I don't often make predictions, but early last year, I made this forecast about the chemical and surgical castration of minors:
I predict the entire house of cards will have fallen across the West within the next year or so - giving the quack medicine known as "gender-affirming care" a shelf life approximating that of lobotomies, and two decades too long.
Ten months later, the prophecy has been fulfilled.
Among a flurry of gender-themed executive orders issued by the Trump administration this week was one released Tuesday entitled "Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation". It began:
Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child's sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation's history, and it must end.
The EO warned that the victims of this practice often experience regret, may end up unable to conceive or breastfeed, and may encounter rising medical bills, "lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization".
As such, the new Administration announced it that "will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called 'transition' of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures."
As well as providing a comprehensive list of the drugs and procedures to be eschewed, significantly, the order requires federal agencies to "rescind or amend all policies that rely on WPATH guidance" - a move that would likely expose recalcitrant practitioners to litigation.
Thus, while stopping short of banning "gender medicine" entirely, Trump's executive order will ensure it is heavily curtailed, if not shuttered for good, in the nation with the highest victim count and the most culpability for expanding, innovating, and popularising the barbaric practice worldwide.
But this is just an executive order that can be reversed by the next administration, critics might argue.
Possibly. But given that the popularity of castrating kids is now at historically low levels and that Republicans control both houses of Congress, it is highly likely Trump's reforms will be written into law before the upcoming midterms.
Even if not, recent polls suggests that the America First movement that swept the country last November, far more than representing just MAGA voters or Trump personality cultists, is a unity ticket that Democrats will struggle to oust in 2028. Trump's executive order could have a very long shelf life.
But this is just America, critics may likewise argue.
Actually, the United States has lagged in its rollback of paediatric gender quackery, at least on a national scale. Chile, Italy, Germany, the UK, the EU, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, France, Sweden and Finland have all made bold moves towards curtailing the practice.
And this just in from The Australian:
More than 100 doctors, academics, lawyers, politicians, advocates and detransitioners are calling for the Albanese government to launch an immediate inquiry into youth gender medicine and to pause the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapies for children in Australia.
The group of signatories, which includes former prime minister Tony Abbott, former deputy prime minister John Anderson, Queensland child psychiatrist Jillian Spencer, former Liberal candidate Katherine Deves, and outspoken medical doctor Dr Julie Sladden, warned the practice is a "potential public health disaster of generational significance".
While a few skirmishes remain to be fought, the era of castrating kids is fast coming to an end. Thank heavens for that.
My next prediction?
Not long from now, the vast majority who aided and abetted the pseudoscience known as "gender medicine" will pivot and deny they ever supported it.
You know they will.
Good thing we kept the receipts.