A lecturer taught nursing students at Mount Saint Mary College, a Catholic college in New York, how to put gender-confused patients on puberty blockers and otherwise facilitate gender “transitions,” according to a video Daily Wire host Michael Knowles exposed on X June 11.

Knowles shared clips of the lecture in an X thread, noting that the lecturer, Steph Williams, is the director of LGBTQIA+ Relations and AmeriCorps Programming at Sun River Health and does not have a medical degree. He noted that Williams uses he/him and she/her pronouns.

In the first clip, Williams informed psychiatric nurse practitioner students that minor girls who identify as male can be upset when they enter puberty, which can lead to bigger issues down the road, such as alcoholism or substance abuse. Williams also claimed that allowing girls to progress naturally with puberty “might trigger other underlying behavioral health conditions that may — like depression — that maybe — or anxiety disorders — that maybe wouldn’t have been present if, for instance, things like puberty blockers were utilized.” 

Knowles commented on X, “Per Williams: If a 12-year-old girl menstruates and feels ‘stress,’ she might grow up to be a depressed alcoholic—unless we drug her. That’s the rationale for chemically halting puberty in gender-confused kids.”

Williams later said that children entering puberty can start puberty blockers without even experiencing “dysphoria” as long as they have a history of gender “incongruence.” Additionally, both they and a parent would need to give consent and undergo a psychological evaluation.

Williams claimed that if a gender-confused child regrets their decision to go on puberty blockers, “native puberty” would be able to pick up “right where you left it off” as soon as the child comes off the puberty blockers. 

Williams acknowledged that “of course, there’s some questions around, like, height and questions along those things” but failed to mention puberty blockers’ potential effects on bone density, fertility, and overall health, Knowles pointed out. Williams also argued that potential effects would have been addressed in the “consent process” anyway, ensuring that the patient was making “informed consent.”

Williams claimed that hormone therapy “is something that adolescents do not do,” but then added, “I don’t say that it doesn’t happen, it does, but it’s extremely rare.” The Daily Wire reported, however, that Stop the Harm Database found that “8,579 minors received hormones and puberty blockers” between 2019 and 2023, while “62,682 sex change prescriptions were written for minors.”

The last clip Knowles posted features Williams informing the students that they don’t need to “have all this memorized” because patients seeking gender transitions will be more informed than they will be as healthcare professionals. 

“Oftentimes, folks who are trans come into your exam room knowing more than you do. And that’s a good thing. That’s an asset. That’s a benefit,” Williams said.

Knowles condemned “gender-affirming care” on X, calling it “Children diagnosed by ideology, puberty treated like a disease.” He added that it also teaches future nurses “that their ignorance is a beneficial feature rather than a bug.”

“The trans agenda hinges on ‘mental health professionals’ approving this ‘care.’ But their standards are incoherent,” he wrote. “Far from ‘assessing,’ it seems they’re just rubber-stamping child abuse.”

Lynette DeBellis, the chair of nursing at Mount Saint Mary’s; Nancy Checchi, a professor for the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner program; and the college’s communications office did not respond to individual requests for comment by the time of publication.