Can Kids Consent to Hormone Blockers?

Those people didn't do the research, if you're trying to invalidate it by association. They included a copy on their website.

Because this is a discussion board, and it's being discussed. Nobody needs your permission to form their own opinions.

No shit.

Did you read the methods and assumptions I did? Let me line your ignorant ass up with the clue by four. A quote from your study saying how they came to that conclusion.

They assumed they no longer had any problems. This is the scientific evidence you cite? A fucking assumption? Did you even bother to read it, or was it more than a tweet so you gave the fuck up?

Good fucking god, my respect for you has completely cratered. You cannot even read the study you cite and undestand it. It is the fucking second page for christ's sake.

This is why I am smarter than you, and why you have no business making medical decisions for anyone.

I'm making fairly moderate and nuanced criticisms of how this issue is approached, particularly with regard to children, while repeatedly expressing full support for trans rights . And you can't handle it at all, acting as if I'm rolling out the swastika.

Yes and unlike you I read all of it, including the fact that they followed up and questioned those initially assumed to be non-persisters to confirm their status. As it says immediately after the part you misleadingly quoted.

It's what he does best

No you're not. You're repeating bad faith arguments from extremely biased sources.

Have you changed your mind about climate change yet? I'm sure you can find some shitty oil company blogs insisting that science isn't settled either.

I've done nothing of the sort here. Feel free to present some evidence to the contrary, that GD persists in most or all children who present with it.

This is why I said if the child consistently maintains X from the time they start having preferences all the way through prepubescence, *then* and only then should the parents and pediatrician discuss any possible options.

Reading comprehension is not your thing I guess, because that is not at all what it said following that quote. It backs up that an assumption was made regarding those who did not respond.

Mods, please change rick's name to tucker carlson.

Seriously, don't bring shit up you do not understand. Also, please do read up on the actual studies of trans youth and how they react to gender confirmation. One half baked assumtion in some study where we really cnnot even get the actual diagnosis of GID confirmed is not something we can base any medicine on, especially when it supposedly contradicts (I don't even see it particularly trying in this instance) many decades and generations of research into this.

There's a straight line path, with no speed bumps, from American "intellectual" journalists and others "just asking questions" and the bill that just passed in Arkansas and, short of court intervention, will be law in 20 or more states within 3 years.

I stand by my remarks, it's not specifically about the extent or nature of the biological origins - it's about people outside the marginalized group feeling entitled to hold a veto over that group's lives. Whatever the origins, it's not for disinterested, lightly informed, casual third parties to blunder through the world "just asking questions" - there's people who actually know what the fuck they are doing capable of asking questions and answering them scientifically.

Did you...

did you literally just say "virtue signalling" in a comment you expected to be taken seriously?

God damn man did you give your password to Diner?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1379493696710795264.html




Now, like so many memes, the comment might appear, on its face, to be innocuous. After all, who wouldn't want the freedom to question right? We should all be so logical, reasonable, and willing to debate.

But that's not what this meme is about. And they know it.
This meme is about the use of "I'm just asking questions" rhetoric to hide and to pretend that one is not spreading hateful and bigoted ideas under the guise of "confusion."
Now, thing is, the social media thread I had actually intended to write before now was specifically about the ways in which Conservative (US) media and pundits have actively fomented a definition of hate that allows this kind of subterfuge to happen.
In short, that Conservatives tend to define "hate" via direct emotional intent/action. And then use this definition to deny their role in perpetuating harm against marginalized identities.
Which is to say, that their idea of "racism" is specifically KKK/cross-burning racism. Their idea of "sexism" is 60's "barred from the workforce" sexism. "Homophobia" is imprisoning and executing gays.
Their idea of "hate" is purely the hate that overtly names itself. In a way, their idea of "hate" can almost be reduced to "rage with slurs." It's cartoonish. And as such, when it doesn't name itself in that way, the plausible deniability of "just asking questions" sets in.


Basically, my point is, by defining hate solely as "angry, emotional, violence," Conservatives have managed to convince many of their viewers/voters that it is simply not possible for them to "hate" or ever be implicated in racism, sexism, transphobia, or bigotry.
Because as long as they aren't "intending" anything, they can paint all calls to action on systemic inequality as something that is specifically against them.

*They* are being wrongly accused. They are the persecuted party oppressed under the yoke of inequity.

(more at the link)

And strikingly, the hundreds if not thousands of trained experienced medical and scientific professionals who actually work and research in the field ...it never occurred to any of these people to be aware of these issues and study the effects and, like all medical intervention, balance the risks and benefits to effectively treat their patients and "do no harm" while improving quality of life to the extent possible and practical.

Thank god we have skeptical internet questioners to bring up these crucial concerns no one ever thought of until the white knight arrived on their mighty steed.

I'd tell you again to fuck off but your arrogance seems to have rendered you incapable.

There are scientists, doctors, psychologists, and caring involved parents - to say nothing of the actual patients - who have ALREADY THOUGHT OF ALL YOUR BULLSHIT OBSERVATIONS. They actually know what they are doing.

If I started a thread opining on what dentistry was getting wrong, or who NASA was fiddle fucking around when an obvious method of FTL travel was right there waiting for them to do the math, or that it was completely irresponsible that doctors were not preventing cancer by recommending regular daily consumption of mangoes...a dentist, or a physicist, or an oncologist (respectively) would be well within my rights to come in here and tell me to fuck right off. I'm NOT going to offer them some brilliant insight they never thought of.

And neither are you. You, unless you are trans or love someone who is, don't even need to know the particulars of hows and whys - you need to respect that other people have their shit together and don't need your god damned advice.

Yes, bluntly, stay in your lane.

That and also the default assumption that being trans is a bad outcome, to be avoided at all costs.

It is, but only to the extent that it gets you all kind of "well meaning" AND bigoted bullshit from people who don't know how to mind their own fucking business. But if being trans were, culturally, no different than being left handed, then it would be the functional equivalent of any other "birth defect" - identify it, treat it, live a better life.

100% bullshit.

Not at all. He seems to have fallen into a vat of Pharisee bigotry and had a Joker transformation.

The rate of de-transition and/or regret, in all the various demos, is not undocumented and the rates run LESS than the regret rate for all sorts of other common medical treatments (cosmetic and otherwise)

The claim about the majority results from a busted study done by Dr. Kenneth Zucker using the GID definition in the DSM IV which, unwisely, includes "gender non-conforming behavior" and not just trans-identity profession - which is to say 80% of the kids in his study never claimed to be trans, and then he reported out that by the teen years 80% didn't claim to be trans. Remarkable, eh?

But this guy, even as sloppy as he was, EVEN HE said that if a trans-professing child reached puberty without first desisting they almost certainly never would.

But the Pharisees don't like to publish THAT citation.

Here's an extensive discussion of what's wrong with the various desistance lies the right uses:

https://juliaserano.medium.com/detr...OtYhv8V-WXKVpBuObuCwChzZniDURsTQ6ZEOHJQSUlA8A

"But lately, as transgender people have become more visible and have garnered increasing media scrutiny, trans-unaware politicians, pundits, and journalists have suddenly swooped in to weigh in on these important issues — issues that (conveniently) they themselves are not personally invested in. Some of these people have very clear anti-trans agendas. Others are (perhaps well-meaning) interlopers who believe that by simply reading a few research papers and interviewing a few people here and there, they can acquire an “objective understanding” about this complex subject that spans a half-century of history. And sadly, they often center their op-eds and think-pieces on an especially vulnerable segment of our community: transgender children.

You’ve probably seen some of these articles. They raise concerns about “80% desistance,” and offer examples of trans people who have since “detransitioned,” and they will leave you with the impression that trans health practitioners are engaging in some kind of reckless sociological experiment. Whenever transgender people object to these misrepresentations or the old gatekeeper ideologies, these pundits and journalists will decry “transgender activists are attacking science!” without ever acknowledging the countless trans advocates, researchers, and health providers who actually agree with us on many of these matters.

Rather than write a short pithy critique or rebuttal of the latest “children are at risk!” or “activists are out of hand!” article-du-jour, I decided to write this lengthy nuanced piece. It is intended to be a step-by-step guide for anyone interested, one that fills in all the holes, reads between the lines, and unpacks the many assumptions that riddle the typical op-ed or think-piece about transgender children."
This is a specific discussion of the "80% desistance" myth
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-end-of-the-desistance_b_8903690

Before I even clicked i knew it.
The Steensma study. Had to be either that, or Zucker, or someone else citing them.

the most cited study (Steensma) which alleges a 84 percent desistance rate, did not actually differentiate between children with consistent, persistent and insistent gender dysphoria, kids who socially transitioned, and kids who just acted more masculine or feminine than their birth sex and culture allowed for. In other words, it treated gender non-conformance the same as gender dysphoria. Worse, the study could not locate 45.3 percent of the children for follow up, and made the assumption that all of them were desisters. Indeed, other studies used to support this also suffered from similar methodological flaws.


As a result, the 84 percent desistance figure is meaningless, since both the numerator and denominator are unknown, because you have no idea how many of the kids ended up transitioning (numerator), and no idea how many of them were actually gender dysphoric to begin with (denominator). When Dr. Steensma went back in 2013 and looked at the intensity of dysphoria these children felt as a factor in persistence, it turned out that it was actually a very good predictor of which children would transition.


In other words, the children who actually met the clinical guidelines for gender dysphoria as children generally ended up as transgender adults. Further research has shown that children who meet the clinical guidelines for gender dysphoria are as consistent in their gender identity as the general population.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-end-of-the-desistance_b_8903690

The problem with the two most cited studies is this:

1. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV Gender Identity Disorder (GID) diagnosis is critically flawed and has harmed people.
2. A DSM-5 Gender Dysphoria (GD) diagnosis is very different from the DSM-IV concept of GID.
3. Pretending that DSM-IV GID research directly applies to those with a DSM-5 GD diagnosis is irrational and harmful
   

To understand the problems with the DSM-IV GID, and perhaps better understand why the trans community has fought against it so hard for so long, we need to begin with the DSM-III’s conceptualization of GID:


The DSM-III’s understanding of GID meant that one had to express dysphoria regarding their phenotype. Merely being gender nonconforming (GNC) alone was not enough to diagnose a kid with GID. Some sexologists were frustrated with this situation as they wanted a way to put GNC kids into “treatments” designed to make them behave more stereotypical in their gender expression.



Anti-LGBT activist George “Rent Boy” Rekers1, who was caught by the NY Times after having spent two weeks with a male sex worker from RentBoy.com, teamed up with Dr. Green to produce a study titled, Behavioral Treatment of Deviant Sex-Role Behaviors in a Male Child. In fact, Green facilitated this study by sending “deviant” gender expressing kids to Rekers for him to study. This “research” was the foundation for Green and Rekers’ Sissy Boy Syndrome, a “study” that found that putting a group of mostly non-GD GNC kids (with a few GD kids mixed in) through “treatments” designed to make them act more stereotypically male, most of the group wound up not having GD. Yes, you read that correctly. A group made up of mostly non-GD kids produced a group mostly made up of non-GD kids. Specifically, it found that around 80% of the study participants did not have GD after their “treatments.” Remember this 80% number because it shows up over and over again in anti-trans literature.

Worse, this “study” was later implicated in the death of one of its subjects.

Nonetheless, Green’s friend, Dr. Zucker and Zucker’s colleagues at the government-run CAMH gender clinic populated the DSM-IV Workgroup and set to work turning the Sissy Boy Syndrome framework into a diagnostic category: the DSM-IV GID. This wasn’t a secret. Those involved with the Workgroup published papers and periodic updates explaining their goals:



These sexologists made it clear that they supported a diagnostic framework that minimized phenotype dysphoria and instead centered itself on nonconforming gender behavior. In fact, this was accomplished in the DSM IV:


Under the DSM-IV, one need only be GNC to receive a GID diagnosis. This resulted in numerous “transgender” studies using the above Sissy Boy Syndrome-derived metric.


When the American Psychiatric Association issued the DSM-5, the DSM-IV category, GID was removed. Many media outlets wrongly reported that GID was being renamed GD, leading many laypeople to believe that GID was basically the same thing as GD. This is a mistaken belief; GID and GD represent two different groups:

GID group: mostly comprised of those who experience anxiety because they are, in some way, gender non-conforming as well as a relative few who are debilitated by a mismatch between their gender orientation and their phenotype.

GD group: comprised of those who are debilitated by a mismatch between their gender orientation and their phenotype.

Unscrupulous writers like Singal proclaim that around 80% of GD kids will stop having GD based on old GID studies that found that most kids with GID do not wind up having GD. Nevermind that most GID kids didn’t have GD in the first place. To drive the point home regarding the difference between GID within a DSM-IV context and GD within a DSM-5 context, here are both categories:




The point is that many who had a DSM-IV GID diagnosis will not qualify for a DSM-5 GD diagnosis because being gender nonconforming alone is not enough to get a DSM-5 GD diagnosis. Let’s consider just how many kids this difference effects. When asked how many kids Dr. Zucker “treated” at his gender identity clinic for GD, he said that a full 70% of them did not have gender dysphoria in the first place. In fact, these children came into his care merely because they were GNC:

Much more at the link:
https://www.transadvocate.com/youre...A0McCJcGikEdWdrs_cplKmvaO--SUNh7qSXSKtkmPL9ZM

So, like i said, bullshit. Get better sources.

Thanks.

That paper points out that the lower bone mineral density, particularly for DMABs, is present at the outset of intervention, likely due to stress differences in how they're used; gender-dysphoric DMABs act more like girls, and girls don't exercise as much, so they have lower BMD to begin with; indeed, they couldn't rule out behavioral differences pre-pubertal blockade as being entirely responsible. They also point out that calcium supplementation and exercised should be prescribed to counteract it. It doesn't deal at all with consequences after cessation, long-term or otherwise. There's not a whiff of irreversibility in it. Other papers (see my previous responses to FF) have looked at long-term consequences, but only for those who continued to transition, though that's not relevant here as we're only talking about pre-informed consent consequences that aren't reversible. That said, there's ample literature on low BMD for plenty of other reasons (excessive swimming, space travel, sedentary lifestyle, low calcium, low vitamin D), and it seems to be reversible with... calcium supplementation and exercise (and vitamin D supplementation in the last case).

Please link to the "similar reports".

A brief but specific thread, from which this is one tweet

Oh come on. He linked to an actual peer-reviewed, unretracted paper in a legitimate journal, which transgendertrend.com was kind enough to host to spare us the $14 charge for getting it from Elsevier. This is some petty bullshit. Don't be a Federal Farmer. That goes for everyone who dogpiles on this. There's a legitimate question about how much else he's getting from this site, but actually ask about that, don't bash the hosting provider for the source when it's legit. That's just bandwagoning.

Yes, I crapped on FF for linking to that site, but he linked to the commentary about the journal articles, which were garbage, not the articles themselves.

This does not say what you think it says, except for the last sentence. That's accurate. The study started before a confirmed GD diagnosis (edit: or what would be one now). It's meaningful in that most of the children who presented with something that could have turned out to be GD didn't have it. But no one is getting puberty blockers without an actual GD diagnosis. Gender non-conformity is so very much not GD.

EDIT: Nova has much more thorough explanation of why that study is significantly less powerful than you think it is (although I don't know that I'd say the methodology is so terrible, just that the context it was in rendered it largely useless).

There's another aspect that you're "missing" (ie it's bullshit that they won't overtly say, but will certainly imply) that if someone has surgery, then regrets it, they'll never be able to have kids!



This ignores the idea of adoption, assumes that everybody wants to have biological children of their own, or that people don't wind up being sterile due to things like bad genetics, disease, or misadventure. It also assumes that we'll never be able to figure out how to have kids without the ol' sperm and egg being involved. This is despite the fact that we're starting to do things like cloning and synthetic DNA. If we can figure out how to clone a mammoth or a dinosaur (and we're trying), we can figure out how to enable someone to have biological children of their own, regardless of if they're fertile or not.

I'm sure there are plenty of kids who at some point question their identity and then end up saying "nah, the genitals I was born with are fine." Maybe even the majority of kids who question at some point eventually decide that. Fine.

But that's not who ends up going on puberty blockers. It's not like every girl who says "Mom, sometimes I wish I was a boy" is getting whisked off and put on a hormone regimen as soon as the words leave her mouth.

Oh, Tucker Carlson would certainly overtly say it:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/en...species_n_606ed95dc5b6034a7085a474?ri18n=true

I'm not going to address every individual point made, just what I believe are the most pertinent. Nevertheless it will take a few posts to respond, and after that I probably won't have time to return to this thread in any detail before next week.

This assigns the bad faith "just asking questions" trope to any discussion of the issues that you don't want to hear. I'm well aware of the tactics of the far right in the US - but not all discussion is an attempt to "spread hateful and bigoted ideas" by "subterfuge" as you implied in your subsequent post.
From the point of view of preventing reactionary legislation, this strategy of trying to muzzle your opponents - especially in states where they clearly have the upper hand - seems to me to be about the worst one you could possibly take. Rather than fostering awareness or understanding, it makes you appear dogmatic and extremist.

If by "the group", you mean anyone capable of fully consenting to medical procedures - adults - then no, there is no "veto" proposed. At least certainly not by me or anyone I will defend.
But the very issue under discussion here is that you wish to include children in "the group", who are not capable of fully consenting with regard to this or any other aspect of sexuality. For them, it may be necessary that safegaurds are put in place to protect them. That requires clarity on both the nature and origins of gender dysphoria, and the long-term effects of proposed treatments. And it is not exclusively the domain of partisans of one side of the debate to make determinations on that.

To make it clear - I am entitled to speak about what I want, when I want, how I want and to whom I want. On that principle, I invite you to stay in your lane.

Unfortunately this is a strawman. I am not posturing as someone who knows better than the medical professionals or making any claim to observations of my own. I am highlighting what the professionals themselves say, and what they admit they cannot.

On that, thank you for the response - which is extremely detailed and furthers what ought to be the object of having threads like this in the first place. I'll follow it up shortly.

Apologies, the rest is going to have to wait too.

Hey dickhead, I posted peer reviewed papers. You dismissed them.