8 ms·

How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired

58 points by giaour 11y ago

Cyph0n 11y ago
This is silly. Young children are essentially genderless. If they express gender issues, work on it using therapy to find what the cause is. I don't see the need to make them crossdress etc. at such a young age.
- viraptor 11y ago
  The cause may be though that they just feel that way. I remember that since the beginning of the primary school there was a boy who pretty much perfectly integrated with girls. The clothes were the only difference from the outside. He explicitly identified himself as a girl. And that was from the age of 9 until 16 (if I count the years correctly...). He was very far from genderless. Actually now that I remember it, it was so plain / obvious / natural that (as far as I'm aware) none of the kids picked on him about that - and kids picked on almost anyone for any reason.
  - Cyph0n 11y ago
    Did he have any brothers? I also recall people I studied with behaving like that because they only had sisters to play with.
    - viraptor 11y ago
      I believe he was a single child, but that was a long time ago...
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  > Young children are essentially genderless. Children know what gender they are and learn gender norms from a young age, in fact. > If they express gender issues, work on it using therapy to find what the cause is. I don't see the need to make them crossdress etc. at such a young age. Nobody is being forced to "cross dress" (I put this in quotes, since I would argue the term doesn't really fit in the context of trans children). This is something kids do for themselves, along with expressing such thoughts as what gender they are, what toys they prefer to play with, what other kids they like playing with. And then people like Zucker tell them they mustn't, because it puts them "at risk of homosexuality or transsexuality" (this is me paraphrasing, but it's very close to what he's said), instruct their parents to force them not to, and they end up with psychological issues for the rest of their life.
koralatov 11y ago
I've written and rewritten a comment for this thread several times now, but every time I get close to posting it, I feel obliged to go back and revise it. The simple truth is that, given how toxic and charged a lot of the activism is around this topic, I don't feel able to make any kind of substantive comment that won't be misinterpreted, deliberately or otherwise, and used to pillior me.
- justinpombrio 11y ago
  Let me try. I frankly find it bizarre that so many things -- colors, clothes, toys, certain behaviors -- that should have nothing to do with gender are associated with gender. Why are toy isles even gendered? Why does everything for girls have to be pink? The kids wouldn't care if the adults hadn't already hoisted the distinction on them. I feel like, if we got rid of all these false associations, the difference between genders would be minimal, and that would make the sorts of problems discussed in the article a lot more manageable. Or are all of these just distractions, and am I missing the point entirely?
  - HarrietJones 11y ago
    Well - Yes and No. My view on this is you have both gender identity and gender expression. Gender identity is very important to people and (to a lesser degree, children), but it's (mostly) invisible. We even hide our most obvious sexual characteristics. For this and possibly other reasons, gender identifiers are important. It's important that we (cis and trans both) can hold the magical tchotchke of womanhood and wave it about so that other people know what we are. If it wasn't important that people knew what we are we wouldn't spend a fortune on dresses and makeup. How that gender identity is defined isn't important. What is important is that it is defined. I'd argue that as long as it doesn't impact on a persons life choices then we should have things for boys and things for girls. So - Javascript is for Boys is a bad implementation of Gender Identity. Pink is for Girls is actually a great expression of Gender Identity. (As it doesn't affect career, or ease of getting dressed or anything that may otherwise societally affect women). Of course this whole conversation is full of mentalists shouting at each other, so we're never going to be able to work out the best way of allowing gender fluidity in children or for trans people to live in the world without being labelled as mentally ill.
bruceb 11y ago
"In 2016, there’s fairly solid agreement about the proper course of treatment for otherwise healthy, stable young people who have persistent gender dysphoria, and who are either approaching puberty or older than that: You help them transition to their true gender. The process is different from person to person, but for an 11-year-old, it might include a round of puberty-blocking hormones to prevent the development of secondary sex characteristics and buy time to figure out the best course of transition, followed by the administration of male or female hormones, and, later on, possibly sex-reassignment surgery or surgeries." Giving an 11 year-old hormones...
- vidarh 11y ago
  Your point being? In this case it is hormone blockers that delay the onset of puberty, to essentially "buy time" until the patient can competently make a decision on more invasive transitioning. This is reversible (just stop taking the drugs), and for young people with gender dysphoria, the onset of puberty can be extremely traumatic and often triggers a range of sometimes severely self-destructive behaviour, and so delaying puberty is for many seen as by far the safest and best option.
  - personjerry 11y ago
    I feel like "reversible" is a generous term for hormone therapies. And additionally, I suspect that puberty and its associated natural hormones is a big part of what allows a teen to feel comfortable.
    - andrelaszlo 11y ago
      "I suspect that puberty and its associated natural hormones is a big part of what allows a teen to feel comfortable" Sorry but I couldn't help laughing out loud. I do not share your suspicion. You probably meant that the hormones makes you feel more comfortable with your gender identity (is there research on this?), but it looks like a general comment about how comfortable teens are with their raging hormones.
    - vidarh 11y ago
jkot 11y ago
This is just disgusting child abuse. Way too many children after this 'treatment' commit suicide.
- fidget 11y ago
  Way too many children with gender dysphoria commit suicide
jlebrech 11y ago
You can't give children counselling, you just have to give them the meds and convert them into the gender they want to be. There's no balance, in some cases it could be psychological and a hormone imbalance (of the childs current gender) In a few years they'll flip flop in the other direction, when children will be denied reassignment, and it'll start all over again. Also this could be dangerous to some in adult life, like telling a partner you used to be a boy as a child.
- 2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
  There was a story on the BBC podcast Analysis, about a UK politician who while helping a transgendered teen, tried to get reassignment treatment funded through NHS. The LGBT group protested. Apparently according to their research the majority of children who feel they are transgender realise they are actually gay.
  - vidarh 11y ago
    This sounds odd to me. The NHS has an extensive programme of treatments, including full reassignment: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Gender-dysphoria/Pages/Treatment.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Gender-dysphoria/Pages/Treatmen... What they certainly would have refused would be to start reassignment if said teen was not yet 18 and/or had not yet undergone the full evaluation and started socially transitioning, and this is in part for medical reasons, in part because it certainly is true that many children with gender dysphoria eventually come to decide they don't want to transition, either because the gender dyphoria resolves or because they don't feel they need to change physically.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
      I scrolled through the podcast episodes and can't find it. I stand by the 2nd paragraph though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria_in_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria_in_children Gender identity disorder in children is more heavily linked with adult homosexuality than adult transsexualism. According to limited studies, the majority of children diagnosed with GID cease to desire to be the other sex by puberty, with most growing up to identify as gay or lesbian with or without therapeutic intervention.[5][6]
SeanDav 11y ago
I can't help thinking that there really is a large element of adults applying adult values to children here. > "...research suggests that most gender-dysphoric kids will, in the long run, end up identifying as cisgender." If this really is true, then the approach offered by Dr Zucker makes far more sense to me - to allow the child to make up his/her own mind over time and provide an understanding and sympathetic environment to do it in, rather than immediately treating the child as the opposite sex the moment they express doubt at age 5.
- vidarh 11y ago
  While I tend to agree, note that a child is not diagnosed with gender dysphoria the "moment they express doubt". It takes extensive evaluation that takes into account persistent and insistent behaviour over time to give that diagnosis. Depending on country, it can take years before that diagnosis is given, but even the most gung-ho people in that article have far more stringent critria than "expressing doubt".
- makomk 11y ago
  Allowing the child to make up their own mind is almost exactly not the approach offered by Dr Zucker. His approach involved telling parents to prevent their kids from playing with toys of the "wrong" gender and making friends with other kids of the "wrong" gender in an attempt to make sure they grow up the right gender. That's why activists call it conversion therapy. This is what the article means when it says that: "That’s because the authors believe that messages from family, peers, and society do a huge amount of the work of helping form, reinforce, and solidify gender identities, and that at young ages these identities tend to be quite malleable. There’s great potential for confusion. A young boy might notice his new baby sister getting more attention than he is, and start dressing like a girl in a bid to be noticed. His parents, not knowing what to do, might go along with this, inadvertently reinforcing the notion that he’s a girl — a notion which, according to the GIC model, probably doesn’t come from a deep-seated kernel of gender identity, but rather mostly from social reinforcement and family dynamics." His position - what he told parents coming to his clinic for help - is that if parents don't do everything they can to dissuade young kids from acting in gender-inappropriate ways, to make sure they wear the right clothes and play with the right toys and socialise with the right gender of other kids, they'll turn their kids trans. This is the point of dispute, and he's way outside of the scientific consensus here. All the stuff about the adolescent he may or may not have mocked is a red herring - I've followed this issue, and literally the only place I've heard it mentioned is articles defending Zucker.
xupybd 11y ago
There is a huge problem when activists care more about their cause than the truth.
- personjerry 11y ago
  I think this is true, and additionally I believe that we should promote understanding and acceptance rather than "pushing" for "one cause over another". Even worse, I worry about people who twist the community and goals to their own ends (some examples show up at times on reddit's TumblrInAction), but I understand that this is probably a minority. At the same time, I can't help but feel like there is a small, growing hostility towards cisgendered people...
  - xupybd 11y ago
    That aside a man who was an expert in his field appears to have been pushed out, because his medical and professional views were not tolerated. The medical industry is one very important part of society. We should do our best to ensure it is a meritocracy. Political agendas often miss the forest for the trees right or wrong this man's expert option should be subject to the test of science, not the wrath of zealots that often believe they cannot be in error. I suspect many believe their own experience is enough to prove them correct, however anecdotal evidence may not represent the truth for the entire population. Better to let medical research stand or fall on its own merits.
    - makomk 11y ago
      Oh, there's definitely politicisation going on here, but I don't think it's on the side you're claiming it is. For example, this article says that "Some trans activists have howled at this claim — they believe that desistance is a transphobic myth entirely", linking to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/the-end-of-the-desistance_b_8903690.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/the-end-of-the... Now let's have a look at that article: "For starters, 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." Yowch. That's some seriously dodgy science there - almost half the subjects lost to follow-up, assigning a particular outcome to the drop-outs, questionable selection criteria... And the NY Mag completely ignores the actual methodological issues, instead dismissing them as ideological complaining from trans activists. This is pretty sleazy too: "they just haven’t come up with scientifically convincing explanations for why the studies would all be wrong, and all in the same way". The studies in question took a group of people who met some definition of gender variance and looked at how many transitioned. The more strict the definition they used, the higher the proportion that transitioned - and the NY Mag are arguing that the studies showing the highest proportion of non-transitioners are right and indisputable because all the studies showed some positive proportion of non-transitioners, which is the only thing they could show.
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kyrre 11y ago
lets pump your 10 year old full of hormones so you can signal how liberal and tolerant you are on facebook. this all makes me incredibly sad.
- vidarh 11y ago
  Noone are pumping 10 year olds full of hormones for the parents sake. Children that have undergone lenghty consultations and therapy are sometimes given puberty-delaying hormone-blockers because the medical evidence is that it substantially reduces emotional and behavioural problems and depression to delay onset until the child matures further mentally and emotionally and is in a better place to decide whether to transition or not.
throwaway-09876 11y ago
I'm a regular poster on HN. I have decided not to use my usual account, because this topic is toxic and breeds hatred. I am now in my forties, married with children. I am now coming slowly to accept that I am trans. It is a hard and troubling realisation. It is (without doubt) a curse in today's (western) society. I'm also starting to realise that there are different kinds of transgendered people [1]. I have also come to realise that gender is not necessarily fixed, and it spans a range. It is not a surprise that our society struggles to accept this, since people only outwardly see two fixed biological sexes from birth. Deviations from the norm are always the subject of derision in society. Brain gender and physical sex do not always match. Gender and sexuality are also different. Many people confuse these two. I like the existing methods for dealing with gender-dysphoric children. Delay puberty because it is extremely traumatic (from personal experience). Then wait and see which gender starts to settle. We don't want our children to make mistakes they regret, nor end up forced into a gender that ends up damaging their entire lives. However, it is incredibly important that children are not forced to be cisgender when they are not, no more than cisgendered children who have a fleeting period of trans-esque feelings be forced into being trans for the rest of their lives. We need to get it right, otherwise you end up with secretly trans people in their forties with children and a partners who have their lives turned upside down, because something that should have been dealt with 25 years ago was brushed under the carpet. My gut feeling is that there are a lot more transgendered people out there than we realise. Many of them sit in their "assigned at birth genders", having their souls ripped in two, because they are forced to live with a shameful secret. [1] http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Zucker is not the victim of misguided activism. He was fired because, simply, he wasn't doing his job, which is to provide (evidence-based) medical treatment for trans people, not peddle pseudo-scientific conversion therapy. If he'd done to adults what he did to kids, maybe he'd have been gone sooner.
- xupybd 11y ago
  From that article it did not seem to be the case? Is there any evidence that he was not practicing evidence-based medical treatments?
  - mcv 11y ago
    That's certainly my impression too. The article sounded like he had evidence on his side, and the activists distorted some of the events. Then again, this is only one article. Maybe the article itself is biased. There's really no good way for us to be sure. Though to me, the story sounds reasonable, and the actions of everybody involved sound understandable from their viewpoint (even when it is misguided).
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      The article is indeed biased. A good example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11064927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11064927 It claims there is "strong evidence", but doesn't point to it, and dismisses most of the evidence against Zucker.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    From what I know of it, Zucker's own report on patient outcomes doesn't come out showing much success, but I can't read it as I lack access to paid journals. There's also been published criticism of CAMH's practices. More to the point, why would Zucker persist with his own method when there actually is evidence for the conventional approach?
ousta 11y ago
frankly. This is sick. this sickens me like nothing before. it is a new form of circumcision, sicks parents butchering the minds and the bodies of their children. drugs? making them wear clothes of girls while they are boys? JUST like for Religion we should leave the kids being kids and deal with the sexuality and "gender" issues when they will be able to articulate a self thought after their adolescence and when they have enough awareness of the world to rebel against their sick parents.
threatofrain 11y ago
I have difficulty seeing why gender is such a solid and psychologically important concept, as opposed to sex. Gender is the social layer of meaning attached to sex, while sex is a biological construct. Do males really need a sex change just to play with barbie dolls? Do females need really need to think about sex change just do play with "action figures"? That's an extreme change to make just so you can fit into social roles. Why not just create your own personal identity that involves being female and doing male-typical activities, or vice versa? Hollywood plays with gender expectations all the time, and while there are certainly still gender norms, the lines aren't so clear anymore, and society has adopted the appetite to continually challenge gender norms. And there are barriers that far surpass gender, like the barrier of money. Most men and women don't travel much because of money. Because of your racial identity, you can't easily penetrate any social circle you wish; it's hard to be an anthropological spy.
- kbenson 11y ago
  > Do males really need a sex change just to play with barbie dolls? Do females need really need to think about sex change just do play with "action figures"? That's an extreme change to make just so you can fit into social roles. I doubt we would be having this discussion if it was just about playing with culturally acceptable gender relative toys. I suspect, because of what I've heard and read, that feeling like your body does not match your mind, is traumatic and troubling. Additionally I suspect that without having experienced this feeling, it can be hard for those of us to understand quite what it feels like. As such, this is probably a good time to error on the side of caution, and accept that some people may have vastly different experiences from the norm, and we should support them where possible. > And there are barriers that far surpass gender, like the barrier of money. Do you have anything to back up that it's a bigger barrier? Keep in mind, we aren't talking just about gender, but whether you feel comfortable in your current gender. I can imagine not feeling comfortable with my own body being quite an issue, and overwhelming a lot of other problems I might have.
mcv 11y ago
Sad to see how many comments here completely miss the complex nuance of this issue, and just project their own prejudices and preferences on this. Just like the activists in the story, apparently.
maxblackwood 11y ago
ITT: No one who understands or even cares to research gender dysphoria.
apta 11y ago
I would postulate that this is because of the decline of family values and traditional roles in Western countries. With problems due to what is known as feminism, SWJs and the like, everything is being watered down and wishy washy. Leonard Sax has talked about some important social topics in today's Western society. The media now influences how kids are raised, and how they see their parents. The influence of parents over their kids is gone in the name of liberalism and open-mindedness. The family unit is being broken down, and we are already seeing the consequences of that.
- glass55 11y ago
  > the decline of family values and traditional roles in Western countries > With problems due to what is known as feminism, SWJs and the like, everything is being watered down and wishy washy. Rad-fems are loud but they don't run the show. Corporations, Brands do. Corporation and Brands want to make more money. In order to do that, they need to find new segments of the population they will sell stuff to (stuff that are less and less useful). Yesterday the "traditional christian white family" got that new fridge or car like in the ad, today gays get this or that product from brand X. Tomorrow Brands will target Trans, Muslims or whatever but in order to do that and not piss off old customers they need to control the narrative thus social influence. Is that bad? that's just how things are. Rad-fems, SJW and co are a fad and a tool,they are working for corporations for free. Proof is they don't question the foundations of modern western societies. They are narcissistic. Brands and corporations need them in order to sell more stuff, period. Basically changes in modern western society are directly related to capitalism and the consumer society. They are not really driven by ideology anymore. Ideologues are just puppets. Watch that whole "islamophobia" finger pointing thing for instance. I bet a few years from now most brands will sell hijabs. They can't today because they'd risk a consumer backlash. edit: sorry for my broken english.
  - apta 11y ago
    Yeah, capitalism plays a big role as well. The focus on money without caring about morals or responsibilities seems to also play a role in the breaking up of the family unit, which in turn is producing more "liberal/open minded" likes. I wonder if anybody stopped to think about how much "gender dysphoria" was an issue in previous societies. It seems to be purely a modern mental illness. I'm not talking about actual hormonal and physical issues such as hermaphroditism, that's something else.

58 points by giaour 11y ago

This is silly. Young children are essentially genderless. If they express gender issues, work on it using therapy to find what the cause is. I don't see the need to make them crossdress etc. at such a young age.

viraptor 11y ago
The cause may be though that they just feel that way. I remember that since the beginning of the primary school there was a boy who pretty much perfectly integrated with girls. The clothes were the only difference from the outside. He explicitly identified himself as a girl. And that was from the age of 9 until 16 (if I count the years correctly...). He was very far from genderless. Actually now that I remember it, it was so plain / obvious / natural that (as far as I'm aware) none of the kids picked on him about that - and kids picked on almost anyone for any reason.
- Cyph0n 11y ago
  Did he have any brothers? I also recall people I studied with behaving like that because they only had sisters to play with.
  - viraptor 11y ago
    I believe he was a single child, but that was a long time ago...
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
> Young children are essentially genderless. Children know what gender they are and learn gender norms from a young age, in fact. > If they express gender issues, work on it using therapy to find what the cause is. I don't see the need to make them crossdress etc. at such a young age. Nobody is being forced to "cross dress" (I put this in quotes, since I would argue the term doesn't really fit in the context of trans children). This is something kids do for themselves, along with expressing such thoughts as what gender they are, what toys they prefer to play with, what other kids they like playing with. And then people like Zucker tell them they mustn't, because it puts them "at risk of homosexuality or transsexuality" (this is me paraphrasing, but it's very close to what he's said), instruct their parents to force them not to, and they end up with psychological issues for the rest of their life.

koralatov 11y ago

I've written and rewritten a comment for this thread several times now, but every time I get close to posting it, I feel obliged to go back and revise it. The simple truth is that, given how toxic and charged a lot of the activism is around this topic, I don't feel able to make any kind of substantive comment that won't be misinterpreted, deliberately or otherwise, and used to pillior me.

justinpombrio 11y ago
Let me try. I frankly find it bizarre that so many things -- colors, clothes, toys, certain behaviors -- that should have nothing to do with gender are associated with gender. Why are toy isles even gendered? Why does everything for girls have to be pink? The kids wouldn't care if the adults hadn't already hoisted the distinction on them. I feel like, if we got rid of all these false associations, the difference between genders would be minimal, and that would make the sorts of problems discussed in the article a lot more manageable. Or are all of these just distractions, and am I missing the point entirely?
- HarrietJones 11y ago
  Well - Yes and No. My view on this is you have both gender identity and gender expression. Gender identity is very important to people and (to a lesser degree, children), but it's (mostly) invisible. We even hide our most obvious sexual characteristics. For this and possibly other reasons, gender identifiers are important. It's important that we (cis and trans both) can hold the magical tchotchke of womanhood and wave it about so that other people know what we are. If it wasn't important that people knew what we are we wouldn't spend a fortune on dresses and makeup. How that gender identity is defined isn't important. What is important is that it is defined. I'd argue that as long as it doesn't impact on a persons life choices then we should have things for boys and things for girls. So - Javascript is for Boys is a bad implementation of Gender Identity. Pink is for Girls is actually a great expression of Gender Identity. (As it doesn't affect career, or ease of getting dressed or anything that may otherwise societally affect women). Of course this whole conversation is full of mentalists shouting at each other, so we're never going to be able to work out the best way of allowing gender fluidity in children or for trans people to live in the world without being labelled as mentally ill.

bruceb 11y ago

"In 2016, there’s fairly solid agreement about the proper course of treatment for otherwise healthy, stable young people who have persistent gender dysphoria, and who are either approaching puberty or older than that: You help them transition to their true gender. The process is different from person to person, but for an 11-year-old, it might include a round of puberty-blocking hormones to prevent the development of secondary sex characteristics and buy time to figure out the best course of transition, followed by the administration of male or female hormones, and, later on, possibly sex-reassignment surgery or surgeries." Giving an 11 year-old hormones...

vidarh 11y ago
Your point being? In this case it is hormone blockers that delay the onset of puberty, to essentially "buy time" until the patient can competently make a decision on more invasive transitioning. This is reversible (just stop taking the drugs), and for young people with gender dysphoria, the onset of puberty can be extremely traumatic and often triggers a range of sometimes severely self-destructive behaviour, and so delaying puberty is for many seen as by far the safest and best option.
- personjerry 11y ago
  I feel like "reversible" is a generous term for hormone therapies. And additionally, I suspect that puberty and its associated natural hormones is a big part of what allows a teen to feel comfortable.
  - andrelaszlo 11y ago
    "I suspect that puberty and its associated natural hormones is a big part of what allows a teen to feel comfortable" Sorry but I couldn't help laughing out loud. I do not share your suspicion. You probably meant that the hormones makes you feel more comfortable with your gender identity (is there research on this?), but it looks like a general comment about how comfortable teens are with their raging hormones.
  - vidarh 11y ago

jkot 11y ago

This is just disgusting child abuse. Way too many children after this 'treatment' commit suicide.

fidget 11y ago
Way too many children with gender dysphoria commit suicide

jlebrech 11y ago

You can't give children counselling, you just have to give them the meds and convert them into the gender they want to be. There's no balance, in some cases it could be psychological and a hormone imbalance (of the childs current gender) In a few years they'll flip flop in the other direction, when children will be denied reassignment, and it'll start all over again. Also this could be dangerous to some in adult life, like telling a partner you used to be a boy as a child.

2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
There was a story on the BBC podcast Analysis, about a UK politician who while helping a transgendered teen, tried to get reassignment treatment funded through NHS. The LGBT group protested. Apparently according to their research the majority of children who feel they are transgender realise they are actually gay.
- vidarh 11y ago
  This sounds odd to me. The NHS has an extensive programme of treatments, including full reassignment: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Gender-dysphoria/Pages/Treatment.aspx http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Gender-dysphoria/Pages/Treatmen... What they certainly would have refused would be to start reassignment if said teen was not yet 18 and/or had not yet undergone the full evaluation and started socially transitioning, and this is in part for medical reasons, in part because it certainly is true that many children with gender dysphoria eventually come to decide they don't want to transition, either because the gender dyphoria resolves or because they don't feel they need to change physically.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 11y ago
    I scrolled through the podcast episodes and can't find it. I stand by the 2nd paragraph though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria_in_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_dysphoria_in_children Gender identity disorder in children is more heavily linked with adult homosexuality than adult transsexualism. According to limited studies, the majority of children diagnosed with GID cease to desire to be the other sex by puberty, with most growing up to identify as gay or lesbian with or without therapeutic intervention.[5][6]

SeanDav 11y ago

I can't help thinking that there really is a large element of adults applying adult values to children here. > "...research suggests that most gender-dysphoric kids will, in the long run, end up identifying as cisgender." If this really is true, then the approach offered by Dr Zucker makes far more sense to me - to allow the child to make up his/her own mind over time and provide an understanding and sympathetic environment to do it in, rather than immediately treating the child as the opposite sex the moment they express doubt at age 5.

vidarh 11y ago
While I tend to agree, note that a child is not diagnosed with gender dysphoria the "moment they express doubt". It takes extensive evaluation that takes into account persistent and insistent behaviour over time to give that diagnosis. Depending on country, it can take years before that diagnosis is given, but even the most gung-ho people in that article have far more stringent critria than "expressing doubt".
makomk 11y ago
Allowing the child to make up their own mind is almost exactly not the approach offered by Dr Zucker. His approach involved telling parents to prevent their kids from playing with toys of the "wrong" gender and making friends with other kids of the "wrong" gender in an attempt to make sure they grow up the right gender. That's why activists call it conversion therapy. This is what the article means when it says that: "That’s because the authors believe that messages from family, peers, and society do a huge amount of the work of helping form, reinforce, and solidify gender identities, and that at young ages these identities tend to be quite malleable. There’s great potential for confusion. A young boy might notice his new baby sister getting more attention than he is, and start dressing like a girl in a bid to be noticed. His parents, not knowing what to do, might go along with this, inadvertently reinforcing the notion that he’s a girl — a notion which, according to the GIC model, probably doesn’t come from a deep-seated kernel of gender identity, but rather mostly from social reinforcement and family dynamics." His position - what he told parents coming to his clinic for help - is that if parents don't do everything they can to dissuade young kids from acting in gender-inappropriate ways, to make sure they wear the right clothes and play with the right toys and socialise with the right gender of other kids, they'll turn their kids trans. This is the point of dispute, and he's way outside of the scientific consensus here. All the stuff about the adolescent he may or may not have mocked is a red herring - I've followed this issue, and literally the only place I've heard it mentioned is articles defending Zucker.

xupybd 11y ago

There is a huge problem when activists care more about their cause than the truth.

personjerry 11y ago
I think this is true, and additionally I believe that we should promote understanding and acceptance rather than "pushing" for "one cause over another". Even worse, I worry about people who twist the community and goals to their own ends (some examples show up at times on reddit's TumblrInAction), but I understand that this is probably a minority. At the same time, I can't help but feel like there is a small, growing hostility towards cisgendered people...
- xupybd 11y ago
  That aside a man who was an expert in his field appears to have been pushed out, because his medical and professional views were not tolerated. The medical industry is one very important part of society. We should do our best to ensure it is a meritocracy. Political agendas often miss the forest for the trees right or wrong this man's expert option should be subject to the test of science, not the wrath of zealots that often believe they cannot be in error. I suspect many believe their own experience is enough to prove them correct, however anecdotal evidence may not represent the truth for the entire population. Better to let medical research stand or fall on its own merits.
  - makomk 11y ago
    Oh, there's definitely politicisation going on here, but I don't think it's on the side you're claiming it is. For example, this article says that "Some trans activists have howled at this claim — they believe that desistance is a transphobic myth entirely", linking to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/the-end-of-the-desistance_b_8903690.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/the-end-of-the... Now let's have a look at that article: "For starters, 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." Yowch. That's some seriously dodgy science there - almost half the subjects lost to follow-up, assigning a particular outcome to the drop-outs, questionable selection criteria... And the NY Mag completely ignores the actual methodological issues, instead dismissing them as ideological complaining from trans activists. This is pretty sleazy too: "they just haven’t come up with scientifically convincing explanations for why the studies would all be wrong, and all in the same way". The studies in question took a group of people who met some definition of gender variance and looked at how many transitioned. The more strict the definition they used, the higher the proportion that transitioned - and the NY Mag are arguing that the studies showing the highest proportion of non-transitioners are right and indisputable because all the studies showed some positive proportion of non-transitioners, which is the only thing they could show.

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kyrre 11y ago

lets pump your 10 year old full of hormones so you can signal how liberal and tolerant you are on facebook. this all makes me incredibly sad.

vidarh 11y ago
Noone are pumping 10 year olds full of hormones for the parents sake. Children that have undergone lenghty consultations and therapy are sometimes given puberty-delaying hormone-blockers because the medical evidence is that it substantially reduces emotional and behavioural problems and depression to delay onset until the child matures further mentally and emotionally and is in a better place to decide whether to transition or not.

throwaway-09876 11y ago

I'm a regular poster on HN. I have decided not to use my usual account, because this topic is toxic and breeds hatred. I am now in my forties, married with children. I am now coming slowly to accept that I am trans. It is a hard and troubling realisation. It is (without doubt) a curse in today's (western) society. I'm also starting to realise that there are different kinds of transgendered people [1]. I have also come to realise that gender is not necessarily fixed, and it spans a range. It is not a surprise that our society struggles to accept this, since people only outwardly see two fixed biological sexes from birth. Deviations from the norm are always the subject of derision in society. Brain gender and physical sex do not always match. Gender and sexuality are also different. Many people confuse these two. I like the existing methods for dealing with gender-dysphoric children. Delay puberty because it is extremely traumatic (from personal experience). Then wait and see which gender starts to settle. We don't want our children to make mistakes they regret, nor end up forced into a gender that ends up damaging their entire lives. However, it is incredibly important that children are not forced to be cisgender when they are not, no more than cisgendered children who have a fleeting period of trans-esque feelings be forced into being trans for the rest of their lives. We need to get it right, otherwise you end up with secretly trans people in their forties with children and a partners who have their lives turned upside down, because something that should have been dealt with 25 years ago was brushed under the carpet. My gut feeling is that there are a lot more transgendered people out there than we realise. Many of them sit in their "assigned at birth genders", having their souls ripped in two, because they are forced to live with a shameful secret. [1] http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm http://www.avitale.com/developmentalreview.htm

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

Zucker is not the victim of misguided activism. He was fired because, simply, he wasn't doing his job, which is to provide (evidence-based) medical treatment for trans people, not peddle pseudo-scientific conversion therapy. If he'd done to adults what he did to kids, maybe he'd have been gone sooner.

xupybd 11y ago
From that article it did not seem to be the case? Is there any evidence that he was not practicing evidence-based medical treatments?
- mcv 11y ago
  That's certainly my impression too. The article sounded like he had evidence on his side, and the activists distorted some of the events. Then again, this is only one article. Maybe the article itself is biased. There's really no good way for us to be sure. Though to me, the story sounds reasonable, and the actions of everybody involved sound understandable from their viewpoint (even when it is misguided).
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    The article is indeed biased. A good example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11064927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11064927 It claims there is "strong evidence", but doesn't point to it, and dismisses most of the evidence against Zucker.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  From what I know of it, Zucker's own report on patient outcomes doesn't come out showing much success, but I can't read it as I lack access to paid journals. There's also been published criticism of CAMH's practices. More to the point, why would Zucker persist with his own method when there actually is evidence for the conventional approach?

ousta 11y ago

frankly. This is sick. this sickens me like nothing before. it is a new form of circumcision, sicks parents butchering the minds and the bodies of their children. drugs? making them wear clothes of girls while they are boys? JUST like for Religion we should leave the kids being kids and deal with the sexuality and "gender" issues when they will be able to articulate a self thought after their adolescence and when they have enough awareness of the world to rebel against their sick parents.

threatofrain 11y ago

I have difficulty seeing why gender is such a solid and psychologically important concept, as opposed to sex. Gender is the social layer of meaning attached to sex, while sex is a biological construct. Do males really need a sex change just to play with barbie dolls? Do females need really need to think about sex change just do play with "action figures"? That's an extreme change to make just so you can fit into social roles. Why not just create your own personal identity that involves being female and doing male-typical activities, or vice versa? Hollywood plays with gender expectations all the time, and while there are certainly still gender norms, the lines aren't so clear anymore, and society has adopted the appetite to continually challenge gender norms. And there are barriers that far surpass gender, like the barrier of money. Most men and women don't travel much because of money. Because of your racial identity, you can't easily penetrate any social circle you wish; it's hard to be an anthropological spy.

kbenson 11y ago
> Do males really need a sex change just to play with barbie dolls? Do females need really need to think about sex change just do play with "action figures"? That's an extreme change to make just so you can fit into social roles. I doubt we would be having this discussion if it was just about playing with culturally acceptable gender relative toys. I suspect, because of what I've heard and read, that feeling like your body does not match your mind, is traumatic and troubling. Additionally I suspect that without having experienced this feeling, it can be hard for those of us to understand quite what it feels like. As such, this is probably a good time to error on the side of caution, and accept that some people may have vastly different experiences from the norm, and we should support them where possible. > And there are barriers that far surpass gender, like the barrier of money. Do you have anything to back up that it's a bigger barrier? Keep in mind, we aren't talking just about gender, but whether you feel comfortable in your current gender. I can imagine not feeling comfortable with my own body being quite an issue, and overwhelming a lot of other problems I might have.

mcv 11y ago

Sad to see how many comments here completely miss the complex nuance of this issue, and just project their own prejudices and preferences on this. Just like the activists in the story, apparently.

maxblackwood 11y ago

ITT: No one who understands or even cares to research gender dysphoria.

apta 11y ago

I would postulate that this is because of the decline of family values and traditional roles in Western countries. With problems due to what is known as feminism, SWJs and the like, everything is being watered down and wishy washy. Leonard Sax has talked about some important social topics in today's Western society. The media now influences how kids are raised, and how they see their parents. The influence of parents over their kids is gone in the name of liberalism and open-mindedness. The family unit is being broken down, and we are already seeing the consequences of that.

glass55 11y ago
> the decline of family values and traditional roles in Western countries > With problems due to what is known as feminism, SWJs and the like, everything is being watered down and wishy washy. Rad-fems are loud but they don't run the show. Corporations, Brands do. Corporation and Brands want to make more money. In order to do that, they need to find new segments of the population they will sell stuff to (stuff that are less and less useful). Yesterday the "traditional christian white family" got that new fridge or car like in the ad, today gays get this or that product from brand X. Tomorrow Brands will target Trans, Muslims or whatever but in order to do that and not piss off old customers they need to control the narrative thus social influence. Is that bad? that's just how things are. Rad-fems, SJW and co are a fad and a tool,they are working for corporations for free. Proof is they don't question the foundations of modern western societies. They are narcissistic. Brands and corporations need them in order to sell more stuff, period. Basically changes in modern western society are directly related to capitalism and the consumer society. They are not really driven by ideology anymore. Ideologues are just puppets. Watch that whole "islamophobia" finger pointing thing for instance. I bet a few years from now most brands will sell hijabs. They can't today because they'd risk a consumer backlash. edit: sorry for my broken english.
- apta 11y ago
  Yeah, capitalism plays a big role as well. The focus on money without caring about morals or responsibilities seems to also play a role in the breaking up of the family unit, which in turn is producing more "liberal/open minded" likes. I wonder if anybody stopped to think about how much "gender dysphoria" was an issue in previous societies. It seems to be purely a modern mental illness. I'm not talking about actual hormonal and physical issues such as hermaphroditism, that's something else.