“Twitter Files” author Michael Shellenberger stated numerous lies on Twitter/X about a new California law that bans school districts from requiring teachers and other staff to notify parents of a chid’s gender identification change, which would consist of a pronoun change or name change. The law was passed to protect children from potential abuse from anti-LGBT parents, notes NBC News.
I’m afraid I have some terrible news. The governor of America’s largest and richest state has just signed a law that puts 10 million children and adolescents in grave danger of medical mistreatment.
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) July 16, 2024
The media headlines have it wrong. They claim that California Governor Gavin… pic.twitter.com/bzr53hZ7We
Shellenberger falsely claimed the law would “place 10 million children and adolescents in grave danger of medical mistreatment.” The law does not legalize or endorse “medical mistreatment.”
Shellenberger also claimed the law “makes children vulnerable to irreversible and lifelong medical abuse and mistreatment,” however, the law has nothing to do with any medical treatment.
Shellenberger falsely claimed that transgender is “pseudoscientific idea that some children are born into the wrong bodies and that we can change a person’s sex through drugs and surgery.”
In reality, surgery and/or drugs do not change anyone’s “sex,” which is biologically impossible. Transgender is not “pseudoscientific.”
Johns Hopkins notes that “medications work to more closely align outward secondary sexual characteristics, such as enlarged breasts, body fat distribution or facial hair, with someone’s gender identity.”
The Cleveland Clinic states that “gender affirmation surgery refers to procedures that help people transition to their gender.”
The Human Right Campaign adds that gender affirming care is “backed by decades of research and supported by every major medical association representing over 1.3 million U.S. doctors.”
Shellenberger went on to demonize teachers and students with imaginary fearmongering :”The new law creates the grave risk that activist teachers, students, and outside groups will convince their children that they were born into the wrong body, and hide their “social transition” from parents, which will lead to harmful medical mistreatment.”
(Sources: NBC News, Johns Hopkins, Cleveland Clinic, Human Right Campaign, Michael Shellenberger/Twitter)