dot-org-slash-some-therapist to learn more. That's do-no-harm-medicine-dot-org-slash-some-therapist. Let's talk about that. So you, so Dr. Peterson was very friendly and supportive toward you in that interview. And I also know that he can be very harsh and I understand why. He's pretty ferocious. about the punishment that people deserve. You've expressed some guilt and remorse and there are similarities between us where, and I think you're in the whistleblower boat with me and Jamie Reid and people like that. One thing that I've expressed that I think is a fairly common sentiment amongst those of us whistleblowers is, that I feel like I have to do like a penance of sorts. Like I feel guilty for the role that I played. It wasn't a very major role, but I just I feel guilty that I had a hand in it at all. So I feel like this work that I'm doing now is sort of my way of making up for that. You and I have some similarities, some differences. Like I said, we're about the same age. And I think it's really interesting to look at how the vulnerability, the lack of life experience, the desire for recognition, the desire for a respectable career, it played a role in your story. And I wonder how many other stories it's played a role in. And then you've also had a separate maturation process from some of your peers. You had kids when they didn't. forced you to grow up and see from a different perspective in some ways. So it's really interesting that you confronted someone as formidable as Jordan Peterson by saying, you know, actually, Dr. P, I disagree with you on some of this. Like, I agree that we should be protecting children, that this is wrong. But I disagree about the way that therapists like myself should be treated. So I'm curious about, just in our last few minutes here, what did you say to Jordan Peterson about his perspective? And what conversations happened between you behind the scenes that you'd be comfortable sharing? Because by the time he got to the interview, he was not being harsh toward you in any way. I think it's an important debate because a lot of people are struggling with this question of who deserves to be punished, how severely, and for what.

Sara Stockton: Yeah, and it's hard because I do see comments on social media that I deserve to be in jail or punished harshly. I think the important conversations behind the scenes were similar to the ones that we having that I do think he wanted an awareness to be done of we're training programmed people versus the perhaps pariahs that are somewhere on the top that have alternative motives, right? Like, I do think there's a difference. And I do think after speaking to him, he was talking more about the person that has an idea that they're really pushing on people. And I don't think I was coming from that. And so I think he was able to see like, again, Like you did, I was in grad school looking for a niche and really believing that I was helping people. And if we can't, you know, I'm the first generation to graduate high school in my family. So I assume higher education is the, is end all be all, right? Like that's really good science and it's been replicated and it's evidence-based. And it's not until now that I realized, oh no, that's, definitely not what's happening and that I was a part of a of a first experiment. So I guess it's like, where is there room for someone to change course when they do see that things are going awry? And I never signed a letter that I didn't think was following a protocol. So as soon as I was in a position that I thought that might be the case, I did I did take myself out of it. And I think it is a cautionary tale. I don't know what these lawsuits are going to look like that we're seeing against transitioners right now. They're not against the mental health professionals. They're against the surgeons and the doctors. Sons are actually. Oh, there are sons for us. Okay. Just as far as I'm hearing, but just the stuff that we're saying, I never said, would you rather have a dead child or a trans child? I never had to say something like that. I do think it should be a wake-up call of, what we're doing with someone and what we're signing off on should matter.

Stephanie Winn: Yes. There's a lot to be reckoned with here over the next few years, a lot of discussion to be had in the professional community and the community of concerned citizens about who is culpable, what does justice look like, how do we welcome back people who change their minds. Yeah, and for anyone who wants to know the status of detrans lawsuits, I will include in the show notes a recent article published on Lisa Selin Davis's substock that is the, it's information about the 11 detransitioner lawsuits publicly in North America right now. Um, there are six more that aren't public. And so, um, there are, yeah, certain mental health professionals, um, as well as organizations that are, um, implicated in these lawsuits. So I'll try to include that in the show notes.

Sara Stockton: And people not knowing that they're not following WPATH guidelines. I think that's what's unique about this is that we keep saying, oh, we're going to WPATH guidelines. But the people that are being sued and some of the most egregious cases are the ones that have not even followed the bare minimum of two letters of recommendation before for a major surgery. So and I mean, yeah, the care is good. It's not we're not even following the pretend guidelines that we do the pretend.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, that's what it's like. Yeah, it's all made up. Right. The WPATH guidelines are such BS. But there are people who aren't even following it and their whole like their whole databases of therapists. who have signed up to do these letters where it's, they're just telling people, you can come to me and I will help you jump through the hoops. Come to me and I will give you this letter. So yeah, given that there are entire online communities of people sharing like what, you know, how to answer the doctor's or the therapist questions so-called correctly to get what you want, combined with therapists that are basically just activists in a thinly-veiled disguise, or not even trying to disguise their motives sometimes, just saying, I will write you these letters. I mean, the whole thing is just such a sham at this point. Well, Sarah, are there any loose ends we left untied? Anything you wanted to come back to before we wrap up?

Sara Stockton: No, I mean, except for the fact, you know, I just want to reiterate, I mean, recently, I've definitely been receiving a lot more pushback from local communities and organizations in terms of blacklisting me and speaking out. But with that being said, I just think I offer the opportunity. I work very closely with Jamie. I speak with Jamie Lodge-Reed, is that we do have places to speak out, to whistleblower, just talk about is, you know, reach out to me or other organizations because you aren't alone and You know, if you're even feeling this a little bit, you owe it to yourself to attend to that, those concerns that you might have. for students, and I just don't think we're aware of a whole group of population that will need specialized care in 10 years that we're not trained for.

Stephanie Winn: Right. So let's talk about those places people can go and then where they can find you so they can reach out to you. Critical Therapy Antidote, Therapy First, and My Locals Community, which I'm constantly working on adding more value to at some kind of therapist.locals.com. So those are some places that people can go. And where can they find you, Sarah?

Sara Stockton: Yeah, you can. Obviously, you can find me on Twitter. This is Sarah Stockton. But I'm also a part of the LGBT Courage Coalition, which is a group that we are trying to help non gender nonconforming kids without the medicalization. So that's, you know, really where Jamie and I and we have a lot of physicians and attorneys that can support and come alongside you if you do want to speak out or get therapy first, Jen's back.

Stephanie Winn: I'll also include in the show notes a link to my previous episode with Jamie Reed. Sarah, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. I hope 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.