Weekly News Roundup: June 20-26, 2025

The week in gender

Welcome to our weekly newsletter! Every Friday, just for paid subscribers, Informed Dissent publishes a roundup, written by Ben Appel, of the previous week’s gender-related news. Our next podcast episode—WITH SPECIAL GUEST, MAUD MARON!—drops tomorrow morning. Happy Friday!

A triple punch

Trans activists got hit with a trifecta of fact-based articles today: a NY Times op-ed by Andrew Sullivan, a WaPo op-ed by Alex Byrne, and a Dispatch article by Jesse Singal. Two of them (Andrew’s and Alex’s) mention that many people consider “gender-affirming care” to be a new form of gay conversion therapy, since historically the vast majority of trans-identified kids have been same-sex-attracted. Andrew and Alex also bring up the Dutch protocol, specifically how 62 of the 70 kids in the original cohort were homosexual. Typically GLAAD and HRC (especially GLAAD) are quick to put out statements “debunking” any articles that contradict their bonkers narrative, but as far as I know, neither of these orgs has bothered to respond. I’ve begun to think they’re never going to acknowledge this issue. For shame.