A retired Navy SEAL who came out as transgender a decade ago before announcing his detransition in recent days spoke out to Fox News about the process and why children should not rush or be rushed into making a life-altering medical decision.
Chris Beck, who had for a time been known as Kristen Beck, told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Monday he is not at all political, nor is he opposed to or critical of transgender people, He told host Tucker Carlson he wants potential transitioners to "slow down" and for doctors to take full grasp of what they are doing.
"The transgender [issue] originally started out as pretty basic and very rare. And now it's kind of morphed into an ideology," Beck said.
"And that's what I'm speaking out about: Thinking about the ideology, I'm not talking about the people -- Now, there's a lot of transgender people out there; great folks. But the ideology as I'm talking about is becoming something where it's being pushed in schools and young teenagers are having surgeries because it says they're transgender. It's an affirmation."
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Beck went on to criticize the idea that doctors are in some places allowed to overrule parents and go forward with transitioning surgeries or pharmaceutical prescriptions, calling it a major problem.
He claimed psychology manuals have essentially "gotten rid of" terminology like "gender dysphoria" or placed the issue under the umbrella of mental health.
"And now as soon as somebody goes in there and says [they want to be] transgender, you're basically labeled transgender, and they start pushing your surgery," Beck said. "That's what I'm trying to stop because [there are] a lot of gay people out there who are transgender but not transgender in everything."
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He cited his recently resurfaced interview with CNN about a decade ago, saying critics are taking soundbites from it and talking about the transgender issue in a "one-sided" way.
Beck said at the same time, he doesn't want the opposite to happen since he is speaking out on Fox News in the opposite way to what he had said on CNN.
"We want to take the emotions out of this and just look at it as a medical team," he said. "Let's look at it through a different scope. I don't want this to be political, and I don't want transgender people to be harmed. But if you're doing this to kids, that's wrong."
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Beck spoke of a fellow SEAL friend whose daughter was a "tomboy" who was happy but went on to have a double mastectomy procedure at age 16 – adding the child is now about 20 and that he does not know what is going to happen to them.
Beck claimed puberty blockers and other pharmaceuticals are "sterilizing" children while only telling "one side of this story" at the time.
"[Critics] also say that I hate transgender people. I don't hate transgender people," he said. "They're a lot of my friends. What I care about is people. I want people to slow down."
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"I want these doctors to see what they're doing. In psychology, take a look at gender dysphoria… take a look at body dysmorphic disorder. There's a myriad of things you can look at."
Beck said physicians and parents need to "wake up" and do more research into what information is being "hidden" about the issue.
"If there's a bunch of kids that are transgender and they grow up and to be happy and are 80 years old and are still happy, you know, that's great," he said. "But there's a lot of kids who get caught up in this huge tidal wave of popular transgender culture, popular transgender ideology. And that is wrong."
