Norman Spack Was Focused On Cosmetic Results In 'Trans Kids' From The Start

Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric endocrinologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, told a TED Talk audience in 2014 of “cases in which there are mismatches in the externals, or between the externals and the internals, and we literally have to figure out what is the description of your sex.” These patients were ‘born in the wrong body’, in other words.

During his opening remarks, Spack conflated this magical condition of wrong-bodyness with congenital disorders of sexual development (DSDs). Then he offered conflicting statements that further confused the audience. He said “there is nothing definable at the time of birth that would define you” in terms of “sexual orientation,” which is different from “your self-concept,” i.e. your invisible gender identity. Why bring it up then?

“Do you see yourself as a male or female, or somewhere in the spectrum in between?” Spack asked a notional child for the audience. Then he claimed it is “extremely unlikely” that children who are persistent in cross-sex identification “will change those feelings no matter what anybody tries, reparative therapies, none of those noxious things.”

Because trans is the new gay, according to Spack, even though he also says it has nothing to do with being gay. Make it make sense.

These statements were misleading and Spack would have known they were misleading when he said them. Decades of research had by then established that more than 80 percent of ‘gender dysphoric’ children grow out of those feelings by adulthood, and that most of them are gay or lesbian adults.

Homosexual transsexualism is common among adult male youth who transition and this was identified in the work of Ray Blanchard decades ago. According to the Dutch study that Spack was so excited about in 2014, 68 of the 70 participants were same-sex attracted, one was attracted to both sexes, and one sadly did not even know what their sexuality was, yet. Surely he read their results in full, being such a fan.

The following year, 2015, Dr. Ken Zucker was canceled and fired from his own Canadian gender clinic for the crime of replicating those findings. Spack references this data, but excludes the ‘trans kids’ in his ‘care’ from any crossover because they ‘persisted’ into early adolescence.

Reader: if a child persists in believing that Santa Claus exists, the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy are real, and that stepping on cracks breaks their mother’s back, all at the age of thirteen, should we affirm these beliefs? Or tell the child the truth, and that it is time to grow up?

Even Dr. Spack has a hard time rationalizing the cognitive dissonance. “I was getting sexual orientation confused with gender identity,” he says, concluding on the basis of a friendship with a ‘trans man’ that ‘gender identity’ “is who you go to bed as” rather than the actual body you are in bed.

Note that the ‘trans man’ friend seems to have classic gay shame, since the anecdote involves a same-sex wedding.

This is not science, it is self-delusion, and Spack was incredibly irresponsible to set aside everything he knew about human development in order to endorse puberty blockade and concretize childish delusions in pursuit of adult fantasies.

Accommodating these new ‘trans kids’ requires a whole-of-society effort, Spack told the crowd. By the end of the TED Talk, he was no longer a clinician at all, but an evangelist for the new gender-diverse society. He was immanentizing gender utopia.

Thus Spack is dismissive of transwidows, women who leave their autogynephile husbands transitioning late in life. How dare those evil women have boundaries!

Spack defends the men, saying they “felt they had to affirm themselves before they would kill themselves.” This is of course extortion, which invalidates informed consent for everyone involved.

Spack conflated adult men who pursue medical transition for adult reasons with children ruminating on what he admits is a “fantasy.” This “fantasy” future self is “nullified” by the “wrong puberty”, Spack said, neatly switching the needs of the fantasy future self for the needs of the existing child.

We must do this, Spack said, or else these children will want to kill themselves. His extortionate claim that the rate of suicide among gender dysphoric kids is “the highest in the world” has been thoroughly debunked by multiple systematic reviews, an evidentiary review by the British government, and even the ACLU’s own lawyer Chase Strangio, who was forced to admit the truth in the United States Supreme Court.

No evidence for it ever existed. It is simply false, a vile and disgusting lie that clinicians like Dr. Spack made up without evidence, for they needed to justify what they were doing to minor children.

They knew what they were doing was unethical and compromised. They committed fraud. They belong in prison.

To avoid the ‘wrong puberty’, which Spack absurdly compared to Pinocchio becoming a donkey, it is necessary to first block puberty as early as possible in a child, so they can be put on cross-sex hormones as soon as possible, so they can be scheduled for surgery as soon as possible.

Children can have perfect future bodies “if they get to us at the appropriate age.” Act now! Available for a limited time only!

Both examples that he provided involved his own ‘treatment’ decisions. Spack was arguing from the principle of early intervention, which is normally a good thing in pediatric medicine, but not when it inflicts iatrogenic harms such as permanent sterility.

Only a deadly condition — like cancer, or a mythical suicide boogeyman under the beds of gender dysphoric children — could possibly justify that kind of iatrogenic harm. See how that works?

But “you can’t just give them the oposite sex hormones that young,” Spack said, or “they’ll end up stunted in growth.” You need a real expert like him to know which children will turn out transsexual and which ones will not. You need his expertise because there is no test, no scan, no objective evidence involved.

Spack assured the audience that the Dutch researchers used the utmost care in picking out the truly persistent kids. The ones who believe the most and hardest. He has the expertise, you can trust him.

Spack seems eager to rush towards surgery, indeed he seems to assume irreversible outcomes for the grown teen if they are given “time to think” on puberty blockers.

As we now understand, blockers are the fastest track to other interventions. They inhibit thinking. Spack’s assumptions are therefore in line with the clinical results of the endocrine disruption experiments he has done.

Nor does Spack seem deterred by the problems inherent in ethical informed consent. “And you think you can have a meaningful conversation about the fertility effects of such treatment with a ten year old girl? Or a twelve year old boy?” Spack asked the audience.

As internal communications among WPATH membership have revealed, clinicians were fully aware their ‘patients’ were too young to make any decisions about the fertility of their future selves.

In 2014, Spack admitted that surgical construction of the neopenis lagged behind that of the neovagina. Phalloplasties and metoidioplasties are incredibly gruesome and notoriously prone to complications, but Spack’s audience would perhaps have been less effusive about vaginoplasty if they knew one of the 70 original Dutch study participants died as a direct result of his puberty blockade.

Because the unfortunate boy had not gone through the adolescent rushes of testosterone that cause penile growth, surgeons used part of his colon to fashion his neovagina, which became infected. He died after 24 hours of sheer agony and multiple attempts to save him from sepsis.

Concluding the TED Talk with his case studies, Dr. Spack revealed a photo of himself with Susie and Jackie Green, formerly of Mermaids.

Spack crowed about his decision to start puberty Jackie on estrogen early, to fuse his growth plates faster, so that “she” would not be over six feet tall. The Greens flew to Thailand when Jackie was 16 and had him surgically altered using the same procedure. Luckily, Jackie survived.

In this video, Spack wants us to focus on Jackie Green’s “normal breast size.” He shows a photo of Jackie in a beauty pageant representing Mermaids. Look, he’s one of the girls!

In the second example, Spack proudly presents us with twin boys, ‘Nicole’ and Jonas. ‘Doctor’ Norman Spack intervened early once again to achieve the desired cosmetic results.

He said he thought the young adults with blocked puberty “looked beautiful, they looked normal, they had normal heights, you would never be able to pick them out in a crowd.”

They ‘passed’, in other words. This was his ideal outcome. He said elsewhere that he was “salivating” at the prospect of being able to do this.

Having argued for early intervention to achieve the best look possible, Spack ended his TED Talk with a social justice argument. Save the trans kids, save the world. That was the magic formula that genderwoo wizards sold the world.

In reality, Spack et al were ready to play God with your child’s body and save them from the horrible fate of growing up in a healthy, whole body so they could have better cosmetic outcomes that made him, a grown man, “salivate”.

The Gender Multispecialty Service (GeMS) clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital “was the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States and has played an outsized role in shaping youth gender medicine worldwide” when Spack co-founded it in 2007, the LGB Courage Coalition reminds us.

Now GeMS has blocked the Internet Archive from accessing their web pages. “This targeted exclusion appears to coincide with the quiet removal of key references to surgeries and other irreversible interventions from the hospital’s live site.”

They are erasing the record of their crimes. It is evidence of consciousness of guilt.

Likewise, Susie Green’s 2015 TED Talk — the one in which she ‘joked’ that Jackie’s penis was so small at 16 that he needed the far more dangerous and debilitating surgery using a piece of his colon — has disappeared from YouTube.

We have preserved both TED talks here at The Distance for the historical record as well as the criminal record.