Don’t Let Your Kids Watch Dr. Keith Ablow

Wow, John, you really sound vicious here. I know you to be a far more reflective, balanced person. And since I work down the street from you, and we’ve had coffee together and all, I wonder why you wouldn’t have called me for a comment. Very disappointing. I would have done you a better turn. Be well.

Keith Ablow, MD

Dear Dr. Grohol,
I don’t need to have a medical degree to figure out that if you think that Dr. Ablow’s article is….searching….sensationalism, this blog is sensationalism as well.
I will keep my personal opinion out of it, but will only say that Dr. Ablow made a very respectful comment to you.
Really, Why didn’t you call him and ask him for a comment if he works right down the street from you, and has had coffee with you.
It’s because YOU wanted to make a media splash as well, at the expense of your colleague.
Everyone is calling Dr. Ablow out, even Joy Behar today on the view. It seems to me that someone needs to call YOU out as well.
Shame on you. I agree, you should have asked Dr. Ablow for a comment before participating in ripping your colleague to shreds.

First of all as someone who is trans, thank you for this article, it is nice seeing some professionals respond to what is bigotry in the guise of science. He made several other statements that were extremely problematic, that just further highlight his ignorance of the issue.

Specifically his comment about not getting a plastic surgeon to fix a mental disorder. Although GID is currently a disorder in the dsm it is a very controversial diagnosis, and as you mentioned is similar to the history of homosexuality being a mental disorder. The treatments that Dr. Ablow was advising against, hormonal, and physical interventions are a well established treatment for GID (gender identity disorder), because they work; there is a large amount of research showing other interventions fail but transitioning succeeds.

Furthermore his comments are incredibly insulting every time he refers to Chaz with female pronouns. From the APA’s web site regarding trans people: “Use names and pronouns that are appropriate to the person’s gender presentation and identity; if in doubt, ask their preference.” Part of being a professional is being respectful of diversity, as said in this article.

Finally I also want to address his comments saying Chaz is a woman because of his DNA. This underscores Dr. Ablow’s misunderstanding of sexual and gender diversity. There are many women who have XY chromosomes, and men who are XX or other variants of chromosomes (for more information you can look up intersex conditions). There is also some literature showing that transgender people have brain development in certain areas that are similar to their identified gender. These things show how there is a large amount of diversity in sexual development, and to reduce it all down to chromosomes and ignore anything else shows how a lack of understanding of developmental psychology.

So again thank you for your article.

Julia

John: You wrote “…Apparently in Dr. Ablow’s eyes, people who undergo the transgendered process are broken individuals, in need of repair. There are no transgendered people — only people who are confused and in need of treatment to alleviate their condition. …”
I laughed at “are broken individuals, in need of repair” because “apparently” Keith isn’t the only who thinks, “broken” and “in need of repair” because the transies obviously agree through the drugs, cutting off boobs or adding them, cutting off penis’ or adding them and adding vaginas, etc. OBVIOUSLY these people are broken and sick.
And another thing that bothers me is that so many people think children are stuipid. They aren’t and if they didn’t know She is a female pretending to be a male because her brain is wrong, somebody in their class will tell them. Then parents have to explain it. And we all know parents shouldn’t have such pressure put on them because liberals tell us all time, how hard it is to be a parent. Hence, removal of Happy Meal Toys, cereal commercials, etc. Parents will not watch the show with their children and that is as it should be.

Dear Dr. Grohol,
I, too, read the original article by Dr. Ablow on FoxNews. As a physician, it seems I formed a strikingly different opinion. To begin with, my “liking” Dr. Keith’s article on facebook sparked a chain of events that led a teenager (who had been contemplating gender re-assignment, and yes, also suicide) to find a therapist more in tune with treating the underlying causes rather than changing just his exterior. A definite victory!

Personally, as a survivor of incest, Dr. Ablow’s observations ring very true. I always felt ugly as well as guilty for any problems that occurred in the family. Had transgender been promoted as the “answer” it is currently, I would have given it great consideration. As an adult, when the insulation of fat was not enough to keep me safe, would I have removed my breasts and closed my vagina to ward off men? Would my parents finally be happy they had the “son” they always wanted? I realize this seems extreme, but as a highly competent adult who has faced these demons, I can promise this path could have seemed like an escape, even though I could not have explained the “why” of the attraction to gender re-assignment. Clearly, I am not a man, but had I seen it as a viable option, I know it would have felt like it could be a solution to all of my problems.

Your lack of data argument fails to impress, because absence of scientific evidence does not make reality any less true. To use your same line of thought, why are there no studies indicating the shortened life-span and higher cancer rates, cardiac deaths and obesity that necessarily accompany such high doses of exogenous hormones? Perhaps the study has not been performed because the answer would prove that by encouraging people to alter their body and flood themselves with non-endogenous levels of hormones, we are encouraging them to an early death? No proof, as you might say, but a thought worthy of consideration, that seems to have been entirely left out of the discussion.

As an incest survivor, and thankfully a woman who now loves her body, I applaud the bravery displayed by Dr. Ablow. I hope as Editor-in-Chief, you realize that simply changing the “what” of a problem, never solves “why” the problem occurred in the first place. As medical professionals, our job is to fix the disease, not simply alter the symptom. I wonder why you would write that Dr. Ablow focused on “shallow physical attributes?” If physical attributes are “shallow” as you wrote, why then, would you be in support of changing them?

Dr. Ablow’s message of examining the core of the ego-dystonic state seems to have been lost, and replaced with your criticism of his ideas as vulgar, twisted and non-sense. Hardly civilized, especially considering your credentials and platform. You publicly chastise him for not speaking with Chaz and yet you judge Dr. Keith without speaking to him first. What happened to holding yourself to the same standard you set forth above? It makes me wonder, perhaps, if your trepidation to explore an alternative theory is a simply a manifestation of an unexamined life?

Your article would have been far more credible without the personal attacks, and resultantly, I hear the pain behind your words. I wish you the best in finding healing for whatever issues you felt would be helped by attempting to tarnish the reputation of a friend and colleague. I hope in the future your are able to refrain from personal attacks and address differences of opinion with the courage exhibited by Dr. Ablow. Best Wishes – Jennifer

What’s worse than what Ablow spewed on WTFUXUPNEWS is that he an assistant professor employed by Tufts University and he is on the Tufts-New England Medical Center forensic psychiatric staff. He should lose his license. If Tufts does not fire him, they should lose their Joint Commission accreditation for employing a transgender basher. What is he teaching future psychiatrists, that transgender people do not exist?

The other problem I see with Dr. Ablow is that he has trouble with the English language, specifically with pronouns. A trans person who self-identifies as male should not be addressed or discussed as “she.”

Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, disagrees with the “free to be” approach with young children and cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has treated about 500 preadolescent gender-variant children. In his studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20 percent continue to be distressed about their gender and may ultimately change their sex.

Dr. Zucker tries to “help these kids be more content in their biological gender” until they are older and can determine their sexual identity — accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex friendships and activities like board games that move beyond strict gender roles.

From journalist John Colapinto:

“McHugh has always reserved special scorn for the practice of sex-change surgery on adult transsexuals. Classifying transsexualism as merely one symptom in a larger complex of personality disorders, McHugh had long believed that psychiatrists should treat such patients with the talking cure, not radical, irreversible surgeries. In a 1992 article in the American Scholar, McHugh lambasted transsexual surgery as ‘the most radical therapy ever encouraged by twentieth century psychiatrists’ and likened its popularity to the once widespread practice of frontal lobotomy.”[1]

From USA Today:

“McHugh is a leading proponent of the notion that the cause is not biological, that transgender people have chosen this path. He halted the university hospital’s practice of performing gender reassignment surgeries in the late 1970s because, he says, a study indicated that postoperative transsexuals were no happier than they were before the operation. “You can live any way you want, but don’t come to us and ask us to give medical resources to this proposal of yours, because we think it’s a social construct and not a condition of nature,” McHugh says. “No one has demonstrated any physical mechanism or physical problem that causes this. The burden of proof is on them to prove that.””[2]

From historian Joanne Meyerowitz:

“In the late 1970s, however, the climate began to change. The first signs were seen at Johns Hopkins, where the chairman of the Psychiatry department, Dr. Joel Elkes, was replaced by Dr. Paul McHugh. McHugh saw SRS as unnecessary mutilation, and set out to kill the program. He assigned Dr. John Meyer to do a long-term follow-up study of 50 transsexuals who underwent SRS at Johns Hopkins. Meyer’s report, issued in 1977, claimed that SRS confers no objective advantage in terms of social rehabilitation for transsexuals. Although the paper was widely criticized as flawed, it led to the October 1979 closing of the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic.”[3]

From sexologist J. Michael Bailey:

“McHugh objected that clinicians naively accepted transsexual patients’ histories of having been quite feminine, when there was ample evidence in many cases that the histories were false (for example, a married man who presents as conventionally masculine). This objection is often correct, though it has no obvious relevance to the advisability of sex reassignment. Furthermore, and more importantly, McHugh argued that it is simply wrong for physicians to “mutilate” perfectly good organs because the transsexual patient’s troubled mind wants this: “[The focus on surgery] has distracted effort from genuine investigations attempting to find out just what has gone wrong for these people–what has, by their testimony, given them years of torment and psychological distress and prompted them to accept these grim and disfiguring surgical procedures. McHugh’s concerns are worth taking seriously. Consider the case of the man erotically obsessed with having his leg amputated. Would it be advisable or even ethical to remove the leg? And McHugh is correct that interest in sex reassignment medicine has far exceeded interest in changing the minds of transsexual people so they do not want to change their sex. Transsexualism is, after all, a condition of the mind and brain.”[4]

Excerpt from Psychiatric Misadventures by Paul R. McHugh

This interrelationship of cultural antinomianism and a psychiatric misplaced emphasis is seen at its grimmest in the practice known as sex-reassignment surgery. I happen to know about this because Johns Hopkins was one of the places in the United States where this practice was given its start. It was part of my intention, when I arrived in Baltimore in 1975, to help end it.

Not uncommonly, a person comes to the clinic and says something like, “As long as I can remember, I’ve thought I was in the wrong body. True, I’ve married and had a couple of kids, and I’ve had a number of homosexual encounters, but always, in the back and now more often in the front of my mind, there’s this idea that actually I’m more a woman than a man.”

When we ask what he has done about this, the man often says, “I’ve tried dressing like a woman and feel quite comfortable. I’ve eve made myself up and gone out in public. I can get away with it because it’s all so natural to me. I’m here because all this male equipment is disgusting to me. I want medical help to change my body: hormone treatments, silicone implants, surgical amputation of my genitalia, and the construction of a vagina. Will you do it?” The patient claims it is a torture for him to live as a man, especially now that he has read in the newspapers about the possibility of switching surgically to womanhood. Upon examination it is not difficult to identify other mental and personality difficulties in him, but he is primarily disquieted because of his intrusive thoughts that his sex is not a settled issue in his life.

Experts say that “gender identity,” a sense of one’s own maleness or femaleness, is complicated. They believe that it will emerge through the step-like features of most complex developmental processes in which nature and nurture combine. They venture that, although their research on those born with genital and hormonal abnormalities may not apply to a person with normal bodily structures, something must have gone wrong in this patient’s early and formative life to cause him to feel as he does. Why not help him look more like what he says he feels? Our surgeons can do it. What the hell!

The skills of our plastic surgeons, particularly on the genito-urinary system, are impressive. They were obtained, however, not to treat the gender identity problem, but to repair congenital defects, injuries, and the effects of destructive diseases such as cancer in this region of the body.

That you can get something done doesn’t always mean that you should do it. In sex reassignment cases, there are so many problems right at the start. The patient’s claim that this has been a lifelong problem is seldom checked with others who have known him since childhood. It seems so intrusive and untrusting to discuss the problem with others, even though they might provide a better gage of the seriousness of the problem, how it emerged, its fluctuations of intensity over time, and its connection with other experiences. When you discuss what the patient means by “feeling like a woman,” you often get a sex stereotype in return–something that woman physicians note immediately is a male caricature of women’s attitudes and interests. One of our patients, for example, said that, as a woman, he would be more “invested with being than with doing.”

It is not obvious how this patient’s feeling that he is a woman trapped in a man’s body differs from the feeling of a patient with anorexia nervosa that she is obese despite her emaciated, cachectic state. We don’t do liposuction on anorexics. Why amputate the genitals of these poor men? Surely, the fault is in the mind not the member.

Yet, if you justify augmenting breasts for women who feel underendowed, why not do it and more for the man who wants to be a woman? A plastic surgeon at Johns Hopkins provided the voice of reality for me on this matter based on his practice and his natural awe at the mystery of the body. One day while we were talking about it, he said to me: “Imagine what it’s like to get up at dawn and think about spending the day slashing with a knife at perfectly well-formed organs, because you psychiatrists do not understand what is the problem here but hope surgery may do the poor wretch some good.”

The zeal for this sex-change surgery–perhaps, with the exception of frontal lobotomy, the most radical therapy ever encouraged by twentieth century psychiatrists–did not derive from critical reasoning or thoughtful assessments. These were so faulty that no one holds them up anymore as standards for launching any therapeutic exercise, let alone one so irretrievable as a sex-change operation. The energy came from the fashions of the seventies that invaded the clinic–if you can do it and he wants it, why not do it? It was all tied up with the spirit of doing your thing, following your bliss, an aesthetic that sees diversity as everything and can accept any idea, including that of permanent sex change, as interesting and that views resistance to such ideas as uptight if not oppressive. Moral matters should have some salience here. These include the waste of human resources; the confusions imposed on society where these men/women insist on acceptance, even in athletic competition, with women; the encouragement of the “illusion of technique,” which assumes that the body is like a suit of clothes to be hemmed and stitched to style; and, finally, the ghastliness of the mutilated anatomy. But lay these strong moral objections aside and consider only that this surgical practice has distracted effort from genuine investigations attempting to find out just what has gone wrong for these people–what has, by their testimony, given them years of torment and psychological distress and prompted them to accept these grim and disfiguring surgical procedures.

We need to know how to prevent such sadness, indeed horror. We have to learn how to manage this condition as a mental disorder when we fail to prevent it. If it depends on child rearing, then let’s hear about its inner dynamics so that parents can be taught to guide their children properly. If it is an aspect of confusion tied to homosexuality, we need to understand its nature and exactly how to manage it as a manifestation of serious mental disorder among homosexual individuals. But instead of attempting to learn enough to accomplish these worthy goals, psychiatrists collaborated in a exercise of folly with distressed people during a time when “do your own thing” had something akin to the force of a command. As physicians, psychiatrists, when they give in to this, abandon the role of protecting patients from their symptoms and become little more than technicians working on behalf of a cultural force. [5]

Okay, as someone who identifies as Trans (Pre op not post), I felt semi-obligated to post a comment here. I’ve never watched Dancing with the Stars, am not a fan of Fox News, and had no idea who Chaz Bono was until I read this article. So, this opinion is coming from an unbiased source. I have no experience with either side and therefore, do not care to take sides.
I just feel it necessary to say this – as someone who has tried to seek therapy for my gender identity “problems”. (I no longer see them as problems, frankly… if I want to identify as a gender other than the one I was born as, that’s no one’s business but my own) I have spoken to a counsellor about it and mentioned in here and there to the psychiatrist I spoke to for about three years. Neither of them seemed all concerned about it. Maybe it was because of my age at the time (I was still a minor) and they assumed it was just me trying to discover my sexuality, I don’t know. Whatever the case, therapy did not help. I find it bold to suggest that it could. And even if it could, I’m at a point where I would not even want to try it. Why would I want to get rid of who I am just because someone else thinks that who I am is “ill”?
The thing about my gender identity is that it is not why I suffer depression. Many people would like to assume it is, but that would be asinine of them. I have suffered depression from a young age. My first depressive episode was in fifth grade and as you can imagine, I was too young to even know what transgendered was. There are many things that trigger my depression. My gender – contrary to popular believe – is NOT one of them. Just as my best friend is happy being bi-sexual, I am happy being quite “gender neutral”.
Also, no, I have never done drugs. Ever. I was, also, never sexually assaulted. Those assumptions to me are strikingly similar to the assumptions once (and sometimes still) made about the gay community. I did not have a good childhood. I will not deny that. But I was NEVER sexually assaulted in any way by anyone. I, also, did not grow up around a “houseful of men” like many people would want you to believe. In fact, my brother was the only “born” boy in our family.
To automatically assume all transsexuals/transgender individuals are depressed or addicted to drugs or have suffered sexual assault of some sort is stereotyping. The fact of the matter is, it simply isn’t always so. Maybe I’m not a prime example since I have been diagnosed with depression – but once again, my depression is not a direct cause of it and I would laugh if someone suggested it was because I’m quite content being in the transgender community. Many of them are really nice people and an online community for us is one of the only places I feel comfortable online save for communities like the one here. In fact, being a part of that community has, at times, eased the depression.
Am I happy in my “birth” body? Not always. Do I spend excessive amounts of time worrying about it? Yes. But frankly, my overly large nose makes me feel worse. I feel like that’s the first thing people notice about me. My stupid nose. Would I ever get a sex change operation? I’m not sure. But frankly, if I decided to, it would be a personal decision for ME to make. Not one I would make with a professional (no disrespect intended to any of the professionals here that agree with Dr. Ablow). Fact of the matter is, my depression is something that needs curing, my gender identity is not. If I can accept that, why can’t everyone else?

For all the people that say there needs to be an “Honest debate” lets bring some STUDIES into the discussion not just the opinions of a few biased professionals. I don’t have have time to do a proper citation for the article but to name just a couple of studies that show the effectiveness of transition:

– Sex Reassignment Surgery: A Study of 141 Dutch Transsexuals Bram by Kuiper & Cohen-Kettenis. From the article “it is concluded that there is no reason to doubt the therapeutic
effect of sex reassignment surgery.”

– Sex Reassignment of Adolescent Transsexuals: A Follow-up Study by Cohen-Kettenis & van Goozen.

– The outcome of sex reassignment surgery in Belgrade: 32 patients of both sexes by Rakic, Vladan Starcevic & Jovan Maric; Katarina Kelin. “In most transsexuals, the quality of life was improved after surgery”

-Transgender patient satisfaction following reduction mammaplasty by Nelson L, Whallett EJ, McGregor JC. “All respondents expressed satisfaction with their result and no regret”

-Female-to-male transgender quality of life by Emily Newfield1, Stacey Hart, Suzanne Dibble & Lori Kohler. “Providing this community with the hormonal care they request is associated with improved quality of life.”

– Quality of life of individuals with and without facial feminization surgery or gender reassignment surgery by Tiffiny A. Ainsworth and Jeffrey H. Spiegel. “Transwomen have diminished mental health-related quality of life compared with the general female population. However, surgical treatments (e.g. FFS, GRS, or both) are associated with improved mental health-related quality of life. ”

Please lets stop hiding behind bigotry and calling it an honest debate. Transition is an effective treatment and to deny this shows that it is bigotry talking and not an honest discussion.

This is why I wouldn’t let children watch Fox on Cable. And why I won’t watch it.

“Truth is the agreement between knowledge and its object.” — Immanuel Kant

How is it that a person who cannot reconcile their mind with their body not “ill” by definition?

The irony in watching the psychiatry/psychology profession allow its ability to reason be infected by politically correct rhetoric is quite disturbing.

Dr. Grohol,
I found your comments about Dr. Ablow rather petty, and then you don’t even ask a fellow colleague for a comment on a piece that you were about to rip to shreds. That in itself seems rather unprofessional.

When I read Dr. Ablow’s article, I seen a doctor speaking out of concern. Not someone who is attacking, or wanting to hurt someone. But a doctor so concerned about what DWT is trying to do..Television does influence kids, whether or not you want to admit it or not. Some times good, and some times bad. It would be a bit different if DWT didn’t play this up so people with watch.
You said you expected something more from Dr. Ablow. Here he is concerned enough about children getting the wrong message, concerned enough about Chaz Bono living in a delusional state, that he shouted from the mountain top, that everyone needs to stop feeding the delusions, and lets get her help. He was willing to stand up, and say, I believe she need serious help. Please, lets help her. What more could you want?
Instead of going to him, and talking with him about your concerns, you attack him, and call him vulgar? It seems like you need to take a good long look at yourself, as to why, you choose to attack him in such a public way.

I really don’t agree with the statement that was made by Dr. Keith Ablow, that it should have not been allowed for a kid to watch a show the featured a known Transgender. When I was born I always knew that I was different, but I didn’t know what I was. Tried the gay scene, because thats’ what kids called me in school for years. After I tried the gay scene, that was not who I was. For years I was trying to figure out who am I. Then one day I was sitting home while the TV was on; there was this lady on a talk show who was describing things that she felt and what she was going through. Well this interview caught my attention quickly, she was actually explaining things that I felt that I was. A Transgender that is how I found out the proper term, it was like a huge 10,000 tons had been lifted from my shoulders to actually find out, that other people feel as I do and that I am not alone in this by far. That was in 1992-92, Is when I started watching Talk shows that had the educational featuring Transgender.

So you see, it was very beneficial to watch programs, it help me find out that there was name for what I was going through. Kids these days and time don’t have to watch TV to find out about Transgender and other subjects thses days and times. I would by far like to see kids learning about different ways of life in an educational way, rather than seeing all people in public showing sex acts and witnessing all this drug deals and other dreadful things going on in society today. I have seen kids 12 years old selling drugs in my old home town which is very sad. A Transgender person is just someone who is being themselves and deserves the rights as everyone else to live there life without being degraded.

I will just post two updates here. The first is another rebuttal from another doctor (I wonder if Dr. Jack Drescher ran his article by Dr. Ablow before publishing it?):

Wouldn’t it be more helpful to offer scientific data rather than sensationalized, detailed descriptions of sex reassignment surgery or metaphors about double amputees to support the views Dr. Ablow “believes to be true?” […]

Dr. Ablow is within his rights to express personal opinions about transgender people. However, as a psychiatrist speaking in a public forum, his audience is entitled to accurate scientific knowledge of a complex subject rather than opinions, scare tactics and inflammatory language.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/13/dr-ablow-gets-it-wrong-about-chaz-bono-and-dancing-with-stars/

Agreed.

And in a followup interview on the Howard Stern show, Dr. Ablow apparently compares people who are transgendered as similar to someone pretending to be a farm animal:

If a person came to me tattooed as a zebra – Zebraman … go on TV but if you want me to agree with you that you’re a zebra, well, now you’re invading my reality. … It’s dancing with a woman as a man.

I’m not going to have my kids watch a show in which people pretend to be farm animals.

http://www.passportmagazine.com/blog/archives/3274-Fox-News-Contributer-Keith-Ablow-Compares-Chaz-Bono-to-Farm-Animal.html

Again, no comment needed. His words speak for themselves.