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In specific to trans identity, I would need to look up some figures, and I doubt there's a ton of modern research out yet. A good research project on this would

In specific to trans identity, I would need to look up some figures, and I doubt there's a ton of modern research out yet. A good research project on this would track not the instances of transitioning, but the percentages of people who transition who later regret doing so. Affirmative care does drastically and pretty irrefutably reduce the risk of suicide in trans/gender-questioning youth, but that's not exactly what you're asking about, you're asking specifically about whether affirmation and respect will decrease regrets about future transitioning. With trans kids, that's tricky to get data on today, because we kind of have to wait for them to get older to find out if they have regrets. However, this philosophy is consistent with how we approach many other topics with kids. There's a reason why psychologists offer guarantees of confidentiality, because we've learned that when people don't feel safe talking about an issue they're having, they don't talk about it. This is also the philosophy behind ending the war on drugs, it's the philosophy behind modern approaches to sex education. We are focused on management and education, not repression. We can also point back towards the debates about gay conversion therapy and look at some of those stats. Gay identity can follow a similar trajectory to trans identity; not everyone who thinks they're gay as a kid identifies as gay when they're older, and vice-versa. Discovering a sexual orientation can be a deeply confusing process. However, we have generally accepted that affirmative counseling for children who are experiencing distress over their sexual orientation is more helpful than conversion therapy or locking down the conversation. It is likely that trans children will have similar experiences. Trans kids will not stop questioning their gender identity just because they're told to. But if that questioning is happening in complete isolation, then how are they supposed to make educated decisions about any of this? In particular, a child who is wondering what they would feel like using girl/boy pronouns may simply burn with curiosity, rather than trying out the identity and genuinely discovering whether or not it fits them. As a somewhat over-simplistic analogy, a child who is convinced that they want to play the piano might take lessons for a while and then decide that they don't like playing the piano. Or they might decide that they love piano, and they might go out and buy their own keyboard. Either outcome is fine. But regardless of what they choose, the early lessons will have better-equipped them to make that decision.

btilly 5y ago
Affirmative care does drastically and pretty irrefutably reduce the risk of suicide in trans/gender-questioning youth, but that's not exactly what you're asking about, you're asking specifically about whether affirmation and respect will decrease regrets about future transitioning. No, that is NOT what I'm asking about. What I'm asking for data on is whether efforts to accommodate teens in their requests is more likely to lead to them being satisfied with what they have received, or more likely to make more extreme requests. The specific example is whether accommodations such as offering teens a choice of pronouns, along with messages about accepting their transgender nature, whatever that might be, makes the teens more or less likely to seek gender reassignment surgery.
- danShumway 5y ago
  > The specific example is whether accommodations such as offering teens a choice of pronouns, along with messages about accepting their transgender nature, whatever that might be, makes the teens more or less likely to seek gender reassignment surgery. Then I'm a little bit confused at your question. I suppose my prior is that acceptance of trans identity will probably lead to more people coming out and more people seeking gender reassignment surgery. I don't know that for certain (again, we don't really have studies about this in the long term yet), but again, we can look at other situations (gay rights, acceptance of left-handedness, ADHD, etc...) and based on how those movements have gone, it's pretty reasonable to conclude that the more people feel comfortable expressing their gender identity, the more people will decide to express their gender identity, including (sometimes) through surgery. However, that is a meaningless thing to worry about unless you believe that gender reassignment surgery is inherently bad, which... it's not. We don't care whether gender reassignment surgeries become more common, we care about people making mistakes and regretting their surgeries. So the only statistics worth measuring here are the outcomes of people who choose to have surgery or choose to avoid surgery. We want to know whether as adults they feel they made the right choice. Lowering the number of surgeries is not a metric we should be optimizing for. Improving outcomes and avoiding post-surgery regret is the metric we care about. I guess to answer your specific question, I suspect that acceptance of transgender identities will probably lead to more people coming out as trans, and will probably lead to more surgery. But that has nothing to do with the question of whether or not affirmation is good for kids and whether it helps them make more educated decisions about their identity in the future. Having more trans-identifying people isn't a bad outcome unless those people are unhappy with their identity. > The specific example is whether accommodations such as offering teens a choice of pronouns, along with messages about accepting their transgender nature, whatever that might be, makes the teens more or less likely to seek gender reassignment surgery. So I don't understand why this is a question that anyone anywhere would care about, unless your insinuation is that your goal is to minimize the number of transgender people overall. Do you care if your kid has regrets about the decisions they end up making about their body once they reach adulthood? Or do you care whether your kid is trans? Because those two concerns are completely orthogonal to each other.

btilly 5y ago

Affirmative care does drastically and pretty irrefutably reduce the risk of suicide in trans/gender-questioning youth, but that's not exactly what you're asking about, you're asking specifically about whether affirmation and respect will decrease regrets about future transitioning. No, that is NOT what I'm asking about. What I'm asking for data on is whether efforts to accommodate teens in their requests is more likely to lead to them being satisfied with what they have received, or more likely to make more extreme requests. The specific example is whether accommodations such as offering teens a choice of pronouns, along with messages about accepting their transgender nature, whatever that might be, makes the teens more or less likely to seek gender reassignment surgery.

danShumway 5y ago
> The specific example is whether accommodations such as offering teens a choice of pronouns, along with messages about accepting their transgender nature, whatever that might be, makes the teens more or less likely to seek gender reassignment surgery. Then I'm a little bit confused at your question. I suppose my prior is that acceptance of trans identity will probably lead to more people coming out and more people seeking gender reassignment surgery. I don't know that for certain (again, we don't really have studies about this in the long term yet), but again, we can look at other situations (gay rights, acceptance of left-handedness, ADHD, etc...) and based on how those movements have gone, it's pretty reasonable to conclude that the more people feel comfortable expressing their gender identity, the more people will decide to express their gender identity, including (sometimes) through surgery. However, that is a meaningless thing to worry about unless you believe that gender reassignment surgery is inherently bad, which... it's not. We don't care whether gender reassignment surgeries become more common, we care about people making mistakes and regretting their surgeries. So the only statistics worth measuring here are the outcomes of people who choose to have surgery or choose to avoid surgery. We want to know whether as adults they feel they made the right choice. Lowering the number of surgeries is not a metric we should be optimizing for. Improving outcomes and avoiding post-surgery regret is the metric we care about. I guess to answer your specific question, I suspect that acceptance of transgender identities will probably lead to more people coming out as trans, and will probably lead to more surgery. But that has nothing to do with the question of whether or not affirmation is good for kids and whether it helps them make more educated decisions about their identity in the future. Having more trans-identifying people isn't a bad outcome unless those people are unhappy with their identity. > The specific example is whether accommodations such as offering teens a choice of pronouns, along with messages about accepting their transgender nature, whatever that might be, makes the teens more or less likely to seek gender reassignment surgery. So I don't understand why this is a question that anyone anywhere would care about, unless your insinuation is that your goal is to minimize the number of transgender people overall. Do you care if your kid has regrets about the decisions they end up making about their body once they reach adulthood? Or do you care whether your kid is trans? Because those two concerns are completely orthogonal to each other.