A liberal poll group is silent on the results of its survey showing voters reject radical gender ideology, while privately plotting to “educate” the public by “renaming puberty blockers.”
DailyMail.com was given access to a webinar invited by San Francisco-based Change Research in which they revealed new polls showing Americans are refusing to give hormones and other trans drugs to children.
In the online session, lead researcher Betsy App called the results “bad news” and said the team would struggle to “educate” the public about gender reassignment for children. She said it was time to “rebrand puberty blockers” with a less divisive term.
“I want to give us all a reality check,” App said during the online session.
“We face an uphill battle when it comes to voters’ fundamental beliefs about the relationship between sex and gender.”
Lead researcher Betsy App (left) wants to ‘rename puberty blockers’ and marketing chief Molly McInerney wants to keep the polls quiet
Change Research’s survey mirrors other polls on sex: Most Americans say it’s assigned at birth
Change Research had already declined our requests for the survey results. They initially invited DailyMail.com to join the webinar, but then backed out. We were there anyway, after registering with a personal email address.
At the start of Friday’s 30-minute session, the group’s marketing chief, Molly McInerney, said they “would not make these results generally available” and urged those in attendance “not to share these findings.”
Nevertheless, DailyMail.com releases the results because they are in the public interest.
They show Americans saying gender is assigned at birth and that men and women cannot change their sex at will.
Voters also oppose giving children puberty blockers, sex hormones, or sex reassignment surgeries, such as breast removals.
The webinar indicated that Change Research wanted to hide its results — with the stated goal of changing American attitudes toward gender ideology and trans treatment for children.
For some, this fits into a larger picture of how progressive activists reject the public’s common sense and use coercive language—rather than sound arguments—to change opinion.
Many trans activists and major medical groups in the US say gender affirmative care is life-saving for a suicide-prone group, but the affirmative model of giving the green light to most trans procedures for children is increasingly questioned.
Britain and other European states have begun restricting procedures, saying most confused children only need counselling, not gender drugs. In the US, Republican politicians are trying to ban procedures in more than a dozen red states this year.
Change’s poll of 1,208 voters was conducted between April 28 and May 2.
Americans are against having children undergo breast removal surgery. Pictured: Surgical scars on a de-transitioner who came to regret their procedure
When it comes to trans procedures for children, Americans agree that counseling is the best treatment
The results echo findings from other polls — that most Americans say sex is unchangeable and not changed by how someone identifies themselves. Some 94 percent of Republicans think so, while 74 percent of Democrats say people can change their sexual identity.
Respondents were also strongly opposed to gender-affirming care for children.
About 60 percent were against puberty blockers, 56 percent against sex hormones, and 60 percent against girls’ breast removal. Barely a third of the respondents supported such interventions in children.
Anna Pokrovsky, who worked on the transpoll, was also involved in President Joe Biden’s election campaign
Instead, respondents agreed on one treatment for trans youth: counseling.
Nearly four-fifths said talk therapy was best for helping teens struggle with identity challenges.
Those surveyed were more willing to allow children to receive sex reassignment care under certain conditions — after they received counseling, when their parents were on board, and when the treatments were reversible.
Respondents said they objected to ‘permanent’ or ‘physical, irreversible changes to the body’.
“It means slaughtering a human body to try to change a person’s gender as determined by the CHROMOSOMES through biology,” said one respondent.
“A person is and will always be the sex assigned by their chromosomes, and nothing will change that.”
Discussing the results, Change pollsters stressed that the public was wrong to oppose sex reassignment treatments for minors, and that they were on a mission to change attitudes.
App, a Denver mother of three, including a “gender-creative grade school senior,” said she was “surprised by these findings” and the “strong headwind” against doling hormones to teens.
A young transgender patient receives a testosterone injection from his mother as part of his ongoing sex reassignment treatment at their home in Missoula, Montana
Puberty suppressants and other trans drugs have made headlines this year as Republicans in the US try to ban them. Pictured: Protests during a debate at the Minnesota State Capitol in April
Winning the argument, she said, meant changing the language. “Gender Affirmative Care,” she said, was a “great term that we should keep using,” because it resonated with the public.
Not so for puberty blockers, she added.
“One of the most important next steps is to rebrand puberty blockers,” App said.
“This is a term we don’t have fun with.”
App said puberty inhibitors are reversible and could give trans children the chance to buy time to make bigger decisions about their identity. Critics say they do long-term harm and users typically get stuck in a lifetime of medicalization.
Change Research was founded after Donald Trump, a Republican, won the 2016 election. It conducts polls for Democratic causes and candidates, including Illinois Representative Lauren Underwood.
Anna Pokrovsky, who worked on the transpoll, was also involved in President Joe Biden’s election campaign. She said she identified as LGBTQ and that the survey was “very important… to me and my community.”
McInerney repeatedly declined DailyMail.com’s requests to share the survey results. During the Q&A of the webinar, we asked again about publishing the results, but we were immediately kicked out of the Zoom session.
Still, McInerney, a San Francisco native who previously interned with California Democratic politician Jared Huffman, kicked off the meeting by saying the group was there to “make public opinion research more accessible.”
“One of our core missions is to democratize access to high-quality, accessible public opinion research,” she said.
In an email exchange after the session, McInerney said DailyMail.com was not invited because the “briefing was not open to the press.”
“We are not making the survey public because the survey was conducted for internal research purposes and was never intended for public publication,” she added.