Princeton University

Our son went to Princeton University in the Fall of 2019. In the Ivy league university known for its rigorous academic system, he found it quite easy. He excelled in academics, started making some friends who he thought were for life, and was blossoming into a young man who found joy in his love and his work. Near the end of the first semester, he told us: “My academics are under control; I have my circle of friends; my career after Princeton is taken care of; all I need is a romantic partner.” And then Covid struck in March 2020.

Our son came back home and missed the company of his friends. Finally, when Princeton allowed some students to go back to campus in early 2021 (even though classes were being held online), he did. His roommate decided to stay frequently with his girlfriend, leaving our son alone in his room. Our son had been eager for a girlfriend ever since middle school, but as happens with many gifted people, most people found him a bit weird. A romantic partnership was one thing he could not crack with his intellect.

In Princeton, our son liked several young women but was particularly enamored with one of them. She was also on campus with him during that fateful semester of Spring 2021. And then one night, the two of them were together in her room. They got intimate. We are not exactly sure what happened that night, but our best guess is that our son, still a virgin, failed to perform.

The next morning, both tried to make light of the situation, but somehow our son felt rejected. By his count, he was rejected by at least 10 girls/young women, maybe more. He came back and started looking up online: as he told me once, “What is wrong with me?” And, of course, in 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, the online world told him that he was trans. A month later, in April 2021, he told me that he “thought he was trans.”

Initially, his friends feted him. One young woman, in particular, who said she was bisexual, lent him her clothes and cosmetics to try on. She used all the she/her pronouns. Disastrously, the two once had sex, which did not go very well at all, and at the end of which, she apparently told him that having sex with him (“her”) felt like having sex with “her sister.” I imagine that must have been traumatic to him.

By this time, our son had already become a recluse, and over the next year (2021-2022), his mental condition became increasingly worse. His friends found him tiresome because he always brought the subject back to his life as trans. He spent all his waking hours online, which convinced him more that not only was he trans but that he needed hormones. We told him to seek psychiatric help and even found some doctors who decided to take him on as a patient, but he would not visit them unless they were going to prescribe him hormones straight away. I talked to one of them, who said that in his conversation with them, he sounded like someone with a borderline personality disorder.
Shortly afterward, he decided to visit the Princeton clinic (this was in the Fall of 2022). There, after a second meeting (each lasting less than an hour), a licensed social worker determined that our son met the “clinical definition for and has been diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria,” (the words are from a letter that I have in my possession) and even though these two meetings had taken place in rapid succession, “all of these symptoms (of gender dysphoria) [have] been present for over 6 months duration.” Also, “It is my recommendation that [our son, but referred to by his new “woman” name] pursues options for gender-affirming medical intervention as she sees fit, as well as continues receiving supportive and gender-affirming mental health counseling.”

Part of the counseling that our son received was that he should try to preserve his sperm, and being the rule-bound individual that he was, he tried to do so and soon found that this was expensive ($4000). He asked us for the money. We agreed, but on the condition that he went for psychotherapy. However, when the psychotherapy center called him, he said that he was going there not because he wanted to but because his parents were forcing him to. The center called us to let us know that they do not accept such unwilling patients.

The sperm was now stored, and our son was immediately on hormones. The RNP who wrote the prescription seemed overjoyed in her emails. When our son asked if there were any possibilities of “brain fog” that he had come to know from Reddit, she said that such concerns were overblown. She cheered him all the way, writing prescriptions for estradiol and spironolactone and even talked to the insurers when they did not initially pay for the drugs. In her mind, I am sure that she thought that she was being virtuous.

When his final exam ended, our son fled home. He did not stay at Princeton for his graduation – he was so ashamed of everything that had transpired there. Princeton turned a confident, vibrant young man who was excelling in every way into a husk of a human being. A person who could not lie before was lying to us. There were times when we felt like we were dealing with a deranged drug addict, someone who will lie to get the only thing that matters to him. And when the promised salvation (intimacy, romantic relationships) did not materialize, he would spurn all the existing relationships within his life – whether it was his parents or his friends – in order to chase the elusive dream.

After he graduated, I wrote to Princeton’s clinic. I had compiled a dossier on the risks of estrogen, as published in the medical literature over the years, when administered as a cross-sex hormone. The list was long – and alarming – depression, cognitive decline, cardiovascular diseases, cancers, autoimmune diseases, the list goes on. I also linked the articles within the journals – they would have access to them from the University. I then wrote: “I point all of this out because the UHS [Princeton’s clinic], no doubt out of their genuine desire to help our child, started the estrogen therapy with [our son] very quickly, but might have, in the process, contributed to some grave iatrogenic harm. We increasingly see them stumbling with their memory, something that we could not even think of a year earlier – they used to have photographic memory ever since they were a child. And so, I hope that other gender-dysphoric natal young men who might visit the UHS are made aware of the risks that I pointed out. Our child will suffer the consequences of estrogen therapy, but let that not be the fate of other young men at Princeton suffering from gender dysphoria. At the very least, they should be aware of the possible consequences that have been documented in the literature after the 2017 [Endocrine Society] guidelines.”

The Cass report was not out yet (an nor were the latest systematic reviews that came out in 2025), but I linked them to the NICE reviews as well as the reviews from Sweden and Finland.

I got a response from the Medical Director a few days later. She wrote, “We are in complete agreement that the research on the long term outcomes of hormone therapy is constantly evolving. The articles that you sent have been shared with our Sexual Health and Wellness providers; we are committed to remaining vigilant to emerging science. We look forward to the Endocrine’ Society’s publication of their new guidelines, and will incorporate. We do abide by the process of informed consent prior to prescribing hormones to our patients.” In other words, your child signed the forms.

From a young man full of life and confidence, our son was turned into a fearful creature who did not even venture out of his room. During his final year, he would get out of his room only to get a delivery from Uber Eats, and that too after dark. he did not have a single friend.
While his erstwhile friends were getting high-paid jobs (it’s Princeton, after all), he did not apply to a single one.

It is one thing for a lay person to believe in the junk science. But for Princeton? For a university that housed actual geniuses like Einstein or Nash to be turned into a caricature of a place of learning is a sight to behold. And, instead of nurturing a rate talent, for turning one of the actually bright people like our son, whose IQ was measured at 157, into someone who has become a caricature borders on criminal negligence. The university is not only ineffective, it is contributing to social harm. A generation – and the society as a whole – will pay for their actions. (We are not naive to believe that our son had no role to play in this. But what chance does an impressionable young man, who has been considered weird his entire life, have against the onslaught of the society, especially when the junk science is being cheered on from a venerable institution like Princeton University?) ~ Parent