People believing that masses of children are literally getting surgery, circumcision notwithstanding, is a result of a persistent campaign to cause panic.
And it's the same hucksters selling fear to the same religious reactionaries. New day, new apocalyptic scapegoat.
Tavistock also were not performing surgeries on children.
Trans people often don't even receive hormones until they're 16, I don't know how this idea that they're receiving surgery on a whim makes any sense to anyone.
chownie said hormones, e.g. testosterone/estrogen, not hormone blockers. You're right, 16 would be too late for most for hormone blockers, and as such it causes immense harm when trans children are prevented from getting blockers earlier, because it causes irreversible changes to occur that strongly correlates with massively increased rates of harmful outcomes (up to and including suicides).
> The blockers are also said to prevent the kids from adapting to their biological gender, leading onto a path to surgery.
Ah, "it is said".
> I am amazed how willing to lie people are in this forum.
Maybe drop the unfounded accusations when you're the one attacking someone for a claim they've not made.
The correct word would have been puberty blockers (which presumably are also hormones).
Most people who believe they are trans actually grow out of it. Puberty blockers (and also testosterone) have severe side effects (or main effects). Therefore more harm is done by overprescribing them.
There is not even scientific evidence yet that trans people actually exist (as in somebody born in the wrong body somehow).
"Ah it is said" - yeah in the same way that "it is said" that withholding puberty blockers causes harm and whatever else you claim.
"Being transitioned" removes agency from people who fight for years for this. You have been shown across this thread that vanishingly few even gain access to any kind of medical support until their late teens and still you insist on lying, pretending that "kids" are being transitioned against their will -- meanwhile in reality trans teens are crying out at the 5+ year long waiting lists just for access to clinics.
You have to turn your back on the trans children who grew into adults and pretend they don't exist to spin this lie where transition is a verb you apply to other people rather than a choice that someone makes for themselves.
Almost no word in this is true. Blockers are "reversible": You stop taking them. Their primary effect is a delay of puberty during use, nothing more drastic. "Activists" push them because the negative mental health effects of forcing trans children to go through puberty before they have a chance to decide as adults whether or not to fully transition are severe and debilitating, and it's shockingly immoral to try to actively deny people access to them.
> Yeah, it’s shockingly immoral to not give children drugs that have existed for something like 0.01% of human existence.
What is the argument here? Drugs haven't existed for long, so it's okay to prevent people from using them? I'm sure we can all agree it would be shockingly immoral to steal cancer drugs from a patient, even if it is natural development.
This jumped out at me too. Yes, it would be shockingly immoral to stop giving children antibiotics. Which I mention because penicillin was developed at around the same time as synthetic estrogen and testosterone. And penicillin could kill me due to an anaphylactic allergy, and it's largely considered safe by medical standards.
Yes, it's shockingly immoral when the evidence of harm of letting trans kids go through puberty is as significant as it is.
It is exactly because some regret more invasive changes that puberty blockers are essential when medically indicated to allow decisions to be deferred until patients are more mature. The only one wanting "adult perverts on the internet" to decide medic issues for these kids are those arguing to deny patients medically indicated treatment.
> Stop parroting the propaganda which we are all perfectly familiar with and educate yourself
You're at least the second person to say "do your research" rather than offer up some evidence. In my experience, that's the mark of a conspiracy theorist.
But I could easily be wrong. Have you got any papers on puberty blockers that support your position?
> Yeah, it’s shockingly immoral to not give children drugs that have existed for something like 0.01% of human existence.
Hormone blockers are frequently prescribed to children to prevent precocious puberty. This practice is extremely well supported by research and considered safe and reversible through decades of observation. But unlike transgender patients, hormone blockers are given to children with symptoms of precocious puberty without the child's informed consent. Where's the outrage?
Cis/hetero-normativity is sexual ideology though. And there's a big difference between "pushing" and "accepting."
I've seen a parent shun their 3-year old for playing dress-up -- "I can't love you if you do this". That's pushing gender ideology. My kid's grandparents started asking him if he has a "girlfriend" at around 4. That's pushing a sexual ideology.
You don't need to be religious to buy into dogmatic misinformation campaigns, no.
Provide the evidence, you'll quickly find that it doesn't support the claim.
No children (prepubescent) are given surgeries, a tiny minority of 16 year olds are able to receive top surgeries but the vast majority can't even get hormones until late teens.
> a tiny minority of 16 year olds are able to receive top surgeries
And this is supposed to be an argument for "it never happens"? You don't see a problem with confused girls who are still coming to terms with their bodies having medically unnecessary surgery to have healthy organs removed? And yes, some of them are regretting that when they grow up. Some of them are even willing to speak up. But I'm sure you will not listen.
Did I say "never" or did you just put that in quotes to pretend I did? Surgery is extremely rare and largely seen as unethical. Again, except for circumcision, which is downright common and often literally forced on children. Where's the outrage? Cisgender women get breast implants before 18 through similar channels and in greater numbers. Where's the outrage?
For kids, it does indeed never happen. You cannot say "children are being mutilated" and then quietly redefine late teens into being children.
> And yes, some of them are regretting that when they grow up. Some of them are even willing to speak up. But I'm sure you will not listen.
You do realize this is literally the spotlight fallacy. 99% have no regrets, 1% do, you would like to focus entirely on the 1% to the point of obsession.
How about listening to the 99% who don't have regrets? Why are you so eager to ignore the majority of the people this actually concerns, instead patronisingly deciding you know what's best?
Why does it matter if it's physical or mental? People regret all those surgeries at a much, much higher rate. Incredibly few trans people do, and those that transition are much less likely to commit suicide.
But I somehow get the feeling that's not a good thing for everyone.
It's exactly because hormones have irreversible life-altering consequences that hormone blockers are the one thing prescribed to children suffering from gender dysphoria, exactly to buy time for them to mature and be able to decide whether to go through puberty as the sex they were born at or if they want to transition.
So if you actually believe what you write, then you should be in favour of puberty blockers as an option when medically indicated.
You're damn right children can't consent to anything! That is exactly the point! Which is why the parents are the ones in charge, and why it's alarming that for irreversible sterilizing and life-altering procedures they're trying to remove the parents.
It's insane, as you very well put it. They can't get a tattoo, too permanent, but they can get their tits chopped off. Makes total sense, yeah.
And yet you're making the insane argument against the treatment (puberty blockers) that is fully reversible and reduces the need for making irreversible decisions at such a young age. And in doing so you're arguing for imposing drastic, life altering and harmful effects on those for whom their dysphoria does not resolve. It's a deeply nasty level of authoritarian overreach to be prepared to force such harm on people when we have a treatment that can mitigate it for a significant proportion of the people in question.
You keep trying to move the goalposts, because it's makes for more shock value to talk about operations. But the reality is that operations are a last resort, and one often brought forward due to immense mental harm for patients for whom blockers have not been an option. They are examples of the entirely predictable outcome of the kind of brutally inhumane policies you've been arguing for by opposing blockers.
Think banning surgeries will work? Trans people have been dying from illegal and unregulated surgeries for decades because it's for many been preferable to staying how they are.
Puberty blockers are risky and can have non-reversible consequences. Your wishing them not to doesn't change that fact.
Plus, on top of the medical risks, starting on puberty blockers will make confused kids who didn't need them more likely to get surgeries later. That's bad, and yes, it's a trade off between not unnecessarily medicalizing confused kids and "helping" "real dysphoria" cases earlier. And I'm telling you very clearly that the answer depends on how many there are of those, but you don't want to engage with the question. Because there just aren't that many "real dysphoria" cases.
And let me preempt your next bad argument: No, a doctor can't tell them apart. That's where we are now, and they get a "dysphoria stamp" after a visit. The incentives are not aligned, they just want the money.
The goal posts have always been firmly on "Don't mess with children". I've told you many times, nobody cares what adults do, sex change surgeries have been around for a long time and nobody cares. Nobody wants to ban them on adults.
Puberty blockers are not fully reversible. It isn't like someone hits a pause button on puberty, as much as people like to portray it that way. I Am Jazz even displayed one of the consequences -- Jazz had inadequate penile growth, and thus wasn't really eligible for the more common and preferred vaginoplasty. And you're definitely messing with height, as any surge in estrogen can cause the growth plates to fuse -- completely non-reversible, to the dismay of all kinds of people.
Time marches on in the human body, whether we like it or not. Now, show me a "perma-kitten," a cat developmentally frozen in full kittenhood, behaviorally and all (something I think would be immensely popular with some crowds) and then undo it, only then will you be close to this pause button which puberty blockers cannot well emulate.
Your parent was complaining about you shifting the goalpost from surgery to medication. They could have done so with less snark, but the complaint is fair: hormone blockers are less invasive than hormones, which are in turn less invasive than surgery. All three call for different criteria. Ignoring that difference is seen by some here as intellectually dishonest.
And to answer your question, no, I believe that such matters should largely be decided between doctor and patient. I do not think that highly polarized politics should be driving medical decisions, and that medical ethics boards are much better suited to make policies in situations like this.
These laws are against all of gender affirming care. They are not against surgeries specifically. Also, puberty blockers are not surgery. The way you jumped from frequent "surgeries" to "hormones" is the exact dishonest arguing people complain about.
It's happening regardless of the disingenous "it's not happening" claims. Here's some reading for you. There are many more examples. Cute swipe at religion though.
Children don't receive elective surgery. It's just not a thing, in any medical guidelines or ethics rules, anywhere in the country. Older teens, _extremely rarely_, are allowed to have top surgery, but it's case by case.
Children _can_ receive puberty blockers, which _by definition_ are 100% completely reversible. The process to start treatment is universally difficult and involves multiple years of therapy and concurrence of multiple medical providers over time.
No, puberty blockers are not 100% reversible and they are not harmless, either. Surgeries are not rare, either - at least it is debatable what should be considered "rare".
Risks are comparative, moral panic is not and ignores this. Banning something because it is not 100% harmless is just not something that is done without extra considerations, such as a moralizing. E.g. Pain killers cause significantly more societal harm than puberty blockers but are still widely available.
As to the real risks, time and again it has been shown that the comparative risks of a) receiving puberty blockers vs b) growing up a gender you do not feel you are, strongly points to puberty blockers being a significant net benefit. Those taking puberty blockers rarely regret it; whereas those growing up a gender they do not identify with mostly regret it are are significantly more prone to abuse, mental health issues and suicide.
Kids get fed mountains of acetaminophen every year. Why do you suppose that acetaminophen packages have prominent warnings about not exceeding dosages?
It's because acetaminophen is extremely hepatotoxic at levels not very far above the recommended dosages.
> Hepatic injury and subsequent hepatic failure due to both intentional and non-intentional overdose of acetaminophen (APAP) has affected patients for decades, and [...] remains a global issue; in the United States, in particular, it accounts for more than 50% of overdose-related acute liver failure and approximately 20% of the liver transplant cases.
I would assert that acetaminophen is far more likely to be dangerous to far more children than puberty blockers and yet I don't see any moral panic over children's Tylenol.
So a miniscule number, and one where the best approach to reducing it further is to encourage the use of puberty blockers to prevent getting to the stage where it is the best option until they are better able to give consent.
And yet you're arguing for denying them the option that'd reduce the demand for these surgeries.
It "might be said" but that makes no sense to anyone who knew firmly what their gender identity was from early childhood. The norm is around 4 years of age. It also makes no sense given that dysphoria does disappear for a portion of patients irrespective of which hormones they're on. As well as for those on puberty blockers. The entire point of puberty blockers is allow for delaying the decision on going on hormones or surgery as long as needed for the patient to be able to make an informed choice.
And of course a lot of the kids given hormones will end up getting surgery, because their dysphoria is highly unlikely to resolve itself with or without hormones and for those whose dysphoria does not resolve surgery will be the best option for many - hence the very low regret rates.
And hence the drive to get puberty blockers to delay the need to decide on either.
You're buying into a hysteria founded on ignoring the actual and immoral harm being inflicted on trans youth by those seeking to deny them care in order to try to pretend they mostly don't exist. It's at best deeply misguided, at worst deeply bigoted.
The dysphoria actually dissolves in most cases, not just in a few cases. And the hormone blockers allegedly also prevent the dysphoria from dissolving in many cases.Hormone blockers also have severe side effects, even possible sterilisation.
Since most people end up not actually being trans, more people are now hurt by pushing transitioning as the solution for everything.
And you absolutely can not deny that it is being pushed.
Not taking the word of a random web comment who makes extraordinary claims with no evidence is not any denial at all, in fact. It's working wonderfully, and will continue to do so for many generations.
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. Regardless of what you're battling for, that's not allowed here. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Circumcision is one of those things that make me pessimistic about any societal change. It's an unthinkable act in most of the world, and broadly considered medically unnecessary for something like 99.9% of penises. With the exception of some religious nuts, no one does this to their son in countries like mine, but in the US the status quo means that the chance you'll lose your foreskin as a baby is about that of calling heads on the flip of a coin.
It just doesn't seem to be about facts at all.
The apparent fact that the people who are pushing for personhood of embryos and rage against people reading a book in drag seem perfectly fine with male genital mutilation really highlights that this isn't about the welfare of the children at all.
As the father of a young son: damn, people are stupid.
Yep, cultural inertia is a powerful thing. Very little about human decision making is about facts. People largely come to an emotional decision based on group identity, prior bias, etc... and then do post hoc justification with curated "facts" from sources they approve of.
Belief perseverance. For anyone who thinks (like I used to) "but not me, right? I'm rational" [this experiment](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3233529) was done on people with PhDs.
Yes, it is - but that would upend the 'only two genders/sexes' status quo and we can't have that. Imagine the mass panic and moral decay that would ensue.
Why bother loving your kid for who they are when you can just ask the docker to slice them up before they can consent? Or deny them access to Healthcare based on your own feelings because you really like your kids genitals...
