Georgia Howe (3:20)

Joining us now to discuss their experience with gender dysphoria and now their activism to protect other young people from predatory medical practices is Simon and Gareth Amaya Price. Gareth and Simon, thank you for coming on.

Simon Amaya Price (3:32)

Thanks for having us.

Gareth Amaya Price (3:34)

Yeah, thank you.

Georgia Howe (3:35)

Now, I understand you both are participating in a documentary series for the Independent Women's Voice regarding transgender ideology. The so for listeners who want to hear more about that story, we're going to include a link for that in the description. But first, Simon, tell us, how old are you now and when did you begin having confusion about your gender?

Simon Amaya Price (3:54)

Yeah. So as of June 2, I am 21 years old. I first started having doubts about the whole gender issue when I was about halfway along the year of being 14.

Georgia Howe (4:07)

And what kind of things were going through your mind at that time that planted doubts? Where did that come from?

Simon Amaya Price (4:13)

Yeah, it was kind of a culmination of a number of factors. In middle school, I had been the target of homophobic bullying for about two years straight, which included death threats and regular slurs. That fall I had also of ninth grade. So when I was 14, I had also recently lost my whole friend group and I was a couple weeks after that sexually assaulted by an older boy. And in my sex ed class, they taught us about the Gender Unicorn. And I had joined what I thought to be the Gay Straight alliance, which really ended up being a gender ideology indoctrination club. And so that's kind of what was going through my mind at the point, you know, I didn't fit in with other boys. I was having all these different social difficulties, discomfort with my body, and I thought that the answer was, you know, that I was secretly a girl inside.

Georgia Howe (5:00)

Now, you mentioned that you were experiencing a lot of bullying and homophobic type comments. Were you openly gay at this time? Is that what people were honing in on or how did that come about?

Simon Amaya Price (5:11)

I didn't come out as bisexual until the end of eighth grade. They bullied me just because I looked and I acted gay. I wore button down shirts and long pants every day, which is very different than the sports casual wear that boys my age wore. And I talked in a little bit. I enunciated a bit more than my classmates, which is oftentimes seen as being an indication of sexuality for some reason, which I think is absurd.

Georgia Howe (5:38)

Now, you said when you were in the GSA and when I was in high school, that stood for Gay Straight Alliance. You said you thought it was going to be one thing, but it turned out to be totally another. What did you experience there?

Simon Amaya Price (5:50)

Yeah, so I really was expecting to get some support for the struggles that I was having after being bullied for my perceived sexuality as perceived by others. In reality, what I found is we would oftentimes have conversations about what it gender dysphoria and being trans and queerness and all of these kind of exotic identities you may have heard of, like asexuality and pansexuality and being non binary and whatnot. And one of the regular activities as well was watching YouTube videos by this transgender male to female YouTuber named ContraPoints, which is where I learned about these concepts of gender identity, gender dysphoria and transition.

Georgia Howe (6:32)

Now, dad, Gareth, what were you observing at this time? Did you notice any red flags or did you notice anything was off during this period when he was about 14?

Gareth Amaya Price (6:44)

Well, you know, Simon was an unusual boy and we didn't know maybe he'd grow up to be gay, maybe he'd grow up to be straight. And didn't make much difference to us. We knew that he acted different from the way the other boys acted. He was very intellectual, much more driven towards music and math than he was driven towards sports. He wasn't going to be caught dead wearing a Red Sox jersey and athletic shorts at school. That just wasn't going to happen. And so when he complained about the other boys treating him badly when he was in middle school, we thought, you know, that's pretty much par for the course. And we hoped to support him as best as we could when he did go to high school, which was a different high school. I wish I had known some things then that I know now. For example, to tell children if they see a group called gsa, they should ask what GSA stands for, because I've heard you saying Gay Straight alliance, and I can tell you right now that's not what's going on. It's Gender Sexuality alliance, and it's all about the gender. And this. There's been a sort of what I call a Pokemonization of gender and sexuality identities where there are hundreds of them and the children are pushed, beginning in elementary school, really, to pick one little flag and one little acronym for their particular brand of, you know, attraction to other people or caring about romance or how they feel about their body. It's a completely different thing than the situation of kids who grow up and have to deal with the idea that maybe they're. They're male and attracted to other males or female and attracted to other females. Those kids aren't going to get a lot of help in a GSA these days.

Georgia Howe (8:44)

Now, Simon, you mentioned you were at a very small, at least middle school, maybe high school as well, just regionally. Where are you from? And were these private schools or public schools?

Simon Amaya Price (8:54)

Yeah, I was born and raised in Boston. And so for middle school, I actually went to Boston Latin School, where there are about 450, 500 thereabouts kids per grade. And then for 9th and 10th grade, I went to a very small private school in Chestnut Hill, kind of Newton area, which is just outside of Boston. So that's where I was about. And two very different circumstances, for sure.

Georgia Howe (9:21)

Oh, okay. So you were 14 and a half, and you started having these doubts that maybe you were the wrong gender. You mentioned the gender unicorn. I believe that's what they call that. How long did that transition period take? Or was it a period of months when you were just playing around with this idea and it progressed, or how quickly did it all happen? And what was that experience like?

Simon Amaya Price (9:43)

Yeah, I think from my. If you asked my dad that question, he'd say it happened almost overnight, and he wouldn't be entirely wrong. I think probably I only thought about it for a couple of weeks, and then I told my therapist at Boston Children's Hospital about it, and she immediately affirmed me. And I said to Myself. Well, I must be completely right about this, since I have a trained medical professional, actually two medical professionals, and then eventually three medical professionals backing me up unconditionally. So it was really zero to 100 thing, and not quite a long period of time.

Georgia Howe (10:24)

So you mentioned there were three medical professionals. How did you get in front of those medical professionals? How did you become involved with the system?

Simon Amaya Price (10:33)

Yeah, so I was my dad, and my parents saw that I was having some significant mental health struggles in the winter of ninth grade. And for kind of just a time frame, this was, I believe, 2018, 2019 that winter. And so they brought me to Boston Children's and I saw a therapist, psychologist at Boston Children's, Waltham, and a psychiatrist there as well, who prescribed me medication. And then the third medical professional who affirmed me was my pediatrician. So, you know, I came in and I was like, hey, I think I'm really a girl inside. And they're like, oh, amazing. You're so brave for coming out. Here's all of these different resources. Here's the gender clinic. You should go here as soon as you can. You know, you should sneak out behind your parents backs to go to this transgender support group, all of this sort of stuff. And it really came to a head, I think, around my 15th birthday, maybe a month or two before, sometime around then, I had my yearly checkup with my pediatrician, and I told him about my gender dysphoria and how my dad wasn't taking me to the gender clinic. And I remember quite distinctly, he asked my dad in front of me, would you like a dead son or a living daughter? And an effort to basically blackmail my dad into bringing me to the gender clinic where I'd get hormones.

Georgia Howe (11:59)

So, dad, it sounds like you had doubts about this, or maybe just doubts about the pace of it. What was going through your mind when these medical professionals were encouraging a physical transformation?

Gareth Amaya Price (12:12)

You know, I think doubts might be downplaying what I thought about this. Certainly among my thoughts were that, why am I bringing my son to these people when he's having mental struggles if they're crazier than he is? This, honestly was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. I remember telling my doctor saying to that pediatrician, I said, look, I brought my son to you because he was cutting himself. And I did that because I wanted the cutting to stop, not because I wanted a professional to do was absolutely the most absurd thing I've ever heard. That I've brought a child to you who is struggling, who is depressed, who is Anxious, who is unsure what's real or what's not real. He was really having a lot of trouble. And he says this magic word, I think I'm a woman inside. And all of a sudden everything he says is clear as a bell, has to be true. And I must take him to the gender clinic where honestly, I don't think they've ever seen a kid they didn't agree was trans. I think it's their policy. And I thought, again, who's the crazy person in this picture? Comparatively, it wasn't him.

Georgia Howe (13:38)

So it sounds like you were very clear from the start about how you felt. Were you open about that with the doctor? And if so, how did that confrontation go? I know there are some kids that will get removed from their homes in certain states over things like this. What was that like?

Gareth Amaya Price (13:54)

Well, with the pediatrician, I, I think I might have spoken a little too openly and I pretty much went up one side and down the other of him. We never saw him again, which was good. We switched pediatricians with the psychiatrist, I felt like I had to be very careful about what I was saying because again, they kept recommending I take him to the gender clinic. And you know, I thought, I know that there are people who in adulthood persist into this idea that they're really the opposite sex, but this is a 14 year old boy. It's preposterous to say that because this unhappy, suffering 14 year old boy says I think I'm a woman inside, that that's what we need to work on right now. We don't need to work on the. We don't need to work on the depression, we don't need to work on the anxiety. We need to work on putting more drugs into his system. How could that possibly dispel the kind of confusion that he was suffering with?

Georgia Howe (15:01)

Now, Simon, how did this affect your relationship, at least with your dad? I don't know about other family members. You can elaborate on that. When you announced that you felt like you were trans and it sounds like you didn't have much affirmation in your home, how did that affect your family relationships or your life in general?

Simon Amaya Price (15:20)

Well, it was rather deleterious to our relationship. I hated my father for about three or four years. And that takes a toll on a young man and on an old man. Didn't really end on an old man. And that my mom didn't really talk about it a lot. I didn't really talk about it much with my other family members and it was really something. I kept to the medical professionals in my life and my friends and the people at school. And so it just. I actually. I think I ran away from home, like, once or twice. Three times. And, you know, my. I met my. My first girlfriend when I was 15, so in 10th grade. And she was very, you know, accepting and affirming.

Gareth Amaya Price (16:16)

Hey, you can't call her she anymore. That's misgendering.

Simon Amaya Price (16:20)

Yeah, she ended up. It's so sad. She ended up transitioning after we broke up, and unfortunately, I wish I could say that was the only case of that happening, but anyways.

Georgia Howe (16:37)

Now, would you say Boston Latin and Brimmer in May is a hotbed of this, or would you say that all the schools in the area have a lot of this?

Simon Amaya Price (16:46)

Yeah, Boston Latin School, it was a hotbed. I mean, even while I was there. And keep in mind, over the pandemic, the rate of transgender identification in my generation jumped, like, three times from, like, 1% to 3%. But even back in 2016, 2017, I was at Boston Latin School, and I had classmates who were going by male names. It was almost all the girls going by. By all girls who were doing this who went by male names or he, him pronouns. I knew one who went by it. It's pronouns. And so I. I can't imagine that it's gotten any better since then. And. And Bremer for sure. I mean, after I. I left, my graduating class ended up being about the boys. One. Six of them ended up identifying as transgender. So it's only gotten worse since I. I've left. And again, I'm going to say 3% of my generation, again, is identifying as transgender. This is. This is an epidemic of. Of really monumental proportions, which I think that people do not understand that this is everywhere. You might think you're the only person, you know who has, like, a granddaughter who is transgender or whose friend has. As a daughter who's transgender or a son. But everybody knows somebody at this point.

Georgia Howe (18:15)

So did you pursue some of the medical treatments, or how close did you come to doing that?

Simon Amaya Price (18:21)

I was. I attempted to pursue them, but fortunately, Covid happened, and I actually went to college two years early when I was 16 at Bard College at Simons Rock, another hotbed for this. And this is out in Western Massachusetts in the Berkshires, quite far from many gender clinics. So that made it rather difficult for me, what I did do. And this is something that is a very serious issue. There are lots of places that are gray or black market where adults on the Internet will give children. I was a child at 16. Legally speaking, in the state of Massachusetts, hormones, sometimes even for free. And I quite nearly did that, but I decided against it because I was afraid of Internet strangers.

Georgia Howe (19:13)

Yeah, those are some of the very worst ones. So how did things turn? You sound very clear minded about this now. What changed and snapped you out of it?

Simon Amaya Price (19:23)

Yeah, I wish I could point at one particular thing, but it was really kind of a series of fortunate, unfortunate events. So, actually, the summer before my first year of college, my dad recommended me the book Woke racism by John McWhorter, who you may have heard of. He's actually one of the. Probably the most preeminent African American alum from Bard College at Simons Rock, which is where I was. Yeah, and that's where I was my first year. And I had my freshman seminar, and the topic of affirmative action came up, and my turn to. To speak came, and I was like, you know, I think this is stupid and racist and actually doesn't work. And people got really mad at me for that. My. My professor demanded I apologize. And of course, me being the kind of the nice way to put this as persistent individual I am, I refused. I failed the class, and I started getting threats from my classmates, and I actually, it got so bad, I had to move dorms. And I realized, wow, all of the kind of social support I got for being a living as a, quote, unquote, trans woman instantly disappeared the moment I thought something different than the people around me. And this led me to hang out with some boys my age who were the only people who would talk to me. Some of them were even a Republican, you know, and at this point in my life, that was quite scandalous from my point of view, but they didn't really care that I disagreed with them. And it was like the first time in my life I'm hanging out with people my age who don't hate me for. For being different. And that. That was a really different experience. And I ended up transferring to Berkeley College of Music, which. Where I graduated last December, cum laude. And I there, my first year there, I joined a sexual assault survivor support group, where I was able to kind of really process the trauma of what had happened to me when I was 14. And I'd probably say that was the last nail in my coffin, in the coffin of my transgender identity. And that coincided with my girlfriend, the second one, who transitioned after breaking up with me. Breaking up with me. So, yeah.

Georgia Howe (21:37)

Now, dad. Gareth, did you rekindle your relationship at this point? What was that like?

Gareth Amaya Price (21:42)

Well, you know, it took a while. You know, he was really mad at me. He was mad at me because I. I wouldn't use the pro. Whatever pronouns he was liking. He wouldn't. I wouldn't call him she, and I certainly wouldn't call him they because that always confused the heck out of me. I remember one of the times he ran away and he was at his. His girlfriend's house, and I called up his girlfriend's dad, and I'm like, is Simon over there? And he's like, they're here. And I'm like, you mean Simon and his girlfriend or just they? Or just Simon they? Which they is it? You know, it just unnecessarily confusing? And I. I don't think Simon appreciated my sarcasm and flippant attitude towards these questions, because I'm just not a very reverent guy. What can I say? And when I was confronted, you know, I didn't have a lot of reverence to the religions surrounding me when I was a kid, and now this new religion has been shoved in my face. I have even less reverence for it. So, yeah, it was difficult for us to find our way back in terms of the things that we both believed and the things that we both love, but we got there.

Georgia Howe (22:52)

And it sounds like you had some clashes with other adults over this socially, particularly with the girlfriend's dad. I'm gonna guess he was very affirming. What was it like being the parent who wouldn't affirm and wouldn't use the correct pronouns? Was that challenging?

Gareth Amaya Price (23:10)

Well, you know, let's just say he only came over for dinner one time.

Simon Amaya Price (23:20)

True story. True story.

Georgia Howe (23:22)

Now, Gareth and Simon, what motivated you to get involved with this documentary? Independent Women's Voice is an explicitly conservative organization. It sounds like you weren't at least initially warm to Republicans or at least people with more of a conservative worldview. How did you get teamed up with them?

Simon Amaya Price (23:41)

Yeah, so about a year ago now. Right. Right before I was getting ready to graduate from Berkeley, I took this class with my favorite professor called Songwriting and Social Change. And for the final project, we were supposed to put on an event about a social change topic that we were passionate about. I wanted to do mine on desistors and detransitioners. So I actually got a Grant from the DEI department for up to $1,000. I reserved a room through the normal Berkeley system. I contacted Public Safety to make sure that they were aware of it happening and would send out an officer, but it ended up being canceled by the. I believe it was the provost, the dean, Ron Savage, and that was a mistake on his part. Let's say the Daily Signal picked up my story and fired it as well. And by the end of the month or by the end of December, I had written an op ed for the Boston Globe, given the event, put on the event at MIT to a combined audience of both in person and virtual of over 100 people. And then I got invited to the Heritage foundation in January to a private. They have like a yearly private conference, summit to end gender ideology that I was invited to. And I met all of these really lovely people from really across the political spectrum. So, you know, lesbian, radical feminists, all the way to, like, Christian nationalist types. And I was like, wow, this is really what America is about. We can set aside what we disagree about and come together and work on the things we really do agree on. And, and look, you know, I'm still kind of fundamentally, I believe in the, the dream of classical liberalism, but I do understand that in order for that dream to be tenable and to thrive, you need to have a healthy, cohesive and unified society. And that's something we don't have right now. And so my disagreements with the conservatives really aren't applicable to the point we are in society right now. And so I have no reservations working with them. I'll talk to anybody who'll talk to me.

Gareth Amaya Price (25:55)

For me, Simon is a little more conservative than I am at this point. We have a bunch of arguments about this topic or the other topic. I was raised as a liberal. I'm still a liberal. Sorry. But you know what? This is not a liberal versus conservative issue. It just isn't. This is an issue of common sense and reality versus insanity and insanity that's oppressive to people and harmful for children. I really don't care who I am going to go talk with and agree with. I don't care where they're coming from. On other issues, we don't, you and I, we could have a conversation about another issue that we would very much disagree about. That's not relevant to the point. The point is that all of us conservatives, liberals, you know, gay people, straight people, men and women, we have to get together and just see the reality and agree that it's terrible to tell children that they're born in the wrong body and that they need medical intervention to change their body to fit their feelings.

Georgia Howe (27:07)

Now, do you sense there's more space for those conversations now than even just a few years ago? Are you feeling more optimistic?

Gareth Amaya Price (27:15)

I want to say that I am. And I don't know about, you know, really politically active people. But I can tell you the number of people that I've had a conversation with in person who've said, you know what, you're completely right about this. I absolutely agree that this is terrible for children, and I'm really glad it hasn't visited my family. I don't think we're seeing a lot in the media right now, but when this first started for us, I did feel very alone on the left, as it were. And I can tell you right now, I don't feel so alone anymore because I know that most people on the left, if they really look inside themselves and ask themselves, seriously, is this really what we want to be telling children? The answer is no.

Simon Amaya Price (28:02)

I just wanted to touch on really the people who are being sucked up into this and why they're being sucked into it. A lot of these people are having identity struggles. So a lot of them can be are, I found, are actually children of first generation immigrants, for example. A lot of them are autistic. A lot of them are same sex attracted. And I think a really big reason why boys at least are getting sucked into this is because of the really negative messages we have in our culture right now about masculinity and this indoctrination that we receive in school, telling us that, you know, all men are bad and that men are, you know, complicit in, you know, the sexual assault of women and our eternal oppressors and all these different sorts of really negative narratives. And so as a young boy, when you notice in yourself your masculinity and these kind of this vitality, you start to see that, oh, no, I'm becoming the thing I've been taught to fear. And so instead of turning that into productive action, you turn it inwards and it becomes a very destructive force. So we really need to be helping these young, sensitive, oftentimes autistic boys have a place where they can be with their peers, where they can get the help they need in a way that doesn't tell them that they.

Gareth Amaya Price (29:25)

They're wrong.

Georgia Howe (29:26)

Yeah, I totally agree with that. Simon, Gareth, thank you so much for coming on today.

Simon Amaya Price (29:31)

Thank you for having us.

Gareth Amaya Price (29:33)

Thank you.

Georgia Howe (29:35)

That was Simon and Gareth, Amaya Price. And you can hear more about their story in the new documentary series Identity Crisis put out by the Independent Women's Voice. And this has been a weekend edition of Morning. Wow.

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