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This is a very disingenuous take. "If You Disagree With Me, You Want People To Die" is also not the best way to signal your openness to an honest debate. > The

This is a very disingenuous take. "If You Disagree With Me, You Want People To Die" is also not the best way to signal your openness to an honest debate. > The truth is, hormone therapy saves lives. Some of those lives will be teenage lives. The truth is - the current research about that is lacking, we know that there are serious (and good faith) arguments against claiming that puberty blockers are reversible, and we know that many clinics simply don't collect data about people post transition or distort whatever data they do collect: "For those late to this: In April I published a very long post laying out the severe flaws in a study about puberty blockers and hormones University of Washington researchers published in JAMA Network Open, and how they exaggerated the results when describing them to the media and to UW’s own PR apparatus. The very short version is that the study has so many flaws that it does not provide us with any evidence whatsoever supporting the idea that kids who went on gender-affirming medicine (GAM) experienced beneficial outcomes relative to the kids who did not. In fact, any genuine comparison between the GAM and no-GAM kids 12 months out is impossible, because 80% of the kids who didn’t go on GAM had dropped out of study by the final wave of data collection, leaving just six remaining. That is far too small a sample to draw any conclusions from. (The paper gave no explanation as to why some kids went on GAM and others didn’t, making it impossible to know whether this was an otherwise apples-to-apples comparison, so even in the absence of this attrition issue, the results would have been difficult to interpret.)" https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/the-university-of-washington-is-putting https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/the-university-of-washing... https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/a-swedish-investigative-journalist-dd6 https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/a-swedish-investigative-j... One thing that sticks in my mind about this issue is the implicit blackmail. "Your kid will kill themselves if you don't do X!" is a jarring and terrifying framework for any parent to deal with, but I'm not aware of it existing anywhere in healthcare except in trans issues. Consider for example if my teenager told me they'd kill themselves if they're not allowed to watch TV. MAYBE unlimited TV is the only way to ensure they don't carry out their threat, but if so this only reveals a deeply dysfunctional mindset that should be further investigated. This inquiry seems to be completely missing from the trans discourse as far as I can tell. I find it genuinely alarming how little curiosity there is from the trans-affirming side as to what exactly causes someone to be feel dysphoria. The inquiry almost doesn't seem to matter, with the prognosis basically taking the form of "don't worry about why, just make sure they get cutting-edge plastic surgery and experimental hormonal treatments or else they'll kill themselves." The current state of "gender affirming care" seems like a band-aid solution that papers over a much deeper problem, and I don't understand how we are helping trans people by turning a blind eye to the root cause of their suffering.

jl6 4y ago
> 80% of the kids who didn’t go on GAM had dropped out of study I know we literally don’t know the specific reasons why they dropped out, as they are lost to followup, but is it plausible that they dropped out while remaining dysphoric? The rate would be in-line with previous studies of desistance rates.
0ct4via 4y ago
"The current state of "gender affirming care" seems like a band-aid solution that papers over a much deeper problem, and I don't understand how we are helping trans people by turning a blind eye to the root cause of their suffering." Are you saying the cause of their suffering isn't being forced to live in a body/identity contrary to how they feel? Your first point is disingenuous. HRT for trans people does save lives. Whether its blockers in minors, or HRT to help with fat redistribution, secondary sexual characteristics, etc. in informed and consenting adults, it goes a long way to helping trans people live as themselves -- indeed, many trans people report feeling significantly better just from taking it, describing it as if their bodies were running on the "wrong fuel" beforehand. Have you considered that data isn't gathered post-transition because trans people are simply going about and living their lives successfully? Assuming they've transitioned and their HRT regiment (if they have one) is stable, there is no clinical need to continue "collecting data" afterwards -- especially when this is done by services which are chronically underfunded as it is. As for the distorted data claim, please show evidence of deliberate distortion -- it's not the fault of those doing studies if subjects drop out of their own accord, and certainly doesn't mean they "distort whatever data they do collect." Another boogeyman, doctors aren't running around telling parents their kids will kill themselves without puberty blockers. Certainly if a doctor were to bring up a feeling of suicidality within a child, it would be within the context of sufficient psychological assessment, which would have to have begun with the parents or child themselves either raising trans or suicidality issues previously. If that claim were made by a medical professional, it wouldn't be out of nowhere, and it wouldn't be without basis. What's actually terrifying is the idea that your child is so uncomfortable and/or unhappy that they question their ability to live their live without the intervention they need, in a day where access to those services are both drastically underfunded, and being outlawed by Conservatives in the western world. The fact that you try and equate hypothetical feelings of suicidality with a transgender child facing the inability to access appropriate medical care, with not being allowed to watch TV, is much more of a "deeply dysfunctional mindset" than your proposed hypothetical. Your brash and baseless claims seem to show a lack of understanding or knowledge of the "trans discourse" as you put it, and seemingly you don't actually care or want to know, since your final sentence is claiming that gender-affirming care covers a "deeper problem," which is just ignorant and attempts to deny trans existence as being valid in itself, as opposed to being a symptom of some other "much deeper problem."

jl6 4y ago

> 80% of the kids who didn’t go on GAM had dropped out of study I know we literally don’t know the specific reasons why they dropped out, as they are lost to followup, but is it plausible that they dropped out while remaining dysphoric? The rate would be in-line with previous studies of desistance rates.

0ct4via 4y ago

"The current state of "gender affirming care" seems like a band-aid solution that papers over a much deeper problem, and I don't understand how we are helping trans people by turning a blind eye to the root cause of their suffering." Are you saying the cause of their suffering isn't being forced to live in a body/identity contrary to how they feel? Your first point is disingenuous. HRT for trans people does save lives. Whether its blockers in minors, or HRT to help with fat redistribution, secondary sexual characteristics, etc. in informed and consenting adults, it goes a long way to helping trans people live as themselves -- indeed, many trans people report feeling significantly better just from taking it, describing it as if their bodies were running on the "wrong fuel" beforehand. Have you considered that data isn't gathered post-transition because trans people are simply going about and living their lives successfully? Assuming they've transitioned and their HRT regiment (if they have one) is stable, there is no clinical need to continue "collecting data" afterwards -- especially when this is done by services which are chronically underfunded as it is. As for the distorted data claim, please show evidence of deliberate distortion -- it's not the fault of those doing studies if subjects drop out of their own accord, and certainly doesn't mean they "distort whatever data they do collect." Another boogeyman, doctors aren't running around telling parents their kids will kill themselves without puberty blockers. Certainly if a doctor were to bring up a feeling of suicidality within a child, it would be within the context of sufficient psychological assessment, which would have to have begun with the parents or child themselves either raising trans or suicidality issues previously. If that claim were made by a medical professional, it wouldn't be out of nowhere, and it wouldn't be without basis. What's actually terrifying is the idea that your child is so uncomfortable and/or unhappy that they question their ability to live their live without the intervention they need, in a day where access to those services are both drastically underfunded, and being outlawed by Conservatives in the western world. The fact that you try and equate hypothetical feelings of suicidality with a transgender child facing the inability to access appropriate medical care, with not being allowed to watch TV, is much more of a "deeply dysfunctional mindset" than your proposed hypothetical. Your brash and baseless claims seem to show a lack of understanding or knowledge of the "trans discourse" as you put it, and seemingly you don't actually care or want to know, since your final sentence is claiming that gender-affirming care covers a "deeper problem," which is just ignorant and attempts to deny trans existence as being valid in itself, as opposed to being a symptom of some other "much deeper problem."