Fox host claims trans youth are just gay kids who were forced to have gender-affirming surgery

Fox News primetime host Jesse Watters paraded his ignorance proudly last weekend as he cluelessly pontificated about gender dysphoria, gender reassignment surgery and childhood sexuality, all while promoting a conspiracy theory that doctors are eager to get kids’ genitals “chopped off”.

“We adopted a young child, and at age five, he was playing with dolls, and everybody knew he was gay, or was going to be gay. And it’s not like all of a sudden we took him to the doctor and chopped him off,” Watters reportedly babbled, implying that’s exactly what greedy medical professionals are out to do.

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“A lot of these people are just gay, or lesbian,” Watters claimed to know about trans kids. Referring to doctors, he added, “And what they’re doing is they’re intervening in a regular gay or lesbian life, and that’s a new experience, and it never used to be like that.”

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Fox News' Jesse Watters thinks most trans people "are just gay or lesbian"

"What they're doing is they're intervening in a regular gay or lesbian life, and that's a new experience and it never used to be like that" pic.twitter.com/IwKeSi71bA

— helena hind (@cynicalzoomer) April 5, 2024

Watters apparently believes there’s no difference between being gay and being transgender.

Liberal co-host Jessica Tarlov at least gave a semblance of balance to the panel discussion on Friday night by rebutting Watters’ claim.

“Well, ‘gay’ and ‘trans’ are different, and that’s not how ‘gay’ works, either,” she told the host.

“I don’t believe it is,” Watters replied, perfectly summing up the primacy of feelings over facts among the far right.

The segment about trans kids, gender transition and puberty blockers started with Watters’ specious argument that access and advances in gender-affirming care and surgery are an indication that doctors are conspiring to exploit trans kids for monetary gain.

“So, surgeons can only make so much money until they invent new surgeries,” he said. “When plastic surgery came along, a lot of surgeons got very, very wealthy, and that’s fine — on adults.”

“So, all of a sudden, they found out a way to make more money, and it’s off children. So what they do, Jessica, is fund studies that say, ‘It’s fine, we’re saving lives, no one has ever regretted it,’” Watters said, quoting his imagined conspiracy-minded cabal. “So, there are studies on both sides.”

The discussion devolved from there into a stale conversation about lesbians in college, featuring Fox legal scowl Jeanine Pirro.

Smirked Watters, “Someone at this table shared some intimate details about their adolescence with me, and now I feel like it’s my right to say what they told me. They said they experienced feelings when they were in middle school that they, perhaps, were a lesbian.”

Correcting the host, Pirro coughed, “She was in college.”

“Liar! Liar!” Pirro rasped back.

“And thank God they didn’t transition you!” Watters continued, managing ignorance and insult in the same breath. “You were a beautiful woman.”