3 ms·

That's not what I'm saying at all. I am actually considered "intersex" because I was born with one of my testicles located and stuck within my abdomen. As a bab

That's not what I'm saying at all. I am actually considered "intersex" because I was born with one of my testicles located and stuck within my abdomen. As a baby they discovered it, and my mom let them operate and relocate it to my scrotum. While the testicle is believed to be inert, it's otherwise normal and I'm glad she did. And I'm glad she and the doctor had the mental faculties in place to _evaluate individual medical concerns_ properly. Not all cases are simply cosmetic; a dislocated testicle can cause a lot of problems later in life, as you might imagine, since it's not supposed to be where it was stuck.

wizzwizz4 1y ago
"Organ in an unhealthy place" is of course a case where intervention is in the best interests of the child ("medically-necessary"). But in many countries (including Norway), medically-unnecessary interventions are frequently approved, or even recommended, by doctors. The existing processes do not provide enough protection against such abusive practices. Wikipedia cites https://web.archive.org/web/20210425173353/https://bufdir.no/Bibliotek/Dokumentside/?docId=BUF00004919 https://web.archive.org/web/20210425173353/https://bufdir.no..., which I cannot read easily, but which you may find interesting. (Unlike Bergamot, Firefox Translation has no Norwegian support, but the Swedish model tries really hard.)
- simianparrot 1y ago
  I agree there's probably more protections necessary. For example I'm also strongly against any religion based altering of the body of children -- circumcision included -- that isn't medically necessary. Although I guess that's a much discussed topic of its own. The problem is that drawing this line isn't always simple. Make the law too strict, and you can just as easily end up barring doctors from performing surgeries that by their correct case-by-case judgement is necessary, but the law prohibits because it necessitates, say, medical consensus in general. But make the law too lax and you open the doors to purely cosmetic surgeries which I am absolutely against. What we cannot have is the ability for children whom cannot legally make medical decisions be allowed to start things like gender-affirming care. Because if we can't trust them with other less life-altering choices, how could we trust them with that? Especially given how easily influenced children are.
  - wizzwizz4 1y ago
    Your paragraph 3 is the basic theory around medical gatekeeping: in many societies, children just plain aren't powerful enough to be in a position to give informed consent, unless special measures are taken to rule out undue influence. (In this case, that'd be: a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which involves a psychologist asking you awkward questions for a few hours; and then ensuring all subsequent consent is informed, and in accordance with the psychologist's findings.) That's also why we have the "compromise" of puberty blockers (safe, reversible), but not any permanent treatment until the child reaches Gillick competence (in Norway, age 16). The trouble I have with this reasoning, though, is it's asymmetrical. We don't allow trans kids access to exogenous sex hormones because cis kids might hypothetically be being influenced by their parents / other authority figures to make a bad decision (e.g. Munchausen syndrome by proxy), but we know there's pressure on trans kids to repress and pretend to be cis (we have statistics about it), so why do we let any children go through puberty? How can we trust them with that? (Yes, this thought experiment is somewhat ludicrous, but why is it ludicrous?) For most people who experience it, gender dysphoria is distressing and hard to ignore. Most cis people can be put in situations where they experience it, and they report the same intense feelings of distress. I doubt you could easily influence many 12-year-olds to push through those feelings – though I'm not sure how one might test this ethically, so I'm not sure what studies to look for. Norway's current approach seems suitably-conservative to me. (And I don't see any advantage, even hypothetically, to forcing trans people into binary classifications: that seems like the "rigid gender roles" problem rearing its head again.) P.S.: You're considerably more reasonable about this than I initially thought: thinking about the right things, for the right reasons, such that with complete information I'd expect you to come to the right decisions. I long to have people like that for political opponents.
    - simianparrot 1y ago
      Puberty blockers aren't reversible, because puberty has an end date. Also puberty is a natural function of the human body. We can only do our best to support children going through it, but it's not even worth contemplating whether we should "let" a child go through it or not. That makes no biological sense. For better or worse, humans are mammals whose offspring require _significant_ amount of care for much longer than any other mammal. We might not like it on a theoretical level, but practically speaking and evolutionarily, parents are responsible for their children until their children come of age. When it comes to legitimate trans kids the aim should be education of and societal support of parents to be as informed as possible, not to circumvent them if some _other_ adults deem it necessary. A doctor is not the legal caretaker of a child, only the parents are.

wizzwizz4 1y ago

"Organ in an unhealthy place" is of course a case where intervention is in the best interests of the child ("medically-necessary"). But in many countries (including Norway), medically-unnecessary interventions are frequently approved, or even recommended, by doctors. The existing processes do not provide enough protection against such abusive practices. Wikipedia cites https://web.archive.org/web/20210425173353/https://bufdir.no/Bibliotek/Dokumentside/?docId=BUF00004919 https://web.archive.org/web/20210425173353/https://bufdir.no..., which I cannot read easily, but which you may find interesting. (Unlike Bergamot, Firefox Translation has no Norwegian support, but the Swedish model tries really hard.)

simianparrot 1y ago
I agree there's probably more protections necessary. For example I'm also strongly against any religion based altering of the body of children -- circumcision included -- that isn't medically necessary. Although I guess that's a much discussed topic of its own. The problem is that drawing this line isn't always simple. Make the law too strict, and you can just as easily end up barring doctors from performing surgeries that by their correct case-by-case judgement is necessary, but the law prohibits because it necessitates, say, medical consensus in general. But make the law too lax and you open the doors to purely cosmetic surgeries which I am absolutely against. What we cannot have is the ability for children whom cannot legally make medical decisions be allowed to start things like gender-affirming care. Because if we can't trust them with other less life-altering choices, how could we trust them with that? Especially given how easily influenced children are.
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  Your paragraph 3 is the basic theory around medical gatekeeping: in many societies, children just plain aren't powerful enough to be in a position to give informed consent, unless special measures are taken to rule out undue influence. (In this case, that'd be: a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, which involves a psychologist asking you awkward questions for a few hours; and then ensuring all subsequent consent is informed, and in accordance with the psychologist's findings.) That's also why we have the "compromise" of puberty blockers (safe, reversible), but not any permanent treatment until the child reaches Gillick competence (in Norway, age 16). The trouble I have with this reasoning, though, is it's asymmetrical. We don't allow trans kids access to exogenous sex hormones because cis kids might hypothetically be being influenced by their parents / other authority figures to make a bad decision (e.g. Munchausen syndrome by proxy), but we know there's pressure on trans kids to repress and pretend to be cis (we have statistics about it), so why do we let any children go through puberty? How can we trust them with that? (Yes, this thought experiment is somewhat ludicrous, but why is it ludicrous?) For most people who experience it, gender dysphoria is distressing and hard to ignore. Most cis people can be put in situations where they experience it, and they report the same intense feelings of distress. I doubt you could easily influence many 12-year-olds to push through those feelings – though I'm not sure how one might test this ethically, so I'm not sure what studies to look for. Norway's current approach seems suitably-conservative to me. (And I don't see any advantage, even hypothetically, to forcing trans people into binary classifications: that seems like the "rigid gender roles" problem rearing its head again.) P.S.: You're considerably more reasonable about this than I initially thought: thinking about the right things, for the right reasons, such that with complete information I'd expect you to come to the right decisions. I long to have people like that for political opponents.
  - simianparrot 1y ago
    Puberty blockers aren't reversible, because puberty has an end date. Also puberty is a natural function of the human body. We can only do our best to support children going through it, but it's not even worth contemplating whether we should "let" a child go through it or not. That makes no biological sense. For better or worse, humans are mammals whose offspring require _significant_ amount of care for much longer than any other mammal. We might not like it on a theoretical level, but practically speaking and evolutionarily, parents are responsible for their children until their children come of age. When it comes to legitimate trans kids the aim should be education of and societal support of parents to be as informed as possible, not to circumvent them if some _other_ adults deem it necessary. A doctor is not the legal caretaker of a child, only the parents are.