Can Kids Consent to Hormone Blockers?

I don’t know much about this sort of stuff but i remembered i saw an article on The Economist about puberty blockers:

https://www.economist.com/science-a...s-known-about-the-effects-of-puberty-blockers

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"Interrupting normal adolescence is not the same as treating cancer, endometriosis or precocious puberty."


Absolute bullshit, and it's not the only anti-trans crap the Economist has published (I presume someone on the editorial side has a hard on for the topic.
Their are kids alive today in the fucking FORTIES who had blockers for precocious puberty or as a part of treating pediatric cancer and the long term effects, such as they are, are WELL understood. There's no medical or biological difference in giving them to trans kids in terms of medical effects. The drugs nor the body can tell the difference, biology works like biology works.

Some Pharisees just want to pretend it's different because they imagine we can be talked out of it given enough time and teir ACTUAL concern is the permanence of hormones, not blockers.

ETA: I'm not going point by point with that steaming pile but the further you read into it the more clear it is that it is driven by moralistic disapproval of transition, not actual medical concerns (because on the latter count it's a garbage fire)

 

Anyone could have a child with these issues. Therefore it is everyone's goddamned business.

I know it's a difficult subject, but that attitude isn't helping anything.

 

Here it's legal for a kid to drink as long as they're with their parent and the parent gives them the drink.

At my last birthday party before she turned 21 my youngest daughter kept hitting me up for French 75s and Gin Rickeys.

 

The economist is one of the few more fair and balanced news organizations that exist in these days of shitty journalism

What other anti trans things have they published? I can’t recall any

 

So, let's get personal - potentially TMI ahead.

I went through puberty in the 70's, this treatment was not available to me and my hateful asshole father would never had allowed it, had it been.

But what did I get for my "healthy" uninterrupted puberty?

A voice like an untalanted Johnny Cash.
Enough body hair to shame Dirty Dutch Mantel (look him up).
A beard which had mostly begun to turn gray (making laser useless on that part) before I had the resources to attack it.
Size 11/12 feet.
In fact a too-big body structure in general (shoulders, hands, etc)
The absence of female specific traits that medicine can't really give me (hips, for example) or come at the cost of many dollars and sometimes notable pain.

Could have been worse, I have one friend who's 6'3" and lives with constant depression about her size despite being perfectly reasonable in many other appearance respects. I have another who's 6'7" but lives in MA and has done fair-well in spite of it, another whol lives in Tupelo and is built literally like a defensive end and will, in my judgement, never be remotely passable and I'll be deeply shocked if she doesn't eat a bullet within the next ten years.

Even to the extent some of these things can be medically addressed later, what gives ill-informed third parties the right to exercise a veto on the life decisions of a trans 14 year old and in so doing condemn them to all these remediating treatments, to the extent any are available?

Besides that, while I've become much more passable than I had any right to expect, if i get clocked, it's because of these features medicine can't address. What gives the critics the right to literally put the life of someone like me in danger every time we go out into the world and potentially encounter a violent bigot? or even short of that, to lose a job or a home when someone sorts out that you're trans, among the various other ill effects. These are all MUCH worse for the trans woman who never achieves routine passability due to very masculinized traits. To say nothing of those who spend their lives in a personal hell (like my friend above) daring not to transition because they know full well they can't get to a point of credible female appearance.

You know what happens with these "imperfect" trans people? Much of the time they end up dead early, either directly by suicide or indirectly by engaging in self destructive behavior to numb, theoretically, the pain.

But hey, all of this is just the price we're gonna have to pay to be sure that one in a thousand kids (out of a population that's already 2% or less of the general population, might somehow in theory, maybe, not end up having their lives made immeasurably better by having the support they need to get through this shit and improve their quality of life.

We were told that we have, all of us, the right to "pursue happiness" but I guess I missed the part that said "conditions apply."

 

As I said earlier - I have all night and a week beyond for "help me understand"

I have run out of fucks to give for "let me tell you why this dude on Rogan's show said you're a pervert"

 

Okay, so indulge my ignorance. Are you saying that some people who are (for example) trans women, who look masculine, wouldn't look so masculine if they had gotten those blockers at a younger age? I'm not trying to be a dick. I'm genuinely asking.

 

I don't keep a catalog of them, but they turn up in my Twitter feed every couple of months when someone is calling out whatever lies they printed.

That's the insidious bit about the current anti-trans fad, you can always find some Pharisee or TERF to misread a study or make one up and then the press is allowed to "just ask questions" which questions serve only to de-legitimize all trans people.

Take Jesse Singal for example, dude has basically fell into a profitable career niche being the "not anti-trans at all but just asking questions" go to guy, who singles out trans people he gets obsessed with and his fans end up harassing that person into oblivion. Lately, Julia Serano, who is brilliant and well qualified to answer almost any challenge just had to say "fuck it, I'm out" because the "mainstream" folks who are "just asking questions" pour jet fuel on the fire of obsessive anti-trans bigotry and give cover to the agenda of those who won't rest until we're legislated out of public life.

All that said, when their are several hundred - thousand? - scientific and medical publications with sound information based on actual knowledge what the conversation doesn't need is some random columnist for an ECONOMICS magazine "just asking questions.

It's another case of "stay in your lane" - You don't see Scientific American running columns just asking questions about the optimal minimum wage do you? If the article had been supportive I'd be inclined to ask "Don't y'all have some economics to write about?"

 

For a kid to get hormone blockers there needs to be a cause. First the kid needs to come out and say they are trans. Then they have to go to a psychologist who is going to evaluate their condition. they will have to start living as the opposite gender for a period of time before any hormones are prescribed and respond positively to the experience. Then the psychologist is either going to either monitor their physical reaction to the puberty blockers as they are prescribed, or send them to an endocrinologist to monitor their physical reaction through blood testing to make sure there are no harmful side effects while their parents are still going to be involved and the medical professionals are going to affirm the child's choice to continue to take the blockers.

Why is it that all of this is going on and Joe Rogan, the republicans, or the fucking harry potter author knows any better than the medical profesionals, child, and parents who are all involved in this decision.

This is not just something a child does on a whim. These hormone blockers are also not prescribed until puberty so it isn't like anyone is giving some five year old hormone blockers.

Fori this matter, why is @The Ghost of Crazy Horse opr anyone else who has never even talked to a trans kid worried about any of this? No child is going to have a legitimate medical professional prescribe puberty blockers to them without showing actual signs of gender dysphoria. The child can live as the opposite gender for a few months while awaiting thew prescription to make sure they really want to. Given how society reacts it is not something that happens on some whim either. In the end, even if some extremely rare mistake is made with hormone blockers you just stop taking them and your body will recover developing gender characteristics. You are not growing to grow breasts as a boy by blocking testosterone.

Where as I endorse joe's opinions on MMA, he can stay the fuck out of other people's choices regarding transitioning at a young age because he has clearly not educated himself or talked to enough trans people to understand this is not something you are wishy washy about. As a person who has never been a part of the treatment and diagnosis a child can make a proper choice with the help of a psychologist and doctor, along with the support of their parents and time to experience their choice on multiple levels without any drugs or surgeries. I knew this shit before I knew anything else. This is the common experience. It would seem the only reason children are confused is society and their parents opposition to them doing it and not their actual feelings regarding it. In other words they are trying to conform to their external environment and not their internal knowledge.

I do apprecxiate your want for some answers because you have listened to a person with no actual experience in gender dysphoria, but you probably should research this based on actual experts in the field and not an expert in MMA.

 

That’s exactly what she’s saying.

 

Okay, so that's why "waiting for their brains to finish developing" might be problematic. That's...that's a tough one.

 

YES!
THANK YOU!

In makes ALL the difference. Look at your average 10 year old boy and 10 year old girl. Other than gonads both of them are a complete blank slate until hormones hit (and indeed, the variability within adult males and females as categories are, along with genetics, almost entirely driven by the effects of hormones between 10 and 15. That's the amount produced AND the receptivity of cells to the effects.

For reference, there's a condition of abnormal chromosomes that causes what's known as androgen insensitivity in which a genetic male develops a feminine appearance because their cells do not respond to testosterone.

There's a subset of the population in the Dominican Republic that seem to be girls until they hit puberty - you can read about them here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Güevedoce

Point being, all these developments are fueled and driven by hormones - interrupt the hormones you interrupt the process, replace them with "cross sex" hormones and you get (again, apart from the existence of gonadal plumbing) and you get for all intents and purposes the same outcome as if your own gonads had produced those "cross sex" hormones

German pop star Kim Petras, never had male puberty


Activist Jazz Jennings, never had male puberty


Best example maybe, actress Nicole Maines who has a twin brother

 

There's another thing wrong with the brain thing. Not every trans person fully grasps what's wrong with them as a child, a minority sometimes struggle with it either through ignorance or internalized rejection (Chelsea manning, for example, as a case of someone who tried to force it into "I'm just gay" until adulthood) but with their existence acknowledged:

Kids that understand themselves as trans before puberty do so typically at a 4-7 year old range (I knew by the time I was 6) and what professionals counsel parents is to be supportive, since at that age it's only social presentation that's involved (names, pronouns, clothes, hair, etc) and see what happens. The rubric is
Consistent.
Insistent.
Persistent.

If it's a phase or uncertainty of whatever sort, they have as much as 5-8 or more years for it to resolve (and false professions are gone WAY before that).
So by the time you get to the onset of puberty, the kid has been consistent in their identity for YEARS. If this was a case of immaturity that conviction would be there. And yet even so blocker scome before hormones to buy 2-4 (depending on the age of onset) even more time to be completely certain. Then, typically at 16 (which now you're talking about a decade, more or less, of consistent profession) they start LOW DOSE HRT, with the doctors vigilant for any potential indication that the teen's self-perception is wavering. All this is done very cautiously.

It's not like the professional providers are unaware of the "brain development" argument.

Again, this is why I'm so easily triggered, I've read too many authoritative opinions from some bozo truck driver in Kentucky that's absolutely certain he is bringing the facts to all these conspiring quacks determined to fuck up kids' health and life for reasons they can't explain. Because Satan or some shit.

 

Is it, though? Hypothetically, let’s say that a male child thinks that they might be trans, gets put on puberty blockers and then, when they turn 18 (which is the “age of maturity” for most things, even though their frontal lobes won’t be fully developed until they’re about 25 or so) they decide that they’re male and stop taking the blockers. They then begin to develop as they would have if they hadn’t taken the blockers. What does that really mean? They won’t be able to get a woman pregnant for a few more years (assuming that they’re straight or want to be a parent)? Is that really so bad? I don’t think so.

Maybe it means that they won’t really fit in with folks the same age as them. Again, is that really so bad? Sure, there’s undoubtedly a downside or two to it, but speaking as a Gen Xer who was born such that I can remember when folks were saying that Boomers were freaks because they didn’t live the same kind of lives as their parents and is young enough that my life experiences are more similar to those of Millennials, I can say that I’d rather be where I am than firmly in one group or another because I understand a hell of a lot more than those in either extreme do.

Honestly, trans people can answer a lot of questions that we might never know the answer to if they didn’t exist. You know, is boob sweat worse than ball sweat in terms of itchiness? Are certain behaviors hardwired or are they cultural? And the list goes on and on.

 

I honestly don't know what long term mental affects it might have. I'm coming at it from a weird perspective. I've got a trans niece that I'm not so sure wasn't made one as opposed to deciding she was one because her mother is (in my unprofessional opinion) is an absolute wackaloon with huge munchausen issues. Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't shake that off no matter how hard I try.

 

I am not sure why you would give children below the age of puberty hormone blockers as a medical professional. I am pretty sure they would not have hormones to block yet, and I would think that just allowing them to present as thew proper gender would be sufficient. If they are self harming at that age it would be time for psychological help over puberty blockers. If your kid is in elementary school and self harming it is time for a psychiatrist, and they probably have some other issues outside of gender dysphoria to work on.

 

That is not the point. The people who are whining do not have children with these issues. They are actually trying to get involved in people's health care who they have no connection with. Nor do they have any information on the issue because they are some dumb ass on the street. Also they are mostly completely lying about their concern for kids because they are the same people who want gun everywhere despite the fact guns are a danger to kids. If you actually gave a fuck about dangers to children yuou would be against guns in homes and areas with kids, and even things like alcohol in homes with children. The number of kids killed or harmed by puberty blockers per year is near zero. The number of kids harmed every year by guns and alcohol in the home is huge. Yet none of the anti trans people want to hear anything about limiting the presence of guns and alcohol around children. Most will even give guns and alcohol to developing children. That is something we know damages children daily.

I do not mind the world of doctors reacting to the harm of prescribing drugs to children based on relevant studies. I do mind some trumpista asswipe who thinks masks and vaccines kill them, but COVID is safe making medical decisions for a child they do not know against actual medical doctors diagnosis and prescription. If you do not want to take hormone blockers then don't, but it is not your choice for others to.

 

Point of order. No doctor is going to force hormone blockers on a child for a parent for trans issues. Maybe in the case of some physical medical issue because testosterone blockers are medicine given for other conditions that might damage the child physically. A doctor would be financially and professionally liable for prescribing hormone blockers on a child against that child's will. Doctors, and the child's school, have to report harm to a child to CPS. The child is talked to alone without the parent present to ascertain the child is trans. The parent is not allowed to just make that diagnosis. If the doctor had any inclination the child was not trans and the parent was forcing drugs on the child for their own mental problems the doctor is required to report that to the authorities and CPS. CPS would then intervene and investigate.

In the case of child abuse by forcing a kid to be trans you could not find enough people willing to go along with this. If the child is going to a school the teachers would ask the child if they were being forced because the child will encounter a teacher who is anti-trans. They look for any reason to step in the way of a parent advocating for their child being trans. parents have to fight against society for their kids to get medical treatment, and it is not something some parent just gets to do. A doctor prescribing Testosterone blockers against a child's wishes would be guilty of a crime, and their medical license would be revoked. This is a damaging issue of child abuse if done wrong. There is not even enough profit in being a pill mill for these issues considering the penalties and rarity of the issue.

 

There is a high probability for a male that they would never be able to biologically father a child. That may be changed by modern medical intervention which might be able to produce enough sperm to fertilize a woman. From what Ii understand sperm production is permanently ended or reduced and does not recover. You probably would also not develop the full potential of your physical gender characteristics at a later age. A lot of that devel;opmentr is done during puberty, but I guess it would happen over time. I just know it is pretty much explained you are going to end your ability to impregnate a woman as the result of hormone therapy. That may also be the addition of fenale hormones. I think trans men can still birth babies after male HRT. I do not know if that is rare or just recovers after you cease male hormone therapy for a while.

It does vary, but it is well explained to do something to preserve your sperm if you ever wish to be a part of the biology of a child in the future. The doctors and advice seems top be very solid that you are going to destroy sperm production, and I am pretty sure you also destroy your ability to orgasm pretty good after a while on HRT though I am not sure how long that is because I have done it for over 6 months and can still get there.

 

I will give @The Ghost of Crazy Horse and @Man Afraid of his Shoes my personal experience with HRT as an example of why kids won't just get these things because them or their parents insist.

I had a manic episode of gender dysphoria in my 30's. I went to the ER because I was getting Birth control and hormone blockers now. I had lived since I was a toddler knowing I was a girl, and had lived for moths as a woman. I wanted to start that night and had myself worked up into a manic episode. I also knew a doctor could prescribe the BC and hormone blockers at the hospital so I was going to insist even if I ended up going to jail. So I get to the hospital, demand to see a doctor about it, and they put me in to see a medical doctor.

The answer was no. Despite their knowledge neither is immediately harmful. They would not even start my baseline blood test for the HRT. I really just wanted to get that process started being over thirty and in command of my own body and medical treatment.

What they did do for me was to call in a doctor who was familiar with the issue and happened to be a gay professional. He had a ton of information for me including local doctors who would start the process properly. I went to the doctor he recommended. I was insistent on not going to a shrink because I was not broken. I know what I was doing. That doctor heard me, but also asked me a ton of questions about my history of gender dysphoria and whether or not I was living as a woman and how that made me feel to confirm I was actually trans. Hew recommended multiple local psychologists for therapy, but recognized I was there for medical assistance with something I was already going to do. He does not just give me the prescriptions. I had to go down and get a baseline blood test and quit smoking. He was not even considering a prescription if I was still using any form of tobacco. He did trust me on the first blood test that I would quit, and I did. he tested me later for nicotine in my blood.

This is not something you just demand and get. If as an insistent adult living as a woman cannot immediately get a prescription while being completely stubborn and even angry as fuck, you are not going to get some angry parent or child bully a medical professional into something they could lose their license for. No medical board or court is going to entertain a complaint the doctor did not prescribe hormone blockers to a pushy parent. What they will do is take away the license oft a doctor and punish them for giving a prescription to a child or adult against their wishes or without going down the proper checklist of signs of gender dysphoria. I do not give a fuck how liberal you think they are, no one risks their medical license for such a profitless scam of abusing someone.

Also what they are trained to do is to talk people down out of manic episodes and gather the proper information so they do not harm the patient. They want the patient to trust them and come back to them if they are serious. You are going to lose the patient if you do not address why they are feeling that way. You are going to be in legal trouble if you go too far and you will; lose patients if you are transphobic. From what I understand the medical industry is somewhat lenient to transphobia as they will not require a transphobic doctor to prescribe medicine they feel is going to harm the patient. So a doctor who has a bias against HRT for people is going to be somewhat protected by their oath to do no harm, and the philosophy that they have a defense for not prescribing medication if they do not like it.

 

For @The Ghost of Crazy Horse here is a joe rogan video you may have seen and why it misses the point.


I will agree with the idea that there is a group on the left that has become so defensive they attack anyone on an academic level who wants to discuss this issue. The problem is so many people do not want to discuss this on an academic level with science, but rather want to get some talking points from science to use to attack anyone who says they are trans and misgender them. These people like Joe and the person he is talking with do not recognize they are pulling these anti-trans objections into the mix and trying to use science which has already addressed these false views to attack the community for an issue that is not effecting you. Some dude taking HRT to become a woman is not your issue. The medical field has licensing and liability which forces a doctor to make a proper diagnosis and not just hand out drugs based on request.

The next problem is that the woman talking about the issue is confusing physical gender with psychological and social gender. She is conflating nature and nurture with each other. There is a social and psychological gender construct, which she outright denies. Nothing in your DNA makes you want to wear a skirt, dress, or love pink because you are a girl. That is purely a learned part of gender conformity. Gender conformity would seem to have some form of physical manifestation which has not yet been fully identify. There are theories why girls and boys chose to accept the gender norms dictated by society as who they are. There is a realm of that acceptance and opposition to the gender norms of society where there is a gender spectrum. If you want to eliminate the gender spectrum for physical characteristics you might be able to do that, but even then people develop differently in a physical sense and some people are physically intersexed.

The fact that Joe cannot address any of this as an interviewer for what is a woman promoting her book that does not seem to address any of what she is saying shows this is a softball issue. I would love to see this woman come up against a dr. mike or ana kasparian who would blow her opinion book away with some actual decent medical opposition. In this case Joe is way out of his lane addressing issues he really should not be talking about because he has no idea what to ask and how to ask it. This shows he is neither a good journalist or educated in medicine.

 

“He’s arguing in bad faith.” Just so you know, I haven’t the poll question. I also didn’t make the poll public for a reason. At this point, I’m asking and answering questions. I don’t have kids or have any skin in the game. I do have a general belief that maybe we shouldn’t be subjecting children to this shit, but for @Nova, who also isn’t a scientist by the way, to come in and just shut down debate is fucked up and a giant load of bullshit.

 

We can’t do X because kids will commit suicide is not a good argument.

 

No.

 

100 years ago I wasn’t alive so...

 

Nobody is asking you to be a doctor. You are a parent though and I know you love your children. I also know you know it doesn’t just end with hormone blockers. I also know you’re a dirty hippie so you’re probably not the right person to ask this, but do you need to make decisions for your children as a parent because you know they can’t make them on their own because they’re too young to make those decisions?

 

Straw man.

 

You do understand we already force gender normality on our children? So we are just taking away a child's choice of what gender normality they want to participate in. Since reproduction is a tiny small amount of our gender normality when we consider how we genderize everything, that is barely even an issue with the choice.

 

Isn't that the supposed argument against giving hormone blockers? If you say it damages a kid and will harm them later in life that is really saying you will cause psychological problems that lead to self harm.

In the end the facts are that by giving a child publerty blockers and hormone therapy we actually help millions of kids from self harming and committing suicide. It is actually so much more harmful to trans kids to not give them an ability to express and affirm their proper gender. No one is actually forcing kids to be a gender they are not aside from the people who want to stop trans kids from being the right gender.