Then there’s kids playing contact sports. Rugby is fucking brutal.
I’d like to bring circumcision into this discussion.
Any Healthcare provider that performs this on a child should be arrested for child abuse.
There are a number of reasons why one could be medically necessary. I agree that medically unnecessary cosmetic procedures to infant genitals for purely cosmetic or cultural reasons are pretty unjustifiable, but “any healthcare provider… Should be arrested” is either a bit ill informed, or a wildly extremist position.
If we’re banning purely cosmetic or cultural changes to a child’s body, are we throwing out ear piercings and back braces and dental work, too? How about haircuts and hair dyes? How about vaccines, since these are now fully included in culture war politics? So much of this seems to boil down to a naturalist attitude towards children. “Just don’t change ANYTHING! Changing things is wrong!”
And the fact that its coming from people - like Elon Musk - who paid top dollar for IVF doctors to guarantee his children conform to his consumer preferences (you’ll notice he’s exclusively had male infant children) is even more obnoxious.
It’s very obviously just pot-stirring. Resent your parents for changing you. Resent your children for changing themselves. Medicalize resentment of everyone.
Invalidating ADHD doesn’t make trans people feel better, it only perpetuates ableist and medically misinformation views on ADHD.
Particularly women, minorities, and non-binary people, who have historically been severely underdiagnosed and neglected as is. Girls are 16 times less likely than boys to receive an ADHD diagnosis and treatment.
Women who speak out about their ADHD are often dismissed on social media as ‘self diagnosed pick me girls’ just seeking attention. In reality, many are speaking up against the ongoing crisis of medical neglect.
Untreated ADHD can put already vulnerable people into higher risk of developing clinical depression and other comorbid mental health issues. ADHD medication can be life saving, and calling it meth only serves to stigmatize the mental health issues ADHD patients go through, as well as discourage them from getting the help and medication they need.
If you call yourself an ally to trans people, that includes trans people with ADHD. There is no need to add to their intersectional struggles when they already have so much on their plate.
Even career choices are altering people’s lives. Even if I have my guitar, sometimes I regret putting so much time, energy, and money into it, partly because of a very depressive period in my life, partly because some potential medical conditions I have make bending strings upwards on the fretboard extremely painful as it feels like my nail wants to separate from my skin, partly because my taste in music shifted a lot away from metal music. I wish I was spending that on art or something else, IDK. Still I don’t want to introduce a bill that would forbid people learning the guitar before the age of 25.
Amphetamines is not the same as meth.
No, but my Vyvanse does specifically say “Methamphetamine…” on the bottle sooo…
Of course the dose is different, and the context too, but still.
The Portion Makes The Poison
Almost as though there’s some kind of merit to professionalization of pharmacology.
Not the same, but according to wikipedia it is also sometimes used to treat ADHD
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine
Its literally the first sentence of the “use” section.
Sorry i had no idea it was a thing in the US
The only reason I know this is, because one time I randomly read the wikipedia article about Meth. If it wouldn’t be for this, I wouldn’t have known this too.
yo me too
It’s not, but there is an FDA-approved drug with Desoxyn.
I don’t think the poster got that specifically, from my understanding that prescription is very rare compared to say Adderall which is an amphetamine but as you correctly point out not methamphetamine; but it can’t be ruled out that they actually got prescription meth.
I didn’t know you had that in the US. Here in france the only allowed adhd medication is methylphenidate
I’m German, but I do know about this from some years ago when I read up on drugs a bit.
Dexies != meth.
actually i’ve heard from a ton of people that youth ballet training is apparently problematic to them
but not because of the medical complications that certainly do arise with it. instead, because of supposed youth sexualization.
I mean, a big component of professional ballet involves the use of beta blockers to prevent girls from showing the signs of puberty.
Some of that is on athletic grounds - maturity brings changes to the body that impede the performance of the ballerina. Some of it is purely aesthetics. In fact, until fairly recently, women professional Olympians would avoid puberty to maintain the lean look that judges preferred. Only in the mid-90s/early-00s did we begin to see the power figure skaters and gymnasts who took advantage of the increased mature muscle mass to outperform their younger peers. Someone like Simone Biles would never have moved passed the preliminaries in an 80s-era Olympic competition.
But you could play the same game with male athletes and steroids/HGH/etc. Practically every professional uses some kind of performance enhancing medication of nebulous legality. And the younger you start, the greater the benefits over your career.
I gotta ask, if we’re so worried about this, do we need to get rid of professional athletics entirely? Or are we going to accept some degree of young body modification and parental control over their bodies?
Generally all peak athletes started very young, probably because of the parent’s dreams and not the child’s. I would have a problem with a lot of those situations.
Yeah, my daughter had expressed interest in doing competition dance. She just had a recital this past weekend, after which she was like, you know, I don’t want to give up my weekends and all my time to competition stuff. I’ll still dance, for fun, but I don’t need the competition. I said hell yeah, because I also don’t wanna do it. I’m glad she doesn’t feel pressured to be ultra competitive, and can still get enjoyment from an activity.
And then let’s not forget beauty pageants and professional kids sports in general. All of it in my eyes is extremely unethical. Kids should be doing their own growing up and their own clubs focused on meaningful growth not entertainment.
This is actually one of real problems of capitalism that no one is talking about. Since early investments are incredibly valuable in capitalistic societies kids with early entertainment training have advantage but using kids for entertainments is in practice simply unethical. This is equivalent of sexualizing kids early so they become sexy adults. Nasty stuff when you spend a minute actually thinking about.
the right wingers don’t see any problem with this.
I don’t think many people working outside pediatric healthcare really have an understanding about how comfortable healthcare providers are prescribing interventional care.
When diagnosing and treating a patient we come up with a plan of care that is weighted on total outcomes. Now this isn’t a perfect system, for example we may not completely understand the potential harm of new medications. However, we are creating the plan of care with the best information we have at the time. Taking potential side effects and weighing it against the potential harm that could occur without any treatment.
I specialize in pediatric orthopedics and rehabilitation…so take anything I say about gender affirming care with a grain of salt. However, the potential outcome for not treating gender dysphoria as I understand it is pretty bad…self harm and suicide are about as bad as an outcome as one could imagine. Now weigh that against the medications that are usually prescribed for gender affirming care which are well known, and most often prescribed without negative effect for a plethora of treatments ranging from precocious puberty, to monitoring rate of which growth plates close.
Hormone replacement therapy has been going on for decades and is very common place at any hospital that atends to pediatric patients. To claim that intervention isn’t appropriate for something with a potential total outcome as bad as suicide, based off “kids can’t consent” is a ridiculous notion considering that the same drugs are often prescribed to make sure a child doesn’t develop a limb length discrepancy after an orthopedic surgery.
Its also worth noting, that kids, especially when they are aware of their condition before puberty, are gonna have a really fucking bad time in puberty. Seeing your body change in a way, that is directly contradictory to what you want can be absolute hell. Theres also the possibility to prescribe puberty blockers and therefore stopping puberty. If a kid then later decides, that it does want to go through puberty they can stop taking the blockers. They won’t really have any long term changes from going through puberty some time later, but on the other hand you just made the life of all kids that dont want to go through puberty way better.
Given the prevalence of forced mutilation of intersex babies as well as medically unnecessary circumcisions, I humbly disagree that these procedures are “weighted on total outcomes”. Unnecessarily cutting off (part of) a baby’s penis is not comparable to being unaware of a new drug’s side effects. Every doctor who has performed that procedure was fully aware that it was medically unnecessary and did not have reason to believe the baby would not come to regret not being given a choice years down the road. I’d argue these procedures are institutionalized medical malpractice.
No shade on you personally because you seem to be approaching the topic rstionally, but I think it’s critical to acknowledge that the field of medicine still has very strong biases in these matters and is not nearly as Cartesian as it is sometimes made out to be. Especially on sensitive topics such as gender identity or reproductive rights doctors have a lot of latitude to be bigoted and to unilaterally deny necessary care.
Given the prevalence of forced mutilation of intersex babies as well as medically unnecessary circumcisions, I humbly disagree that these procedures are “weighted on total outcomes”.
As I said, it’s not a perfect system. However, a lot of the times the flawed treatments of their times were influenced by how physicians perceived cultural norms.
As cultural mores are adjusted and education within the medical community improves, treatment options are usually re-aligned to fit the science. For example circumcisions are becoming a thing of the past and intersex operations nare usually conducted after secondary sex organs develop.
Every doctor who has performed that procedure was fully aware that it was medically unnecessary and did not have reason to believe the baby would not come to regret not being given a choice years down the road. I’d argue these procedures are institutionalized medical malpractice.
Eh… Doctors are a slave to social mores as much as anyone is. They are unfortunately just as susceptible to belief as lawyers or politicians. There were beliefs that spouted about hygiene etc, but in reality those were just to validate belief systems held by the vast majority of the population. In the end they believed that the harm was not very significant to the pts overall health.
but I think it’s critical to acknowledge that the field of medicine still has very strong biases in these matters and is not nearly as Cartesian as it is sometimes made out to be.
I think it’s fairly obvious that the medical system has failed several minority groups, most recently trans people. I am proclaiming how medical providers should behave and how we were trained to treat all patients. Unfortunately, as you have stated, beliefs systems unjustly often interjects itself in medical care. Whether that be in prescribing birth control or administrating gender affirming care.
Suicide attempts and ideation among transgender people receiving gender affirming treatment is still very high compared to the general population.
That’s because of transphobia, not the treatment.
I’m old enough to remember the same argument being used to “prove” gays were unstable, and it’s still utter horseshit
Yeah, when you live in a society that treats you like shit for an immutable characteristic that tends to happen. It’s called minority stress, and it happens to cis queer people as well.
I totally agree and it sucks that people are like that. I was just responding to the argument that any treatment is worth it when the alternative is suicide, because studies range from showing HRT helps a little to not at all at preventing suicide.
Trans people just need to be loved and accepted like everyone else but unfortunately a lot of people really suck.
Trans people just need to be loved and accepted like everyone else but unfortunately a lot of people really suck.
Point of order. Trans people do not just need to be loved and accepted. Sometimes when this discussion point comes up it’s under the context that if everyone was playing ball with pronouns and being nice then medical transition would be unnecessary. That is not the case.
While it’s true that one of the effects of medical transition means that strangers are more likely to read and not misgender you - being trans the feedback system isn’t dependent on outside observers. What a lot of people seem to think is that gender as understood by cis people, as a largely performative construct, is by and large not how trans people interact with gender.
I personally wish we would stop looking at trans healthcare from the sour perspective of needing to justify itself being a worthy endeavor or not strictly on the basis of suicide rates as though if something is not provably strictly lifesaving in every case it isn’t worthy.
because studies range from showing HRT helps a little to not at all at preventing suicide.
No they don’t. There are a couple of studies that are deliberately misrepresented by transphobes to imply this, and they often get passed around as fact, by people who aren’t familiar with the studies in question.
Firstly, there was this Finnish one https://mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/27/1/e300940
You can see more about the hatchet job that the New York Post did on that one here https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/56772/does-gender-transitioning-do-nothing-to-help-suicidal-ideation
Then there is this one https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3043071/. It’s older, and it is misrepresented to claim that the suicide rate of trans folk doesn’t change after transition. The thing about that study is that doesn’t even assess the impact of transition. The entire cohort of trans people in the study were post transition, and questions were asked about their lifetime suicide attempts, without comparing before/after transition data. So because 41% of trans people in that study had made at least one suicide attempt at some point in their lives, the claim was made that transition doesn’t help, because “41% of post op trans people have attempted suicide”. The lead author of this particular study has spoken out several times on the misuse of the study by transphobes with an agenda, but to this day, it keeps happening…
So, let me give you the actual data…
This is a consolidation of the findings of research on trans health care, and the impact of transition on the well being of trans folk. To summarise, they looked at 55 studies on the impact of transition. 51 of those found transition to be beneficial, and 4 of them contained mixed findings.
You’ve stumbled on one of the tools that transphobes use. Deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, so that they can push for trans folk to be cut off from transition related healthcare, all whilst sounding reasonable, and sometimes even supportive. That, and trans people in sports, were the two main wedge tactics that they used to open the door to the wave of transphobia now sweeping the world.
because studies range from showing HRT helps a little to not at all at preventing suicide
You’re misinformed, the evidence supporting HRT for those that want it is sufficient that withholding it is unethical. HRT alone not being able to overcome extreme minority stress for everyone doesn’t mean it’s not helpful or necessary.
While family and community support is extremely important, it can’t replace medical transition for those that want it. You can’t hug the dysphoria away.
I’m primarily going off this meta study. They found many studies failed to reach statistical significance and many failed to account for confounding issues like psychological conditions, trauma, abuse, and substance use.
Instead of using a single meta study (which itself has limitations) as a reason to declare that HRT has no effect on suicidality—which isn’t even something the meta study claimed—you could take a peek at the political climate for trans people right now and just not?
was just responding to the argument that any treatment is worth it when the alternative is suicide
That’s not the argument…
The argument is that treatment plans are developed by evaluating risk and reward.
The risk for not treating is very high, even if the treatment doesn’t have a high rate of efficacy as long as it doesn’t introduce further risk, it’s still a valid treatment.
I made the conscious decision when I was around 14 to not transition, because I knew that it would lead to a more difficult life.
I could not make it. I would be dead if not for transition in my early 20’s.
My life is still more difficult, and I struggle with suicidal ideation, but that is entirely related to the way society treats me. I have been chased out of my career field, I have been told I am disgusting, I have been threatened, I have been sexually assault. Those things have happened because I am trans, and they have made me suicidal. But denying me treatment would take away the one aspect - the comfort in my own body - that helps protect me from the decision to commit suicide.
and transitioning at 14 might on average result in a person integrating into cis-normative society more easily than transitioning after puberty in their 20s, this means less dysphoria, less job discrimination, less chance of being a hate crime statistic, etc. - we need to make it much easier for trans kids to get the help they need so they live healthier and happier lives.
We just don’t have any evidence or reason to think trans kids are very likely to be wrong about transitioning, and we meanwhile have a mountain of evidence telling us treatment is very effective and has unusually low regret rates … this is just so obvious from a medical and scientific viewpoint, the only hangup seems to be cultural lag.
Even if we are accepting that as true, that doesn’t really have anything to do with an individual patients treatment plan. You aren’t evaluating risk based on the general population, you are evaluating risk based on patient populations with the same diagnosis.
If any risk is mitigated with gender affirming care compared to patient populations who aren’t receiving care , and the risk of harmful side effects are minimal then the treatment plan is valid.
I don’t really see how you think that comparing them to the general population makes any sense?
That would be like someone saying that people receiving treatment for HIV are still more immuno compromised than the general population…well yeah, but treatment vastly improves their total outcomes.
That would be like someone saying that people receiving treatment for HIV are still more immuno compromised than the general population…well yeah, but treatment vastly improves their total outcomes.
this illustrates it so well, well done
The fact that bad shit is normalized isn’t a great argument in this instance.
Yes it is. The argument is that people having a moral panic over kids getting gender affirming care (which they erroneously believe to be bottom surgery, that’s another can of worms), which is shown to be safe and effective, are not having the same moral panic (and even are likely to be the same demographic enabling this behaviour) over actual, proven to be a disaster for your health activities, shows that all these people are simply transphobes.
It’s not transphobic to recognize a bad argument against trans hate. There are plenty of good arguments against it
Where transhobes do and do not direct their attention betrays their motivations.
Their motivations are very important.
The OP comment is not anti-transitioning, nor pro-child-meth.
could you be more cryptic?
I am trying, but I literally cannot think of a way to be more direct here.
The transphobe’s hypocrisy is being used here as evidence of their lack of sincerity. i.e., they’re conning people. They are conmen. Liars and cheats who believe whatever they have to to convince people to hate the gays too. They will constantly contradict themselves because they don’t care about consistency. The irrational fear that they feel is the only consistent position they hold. And so, they don’t care about children’s causes because they aren’t motivated by children’s causes.
I know that you already know this; I’m not trying to be condescending. What I think is that you are, like, debate-tricking yourself into disagreeing with something really easily understood by most people.
We are just talking about two different things. I took the first response to the top level comment to be saying the top level comment was transphobic. Which I was disagreeing with
I suppose. I mean, I was reacting to the suggestion that it was indeed a bad argument.
For what it’s worth, I do only see themoonisacheese saying that anti-transitioners are being transphobic.
Except it’s a strawman. Plenty of people are upset about over medication of children. As one of those children, kindly STFU and don’t speak for us.
As one of those children, have you witnessed fetishising of people who have had puberty blockers? Or is that class of predator rare and without influence?
Yeah I’m reading this and I’m like “I’m actually very much against both of these examples……” the sports shit with kids in general is insane and it’s just to help them stand out for capitalism reasons, which is also why mainstream people don’t see anything wrong with it, capitalism has footed the bill of normalizing genuinely bad things like turning kids sports from a fun way to make friends to a literal job with overbearing schedules and physically inappropriate levels of activity for young bodies and joints.
As one of those children
Hey, just a heads up that admitting you are a minor online isn’t a good idea for lots of reasons, and that a number of lemmy instances will ban you for it (as they’re officially 16 or 18+ by instance rules) rather than accepting having to deal with all the various complicated laws about handling the data of underage users.
I was one of those children, Einstein. Think about how old I would have to be to be one of the overly medicated ADHD kids when that mostly happened in the 90s and early 2000s.
Get your white knight ass out of here.
Don’t come at me for missing context you didn’t include. You said nothing about the over medication of ADHD in your comment.
It’s right there. You can check it.
I’m sorry they didn’t hold you back enough for you to learn proper communication or emotional regulation. That must be tough.
…holy waffle tweet moment batman
you missed the point. children can give informed consent to things that might prove harmful down the line, like ballet.
not so much for ADHD meds, because parents often force these on them to make them compliant and as punishment.
there is no medication without side effects. ADHD meds can have bad consequences, but we should still allow people to take them based on informed consent. apply the same logic to kids on HRT.
I hate to break it to you about how many children are forced to do things like youth football and youth ballet…
Children can give informed consent? We’ve agreed pretty unilaterally as a society that that is fundamentally untrue. Especially at the ages where children are taken to ballet classes.
Children can give informed consent? We’ve agreed pretty unilaterally as a society that that is fundamentally untrue.
In every context? About everything? No, we have not. Just because a child isn’t old enough to consent to sex doesn’t mean they can’t give consent to anything at all. Maybe in the US, the only country that has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, where parental rights are so extreme and out of control that parents can hire people to abduct their child in the dead of night off to a Holes-esque labor camp, if not a “conversion therapy” brainwashing camp. But in more civilized countries, there’s more of a balance where children are gradually given more autonomy and rights appropriate to their age.
But even in the US, I’ll give an example. When I was in middle school, we were assigned to dissect frogs. I believed that the assignment was morally objectionable, and said that I would refuse to participate - I withdrew my consent. Most of the rest of the class did consent to the activity. My teachers accommodated me and a few other students by letting us do a computer simulation of it. But both my teachers and my parents wanted me to do it, the only objection came from me, expressing my own will and my own convictions.
In the US, there seems to be this neurosis that the parent-child relationship is something bordering on ownership, and there’s a corresponding fear of, “If I don’t own my child, then who does? The state?” This is why there is a preconception, especially among conservatives, that if a child comes out as any form LGBT+, they must have “gotten it from someone,” often, they assume, through abuse. In reality, teens are capable of making their own decisions regarding how to identify, as expressions of their own will - a teen can say “I’m not into girls” in the same way that I, when not even a teen, could say, “I’m not into dissecting frogs.”
Whether, and at what age, children can consent to things like ballet classes, Adderall, puberty blockers, and other forms of gender affirming care are valid questions to examine, they are not resolved by this oversimplified way of thinking that the ability to consent to anything flips on like a light switch at age 18. In the case of gender affirming care, not only have these questions been examined, and generally answered more in favor of the child’s autonomy, but they are also reexamined for each individual child on a case-by-case basis. Doctors are both careful about and (generally) supportive of gender affirming care.
where parental rights are so extreme and out of control that parents can hire people to abduct their child in the dead of night off to a Holes-esque labor camp, if not a “conversion therapy” brainwashing camp.
this reminds me of when I sat down and read this:
some of these camps are just so fucked up
The key you, (and many people in this thread, I can only reply to one person) are missing is the difference between consent and informed consent.
Children can consent to literally anything, and withdraw their consent at any time. In almost every case, you should respect the wishes of the child. Most of that consent or withdraw is harmless and helps the child establish boundaries and even learn about themselves.
A child is able to consent to participating in ballet classes, however, depending on the maturity of the child, they may not be able to grasp that they are doing irreparable damage to their feet; they might not know chronic illness, they usually don’t have a concept of just how long a human life is. So even if they are told directly, the “informed” part of informed consent needs a deeper understanding of actions and consequences than many children have.
With our current medical understanding (and it will probably be this way for a long long time) the line between being able to give informed consent and uninformed consent is blurred and is straight up different for different scenarios someone is in. We chose 18 in our society by basically picking a number out of a hat. It’s different in different societies and we know for a fact that it’s different person to person.
Consent when it comes to trans or questioning kids has been co-opted by the right so when you question how much someone should be allowed to go on HRT or get gender affirming surgery when they’re young, the knee-jerk assumption is that they’re completely anti-trans. If you look into the trans community there’s still a lot of healthy debate about what lines to draw. We have a lot of research on the effects of something like hormone blockers and it’s generally agreed that they are an effective treatment to young kids questioning their gender that only delays whatever puberty they choose until they can give their full informed consent (ideally after many hours of therapy). When people can give that informed consent is still up in the air.
This thread is about kids medically transitioning, by the time they’re undergoing puberty they’re teens or preteens. Not like six year olds who want to do ballet or whatever.
Removed by mod
Wtf? The fact that you are comfortable conflating those two wildly different topics is concerning.
First of all, being put on hormone therapy isn’t a child deciding their own gender. It is pausing puberty until they are old enough to make an informed decision about their own health and identity.
Secondly, what does gender identity have to do with pedophillia? Gender affirming care is all about harm reduction, not sexualizing literal children…
Uh, do you want to rephrase that, because it sounds like you’re mad you can’t fuck kids.
you distorting the comment xd
No, that was me giving them the chance to clarify what they meant if their comment wasn’t them huffing about how preteens/teens can medically transition but not have sex with adults.
Anyway, as someone who is trans and used to be a kid, knowing your gender isn’t really anything like having sex.
You seem so disappointed that statutory rape is a crime.
If kids can give informed consent doesn’t the entire argument for not fucking kids cause they can’t consent go right out the window? I do not believe kids can give informed consent because they don’t have the capacity, context or knowledge to foresee the consequences of their actions
Personally as a nearly 40 year old I would be horrified by 12 year old me making irreversible life changes for current me
12 year old you (unknowingly) made the irreversible life change of going through the default puberty. Plenty of people regret making that choice.
If kids can give informed consent doesn’t the entire argument for not fucking kids cause they can’t consent go right out the window?
What is with people being absolutely unable to reconcile ‘children should have some input over their own healthcare decisions, actually’ with ‘grown adults should not be able to sexually prey on children’?
Knowing your gender is so different to having sex that I’m having trouble believing anyone is bringing it up sincerely.
there is no medication without side effects. ADHD meds can have bad consequences, but we should still allow people to take them based on informed consent. apply the same logic to kids on HRT.
People aren’t put on ADHD medications or on hormone therapy because of any ability of informed consent. They are prescribed because a medical professional has evaluated that the outcome of their overall health with treatment is improved when compared to not being treated. The parents and the patient have a say…to a point. However a medical professional can be empowered by the courts to supercede the consent of the PT or the parent if and when deemed necessary.
Medications have the potential of negative side effects, it’s not guaranteed. Those potential side effects are weighted against the potential negative effect of inaction.
frankly medical processionals should have no say over whether a trans person gets HRT or not.
they should warn you of what might happen if you have health conditions but frankly those interactions aren’t common enough to justify this level of draconian gatekeeping in most societies.
this is why trans people on a DIY regimen often do much better than by asking for “professional” help because most cis doctors are evil, gatekeepers or too ignorant to know what’s good for us.
While I don’t agree that medical providers shouldn’t be involved in important healthcare decisions. Unfortunately, at this point I agree the American healthcare system has largely failed the trans community, among others.
I think medical providers should be doing their jobs and keeping their personal beliefs to themselves. If a patient is wanting to transition they should have access to a provider who can make that transition as easy and safe as possible.
parents often force these on them to make them compliant and as punishment.
That sentence is doing a LOT of heavy lifting. Why do you believe this?
I don’t know about them, they may have personal experience, but there was definitely a period in the 90s and 2000s when doctors were prescribing Ritalin as freely as opioids and it was advertised by some as a treatment for hyperactive kids. Kids won’t sit still in class? Just pop a pill and watch them become model students!
Ok, so… you know that happens when you give a normal child a stimulant? The same thing that happens to adults.
If you give a kid Ritalin and they don’t bounce off the walls, that’s a pretty good indicator they’re ADHD and you made the right choice.
Who cares?! All I wanna know is which bathroom they use!!!
and you better have gametes to prove you can pee there
This is something I know little about and want to be better informed on by anyone willing. Web searches don’t pull up much and I’m hesitant to ask people in my IRL community.
So most kids don’t regret it right? But it seems so iffy to let developing people make decisions like that. I had a three year phase from around 13-16 where I desperately wanted to remove my nose. Completely. (It’s an ugly nose and I was an especially dumb kid). I think I would have done it/had it done if it were easier. And less painful. And maybe I’d still be chill with it if I had but man was I a strange kid. But I’m kind of glad there wasn’t a good way to do it. Is this a false equivalency? And why? What age should they be allowed to begin HRT? What impacts does it have if reversed? Should kids also be allowed stuff like tattoos and alcohol? I don’t like the argument that you can give kids amphetamines or make other life changing decisions for them as I’m pretty against the system that allows it and so I don’t think if that’s the justification I’m on board on that basis necessarily. I’m genuinely asking as I usually don’t engage on this topic because it can get spicy. I’m open to opinions from anyone with one.
So here’s where the whole “but kids shouldn’t make these decisions” arguement kind of falls apart… You are assuming it’s the kids making the decisions.
The reality here is there is a bar that trans kids need to pass to be eligible which requires the signoff of a whole panel of adults based on the observed behaviour, self descriptive process and recorded outcomes of thousands of trans people in the past creating a rubric that professionals draw on. Being trans and the way gender is processed by trans people is actually more different from being cis than a lot of cis people are aware and the presentations of transness are actually pretty consistent. The regret rate is astronomically low - kind of to the point where it is actually unusual because of the level of care taken to predict and assess potential harm.
To get puberty blockers you need first a child who wants them, then all guardians of the child to agree it is worth pursuing. Then you require the endorsement of a psychiatrist with years of consultation and a social worker to make sure the home situation is above board and nobody is being coerced. Then you need a pediatrician to sign off on the standing health of the paitent, and endocrinologist to assess the safety of pursuing blockers…
It’s not a one time thing either, you have to have routine check ins once things start and if any of these adults remove their endorsement of the paitent then it doesn’t matter what the kid wants. It’s not happening.
If anything medical starts going wrong long term health remains priority.
So can we please not pretend it’s dumb children showing up to a tattoo parlor? It’s a panel of professionals working off predictions based off of a nigh century of diagnostic data in conjunction with parents making informed decisions on behalf of their incredibly dedicated child- because these kids need to self advocate like fucking crazy at all points of the process… Which in itself tends to disqualify kids who don’t absolutely need this because it’s a job and a half.
This is designed as ironclad ethical assisted decision-making as can be made and people are being tricked into thinking that somehow this process is not as rigorously checked for flaws or deals with consent of minors differently than any other form of pediatric medicine. Why is that?
Others have given great responses there, but I just wanted to chime in my two cents. The major difference between your example and trans kids is that the latter make decisions in concert with family and medical professionals. Often times, not just a family doctor, but also a psychologist (to discuss feelings of gender incongruence) and endocrinologist (because hormones are extremely powerful, no matter which way you slice it) on top of the regular fare.
These medical professionals are making decisions based on the most up-to-date, widely held medical consensus – which is to let trans kids transition with medical guidance. That doesn’t apply in your hypothetical, because there is no agreed upon medical prognosis on kids going through identity issues (which is a normal part of psychology, whereas gender dysphoria very much is abnormal, divergence from the mean). That also goes for giving ADHD kids medication if that helps them – not all psychs rush to push pills on kids, but if it makes a huge difference and helps a child, who are you as a layman to force them to continue suffering? Being on ADHD medication (or puberty blockers) can be a night and day difference for someone, whether they are kids or not.
Tangent: We in western society infantilize children a lot, I feel. In a lot of eastern/(global) southern culture, kids are a functional part of the household unit, almost little adults. Parents aren’t afraid to give their kids some semblance of responsibility because it helps them grow. From that perspective, it seems almost odd that the west wants to coddle kids so much. Not accusing you of this, just something I’ve noticed.
Not worried about accusations haha. Yeah I’m really guilty of infantilizing children. I also haven’t broken the connection in my brain between gender and sexuality so I’m thinking there’s something in my head saying that kids don’t know their gender until they know what they’re attracted to (which you really don’t know much about before puberty) which is just incorrect probably. Thanks for illuminating that for me, actually.
To be fair, that’s a very hard connection to break because it is just everywhere and still gets repeated as gospel. But it does make a lot of sense when you think about it. There are many more opportunities to identify an internal feeling like one’s gender identity than there are for something external like who they may be attracted to.
I myself knew that being a boy felt wrong as early as 10. I’d had some run-ins with that feeling before then because of the way my father treated me. Things like getting berated for being too emotional, and him getting rid of a baby doll that I carried around and took care of when my Mom was doing things for my baby brother that I couldn’t help with. With the stated reason that he didn’t want me to grow up to be some kind of queer (though the word he used was much worse). But 10 is where I first remember recognizing the feeling of my body being wrong.
Of course I didn’t have the words for it at the time so I didn’t know what I was experiencing was dysphoria. Nor did i know that nonbinary was even a thing you could be. I understood that trans women existed, but no matter how hard I thought about it over the next few years I didn’t feel like a girl either. It took until I was 26 before I finally realized with the benefit of hindsight that I’m nonbinary. So I’d already been forced into a male puberty which hit me like a train. I’m 6’2" (~188cm) and built like a balding fridge in a fursuit. I’m almost 35 now and because of other medical issues I haven’t been able to transition so it is very hard to not feel like it’s too late for me even though I know it’s not. Especially in the current political climate.
The important thing to remember with trans kids is that there isn’t a ‘do nothing’ option if they want HRT. ‘Nothing’ is actually ‘force them to undergo puberty for the wrong gender,’ which is traumatic and has effects as permanent as taking HRT.
Going through puberty with HRT as a trans person isn’t any more inappropriate than going through natal puberty is for cis kids. Natal puberty is having permanent, unpredictable effects on their bodies as well, except we just call that growing up. Trans teens also deserve to grow up like their peers, without spending most of their waking hours managing their dysphoria because some third party who’s never met them is uncomfortable.
The big things to remember with this discourse is that one, the regret rates for going through transition are exceedingly low. Like so low it’s virtually unheard of for almost any other medical intervention. This heavily implies that not only is the current standard of care very good at weeding out people for whom transition is not the correct treatment, but that it might even be too good and there’s a significant cohort of people for whom transition would be the best treatment but they get filtered out because they don’t present as being trans enough. Furthermore when you dig deeper into those regret and detransition rates you find that most of the time the reason for detransition was external. Meaning things like can’t afford the medication, discrimination, getting kicked out of housing, etc.
The second big thing was already mentioned and it’s that there isn’t a neutral option. Imagine telling a 13 year old girl “how do you know you’re not a boy unless you go on testosterone for a few years?” Just because we’re talking about the puberty that they’d naturally go through without intervention doesn’t mean that it’s good.
But realistically the most any kid younger than ~16 is gonna get when they show up to the gender clinic saying they’re trans is therapy, social transition so things like trying out a new name, pronouns, and/or clothes, and at most puberty blockers. Puberty blockers by the way have been proven safe for trans kids since the 90s. Then if they still want to transition they might start HRT after months if not years of this therapy.
No pediatrician is going to be giving 10 year old any sort of hormonal therapy unless things are seriously out of whack (ie something like congenital adrenal hyperplasia) however the usual standard of care for children who are experiencing any sort of gender dysphoria is to put them on puberty blockers which simply delays puberty until they are old enough to choose.
The transgender care that children receive gives them a choice in how their body develops they would not otherwise have.
My controversial opinion is that all children should be encouraged to take puberty blockers in addition to having a say in how their body develops it has additional benefits of: significant reduction in teen pregnancies, reduced sexualization of minors, reduced stress during a time when a lot is already changing, etc.
That’s the thing they though don’t have to just “cut off their nose”, there puberty blockers which hit the pause button and prevent going through the wrong puberty, which they give to kids with precocious puberty without any moral outrage.
That’s actually pretty neat. Thanks.
I’m looking for discourse more than a webpage.
I’m happy to discuss, but I’m curious why you are more interested in discussion than a literature review that summarizes the empirical evidence that answers your questions- is it just not as accessible? You might try reading the Gender Dysphoria Bible, it’s more accessible to lay audiences.
Also, whether kids should be allowed to make those decisions tends to only come up when those decisions are for trans children, nobody is wringing their hands about whether cis children are allowed the exact same consequential gender affirming care, such as puberty blockers for precocious puberty or nose jobs or boob jobs for minors. Trans children don’t even typically have access to the gender affirming surgeries cis children do, so the only relevant debate is whether puberty blockers are acceptable- which isn’t a debate we have for cis children mind you, for some reason we’re only worried when the kid has gender dysphoria (a condition we know is genetic and which has effective treatment through gender affirming care, the science isn’t controversial).
And to answer your question, the evidence we have points to regret rates being low (like, exceptionally low, lower than most medical treatments).
That’s a great answer. Thank you. To answer your question: I find that I can locate a lot of neat and informative stuff online but I’m being a little selfish here. I learn better when asking questions and having people answer in their own words. I know a lot but it helps cement things I’ve already read or heard. Also a lot of what I’m thinking about contains subjective matter. It helps with objective fact to read articles but even armed with a bunch of facts (some conflicting and some from bad sources) I feel my understanding really shines when I’m communicating with real people. I’m also using it as a temperature check for if I can ask these questions normally and how people take it. I don’t mind downvotes or negative reactions online but I mind if I piss off a group of people I know. I really am just kind of an old dunce stumbling around a world I was never familiar with in the past. I’m way better at not deadnaming or misgendering but this kind of discourse really tells me a lot even if it’s all negative.
Oh and last of all I’m happy to read any new material dropped here. I’m really bad at finding good scientific articles. And distinguishing AI. And not getting scammed. I find people here are trustworthy and don’t really lead you wrong all that often.
I get all of that, I’m not here to judge, I was just kinda authentically curious.
Let me know if you have any questions, I have plenty of personal experience as well as facts I’m willing to talk about, this is obviously an important topic to me.
Discourse or an argument, the information you are looking for is accessible in a concrete way based on meta analysis of dozens of studies with an easy to read intro. It’s much easier to put your trust there.
It’s a very complicated topic where for some kids it’s the right choice, other kids are feeling this way due to social contagion, and it’s turned into a weird culture war. Reductive posts like this (edit: OP’s post) don’t help.
Is it though? Is there a single decent source to back up the idea that there’s a social contagion of trans kids?
To be honest idk about that, kids are pretty fucking stupid in general. Not sure if they should be allowed to do whatever they want before legal age
Trans kids don’t have access to surgeries, so we are talking about taking puberty blockers - which are low risk and reversible, and have been used for nearly half a century.
Even if you still think they can’t choose, are you saying kids shouldn’t be allowed to consent to other consequential medical decisions? What about the same exact treatment, but for cis kids? Nobody seems upset that cis kids are taking the same puberty blockers for precocious puberty let alone that cis girls can have breast reduction or augmentation surgeries (treatment trans kids don’t have equal access to).
So what’s the difference, why is it only suddenly a problem when the gender affirming treatment is trans?
Adults are pretty fucking stupid too
yea, there are adults that wanna change kids genre and compare it to take ballet classes. lmao
Its not the adults that want children to transition, its the children that want to transition
Gender dysphoria exists and is terrible
Huh?
Just another uninformed idiot that thinks kids are getting bottom surgery.
But gender dysphoria is feeling something is wrong, that has nothing to do with intelligence
that’s actually a good point, what is relevant for a clinican to evaluate a child’s self awareness about their gender? Is being younger than 18 actually empirically relevant to that awareness?
Regardless, let’s say we don’t trust a kid’s self knowledge, how does a cis child know they are cis? Should cis children be forced to take puberty blockers because they don’t really know their gender until they are 18? What is the relevant difference for a trans child?
If you are arguing against trans kids being allowed to go on puberty blockers, the impacts of going through the wrong puberty can be traumatic and have lasting effects on trans kids. Puberty blockers are safe, and it’s not like you can just decide to take them anyways; there are processes that you need to go through with the medical system to make sure it’s actually a decision you want to make, even with any potential side effects.
I wouldn’t trust myself on that either when I was a kid tbh. Like right now I may be dosing estrogen left and right but then? I don’t know really. I don’t remember it that well though. It’s a blur
The thing is…hormone replacement therapy isn’t really a drastic intervention. If the outcomes are not aligning with the treatment plan you simply stop taking the medication.
There are virtually no long lasting repercussions for temporarily delaying puberty. Really the only notable side effects are that you may be a bit taller than you were going to be.
Wait we could have delayed puberty with negative side effects but with actual benefits? Those poor 5th graders with beards would have really appreciated this info. Poor guys really struggled.
Precocious puberty is one of the many reasons kids are put on hormone therapy, its quite common nowadays.
Didn’t eve know that had a name. Learning quite a bit
Yeap, it’s being diagnosed more every year, especially in young women. I think there are theories about hormone influencing chemicals in the environment, but it may just be a case of better diagnosis in the medical community.
My main point is just that hormone therapy in pediatrics is super common, and the vast majority of it has nothing to do with gender affirming care. Yet we don’t really see any parents or politicians harping concerns about these prescriptions even though they have the same mechanism of action and risk.
Sure, but you’re not trans.
-# unless you are trans
I don’t know honestly tbh honest, genuinely I have no idea what I am
fair, same.
Still, enjoying not having ugly masculine fucking face so I am gonna keep it that way for sure
brr imagine looking like some fucking uncle or other used car salesman, how these people can look in the mirror at their balding heads, skin looking like surface of some chemistry experiment gone wrong or ancient Egyptian parchment.
Kill me when I am still relatively young - even better
But all in all I think I would slightly prefer to be some queen Elizabeth the second 99 year old, slightly. Both is just crap in different ways.
Imagine how tits must look like at that age, jesus christ. My morning scrambled eggs are probably more firm and I barely heat them up.
At some point you prolly tripping over them when getting out of bed and you need to roll them up and tie into a bundle.
Adults aren’t any smarter, bud. If you stand on a kids neck and they ask you to move that’s a legitimate request. It’s no different when the kid doesn’t feel “right” in their skin.
‘no different’
