Dr. Alan Bean, MD briefs grassroots activists at Maine First Project training session on May 13, 2023 in Gorham
I had a year of specialized psychiatric training after med school before realizing that half the people I worked with had psych disorders. Still, that training gave me some valuable insights into mental illness. I then trained and worked in Emergency Medicine for almost 10 years and for the last 20+ years, I have done Occupational Medicine, which is mostly treating workers’ compensation injuries.
I’ve never been afraid to speak my mind on issues, and we all know there is a very long list of weirdnesses in our culture to speak out against, but when I learned that the transgender agenda began to be promoted in Oxford Hills, where I grew up K-12, I had my Popeye moment. “I’ve had all I can stand and I can’t stand no more!” For the first time in my life, I’m willing to really stick my neck out.
How did we get here? By the radicals repeating their agenda over and over and over. If you repeat a lie enough times it will become “truth” in the minds of the spineless victims of the Main Street media.
Well, that can cut both ways. When I spoke out publicly for the first time at OHHS, the ratio of those in the crowd was easily 20:1 against the trans agenda. We need to be more vocal than the radicals. Today, I hope to help you develop your own ways to effectively argue against this nonsense.
The rumblings in our culture over the last few weeks have given me hope. Bud Light putting Dylan Mulvaney on a beer has more than backfired financially for Anheuser-Busch – to the tune of $5B losses in the first week, it has awakened the less vocal majority – the “sleeping giant”. I heard an interview on the radio with the owner of one of the largest bars in Boston right after this happened. On a typical weekend that bar would, on average, sell two kegs of Bud Light on tap. That is #330, 12 oz beers. The first weekend after this fiasco, they sold 4 beers. Here’s the big caveat: the public has a very short memory. So, we need to be MORE vocal about this issue than the radical left.
There is clearly an agenda behind the transgender movement, but those in the thick of it are mostly unaware of the history behind it.
-there have always been cross dressers or transvestites, but that wasn’t gender confusion, it was always a sexual fetish — typically, men being sexually aroused by dressing up like a woman.
-The first acknowledged transsexual: Christine Jorgensen in the 1950’s, was a flash in the pan and then we heard virtually nothing until transgenderism as an agenda very suddenly appeared only about 10 years ago — promoted by a small group of transsexuals who just happened to be extremely wealthy. A single transgender man, Martine Rothblatt, a lawyer and billionaire CEO of a massive health care organization, got the ball rolling. Rothblatt refers to himself as a “transhumanist”. He saw transgenderism as a steppingstone to transhumanism (the ultimate goal is be able to upload our consciousness into digital form so our bodies are no longer needed; crazy sci-fi stuff!). The other two big money pushers of this agenda were/are the Pritzker family and the CEO of Stryker (medical equipment).
-Big medicine/big tech saw $$ to be made when AIDS hit in the 80’s. This was the catalyst to the beginning of promotion of LGB “rights”. In the last 10 years trans rights started being pounded into our culture in virtually all media. Even Hannity on Fox calls BRUCE “Kaitlyn” Jenner “she”!
-These radical billionaires started donating millions to colleges, medical centers, the entertainment industry, etc., but always with a catch…they must include gender fluidity in their content. Governor Pritzker in Illinois gave an executive order: if your school wants funding for health education, you must teach gender ideology. That is called blackmail.
What started as way less than ½ of 1% of the population having an acknowledged mental illness with the delusion of believing that God somehow made a mistake and put them in the wrong body, has now morphed into a promotion of anything goes — “just express yourself!”. The whole concept of “gender fluidity” – which can now be seemingly a minute by minute choice — runs completely counter to what we all know to be one of the most obvious and universally recognized scientific truths: you’re a male or a female.
-This has become a cult; even intelligent, heterosexual people are professing that, yes, we can be born in the wrong body. Why? Because our culture is force-feeding us this in every avenue. The idea in the beginning – arguably a noble idea — was to de-stigmatize these mentally ill people, but has it has morphed into legitimize! Gay used to mean happy. Rainbows used to just be a natural beauty in the sky. Our very language has been hijacked. Can anyone you know even name all of the new words from the LGBTQ+++ alphabet soup that have been invented much less tell what they all mean? Even the Cambridge University dictionary has re-defined the word “woman” as a feeling of being female.
Although I’m a deeply committed Christian, when confronted with proponents of this ideology, I do NOT approach this subject from my faith perspective. If you do so, you’ll lose your audience before you start.
I want to read to you what I recently said when I spoke in front of the Windham School Board:
My name is Alan Bean. I’m a medical doctor. I do not come to this argument from a position of morality — I am here to talk about defensible, objective science. A very vocal and tyrannical minority has an agenda to convince the vast majority of us that what is clearly a psychological disorder has now somehow become normal.
In the practice of medicine, we are called to compassionately balance subjectivity and objectivity. As patients we had better all hope that our doctors make wise decisions based upon objective truths, not on their feelings or personal ideological biases. With or without chemical or surgical “gender affirming” procedures, genetic males get male diseases. Genetic females get female diseases. Whatever an individual may think their gender to be should never cause us doctors to compromise our medical assessments.
Since the dawn of human history, both medical science and simple common sense have recognized this most basic of truths: you are genetically either male or you are female. One’s birth gender is about as objective as objective can be. I didn’t need 11 years of training after high school to know this — and neither did any honest person in this room. Before you raise the argument, hermaphroditism is an exceedingly rare phenomenon and has no place in this debate.
10 years ago, in a national survey of ages 12-25, 0.7% of that population expressed a self-perceived gender identity different from their genetic gender. Last year, the same national survey saw that number double to 1.4%. Maine is a huge outlier: last year close to 30% of our high schoolers expressed gender confusion. WHY? Have Mainers, after thousands of years of humankind, suddenly de-evolved in only 10 years? Of course not! For very misguided reasons, our school systems have embarked on a very dangerous social experiment by trying to convince our youth that gender is a choice and that any choice they make is normal. Looking back at our own youth, we all know that young people are known for making some poor choices. This issue is almost exclusively a problem seen in those under 25-26 years old. That is before the frontal and temporal lobes of our brains have fully developed. Those areas of the brain are the seat of both our reasoning and emotions. Adolescence is already a time of very difficult adjustments to the hormonal changes taking place within the mind and body. The last thing kids need at this tumultuous time in their lives is ambiguity.
Medical science has always recognized that gender dysphoria (or gender identity disorder) is clearly a psychological disorder. To label it as “normal” or a legitimate “choice” can only be based on gross ignorance, mental illness, societal brainwashing or an outright lie. With zero exceptions, every gender confused patient I have seen in my practice has had pre-existing, lifelong psychological maladjustments. They have ALL been cutters. Anxiety disorders. Most have been tragic victims of sexual abuse who deserve our compassion, but having been abused does not warrant futile attempts to change one’s gender.
Undoubtedly there are wide disparities in sexual preferences among the population; one may be attracted to males or females or both, but the creature behind those preferences can only be either male or female. Sexual attraction preference is not the issue here. This is about society attempting to re-define gender itself. We are all heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual. LGB — End of the list. The rest of the alphabet soup is completely without merit.
Advising children on issues of sexuality is not the role of any school system. These are minors who are wards of their parents, not wards of the school. School Boards and teachers have neither special qualifications nor, more importantly, the right to make parental decisions for our children on this issue. Yes, we all know that a minority of students have abusive parents, however, we already have DHHS/Child Protective Services to address that tragedy.
Imposing this agenda on those who disagree is the very antithesis of freedom. For a school board to push this agenda on the citizenry is an infringement on the views of the vast majority to accommodate a very small minority. I challenge the school board to put any proposed “gender affirming” policy up to a community referendum vote. It will fail in a landslide.
So, you see, my approach to the other side on this issue is to be sure to acknowledge that they may think that they are acting out of compassion for the trans community, but, in actuality, they are making the problem worse. Psychiatrists know that you treat delusional patients to dispel their delusions. You don’t buy into their psychosis and agree with it.
Hormones blockers first: disrupt growth, weakened bones, THEN cross-sex hormones > sterility; there are now several hundred clinics in the US — who’s funding these? – see above. American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Psychiatry and the AMA have all moved to normalizing this.
Surgical “gender-affirming” care — the ultimate oxymoron – kind of like calling abortion “reproductive rights” – is better called what it is: genital mutilation!
This is hugely disproportionate: the vast majority having gender reassignment surgery are young females having their female parts removed. The million-dollar question, “Why?”, is NOT being asked! Having met and interviewed many of these young people, I know what’s the most common thread: sexual and other forms of abuse at the hands of very bad men when they were very young. “If I’m a man, no man will ever want to do that to me again”.
Practical stuff:
-If a male insists that you call him by his chosen female name, ask if he has changed his name legally through the courts. If he has, fine, call him Susie. If he hasn’t, politely inform him that it is your right to refuse to acquiesce to his request.
-“You’re transphobic!” Explain that a phobia is defined as an irrational fear and that you do not fear transgenders in any way. I feel deeply sorry for them. Be compassionate, they are ill. But, stand your ground. I practice medicine as compassionately as any physician you will meet. However, lying to my patients by minimizing their problems is NOT compassion. If I tell my patients that their disorder is normal, that is not compassion.
-Your employer tells you that you must comply with their gender-affirming policies as a condition of employment. Simply remind them of the First Amendment which includes freedoms of speech and religion. And that while there are laws prohibiting discrimination based upon actual, biological gender, there is no such law forbidding my deeply held convictions that gender is fixed and a product of genetics. Black people don’t choose to be black. I didn’t choose to be white. We cannot and should not discriminate against any person based on their genetics. I didn’t choose to have a penis. If I don’t like having a penis, too bad, it’s my responsibility to live with that dysphoria, not your responsibility to agree with my delusion. If necessary, make it clear that if they threaten to fire you, you will sue them for discrimination.
So, this really comes down to one word: courage. Are you willing to stick your neck out?