"I think you may be suggesting that Gender Dysphoria is the gold standard for trans status, and I think we should question that"
Yeah, maybe I wasn't perfectly clear here. I do think gender dysphoria (GD) is the gold standard, but a) I think a lot of people calling themselves trans today don't actually have GD, b) GD status can change, an…
"I think you may be suggesting that Gender Dysphoria is the gold standard for trans status, and I think we should question that"
Yeah, maybe I wasn't perfectly clear here. I do think gender dysphoria (GD) is the gold standard, but a) I think a lot of people calling themselves trans today don't actually have GD, b) GD status can change, and c) I'm talking about an official, not self diagnosis.
I'm not arguing that somebody with GD should automatically be given hormones and surgery. Especially when they're children. I think surgery and hormone treatments should be a last resort when all other efforts to help the person deal with their distress have failed.
Again, the significant and irreversible nature of gender affirming surgery means that some percentage of people will always have regrets. The aim is simply to make that number as small as reasonably possible.
Yes, most dysphoric children will outgrow their feelings and become (usually homosexual) children. I hate the fact that this has become one of the many taboos in trans discourse. That's why I think it's important to normalise gender "non-conformity".
I think, for a lot of these kids, if they were able to explore their relationship to their gender without learning to think they were in the "wrong body," they'd experience much less distress and would be much more comfortable waiting for adulthood to see if they were in that 80%.
ROGD should absolutely be assumed to be temporary (again, in most cases this would fail a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria), and medical interventions should at least wait until the child is an adult. Given that most cases of ROGD manifest well into puberty, I don't think this would be a big issue in most cases with proper care and counselling.
I think adults really underestimate how impressionable children are, and how much of their sense of identity they absorb from their parents and friends. We really need to give them the chance to develop into adults before making these life-changing choices. That the ~80% desistance rate isn't enough to convince people of this shows how lost we are.
But, since gender affirmative treatment has become required in much of the US, and counseling professionals can lose their licenses if they are perceived to have questioned whether a given client is actually trans or might have other conditions, and puberty blockers are fairly widely used, today it's close to illegal and certainly infeasible to reproduce any assessment of how often GD would desist on its own. So those advocating for this cause may be hoping that the pre-WPATH data on resolved GD will age out and be forgotten.
Some of the selling points of puberty blockers are: (1) it just delays puberty, but kids can always change their mind later, and (2) they do no irreversible harm in the meanwhile. However, nearly 100% of those taking puberty blockers continue on that path (while we have reason to believe that only perhaps 20% would absent chemical intervention). Apparently going through normal puberty (including developing sexual attractions) is part of what helps resolve the GD for many of the homosexual kids. Sigh.
"and counseling professionals can lose their licenses if they are perceived to have questioned whether a given client is actually trans or might have other conditions,"
Yep, this is the first layer of insanity that needs to be rolled back. I think the de-trans community are gong to be invaluable here, because they're the ones pushing for it the hardest and are the living proof that blindly affirming children isn't the answer.
Not only do (I think it actually *is*) 100% of children on puberty blockers go on to transition, but the claim that they're reversible or do no harm is a lie. Not only that, but as I think I mentioned earlier, putting prepubescent children on puberty blockers can actually make their gender reassignment *more* difficult.
"I think you may be suggesting that Gender Dysphoria is the gold standard for trans status, and I think we should question that"
Yeah, maybe I wasn't perfectly clear here. I do think gender dysphoria (GD) is the gold standard, but a) I think a lot of people calling themselves trans today don't actually have GD, b) GD status can change, and c) I'm talking about an official, not self diagnosis.
I'm not arguing that somebody with GD should automatically be given hormones and surgery. Especially when they're children. I think surgery and hormone treatments should be a last resort when all other efforts to help the person deal with their distress have failed.
Again, the significant and irreversible nature of gender affirming surgery means that some percentage of people will always have regrets. The aim is simply to make that number as small as reasonably possible.
Yes, most dysphoric children will outgrow their feelings and become (usually homosexual) children. I hate the fact that this has become one of the many taboos in trans discourse. That's why I think it's important to normalise gender "non-conformity".
I think, for a lot of these kids, if they were able to explore their relationship to their gender without learning to think they were in the "wrong body," they'd experience much less distress and would be much more comfortable waiting for adulthood to see if they were in that 80%.
ROGD should absolutely be assumed to be temporary (again, in most cases this would fail a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria), and medical interventions should at least wait until the child is an adult. Given that most cases of ROGD manifest well into puberty, I don't think this would be a big issue in most cases with proper care and counselling.
I think adults really underestimate how impressionable children are, and how much of their sense of identity they absorb from their parents and friends. We really need to give them the chance to develop into adults before making these life-changing choices. That the ~80% desistance rate isn't enough to convince people of this shows how lost we are.
Yep.
But, since gender affirmative treatment has become required in much of the US, and counseling professionals can lose their licenses if they are perceived to have questioned whether a given client is actually trans or might have other conditions, and puberty blockers are fairly widely used, today it's close to illegal and certainly infeasible to reproduce any assessment of how often GD would desist on its own. So those advocating for this cause may be hoping that the pre-WPATH data on resolved GD will age out and be forgotten.
Some of the selling points of puberty blockers are: (1) it just delays puberty, but kids can always change their mind later, and (2) they do no irreversible harm in the meanwhile. However, nearly 100% of those taking puberty blockers continue on that path (while we have reason to believe that only perhaps 20% would absent chemical intervention). Apparently going through normal puberty (including developing sexual attractions) is part of what helps resolve the GD for many of the homosexual kids. Sigh.
"and counseling professionals can lose their licenses if they are perceived to have questioned whether a given client is actually trans or might have other conditions,"
Yep, this is the first layer of insanity that needs to be rolled back. I think the de-trans community are gong to be invaluable here, because they're the ones pushing for it the hardest and are the living proof that blindly affirming children isn't the answer.
Not only do (I think it actually *is*) 100% of children on puberty blockers go on to transition, but the claim that they're reversible or do no harm is a lie. Not only that, but as I think I mentioned earlier, putting prepubescent children on puberty blockers can actually make their gender reassignment *more* difficult.