Remember the 3 Vs?

Recognizing how disinformation works in real-time

Author

Kyan Lynch
January 29, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Yesterday, the Trump administration issued an Executive Order aimed at gender affirming care for minors.

It reads, in part:

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.

Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding.  Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization.

Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it 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.

This EO is full of misinformation and propaganda.

If you want to understand what’s wrong with the content, keep reading to the end.

But first…

Can You Spot the Tactic?

In this past Sunday’s newsletter, I shared some lessons I learned from a book about manipulating media.

The first strategy I shared was use of the 3 Vs to make a story compelling.

The 3 Vs are:

  • Villain

  • Victim

  • Vindicator

Can you identify a victim, villain, and vindicator in the EO text?

Why do you think this framing is so compelling?

How might we, as medical educators, public health proponents, and allies, use this tactic to share quality information?

Facts

In reality, very few minors receive gender affirming hormonal care or surgical care.

Most of gender affirming care for minors consists of talking, including therapy for both the child and the family.

Social affirmation and puberty blockers are completely reversible. Hormone therapy is partially reversible. Surgery, obviously, is irreversible. It’s also exceedingly rare.

Gender affirming care improves mental health and wellbeing for children and adolescents.

A recent analysis of over 5 million adolescents’ medical records showed that between 2018 and 2022:

  • The rate of adolescents receiving puberty blockers was 0.02%

  • The rate of adolescents receiving hormone therapy was 0.05%

  • No adolescents younger than 12 years received a hormone prescription

  • The rate of undergoing a gender-affirming surgery with a TGD-related diagnosis was:

    • 2.1 per 100 000 minors aged 15 to 17 years (0.002%)

    • 0.1 per 100 000 minors aged 13 to 14 years (0.0001%)

    • 0 procedures among minors aged 12 years or younger

    • The most common gender affirming surgery for both children and adults is masculinizing chest surgery.

      • “Of the 151 breast reductions among cisgender male minors and TGD minors, 146 (97%) were performed on cisgender male minors”