As someone who has gone through a phase of questioning my ... inner state of the matter on this topic, now in retrospect, I am so so so so soooooo glad that such options were not readily available to me. If I was that age in the current world, I simply would've done it.
Given the permanent nature of a transition on a body, I really wish the advocates of pushing this at young ages would not push back against discussions of people who decide to detransition. Such stories break my heart way more than someone being unable to transition before a certain age.
100%, completely agree with this. I was a raised in an small town in the US where men were expected to football-loving brutes with hair-trigger tempers and went deer-hunting on the weekend. Given I was never like this, I also went through a phase of questioning - until I realized there are many ways of being a man. But I didn't come to that realization until I was in college.
I think this is a failure of empathy. "Being unable to transition before a certain age" in this context entails a child having their body modified against their will, which they can only partially correct through expensive and avoidable surgeries in adulthood. It seems much worse than merely detransitioning to me.
Not really understanding you. Are you softly still saying, as someone who isn't them, that you want to gatekeep this from people who don't feel comfortable in their own bodies?
I'm not sure what you're trying to say by - "isn't them"
If I did undergo that path when I wanted to, at which point would you consider me "becoming them"? At the inception of the thought? After some rumination? After making the decision? After first time taking meds? After undergoing surgery?
I don't consider it gatekeeping, rather prevention of making an irreversible choice while the frontal lobe is still far from knowing even what path it wants for itself for the rest of its life. I know that might be seen as unfair to a lot of people, but given the persistence with which gender affirmation is being pushed, I feel that cases like me are simply considered collateral damage. Really glad I didn't end up as such.
Which is also wrong. People living with BIID are (usually) not irrational. The small percentage that do seek amputation have usually exhausted all treatment options, and find that amputation improves their quality of life.
This thread will likely have extensive hate on a very small portion of the population.
A reminder that actual people have been turned into a cultural wedge issue, their lives put in danger due to the vitriol the culture war issue has stirred.
If you have known a person who has transitioned, you'd likely see someone happier after being able to transition.
Laws targeting trans people won't stop an actual criminal from entering the wrong bathroom.
Children and teens can absolutely know these things about themselves. Imagine telling a child who has a hetero crush on a classmate that they're too young to know they're straight. Children are little people. It won't be the correct choice for every child, but for every child it is the correct choice for, it will lead to a happier life and a more effective transition.
last but not least, you didn't care about competitive women's swimming before, you're not fooling me that you care about it now.
You have to be an adult to get a tattoo. Because by then, you're expected to be able to make a well-informed descision and be able to think of possible coonsequences.
Why on earth would a child be allowed to decide on life-changing or even life-shattering bodily harm?
The entire purpose of puberty blockers is to enable deferring the decision until you are an adult and can make a well-informed decision. The make an irrevocable decision right now options are to go through natural puberty or immediately go on HRT.
We also let children decide on inflicting life-shattering bodily harm to themselves all the time. The classic examples are things like contact sports (children playing tackle football is pretty fucked up) and ballet. In the latter case they're like four when they commit to having deformed feet.
Puberty blockers are not meant to be prescribed from onset of puberty to adulthood. (I don't think anyone wants to be just starting puberty at 18.) They're meant to buy time for the patient to make a decision and get counseling if they need it if they're not sure they want a natal puberty or HRT at the onset of puberty. They will have to decide as a minor.
I disagree with this, puberty blockers should be used sparingly and certainly should not be taken until adulthood. Can you imagine starting puberty at 18?
Trans children deserve to mature at the same time as their peers.
If you are 11 and wait 7 years to get a tattoo, your tattoo will look just as good or better.
If you are 11 and wait 7 years to transition, you will suffer irreversible physical and psychological damage. You will have missed formative social experiences. You will have to get expensive, painful surgeries to partially correct what was done to you.
I'm 100% with Sarah McBride on this. The blame for this culture war is arguably as much because of how pro-trans folks handled it as it is resistance from conservatives. It did not need to happen this way. There will be progress in the future but it definitely got set back a ways over the last few years. Unfortunately with collateral damage for the rest of the LGBT community.
> Children and teens can absolutely know these things about themselves.
The article quotes a campaigner against the trial who first transitioned and then detransitioned (as far as this was still possible I assume, since a lot is irreversible). So kids can absolutely make the wrong decision. The question is what the relative frequency of these mistakes is.
"In a review of 27 studies involving almost 8,000 teens and adults who had transgender surgeries, mostly in Europe, the U.S and Canada, 1% on average expressed regret. For some, regret was temporary, but a small number went on to have detransitioning or reversal surgeries, the 2021 review said."
Dutch study (Steensma 2013) followed 127 children who were referred to the Gender Identity clinic in Amsterdam under the age of 12. The study looked to see if these children were still gender dysphoric by the time they reached adolescence at age fifteen. 37% of these children had persisted. However 64% of children had either desisted or were no longer traceable. Since there is only one Gender Identity clinic for children in Holland it can be assumed that the latter no longer required support and so had also desisted.
The "desistance" measured in that study is between going to the clinic as a child (before any treatment would be offered) and the time they would go to receive medical treatment from the clinic. Most sources I've seen suggest that change in gender identity is more common in younger children and drops off around the time puberty would start, which is the earliest that medical treatments are offered. The meaning of "desistance" being discussed here is regret after receiving medical treatment - basicly, the Type I error (false positive) rate of the treatment decision. These aren't really comparable.
With how few trans people are, the people among them who have detransitioned is even smaller. I'm not sure why these people should be the only ones that are taken seriously. They're nearly as big of grifters as the "tied-in-fifth-place" swimmer who decided the grift train would pay better than being a mid swimmer.
The thing about Puberty blockers, is they can be mostly reversed. This isn't about children getting things cut off, it's about preventing certain features that surgery cant fix from developing. IMO it's cruel for a teenager who is absolutely sure, to be forced to go through the incorrect puberty and have to undo that later.
> Children and teens can absolutely know these things about themselves.
They can also absolutely be unduly influenced by their parents or other authority figures. The fact that Megan Fox has 3 trans kids points to upbringing as being a major factor.
> Campaigners who brought the legal action had argued the safeguards in place were inadequate and raised concerns about the long-term physical and psychological effects on young people.
What exactly are the safeguards for real? It’s literally irreversible damage when you mess up with hormones while on puberty.
I am conflicted myself, but I think I err on the side of caution and think that avoiding messing with your hormones should be no brainer.
> It’s literally irreversible damage when you mess up with hormones while on puberty.
This is equally true when you don't intervene. The children being recruited for this study would otherwise be forced to undergo physical changes that cause them severe psychological distress and would need to be surgically corrected in adulthood.
> Puberty blockers are safe, effective, and generally reversible
Any credible studies to back this up? I find the contrary when I looked last time around, and it does not feel reversible when you disrupt the most important phase of your development (body wise).
The pattern I've observed repeated around issues of transgender health care is "ordinary levels of scientific uncertainty used to argue for the most extreme possible restrictions." Puberty blockers have long been used to treat precocious puberty, the main problems of which are social difficulty from going through puberty earlier than one's peers and a shorter adult height.
The opponents of transgender healthcare have used the minor uncertainty of prescribing this medication to a group a few years older to argue not for tighter safeguards, but for a legal ban on prescribing it for that purpose. Not letting doctors evaluate the potential risks and benefits for their patients is one thing, but not even wanting a medical trial to begin to gather more data is outrageous. There is absolutely no concern from these same groups about any risk of the medication to cisgender children, which casts doubt that the concerns are raised in good faith.
> Puberty blockers have long been used to treat precocious puberty
That seems orthogonal, yes? Delaying puberty until the body gets into the usual range of growth is arguably improving something that was otherwise going off the rails. Delaying puberty from normal onset until after the body has otherwise stopped growing is a different use case, different intended goal. It does not seem unreasonable to have different expectations.
>The number of members with GH claims per 10,000 beneficiaries under age 18 rose steadily from 5.1 in 2001 to 14.6 in 2016, without a dramatic change around 2003, the ISS approval date.
Just as a reminder for everyone here, 0.14% of US children (+3x in a decade) are given Human Growth Hormone because they are short. Our government says that being in the bottom 2 percentiles is a medically valid condition to be treated with hormones.
Differentially focusing your emotional response on sex-expression hormone therapy vs. hormone therapy generally is reflective of bias.
Given the permanent nature of a transition on a body, I really wish the advocates of pushing this at young ages would not push back against discussions of people who decide to detransition. Such stories break my heart way more than someone being unable to transition before a certain age.