4 ms·

> undergo their AGAB puberty against their will It's also weird mental gymnastics like this that people are pushing against. For anyone who is not familiar wit

> undergo their AGAB puberty against their will It's also weird mental gymnastics like this that people are pushing against. For anyone who is not familiar with the acronym, AGAB means "Assigned Gender At Birth", and is push back against the fact that we broadly lump all people into either the male / female camp when they are born. It can be useful when talking about gender norms, etc – which are discussions worth having. But when you start to move into the region of "biological sex is unimportant" it takes on an entirely different slant. "AGAB puberty" is an oxymoronic statement. If the gender was merely "assigned" to them, then why is their body naturally going through puberty in a certain direction. It's not their AGAB, it's their biological sex. We are not saying "this is a boy" and then giving them testosterone when they hit 12 so that they match their "assigned" gender. Their body is the body of a boy which naturally produces (much) more testosterone (and other obvious hormonal and physical differences) than that of what we broadly call a girl. Nobody is FORCING anything – that is just something our bodies do naturally because we are a sexually reproducing species of mammal so our DNA causes us to split broadly into male and female.

nyanpasu64 4y ago
Denying puberty blockers, which are easily produced, known to be acceptably safe, and can prevent physical changes, is forcing teens through a harmful puberty against their will.
- concordDance 4y ago
  That's besides the point the parent is making.
- JetSetWilly 4y ago
  Allowing puberty blockers, allows children to make uninformed decisions with lasting and harmful consequences to their own body and future. That's why this issue has went to various courts, ascending the hierarchy, in England where it has been found illegal, legal etc. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_v_Tavistock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_v_Tavistock and think how Keira Bell is likely to feel about your simplistic "it is safe" comments. It is a complex issue and perfectly OK to be on one side or the other - what's not OK is pretending that only one side is right and the other is evil and abandoning all nuance - that seems to be the trans activist way tho.
  - matthewmacleod 4y ago
    It’s a bit silly that you’ve essentially written here “abandoning all nuance is bad, that’s what the other side does!” This is ironic of course, since you’ve ignored the nuance that the Keira Bell case was specifically regarding the ability of children under the age of 16 to consent to this treatment themselves. It does not question the lawfulness of the treatment or guidance itself, and it has been clearly established that parents or guardians can give consent. I have absolute sympathy with Keira Bell and the struggles she has gone through, but it seems clear we should want to avoid using the legal system to intervene in clinical decision making to the greatest extent possible. For the record though, I disagree with you - I don’t think it’s a particularly complex issue. It has certainly been ratcheted into a hot-button culture-war topic by quite a lot of ignorance and deliberate muddying of the waters though, which can have the effect of making things seem more complex than they really are. You’ve just done this yourself—even if unintentionally—in your comment.
    - fastball 4y ago
      How have they ignored the nuance of the Keira Bell case? > It does not question the lawfulness of the treatment or guidance itself Nobody is saying it does. The nuance is in fact what people are talking about. Many advocates for the trans community argue that under-16s should be able to choose such treatments for themselves without parental consent/oversight. The other side argues that trans issues should not be treated any differently than anything else, where generally children have limited say in medical interventions applied to them and that the responsibility is ultimately the parents'.
  - DanBC 4y ago
    Just checking you know that Kiera Bell lost.
    - fastball 4y ago
      Given as they linked the wikipedia article, it seems likely they are aware. Just because she lost on appeal does not detract from the parent's point, which is that clearly these things are not harmless otherwise there probably wouldn't be such a court case.
- NeutralCrane 4y ago
  Puberty blockers aren’t known to be safe. The FDA just issued a new series of warnings on blockers in the last month due to the severe side-effects being experienced by children on them, including brain swelling and vision loss: https://abcnews4.com/amp/news/nation-world/fda-warns-puberty-blocker-may-cause-brain-swelling-vision-loss-in-children-rachel-levine https://abcnews4.com/amp/news/nation-world/fda-warns-puberty...
kuschku 4y ago
> We are not saying "this is a boy" and then giving them testosterone when they hit 12 so that they match their "assigned" gender. That's literally what happens, especially to inter people, though. And sometimes even done for cis people if their natural hormone levels are too low, or rather their parents and doctors deem them too low (the child is never asked).
- fastball 4y ago
  We literally do not give 99% of the population any sort of hormonal treatment in order to ensure they match their "assigned gender". For the overwhelming majority of people we say "wow this looks like a boy" and that person ends up a boy with no intervention and no gender identity issues. Yes, there are intersex people and they are a special case that need to be handled differently than the rest of the population. And just "assigning" a gender to those people like we've been doing for most of medical history is probably not the right move. But the vast majority of trans people are not even intersex so injecting that into a conversation about trans issues is just muddying the waters. When we do intervene, yes, of course the child is never asked. As far as I'm aware there isn't any medication/intervention we give to children where we ask for their permission. Because they are children. One of the main reasons we distinguish between children and adults in our society is because we have decided that children do not have the mental maturity to make such decisions of large import, so we place that responsibility on parents/guardians/doctors/etc.
  - kuschku 4y ago
    What do you mean "of course"? Children have a right to take part in their own medical decisions as early as 7 years old, and teens make the majority of the decisions themselves after 14yo. If teens can get tattoos (16+), can drink alcohol (16+), can work part time jobs (14+), under conditions (12+) and can get jail time (14+), then they can just as well make at least part of their own medical decisions. Delaying permanent changes to a point in time where they can decide for themselves is the perfect solution if teens want to make such a decision, as long as it's safe (which even the cass review admits has been proven safe for AMAB people)
zo1 4y ago
- matthewmacleod 4y ago
  I just realized a lot of the pro arguments for some of these newer things like trans et al are essentially dependent on gaslighting the "rest of us". E.g. having us deny basic biology and twisting it with weird re-definitions of existing terms. I’d encourage you to check your assumptions on that realisation buddy, because it ain’t really right. The specific terms you are using there—“gaslighting”, “deny basic biology” etc.—suggest that you’re picking up some of those views from sources that are unlikely to be all that reliable or representative of reality, and way more likely to be a bad-faith representation of extreme or minority views. So don’t form your opinions based on them. In reality it’s pretty simple and I don’t think it seems particularly controversial: - People are born biologically male or female, with some exceptions and variations. - Most people also have an internal gender identity of themselves as a man or a woman, which is a bit of a fuzzy concept but seems to be something innate along the lines of sexuality. - Most of us fit pretty neatly into one of those two binary buckets in both axes and aren’t really aware of a gender identity; everything feels fine and we get on with our lives without noticing it. - Some of us don’t feel that way and there’s an incongruity between our gender identity and physical bodies. - That experience can vary a lot - some people feel themselves clearly and strongly as the opposite binary gender, and others less so. Some people are aware of not having that binary gender identity at all. Some people struggle with it, accept it easily, or feel differently about it at different times. - People will choose to deal with that incongruity in different ways. Some people will seek surgery or other medical treatment to increase their comfort in their body; others might change their name or their outward appearance. What you describe as “a lot of the pro arguments for some of these newer things like trans et al” is really about a pressure to modernise our handling of all the stuff above, along the lines of: - Generally de-medicalise “gender identity disorder”, accepting the stuff above as a natural aspect of human identity and sexuality rather than a malady to be cured. - Instead of forcing people through clinical pathways to transition allow them to explore their own identity and find their own path. - Remove the social and cultural aspects of shame and abuse faced by people, that magnify all the above struggles. Stuff like being respectful of people’s identities and trying to be generally inclusive to people who might not fit into our own personal existing notions of gender and sexuality. There are more specific issues that attract controversy - things like fair treatment in sport and appropriate support for children and young people. But “deny basic biology”? Not a thing.
matthewmacleod 4y ago
Nobody is FORCING anything – that is just something our bodies do naturally This is just a silly semantic game. Our bodies naturally do a lot of things that in some cases we’d prefer they not do. They love growing babies, or tumours, or falling apart in uncountable ways. Withholding access to an available and desired medical treatment is broadly equivalent to forcing a patient to experience the effects of whatever the treatment is intending to prevent. We are just far more likely to use the explicit term “forcing” in cases where that treatment is being withheld for ideological reasons - such as abortions or puberty inhibitors.
antifa 4y ago
> Nobody is FORCING anything Well except Texas law makers

nyanpasu64 4y ago

Denying puberty blockers, which are easily produced, known to be acceptably safe, and can prevent physical changes, is forcing teens through a harmful puberty against their will.

concordDance 4y ago
That's besides the point the parent is making.
JetSetWilly 4y ago
Allowing puberty blockers, allows children to make uninformed decisions with lasting and harmful consequences to their own body and future. That's why this issue has went to various courts, ascending the hierarchy, in England where it has been found illegal, legal etc. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_v_Tavistock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_v_Tavistock and think how Keira Bell is likely to feel about your simplistic "it is safe" comments. It is a complex issue and perfectly OK to be on one side or the other - what's not OK is pretending that only one side is right and the other is evil and abandoning all nuance - that seems to be the trans activist way tho.
- matthewmacleod 4y ago
  It’s a bit silly that you’ve essentially written here “abandoning all nuance is bad, that’s what the other side does!” This is ironic of course, since you’ve ignored the nuance that the Keira Bell case was specifically regarding the ability of children under the age of 16 to consent to this treatment themselves. It does not question the lawfulness of the treatment or guidance itself, and it has been clearly established that parents or guardians can give consent. I have absolute sympathy with Keira Bell and the struggles she has gone through, but it seems clear we should want to avoid using the legal system to intervene in clinical decision making to the greatest extent possible. For the record though, I disagree with you - I don’t think it’s a particularly complex issue. It has certainly been ratcheted into a hot-button culture-war topic by quite a lot of ignorance and deliberate muddying of the waters though, which can have the effect of making things seem more complex than they really are. You’ve just done this yourself—even if unintentionally—in your comment.
  - fastball 4y ago
    How have they ignored the nuance of the Keira Bell case? > It does not question the lawfulness of the treatment or guidance itself Nobody is saying it does. The nuance is in fact what people are talking about. Many advocates for the trans community argue that under-16s should be able to choose such treatments for themselves without parental consent/oversight. The other side argues that trans issues should not be treated any differently than anything else, where generally children have limited say in medical interventions applied to them and that the responsibility is ultimately the parents'.
- DanBC 4y ago
  Just checking you know that Kiera Bell lost.
  - fastball 4y ago
    Given as they linked the wikipedia article, it seems likely they are aware. Just because she lost on appeal does not detract from the parent's point, which is that clearly these things are not harmless otherwise there probably wouldn't be such a court case.
NeutralCrane 4y ago
Puberty blockers aren’t known to be safe. The FDA just issued a new series of warnings on blockers in the last month due to the severe side-effects being experienced by children on them, including brain swelling and vision loss: https://abcnews4.com/amp/news/nation-world/fda-warns-puberty-blocker-may-cause-brain-swelling-vision-loss-in-children-rachel-levine https://abcnews4.com/amp/news/nation-world/fda-warns-puberty...

kuschku 4y ago

> We are not saying "this is a boy" and then giving them testosterone when they hit 12 so that they match their "assigned" gender. That's literally what happens, especially to inter people, though. And sometimes even done for cis people if their natural hormone levels are too low, or rather their parents and doctors deem them too low (the child is never asked).

fastball 4y ago
We literally do not give 99% of the population any sort of hormonal treatment in order to ensure they match their "assigned gender". For the overwhelming majority of people we say "wow this looks like a boy" and that person ends up a boy with no intervention and no gender identity issues. Yes, there are intersex people and they are a special case that need to be handled differently than the rest of the population. And just "assigning" a gender to those people like we've been doing for most of medical history is probably not the right move. But the vast majority of trans people are not even intersex so injecting that into a conversation about trans issues is just muddying the waters. When we do intervene, yes, of course the child is never asked. As far as I'm aware there isn't any medication/intervention we give to children where we ask for their permission. Because they are children. One of the main reasons we distinguish between children and adults in our society is because we have decided that children do not have the mental maturity to make such decisions of large import, so we place that responsibility on parents/guardians/doctors/etc.
- kuschku 4y ago
  What do you mean "of course"? Children have a right to take part in their own medical decisions as early as 7 years old, and teens make the majority of the decisions themselves after 14yo. If teens can get tattoos (16+), can drink alcohol (16+), can work part time jobs (14+), under conditions (12+) and can get jail time (14+), then they can just as well make at least part of their own medical decisions. Delaying permanent changes to a point in time where they can decide for themselves is the perfect solution if teens want to make such a decision, as long as it's safe (which even the cass review admits has been proven safe for AMAB people)

zo1 4y ago

matthewmacleod 4y ago
I just realized a lot of the pro arguments for some of these newer things like trans et al are essentially dependent on gaslighting the "rest of us". E.g. having us deny basic biology and twisting it with weird re-definitions of existing terms. I’d encourage you to check your assumptions on that realisation buddy, because it ain’t really right. The specific terms you are using there—“gaslighting”, “deny basic biology” etc.—suggest that you’re picking up some of those views from sources that are unlikely to be all that reliable or representative of reality, and way more likely to be a bad-faith representation of extreme or minority views. So don’t form your opinions based on them. In reality it’s pretty simple and I don’t think it seems particularly controversial: - People are born biologically male or female, with some exceptions and variations. - Most people also have an internal gender identity of themselves as a man or a woman, which is a bit of a fuzzy concept but seems to be something innate along the lines of sexuality. - Most of us fit pretty neatly into one of those two binary buckets in both axes and aren’t really aware of a gender identity; everything feels fine and we get on with our lives without noticing it. - Some of us don’t feel that way and there’s an incongruity between our gender identity and physical bodies. - That experience can vary a lot - some people feel themselves clearly and strongly as the opposite binary gender, and others less so. Some people are aware of not having that binary gender identity at all. Some people struggle with it, accept it easily, or feel differently about it at different times. - People will choose to deal with that incongruity in different ways. Some people will seek surgery or other medical treatment to increase their comfort in their body; others might change their name or their outward appearance. What you describe as “a lot of the pro arguments for some of these newer things like trans et al” is really about a pressure to modernise our handling of all the stuff above, along the lines of: - Generally de-medicalise “gender identity disorder”, accepting the stuff above as a natural aspect of human identity and sexuality rather than a malady to be cured. - Instead of forcing people through clinical pathways to transition allow them to explore their own identity and find their own path. - Remove the social and cultural aspects of shame and abuse faced by people, that magnify all the above struggles. Stuff like being respectful of people’s identities and trying to be generally inclusive to people who might not fit into our own personal existing notions of gender and sexuality. There are more specific issues that attract controversy - things like fair treatment in sport and appropriate support for children and young people. But “deny basic biology”? Not a thing.

matthewmacleod 4y ago

Nobody is FORCING anything – that is just something our bodies do naturally This is just a silly semantic game. Our bodies naturally do a lot of things that in some cases we’d prefer they not do. They love growing babies, or tumours, or falling apart in uncountable ways. Withholding access to an available and desired medical treatment is broadly equivalent to forcing a patient to experience the effects of whatever the treatment is intending to prevent. We are just far more likely to use the explicit term “forcing” in cases where that treatment is being withheld for ideological reasons - such as abortions or puberty inhibitors.

antifa 4y ago

> Nobody is FORCING anything Well except Texas law makers