Where Society Is Headed in the Future

The Argument Against Trans Just Needs More Time

Recent attempts to explain the collapse of public support for transgender ideology have leaned on a familiar excuse: we just needed more time.

Jonathan Cowan, writing for Politico, urged Democrats to “meet Americans where they are today, not where advocates might wish them to be, or where society may be headed in the future.” Sarah (Tim) McBride, a trans-identified male and congressional representative, echoed that line on The Ezra Klein Show (June 17, 2025), lamenting that the movement simply hadn’t had the time to “open hearts and change minds.”

But the truth is: we did have the time. I saw what happened with it.

From 2019 to 2022, I worked in the heart of pediatric gender medicine at a major children’s hospital in St. Louis. What I witnessed during those years—what I now call the gap between “The Introduction” and “The Reckoning”—undermines every talking point offered by Klein and McBride.

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The Introduction

In 2019, I helped lead what we called our “Trans 101” training for emergency room staff. The program was about 75 minutes long and designed to explain the medical model: pronouns, terminology, the WPATH model of care. It was clinical and non-confrontational.

This was St. Louis—not San Francisco, not Brooklyn. And yet the response was overwhelmingly polite, even supportive. These were smart, compassionate healthcare workers, most of them politically liberal, who absorbed the information in good faith. The idea of “transgender medicine” still existed in the abstract for them. They weren’t rejecting it—they simply hadn’t seen it up close.

This phase reminds me of the early gay rights era. Even when Americans didn’t fully understand homosexuality, they grasped the core idea: some men love men, some women love women. Over time, many changed their minds because the ask was human, bounded, and relatable.

The trans movement claims it never got that moment. That Americans turned on them before they had a chance to connect. But I contend the opposite: America did meet the movement—and what they saw disturbed them.

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The Reckoning

By 2022, I was asked to return and conduct a “refresher” series with the same ER staff. The cultural moment had shifted. Trans issues were no longer theoretical—they had arrived, daily, and with force.

Staff were overwhelmed. Many told us they now encountered at least one trans-identified child every shift. They had done what Ezra Klein demanded—used the pronouns, played along. But the requests didn’t stop at “she/her.” One child demanded to be called “mushroom.” Another insisted on being referred to as “it.”

Nurses were fielding demands for biologically male patients to be roomed with girls. In a pediatric hospital, that meant young patients—often semi-nude, in gowns—placed alongside intact males who claimed womanhood. There were requests for cross-sex hormones without therapy. There were furries. Concerns about fertility and the general health of the patients became prominent. There were breakdowns.

One clinician asked, “Where is the line drawn?” Another: “This has gone too far.” And another still: “How can you do this to children?” These were not right-wing activists. They were nurses and doctors who had initially welcomed this ideology—and now felt betrayed by it.

So when Sarah McBride says Americans would be more supportive if they just met trans people, I have to ask: Which ones?

The ER staff met them. Riley Gaines met them in the locker room. What people found was not a marginalized population simply asking to live in peace—but a movement demanding the suspension of reason, the redefinition of language, the erasure of sex-based rights, and the medicalization of distress in children.

There was no shortage of time. There was a shortage of boundaries.

And now, the American public is drawing them.

• No, we don’t want males in women’s sports.
  

• No, we won’t call a rapist “she” or refer to “her” penis.
  

• No, we won’t tell children they were born in the wrong body.
  

• No, we will not medicalize autism, trauma, or gay puberty.
  

• No, “mushroom” is not a gender.
  

• No thank you. We’ve had enough.
  

The reckoning has arrived—not because we refused to listen, but because we did.