Washington Post Shamefully Endorses RFK Jr's Pseudoscience Report On Trans People

The paper, which has had no problem critiquing other pseudoscience efforts by RFK Jr's HHS, appears to fully embrace anti-transgender pseudoscience and conversion therapy.

Mob Mob // Creative Commons

On Sunday, the Washington Post editorial board published an op-ed that appeared to fully embrace the anti-trans pseudoscience promoted in the recent report from RFK Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services. This is the same department that has overseen some of the most disastrous public health responses in recent memory, stacked key positions with conspiracy theorists, and pushed disinformation on everything from autism to vaccines. Ironically, the Post has criticized these failures in other reporting—but when it comes to transgender health care, the editorial board seems unwilling to apply the same scrutiny, leaving readers uninformed about the report’s dangerous, evidence-defying recommendations.

“Rather than say doctors have been performing interventions for which the evidence of effectiveness is inadequate, |Trump| said they are “maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children” based on “Junk Science.” … This hyperbole is not helpful to anyone, especially not young people and their families. What’s needed instead is better evidence and reasoned discussion about the trade-offs involved in intervening with the biological process of puberty in children who experience gender dysphoria… The good news is that the executive order provided some of what is too often missing in the debate over transgender medical care for children,” reported the Washington Post Editorial Board in an article titled, “Good questions about transgender care.”

The Washington Post editorial board describes the HHS report—laden with disinformation and distortions about transgender care—as “careful” and “thorough.” While the op-ed concedes that the report was born out of executive orders that deny transgender people even exist, it fails to grapple with the obvious: the report was constructed to reach a predetermined conclusion. There is no world in which the study’s authors could have released any report affirming transgender healthcare’s importance, given the executive order that made it possible and those in charge of selecting the authors, whose names were kept anonymous. The editorial calls for “neutral, unbiased studies” on transgender health care, yet in the same breath treats a 400-page screed—designed explicitly to justify banning that care—as if it meets that standard. The contradiction is as glaring as it is dangerous.

Almost none of the content from the HHS report actually makes it into the Washington Post editorial. The piece largely ignores the avalanche of criticism from scientists, medical experts, and transgender people over the report’s glaring falsehoods. Nowhere in the editorial will readers learn that the report endorses thoroughly discredited theories like “rapid onset gender dysphoria” and “social contagion” to explain trans identity. It deadnames some of the earliest known transgender patients—seemingly out of spite—and classifies social transition, something as simple as a haircut and a new name, as a medical intervention requiring regulation. It leans heavily on fringe, debunked studies and repeatedly cites known anti-trans ideologues like Jesse Singal, Ray Blanchard, Paul Hruz, James Cantor, Michael Laidlaw, and Quinten Van Meter—figures courts and experts have ruled unqualified to speak on transgender health care. None of this, nor the hundreds of factual distortions and pseudoscientific claims littering the report, are addressed in the Post’s editorial.

On the rare occasions the Washington Post editorial acknowledges criticism of the HHS report, it does so by dismissing those critics as mere “activists.” Take, for example, the paper’s defense of the report’s anonymous authorship and lack of transparent review—an unprecedented move for a document claiming scientific credibility. The editorial suggests their anonymity was justified to shield them from backlash for promoting “a greater emphasis on psychotherapy,” writing: “Presumably, one reason they kept their names secret was because the underlying issue is so heated and polarized: A fierce activist backlash awaits anyone who calls for greater emphasis on psychotherapy in treating gender dysphoric youth. (Critics deride this approach as ‘conversion therapy.’)” In this telling, anyone defending trans people is cast as an ideologue… which includes the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, experts at Yale, and more. Meanwhile, an anonymous, Trump-commissioned screed—produced under an executive order declaring that transgender people don’t exist and referring to their care as “mutilation”—is framed as the work of “thorough skeptics.” The rhetorical game is obvious, and dangerous.

It’s telling that the Washington Post entirely misrepresents what’s actually happening inside the HHS report and the broader Trump administration. There is no “greater emphasis on psychotherapy” here—there is only psychotherapy, and not in any neutral or therapeutic sense. What the report promotes is not mental health support, but conversion therapy dressed up in rebranded language. “Gender Exploratory Therapy,” the euphemism used throughout, is widely recognized by transgender people and medical professionals as a form of conversion therapy—its name as misleading as “crisis pregnancy centers,” which mask anti-abortion extremism behind the veneer of medical care. Just as those centers are designed to delay care until it’s no longer accessible, Gender Exploratory Therapy is engineered to stall transition indefinitely, pressuring patients until they no longer identify as transgender. Therapists practicing it never provide letters for transition and are affiliated with groups that actively lobby against trans rights in bathrooms and schools. This is not a neutral alternative. And yet, the Washington Post editorial board either fails to understand that—or worse, chooses not to.

The Post seems capable of recognizing the rot inside RFK Jr.’s HHS—when it comes to vaccines, to autism, to measles outbreaks. But when it comes to transgender people, suddenly the standards slip. Suddenly, the same department pushing anti-vax pseudoscience is recast as thoughtful, and its anonymous authors as brave truth-tellers. Why? Because trans lives make for easy outrage clicks, and the Post, under Jeff Bezos, is increasingly positioning itself to win a right-wing audience. This is a paper that used to lead on trans health coverage—now it’s playing footsie with extremists. Ever since it refused to endorse a presidential candidate and watched its readership crater, something fundamental has shifted. Truth was one of the first casualties. And today, transgender people are paying the price.