2 weeks Ago By By Colleen Schrappen St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS — Two years ago, Jamie Reed was adjusting to a new position at Washington University, working in cancer research. In her spare time, she taught swimming lessons and tended to her garden.
She had left her old job as the case manager at Washington University’s Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Three months later, in February 2023, Reed sounded an alarm about her former employer.
Her public allegations of malpractice reverberated throughout the country. She charged that doctors introduced medical interventions without informed parental consent, that mental health issues weren’t adequately addressed and that minors were regularly referred for surgery. The mother of five instantly became a lightning rod for a burgeoning debate about how transgender people, especially young people, should be treated.
Since then, Reed’s life — like her view of transgender care — has radically changed. She’s become a high-profile voice for opponents of gender-affirming treatment. She has spoken in court and at conferences across the United States and abroad.
She’s been profiled in the New York Times and interviewed by Dr. Phil . When Reed left the pediatric transgender center in late 2022, six states had bans on gender-affirming medical care for minors.
Now, at least two dozen do. Other transgender-related restrictions have also been enacted, touching education, athletics and bathroom availability. Many people have extolled Reed, while others — including families of the clinic’s former patients — have excoriated her.
Friends have backed away; onetime foes from across the ideological divide have turned into confidantes. “Whistleblowers experience profound impacts that very few can ever truly understand,” Reed, 44, said in a recent interview with the Post-Dispatch. “Those impacts have touched my personal relationships as well as my career.
” When Reed went public with a first-person narrative in the Free Press, an online platform, she mentioned her marriage “to a transman.” Reed’s spouse, however, didn’t want Reed to air her complaints. “I was really horrified when she decided to go public,” Roxxanne Reed told the Post-Dispatch recently.
“I knew we would lose friends. There would be people who severed ties.” The response aggravated tensions between the two.
At the time, Roxxanne identified as a transgender man. This summer, Roxxanne decided to detransition and return to her birth name. Reed and Roxxanne still live in the same south St.
Louis County home, raising the five kids together. But they have separated as a couple. Reed has no regrets.
Today, her advocacy has become her livelihood. She’s leading a nonprofit formed last year with a mission to support whistleblowers and give voice to those who question medical transitions for minors. “As a society, we have to make decisions about what is offered to children,” she said.
“I don’t believe in identifying a child as trans. There is not a trans child.” ‘I did a lot of gender questioning’ As a kid, Reed was a tomboy.
No one was surprised, she said, when she came out as a lesbian during her freshman year at Rosati-Kain High School. In her 20s, she married and moved to Florida but returned to St. Louis after she divorced.
Reed, who has a master’s degree in clinical research management, started at Washington University in early 2016. She worked with teens and young adults who were HIV positive. Many of them, she wrote in the Free Press, were transgender.
She felt pulled to do more for that population. “I could relate,” she wrote. “Throughout childhood and adulthood, I did a lot of gender questioning myself.
” But Reed came to believe during her four years at the pediatric transgender clinic that she was part of a process that was hurting kids, not helping them. A couple of weeks after she left the center, Reed emailed a nonprofit called the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine , which opposes gender care for minors. The organization, co-founded by Idaho-based endocrinologist William Malone, eventually connected Reed to lawyers and the Free Press, which published her essay, “I thought I was saving trans kids.
Now I’m blowing the whistle” in February 2023. “I was slightly surprised it went viral,” said Reed, who had no social media accounts at the time. “My expectation was smaller-scale.
” Many in Reed’s circle felt betrayed. Reed’s sister has a transgender partner. They haven’t spoken since.
An old friend with a teenage transgender son had confided in Reed before her son went on testosterone. The friend was outraged that Reed had kept quiet about her objections. “I was really blindsided,” the teen’s mother said.
“She didn’t say anything about this to me at all.” Reed said she wasn’t ethically able to give advice, or even look at the teenager’s chart. After the publication of Reed’s essay, the Post-Dispatch interviewed almost two dozen parents of patients at the pediatric transgender center.
Their accounts contrasted sharply from Reed’s. The path toward treatment for their children was deliberate, they said, not rushed. The physicians were explicit about potential side effects and did not pressure them into medicalization.
The center’s co-founders, endocrinologist Christopher Lewis and pediatrician Sarah Garwood, declined to comment at the time. They also declined to comment for this story. After her story came out, Reed had a whirlwind of speaking engagements.
But she spurned local media, including the Post-Dispatch, until recently. The decision, she said, was made over concern for her family’s privacy. On at least one podcast, Reed said she felt she was being vilified by local media outlets.
Reed also felt shunned by her new colleagues at the cancer research lab. In Zoom meetings, she said, they would hang signs in the background that read, “Trans health care saves lives.” “They just froze me out,” said Reed.
She complained to her supervisors, but nothing was done, she said. Julie Hail Flory, a Washington University spokesperson, would not comment on whether complaints were made or how they were addressed. Reed, however, was finding support elsewhere, often among people whose political views differed from hers in every way but one.
“Every single Republican I have met has been a super kind human being,” she said. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey opened an investigation into the pediatric transgender center on the heels of Reed’s accusations, which she submitted in a sworn affidavit. Bailey has yet to release the results , and his office did not respond to a question about the inquiry.
In May of last year, the Legislature passed a bill prohibiting anyone under 18 from being prescribed puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, which trigger physical changes — such as body hair or breast development — that align with a person’s gender identity. Gov. Mike Parson signed the measure into law the next month.
Under the moratorium, young people already receiving medical interventions could continue to do so. But the Washington U.’s pediatric clinic halted prescriptions for its current patients three months later, citing “unacceptable” legal liability.
In response to the law, some families fled Missouri for so-called sanctuary states. Others switched to health care providers in the Metro East or commuted even farther to ensure their children could continue to get the care they say is urgent, even lifesaving. A strained marriage Reed’s spouse, Roxxanne, was not named in the Free Press piece, but she felt exposed by it anyway.
“I wanted to stick my head in the sand,” said Roxxanne, who was then known as Tiger. The couple were raising the two children from Reed’s first marriage and three foster children, whom they have since adopted. Roxxanne, 44, grew up in Florida.
She had a tumultuous upbringing and endured sexual abuse, she said. She never felt accepted. “I was super non-gender-conforming my whole life,” Roxxanne said.
In her early teens, she used drugs and considered suicide. Eventually, a vocational rehabilitation program helped put her back on track. She came to the St.
Louis area to earn the first of her two master’s degrees at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. A documentary series called “TransGeneration,” which aired in 2005, opened her eyes to what life could be like if she transitioned. Later, she became obsessed with YouTube videos on the topic.
In 2011, the death of her grandfather’s longtime partner — the one person in her family who had always come through for her — sent her on a spiral. The next year, with the support of a therapist, Roxxanne went on testosterone. Around that time, she legally changed her name to Tiger.
“No one told me, ‘Don’t do this,’” she said. “And no one could have.” In 2015, Roxxanne met Reed, who was still working at the HIV clinic, at church.
They married the following year. Roxxanne had a mastectomy soon after. It wasn’t long — maybe a year — after Reed transferred to the transgender center that she began bringing her doubts home with her.
The strain created cracks in their relationship. Roxxanne wanted Reed to quit. The stress is not worth it, she told her wife.
Meantime, as outlined in the affidavit, Reed was keeping track of patients who she thought were not receiving appropriate screenings and protocols she believed were breached. Reed didn’t want to resign until she landed another position at the university so she could maintain the college tuition benefit for her children that WashU provides. When Reed transferred to the cancer lab, Roxxanne was relieved.
But the tension during Reed’s years at the transgender center, the firestorm that followed her whistleblowing and Roxxanne’s inner turmoil all contributed to pressure that their marriage ultimately could not withstand. This summer brought another personal change. One day, after Roxxanne had finished mowing the lawn, she broke some news.
“I’m going to detransition,” Roxxanne informed her wife. When Reed asked her why, Roxxanne told her, “I’m just so tired.” For years, Roxxanne said, she had had misgivings.
The testosterone affected her emotions. She got angry easily. She couldn’t cry.
When Roxxanne thought of her future, she pictured herself as “an old butch woman.” But she didn’t know how to get there. Then, she met someone else who had detransitioned.
She saw the possibilities for herself. Roxxanne — who is now tapering off testosterone — came out with her own Free Press narrative in September. “Transitioning couldn’t bring me the sense of comfort and inner peace I was seeking,” Roxxanne wrote.
She is not willing to go so far as to say she regrets making the decision to transition 13 years ago. “It’s my life,” she told the Post-Dispatch. “I can’t do anything to change it now.
” Reed had long suspected that Roxxanne was uneasy about her identity, but never pressured her, they both said. Traveling the country Reed is immersed in her activism now. Some months, she is on the road more than she is at home.
In the spring, she quit her job at the cancer research lab to become the only paid staffer for the organization she co-founded. The LGBT Courage Coalition is made up of mostly progressives who question the prevailing gender-care model and are calling for reform. The nonprofit is primarily funded by “old gay money,” as Reed jokingly refers to donors.
The Q — for queer — was intentionally left off the name. Reed had identified herself as a queer woman in the Free Press piece but no longer embraces the term. “It means something completely different now,” she said.
“The word has become very complicated.” In July, the Post-Dispatch ran an op-ed by Reed . Washington University had “quietly announced” that the pediatric transgender center — which had been providing counseling and other services — would permanently close, Reed wrote.
The university would not confirm or deny the claim , but the website for the clinic now says: “You are not authorized to access this page.” The closure is not enough, Reed wrote in the op-ed: “A cohort of young people who have received these drugs and surgeries need — nay, deserve — proper, evidence-based long term care.” Reed leans on reviews performed in Europe that have pushed several countries there to pause or slow down their use of puberty blockers and masculinizing or feminizing hormones, though without outright bans.
The American Academy of Pediatrics reaffirmed its support last year of gender-affirming treatments and commissioned its own systematic research review. Long-term outcomes for transgender children remain largely unknown. A comprehensive study on puberty blockers funded by the National Institutes of Health almost a decade ago has not yet been released.
The New York Times reported in October that the doctor managing the study had delayed disclosing the results “because of a charged political environment.” This week, Reed posted about Missouri’s Amendment 3, which seeks to reverse the state’s abortion ban, on the social media platform X. “The recommendation is to vote no,” she wrote.
Court challenges could potentially argue the amendment “allows minors to access gender related interventions outside of parental oversight,” she wrote. But legal and medical experts have called that claim dubious . Reed told the Post-Dispatch she has always been pro-choice and is still a Democrat.
In November, Reed will travel to Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas to discuss a bill on health coverage for people who detransition, meet with a group of bioethicists and record a podcast. Then it’s on to a planned rally in Washington, D.C.
, in early December. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments for U.S.
v. Skrmetti, on whether prohibitions on transgender care violate the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment. Reed was the state’s star witness in a similar case in Missouri.
She testified in October in defense of the state’s pediatric restrictions, which have been challenged by three transgender minors and their parents, a health clinic and two LGBTQ+ rights groups. That ruling is expected by the end of the year. Reed believes that the bans will be upheld in both cases, but her preference would be for care providers and health insurers to take the lead on changing the gender-affirming protocol.
She’s aware that the country will likely remain a patchwork of laws, split red and blue. “This should never have been political, because it’s medical,” she said. “But I am going to accept what I can get.
”.
