Have you ever wondered what’s really happening behind the headlines on gender transitions in children? In a compelling interview with UFI’s Alexis Tarkalson, pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Quentin Van Meter shares eye-opening insights from decades of experience—raising serious concerns about the medical, psychological, and ethical implications of transitioning young people.
This is not just another opinion piece—it’s a must-read conversation with a medical professional who’s seen this firsthand. Whether you’re a parent, educator, or concerned citizen, this interview will challenge what you thought you knew and offer a powerful case for protecting our children’s health and future.
Safeguarding innocence together,
Wendy Wixom, President
United Families International
Losing Young People to Gender Ideology:
A Conversation with Dr. Quentin Van Meter
(Part I)
By Alexis Tarkalson
It’s an exhausted topic. One that you hear about over and over every time you flick through the news. The passion, anger, and frustration are heard on both sides of the situation, and by the end of your daily doom scroll you feel mentally and emotionally drained. Because of these feelings, you swear off the topic.
I am speaking about gender ideology. And more controversially, gender affirming care for minors. Personally, I get so tired of discussing it, that for a week or so I will close my eyes and cover my ears when anything even remotely hints at it.
So then why did I venture to engage in interviewing a prominent and out-spoken advocate against gender ideology? Because its dangers are encroaching more and more into our personal lives and we can’t turn our back on it. Not when the crucial time to act is now; before more of our youth are snatched into its tide and our freedom to speak on it is revoked.
Dr. Quentin Van Meter, a pediatric endocrinologist, earned his medical degree from the Medical College of Virginia and completed his residency and fellowship at the Naval Regional Medical Center in Oakland and Johns Hopkins Hospital. He has operated his own pediatric clinic in Atlanta for the past 21 years.
From 2018 to 2023, he served as President of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), a medical advocacy group labeled a “fringe anti-LGBTQ hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). In 2023, SPLC gave him the honorific title of “anti-trans activist” for his outspoken opposition to gender ideology in court testimonies, amicus briefs, and research presentations on youth gender confusion.
Over the course of two meetings with him, I came to learn that Dr. Van Meter could never be a member of a hate-group (as you can clearly sense his concern and care from our discussions), but most definitely he would be part of a group dedicated to advocating for truth and the best outcome for the most vulnerable among us.
We discussed everything from the various outlets and inlets of gender ideology to the strawman fallacy that is the intersex justification.This article will be addressing the contents of the WPATH files, experimenting on the body, the crisis our youth are experiencing, and more.
Inside the WPATH Files
In 2024, files containing internal forum posts from doctors part of the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) were leaked to Environmental Progress. Several things were learned from the files.
- Clinicians for “gender medicine” are egregiously violating their ethical oaths of “do no harm”
- They are aware of the severe side effects, such as sterility, and yet decline to adequately make their patients aware, specifically minors, thereby violating informed consent
- When comorbidities arise in their patients, rather than delving deeper into those issues, they remain solely focused on the gender confusion
- Time and again they acknowledge they do not understand enough about the procedures they are implementing on their patients, and yet they do not modify their approach
The WPATH files are an absolutely mind-boggling example of the determination of mainstream media to bypass any arguments for pumping the brakes on gender affirming care, particularly for minors. It’s been over a year since the files release, and yet the public is largely unaware of their contents. These leaked conversations from WPATH raise troubling questions—not only about informed consent but about the broader consequences of these medical interventions.
Gender Affirming Care Means Trading Function for Identity
I asked Dr. Van Meter about a statement made by Dr. Marci Bowers in the WPATH files, a transgender woman who was the immediate past president for WPATH. My question was, “Marci Bowers talked about how there’s no difference between women who receive breast enhancements or reductions, or people who get facelifts, or those seeking sex reassignment surgery. What would be the appropriate response to that, because I’ve heard other people make those similar arguments?”
He explained various conditions wherein people would need to receive surgery to relieve suffering and prevent the loss of purpose in a body part. He then said, “These kinds of plastic procedures are very different from someone simply not liking their sex and wanting to become the opposite sex by removing everything.”
I responded, “So it’s all about retaining the functionality.”
“Yes,” he said.
This bothers me deeply. On the surface it is an expected answer with little to no surprises. But if you think about it, we are seeing more and more of our fellow men and women losing functionality of their bodies. Marci Bowers posted, “The fertility question has no research that I’m aware of as puberty onset allows for fertility options while blockers preclude those opportunities…To date, I’m unaware of an individual claiming ability to orgasm when they were blocked at Tanner 2.” (Tanner 2 meaning the beginning of puberty)
Through research we also learn that taking puberty blockers gives gender dysphoric youth a lower bone density than 97.7% of their peers, not to mention making them sterile. And breast binding is reported to give girls severe pain, pulmonary issues, skin issues, and bad posture.
Are they merely an experiment? Reduced to nothing more than a malleable body and an unhealed mind?
What Is The End Goal?
At the very beginning of my interview, I asked Dr. Van Meter, “What is the end goal for W. Path? What is their ideal society?”
To which he responded, “When sex is seen as arbitrary—just whatever anyone wants it to be—then the need for sex itself, in terms of its biological purpose, becomes irrelevant. Families become unimportant. Procreation no longer matters. Sustaining the population loses significance. It becomes all about personal will, a kind of transhumanism, where you can be anything you want and are fully in charge of yourself. And not only that—you must demand that society accept your self-perception. If they don’t, they’re to be chastised or punished. That’s the end goal. That’s really where they want to take us…It’s a form of anarchy.”
This is made evident in the WPATH files when the ‘nullification’ of bodies are discussed and various pathways are explored, such as turning a boy into a eunuch. Dr. Thomas Satterwhite posted in the files, “I’ve found more and more patients recently requesting “non-standard” procedures such as top surgery without nipples, nullification, and phallus-preserving vaginoplasty.”
Some names in the files are redacted, and one of those redacted names posted, “I have worked with clients who identify as non-binary, agender and Eunuchs who have wanted atypical surgical procedures, many of which either don’t exist in nature or represent the first of their kind…”
Innate Identity or Fluid Fantasy?
Dr. Van Meter and I then got onto the topic of detransitioners.
I asked him, “I was reading the leaked WPATH files, and I noticed that a lot of the members were trying to frame detransitioners and detransitioning as a positive thing because they’re “exploring their gender identities” and everything. And so, if that’s the case, then why do you think they believe in allowing life changing surgeries that are irreversible?”
Dr. Van Meter’s response was intriguing, “The point is, if you say people have the freedom to choose their identity however they want, then you’re admitting that identity is fluid. You can’t have both fluidity and something innate at the same time…But if you claim it is innate and biologically determined, then it gains legal protections as a civil right. That brings laws and regulations into society that treat identity like race or biological sex.”
This is paramount. They must retain the innateness so as to secure their right to legal protections, so in the name of science and law they uphold this front, but when looking at the underbelly of the movement, there is no substance and more of an attachment to the idea of “fluidity”.
Adolescence in Crisis
Our youth are lost. They are searching for purpose, guidance, and a listening ear. And more often than not, they are finding that in the transgender community.
Of American high school students, 40% reported feeling sadness and/or hopelessness in 2023, and 20% seriously considered suicide as a viable option. Of youth that present themselves as having gender dysphoria, 63% are also diagnosed with anxiety, up to 62% have depression, they are more likely to have autism and eating disorders. They are between 3 and 13 times more likely to have one or more mental health conditions than those who do not identify as the opposite gender. And most often these issues arise before the arrival of gender incongruence.
One nurse in the WPATH files described a patient she was seeing who desired gender affirming care, “I’m struggling with a patient dx [diagnosed] with PTSD, MDD [major depressive disorder] with well documented, and observed dissociations. Moreover, a recent personality test suggested schizoid typical traits…Psychiatry is recommending holding off…struggling internally as to what is the right thing to do…”
To which she got this response from psychiatrist Dan H. Karasic, “I’m missing why you are perplexed…The mere presence of psychiatric illness should not block a person’s ability to start hormones if they have persistent gender dysphoria…so why the internal struggle as to “the right thing to do”?”
This is one example among quite a few interactions where a medical person posts that their patients have multiple mental illnesses, and yet they continue to treat them with hormones and sex change surgeries.
It wasn’t long before Dr. Van Meter and I started discussing the darker issues youth are experiencing while simultaneously being talked into gender affirming care as the solution. Dr. Van Meter explained, “If you don’t dig deeper, you won’t find answers. What we’re asking is that the first and most thorough evaluation includes a deep look into the child’s emotional background. Everyone in the child’s family should be interviewed—the siblings, aunts, uncles, stepparents—to understand their relationships and what might contribute to the child’s depression or anxiety and discomfort with themselves.”
Rather than do this, most clinicians specializing in gender treatment will go the route of saying “You’re unhappy because you were born in the wrong body.” If the parents resist this, the doctor will pull out his most diabolical and manipulative weapon against skeptical parents and say, “Would you rather have a dead son, or a living daughter?” They are attacking the parents’ natural instinct to protect their child, even if that means giving them up as a sacrifice to the cult that is gender ideology.
The Trevor Project reports transgender youth are 2–2.5 times more likely to attempt or commit suicide after transitioning. Proponents blame this on “minority stress” from social intolerance—yet they also claim rising numbers of trans-identifying youth are due to increased social acceptance. It can’t be both. Even in highly accepting countries like Sweden, trans individuals still face elevated suicide and mortality rates.
Where Should Our Youth Be Turning For Answers?
I asked Dr. Van Meter, “Before the rise of the transgender movement, where do you think kids who experienced trauma—like depression or anxiety—would have turned for support? For example, today, a child struggling might go online and find the transgender community and identify with that. But 50 years ago, what kind of help or path would have been available to that child?”
He responded, “That’s a very good question. I always like to take a step back—let’s go up to 30,000 feet—and look at the 1950s and 60s. Where were all the suicides that supposedly would have happened if not transitioning caused you to take your life? That’s the claim—that the reason to transition is to save your life because you were going to kill yourself. But where were all those suicides back then? There weren’t any. What happened was that families were more involved.”
Dr. Van Meter related an experience he had with a young girl who was experiencing gender confusion. He shared:
“Honestly, in the cases I’ve seen, it’s surprisingly black and white. For example, I had a 13-year-old girl who suddenly decided she wanted to be a boy. Her parents were divorced, and she had never shown any interest beyond typical girl behaviors—Barbie dolls, things like that. Then, out of nowhere, when her dad was about to remarry his girlfriend—someone the girl had been forced to see living with him—her dad told her she had to wear a dress to the wedding. She refused and said she wouldn’t wear a dress. To avoid that, she decided she wanted to be a boy. The family was talking to me as if there was no connection, but the exact moment she decided this was when her father insisted she wear a dress to his wedding. It was like a clear cause-and-effect—do they not see the elephant in the room here?”
Dr. Van Meter then explained how we used to just talk to each other rather than running to the medical community to get diagnosed and pumped full of medications. He said, “They might have talked with siblings, aunts, or uncles—someone who would listen and say, ‘You’re struggling with understanding your masculinity or femininity. Where do you fit on that spectrum? Will you grow up to be gay? Straight? Somewhere in between? How do you express your sexuality?’ They would get feedback and support from their families.”
The Clientification of Medicine
Had this young girl been taken to someone other than Dr. Van Meter, she would have likely been sent down the gender affirming care conveyer belt where informed consent would not be acknowledged, because as one WPATH contributor put it, “I’d also look at the vast literature on the uselessness and dehumanizing nature of the assessment process. The ‘traditional’ model has had no real evaluation and does not appear to be grounded in much more than ‘commonsense’ cis normativity.”
To the WPATH community, informed consent is nothing more than a barrier to making kids lifelong “clients”. And that is what they genuinely call their patients. Repeatedly throughout the files I read these “doctors” and “therapists” call their patients “clients”.
I asked Dr. Van Meter his thoughts on this, and his response was, “The concept of “client” is really about taking apart medicine—removing the art of medicine and turning it into a business…in a “client” model, it’s just a rule: you hired me, you do what I say, I’m right, you’re wrong. If it fails, it’s your fault. Goodbye.”
That much is true when Marci Bowers posted to the forum, “Patients need to own and take responsibility for medical decisions, especially those that have potentially permanent effects.” WPATH members say things like this even though they admit, regarding youth, “It’s out of their developmental range sometimes to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them.”
They know their “clients” aren’t understanding the full impact of these procedures, yet they still push them down the gender-affirming path and then tell them, “It’s your own fault this didn’t work out.” Because if you can get just one naive teenager to fully transition, you are making anywhere between $66,500 and $605,500 (the numbers vary if they are a boy or girl). This is a money making business, not the auspices of a caring and compassionate medical office.
As Dr. Van Meter puts it, “They shouldn’t be given the chance to make that decision. It’s like not giving a loaded pistol to a 3-year-old—you know logically it’s going to end badly. You don’t put responsibility on someone who can’t understand it.”
How You Can Take Action
There is something that we must rectify in our medical community, culture, and our very own families. And that is: putting our children first before ideologies and surplus amounts of money.
This topic is so exhausting because it builds up a frustration within us that we have no outlet for. The public at large feels there is nothing that can be done to fight this ‘larger-than-life’ Goliath.
It’s easy to feel helpless in the face of a movement this vast, well-funded, and deeply embedded in our institutions. But silence is not neutrality—it’s surrender. And there is something you can do. You can:
- Start within your own homes. United Families International has an incredibly resourceful program called HomeFront Project, where we have compiled all of the latest research on various topics into a format where you can discuss with friends and your own family. Talk about this topic and teach your kids about the dangers of gender ideology.
- Speak up locally. It’s so tempting to hide your beliefs from the crowd, especially when they go against the grain. But you know what’s even more compelling? Saving a naive teenager from irreversible damage from tampering with their bodies. So, attend school board meetings to advocate against gender ideology being taught in schools.
- Support ethical medicine. Reach out to your representatives to ensure laws are being put in place to prevent minors from accessing gender affirming care and at a minimum, ensure that informed consent is being instituted to its full extent. Support those medical professionals–like Dr. Van Meter–who dared to make waves, thereby risking their careers and reputations.
- Amplify the truth. Share the leaked WPATH files with your friends and family. Share detransitioner’s stories. Share this article. Share Dr. Van Meter’s highly useful website, biologicalintegrity.org. Social change happens when the public is shown the truth–and they can’t look away.
I often get caught up in the “imposter syndrome”, not feeling qualified enough. But for injustices such as these, you don’t need to be an expert, you just have to have the courage to do something.
Look out for part 2 of this series, where I relate further my conversations with Dr. Van Meter regarding the use of intersex as a red herring—used to distract from the lack of biological basis for gender identity, and what must happen when medicine fails to self-regulate.
Go here to read the full Dr. Van Meter interview.
Alexis Tarkalson graduated from Brigham Young University-Idaho with her degree in Political Science and an emphasis in American Government. She loves spending time with her husband and little boy, reading, hiking mountains, and learning new hobbies. The family unit is immensely important to her, as is protecting the associated rights, which is why she volunteers her time towards United Families International.