Puberty is an incredibly complicated process, involving innumerable intertwined signaling pathways, gene expression changes, physical and mental changes, etc. We are only beginning to understand it all; to think we can just "pause" it like an MP3 player is the height of hubris. These experimental treatments have many potential negative side effects, including osteoporosis and infertility. Teenagers who feel insecure about their bodies (which is totally normal at that age) are being pressured and induced into potentially destroying their future at an age where they are not mentally mature to make these permanent life-altering decisions. Many will sorely regret it, some will even take their own lives. A tragedy in the making
Everything in the body is complicated. The history of medicine is rife with unintended consequences. Many body altering surgeries are entirely useless and dangerous. Over 40% of antibiotic prescriptions are off-label and fully 75% of all prescriptions in pediatric populations are off-label, all of those prescriptions being administered by definition at a time of great growth and change in the body.
And yet it's only this that people are talking about. It's bad faith. If you really want to shut this particular thing down for the reasons you've given then you would shut down most of medicine, and virtually all care for pediatric populations.
Indeed. We value evidence-based medicine, especially when it comes to rejecting interventions that have been demonstrated not to work. As has been said, the name for "alternative medicine that actually works" is "medicine".
But a surprising amount of "medicine" is less well evidenced than we'd like it to be. That's not the same as demonstrably-false, but nowhere near the rock-solid gold-standard of testing. But we don't stop using it, because suffering patients can't wait while we straighten out the epistemological mess.
The best one to make a decision is a doctor, who has both the education required to understand the state of the art, and the details of the patient in front of them. They can combine that with their experience to make the best decision possible. It won't always be perfect, but it's got more likelihood than people guessing about what they think medicine is about.
And yet, Lupron has been used since the 1970's to treat precocious puberty and every single ban on using it for gender affirming care still allows it to be administered for that purpose. Medical associations also approve its use, in both cases.
When the people against it are only against it for one group of people, and doctors by and large disagree with them, it makes me suspicious that their motives are not based in concern for health and instead are based on personal feelings that are being projected onto an external cause.
People aren't against any group of people, they're against administering a damaging and potentially life-ruining treatment to perfectly healthy children.
Children with gender dysphoria are not "perfectly healthy."
They have a serious problem. The level of hubris in assuming that all these heterosexual parents, many of them conservative, would just up and decide to "trans" their kids is outstanding.
Whatever makes people trans is immutable. Every possible way has been tried to "fix" them, by making them happy as their assigned sex. All the attempts just led to broken people, many of whom killed themselves.
The gall to just insert yourself into the lives of these kids and their families, without understanding their struggles or knowing them, and trying to take away the one proven path to them having a happy successful life is really something to behold.
Agreed. We've created societal structures and cultural norms that have survived thousands of years to deal with teenagers, which have existed and behaved like teenagers since the dawn of humankind. Our civilization exists because of the systems that we put in place, good or bad, and they allowed us to not only survive, but also thrive. Our thriving included getting rid of many bad ideas and norms along the way.
Whenever we want to experiment with radical changes in our systems, we need to be very careful. New radical approaches lack the test of time, and should be introduced carefully when there is potential for widespread negative impact.
Today we're saying that a large number of teenagers actually would be better off with a permanent change in gender. This extraordinary claim, which goes against biology and our established cultural norms, could be true but we have to recognize it as extraordinary and approach with extreme care. Maybe one day we'll figure out how many teenagers actually would benefit from this, but right now it's clear to me that we're just going all-in on an untested paradigm with great potential for irreversible pain and suffering.
* Here is an [*AMA resolution*](http://www.tgender.net/taw/ama_resolutions.pdf) on the efficacy and necessity of transition as appropriate treatment for gender dysphoria, and call for an end to insurance companies categorically excluding transition-related care from coverage
----
*Citations on the transition's dramatic reduction of suicide risk while improving mental health and quality of life, with trans people able to transition young and spared abuse and discrimination having mental health and suicide risk on par with the general public:*
* [*Moody, et al., 2013*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3722435/): The ability to transition, along with family and social acceptance, are the largest factors reducing suicide risk among trans people
* [*Young Adult Psychological Outcome After Puberty Suppression and Gender Reassignment*](http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/09/...). A clinical protocol of a multidisciplinary team with mental health professionals, physicians, and surgeons, including puberty suppression, ... cross-sex hormones and gender reassignment surgery, provides trans youth the opportunity to develop into well-functioning young adults. All showed significant improvement in their psychological health, and they had notably lower rates of internalizing psychopathology than previously reported among trans children living as their natal sex. *Well-being was similar to or better than same-age young adults from the general population.*
* The only disorders more common among trans people are those associated with abuse and discrimination - mainly anxiety and depression. Early transition [*virtually eliminates these higher rates of depression and low self-worth*](http://www.jaacap.com/article/S0890-8567%2816%2931941-4/full...), and [*dramatically improves trans youth's mental health*](https://archive.thinkprogress.org/allowing-transgender-youth...). *Trans kids who socially transition early and not subjected to abuse are comparable to cisgender children in measures of mental health.*
* [*Dr. Ryan Gorton*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3219066): “In a cross-sectional study of 141 transgender patients, Kuiper and Cohen-Kittenis found that after medical intervention and treatments, suicide fell from 19% to 0% in transgender men and from 24% to 6% in transgender women”
* [*Murad, et al., 2010*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19473181): "Significant decrease in suicidality post-treatment. The average reduction was from 30 percent pretreatment to 8 percent post treatment.
* [*UK study - McNeil, et al., 2012*](https://www.scottishtrans.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/tra...): "Suicidal ideation and actual attempts reduced after transition, with 63% thinking about or attempting suicide more before they transitioned and only 3% thinking about or attempting suicide more post-transition.
* [*Lawrence, 2003*](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1024086814364): Surveyed post-op trans folk: "Participants reported overwhelmingly that they were happy with their SRS results and that SRS had greatly improved the quality of their lives
* [*Reduction in Mental Health Treatment Utilization Among Transgender Individuals After Gender-Affirming Surgeries: A Total Population Study*](https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.190...) - "*Conclusions:*"... the longitudinal association between gender-affirming surgery and reduced likelihood of mental health treatment lends support to the decision to provide gender-affirming surgeries to transgender individuals who seek them."
I'd strongly recommend anyone interested in this topic to find sources outside of the US. The foundation of these studies are largely dubious, consistent with the kind of replication crisis you see in the medical field. Throw activism into the mix and these sources are now biased towards certain outcomes.
For those who lean left, I strongly recommend reading up on Hannah Barnes' book, "Time to Think". The UK and the EU have deemed "gender-affirming care" experimental with US holding out. This should definitely give some pause.
> EU have deemed "gender-affirming care" experimental
This is a lie that Gender Critical people keep repeating, it is simply untrue. The EU continues to treat transgender children according to the same scientifically studied standards of care that they have in the past
For those reading, comments are an unreliable proxy for politicised topics such as this. As such, if you want to be certain about what your beliefs are (as opposed to blindly inheriting the opinions held by your bubble), always go to the original sources.
For those who wish to validate the claims of my original comment and that of the person replying me, you can check out sources outside of the US, especially Sweden and the UK (i.e. The Cass Report, Hannah Barnes of the BBC), and comments by progenitors of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM).
There is research being promoted by the other side of the debate too... Unfortunately, once a scientific issue becomes politicised, it’s hard to know who can be trusted.
n=1 is not a representative sample. many people suffer from medical treatments and regret having them. if you can show me that the percentage of people who regret trans treatments are dramatically higher than people who regret _any_ medical treatment, maybe then you'll have an argument.
Yeah, I was watching a gender doctor on youtube who was saying something like 'suicide rate in trans people who don't go on HRT as a teenager is 40%, so we put teenagers on Lupron and send them to therapy until they're sure if they want to transition or not. Increased chance of osteoporosis in old age isn't much of a risk compared to 40% suicide rate' (my words from memory, not a direct quote)
From memory, he was saying that people who go through some kind of trans affirmative procedures have a dissatisfaction rate of 5% and this is likely to be lower than the complication rate.
I think I watched the first hour, here's the video:
https://youtu.be/qGuvDlYDNzU, I'm sure if you're inclined to be critical of trans healthcare then it would be possible to make counter arguments to things that he says.
My perspective is;
There seems to be concrete evidence from neuroimaging studies that transgender people's neuroanatomy more clearly matches the identified gender than the chromosomal gender. This is corroborated by anthropological and epidemiological evidence.
Clearly it's a complex issue and I think it could be quite possible to put cisgender people whose sense of gender was badly traumatised on hormone therapy as a teenager and cause them problems later in life. However 40% suicide rate in trans people is not something to be ignored
Puberty blockers have been administered as a valid treatment for precocious puberty for many decades. All of the bans on them specifically still allow them to be used for this purpose, because they are indeed safe enough. It's just that people don't like the idea of children being transgender, probably because it reminds them that they could potentially have a gay or transgender child.
The Alan Turing lie is laughable, Lupron wasn't even invented until 20+ years after Alan Turing was given hormone injections. The falsehoods you're spouting have the hallmarks of coming from Twitter infographics meant to enrage you. Trans care has been made into a wedge issue by US politicians as a way of taking advantage of people's ignorance about the topic, and their knee-jerk dislike of gender non-conformity. An incredible amount of non-sense is being spread, the same as it was about gay people in the 70's and 80's.
> In fact, "trans kids" has never been a thing until about two or three years ago.
Another blatant lie, but it's a fun opportunity to talk about the first trans kid in the US, Agnes Torres. She started taking hormone therapy as a child in 1950. Nearly 80 years ago.
Doctors declared her intersex and she was given a fast track to having her documents changed. She went on to marry and have a nice normal life, because people left her alone. Trans people today could have the same if not for the vicious ignorance propagated by political parties looking for fresh meat.
> Puberty blockers have been administered as a valid treatment for precocious puberty for many decades.
That's a different treatment though, because puberty eventually resumes. Halting it entirely is more akin to the castrati children [1] who had their puberty physically blocked through removal of testicles.
Yes, the point is that you wait until the subject is sufficiently competent to be able to make those medical decisions for themselves, which in most jurisdictions is 14 to 16. The entire point of puberty blockers is to delay permanent sexual changes until the subject can make their own decisions.
Puberty blockers are claimed to be non-permanent. However, that can't be verified at present [0]. In light of that, such a claim being made in the first place is definitely medical malpractice of some sorts.
Also, I do not think medical sources from America are reliable for this topic. The UK and the EU have moved away from gender-affirming care and designated it an experimental treatment. Medical and psychological associations in the US have been captured by such activists and are pushing false rhetoric such as "the science is settled" and "we have medical consensus" (note the misrepresentation here; consensus does not imply evidence-based).
US have a problem where radical activists have captured many influential cultural institutions. Anyone who disagree is automatically designated a "right-winger", "conservative", "white supremacist", "oppressor", "racist", "sexist", "homophobe", "transphobe", etc. This should be obvious to anyone looking from outside the anglo-sphere. For things to get to the point where US can't even recognise what a medical scandal is is frankly appalling, especially when their counterparts in Europe is able to do so.
> The UK and the EU have moved away from gender-affirming care and designated it an experimental treatment.
The UK and EU are hardly a paradise for trans people. Until recently they even REQUIRED trans people to be sterilized, I suppose under the dual assumptions that 1.) they weren't fit to have children and 2.) if there's a genetic component to being transgender it's best to weed it out.
These days, you'll notice a lot of europeans calling to clamp down on transgender people because they'd prefer for them to be gay. Conversion therapy is conversion therapy, however, and whether you do it US style where you try to make someone a good straight Christian or European style where you try to make them a feminine male or butch female, it's still wrong.
As for sterilization, people bring this up without pointing out that we can bank sperm and eggs. A treatment plan for trans youth can wait until they reach a tanner stage (these are the stages of puberty) where they can bank before starting puberty blockers. That is more reasonable than an outright ban.
As for Lupron's side effects, parents are informed about possible side effects. Just like with precocious puberty. It remains telling that families are allowed to access these treatments for some reasons but not others. The double standard betrays prejudice and political meddling in the affairs of parents and doctors.
I think the issue is more technically dubious than political. I'd refer to this investigative feature by The British Medical Journal (BMJ)[0], as well as the follow up[1] of clinicians and researchers alike.
Being intersex is very rare and unfortunate, and I am sympathetic to those with such birth defects.
However, the explosion in "trans kids" has nothing to do with being intersex and has everything to do with being a mental craze. There is no explanation for feelings of "gender dysphoria" rising by 1000% among young girls except for it being a mental craze, with all the encouragement and support among themselves, in social media, and among the school administrators. [1]
> Being intersex is very rare and unfortunate, and I am sympathetic to those with such birth defects.
Agnes Torres was not intersex, she was merely classed as such which allowed her to live a normal life. Funny enough, your comment itself shows why this was successful. You see intersex as more legitimate and because of that you "give it a pass."
Agnes Torres was transgender, but was treated as legitimate back in the 1950's. Being treated like a normal human being allowed her to live a good life back then, free from hate.
It goes to show, if people would just allow trans people to live their lives, they could blend in with society. The thing holding them back is just... prejudice. How sad.
I'm not sure what the situation is like now concerning prejudice towards trans people in the US, but looking from the outside, I'm aware of the incredible amount of bad faith coming from medical and activist organisations from within the US.
For instance, any legitimate discussion or criticism about gender-affirming care, possible social cause that's driving the increase of trans-identifying teenagers (confounded by high rates of autism, mental illness, trauma), or how certain trans rights infringes on women's rights, are framed as "transphobic" by these medical and activist organisation. This would also mean that statements made by countries that are arguably more progressive than the US (i.e. UK and European countries) about the current trans issue would fall into that category as well.
Now, against the backdrop of the capture of cultural institutions by radical activists in the US who share a common foundation (critical social justice), it's hard to be sympathetic towards your claim that prejudice is what's holding them back, when the actions of the medical and activist organisations in the US is consistent with the silencing of valid criticism that other factions of the critical social justice adherents (i.e. race) have a track record of.
In other words, it's hard to believe that the medical and activist organisations in the US are actually acting in good faith; they are weaponising our empathy for marginalised groups to silence legitimate criticisms about a medical scandal and the ideological foundations driving the scandal.
Edit:
Anyone of sound mind can clearly evaluate that my point isn't transphobic. The reply to this comment is a demonstration of what's wrong with the US.
I think you're ideologically motivated, and arguing from a position of emotional distaste for trans people rather than unbiased concern about medical practice. Here's why:
> any legitimate discussion or criticism about gender-affirming care, possible social cause that's driving the increase of trans-identifying teenagers
Trans-identified is a term created by anti-trans activists initially as an "in joke" because calling someone a trans identified male or trans identified female created acronyms that spelled traditionally female and male names: TIM and TIF, where TIM would be applied to trans women and TIF would be applied to trans men. A group that is serious about improving the world wouldn't choose their terminology so as to make fun of or harass people. A hate group would.
> or how certain trans rights infringes on women's rights
It's not at all clear that trans rights infringe on women's rights. The right to segregate yourself from elements of the population that you find distasteful isn't guaranteed. Otherwise we'd still have Jim Crow laws in the American South and lesbians would still be barred from women's sports due to concerns about them being predatory in locker rooms - yes this was a big concern in the 1980's.
> the capture of cultural institutions by radical activists
This is conspiratorial thinking. "Institutions" are made up of individuals and operate under some guiding principles. They aren't captured like territories in a game of risk.
> This would also mean that statements made by countries that are arguably more progressive than the US (i.e. UK and European countries) about the current trans issue would fall into that category as well.
The UK and EU have different politics than the US. They are economically more egalitarian, but socially can be very conservative.
> it's hard to believe that the medical and activist organisations in the US are actually acting in good faith
Why would you conflate medical and activist organizations? Isn't it possible that you are the activist, and that you'd like to bend medical organizations to your will because they disagree with your own prejudices?
> Anyone of sound mind can clearly evaluate that my point isn't transphobic. The reply to this comment is a demonstration of what's wrong with the US.
Saying that nobody can disagree with you unless they are mentally unwell, and then calling someone who disagreed with you an example of "what's wrong with the US" is very odd behavior. It doesn't seem like the way someone operating in good faith would behave.
I don't appreciate your ad-hominem attacks. I'm not the "activist" you accused me of being, or the conspiracy theorist/covert "right winger" you're trying to paint me as. I clarify my position here [0].
>Saying that nobody can disagree with you unless they are mentally unwell, and then calling someone who disagreed with you an example of "what's wrong with the US" is very odd behavior. It doesn't seem like the way someone operating in good faith would behave.
I don't see how I acted in bad faith. However, it appears that your comment is an odd interpretation of the additional remarks I added to my original comment. Perhaps my command of english isn't as good as I thought (I'm not in the anglosphere), or perhaps, you're the one acting in bad faith and giving a convoluted take on my remarks. Regardless, allow me to clarify; "Feggal" replied to my original comment, accusing me of being a "transphobe" and claims that he's going to tattle to Dang for my alleged transgressions. The additional remark I added to my original comment was meant to extend the original points I made about how a particular group of ideologically motivated people are contaminating the conversation, and how "Feggal"'s ad-hominem reply is an example of that. I hope this clarifies things.
Lastly, I'm not interested in entertaining any more ad-hominem attacks. For anyone reading this thread, allow me to point you to this investigative feature by the British Medical Journal (BMJ)[1], one of the most reputable journals in medicine alongside The Lancet. You figure out the discrepancy in claims between the BMJ and that of the medical associations and activist organisations in the US, and decide which of the both is the conspiratorial one.
> However, the explosion in "trans kids" has nothing to do with being intersex and has everything to do with being a mental craze
what "explosion"? the only explosion is the right wing suddenly realizing trans people exist and turning it into a political issue.
have you considered that the reason you're seeing more about "trans kids" or people being more open about gender dysphoria because it's more socially acceptable to be LGBTQ than it was 50 years ago? or maybe because right wing outrage is profitable?
> It's just that people don't like the idea of children being transgender, probably because it reminds them that they could potentially have a gay or transgender child.
A shallow dismissal, a perfectly reasonable argument against irreversible action for changing children’s genders is that many of them aren’t so sure as it seems and later want to transition back.
> A shallow dismissal, a perfectly reasonable argument against irreversible action for changing children’s genders is that many of them aren’t so sure as it seems and later want to transition back.
About 2% want to transition back. 98% are quite sure, and are happy with being treated. Trans youth who are not treated tend to be miserable as adults, with many committing suicide since their bodies have been shaped by the puberty of their natal sex in such a way as to draw constant negative attention. While it is very reasonable to want to lower that 2% rate down even further, attempting to rip care away from that other 98% is not reasonable. Just prejudice, masquerading as concern for children, same as the 80's when "save the children" was having a national campaign against homosexual rights.
If you're not ideologically invested in this topic and are sincerely interested in the truth, I'd urge you to look at your own country from an outsider's point of view. The point being, many sources in the US that were reputable (i.e. scientific american) are parroting misinformation about this topic in service of ideology. That much is obvious to someone who does not live in the anglo-sphere. To address your claims, I'd recommend you check out Hannah Barnes' book, "Time to Think". This much should show that the study you're relying on is dubious, and transitively, your rhetoric.
> If you're not ideologically invested in this topic and are sincerely interested in the truth, I'd urge you to look at your own country from an outsider's point of view. The point being, many sources in the US that were reputable (i.e. scientific american) are parroting misinformation about this topic in service of ideology.
You've really been running wild in this comments section, as have I. I can see that we're both very interested in this topic, but from different sides.
What I'll point out here again, is that you continue to paint reputable organizations that disagree with you as "ideological" while maintaining yourself as some sort of unbiased outside observer. This is blatantly untrue.
You are the one trying to change the facts being reported by reputable sources. You are the activist who is engaged in a campaign of attempting to ideologically modify unbiased institutions.
I think the trans topic can really rile people up, and there's no shortage of think pieces of conspiracy theories about it. Same as has existed around lots of minority groups that caught the attention and ire of the larger public.
You aren't the unbiased observer however. You are an activist, and it shows in your writing.
I don't appreciate your ad-hominem attacks. I spent two years outside of the US witnessing the idiocy of Trump, and another three witnessing the idiocy and regressiveness of the "progressives". As such, I don't take sides in your politics; both your left and right are a disaster to me.
I am not an activist, but I do care about causes that most on the left would empathise with, which is ironic given that gender-affirming care is one heralded by the "progressives" on the left. To the best of my ability, my commitment is to reason, which is something the right clearly lacked during (and after) the Trump administration, and something the left has been lacking for quite some time now.
This much should establish that I'm not some garden-variety "right-winger". Now that signalling my "creds" is out of the way (and it should never have mattered anyway), I think I have a unique perspective as an outsider. Because I have no commitment to US' abysmal politics and since I am not in the anglosphere, I'm not immersed in the local narratives that are happening on the ground. This lets me compare (much fairly) the US and UK + EU's approach to gender-affirming care, and how it's reported. So perhaps while I'm not an unbiased observer as you would put it (I have an opinion on this matter), I do think I've a much better view of what's going on than someone in a country who's narratives are dominated by their political extremes.
So here you are, making a bunch of accusations about me which you can't even bother to back up. To counter that, here's something of substance; for those who think there are no credible claims to the contrary, you can check out this investigative feature by the British Medical Journal (BMJ)[0], one of the most reputable journals in medicine alongside The Lancet.
Indeed. The Guardian is a source I consider to be fairly ideological on certain topics, and belongs to the camp that would largely be in support of gender-affirming care. Yet despite their bias, even they gave a decent review of the book.
For those who are earnest about understanding what's up, the last thing you should do when evaluating the comments of a particularly politicised topic is to automatically deem a downvoted comment as being on the "wrong" side. This is how you inherit opinions that you were never truly convinced of in the first place. Always go to the original sources, and given how politicised this is in the US, it's ideal to see how the UK and EU are handling this. It can't harm to look outside of the bubble you're in, you own your opinions afterall.
Even assuming your study is true, the argument against irreversibly treating children is still a reasonable position and not the shallowly insulting straw man argument you present as the only option.
> the argument against irreversibly treating children is still a reasonable position
Allowing a trans child to go through their natal puberty is not a neutral act. A trans person who "passes" has a much better lifetime outcome thanks to facing less discrimination and having less body image issues (not many people living as females would enjoy being called a man in a dress and harassed regularly based on their body proportions regardless of their chromosomes).
> and not the shallowly insulting straw man argument you present as the only option.
It's not a shallow straw man. Anti-trans activists want to ban care for trans people outright. They want conversion therapy - or what they have slickly labled "gender exploratory therapy" - to be the only treatment available.
If we hadn't lived through many decades where such treatment was already the only option and seen how disastrous it was I may be less inclined to say they are acting in bad faith, but, alas, we know exactly what conversion therapy does: it creates incredibly traumatized adults who are still trans.
All your arguments do not change the fact that it is still possible for reasonable people to simply disagree with you, and it is not a valid argument to put up straw men to take down, just like you’re doing again here, this time anyone against irreversible actions taken on children is claimed to be someone who ‘wants to ban care for trans people outright’.
If your arguments consist of assigning outrageous opinions to people you disagree with, your argument is invalid and you’re bound to be wrong.
Have you ever had a conversation with a trans person? Quality of life for trans people that get the privilege of blockers is enormously higher than their counterparts. They've been in use for decades; it's not new.
I cannot imagine a greater horror then having gender dysphoria, knowing exactly what is wrong, and still being forced to go through the wrong puberty (which does inflict irreparable harm, for us) because some "concerned" parents want decades of medical history on blockers before they deign to allow you to receive medical care. I wonder how that medical history is supposed to be built if no one is allowed to take blockers?
I'm not even going to engage with your bad faith argument that trans kids are only in the last 2-3 years.
I'm not under any illusion a person with your opinions could ever be swayed, but hopefully other reasonable people will see this comment and not fall victim to your scare tactics.
I know someone who as a teenager was in an abusive relationship, insecure about themselves, pushed into taking these experimental treatments for a few months. The doctors and therapists just handed over the prescription, not questions asked. They now sorely regret ever having taken blockers, and are hoping it hasn't damaged their fertility too much.
> pushed into taking these experimental treatments for a few months
It's a shame that this person was in such a difficult situation, but, barring some extraordinarily rare reaction, a few months would not cause long term problems. The full impact takes several years, by 3-6 months the very first changes are only starting to become visible and many of them are things like changes to skin quality and fat distribution which revert after cessation.
It's still possibly a failure that your acquaintance got on HRT or Lupron in the first place. Given that long term follow ups show, consistently, that less than 2% of trans youth "desist" and are happy with their treatments, the reasonable solution to that failure would be to require some sort of evaluation by a therapist who has been trained to spot when someone has gender dysphoria and belongs to that 98% of happy transitioners versus someone from the 2% group that will desist because their issues came from somewhere else.
Instead of that sort of reasonable response, we see calls for outright bans on all treatment with many also calling for banning treatment for adults and a reversion to conversion therapy as the only "treatment" - it's not a treatment because it doesn't work and just hurts people.
The reason for this, is that the vast majority of people who suddenly have such strong opinions on trans health care are not actually concerned about people's health. They've just found a way to make their prejudices against transgender people sound like reasonable concerns.
A few months of blockers won't do much of anything in the long run. The risk of osteoporosis in the absence of sex hormones is well-known to endocrinologists, and they account for it. Even a few months of cross-sex hormones will do very little. It takes at least six months before anything irreversible happens.
And "someone who did this under duress regretted it hence no one should do this" isn't a sound argument.
I'm talking about children. Look at the charts here. [1] Why is the number of children experiencing this "gender dysphoria" skyrocketing? It should be linear, not exponential. There is a mental craze driving this, which is extremely profitable for the medical industry. This industry is preying on children to make a profit, justifying all the research on the small percentage of trans adults that actually need this treatment.
Why would it be linear? The reasons it's increasing is because people no longer feel as much pressure to hide their true identity. It's the same reason that the number of left handed people doubled from 1920 to 1960 [1], it's not a conspiracy it's just the way social norms work
it is also undoubtedly true that it is more rewarding on a political level to not have any doubt on these issues than it was just 10 years ago.
Entire careers have been built on it. On both sides.
But, incredibly enough, the ones on the "precaution" approach are on the far right side.
If we saw the same increase in cases of kids having mental health issues, which is also more socially acceptable to talk about than 50 years ago, we would be worried sick, we would ask why it happened and what caused it, not simply treat the symptoms and call it a definitve solution.
studies would also show that their life is better than when they were not treated, but is relying on anti depressants really a good life?
is asking the question proof that the person asking hates (or is phobic of), for some reason, people with mental health issues?
Yes, I have. Some trans adults really need these treatments, but that does not explain the 1000% increase in so-called "trans kids" over the past 2-3 years.
We'll probably look at what's happening today the same way we look at lobotomies. It's quite scary. As usual, those people are trying to address the symptoms, not the cause.
This is a base rate error. There are so many more trans people recently because it became socially acceptable to be openly trans somewhere around 2014. The watershed moment was probably Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of Time.
Even among those of us who detrans (on the order of magnitude of 1%), at least 95% do so not because they were wrong, but because coming out invited reprisals which made their life too difficult to continue (losing home, family, job, etc.) The first study I was able to find puts that proportion at 97.6%. [0] My Fermi estimate puts your "so many" at one in 5000 or so.
> Gay people don't require any medical interventions to be gay, so it's not really the same thing.
Many homophobes have made "medical" arguments about why sodomy should be banned. Aids was seen as a "gay disease" and as proof of how homosexuality caused and spread diseases. A good friend of mine's mother refused to have her hair done by a gay man in our small town because she said she was scared he may cut his hand while cutting her hair and give her hepatitis or aids (what's more, she was a nurse).
Beyond that, pathologization of gender non-conformity is why homosexuality was classed as an illness until relatively recently, and it's been a common source of medicalized discrimination shared by gay and trans people.
> why are there so many detransitioners coming out recently
Because the same few are being trotted about by conservative media outlets and political action committees to stir up hate.
A study showing the rate of desistance in trans youth, using more recent cohorts, showing that it still hovers around 2% where it has basically always been:
tl;dr 98% of trans youth are well served by receiving medical care and 2% are not. Conservative media blows up coverage on the 2% in order to try to ban treatment for that other 98% instead of doing the sane and humane thing, which would be to try to screen out more of the 2% from getting care and allowing that 98% live happy lives.
> This comment implies that you support conversion therapy. Conversion therapy has been tried, in every possible fashion, and has never worked. It is functionally just torture that leaves people shattered emotionally and sometimes physically. Supporting it is inhumane.
I think you're jumping to conclusions --- my reading of GP is that "the cause" == dysphoria.
> I think you're jumping to conclusions --- my reading of GP is that "the cause" == dysphoria.
Conversion therapists like Ken Zucker know full well about gender dysphoria and helped create the old "gender identity disorder" diagnosis in DSM IV. The "conversion" they are trying to achieve is to change the child's gender identity so that it's congruent with their sex via conversion therapy. This has failed spectacularly time and time again, and yet, prejudice against trans people, keeps folks interested in "treating" gender dysphoria in this manner.
There was an article on Zucker and his practices in 2008.
What it comes down to is just punishing gender non-conforming behavior. Kids treated in this way have been prone to commit suicide as adults, or, to transition anyway but then have to deal with a lifetime of ridicule for having the marks of a male puberty on their body. Outing them as transgender at a glance, whereas if they'd have had access to gender affirming care they'd have been able to blend in and, you know, go buy milk at the store without being gawked at or harassed.
You're talking past me. I'm a trans girl who went through testosterone-mediated puberty. If "the cause" is dysphoria, then "treating the cause" is transitioning.
> What it comes down to is just punishing gender non-conforming behavior.
Not really though, it's perfectly possible to be gender non-conforming without undergoing drastic medical procedures. In particular, all the women and men who reject the societal impositions of femininity and masculinity, while still being comfortable with their bodies.
> Not really though, it's perfectly possible to be gender non-conforming without undergoing drastic medical procedures. In particular, all the women and men who reject the societal impositions of femininity and masculinity, while still being comfortable with their bodies.
Yes, I was pointing out how the conversion therapy works. I know lots of happy feminine gay men and butch gay women for example, but they don't have gender dysphoria. Trans people aren't the same as feminine gay men or butch gay women.
Zucker himself, whose conversion therapy included punishing boys for playing with barbies, said he supported the idea of someone being a feminine man and saw his therapy as a way of achieving that. He would straight up tell parents that their children would most likely be gay, but that being gay was better than being trans.
So, ironically, we have a conversion therapy, where the aim was to turn trans kids gay. I guess they thought that if you punished gender non-conformity early on you could instill a sense of maleness or femaleness into a kid, and then later they could just be more femme or butch as they liked. Sick stuff.
3) Lupron is a brand name for leuprorelin, "in the gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogue family of medications". It looks nothing like DES and has a very different method of action ("decreasing gonadotropin and therefore decreasing testosterone and estradiol"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuprorelin
Puberty blockers are given to kids all the time for things as frivolous as them not being tall enough, and have a benign safety profile, especially when they're discontinued before the age of ~16 (which is the case here).
They've been used for more than 40 years and few grave side effects have been recorded. It's not a new thing, as I've said, it was and still is fairly common for short kids to be put on GnRH blockers.
> With puberty blockers and in adults treated with GAHT, unintended systemic biological changes may occur which may increase the risk of chronic diseases, such as osteoporosis. Sex hormones are well known in playing a crucial role in bone acquisition at puberty, 6 and in adulthood, it regulates bone homeostasis.7–9 Therefore, hormone treatments (puberty blockers and GAHT) can affect bone health both in adolescents who undergo puberty suspension and in transgender adults.
I don't understand the point you're trying to make. Yes, GnRH blockers will affect bones in adulthood, that's exactly why they're used to make kids taller, because they give more time for bones to develop. This is, of course, an unintended effect in the context of transgender healthcare, but it's fairly benign.
Gender affirming hormones, such as estrogen, do cause osteoporosis - that's why women are more prone to osteoporosis than men. Puberty blockers have not been linked to osteoporosis in pre-pubescent patients, despite more than 40 years of use.
GnRH blockers are however dangerous in adults because you need adult level of sex hormones for your bodily function and as such are generally not used for an extended period of time - in pre-pubescent children however it moreso prevents their increase from puberty than it suppresses current levels. This is because GnRH is not produced in significant quantities before puberty, so suppressing it further has far fewer side effects.
>In fact, "trans kids" has never been a thing until about two or three years ago.
I didn't know I was still a child as recently as 2020. I remember fondly having a girls' theater night to see Shrek with my mom and sister, but I must have hallucinated all of it!
Trans kids are just as much a thing as cis kids and have been for just as long. The existence of a thing is not dependant on it being in the public consciousness.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7073269/ "These results align with past literature, suggesting that pubertal suppression for transgender adolescents who want this treatment is associated with favorable mental health outcomes" - that sure sounds like care to me
> Attacking and shaming concerned parents as being "transphobic" for questioning this practice is not a helpful solution. We don't have the long-term data to ensure this is safe for kids
> The data released by the group, which calls itself SiegedSec, includes South Carolina police files, a list of licensed therapists in Texas and contact details for court officials in Nebraska.
Meanwhile the supposedly targeted agencies deny they suffered a breach.
This strikes me as a group that is less capable than they want people to believe, but on the other hand knowing how well local and start government do at InfoSec I also have a hard time doubting it.
