Dobkowitz wrote back using the same email account she used to contact Bowers. “This documentary will explore the challenges the transgender and LGBTQIA+ face in today’s culture, as well as advancements in transgender care and gender/sex affirmation surgery,” she wrote.
“We are coming from the position that as more attention is given to the transgender community, it’s critical that accurate information is available to the public,” she went on.
In the movie, Walsh did not use phrases such as “transgender care” and “affirmation surgery” — terms that support trans rights — and instead referred to some such treatments as “chemical castration.”
Ōkami said she would not have done the interview if Walsh’s staff had been forthcoming with their perspective. In the movie, Walsh mocks Ōkami for her spiritual and psychological connection with wolves, something that is not connected to her being transgender. Opponents of trans rights often raise the alarmist and false idea that transgender identity is somehow encouraging people to identify as animals.
“It was complete fraud in my opinion,” Ōkami said. “He wanted to use me to make us look ridiculous, to make us look sensational.” She said she spoke with an attorney about potential recourse but was told there was little she could do because she had signed a general release form provided by Walsh’s staff.
Forcier, a professor of pediatrics at Brown University, said she got an email from Walsh’s staff that she thought was a sincere inquiry about the science of puberty blockers.
“I said, ‘sure.’ Learning about blockers is really important, and I’m always trying to be available to talk about the science and help people understand,” she said. For everyone, she said, “I think there’s room for growth, in terms of both individual and larger cultural understanding.”
Forcier said she felt pressured to sign a release form before she knew much more.
“They said they needed the release before they made the effort to come down from Canada,” she said. “There were definitely some pressure tactics: Sign this so we can use the footage.” She said she hasn’t been able to find copies of the emails.
The interview — part of which Walsh later posted online — didn’t last long, Forcier said. A few minutes in, Walsh compared gender dysphoria to believing in Santa Claus and compared puberty blockers to “chemical castration.” Forcier ended the interview.
“I thought, ‘This is not what I thought this was going to be,’” she said. “I thought, ‘This is now a gotcha video, and I was not quite informed about what’s going to be happening today.’”
“He was getting frustrated because I just wouldn’t say some of the things he wanted me to say,” she added. Forcier said she tried to get in touch with Walsh’s staff afterward to learn more and to ask to see the video. She said they didn’t respond.
Doctors who provide transgender care and their allies have been the targets of misinformation campaigns organized on social media for some time, and the promotion of the video whipped up even more of a cultural maelstrom and harassment of the people interviewed for it.
Forcier said she keeps a folder of the worst emails she gets in case she needs to send them to law enforcement later.
“People send really graphic, sexual, violent comments about me being a pediatric gender-care provider. It’s way more graphic and sexual than any work I’ve done,” she said. She shared excerpts with NBC News, including one email saying, “I’m sure Lucifer has a nice warm seat waiting for you.”
Bowers said that one person tracked down her daughter on Instagram and told the daughter she was going to hell. She said that she and her daughter try to take the harassment in stride and even joked about it on Mother’s Day.
“I’d been at the front line for a long time, so I’m used to taking a lot of arrows, but we take those arrows and we send them back with kindness and truth,” she said. Bowers is serving a two-year term as president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the medical group that writes the standards of care for trans health care.
Bowers said that she doesn’t necessarily regret speaking to Walsh. She said her inclination is to talk to anyone and try to find common ground. But she said Walsh in the video came across to her as smug and arrogant.
“He edited it in a way that wasn’t fair, so it doesn’t leave people with any sort of knowledge or education. It just heightens their fears of trans people — to his and his viewers’ loss,” she said.
“Matt really is just a bully,” she said.
Bowers said that she’s undeterred. Her clinic near San Francisco offers surgery not only for transgender people, but also to victims of genital mutilation and other people needing gynecological services.
“I’m here helping people in three areas of medicine that are not covered by current services, so I’m pretty certain that I’m doing God’s work. What is Matt Walsh doing but trying to return us to some 1950s simplified version of male and female?” she said.
Forcier said that, like Bowers, she hasn’t let up in her medical work and that, if anything, she now has more resolve.
“These are adults bullying and victimizing children,” she said about Walsh and his supporters.
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