Can Kids Consent to Hormone Blockers?

That’s the conclusion I’ve had to slowly accept. I thought maybe the kid would chill us both out.

The one thing having a child has not made me is more chilled out.

I think parenthood is like the old duck analogy - looks calm and normal on the surface, but underneath you’re paddling like the clappers.

This is why Ten Lubak is a Wordforge treasure.

Let me see if I can boil this all the way down. Can we imagine a society in which being trans, and transitioning, were as completely ordinary as being left handed? Because a few hundred years ago, or less, that also was widely understood to be evil.

In such a world, kids would get the support they needed in childhood, in legit cases puberty suppression, then HRT, then GRS sometime in the early 20's being just as ordinary as providing insulin to Type 1 Diabetics. In this world a trans person is only a mild and unimportant qualifier to the term woman, not unlike saying an Asian woman or a disabled woman or whatever. That which you do for/against women genderally, you do no more or less so for trans women as cis women.

Now, imagine how many current controversies and political posturing bullshit would still be able to exist in that world.

Point being, it's the resistance to normalizing trans-ness that creates the environment for all this conflict to germinate. And it's the only way out of the conundrum you describe.
I mean, apart from just declaring trans people non-persons and...confining all of us, or killing us, or whatever, but that seems an unwieldy solution.

Basically all of major UK media has bought into the TERF argument. Guardian US does some excellent work, Guardian UK has been running straight trash. BBC is a mixed bag but they give un-credible claims credibility alongside facts. (Bothsidesism is a plague everywhere)

And to be fair, I'm at a loss to tell you how to handle this. Part of the reason that the UK is going to shit for trans people - our haters have, at this point, basically co-opted the "respectable" media and that both has a huge influence on impressionable listeners/readers, but it robs you all of a domestic source you can trust.

Trans
Exclusionary
Radical
Feminists
A description that distill what they said of themselves, until it took on a negative connotation and then suddenly it was a grievous insult.

I do not and we do not label every critical comment hate speech - in this very thread I've engaged openly with skeptical views, AND called out hateful bullshit. This is my pattern everywhere. It may be that you're missing the nuance. May I suggest that if you are not even familiar with the term, you can't possibly be familiar with the vitriol of those to whom it is applied.

In the mean time, maybe stop both-sidsing it and have some empathy for folks out here defending their very right to EXIST in society instead of those who are trying to take it?

A luxury you can afford.
Congrats.
Maybe see yourself out now?

Radical Feminists - RadFems - are and have been a thing since at least the 70's, a somewhat more edgy and assertive wave of feminism than, say, the Gloria Stinem crowd. Within that population, a certain segment took the position that trans women would always be men, they were always invaders in women's spaces, and in effect colonizing and bringing patriarchy into their movement. They were and are a fringe, but over the last... 15 years or so? ... have become an increasingly unhinged fringe as trans people have become more visible. Trans-exclusionary is a description of that subset, defining them by their most defining ideology. Not a slur, a description. One they initially embraced.

That is not always the ask. In some places politicians seek to provide specific legal cover, and encouragement (if not an outright mandate) to reject them.

It's darker out here than you seem to realize.

Right?

I mean every right wing male dude in the western world LOATHES RadFems...until they have a common revulsion for trans folks and then "Hey, y'all need to respect THESE RadFems!"

But again the problem here is it postulates a supposed danger that has presented itself so rarely, if at all, as to be an outlier not a matter of public concern. My reply was that if you give shelters wide latitude to turn away trans folks based on this potential (theoretical) threat it WILL be and HAS been a blank check to put all the known trans women who appear in danger, because it's allowed.

The theoretical danger of the presumptive outlier shouldn't trump the real and known danger to the multiple trans women turned away. And that's the outcome of legal intervention. There's simply far too much anti-trans bigotry for it not to be abused.

I accept that it is a difficult situation to manage, and case-by-case there might at times need to be an extraordinary and difficult approach, but I do not accept that the trans population by definition has to accept the status of being less important than the cis population, even in the hard cases.

Anecdotal evidence is the shit, right?

I have a friend who's "son" insisted they were a girl for a year and the parents basically said "no child of mine..." until said child tried to throw herself from a moving car because being dead seemed the preferable option. They began to listen, they learned, they set aside the assumption that "this can't possibly be a thing" - and she's now a healthy happy well adjusted girl of 11 or 12 and has yet to go "oh fuck, I was 3, what was I thinking?!!?"

Pro tip: Just because YOU can't process it and YOU have never experienced it and YOU have never had to lay awake at night worrying if you were going to end up burying your child because they live in a world full of people who don't understand it...

Does not, in point of fact, confirm the correctness of your claim - it only shows that you are happy to dismiss that which you know nothing about because doing so doesn't hurt YOU and those you care about.

Thing is, the only way human society can function, is if we somehow learn to have empathy for people dealing with serious shit that we ourselves were blessed not to have dumped into our own lives. Maybe try that?

So high a percentage as to be, statistically, basically all of them. There's not a lot of info but there's some info from the following link below:

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc...4xz8h0izlon0OMTuarF6x1KERXLG4OzgSa7JCiK11QbW4


While the information regarding how many trans people detransition is sparse . . . The information that does exist appears to corroborate Asquith’s claim. In a 2015 survey of nearly 28,000 people conducted by the U.S.-based National Center for Transgender Equality, only 8 percent of respondents reported detransitioning, and 62 percent of those people said they only detransitioned temporarily. The most common reason for detransitioning, according to the survey, was pressure from a parent, while only 0.4 percent of respondents said they detransitioned after realizing transitioning wasn’t right for them.


The results of a 50-year survey published in 2010 of a cohort of 767 transgender people in Sweden found that about 2 percent of participants expressed regret after undergoing gender-affirming surgery.
The numbers are even lower for nonsurgical transition methods, like taking puberty blockers. According to a 2018 study of a cohort of transgender young adults at the largest gender-identity clinic in the Netherlands, 1.9 percent of adolescents who started puberty suppressants did not go on to pursue hormone therapy, typically the next step in the transition process.


Stories about detransitioning often include misinformation not only about the prevalence of transition regret, but also about transitioning itself, according to transgender health experts and LGBTQ advocates. They say misconceptions about the gender transition process — including at what age different procedures are even considered — are widespread.
"We have people that are using media to educate themselves, and media is picking and mixing what they want to highlight and what they want to conflate or exaggerate," Asquith said. "It's incredibly unhelpful."
Dr. Stephen Rosenthal, medical director for the University of California, San Francisco, Child and Adolescent Gender Center, said before the onset of puberty, there’s “no role” for medical intervention in a person who might be transgender, something that is not always made clear in media coverage.
For a child who has not yet reached puberty, trans health experts recommend seeking mental health support, because even prior to disclosing a gender identity that is different than the one they were assigned at birth, trans youth can experience symptoms including depression, social isolation and suicidal ideation. While medical guidelines advise that prepubescent children do not undergo hormone interventions, they state that allowing trans youth to “socially transition,” which can include taking on a new name and wearing a different style of clothing, can greatly benefit a child.
“It’s letting your child be themselves and loving them for who they are,” transgender advocate Gillian Branstetter said of the guidelines regarding children who haven't reached puberty.
Once the child starts to experience puberty, health experts — including those at the U.K.’s National Health Service and the American Academy of Pediatrics — recommend a puberty blocker, as experiencing puberty when suffering from gender dysphoria can be traumatic for trans youth. With age, gender-expansive youth can explore other options such as gender-affirming hormones and surgery.
The World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care recommends deferring genital surgery until a person is at least 18 years old. But even then, only 25 percent of trans and gender-noncomforming adults in the U.S. reported undergoing some form of transition-related surgery, according to a 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey.
There have also been misconceptions surrounding the safety and lasting impact of nonsurgical transitioning steps, like puberty blockers. In September, a false news story linking the use of puberty blockers to “thousands of deaths” went viral, thanks in no small part to the signal boosting of right-wing media outlets like The Daily Wire.
Dr. Jack Turban, a resident physician in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital who researches the mental health of trans youth, told NBC News that puberty blockers are actually a pretty low-risk way to provide care for gender dysphoric youth.
“Puberty blockers put puberty on hold so that adolescents have more time to decide what they want to do next. This is important because, while pubertal blockade is reversible, puberty itself is not,” he said. “It’s much more common to regret not getting puberty blockers than it is to regret getting puberty blockers.”
“With any intervention there are risks and benefits,” Turban said. “Are there risks to getting gender affirming care? Maybe. But are there risks for not getting gender affirming care? Definitely. And the risks of the latter usually outweigh the former.”

Actually, yes, we absolutely can you fucking simpleton.

During pre-natal development, there are certain known and relatively well understood processes which happen as certain hormones interact, or don't, with the developing fetus. These are natural, normal, functions of human biology, even when they take an atypical turn for one of various reasons. In over 90% of cases, things go swell and you get you basic model female or male, sometimes there's a twist and you get an outcome not QUITE either of those but some variant on one of them. But in every case, the outcome is a result of processes "designed" by evolution to result in a sexual identity and phenotype.

At ***NO*** point in that natural process is there a moment where a slight twist might produce the potential to identify as a cat, or a dead dictator, or a chair, or an alien, or a fire truck, or a terminator. There is no biological process which, if it goes as is typical would result in such an outcome so there's no mechanism for a variation of the process to do so.

Your analogies - ALL OF THEM - are lame and stupid and you beclown yourself by offering them as an attempt at a serious comment.

Want an actual good analogy? Being left handed. Work with that one.

that's not what she's saying. She's saying that professional medical providers look for long term, consistent, insistent, persistent assertionn of gender identity over the course of years (years which fall within that range) - this provides the background for the discussion of blockers when puberty does commence. You're not talking about blockers at 4, you're talking about identity at 4, 5, 7, 9...so that when 12 gets here and shit starts happening then suppression is well indicated by that point.

Reminds me of something someone said to me once. Don't remember who, but someone told me I didn't know much about parenting because I had two "easy" children.

I took that as a serious compliment, because anyone who knew my daughter when she was little would never, ever have accused her of being "easy". (She says herself, today, that she was a real pest when she was little.) That someone who only knew her in her teen years thought she had been an "easy child" all her life says a lot about how successful we had all been (her mother and I, but she contributed a lot herself) in making her into someone really worth knowing. Today, she's a great, dependable, and very capable adult, appreciated not only by her husband but also by just about everyone who knows her.

Thanks @Nova, I’m really grateful for your input. I know it’s probably exhausting explaining.

From this thread I hope you understand how much if a minefield it is to navigate too - in maybe a dozen posts I’ve posted in the relative safety here, it’s been a case of wanting to understand but not be offensive > doing a cursory search > asking questions > being told I’m falling for propaganda > being told to educate myself > trying to find information from standard places > being told yeah but not information from there > trying to to discuss further because I’m not sure from where information is “safe” to rely on > being told again to educate myself > to trying to find sources and failing > asking questions > and probably being automatically slotted as a TERF from the outset (which I hadn’t even heard of until I read this thread ) because I haven’t been able to follow the path instantly that draws one to the “correct” conclusion. I’m lucky I know of and like people here — I’ve been treated with relative kid gloves and your patience — because in any other arena those barriers would’ve been game over. I’d have noped out long ago.

I can understand the argument that puberty blockers solve the issue of developing into the other gender and subsequently could prevent the problems of single sex areas in the future. I think if a child of mine was so obviously distressed at being assigned a gender they didn’t feel they should be, I would rather they puberty blockers than going through trauma of puberty and them potentially harming themselves with things like binding or worse. But I can’t deny it would be a big worry - how unbiased is medical and psychological help? How can you not reinforce gender stereotypes in all this? How would you know it’s not child avoidance of societal sexualisation? How does it impact sexuality (ie what if a desire in childhood of gender change is in response to them not processing they may just be gay?)

Sorry if these points are old worn ground, I’d not really thought about it until this week.

Jenee's comments aside, and no, I had no problem with those comments, this isn't necessarily true. It's also as Nova clearly pointed out to make transition easier for the person transitioning. Some politicians may push the first agenda, but doctors prescribe it for the second, and that is part of the recommendations in the literature.

There's some questions in the medical community on if there are any long term issues and studies on that are and should be ongoing so people can make an informed choice. And yes, right wing politicians will always seize on any percieved doubt as absolute reason to ban them, like in AR, and that's reprehensible.

But the current thought is that the advantages for the people transitioning far outweigh any costs based on the science that's been done to this point, and hopefully that question is eventually settled and that turns out to be true.

Right, but we are talking about this specific proposal now, and I consistently don't get a response on that, because it's immediately conflated with Cletus Bupkins from the Lower South take on the issue, and presumed to be in bad faith. See: Tererun.

In fact, if my proposed guideline was put into place in the US, it would be far more progressive than a huge number of states, some of whom don't allow transgender people at all in shelters, and others who have no legal guidelines and leaves it up to each shelter on a case by case basis, no?

Basically I believe the standard should be acceptance, but if there's a question of legitimacy, then the shelters should have the right to confirm that the person seeking access to the safe space is in fact under medical guidance.

I don't see any other way of prioritizing one victim over another. Because I do believe that both women sexual assault survivors should have shelters that give them a protected space, and that transwomen will need those shelters too. The argument that no man has used this loophole yet seems specious to me - we don't need to wait until someone is hurt.

And I wouldn't want to delegitmize trans status by requiring separate shelters.

Of course the religious right is going to oppose any sane and reasonable accommodation. But they will do the same thing on any question and any point, including bastardizing the medical research as we saw in the recent bills in AR, and it's insane to allow them to set the terms of the discussion.

Nope. Sorry. Biology isn't real. My identity is what I say it is. Anyone who shows me even the most tepid, halfhearted skepticism , or god forbid has a laugh at my expense, is a bigot/phobe/nazi who should lose their job and never find work again. I am declaring myself a protected class and claiming the entire world as my personal echo chamber.

Special Ed?

Are you going TERFy?

I never knew there was a radical feminist bubbling under that misanthropic exterior

I feel entirely comfortable saying that my son has no concept of gender at his current age of two and the likelihood of lots of other two years olds feeling the same way is rather high

This is not a controversial opinion yet you are visibly upset by it

I’m starting to think that you’re a bit of an extremist. First the Economist thing and now this

Boy, UA beats on strawmen so hard, Ray Bolger's ghost feels phantom pains.

Do you have issues with concepts?

A child of 2 can and does have preferences - very probably not gender related, but preferences just the same. If you've been paying attention, you should know what food your 2 year old likes and dislikes.

s/he may even have a preference for a certain type of clothes - t-shirts as opposed to button downs. or stretchy pants vs pants with a zipper and snap/button.

Have you noticed any preferences by you 2 year old?

Interestingly, the already-very-unlikely possibility of kids incorrectly identifying as trans -- that is, thinking they are and later realizing they were wrong -- is probably made MORE likely by the gender essentialism that the cultural right loves so much. Without the essentialist bullshit, a girl who's into "guy things" might be more likely to just say "yeah, I'm a girl who likes these things and that's fine."

I am invoking my unilateral veto power over the whole of human discourse. I hereby forbid you to criticize my logical fallacies and emotional appeals.

Exactly - glad we're on the same page, oldfella with tits

Wow. You have really gone downhill. Have you been diagnosed with senility? Or are you just trying to keep up with garamet?

A child has preferences. If a child has gender dysphoria, it will begin showing up around 2 with their preferences in clothes and toys and other things. They may or may not say something like "I'm a girl" or "I'm a boy".