Florida mother January Littlejohn, who sued her school district for keeping her daughter’s social gender transition a secret, spoke at the Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine Joint Rules/Legislative Committee Rule Workshop on Friday.
“The irreversible consequences of medical transitioning, including loss of sexual and reproductive function, can not be fully understood by children or teens who lack the necessary cognitive maturity or experience,” said Littlejohn. “These children deserve ethical, evidence-based treatment that helps them explore and resolve the true source of their distress. Please stop enabling doctors to chemically castrate and cut off the healthy organs of children and teens.”
Mother January Littlejohn speaks out against child sex changes at the Florida Boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine Joint Rules/Legislative Committee Rule Workshop. pic.twitter.com/KmxbZBdADW
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) October 28, 2022
The workshop is being held by the state’s board of medicine in an effort to gather information as they build state guidelines on the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors.
Littlejohn then went on to tell her daughter’s story: “In the spring of 2020, or 13-year-old daughter told us she was experiencing distress over her sex, and she didn’t feel like a girl. She had expressed no previous signs of gender confusion, and her announcement came shortly after three of her friends at school also claimed transgender identities,” Littlejohn said. “Soon afterward, her mental health spiraled.” She said her family then worked with her daughter to deal with her feelings of anxiety and low self-esteem.
“We also gave her more one-on-one time, in-person activities away from trans influencers, limited her internet use, and declined to affirm her newly chosen name and pronouns,” Littlejohn said, adding, “We set appropriate boundaries and allowed her to choose her hair and clothing, but denied harmful requests such as breast binders, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries.” She said that her daughter’s changes were connected with discomfort of going through puberty and the changes of her “developing body” along with “an intense fear of being sexualized.”
“She was filled with deep self-loathing and was in true emotional pain, but had been encouraged by peers and influencers to believe that gender identity was the source of that pain,” the mother added.
“What she really needed was for us to help her make sense of her confusion. And remind her that hormones and surgeries could never ever change her sex, or resolve her underlying mental health issues. I shudder to think what could have happened if we had affirmed her false identity and consented to medical treatments as opposed to what we did through watchful waiting, which was to lovingly affirm her as she is beautifully unique and irreplaceable, and undeniably female,” Littlejohn said, adding that her daughter is now on a path of “self-love.”
“Unfortunately, gender dysphoria children are being encouraged through activism and peer pressure to disassociate from their bodies and to believe their body parts can simply be removed, modified or replaced,” she concluded.
