In a book released earlier this month, Sim Butler, an associate professor at the University of Alabama, chronicles his family's story of raising a son with gender dysphoria in Alabama.
The story begins when the child is six and continues through the family's decision to leave Alabama in May 2023, a direct result of the legislature's passage of the Vulnerable Child Protection Act (VCAP) in 2022.
The book, "And the Dragons Do Come," criticizes lawmakers, medical professionals and child advocates who have worked to protect children from the harmful effects of gender ideology and irreversible medical procedures that have been banned in 27 states and several European countries.
"Telling our family's story, I hope, bridges that gap for those who have not interacted or will not interact with transgender, gender-diverse, or nonbinary people," Butler said.
The grandson of famed Montgomery Sheriff Mac Sims Butler explained in the first chapter, titled "Deadnaming," how he named his son, Mac, after his grandfather.
"My whiteness, my gender, and my privilege complicate my own power to name and critique the naming of others," he explained on page 10. Later in the chapter, he described how using someone's given name without their approval was "a huge act of disrespect and a deplorable tactic."
Butler, recently promoted to coordinator of distance learning in communication studies for the master's program at UA, wrote about and researched transgenderism, including publishing an article on Chaz Bono, long before his son reportedly declared at age 6, "I am a girl in my heart."
Shortly thereafter, Butler explained later in the book how he "purged" all photos of his son as a boy, while the boy's grandmother bought a copy of "I am Jazz," which Butler claims introduced him to the term transgender.
After "a few sessions" with a gender affirming therapist, the family changed his name to that of a girl; he was just six and a half years old at the time, between kindergarten and first grade.
"When it became apparent that my daughter needed a new name, she picked Marina," Butler said of his son. The reason? The boys 'childhood obsession with mermaids." Ultimately, the family settled on a name, one that Butler chose not to use in his book, opting instead for a pseudonym.
"People have been emboldened to follow their leaders, entrenching dangerous stereotypes and justifying violence against and already vulnerable population," he explained.
In not using his son's "real name," Butler said he was "hoping it helps keep her alive." In the book, he calls his son Kate while referring to him as using he/him pronouns.
The book details the first challenge to their son's "social transition," when his first-grade teacher said she would not be compelled to use the wrong name and pronouns for their child. The family left the school — shopping for one that would "affirm" the child's dysphoria.
By the time his son entered middle school, the family legally changed his name and sent him to Magic City Acceptance Academy, saying, "Because of the mission, the student population, and the success in working with LGBTQ+ students, MCAA quickly became the queer school in town, even as straight students found a home there too."
In Chapter 5, Butler described how arguments against men in women's sports were comparable to those against racial integration in sports. He explained how a swim coach told the family that, before allowing their son, who was seven years old at the time, to swim on the girls' team, they had to "clear it with all the other parents."
Butler goes on to ask, "So why, then, have we decided that sex becomes the biological enforcement tool for fairness?"
"I think the answer is twofold. First, because of the myth that sex is a binary, and second, because of the taboo nature of penises and vaginas," Butler said.
The first time Butler's son received puberty blockers at the Children's Hospital at UAB, he "passed right out," collapsing like a "noodle" in the hall. That, however, wasn't a deterrent. The family continued to seek pharmaceutical interventions for puberty.
"I'm left to ponder if my daughter will regret, years from now, not being able to contribute sperm to an embryo or carry a child, because the best care available to treat her gender dysphoria comes with the side effect of sterilization," he said.
The doctor they saw at the UAB Gender Clinic, Dr. Morissa Ladinsky, who, according to the UAB website, treated more than 200 youth with "gender-affirming care," reportedly told Butler's son, "You still have some boy parts, your body is going to go through boy puberty," the doctor explained to the young man, asking, "Do you want a beard like your dad?"
The doctor then explained, "So we can help pause boy puberty and start girl puberty."
Ladinsky, a vocal opponent of the state's Vulnerable Child Protection Act, once glorified the tragic suicide of a young boy with gender dysphoria, saying that when he did so, he "boldly ended her life." A review of her public profiles and published works shows that she has dedicated her professional life to the transgender agenda.
She and a colleague from the UAB Gender Clinic were featured in a news story after Alabama passed the VCAP bill. In it, the two describe how the clinic wrote prescriptions for a year's worth of medication before the law took effect, as a way to circumvent it. The article, "A Muslim and a Jew face the Bible Belt: Meet the only two doctors in Alabama providing gender-affirming care to trans youth," highlights a frequent concern of the gay community that youth receiving treatment may just be uncomfortable being gay.
"Islamically speaking, being trans is better than being gay," Dr. Hussein Abdul-Latif said in the report.
Here’s my iPhone video of Dr. Ladinsky glorifying suicide in a 16 year old. In case you were thinking I misunderstood. pic.twitter.com/zrlSU2puVZ
— Julia Mason MS MD (@JuliaMasonMD1) October 11, 2022
"In May 2023, the family left Alabama and regrouped," Butler said in the final chapter before continuing to argue that "facts" and "evidence" were on his side, regardless of all the neutral evidence demonstrating otherwise, such as the Cass Review, which led to the reform of England's broken system of care for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, or even evidence discovered in Alabama's case to defend the VCAP bill, evidence that played a pivotal role in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold a similar law in Tennessee.
"Discovery in the case revealed that key medical organizations misled parents, promoted unproven treatments as settled science, and ignored growing international concern over the use of sex-change procedures to treat gender dysphoria in minors. Contrary to their public claims, these groups had little reliable evidence to support the interventions they recommended. Additionally, Alabama's investigation uncovered internal communications showing that the 'standards of care' were crafted with input from lawyers and activists to win lawsuits and influence policy decisions, even if those goals were at odds with the scientific evidence," according to Marshall's office when the state declared victory over the challenges to the Alabama law.
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