Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cubefox 1 day ago
> 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.

2 comments

"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."

https://apnews.com/article/transgender-treatment-regret-detr...

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.

Most change their mind.

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.