[morelisp]

As is the normal talking point for the UK anti-trans lobby, you are conflating the medical intervention for children (hormone blockers) with the medical intervention for young adults (hormones) with the long-term effects of hormones after taking them for years - well into adulthood.

Some adults do regret the long-term effects of their hormone treatments. Many more adults regret not getting access to hormone treatments sooner. Others regret going off hormones for personal or professional reasons and then not being able to start again because their doctor says they must not really be trans.

The solution for all these problems is easier and more flexible access to the treatments and a society more open to all modes of gender. Not a "but the children" moral panic.

[throwaway53453]

First, I'm not some kind of shill who's "part of the UK anti-trans lobby". I'm not anti trans. What I am concerned about is damaging children's hormonal development and having them later regret it.

> Some adults do regret the long-term effects of their hormone treatments.

Even a single child regretting this when they're older is enough for me to say this is morally ambiguous, but I bet you those numbers will go up in decades to come.

[vertex-four]

What about children who are later angry they could not get treatment that would’ve helped them? Do they not count?

We could just, never treat anyone for anything, then nobody would ever regret any treatment.

[throwaway53453]

It's not a good solution, but no. We don't allow children to have sex until they're 16, or drink until 18, for valid reason. This is the same situation.

Which is that they're not mentally developed enough to consent to those things.

[vertex-four]

There is a doctor involved. There is, for children, an incredibly long wait time, a number of sessions in order to diagnose, very likely therapy, more appointments to decide what is the correct treatment process. If everyone involved agrees they should go on puberty blockers (for example, because their body development is causing them problems in line with gender dysphoria diagnostic criteria), there’s therapy and more assessments all the way through that. And now in the UK a fucking court is involved too. In a medical decision. That is, someone who is not a doctor has complete control over someone’s medical treatment.

A child can get put on lithium and kill their emotions for years with less hassle. And no court involved. That should tell you the priorities of the people who tell you it is a good idea to prevent kids from accessing medicine that is widely agreed to be safe and effective.

It wasn’t easy for children to be put on puberty blockers before and it’s worse now.

If you can’t see how it’s fucked that all this isn’t enough, and we must make it even more impossible for doctors to do their jobs, I don’t know what to say.

[throwaway53453]

Preaching to the choir here. I already know the data you've just listed. My point still stands.

[vertex-four]

Trans children who wish to go on puberty blockers don’t consent to puberty.

But inaction is always more moral than action, even when it harms people, right? When we see that we’re about to run over 5 people, but we could instead run over 1 by pulling a lever, we shouldn’t pull the lever?

[esarbe]

Blocking hormones can have just a bad effect as giving hormones. Hormones are signals for the body. I don't think we know enough about the developmental process to justify interfering with it.

This is a quote from a recent article in the Economist[0].

>One big worry is that puberty blockers seem to reliably lead to cross-sex hormones, in what doctors call a “cascade of interventions”. The best estimate, from studies starting in the 1970s, is that around 80% of gender-dysphoric children who are allowed to express themselves as they wish, but who do not socially transition—change their clothes, pronouns and the like to present as members of the opposite sex—will, as they grow up, become reconciled to their biological sex. Yet puberty blockers seem to prevent that reconciliation.

[0] https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/02/20/...