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> I'm still completely astonished that doctors allow teenagers to undergo sex change surgery or chemical procedures before the age of sexual consent, or the rig

> I'm still completely astonished that doctors allow teenagers to undergo sex change surgery or chemical procedures before the age of sexual consent, or the right to vote. Thankfully, there is data here. First, sex change surgery and chemical procedures are not what you think they are. The care given to teenagers is typically "puberty blockers", which are temporary and reversible drugs that delay the onset of puberty. These are typically given explicitly so kids can age a bit and ensure they are aren't making difficult to reverse decisions either way. Puberty is irreversible, so temporarily delaying it gives people time to make evaluations without time pressure. You really don't want people making decisions about whether they are trans or not under the gun -- "Oh shit, if I don't make a decision now, I'm going to have puberty, so I better go go go!". After that, kids enter the care of mental health professionals and doctors, who observe and work with that kid's community and the kid themselves for years before undergoing any semi-permanent change like hormone therapy or surgery. These decisions are not taken lightly, and the regret rate for gender affirming care is about 1%. That regret rate is considerably smaller than regret rates for knee/hip replacements, marriage, having children, and many, many other things we widely consider to be normal healthy things to do.

smeej 4y ago
That regret rate stat is often-touted, but extremely out of date. It may have been accurate back when 0.3% of people, most of them adults, were the sample set of "people who had undergone gender-affirming medical treatment," but now approximately ten percent of children, a 30x increase, are identifying as some type of transgender, and we simply do not have current regret statistics. It would be great if the reality were as you described, that children were receiving years of dedicated psychotherapy to address and rule out other issues before being provided cross-sex hormones (which, if given after puberty blockers, permanently sterilize the recipient), but it's just not the case. There are many, many places kids can get needed "referrals" from one visit without their parents' knowledge or consent.
- xracy 4y ago
  [Citation Needed]
  - smeej 4y ago
    The "0.3-3.8% regret" statistic comes from this summary of the literature, which does not have sources before 2017: https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people/ https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equali... The claim that this is current despite the massive uptick in children identifying as trans (again, a 30x increase), needs a current citation.
    - xracy 4y ago
      I was asking for citations for your claims. That literature seems pretty solid, given you shared a literal collation of all of it. Importantly, increased number of children identifying as trans Does Not Mean "increased number of children who would not otherwise have identified as trans". It just means our culture is getting more accepting of trans kids, so they're not relegated to being outcasts in all cases. So your claim that the year studies were published matters, is just wrong on the face of it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/ <- also, it turns out that it's a lie that there's no current data on this. This was my first Google. It would be hella weird if there was a sudden stopping of people studying this since 2017, given all of the interest in the subject. > There are many, many places kids can get needed "referrals" from one visit without their parents' knowledge or consent. That's the citation I want from you.
      - rbanffy 4y ago
        > Importantly, increased number of children identifying as trans Does Not Mean "increased number of children who would not otherwise have identified as trans". A useful analogy would be the number of women who spontaneously self-identified as witches in Salem by 1692 and 1693 compared to the number who self-identified as witches in the late 1960's. Being burned to a crisp is certainly a huge downside to showing your true persona.
- mcphage 4y ago
  > are identifying as some type of transgender, and we simply do not have current regret statistics. It's hard to have regret statistics for identifying as transgender, because if you regret identifying as transgender, you just... stop. Regret statistics are irrelevant, because it's not a decision with long term consequences.
  - smeej 4y ago
    I'm not talking about "desisters," people who socially transitioned but never took medical action. I'm talking about people who used cross-sex hormones and surgery to alter their bodies. Having body parts added or removed absolutely has long-term consequences.
    - mcphage 4y ago
      > I'm talking about people who used cross-sex hormones and surgery to alter their bodies. Then why on Earth did you cite the statistic of “10% of children”… 10% of children have not used cross-sex hormones or surgery to alter their body.
lostmsu 4y ago
> temporary and reversible drugs According to a short overview of the subject, this is false. Temporarity is questionable, and there are significant adverse side effects, especially in girls. E.g. https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/20636/Risk-of-pseudotumor-cerebri-added-to-labeling-for https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/20636/Risk-of-pseu... . None of which should be surprising to anyone who read anything about hormonal treatments.

smeej 4y ago

That regret rate stat is often-touted, but extremely out of date. It may have been accurate back when 0.3% of people, most of them adults, were the sample set of "people who had undergone gender-affirming medical treatment," but now approximately ten percent of children, a 30x increase, are identifying as some type of transgender, and we simply do not have current regret statistics. It would be great if the reality were as you described, that children were receiving years of dedicated psychotherapy to address and rule out other issues before being provided cross-sex hormones (which, if given after puberty blockers, permanently sterilize the recipient), but it's just not the case. There are many, many places kids can get needed "referrals" from one visit without their parents' knowledge or consent.

xracy 4y ago
[Citation Needed]
- smeej 4y ago
  The "0.3-3.8% regret" statistic comes from this summary of the literature, which does not have sources before 2017: https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people/ https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equali... The claim that this is current despite the massive uptick in children identifying as trans (again, a 30x increase), needs a current citation.
  - xracy 4y ago
    I was asking for citations for your claims. That literature seems pretty solid, given you shared a literal collation of all of it. Importantly, increased number of children identifying as trans Does Not Mean "increased number of children who would not otherwise have identified as trans". It just means our culture is getting more accepting of trans kids, so they're not relegated to being outcasts in all cases. So your claim that the year studies were published matters, is just wrong on the face of it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/ <- also, it turns out that it's a lie that there's no current data on this. This was my first Google. It would be hella weird if there was a sudden stopping of people studying this since 2017, given all of the interest in the subject. > There are many, many places kids can get needed "referrals" from one visit without their parents' knowledge or consent. That's the citation I want from you.
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      > Importantly, increased number of children identifying as trans Does Not Mean "increased number of children who would not otherwise have identified as trans". A useful analogy would be the number of women who spontaneously self-identified as witches in Salem by 1692 and 1693 compared to the number who self-identified as witches in the late 1960's. Being burned to a crisp is certainly a huge downside to showing your true persona.
mcphage 4y ago
> are identifying as some type of transgender, and we simply do not have current regret statistics. It's hard to have regret statistics for identifying as transgender, because if you regret identifying as transgender, you just... stop. Regret statistics are irrelevant, because it's not a decision with long term consequences.
- smeej 4y ago
  I'm not talking about "desisters," people who socially transitioned but never took medical action. I'm talking about people who used cross-sex hormones and surgery to alter their bodies. Having body parts added or removed absolutely has long-term consequences.
  - mcphage 4y ago
    > I'm talking about people who used cross-sex hormones and surgery to alter their bodies. Then why on Earth did you cite the statistic of “10% of children”… 10% of children have not used cross-sex hormones or surgery to alter their body.

lostmsu 4y ago

> temporary and reversible drugs According to a short overview of the subject, this is false. Temporarity is questionable, and there are significant adverse side effects, especially in girls. E.g. https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/20636/Risk-of-pseudotumor-cerebri-added-to-labeling-for https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/20636/Risk-of-pseu... . None of which should be surprising to anyone who read anything about hormonal treatments.