You really can’t make this stuff up.

A doctor in Norway whose medical license was suspended for dangerous and unethical practices has been given an award for being a  “standard-bearer for trans people and transsexuals in Norway and an ambassador for gender and sexuality diversity in Norwegian society.”

Why the award? Those unsafe and unethical practices were in the service of transing people, and anything one can do to sterilize and mutilate people for any reason is great.

Doing it as a man masquerading as a woman makes you even better: a feminist icon.

NORWAY: A prominent transgender doctor who had his medical license suspended for privately issuing puberty blockers and hormones to children has now been honored with a "feminist" award.

One teen who was treated by Dr. Esben Benestad committed suicide.https://t.co/HtJp0gf8m2

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) August 24, 2023

As is so often the case, Reduxx has the depressing story.

A gender clinician and sexologist who recently had his medical license suspended following an investigation by the Norwegian Health Authority (NHA) has been granted an award named after a prominent Norwegian feminist. Dr. Esben ‘Esther Pirelli’ Benestad, a male who identifies as transgender, was given the Ottesen award by non-profit membership organization Sex og Politikk despite having had his medical license revoked at the start of this year due to “substantial breaches of duty.”

The Ottesen award is the namesake of Norwegian-Swedish women’s rights activist and social worker Elise Ottesen-Jensen, who was involved in the foundation of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) in 1953. Benestad, 74, was presented with the award for his career as a “standard-bearer for trans people and transsexuals in Norway and an ambassador for gender and sexuality diversity in Norwegian society,” reported Norwegian outlet Psykologisk.

When issuing the award, which was presented at a ceremony on July 12 in Oslo, Sex og Politikk representatives praised Benestad as “an important practitioner of patients with gender incongruence.”

As you probably know, Norway has until recently been a leader in the movement to expand the medicalization of gender. The country has reversed course in recent months due to a growing body of evidence that gender transition hormones and surgery are neither helpful nor safe, at least for younger people.

It is quite a turnaround, given how Norway and Sweden literally pioneered gender reassignment procedures.

Dr Benestad, though, did not have his license suspended for remaining an advocate for gender reassignment procedures for children. Rather, the suspension was due to the manner in which he practiced his gender medicine, sometimes resulting in great harm to patients.

The treatment of “gender incongruence” is overseen by Oslo University Hospital, or Rikshospitalet, which requires that a psychiatric assessment be undertaken prior to the implementation of medical intervention. Despite this regulation, Benestad had been repeatedly providing hormones and puberty-halting drugs to patients who were refused the medications following an assessment by professionals at Rikshospitalet.

The ages of the patients were redacted to protect their identities, and therefore it is unclear how young the children were at the time that medical intervention was initiated. However, in the past, Benestad has indicated that he has prescribed puberty-halting drugs to a boy that he began treating at the age of nine, an incident that spurred the first investigation into his practice by health authorities.

Benestad was previously investigated twice by the NHA for disregarding recommended safe practice policies in his medical treatment of minors.

In 2021 it was revealed that he had privately administered puberty-blocking drugs and hormones to a teenager who went on to die by suicide.

Benestad, in other words, violated Norway’s laws and his actions may have resulted in the death of a patient. To be fair, we cannot assert that his actions DID result in that suicide, but the laws exist in order to ensure that patients in need of psychiatric care to prevent self-harm, and Benestad interfered with that care.

Unsurprisingly Dr. Benestad was loose with his attitudes about pedophilia (ever notice how alphabet ideology and pedophilia go together?), and clearly has…unconventional views about sex and gender, and a certainty that his judgment is always superior to anybody else’s.

Benestad has recently estimated the number of patients he has seen in his 37-year-long career to be between approximately 1,800–2,000 in total. Prior to administering puberty-blocking drugs to under-18’s, Benestad was treating child sexual abusers, which he has referred to as “pedosexuals,” and insisted pedophilia was a common human trait.

“We’ve all been pedosexuals once,” Benestad told VG in 1998, and cited “prevailing taboo notions” around pedophilia as a cause for child sexual abuse.

Norwegian gender clinician and former WPATH member Dr. Esben Benestad – a man who identifies as transgender – boasted about medically “transitioning” children by circumventing protocols.

In 2009, he joked that he could not be sent to prison, and even if he were, his cell would… pic.twitter.com/RUNjO9xRD3

— Genevieve Gluck (@WomenReadWomen) August 2, 2023

Benestad has advocated for normalizing sexual fetishes and, along with his spouse and co-professor, Elsa Almås, founder of the Norwegian Association for Clinical Sexology (NFKS) co-authored an article in the Journal of Sexual Medicine titled, Autogynephilia and Autoandrophilia Revisited, which argues that the sexual arousal men experience through transvestic crossdressing should be normalized.

Benestad was also listed as a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) until as recently as November. The gender clinician has also spoken at and attended conferences hosted by WPATH and has exerted influence on their policies.

Benestad was present at a WPATH conference held in June of 2009 where academics involved in a pedophilic and sadomasochistic fetish forum presented a concept of a “eunuch” gender identity. The concept would later be incorporated into the most recent WPATH Standards of Care guidance, and the WPATH conference and presentation by academics involved with the fetish forum appears to have influenced Benestad’s own interest in the subject.

Once again we are confronted by the fact that institutions that claim to advocate for women are instead going to bad for men who pretend to be women. Not only is Benestad a bad example of a person to be admired, indisputably, but a particularly inappropriate one to be held up as a feminist to be admired.

Of course, the institution that honored her has named the award after Elise Ottesen-Jensen, who helped found International Planned Parenthood, so I suppose that sterilization of people is considered a major point in his favor. Gender reassignment, after all, is guaranteed to ensure that the “patients” will never have children.