23 ms·

I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle

427 points by jtbayly 4y ago

eahoeig 4y ago
[dead]
beecafe 4y ago
Entire article ignores trans experiences, elevates a cis "ally" who feels trans people are icky, doesn't mention that detransitoners make up a very small fraction of all cases and the vast majority of people who transition are glad to have done so. Hand wringing about the effects of T on young girls from seeing the female body as a sexual object that is "ruined" by it. The only thing the article gets right is that puberty blockers are generally bad, but they're used because doctors are reticent to prescribe hormones, so they delay the choice.
- spurgu 4y ago
  > the vast majority of people who transition are glad to have done so According to a study with a ~12 month follow-up period after transitioning? I read something similarly misleading recently.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    12 months? What about 3, 5 or 10 years? Wouldn't that be more reasonable period to consider.
    - spurgu 4y ago
      So you would think and the prospect doesn't necessarily look that rosy when you do.
      - CSSer 4y ago
        I’m interested in the sources you’re referring to. Loss of follow-up seems well-cited as a potential weakness by legitimate sources in my brief investigation, but more importantly they have a reasonable amount of data from very old sources as well. I didn’t have to look hard.
  - to1y 4y ago
    I completely believe all those feelings are completely real but I fail to see how changing anything related to your appearance will bring true lasting happiness. To me it seems like the pinnacle of an image obsessed society. Additionally, let's be honest, most trans will never look 100% like their desired gender, none of them will look close without hormone therapy, and many are much less fortunate even with all the pills and operations. It's a spiral of self-delusion and refusal to accept boundaries and the limits of nature.
    - CSSer 4y ago
      Your comment strikes me as interesting because you mention an image obsessed society but then you make some statements about image that seem to suggest a personal endorsement of this standard. Let’s hypothetically assume that your statements about failure to be perceived as they wish are 100% true as well as the idea that we should be less image focused are true too. Why should they or anyone else care if they never look like their desired gender if they feel better and lead productive lives? I’ve certainly gotten dressed up to go nowhere, and I know women who put on makeup just for themselves too. I realize this doesn’t lie in exactly the same realm, but I hope you can see my point. Are we deluded? It seems to me that nature is a slippery slope.
    - majikaja 4y ago
      If people say that the placebo effect will be diminished.
- crazygringo 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 4y ago
    You've broken the site guidelines in several places here. Please don't do that, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. Those are the moments when it matters most to follow them. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- tonfreed 4y ago
  Suicide rates are the same before and after transitioning. There's something else going on that needs to be addressed, and simply screaming at and attempting to gaslight critical voices is going to end with the unnecessary deaths of a lot more people.
  - StanislavPetrov 4y ago
    Seems likely from the evidence that gender dysphoria is a good indicator for the existence of an underlying mental condition rather than some sort of glorious lifestyle choice, whether or not the person with dysphoria actually "transitions". Unfortunately instead of helping these troubled people we are placating them and encouraging them to damage themselves (which, to be clear, should be there right if they are adults).
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    Are they? Where's the study? I couldn't find one on suicide rates, but this one on based on survey data (so people who are still alive to answer the survey), says that suicidal thoughts reduce after transitioning. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/2779429 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstrac...
    - 0xy 4y ago
      The study you are citing appears to have been commissioned by the National Center for Transgender Equality (an organization that was founded by a transgender activist). That's like citing a study commissioned by Exxon-Mobil on climate change. Forgive me for being extremely suspicious, given the multitude of other research to the contrary. "The overall mortality for sex-reassigned persons was higher during follow-up" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/
      - lern_too_spel 4y ago
        > The study you are citing appears to have been commissioned by the National Center for Transgender Equality Wrong. It was funded by a grant from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, which has no affiliation with any transgender activists. https://www.pcori.org/about/about-pcori https://www.pcori.org/about/about-pcori Forgive me for being extremely suspicious of your ability to evaluate evidence to come to rational conclusions. Your study compares sex-reassigned people to the general population, not those who had surgery against those who wanted surgery but didn't get it. It is cited multiple times with a correct interpretation by the paper I gave you. The author herself points out you're using it wrong. https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6q3e8v/science_ama_series_im_cecilia_dhejne_a_fellow_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6q3e8v/science_ama...
- aaplok 4y ago
  > elevates a cis "ally" who feels trans people are icky Are you talking about the author, who says at the start of the article that she is married to a trans man and spent years of her life working with and helping trans people? No matter what you think of the article, that claim is obviously wrong to anyone who read it.
devmor 4y ago
[flagged]
- willcipriano 4y ago
  What was false in the Twitter files?
  - rapsey 4y ago
    Nothing. But when you are from a specific political spectrum, before they came out it was "this is a conspiracy". After they came out it was "well of course that is how it works this is nothing new."
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      Who would’ve been shocked to hear that governments (including the US) make requests of private companies? Even Third Party Doctrine, which is a way more direct attack on people’s rights, is so well established that it has a name with capital letters and its own Wikipedia article and whatnot.
      - ksniwmidjd 4y ago
        [dead]
  - jjeaff 4y ago
    Its the selective release of the Twitter files given only to select, pre-approved opinion/culture war journalists that concerns me.
    - willcipriano 4y ago
      What unreleased materials are you looking for?
      - jjeaff 4y ago
robjwells 4y ago
Interesting to note that very similar concerns have been raised by staff at the GIDS youth clinic in the UK. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51806962 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51806962 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56539466 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56539466
- at-w 4y ago
  Interesting parallels to the "epidemic" of Tourettes symptoms among teen girls that exploded over the past 2 years: https://www.wsj.com/articles/teen-girls-are-developing-tics-doctors-say-tiktok-could-be-a-factor-11634389201 https://www.wsj.com/articles/teen-girls-are-developing-tics-... As with gender dysphoria, patients flipped from being majority male to overwhelmingly female in just a few years. They also tended to know others with the symptoms either directly, or from social media feeds whose algorithms fed them more and more content around the topic.
  - MagicMoonlight 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - ghqst 4y ago
      this... seems insane. Tourettes is a genuine syndrome that the annoying TikTok and internet culture is causing teenage girls to misdiagnose themselves.
    - tpush 4y ago
      Wow, this and your other comments on this thread are disgusting. This whole article's comment section is truly fucking awful.
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    And ADHD. Could be that there is a lot of it, but I know a few folks self-diagnosing. At least two of them went off meds and are fine, which raises questions if they were truly ADHD in the first place.
longcommonname 4y ago
More research should be done around detransitioners. Doctors need to evaluate the whole patient and in the case of informed consent they should confirm that the patient is aware of all the potential changes. That being said, gate keeping what I do with my body is wrong. I knew all the potential side effects when I transitioned. I read the wpath in full. I was comfortable with all the risks. This type of critical judgment of children's health care is needed and I hope the doctors are being more rigorous than what the author suggests. I feel terrible for the girls who made a decision they regret and lost parts of their body that made them happy. Their doctors, and parents failed them. I am also happy that so many people were able to successfully transition. The timing of the article is concerning with so many states trying to withhold life saving care I worry that the nuance of this article will be lost.
- philwelch 4y ago
  Gatekeeping is one of the central aspects of modern medicine. Maybe a hundred years ago, when we had a free country and you could buy heroin over the counter, there was nobody gatekeeping what you did to your own body. But now we’ve corrected a pretty long way in the other direction. In principle I think consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want with their own bodies, but consent needs to be informed and the person needs to be mentally capable of consent. You need some degree of gatekeeping just to reach that bar. And this is going to be an even bigger concern with children.
  - landemva 4y ago
    > heroin over the counter, there was nobody gatekeeping I wasn't there, though I have learned that generally the local pharmacy would do the gate-keeping. Now the local pharmacy does what the computer says to do based on whatever regulations were input by the back office.
    - tomnipotent 4y ago
      The local pharmacy at that time didn't look anything like its current counterpart. Let's not forget that the 1920s was the start of the "Soda Fountain Pharmacy" thanks to prohibition, so I wouldn't put much stock into the quality of professional pharmacology at the time. It would be decades before regulation caught up.
selfmodruntime 4y ago
> To begin transitioning, the girls needed a letter of support from a therapist—usually one we recommended—who they had to see only once or twice for the green light. To make it more efficient for the therapists, we offered them a template for how to write a letter in support of transition. The next stop was a single visit to the endocrinologist for a testosterone prescription. This is exactly what parents have been fearing. They were told that cases like this are non existent. What these clinics are doing to children is criminal.
- sixblossom 4y ago
  > This is exactly what conservatives and parents have been fearing I'm as left leaning as they come and I'm also very worried and irritated by what is happening here. I hate that I have to make a new account for plausible deniability as well. I don't really understand what doctors and a section of society is playing at. This is an issue that needs therapy not surgery. I'm sorry you feel you're in the wrong body, welcome to the club of the ugly short bald people who have a similar problem. You can do xyz but you'll never be what you want to be. It's tough but there is is, let's do some things to make you more comfortable and make life more positive. See feelings don't have to be dismissed, but they also don't have to be pandered to. Using state funded medical services (or insurance funded if you're USA) is immoral imo. Sure if you're rich enough you can do whatever bizarre things you like to yourself, I don't care.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
    You are proposing outlawing rogaine and Viagra an plastic surgery and Botox, I assume? Or only medicines for trans people?
    - jtbayly 4y ago
      Paid for by the state? Yes.
      - kevingadd 4y ago
        The medications and treatments often prescribed for trans people typically have other uses, so unfortunately for those who want to ban trans care, it's not possible to ban the treatments entirely, just come up with policies for being really selective about it. Those policies will not be terribly fair or effective. Otherwise you're denying other people access to the same care even though you might believe they need it - reconstructive plastic surgery for cancer survivors, androgen or estrogen suppressors for people with various hormone regulation problems, hormone replacement for post-menopausal women or men who no longer have functioning gonads, etc. Incidentally the latter is why Californian insurance typically covers surgeries for trans people: They already cover the same surgeries for other cases.
netmonk 4y ago
[flagged]
- dang 4y ago
  "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html This topic is flameprone enough as it is, even if people don't pile on the firestarter.
Animats 4y ago
"Until 2015 or so, a very small number of these boys comprised the population of pediatric gender dysphoria cases. Then, across the Western world, there began to be a dramatic increase in a new population: Teenage girls, many with no previous history of gender distress, suddenly declared they were transgender and demanded immediate treatment with testosterone." That's what's so striking. Why is that happening? There's a controversy over this.[1] It's been observed in (at least) Australia, Canada, the UK, France, Sweden, and the US. People involved in studying this have been attacked, and as a result, there's not much new data since the big controversy in 2018. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid-onset_gender_dysphoria_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid-onset_gender_dysphoria_c...
- 2devnull 4y ago
  I witnessed this first hand in a close relative who, in the throws of a multi month long bipolar psychosis, concluded that the source of her mental health problems was gender dysphoria. The internet was very influential in her reaching this conclusion. The internet also allowed her to locate a dr who didn’t restrict sexual reassignment to those without mental health comorbidities. Thankfully the very liberal dr she found was too far for her to travel, since she could not drive and Uber wasn’t yet a thing. She was stabilized on antipsychotics a few months later and completely dropped all discussion of gender dysphoria, something, to be clear, that she had never talked about or hinted at prior to her psychotic episode. It concerns me that had she had this episode a few years later, when the medical ethics had changed and Uber made it possible for a mentally ill person to travel to the city where the dr she found was located, she likely would have undergone some form of reassignment surgery with lasting physical effects and potentially catastrophic effects on her psychological well being. She has been happily married, well more or less happily, for more than a decade now, to a nice man. No sign of gender dysphoria and no recent psychotic episodes.
  - Breefield 4y ago
    You seriously misunderstand how hard it is to have sex reassignment surgery. Even in states where beginning an HRT regimen is based on informed consent, there are many steps one must go through before having this procedure done. Multiple letters of recommendation from licensed therapists and having been on hormones for years. Not to mention the exorbitant costs even with insurance. Your suggestion that one could Uber to another city and have SRS performed is a gross mischaracterization of the reality trans people face.
AussieWog93 4y ago
Interesting she mentions Autism. I've definitely noticed a trend of people on the spectrum suffering from mental health problems, self-diagnosing as gender dysphoric and then launching themselves down a one-directional, miserable path that ends in their suicide. Being Autistic myself, and having goine through complete dysregulation as a 15-16 year old (it's way more common than you'd think, especially as most government support just stops when the kids turn 18), I completely understand the mental processes that both lead to the depression/anxiety/emotional dysregulation as well as the absolute certainty with which the epiphany of gender dysphoria is reached. Hearing the specific linguistic choices common on trans reddit/twitter/tttt, and knowing the exact state of mind that cause this language to be used just sends a shiver down my spine. All it would have taken is for me to have been born 5 years later, and I'd be a dead trans woman rather than a fulfilled husband and father of two. If there's anyone reading this who's on the spectrum themselves, or has a kid on the spectrum who's talking about gender issues, feel free to reach out and I can elaborate a bit more on exactly how this specific failure works.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Can you write a blog article explaining how it works?
  - AussieWog93 4y ago
    Maybe I should. Got some paternity leave coming up, so might have a bit of time to get my thoughts in order...
- Pearse 4y ago
  Thanks so much for taking the time to write this up. I would love to hear more about you're experiences growing up and especially the dysregulation. Is there any other things about your life you would be willing to share?
  - AussieWog93 4y ago
    >I would love to hear more about you're experiences growing up and especially the dysregulation. Dysregulation[1] was Hell on Earth, in the literal sense. Very little in life works the way you think it should, and the reaction to these things constantly going wrong is extremely intense, negative, emotional unable to be controlled in any real sense. You lose the ability to reliably form even basic episodic/autobiographical memories, and with it any sense of the past or future. Entire chunks of your life go missing and you don't know what day it is, where you've been or where you're going. All you know is that you're constantly exhausted, nothing makes sense and everything just feels wrong. You don't know how long you've felt like this, and you don't know how long you'll continue to feel like this. As far as you're aware, past and future suffering will keep going on for eternity. And you will do anything, literally anything, to make it stop. For me, I was fortunate that my mum took me to a sleep specialist, who recommended getting my adenoids removed and prescribing an extremely specific sleep schedule which I followed to a T (all screens off at 9:00, in bed by 10:00, I don't remember if there was a specific constant time I needed to wake up by but I suspect that was part of it to. As an adult, I now supplement this routine with melatonin). This was enough to get me from a state of complete dysregulation to "garden-variety" depression, which eventually I overcame with the help of a supportive network of friends and parents who (semi-forcefully) steered me down a path where I could succeed. A hypothetical AussieWog98 might have convinced himself that the cause of the dysregulation was gender dysphoria, cut himself off from the people who really care and spent all his time online with other people just like himself until one day he couldn't take it any more. I really, genuinely believe that this is what is happening today, at least in the case of some people. For others (especially people who transition later in life), it really can help them be comfortable in their own skin, and this is of course where the trans "debate" gets hairy. [1] This is not technical language, but is the best and most concise word I can use to decribe it. There may be a more appropriate technical term, or a more scientific description of what is happening (seizures in the amygdala?). Feel free to comment if you have any scientific information or proper terminology, I'd love to read the literature on it.
aaron695 4y ago
[dead]
Grismar 4y ago
It's so important to take these testimonials seriously, whilst also being careful we don't hurt the chances of those that are able to get the help they would have had no access to only a decade ago.
- jtbayly 4y ago
  Gender reassignment has been a thing since the 70’s at least. And stopped being a thing because of these sorts of problems at John’s Hopkins where they actually did keep track of the results.
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    It looks like the opposite of what you say is true. It started being a thing again at JHU because of studies that were done. https://hub.jhu.edu/2022/07/01/johns-hopkins-expands-gender-affirming-care-and-support/ https://hub.jhu.edu/2022/07/01/johns-hopkins-expands-gender-... > "Gender-affirming care is evidence-based medical best practice that, for transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse people, is essential health care that enhances quality of life and overall well-being," wrote Pierre Joanis, JHU's vice president for human resources; Kevin Shollenberger, JHU's vice provost for student health and well-being; and Inez Stewart, senior vice president and chief human resources officer for Johns Hopkins Medicine, in a message to the Johns Hopkins community. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/long-shadow-cast-by-psychiatrist-on-transgender-issues-finally-recedes-at-johns-hopkins/2017/04/05/e851e56e-0d85-11e7-ab07-07d9f521f6b5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/long-... > Many scientists subsequently challenged the methodology behind Meyer’s study, as well as his interpretation of the results. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M22-1480 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M22-1480
    - jtbayly 4y ago
      I didn't mean to imply that it doesn't do them today. It started doing them in the 1960s, and it ended them in 1979 based on the psychiatric results not justifying the practice. People smear Dr. Paul McHugh today for ending it, but unlike the doctors at the clinic described in this article, he cared about whether his patients were actually being benefited. Now we've come full circle and people are beginning to study the results, just like he did in the 70's. Not surprisingly, the same conclusions seem to be popping up around the world.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
g3e0 4y ago
No surgeon should be removing healthy body parts, in my opinion. You wouldn’t fit a gastric band to an anorexic person, no matter how badly the patient wanted it, and that’s not even permanent. I sympathise with all people who have issues accepting the body they were born with. If someone believes their body should be different, but otherwise their body is healthy, I think it’s fair to say that whatever is causing the feeling of mismatch is happening in the mind. It’s no surprise to me that a significant fraction present with other mental disorders. In an ideal world, there would be some form of therapy that helps people come to terms with and accept themselves with what they’ve been given. But again I do sympathise, because contemporary medicine simply isn’t very good at treating mental illnesses.
- qaz_plm 4y ago
  People are terrible at analogies
- kevingadd 4y ago
  What is your definition of healthy? Should people born with a cleft palate be forced to leave it alone? What about people with breathing problems due to their anatomy? If a kid has teeth grow in improperly and start causing jaw problems, should they be prohibited from having their wisdom teeth removed or teeth realigned with braces? Should tonsil removal be prohibited? If a woman has severe back pain due to oversized breasts, should it be prohibited to get a reduction surgery even if it improves quality of life? Should vasectomies be prohibited if a person with testes wants to be able to have sex with their partner without the risk of pregnancy? Should it be prohibited to medically disable "healthy" body parts as well? As an alternative to vasectomies you can use drugs to similarly disable that body part, in many cases effectively forever. Should that be illegal too? What about anti-androgens like Spironolactone - used on-label for multiple different purposes - should we ban those since they are also used for MtF HRT? Birth control also is functionally disabling healthy parts of the body. Why does a problem "happening in the mind" somehow mean that no treatment can occur outside of the mind? Do you think mood stabilizers and antipsychotics should be banned because we're treating an "in the mind" problem with physical, body-altering interventions?
  - 4y ago
Pixeleen 4y ago
Comprehensive mental health treatment needs to be generally available in a non-threatening, universal, single-payer way. "Managed care" has an awful ring to it when you are mistrusting. I suspect that many cases being treated as gender dysphoria are actually other mental health disorders, such as self-loathing, borderline, schizoid personality disorder, substance abuse, or one or a combination of many others. I personally believe that only a licensed, Ph.D. psychologist, or in some cases psychiatrist providing short courses of medicine, without pecuniary interest, is qualified to treat these kinds of non-gender dysphoria disorders. Transgender medical care usually involves medicine, and the trans rights movement had a moment in the 2010s. I believe it inappropriate to use victim status to force others to provide an inappropriate treatment. It is also inappropriate to rush an inappropriate treatment because of the ticking clock argument. I draw a comparison to how many people go to the emergency room, which cannot turn them away, because they do not have first-line care like a family doctor, or basic health upkeep such as not smoking and eating healthy food. For clear or severe cases of gender dysphoria, early treatment is essential. Pharmaceutical and surgical. However gender transition only changes your gender! You still have to deal with whatever mental issues you had, integrate into society, and work hard to become a whole person. The gay rights movement came of age around 1980 in my view, but everybody agreed that how inappropriate it is to attempt to treatment that medically, except for self-harm or AIDS. I suspect that what we need is mental health to have its moment. Not "pride", or boasting about how many pills you are on. Maybe psychology programs need to be subsidized and promoted. We spent the past decade focusing on our smartphones, and I don't think it made us much happier. I suspect that we have the courage to turn some of that focus inward.
- kevingadd 4y ago
  While I personally think gender related care is far too restricted in most places, I agree that comprehensive mental health treatment is the biggest priority. People will have a much easier time dealing with gender-related stresses and issues if they're not ALSO staring down a bunch of other problems in their lives without access to care. It's also my understanding that trans and non-binary individuals tend to have other co-morbid problems going on, mental health or otherwise. This may be a data problem - the other problems being diagnosed more often because they go for treatment, etc - but from the specialists I've spoken to, it probably is an actual connection, induced by stress or otherwise.
faeriechangling 4y ago
>The center’s working assumption was that the earlier you treat kids with gender dysphoria, the more anguish you can prevent later on. This premise was shared by the center’s doctors and therapists. Given their expertise, I assumed that abundant evidence backed this consensus. Most of the evidence I've seen around transitioning is for older cohorts who were outliers in terms of their motivation to transition - most of the push I've seen is to transition younger cohorts for which the effects of transition are unknown and experimental since we are transitioning kids in populations that we never would have transitioned before. I don't think this is necessarily WRONG, just risky and experimental and requiring tracking, but I see it being portrayed as a scientific fact that putting kids on hormone blockers as preteens makes their lives better. > A report last year on a British pediatric transgender center found that about one-third of the patients referred there were on the autism spectrum. Regarding the whole notion of "Transgender kids are really just confused autistics", first what is considered an Autistic child itself is a moving target since Autism is not consistently diagnosed and we diagnose autism more broadly than we did even 10 years ago and the autistic population growth is pretty rapid itself. It's hard to get insight from something poorly understood by pointing out a correlation to another thing poorly understood. Second I've seen zero evidence that autistic populations are at any particular risk of adverse effects from gender affirming treatment or whatever, this just seems to be presumed because of condescending views towards autistics and their competence to guide their own care. >My concerns about this approach to dissenting parents grew in 2019 when one of our doctors actually testified in a custody hearing against a father who opposed a mother’s wish to start their 11-year-old daughter on puberty blockers. Gender identity is something rather famous for changing as you hit adolescence and this is something which has been noted throughout history to the point of being ritualised in some cases, and we even have the concept of "genderfluidity", but people seem to have this very deterministic view that whatever gender identity you had at 8 years old you have forever and you should intervene early before hormones kick in. Yet fucking with somebodies hormones at like 11 years old can't help but modify somebodies natural development of their gender identity, and that makes it hard to evaluate the effectiveness of early interventions without a control. We should make the treatment open to kids from 14 up, but below that kids should with both parents consent be allowed to enter an experimental trial on the condition that some of them will be controls. Unless we do that, we're going to keep hurting kids in ignorance, either due to under treatment or over treatment. In regards to the claims that patients aren't being informed of the risks of gender affirming care, I think political influence is fucking with proper medical care of transgender people in both directions, both outlawing supportive and sceptical medical care alike but in different areas, and I really wish politicians would frig off of such a fast changing, poorly understood, and charged issue. Maybe this clinic is saving trans kids, maybe it's not, but I personally would like society to stop pretending that it actually understands what will happen after they subject a significantly larger slice of the population to hormone treatments at increasingly young ages when the treatment population has multiplied several times over in short-order and we literally haven't even had time to do long term retrospectives. It's an experiment being portrayed as scientifically validated best practice. I would like to see more emphasis on medical freedom for doctors, controls, and proper long term tracking and research on patient outcomes but to allow these early interventions so long as they're being conducted as ethically as possible. That way we might even be able to identify nuances like "oh, if somebody has X issue, we should be extra cautious or extra aggressive about pursuing gender affirming care"
kevingadd 4y ago
It's disappointing that the generally dire state of gender care in the west - in terms of a lack of rigor (as complained about in this article), lack of consistent process, etc - is used mostly as an excuse to shut down clinics entirely or fully ban gender care even for consenting adults (in process in the US right now). The high rates of mental health struggles and suicides in the general US population (including but not limited to people struggling with gender issues) are used as a tool for arguing that gender care somehow leads to people's deaths instead of as a tool to argue for comprehensive, no-cost mental health care for people of all races, genders and identities. We're just handed the latest most fashionable bogeyman - drag queens doing book readings at the library, gender-questioning kids going to gender clinics, etc - and told that if only we Put A Stop To this, maybe things will be alright again. When in reality millions and millions of people are experiencing untold suffering right now, and we could make fundamental fixes to our medical system to help all of them instead of fixating specifically on a small subset of the population and helping extremist lawmakers ban entire categories of care, whether it be gender care or abortions or birth control.
- throwaway378037 4y ago
  Thanks for posting what seems to be the only sensible comment in this entire thread.
sverona 4y ago
This is poppycock. Here's a response: https://erininthemorn.substack.com/p/missouri-anti-trans-whistleblower https://erininthemorn.substack.com/p/missouri-anti-trans-whi...
- not_a_shill 4y ago
  Do you have a refutation that's a length most people would be willing to read? I don't need to keep hearing about the author's problems with misgendering.
  - sverona 4y ago
    I'm sorry it's uncomfortable. So is getting misgendered.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - mkoryak 4y ago
    The original article is pretty long, so it makes sense that the refutation might also be long. I skimmed both. It feels kind of shitty to be asking for a tldr or a summary.
    - not_a_shill 4y ago
      I'm not asking for a tldr, and I don't need a point by point refutation of someone's personal experiences. I'm asking for them to write it in a more readable format. (Even you admit you skimmed it, and didn't really read it!) It's missing the forest from the trees, and non persuasive to me.
  - xrd 4y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out. I was watching for "misgendering" when reading it. And I did read the whole thing! I actually found the misgendering part relevant. If Jamie Reed was as progressive as she claims, wouldn't that be something she would do "correctly?" I suppose you could say she no longer believes in trans identities, so that's why she isn't willing to do it anymore. But it feels like she is attacking the medical establishment and not the people, and as such would support what I'm assuming 100% of her patients desire, no? And, if you were to accept that she is writing for a conservative audience, it follows that that crowd would be turned off by using she when talking about someone born with a penis. I found the rebuttal compelling and I'm struggling a lot with this issue. The fact that so many medical organizations support the current care guidelines feels very contradictory to the assertions made by JR. And as the rebuttal author notes, JR was an intake worker, with limited access to the full story of these patients, and without proper medical training to do a full assessment. All in all, both articles are worth a read. After reading them both, I did feel like JR's was a well coordinated hit piece with dubious assertions, but would love to hear a rebuttal of the rebuttal!
erenyeager 4y ago
As a current medical student, I can confirm that school in the US teaches us “gender affirming” ideology acceptance without really much question or giving alternative perspectives. There was an entire required session where a “gender affirming” care doctor said we should imagine “cis people” as being “just as weird as trans people” and to reflect on our own idea of self-gender. When a Q&A question was posed about if gender transition is medically necessary (which is not easy to post about, btw, as during these sessions you are recorded in a zoom and anonymous questions are turned off; so everyone can see the full name of the person who asked, and it is recorded in a transcript also). The doctor responded dismissively about any doubt in the necessity of gender transition. Medical education and the medical institution is full of agenda pushing and ideology by the way, do not get me started on the day they introduced nurse practitioners as fellow “providers” who only want to make our jobs easier, while laws are being passed giving them full practice authority and expanding their scope to the detriment of doctors.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  As a non-Muslim, I wonder about the medical necessity of male or female circumcision, especially as it is commonly practiced without the consent of the patient. The latter is illegal in the US as of 2021, but the former seems a much larger and more pressing issue than gender affirming care. I just don't get the obsession with this topic. If you're a parent, your kids are being told things you don't like all the time, including being propositioned or being offered recreational drugs. This is very low on my list of worries. Talk to them to help them make better decisions, using logical arguments instead of groundless religious commandments. Problem solved.
- silveroriole 4y ago
  Do you object to the “cis people are also weird, gender is weird” bit? Why? It’s always seemed very weird to me that the vast majority of people DO align with gender roles and DO enjoy the sexually dimorphic body they have, even though that body had a 50-50 chance of being the other sex and cultural ideas of gender seem to be pretty randomly assigned (the clothes men and women are supposed to wear change over time, for example). Why aren’t more people unhappy because they are not the other sex? Either there’s something innate that tells you you are a certain sex and makes you want to imitate others of that sex - in which case obviously it can go wrong, hence transgenderism, and that’s a completely neutral thing to happen - or it’s all cultural brainwashing and we might as well let people choose their bodies and gender expression anyway.
u1337ochka 4y ago
Please read this thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1624135644904624128 https://mobile.twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/162413564490... The article is just another piece of fearmongering propaganda
- deely3 4y ago
  Could you describe some points where you agree with article mentioned in the tweet? Article: https://erininthemorn.substack.com/p/missouri-anti-trans-whistleblower https://erininthemorn.substack.com/p/missouri-anti-trans-whi... > She is not a doctor, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, and does not have direct medical diagnostic experience with patients. Author of "debunction" is "Trans queer news and history content creator". Author is not a doctor, not a psychologist, not a psychiatrist too..
diogenescynic 4y ago
A for-profit healthcare industry is rife with conflicts of interest. Doing the medically correct thing takes a back seat to making revenue/profits.
xupybd 4y ago
In New Zealand we have anti conversion therapy laws. The way the law is written it may not be legal for a trained councilor to suggest that a child is not trans if they present as trans. I don't know if it's possible that 100% of children claiming this are correct.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jtbayly 4y ago
  It is also against the law in my city (Cincinnati, OH) as well as several states. These laws are terrible.
majikaja 4y ago
Maybe normalizing skirts and makeup for men like they did the opposite for women would reduce the rates a little. They've released lace underwear for guys in Japan lately.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  Possibly. When you get right down to it, "gender" is really just a categorization of behavioral traits. This is what we mean when we say that gender is a social construct. I mean, what are people so worried about with trans people? That they use the "wrong" bathroom, wear the "wrong" clothes, use the "wrong" pronoun? These are all arbitrary bullshit. If we had genderless bathrooms and accepted that people could wear whatever they want and got rid of gendered pronouns, maybe we really wouldn't need special gender-affirming care. I have it on good authority that having the "wrong" genitalia for your gender is legitimately distressing, but perhaps that is just part of the expression of the social construct of gender and if the person had grown up without the concept of gender they wouldn't care what their genitalia were. Regardless, it wouldn't be an different than any other form of plastic surgery as far as I'm concerned.
  - gingfro 4y ago
    Increased societal acceptance of men wearing clothing and styling themselves in a way that is considered feminine, is a different type of thing to eradicating female-only safe spaces. The latter is still necessary due to human sexual dimorphism. The former is just adornments.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
      Sexual dimorphism in humans has significant overlap. Many females are well above average male strength and many men are well below average female strength. I therefore submit that it doesn't really make any sense to use this as a basis for what constitutes a "safe space".
      - tempposter 4y ago
mattwilsonn888 4y ago
I've never been so gripped by common sense.
SillyUsername 4y ago
People don't truly know what they want until they get it. They don't appreciate the grass often looks greener, but actually isn't. Add that to raging often teenage hormones and you get this result. Misdiagnosis of a genuine need to change gender is just adding justification for transphobia - it allows people to say "look, these people were wrong in their decision", which can then be misused as an argument in all cases. The law needs tightening - this isn't to prevent the changes, this is to assess proper mental faculty in separating the perceived post transition fantasy of what it's like Vs the reality, and not provide fuel for the anti trans fire.
- ghqst 4y ago
  Yeah, the more of these too extreme clinics we have, the more it hurts the overall case for the genuine trans person who has been on hormones for years medically transitioning.
rejectfinite 4y ago
Good and interesting article. Swedish TV has done several documentaries on trans care here and its findings are disturbing. The patients are put on hormores too easily, don't understand what they do etc. There was even several regrets, detransitioners.
majikaja 4y ago
Why don't we just force all people who make appointments with psychiatrists to take a course in how the brain works, including theoretical reasoning of how unusual thought patterns can occur just like random weather fluctuations. If people understood that their thoughts are just a chaotic product of electrical impulses instead of some undefined metaphyisical phenomenon maybe they would realize that no one is really special. Instead we encourage magical thinking around identity and strip people of ability to reason about their feelings effectively.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
DoreenMichele 4y ago
Experiments are supposed to be carefully designed. Hypotheses are supposed to be tested ethically. The doctors I worked alongside at the Transgender Center said frequently about the treatment of our patients: “We are building the plane while we are flying it.” No one should be a passenger on that kind of aircraft. Late to the party, so no one is going to read this comment, but I can't help but wonder how much the explosion in Trans stuff is related to changing gender roles generally. We used to have fairly clearly separated roles, clothing styles, etc and I wonder if we just lack an adequate framework for sorting that out properly and it helps nudge some vulnerable individuals down odd pathways in unfortunate ways.
- hyperman1 4y ago
  In my experience, it takes at least a few days before a popular HN story fully burns out. There is a huge peak of activity in the first few hours, and then a looooong period of simmering. I've seen up/downvotes for comments days after I wrote them. Besides, there is empirical evidence that at least 1 person read this comment ;-)
- ghqst 4y ago
  I agree it'll be interesting to see how society progresses, especially as the other side is overcorrecting right now.
  - DoreenMichele 4y ago
    I'm really not expecting progress. That suggests improvement and it's nigh impossible to even have a meaningful discussion about anything having to do with sex or gender without it going sideways. My magic 8 ball does not predict good things here.
    - ghqst 4y ago
      I unfortunately too was just meaning "progress" as in the marching on of time :(
MagicMoonlight 4y ago
I think it’s funny that we always mocked countries for castrating gay people. How could they do that we asked. And now we’re castrating millions in the name of diversity. Ironic.
- honeybadger1 4y ago
  I am gay, 34, and I still can't understand HOW doctors can justify severing breasts, a penis, or altering chemical systems permanently in someones body to make them feel better about themselves, especially in youth! This is like treating Schizophrenia by playing into their delusions to give them comfort. There is also something extremely concerning about gender dysphoria or being trans becoming essentially a pop culture within more blue-leaning states while other states have statistically low occurrence of gender dysphoria(which is in line with modern psychiatry and historically). Are blue-leaning states producing trans people, why are most trans people in the USA under 25(by more than 43%!)? Is this our generations medical grift(snake oil)? In 40 years will we have a derogatory reference to it in our history books(gender med)? Sounds super insensitive, but I don't mean to be. I feel awful for these people that are truly miserable and need help, but there is more going on here from a crony-capitalism and big-pharma perspective than people are willing to admit. It seems like every where I turn I am trying to be convinced it IS the answer and Gay or Lesbian people are also being forced to get in line on what is happening(if you're a gay male who only dates other biological males, you're transphobic...yeah)... I feel this is so damaging to a large group of a future generation of our youth and creating contention even between communities that are otherwise united on the other 98% of issues that we face.
  - ghqst 4y ago
    Gender dysphoria is easy to shove down if you're in an environment where others around you won't be accepting. It's unsurprising that blue states have a lot more REPORTED trans people. However, the general internet culture of teenagers misdiagnosing medical disorders means that there is indeed too many of the wrong people receiving gender affirming care. In regards to the biological male thing, no sane person would say that this is transphobic. Attraction has many factors, it's just being mean about it to trans men that is hurtful, not "not being attracted to them," which is normal imo.
low_tech_love 4y ago
One weird thing I see (as a scientist myself) commonly in this debate is the rough idea that to intervene or to not intervene are two sides of a balanced coin, and the decision is solely the doctor’s; this naturally results in the idea that, if a doctor opposes it, then she/he is a prejudiced bigot who is personally intent on harming the person by keeping her from fulfilling some predestined fate. However, in the scientific method, the onus of evidence is always on the intervention side. Even if you happened to discover an amazing drug to cure cancer, with little to no apparent side effects, it would take years to prove that it actually works and is not harmful. Why is all this being thrown away? If a doctor stops you from messing with your body without good evidence it’s because well that’s how science should work.
Connor_Creegan 4y ago
"... the safety of children should not be a matter for our culture wars." Unfortunately, everything attested in this article is the direct consequence of adopting philosophical tenets of the currently-victorious contender in the Kulturkampf, namely Liberalism. Save for some cataclysmic distraction (like a war total enough to drain our resources and attention to the point of bringing us back to nature, as it were), this situation will not improve unless Americans begin to challenge the liberal dogma of bodily autonomy. Of course, no one wants to do that because that would mean admitting that the will of each individual is corrupt - and that's, like, original sin, or whatevur...
_nalply 4y ago
Why does this happen? If anyone has at least some speculation, I would like to read about it.
aiscapehumanity 4y ago
This has nothing to do with tech
S3rM5Y5 4y ago
Interesting that this article gets traction on HN yet posting an article that directly responds to it gets flagged[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34842454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34842454

427 points by jtbayly 4y ago

[dead]

Entire article ignores trans experiences, elevates a cis "ally" who feels trans people are icky, doesn't mention that detransitoners make up a very small fraction of all cases and the vast majority of people who transition are glad to have done so. Hand wringing about the effects of T on young girls from seeing the female body as a sexual object that is "ruined" by it. The only thing the article gets right is that puberty blockers are generally bad, but they're used because doctors are reticent to prescribe hormones, so they delay the choice.

spurgu 4y ago
> the vast majority of people who transition are glad to have done so According to a study with a ~12 month follow-up period after transitioning? I read something similarly misleading recently.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  12 months? What about 3, 5 or 10 years? Wouldn't that be more reasonable period to consider.
  - spurgu 4y ago
    So you would think and the prospect doesn't necessarily look that rosy when you do.
    - CSSer 4y ago
      I’m interested in the sources you’re referring to. Loss of follow-up seems well-cited as a potential weakness by legitimate sources in my brief investigation, but more importantly they have a reasonable amount of data from very old sources as well. I didn’t have to look hard.
- to1y 4y ago
  I completely believe all those feelings are completely real but I fail to see how changing anything related to your appearance will bring true lasting happiness. To me it seems like the pinnacle of an image obsessed society. Additionally, let's be honest, most trans will never look 100% like their desired gender, none of them will look close without hormone therapy, and many are much less fortunate even with all the pills and operations. It's a spiral of self-delusion and refusal to accept boundaries and the limits of nature.
  - CSSer 4y ago
    Your comment strikes me as interesting because you mention an image obsessed society but then you make some statements about image that seem to suggest a personal endorsement of this standard. Let’s hypothetically assume that your statements about failure to be perceived as they wish are 100% true as well as the idea that we should be less image focused are true too. Why should they or anyone else care if they never look like their desired gender if they feel better and lead productive lives? I’ve certainly gotten dressed up to go nowhere, and I know women who put on makeup just for themselves too. I realize this doesn’t lie in exactly the same realm, but I hope you can see my point. Are we deluded? It seems to me that nature is a slippery slope.
  - majikaja 4y ago
    If people say that the placebo effect will be diminished.
crazygringo 4y ago
[flagged]
- dang 4y ago
  You've broken the site guidelines in several places here. Please don't do that, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. Those are the moments when it matters most to follow them. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
tonfreed 4y ago
Suicide rates are the same before and after transitioning. There's something else going on that needs to be addressed, and simply screaming at and attempting to gaslight critical voices is going to end with the unnecessary deaths of a lot more people.
- StanislavPetrov 4y ago
  Seems likely from the evidence that gender dysphoria is a good indicator for the existence of an underlying mental condition rather than some sort of glorious lifestyle choice, whether or not the person with dysphoria actually "transitions". Unfortunately instead of helping these troubled people we are placating them and encouraging them to damage themselves (which, to be clear, should be there right if they are adults).
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  Are they? Where's the study? I couldn't find one on suicide rates, but this one on based on survey data (so people who are still alive to answer the survey), says that suicidal thoughts reduce after transitioning. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/2779429 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstrac...
  - 0xy 4y ago
    The study you are citing appears to have been commissioned by the National Center for Transgender Equality (an organization that was founded by a transgender activist). That's like citing a study commissioned by Exxon-Mobil on climate change. Forgive me for being extremely suspicious, given the multitude of other research to the contrary. "The overall mortality for sex-reassigned persons was higher during follow-up" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/
    - lern_too_spel 4y ago
      > The study you are citing appears to have been commissioned by the National Center for Transgender Equality Wrong. It was funded by a grant from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, which has no affiliation with any transgender activists. https://www.pcori.org/about/about-pcori https://www.pcori.org/about/about-pcori Forgive me for being extremely suspicious of your ability to evaluate evidence to come to rational conclusions. Your study compares sex-reassigned people to the general population, not those who had surgery against those who wanted surgery but didn't get it. It is cited multiple times with a correct interpretation by the paper I gave you. The author herself points out you're using it wrong. https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6q3e8v/science_ama_series_im_cecilia_dhejne_a_fellow_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6q3e8v/science_ama...
aaplok 4y ago
> elevates a cis "ally" who feels trans people are icky Are you talking about the author, who says at the start of the article that she is married to a trans man and spent years of her life working with and helping trans people? No matter what you think of the article, that claim is obviously wrong to anyone who read it.

devmor 4y ago

[flagged]

willcipriano 4y ago
What was false in the Twitter files?
- rapsey 4y ago
  Nothing. But when you are from a specific political spectrum, before they came out it was "this is a conspiracy". After they came out it was "well of course that is how it works this is nothing new."
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Who would’ve been shocked to hear that governments (including the US) make requests of private companies? Even Third Party Doctrine, which is a way more direct attack on people’s rights, is so well established that it has a name with capital letters and its own Wikipedia article and whatnot.
    - ksniwmidjd 4y ago
      [dead]
- jjeaff 4y ago
  Its the selective release of the Twitter files given only to select, pre-approved opinion/culture war journalists that concerns me.
  - willcipriano 4y ago
    What unreleased materials are you looking for?
    - jjeaff 4y ago

robjwells 4y ago

Interesting to note that very similar concerns have been raised by staff at the GIDS youth clinic in the UK. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51806962 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51806962 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56539466 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56539466

at-w 4y ago
Interesting parallels to the "epidemic" of Tourettes symptoms among teen girls that exploded over the past 2 years: https://www.wsj.com/articles/teen-girls-are-developing-tics-doctors-say-tiktok-could-be-a-factor-11634389201 https://www.wsj.com/articles/teen-girls-are-developing-tics-... As with gender dysphoria, patients flipped from being majority male to overwhelmingly female in just a few years. They also tended to know others with the symptoms either directly, or from social media feeds whose algorithms fed them more and more content around the topic.
- MagicMoonlight 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - ghqst 4y ago
    this... seems insane. Tourettes is a genuine syndrome that the annoying TikTok and internet culture is causing teenage girls to misdiagnose themselves.
  - tpush 4y ago
    Wow, this and your other comments on this thread are disgusting. This whole article's comment section is truly fucking awful.
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  And ADHD. Could be that there is a lot of it, but I know a few folks self-diagnosing. At least two of them went off meds and are fine, which raises questions if they were truly ADHD in the first place.

longcommonname 4y ago

More research should be done around detransitioners. Doctors need to evaluate the whole patient and in the case of informed consent they should confirm that the patient is aware of all the potential changes. That being said, gate keeping what I do with my body is wrong. I knew all the potential side effects when I transitioned. I read the wpath in full. I was comfortable with all the risks. This type of critical judgment of children's health care is needed and I hope the doctors are being more rigorous than what the author suggests. I feel terrible for the girls who made a decision they regret and lost parts of their body that made them happy. Their doctors, and parents failed them. I am also happy that so many people were able to successfully transition. The timing of the article is concerning with so many states trying to withhold life saving care I worry that the nuance of this article will be lost.

philwelch 4y ago
Gatekeeping is one of the central aspects of modern medicine. Maybe a hundred years ago, when we had a free country and you could buy heroin over the counter, there was nobody gatekeeping what you did to your own body. But now we’ve corrected a pretty long way in the other direction. In principle I think consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want with their own bodies, but consent needs to be informed and the person needs to be mentally capable of consent. You need some degree of gatekeeping just to reach that bar. And this is going to be an even bigger concern with children.
- landemva 4y ago
  > heroin over the counter, there was nobody gatekeeping I wasn't there, though I have learned that generally the local pharmacy would do the gate-keeping. Now the local pharmacy does what the computer says to do based on whatever regulations were input by the back office.
  - tomnipotent 4y ago
    The local pharmacy at that time didn't look anything like its current counterpart. Let's not forget that the 1920s was the start of the "Soda Fountain Pharmacy" thanks to prohibition, so I wouldn't put much stock into the quality of professional pharmacology at the time. It would be decades before regulation caught up.

selfmodruntime 4y ago

> To begin transitioning, the girls needed a letter of support from a therapist—usually one we recommended—who they had to see only once or twice for the green light. To make it more efficient for the therapists, we offered them a template for how to write a letter in support of transition. The next stop was a single visit to the endocrinologist for a testosterone prescription. This is exactly what parents have been fearing. They were told that cases like this are non existent. What these clinics are doing to children is criminal.

sixblossom 4y ago
> This is exactly what conservatives and parents have been fearing I'm as left leaning as they come and I'm also very worried and irritated by what is happening here. I hate that I have to make a new account for plausible deniability as well. I don't really understand what doctors and a section of society is playing at. This is an issue that needs therapy not surgery. I'm sorry you feel you're in the wrong body, welcome to the club of the ugly short bald people who have a similar problem. You can do xyz but you'll never be what you want to be. It's tough but there is is, let's do some things to make you more comfortable and make life more positive. See feelings don't have to be dismissed, but they also don't have to be pandered to. Using state funded medical services (or insurance funded if you're USA) is immoral imo. Sure if you're rich enough you can do whatever bizarre things you like to yourself, I don't care.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  You are proposing outlawing rogaine and Viagra an plastic surgery and Botox, I assume? Or only medicines for trans people?
  - jtbayly 4y ago
    Paid for by the state? Yes.
    - kevingadd 4y ago
      The medications and treatments often prescribed for trans people typically have other uses, so unfortunately for those who want to ban trans care, it's not possible to ban the treatments entirely, just come up with policies for being really selective about it. Those policies will not be terribly fair or effective. Otherwise you're denying other people access to the same care even though you might believe they need it - reconstructive plastic surgery for cancer survivors, androgen or estrogen suppressors for people with various hormone regulation problems, hormone replacement for post-menopausal women or men who no longer have functioning gonads, etc. Incidentally the latter is why Californian insurance typically covers surgeries for trans people: They already cover the same surgeries for other cases.

netmonk 4y ago

[flagged]

dang 4y ago
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html This topic is flameprone enough as it is, even if people don't pile on the firestarter.

Animats 4y ago

"Until 2015 or so, a very small number of these boys comprised the population of pediatric gender dysphoria cases. Then, across the Western world, there began to be a dramatic increase in a new population: Teenage girls, many with no previous history of gender distress, suddenly declared they were transgender and demanded immediate treatment with testosterone." That's what's so striking. Why is that happening? There's a controversy over this.[1] It's been observed in (at least) Australia, Canada, the UK, France, Sweden, and the US. People involved in studying this have been attacked, and as a result, there's not much new data since the big controversy in 2018. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid-onset_gender_dysphoria_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid-onset_gender_dysphoria_c...

2devnull 4y ago
I witnessed this first hand in a close relative who, in the throws of a multi month long bipolar psychosis, concluded that the source of her mental health problems was gender dysphoria. The internet was very influential in her reaching this conclusion. The internet also allowed her to locate a dr who didn’t restrict sexual reassignment to those without mental health comorbidities. Thankfully the very liberal dr she found was too far for her to travel, since she could not drive and Uber wasn’t yet a thing. She was stabilized on antipsychotics a few months later and completely dropped all discussion of gender dysphoria, something, to be clear, that she had never talked about or hinted at prior to her psychotic episode. It concerns me that had she had this episode a few years later, when the medical ethics had changed and Uber made it possible for a mentally ill person to travel to the city where the dr she found was located, she likely would have undergone some form of reassignment surgery with lasting physical effects and potentially catastrophic effects on her psychological well being. She has been happily married, well more or less happily, for more than a decade now, to a nice man. No sign of gender dysphoria and no recent psychotic episodes.
- Breefield 4y ago
  You seriously misunderstand how hard it is to have sex reassignment surgery. Even in states where beginning an HRT regimen is based on informed consent, there are many steps one must go through before having this procedure done. Multiple letters of recommendation from licensed therapists and having been on hormones for years. Not to mention the exorbitant costs even with insurance. Your suggestion that one could Uber to another city and have SRS performed is a gross mischaracterization of the reality trans people face.

AussieWog93 4y ago

Interesting she mentions Autism. I've definitely noticed a trend of people on the spectrum suffering from mental health problems, self-diagnosing as gender dysphoric and then launching themselves down a one-directional, miserable path that ends in their suicide. Being Autistic myself, and having goine through complete dysregulation as a 15-16 year old (it's way more common than you'd think, especially as most government support just stops when the kids turn 18), I completely understand the mental processes that both lead to the depression/anxiety/emotional dysregulation as well as the absolute certainty with which the epiphany of gender dysphoria is reached. Hearing the specific linguistic choices common on trans reddit/twitter/tttt, and knowing the exact state of mind that cause this language to be used just sends a shiver down my spine. All it would have taken is for me to have been born 5 years later, and I'd be a dead trans woman rather than a fulfilled husband and father of two. If there's anyone reading this who's on the spectrum themselves, or has a kid on the spectrum who's talking about gender issues, feel free to reach out and I can elaborate a bit more on exactly how this specific failure works.

hgsgm 4y ago
Can you write a blog article explaining how it works?
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  Maybe I should. Got some paternity leave coming up, so might have a bit of time to get my thoughts in order...
Pearse 4y ago
Thanks so much for taking the time to write this up. I would love to hear more about you're experiences growing up and especially the dysregulation. Is there any other things about your life you would be willing to share?
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  >I would love to hear more about you're experiences growing up and especially the dysregulation. Dysregulation[1] was Hell on Earth, in the literal sense. Very little in life works the way you think it should, and the reaction to these things constantly going wrong is extremely intense, negative, emotional unable to be controlled in any real sense. You lose the ability to reliably form even basic episodic/autobiographical memories, and with it any sense of the past or future. Entire chunks of your life go missing and you don't know what day it is, where you've been or where you're going. All you know is that you're constantly exhausted, nothing makes sense and everything just feels wrong. You don't know how long you've felt like this, and you don't know how long you'll continue to feel like this. As far as you're aware, past and future suffering will keep going on for eternity. And you will do anything, literally anything, to make it stop. For me, I was fortunate that my mum took me to a sleep specialist, who recommended getting my adenoids removed and prescribing an extremely specific sleep schedule which I followed to a T (all screens off at 9:00, in bed by 10:00, I don't remember if there was a specific constant time I needed to wake up by but I suspect that was part of it to. As an adult, I now supplement this routine with melatonin). This was enough to get me from a state of complete dysregulation to "garden-variety" depression, which eventually I overcame with the help of a supportive network of friends and parents who (semi-forcefully) steered me down a path where I could succeed. A hypothetical AussieWog98 might have convinced himself that the cause of the dysregulation was gender dysphoria, cut himself off from the people who really care and spent all his time online with other people just like himself until one day he couldn't take it any more. I really, genuinely believe that this is what is happening today, at least in the case of some people. For others (especially people who transition later in life), it really can help them be comfortable in their own skin, and this is of course where the trans "debate" gets hairy. [1] This is not technical language, but is the best and most concise word I can use to decribe it. There may be a more appropriate technical term, or a more scientific description of what is happening (seizures in the amygdala?). Feel free to comment if you have any scientific information or proper terminology, I'd love to read the literature on it.

aaron695 4y ago

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Grismar 4y ago

It's so important to take these testimonials seriously, whilst also being careful we don't hurt the chances of those that are able to get the help they would have had no access to only a decade ago.

jtbayly 4y ago
Gender reassignment has been a thing since the 70’s at least. And stopped being a thing because of these sorts of problems at John’s Hopkins where they actually did keep track of the results.
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  It looks like the opposite of what you say is true. It started being a thing again at JHU because of studies that were done. https://hub.jhu.edu/2022/07/01/johns-hopkins-expands-gender-affirming-care-and-support/ https://hub.jhu.edu/2022/07/01/johns-hopkins-expands-gender-... > "Gender-affirming care is evidence-based medical best practice that, for transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse people, is essential health care that enhances quality of life and overall well-being," wrote Pierre Joanis, JHU's vice president for human resources; Kevin Shollenberger, JHU's vice provost for student health and well-being; and Inez Stewart, senior vice president and chief human resources officer for Johns Hopkins Medicine, in a message to the Johns Hopkins community. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/long-shadow-cast-by-psychiatrist-on-transgender-issues-finally-recedes-at-johns-hopkins/2017/04/05/e851e56e-0d85-11e7-ab07-07d9f521f6b5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/long-... > Many scientists subsequently challenged the methodology behind Meyer’s study, as well as his interpretation of the results. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M22-1480 https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M22-1480
  - jtbayly 4y ago
    I didn't mean to imply that it doesn't do them today. It started doing them in the 1960s, and it ended them in 1979 based on the psychiatric results not justifying the practice. People smear Dr. Paul McHugh today for ending it, but unlike the doctors at the clinic described in this article, he cared about whether his patients were actually being benefited. Now we've come full circle and people are beginning to study the results, just like he did in the 70's. Not surprisingly, the same conclusions seem to be popping up around the world.

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g3e0 4y ago

No surgeon should be removing healthy body parts, in my opinion. You wouldn’t fit a gastric band to an anorexic person, no matter how badly the patient wanted it, and that’s not even permanent. I sympathise with all people who have issues accepting the body they were born with. If someone believes their body should be different, but otherwise their body is healthy, I think it’s fair to say that whatever is causing the feeling of mismatch is happening in the mind. It’s no surprise to me that a significant fraction present with other mental disorders. In an ideal world, there would be some form of therapy that helps people come to terms with and accept themselves with what they’ve been given. But again I do sympathise, because contemporary medicine simply isn’t very good at treating mental illnesses.

qaz_plm 4y ago
People are terrible at analogies
kevingadd 4y ago
What is your definition of healthy? Should people born with a cleft palate be forced to leave it alone? What about people with breathing problems due to their anatomy? If a kid has teeth grow in improperly and start causing jaw problems, should they be prohibited from having their wisdom teeth removed or teeth realigned with braces? Should tonsil removal be prohibited? If a woman has severe back pain due to oversized breasts, should it be prohibited to get a reduction surgery even if it improves quality of life? Should vasectomies be prohibited if a person with testes wants to be able to have sex with their partner without the risk of pregnancy? Should it be prohibited to medically disable "healthy" body parts as well? As an alternative to vasectomies you can use drugs to similarly disable that body part, in many cases effectively forever. Should that be illegal too? What about anti-androgens like Spironolactone - used on-label for multiple different purposes - should we ban those since they are also used for MtF HRT? Birth control also is functionally disabling healthy parts of the body. Why does a problem "happening in the mind" somehow mean that no treatment can occur outside of the mind? Do you think mood stabilizers and antipsychotics should be banned because we're treating an "in the mind" problem with physical, body-altering interventions?
- 4y ago

Pixeleen 4y ago

Comprehensive mental health treatment needs to be generally available in a non-threatening, universal, single-payer way. "Managed care" has an awful ring to it when you are mistrusting. I suspect that many cases being treated as gender dysphoria are actually other mental health disorders, such as self-loathing, borderline, schizoid personality disorder, substance abuse, or one or a combination of many others. I personally believe that only a licensed, Ph.D. psychologist, or in some cases psychiatrist providing short courses of medicine, without pecuniary interest, is qualified to treat these kinds of non-gender dysphoria disorders. Transgender medical care usually involves medicine, and the trans rights movement had a moment in the 2010s. I believe it inappropriate to use victim status to force others to provide an inappropriate treatment. It is also inappropriate to rush an inappropriate treatment because of the ticking clock argument. I draw a comparison to how many people go to the emergency room, which cannot turn them away, because they do not have first-line care like a family doctor, or basic health upkeep such as not smoking and eating healthy food. For clear or severe cases of gender dysphoria, early treatment is essential. Pharmaceutical and surgical. However gender transition only changes your gender! You still have to deal with whatever mental issues you had, integrate into society, and work hard to become a whole person. The gay rights movement came of age around 1980 in my view, but everybody agreed that how inappropriate it is to attempt to treatment that medically, except for self-harm or AIDS. I suspect that what we need is mental health to have its moment. Not "pride", or boasting about how many pills you are on. Maybe psychology programs need to be subsidized and promoted. We spent the past decade focusing on our smartphones, and I don't think it made us much happier. I suspect that we have the courage to turn some of that focus inward.

kevingadd 4y ago
While I personally think gender related care is far too restricted in most places, I agree that comprehensive mental health treatment is the biggest priority. People will have a much easier time dealing with gender-related stresses and issues if they're not ALSO staring down a bunch of other problems in their lives without access to care. It's also my understanding that trans and non-binary individuals tend to have other co-morbid problems going on, mental health or otherwise. This may be a data problem - the other problems being diagnosed more often because they go for treatment, etc - but from the specialists I've spoken to, it probably is an actual connection, induced by stress or otherwise.

faeriechangling 4y ago

>The center’s working assumption was that the earlier you treat kids with gender dysphoria, the more anguish you can prevent later on. This premise was shared by the center’s doctors and therapists. Given their expertise, I assumed that abundant evidence backed this consensus. Most of the evidence I've seen around transitioning is for older cohorts who were outliers in terms of their motivation to transition - most of the push I've seen is to transition younger cohorts for which the effects of transition are unknown and experimental since we are transitioning kids in populations that we never would have transitioned before. I don't think this is necessarily WRONG, just risky and experimental and requiring tracking, but I see it being portrayed as a scientific fact that putting kids on hormone blockers as preteens makes their lives better. > A report last year on a British pediatric transgender center found that about one-third of the patients referred there were on the autism spectrum. Regarding the whole notion of "Transgender kids are really just confused autistics", first what is considered an Autistic child itself is a moving target since Autism is not consistently diagnosed and we diagnose autism more broadly than we did even 10 years ago and the autistic population growth is pretty rapid itself. It's hard to get insight from something poorly understood by pointing out a correlation to another thing poorly understood. Second I've seen zero evidence that autistic populations are at any particular risk of adverse effects from gender affirming treatment or whatever, this just seems to be presumed because of condescending views towards autistics and their competence to guide their own care. >My concerns about this approach to dissenting parents grew in 2019 when one of our doctors actually testified in a custody hearing against a father who opposed a mother’s wish to start their 11-year-old daughter on puberty blockers. Gender identity is something rather famous for changing as you hit adolescence and this is something which has been noted throughout history to the point of being ritualised in some cases, and we even have the concept of "genderfluidity", but people seem to have this very deterministic view that whatever gender identity you had at 8 years old you have forever and you should intervene early before hormones kick in. Yet fucking with somebodies hormones at like 11 years old can't help but modify somebodies natural development of their gender identity, and that makes it hard to evaluate the effectiveness of early interventions without a control. We should make the treatment open to kids from 14 up, but below that kids should with both parents consent be allowed to enter an experimental trial on the condition that some of them will be controls. Unless we do that, we're going to keep hurting kids in ignorance, either due to under treatment or over treatment. In regards to the claims that patients aren't being informed of the risks of gender affirming care, I think political influence is fucking with proper medical care of transgender people in both directions, both outlawing supportive and sceptical medical care alike but in different areas, and I really wish politicians would frig off of such a fast changing, poorly understood, and charged issue. Maybe this clinic is saving trans kids, maybe it's not, but I personally would like society to stop pretending that it actually understands what will happen after they subject a significantly larger slice of the population to hormone treatments at increasingly young ages when the treatment population has multiplied several times over in short-order and we literally haven't even had time to do long term retrospectives. It's an experiment being portrayed as scientifically validated best practice. I would like to see more emphasis on medical freedom for doctors, controls, and proper long term tracking and research on patient outcomes but to allow these early interventions so long as they're being conducted as ethically as possible. That way we might even be able to identify nuances like "oh, if somebody has X issue, we should be extra cautious or extra aggressive about pursuing gender affirming care"

kevingadd 4y ago

It's disappointing that the generally dire state of gender care in the west - in terms of a lack of rigor (as complained about in this article), lack of consistent process, etc - is used mostly as an excuse to shut down clinics entirely or fully ban gender care even for consenting adults (in process in the US right now). The high rates of mental health struggles and suicides in the general US population (including but not limited to people struggling with gender issues) are used as a tool for arguing that gender care somehow leads to people's deaths instead of as a tool to argue for comprehensive, no-cost mental health care for people of all races, genders and identities. We're just handed the latest most fashionable bogeyman - drag queens doing book readings at the library, gender-questioning kids going to gender clinics, etc - and told that if only we Put A Stop To this, maybe things will be alright again. When in reality millions and millions of people are experiencing untold suffering right now, and we could make fundamental fixes to our medical system to help all of them instead of fixating specifically on a small subset of the population and helping extremist lawmakers ban entire categories of care, whether it be gender care or abortions or birth control.

throwaway378037 4y ago
Thanks for posting what seems to be the only sensible comment in this entire thread.

sverona 4y ago

This is poppycock. Here's a response: https://erininthemorn.substack.com/p/missouri-anti-trans-whistleblower https://erininthemorn.substack.com/p/missouri-anti-trans-whi...

not_a_shill 4y ago
Do you have a refutation that's a length most people would be willing to read? I don't need to keep hearing about the author's problems with misgendering.
- sverona 4y ago
  I'm sorry it's uncomfortable. So is getting misgendered.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- mkoryak 4y ago
  The original article is pretty long, so it makes sense that the refutation might also be long. I skimmed both. It feels kind of shitty to be asking for a tldr or a summary.
  - not_a_shill 4y ago
    I'm not asking for a tldr, and I don't need a point by point refutation of someone's personal experiences. I'm asking for them to write it in a more readable format. (Even you admit you skimmed it, and didn't really read it!) It's missing the forest from the trees, and non persuasive to me.
- xrd 4y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out. I was watching for "misgendering" when reading it. And I did read the whole thing! I actually found the misgendering part relevant. If Jamie Reed was as progressive as she claims, wouldn't that be something she would do "correctly?" I suppose you could say she no longer believes in trans identities, so that's why she isn't willing to do it anymore. But it feels like she is attacking the medical establishment and not the people, and as such would support what I'm assuming 100% of her patients desire, no? And, if you were to accept that she is writing for a conservative audience, it follows that that crowd would be turned off by using she when talking about someone born with a penis. I found the rebuttal compelling and I'm struggling a lot with this issue. The fact that so many medical organizations support the current care guidelines feels very contradictory to the assertions made by JR. And as the rebuttal author notes, JR was an intake worker, with limited access to the full story of these patients, and without proper medical training to do a full assessment. All in all, both articles are worth a read. After reading them both, I did feel like JR's was a well coordinated hit piece with dubious assertions, but would love to hear a rebuttal of the rebuttal!

erenyeager 4y ago

As a current medical student, I can confirm that school in the US teaches us “gender affirming” ideology acceptance without really much question or giving alternative perspectives. There was an entire required session where a “gender affirming” care doctor said we should imagine “cis people” as being “just as weird as trans people” and to reflect on our own idea of self-gender. When a Q&A question was posed about if gender transition is medically necessary (which is not easy to post about, btw, as during these sessions you are recorded in a zoom and anonymous questions are turned off; so everyone can see the full name of the person who asked, and it is recorded in a transcript also). The doctor responded dismissively about any doubt in the necessity of gender transition. Medical education and the medical institution is full of agenda pushing and ideology by the way, do not get me started on the day they introduced nurse practitioners as fellow “providers” who only want to make our jobs easier, while laws are being passed giving them full practice authority and expanding their scope to the detriment of doctors.

lern_too_spel 4y ago
As a non-Muslim, I wonder about the medical necessity of male or female circumcision, especially as it is commonly practiced without the consent of the patient. The latter is illegal in the US as of 2021, but the former seems a much larger and more pressing issue than gender affirming care. I just don't get the obsession with this topic. If you're a parent, your kids are being told things you don't like all the time, including being propositioned or being offered recreational drugs. This is very low on my list of worries. Talk to them to help them make better decisions, using logical arguments instead of groundless religious commandments. Problem solved.
silveroriole 4y ago
Do you object to the “cis people are also weird, gender is weird” bit? Why? It’s always seemed very weird to me that the vast majority of people DO align with gender roles and DO enjoy the sexually dimorphic body they have, even though that body had a 50-50 chance of being the other sex and cultural ideas of gender seem to be pretty randomly assigned (the clothes men and women are supposed to wear change over time, for example). Why aren’t more people unhappy because they are not the other sex? Either there’s something innate that tells you you are a certain sex and makes you want to imitate others of that sex - in which case obviously it can go wrong, hence transgenderism, and that’s a completely neutral thing to happen - or it’s all cultural brainwashing and we might as well let people choose their bodies and gender expression anyway.

u1337ochka 4y ago

Please read this thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1624135644904624128 https://mobile.twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/162413564490... The article is just another piece of fearmongering propaganda

deely3 4y ago
Could you describe some points where you agree with article mentioned in the tweet? Article: https://erininthemorn.substack.com/p/missouri-anti-trans-whistleblower https://erininthemorn.substack.com/p/missouri-anti-trans-whi... > She is not a doctor, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, and does not have direct medical diagnostic experience with patients. Author of "debunction" is "Trans queer news and history content creator". Author is not a doctor, not a psychologist, not a psychiatrist too..

diogenescynic 4y ago

A for-profit healthcare industry is rife with conflicts of interest. Doing the medically correct thing takes a back seat to making revenue/profits.

xupybd 4y ago

In New Zealand we have anti conversion therapy laws. The way the law is written it may not be legal for a trained councilor to suggest that a child is not trans if they present as trans. I don't know if it's possible that 100% of children claiming this are correct.

deleted 4y ago
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jtbayly 4y ago
It is also against the law in my city (Cincinnati, OH) as well as several states. These laws are terrible.

majikaja 4y ago

Maybe normalizing skirts and makeup for men like they did the opposite for women would reduce the rates a little. They've released lace underwear for guys in Japan lately.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
Possibly. When you get right down to it, "gender" is really just a categorization of behavioral traits. This is what we mean when we say that gender is a social construct. I mean, what are people so worried about with trans people? That they use the "wrong" bathroom, wear the "wrong" clothes, use the "wrong" pronoun? These are all arbitrary bullshit. If we had genderless bathrooms and accepted that people could wear whatever they want and got rid of gendered pronouns, maybe we really wouldn't need special gender-affirming care. I have it on good authority that having the "wrong" genitalia for your gender is legitimately distressing, but perhaps that is just part of the expression of the social construct of gender and if the person had grown up without the concept of gender they wouldn't care what their genitalia were. Regardless, it wouldn't be an different than any other form of plastic surgery as far as I'm concerned.
- gingfro 4y ago
  Increased societal acceptance of men wearing clothing and styling themselves in a way that is considered feminine, is a different type of thing to eradicating female-only safe spaces. The latter is still necessary due to human sexual dimorphism. The former is just adornments.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    Sexual dimorphism in humans has significant overlap. Many females are well above average male strength and many men are well below average female strength. I therefore submit that it doesn't really make any sense to use this as a basis for what constitutes a "safe space".
    - tempposter 4y ago

mattwilsonn888 4y ago

I've never been so gripped by common sense.

SillyUsername 4y ago

People don't truly know what they want until they get it. They don't appreciate the grass often looks greener, but actually isn't. Add that to raging often teenage hormones and you get this result. Misdiagnosis of a genuine need to change gender is just adding justification for transphobia - it allows people to say "look, these people were wrong in their decision", which can then be misused as an argument in all cases. The law needs tightening - this isn't to prevent the changes, this is to assess proper mental faculty in separating the perceived post transition fantasy of what it's like Vs the reality, and not provide fuel for the anti trans fire.

ghqst 4y ago
Yeah, the more of these too extreme clinics we have, the more it hurts the overall case for the genuine trans person who has been on hormones for years medically transitioning.

rejectfinite 4y ago

Good and interesting article. Swedish TV has done several documentaries on trans care here and its findings are disturbing. The patients are put on hormores too easily, don't understand what they do etc. There was even several regrets, detransitioners.

majikaja 4y ago

Why don't we just force all people who make appointments with psychiatrists to take a course in how the brain works, including theoretical reasoning of how unusual thought patterns can occur just like random weather fluctuations. If people understood that their thoughts are just a chaotic product of electrical impulses instead of some undefined metaphyisical phenomenon maybe they would realize that no one is really special. Instead we encourage magical thinking around identity and strip people of ability to reason about their feelings effectively.

deleted 4y ago

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DoreenMichele 4y ago

Experiments are supposed to be carefully designed. Hypotheses are supposed to be tested ethically. The doctors I worked alongside at the Transgender Center said frequently about the treatment of our patients: “We are building the plane while we are flying it.” No one should be a passenger on that kind of aircraft. Late to the party, so no one is going to read this comment, but I can't help but wonder how much the explosion in Trans stuff is related to changing gender roles generally. We used to have fairly clearly separated roles, clothing styles, etc and I wonder if we just lack an adequate framework for sorting that out properly and it helps nudge some vulnerable individuals down odd pathways in unfortunate ways.

hyperman1 4y ago
In my experience, it takes at least a few days before a popular HN story fully burns out. There is a huge peak of activity in the first few hours, and then a looooong period of simmering. I've seen up/downvotes for comments days after I wrote them. Besides, there is empirical evidence that at least 1 person read this comment ;-)
ghqst 4y ago
I agree it'll be interesting to see how society progresses, especially as the other side is overcorrecting right now.
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  I'm really not expecting progress. That suggests improvement and it's nigh impossible to even have a meaningful discussion about anything having to do with sex or gender without it going sideways. My magic 8 ball does not predict good things here.
  - ghqst 4y ago
    I unfortunately too was just meaning "progress" as in the marching on of time :(

MagicMoonlight 4y ago

I think it’s funny that we always mocked countries for castrating gay people. How could they do that we asked. And now we’re castrating millions in the name of diversity. Ironic.

honeybadger1 4y ago
I am gay, 34, and I still can't understand HOW doctors can justify severing breasts, a penis, or altering chemical systems permanently in someones body to make them feel better about themselves, especially in youth! This is like treating Schizophrenia by playing into their delusions to give them comfort. There is also something extremely concerning about gender dysphoria or being trans becoming essentially a pop culture within more blue-leaning states while other states have statistically low occurrence of gender dysphoria(which is in line with modern psychiatry and historically). Are blue-leaning states producing trans people, why are most trans people in the USA under 25(by more than 43%!)? Is this our generations medical grift(snake oil)? In 40 years will we have a derogatory reference to it in our history books(gender med)? Sounds super insensitive, but I don't mean to be. I feel awful for these people that are truly miserable and need help, but there is more going on here from a crony-capitalism and big-pharma perspective than people are willing to admit. It seems like every where I turn I am trying to be convinced it IS the answer and Gay or Lesbian people are also being forced to get in line on what is happening(if you're a gay male who only dates other biological males, you're transphobic...yeah)... I feel this is so damaging to a large group of a future generation of our youth and creating contention even between communities that are otherwise united on the other 98% of issues that we face.
- ghqst 4y ago
  Gender dysphoria is easy to shove down if you're in an environment where others around you won't be accepting. It's unsurprising that blue states have a lot more REPORTED trans people. However, the general internet culture of teenagers misdiagnosing medical disorders means that there is indeed too many of the wrong people receiving gender affirming care. In regards to the biological male thing, no sane person would say that this is transphobic. Attraction has many factors, it's just being mean about it to trans men that is hurtful, not "not being attracted to them," which is normal imo.

low_tech_love 4y ago

One weird thing I see (as a scientist myself) commonly in this debate is the rough idea that to intervene or to not intervene are two sides of a balanced coin, and the decision is solely the doctor’s; this naturally results in the idea that, if a doctor opposes it, then she/he is a prejudiced bigot who is personally intent on harming the person by keeping her from fulfilling some predestined fate. However, in the scientific method, the onus of evidence is always on the intervention side. Even if you happened to discover an amazing drug to cure cancer, with little to no apparent side effects, it would take years to prove that it actually works and is not harmful. Why is all this being thrown away? If a doctor stops you from messing with your body without good evidence it’s because well that’s how science should work.

Connor_Creegan 4y ago

"... the safety of children should not be a matter for our culture wars." Unfortunately, everything attested in this article is the direct consequence of adopting philosophical tenets of the currently-victorious contender in the Kulturkampf, namely Liberalism. Save for some cataclysmic distraction (like a war total enough to drain our resources and attention to the point of bringing us back to nature, as it were), this situation will not improve unless Americans begin to challenge the liberal dogma of bodily autonomy. Of course, no one wants to do that because that would mean admitting that the will of each individual is corrupt - and that's, like, original sin, or whatevur...

_nalply 4y ago

Why does this happen? If anyone has at least some speculation, I would like to read about it.

aiscapehumanity 4y ago

This has nothing to do with tech

S3rM5Y5 4y ago

Interesting that this article gets traction on HN yet posting an article that directly responds to it gets flagged[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34842454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34842454