Scientific studies are supposed to be a source of unbiased information. But according to University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) psychology student Emily Andersen*, some researchers have traded objectivity for ideology.  

In an interview with IW Features, Andersen, who has requested to remain anonymous due to the fear of potential retribution from the school, revealed that UCLA’s psychology department has been captured by radical gender ideology. The belief that “gender identity” is separate from sex is even creeping into the school’s scientific papers, which Americans rely on to make informed choices about their health, she said. 

For Andersen, the ideological takeover of academia and scientific research is very personal. 

“I suffered from gender dysphoria as a kid,” Andersen said. “I hated being a girl and I hated my body.” 

Thankfully, despite her confusion, Andersen said she never thought she was a boy. 

But had she been raised in today’s cultural environment, where gender ideology is too often taught as fact, Andersen said she might have undergone a “gender transition” of her own.

“I’m very concerned about the health of vulnerable young women like myself,” she added.

Before enrolling at UCLA to obtain her second bachelor’s degree, Andersen worked as a surgical technician and nurse for more than 15 years. It was at a hospital in Los Angeles, right before the COVID-19 pandemic, where she said she first saw the encroachment of gender ideology in the medical field. 

“They were starting to implement [a] fast-track to transition” for children, she said. “We should not be trying to medically treat something that should be treated with mental health[care].”

Andersen said her desire to change institutions’ medicalized approach to gender dysphoria was what led her to enroll in a psychology program. Unfortunately, she discovered that her beliefs put her at odds with other students, professors, and the university at large. 

“I’ve noticed that in the classes where I wouldn’t give my pronouns, the teacher graded me more harshly,” Andersen said. “Once I had to write two papers which were almost exactly the same. One was on gender and one was on something not related to gender.”

She continued, “On the one that was unrelated [to gender], I got almost an A, but on the one that was related to gender – where I disagreed with what the teacher said – I got an F.” 

According to Andersen, her interactions with the student body haven’t been much better. 

“I tried engaging in some arguments about the [men in women’s] bathrooms, locker rooms, prisons situation,” she said. “It was made very clear that if you have these views, you are a bigot. There’s this … idealization of trans people, that they cannot make mistakes.” 

Concerningly, Andersen said this mindset is making its way into scientific research being conducted on campus. A flier for an upcoming study, for example, sought to recruit participants based on their “gender identity” rather than their sex. This directly undermines  FDA research guidelines that “require sponsors to include a fair representation of both genders as participants in clinical trials so that clinically significant gender-related differences in response can be detected.”

In other words, scientists must take sex-based differences into account in order to produce accurate research. If transgender-identifying men are counted as women and vice versa, the research could be flawed. 

But that’s exactly what the UCLA study is doing, according to Andersen. 

“I saw that the study was about behavioral and consumer preferences, and they were taking biometric information like your sleeping habits, your weight,” both of which are “biological and psychological variables” affected by a person’s sex, Andersen said. 

“Sex is one of the primary variables that matter,” she continued. “If you’re putting transgender people in those categories, we’re not going to have quality healthcare. People are going to get hurt.” 

While classifying transgender-identifying study participants according to their chosen identity seems to be a recent phenomenon, medical journals have urged a blurring of the sexes for years. In 2020,  Obstetrics & Gynecology  suggested researchers reject “a narrow focus on cisgender women” and even claimed that pregnancy and birth care should be male-inclusive because transgender “women” can carry a baby  – just not “as well” as a cisgender woman. 

Ignoring the differences between men and women is only part of the issue, Andersen said. Another massive problem in the scientific field is an unwillingness to see the relationship between people’s psychological issues and their medical issues. 

“A lot of people’s issues are related to their behaviors, which are related to traumas that they suffered in early life, and we just don’t address that,” she said. 

After graduating, Andersen said she plans to pursue a career in social intervention psychology in order to advocate for gender-confused children.

“We need to stop normalizing [gender ideology]” and “get it out of schools,” she said — starting with UCLA. 

*Storyteller’s name has been changed to protect her identity.