Can Kids Consent to Hormone Blockers?

Oh, come on. It's not that simple. Anyone who got at least a C in Psych II should understand that. Reconsider lecturing people on common sense if you can't even get this one right.

I brought up the first link because it is a peer reviewed paper that documents kids who have claimed to lived past lives so I wonder if you take those claims seriously as you do a little boy who claims to be a little girl?

Two entirely different jars of pickles, if you ask me.

People can say anything, convince themselves of anything, and yes, even rationalize lying if it serves what they consider a righteous and just end, or just makes them feel better. Even a consensus of opinions is not enough to establish an immutable fact. I wouldn't mind the stories some strangers tell themselves, except for the same entitled, authoritarian bent I see in any social/political topic. And I don't care if some self-serving bullshitter tries to frame it as simple compassion towards people who just want to live their lives. If that were true, there would be no imposition anyone else's priorities. If that were true, there would be no debate on what sort of experimenting can be done on children to this end.

While it remains consenting adults spending their own money to alter their own bodies, there is no problem. Change any element within that statement, and I take issue.

I take very seriously that the claims exist, sure. I do not take seriously the idea they are true, because, as the paper points out, there is no known (ed: or even a plausible) etiology for the claims. As the paper also points out, such behaviors disappear by age 6-8, and without everyone around them telling them they're wrong, don't know what they're talking about, couldn't possibly be feeling that, etc.; indeed, particularly if the "past life" (the paper omits the quotation marks for brevity; I will not) is a family member, the family will often actively encourage the claim. GD symptoms, for those who are candidates for treatment with puberty blockers, do not. They last through adulthood (typically until death or social pressure becomes overwhelming, and then the behaviors are hidden for social conformity), and are typically successfully treated through social and sometimes physical sex transition. Unless you're claiming that adult trans people don't actually exist (and from there is the short road to solipsism), trying to use this to prove any sort of point about whether children actually experience GD is futile, and frankly stupid. When I read your post the first time, I thought there was maybe a 5% chance that was the argument you were making, but I thought, "no, he couldn't possibly be that dumb, this is just some irrelevant tangent he finds interesting." I'm sorry I was wrong, but since you are, you are owed this explanation.

Just plain paranoia, huh?
Funny what you pick to be paranoid about.

As a matter of statistical analysis, essentially every child who arrives at puberty with a consistent, insistent, persistent, long term profession of cross-sex gender identity will persist in that identity for life.

Even Kenneth Zucker who's a proponent of what amounts to conversion therapy for gender-nonconforming (but not necessarily trans) pre-teens is on record as admitting that should such a profession persist into puberty they will never recant.

The examples otherwise are so very rare as to border on non-existant and even those are near exclusively those who have been troubled by some external pressure (like the girl in the Tavestock case who got sucked into basically TERFism) such as a religious conversion or pressure from family or whatever.

So yes, clinicians who ***literally actually specialize in the treatment of gender issues in children*** (as opposed to blowhard internet skeptics who know fuck-all but have an inflated sense of their own wisdom) agree that when such a child presents with such a history as puberty ensues, the proper course of action is to prescribe puberty suppression ***IN ORDER TO GIVE THE CHILD EVEN MORE TIME TO BE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN BEFORE ANY IRREVERSIBLE TREATMENT BEGINS*** out of an abundance of caution.

Nobody who dismisses the comparison has any moral standing to make that call. The reason we catch so VERY much shit in life is because god-damn assholes like you who know exactly zero about any thing related to being trans feel entitled to declare our needs and concerns less than and less worthy than other things that are "actually" important.

Like we were deciding whether to get a god damn tattoo or something.

It's a choice that derives from the quality - or lack thereof - of one's life (or at least the perceived potential quality). It's not up to bystanders like you to decide whether or not the circumstances is consistent with the choice. In point of fact: none of this is any of your fucking business.

And saying "well suicide is a choice and people threaten it as blackmail to get their way" is not a comforting analysis when you're standing next to parents who had to bury the kid they failed to support because they listened to heartless asshole fucks like you. Your meta-analysis may comfort you when you tell yourself you're not ACTUALLY a bigot, but such a conclusion will never in the history of mankind save a single life, so sit your ass down.

My sample size is the entire god damn population of trans people - your sample size is non-existent because it is nothing more than "Albert thinks..." and is about as relevant as your point of view on how much it hurts to give birth.

Nor have I. Nor has any trans person, nor has any supportive parent of trans young people.

I've reached the conclusion of my willingness to humor your bullshit.

It's pretty comical how he just perfectly described his own position, apparently completely oblivious to the self-own.

@Uncle Albert is still crying over the election being stolen by a group of hillary clinton's pedophile pizza parlor empoloyees in a basement that does not exist.

Thinks that are real: Gender and gender dysphoria.

Things that are imaginary: The election being stolen, anything Q says, microchips in vaccines, trickle down economics, Republican morality and ethics, and UA's delusions.

A guy who believes in Q and a zombie savior made of quackers and wine is telling us that gender is all imaginary.

There comes a certain point where you just have to look at who is making the argument and recognize a schizophrenic 5 year old on drugs has more of a grip on reality than they do.

A LOT of the pseudo-science transphobic tropes can be found in the shitty book "The End Of Gender".

This podcast uses real science to tear it to fucking shreds.

https://player.fm/series/1329782/288809403

https://player.fm/series/1329782/288880751

Spoilers-
Not only is it toxicly transphobic, it's badly researched, badly sourced, uses un-sited anecdote, un-sited sources, bad studies when it does site, and it's written shittily like a bad high school book report.
It's social-conservative trash masquerading as liberal concern.
Fuck Debra Soh.

And fuck Richard Dawkins for signal boosting this piece of trash.
"The God Delusion" was thoroughly researched and sourced, indexed, glossary-ed, the whole nine fucking yards.
How a guy who can write a book that thorough and meticulous could pimp this fucking coloring book is staggering.
The only leeway I can give the fucker is that his stroke must have scrambled his fucking marbles.
How the mighty have fallen.
Depressing.

Gender norms are such a weird thing. On one hand I think they end up holding people back and being applied problematically. OTOH I recognize I like doing frilly girly things because I like connecting with the societal aspects of gender. I want to express myself in that way, which makes a terribly small amount of sense logically. Eve.n for many cisgendered people the desire to express yourself within gender norms is powerful and makes them feel good. My niece really likes being girly right now. No one forces her to. She just does it. There is probably some reinforcement of people being happy when she is doing girly things that she catches onto and it molds her by way of wanting to please her parents.

I guess I am saying I get how it can appear to be some form of psychosis or abstract that people might label as not real. However, gender is real. When you go down the road into the abstracts and try to find the essence of something you often end up at a point where something is what it is and the definitions fall apart. For example we know what a table is, but when you get down to it tables can be all sorts of different things which do not necessarily match up with a basic description of what a table is. (Sorry about the itallics)

When you really get down to what makes a woman a woman you find that you can take out a lot of the defining facts of the situation and still determine something is female. I often wonder if I would like frilly clothing if it were not female and the reality is I wouldn't. I hate neckties, but I like wearing one if I am dressing like a schoolgirl wearing one. When my roommate was threatened at work for hanging out with a transexual (me) it actually helped when he joked with me about me being a girl in disguise so I could infiltrate straight society. It is horrible it had to be done, but one of the reasons I love him to death is because he went there and recognized the girl inside of me. It is not something we should force people to do, but as a solution to a dangerous situation where people were actually trying to harm him because of me it helped. The other solution was to give me the name and let me do my thing, and though the demon inside still snarles at his choice, he made the best one.

^ Understanding gender, and understanding how other people understand gender, is one of those weird things that when I believe I’ve just about figured it out, I realise I haven’t.


ETA: I’ve also never understood why some women dress up as schoolgirls.

It is really strange. I would have been increadibly confident in a schoolgirl uniform. I actually go to interviews for jobs crossdressed now because I come off so much better that way. The last job fair I was at the guy was actually laughing about having to interview me because he thought it was a joke. Within 15 minutes I had him pitching me to his crew. They smashed him down, of course, but when I am dressed up in my way I am all sorts of in the zone.

the only place where that is sort of different is when I am reffing paintball. However, I sort of see myself as a powerful "person" and genderless when in that position. I wear more protective clothing that fits the situation and I actually avoid women's clothes because they are often made of weaker and softer material. Not that I don't have some things that would hold up, like one of my gothic lilita dresses is so well made and awesome that I would play paintball in it. Most girl's clothing is horribly thin and flimsy. I love it for taking pictures in the wind and sipping some fruity drink on a hot day, but being out on the paintball field I am sort of myself without gender in my mind.

It is funny because the only guy who I would ever call my commanding officer once told me it was a bad look to tell the other refs I was open to questions and I would not bite while wearing pink nail polish. He was one of the few people who I respected enough to speak to me and tell me that I was undermining my position at the field when saying that. At the field there was a huge pecking order that was followed sort of militaristically. RT was the fucking general who commanded everything, and we were best as a unit with him in command and we knew it. That experience of mostly brotherhood is what really made me appreciate being a man. That was a bit of a boys club, with a couple of tough girls in there, that I enjoyed being a man in.

In that way I can somewhat understand why trans people enter the military. It was not for me, but I could see the draw of a place where your effort means something for serving. At the field it was always bust ass and then enjoy the time. I would work 40 hours during the week and then work tough ten hour days on the weekends at the field for shit money because those were my brother in arms. I was not scared on 9/11 being in what would have been the invasion zone because I was going to go to the field and meet up with my boys and we were going to fuck shit up. That was my first thought before I knew what actually was happening.

Even now without them around I still am not scared because I know I can take command and survive. This is why I do not need a gun to make me feel safe. The gun is actually a hinderance to a person who truly knows how to command and manipulate a situation.

Only getting some time to return to this minefield now. There will be more to follow.

Your initial claim was that the hormone blockers were "basically side effect-free and completely reversible". This paper refutes that. It points out one serious side-effect with regards to BMD, and it offers no grounds to think that it is reversible. (Where there are BMD issues arising from other conditions, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't.) Maybe it is reversible here - but that needs to be shown, not just assumed. And clearly even if it were possible, that was not done for the subjects of the study and presumably is not done generally.

It's difficult to gain access to the research papers for some of the other issues mentioned, though they are cited repeatedly in articles about the subject. But here's another concerning brain development.
There are some caveats around the conclusions that can be drawn, more study needed and so forth. Though certainly not supporting the conclusion "side-effect free".

So to underline the point yet again, there are unknowns and there is active debate among medical professionals in this whole area. That debate that is better carried out free from the kind of politicised and censorious atmosphere that this thread is a small example of.
The situation is not as is being represented one where the doctors have reached a mature consensus.

See this letter, written by an expert precisely to address concerns at these treatments being promoted as "fully reversible", and highlighting the bullying of colleagues who raise questions, with pejoratives like "TERF" and "transphobic" being thrown around liberally. Sounds familiar.

This is what science and peer review is actually about. The people who actually follow the guides of scientific method and have ethics, which most of them do, result in better care for transgendered people. This is not some stupid bunch of trumpistas saying something. You are equivocating the world of stupid with actual science and medical study.

I may have actually agreed with you decades ago due to the lack of communication and observations of such experiments and studies, but today there is actually peer review to keep things steady and right. This is not Q. This is not people forcing children to do something they do not want to do. We make choices in life that effect our futures all the time, and we do many of them in childhood. By your definition we should whip children to study hard and get better grades because they do not understand how all that playing around will stop them from being astronauts or the best and brightest.

Give the pressure a fucking break. Those side effects are not the end of the world and a person who is going through this sort of thing will want some of the effects even if they do not continue to the conclusion you want. Maybe the child is fine with a penis and boobies. What is wrong with that? Maybe everyone does not want to go full SRS, but they might be happier if they developed a little more like the other gender. In the end they are still people and we can respect and nurture them to live a good life.

Odds-wise, saying teenagers shouldn't be allowed to take hormone blockers if they want to is like saying all boys should be forced to play football, because they might decide they want to be in the NFL later, and if they don't play in high school, they will have permanently missed that chance.

Except it's even more ridiculous, because while the rare person who starts hormone blockers at 12 and changes their mind at 20 can probably still end up as a typical cisgendered man or woman, a kid who doesn't do any sports in high school and decides at 20 that they want to play pro ball is almost definitely not gonna make it.

Funny, when I plug Kirsty Entwistle into Google, I get a shit ton of right-wing and Christian shit-rags plugging her.

Same question I gave UA about oldfella and TR agreeing with him.
Doesn't it give you pause for thought?
Even a little?
Hmm?
Any gears turning in there, Rick?

It was stupid the first time, and it's not improving with age. You don't have to buy into a person's entire fucking existence from birth to death, everything they ever said or did, to agree with or get a chuckle from them occasionally.

Bill Cosby used to make me chuckle.
Guess what?
Turns out I can get my chuckles from non-rapists.

Just like I can get my fantasy and sci-fi from non-TERFs.

And my gender science from non-quacks who don't have an agenda to steal everyone's bodily autonomy starting with trans people.

That's right, Albert and Rick, you're being suckered by the same old anti-abortion side with a new coat of paint.
Enjoy that stain on your souls.
That's gonna be fun when you wake up and realize it.
I'm SO gonna be a sore-winner when I see the looks of sad realization on your faces.

So, couple months ago, when my 17 year old peripherally contemplated joining this board, he said he thought it odd that in one thread, two or three people would be saying things he wouldn't say to his worst enemy, but in another thread, those same people were besties and allied against a different group.

I don't see why this one issue is a hang-up for you in regards to UA and RickDeckard.

What, you think I hate them?
No, far from it.
It actually makes me sad that they've been suckered by the worst sorts of people.
I just numb the disappointment by going full Prank-enstein.
It's my way.

I, too, am often disappointed at how I perceive other people think. Or, sometimes, I jump to conclusions and call people horrific names (only on Wordforge or sometimes Facebook). But, mostly, when push comes to shove, most people are decent, polite, and accepting of others.

The problem is you tubers who buy into or attempt to convince others of conspiracies like ... right wingers are being silenced and liberals want to take your guns. That's when I get most annoyed.

Do you think that’s an affirming thing because of your trans experience?

I think because I now have a daughter, I’m very wary of adults role playing as schoolgirls, and some fetishising it (not saying you fetishise it, but some might).

I’m not sure how prevalent school uniforms are in the US, but they’re commonplace over here. I don’t think it’s as bad now, but in my young teenage years (so 12-16) it was a fairly frequent thing get cat calls and have explicit and humiliating things shouted to you in the street, just because you’re a girl in a school uniform. It would usually be a group of much older men who thought it hilarious. And the worst thing is, it was that commonplace everyone was desensitised to actual kids being spoken to like that and they ignored it.
You might tell them to fuck off if you were in a group, but on your own it’s a very intimidating and embarrassing experience for a child having crude and graphic things shouted at you.
So yeah, I’d kind of like the “schoolgirls” thing to piss off in this day and age. Same as “jailbait”. It seems to me it’s just a green light for creeps to be lecherous and paedo-y with kids under the guise of banter.
I do get the natural inclination for dressing according to gender. If I’m on site, I wear trousers and steel toe caps because it isn’t practical climbing a ladder or hitching yourself up into an attic in skirt and heels. But in normal circumstances, I wouldn’t choose to wear them.

No, you have been seduced by the twitter mob mentality. "He once LIKED a bad person's TWEET! Let's hate him forEVAR, Becky!"
But it's impossible to main some kind of mythical ideological purity when the terms change every fucking day, and no matter how long you hold that pose, the purple-haired 20 year olds will never let you into their club.

Too bad both are objectively true and can be verified straight from the horse's mouth.

My turning gears are telling me that that's a very obvious logical fallacy. Arguments stand and fall on their own merits, and don't become false because someone you dislike happens to also espouse them.

I am on plat 4 right now, but I am getting to this when I can . Thank you for a nice sentiment in this trip. Wow, that took a lot of effort. I am off for a while.

Wrong! That is absolutely the bestest reason they become false. That's peak human enlightenment, right there!

And TERF arguments don't even have merit.
You think you're dying on the hill of "logic" but you ain't.
Sorry, fella.
You've got a horrible hangover coming.