Democrat candidate’s name removed from list of gender affirming providers

A Greenville North Carolina School board candidate’s name was scrubbed from East Carolina University’s (ECU) list of LGBTQ Affirming Providers a day after clinic workers confirmed it provides medical treatments to children wishing to change “genders.”

by: Sloan Rachmuth

The Democrat party has endorsed Jennifer Hodgson for Pitt County school board, and she has impressive credentials. Besides volunteering and working in pre-k and elementary schools, Hodgson helped launch first nationally accredited doctoral program in Medical Family Therapy at ECU.

According to an archived ECU webpage, Dr. Hodgson has been only one of a few therapists specializing in “sexually and gender diverse patients” in Greenville since 2021.

But Hodgson's contact information was removed from the directory on October 13th - the same day that Education First published a follow-up story about the connection between ECU's Safe Zone Training for K-12 school staff and its new pediatric clinic, where children can be given experimental drugs to change their gender.

As part of the continuum of care, therapists often examine patients to determine whether they are eligible for hormone treatments, or to help them change their gender on their birth certificates.

In the directory, Hodgson also noted that she received Safe Zone Training with ECU’s Dr. Jesse R. Peel LGBTQ Center.

The directory stipulates that healthcare providers must provide their own information and are solely responsible for its accuracy. If that true, then why did Jennifer Hodgson remove her listing from ECU's LGBTQ affirming provider list?

Is Jennifer Hodgson merely hiding crucial details about her professional life to avoid backlash that could undermine her campaign? Maybe she just read that an overwhelming majority of likely voters in America oppose children receiving gender care, and now she'd hiding under her desk.

Or, maybe Hodgson has done more research on the dangers of youth "gender affirming care."

She'd be terribly concerned had she read the recent investigative report from Reuters. It raised major red flags about the rising rate of children receiving medical treatment for gender dysphoria.

From the report:

Puberty blockers and sex hormones do not have U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for children’s gender care. No clinical trials have established their safety for such off-label use. The drugs’ long-term effects on fertility and sexual function remain unclear. And in 2016, the FDA ordered makers of puberty blockers to add a warning about psychiatric problems to the drugs’ label after the agency received several reports of suicidal thoughts in children who were taking them.

If Hodgson read the Reuters report, then she knows that European countries like Switzerland, Finland, and the UK who embraced gender care for children long ago have now effectively banned the practice for children. The UK closed its main clinic child sex-change clinic after an independent review found that staff felt “pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach.”

Could it be that Hodgson is paying attention to the testimonies of dozens of young people who deeply regret going through treatments to change their gender and then change back - called detransitioning?

Many “detransitioners” blame therapists and specialists who followed the affirmative care model. “The professionals all seemed to push medical transition, so I thought it was the only path for me to be happy,” claimed detransitioner Chole Cole.

The consequences of hormone therapy and surgery can be devastating. One girl named Helena suffered from emotional instability caused by testosterone, which culminated in two hospitalizations for suicide attempts. During Helena's stay in the hospital, she realized her transition was a mistake. "I saw a montage of my photos, and when I saw how different my face was, I realized this was all wrong. It was a very dark time for me."

Perhaps Jennifer Hodgson has decided against introducing sexuality into classrooms full of impressionable children as the Safe Zone training suggests. Maybe she had abandoned providing gender affirming care to minors.

Hodgson should explain to Greenville voters why her name was removed from the list of gender affirming providers and why she's now trying to hide her involvement with Safe-Zone trainings.