4 ms·

> I am going to re-insist on the idea that parental consent is going to play a big role in practice in US healthcare practices, if only for financial reasons.

> I am going to re-insist on the idea that parental consent is going to play a big role in practice in US healthcare practices, if only for financial reasons. Oh agreed. If, for no other reason, that is how the politics, even on the American Left, are now. A few years ago, people were talking about gender affirming care as a matter of right for the children. Singal, among others, changed that conversation. > I have very little patience for the idea that access is easy. Agreed, but I think you may have misconstrued Singal's point. He's not saying it's too easy, he's saying there is not enough preliminary psychiatric care like the treatment protocol dictated in the Netherlands. > Perhaps there is a debate to be had on treatment protocols, but I generally feel like, for something that covers such a small segment of the population, the default is to err towards letting that debate happen in professional circles. Um. Those professional circles like HN's professional circles need to be open to the air every now and then. Like -- what if we allowed Peter Thiel and his circle of founders, raised on Heinlein novels and sugary soda, to dictate tech policy in the US? Some people are just too weirdly close to a thing. We actually do need the wisdom that normies can offer. Specifically, re: this topic, four European countries, who have a much more experience than Americans do with this care, have recently implemented more restrictive approaches to care. See: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/06/us-europe-transgender-care-00119106 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/06/us-europe-transgend...

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
theossuary 1y ago
It should be a matter of right. My parents mutilated me as a child because they denied me healthcare. We should not allow parents to deny their children healthcare which leads to their permanent disfiguration. That's disgusting. If you think it'd be wrong to force a cis kid to be trans, then it's also wrong to force a trans kid to be cis.
- mustache_kimono 1y ago
  > It should be a matter of right. I think that's a fine point to make, but I also think it's unlikely to be politically feasible, any time soon, in the US. You may have been perfectly capable of making this decision, but, in the most common case, most parents know that teenage brains driving almost adult bodies sometimes make really terrible decisions. And lots of us imagine we were much smarter than we actually were in adolescence. Moreover -- parents can be just as profoundly stupid. I'd imagine a teenage Melanie Griffith would say she was perfectly capable of consenting to the very adult relationship she had with Don Johnson, and to which, I believe, her parents consented, as well. In retrospect, I'm not sure adult Melanie Griffith would feel the same. Or at the very least she may not allow her daughter to do the same. Perhaps that's why we should willing to accept some guidance from things that at least can pretend to be objective -- science and journalism. Especially views critical of our priors and intuitions. And we definitely shouldn't seek to silence or de-platform anyone simply because they disagree. Please -- vote the bastards out of office who don't take your problems seriously, but also please don't silence journalists for suggesting that there is more to this question than two simple American Left and Right narratives. Some of us need that kind of help to understand the world.
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  > We should not allow parents to deny their children healthcare which leads to their permanent disfiguration. That's disgusting. So instead we need to enable parents to allow healthcare to disfigure their young kids when they predictably get influenced from social media and their peers? How is it 'disgusting' to try to let someone live as they were born?
  - TimorousBestie 1y ago
    > How is it 'disgusting' to try to let someone live as they were born? Welcome to the cleft palate surgical repair denialism club!
  - TheDong 1y ago
    It's a medical matter. If medical officials broadly agree that having a prosthetic limb gives someone better quality of life than having no limb, then yes, we should disfigure the human body by attaching a prosthetic. Medical officials fairly broadly agree that gender-affirming care improves the quality of life of patients, and so of course it should be allowed. It's disgusting to try and use the law to force medical professionals to give sub-par care for no good reason. > How is it 'disgusting' to try to let someone live as they were born? I assume you're opposed to cosmetic dental braces for children? Even though just like gender-affirming care, they can lead to better self-perception and better outcomes (but 'disfigure' the child by making their teeth more aligned with stereotypical norms)
    - Manuel_D 1y ago
      > Medical officials fairly broadly agree that gender-affirming care improves the quality of life of patients, and so of course it should be allowed. This is not really true any more at this point in history. European countries have either backed away from pediatric gender affirming care, or they never allowed it in the first place. It's increasingly the case that the US and Canada are the outliers in the broader consensus that the evidence for the benefits of endocrine interventions in children is too weak to justify routine prescription. > I assume you're opposed to cosmetic dental braces for children? Even though just like gender-affirming care, they can lead to better self-perception and better outcomes (but 'disfigure' the child by making their teeth more aligned with stereotypical norms) Are we really going to try and draw an equivalence between cosmetic dental braces and permanently-altering hormones? A wire pulling a kid's teeth into places is not comparable to chemically castrating the kid for a few years and giving them opposite-sex hormones in their mid-teens. The measured benefits to the latter have to be way higher to justify that level of invasiveness and permanent change. These kinds of blithe comparisons to the seriousness of gender-affirming care no small part of why trust on this issue has waned so fast.
- bobsmooth 1y ago
  I read a study that said a majority of trans kids grow up to be gay if they don't take puberty blockers. I think it's wrong to force a gay kid to be trans.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

theossuary 1y ago

It should be a matter of right. My parents mutilated me as a child because they denied me healthcare. We should not allow parents to deny their children healthcare which leads to their permanent disfiguration. That's disgusting. If you think it'd be wrong to force a cis kid to be trans, then it's also wrong to force a trans kid to be cis.

mustache_kimono 1y ago
> It should be a matter of right. I think that's a fine point to make, but I also think it's unlikely to be politically feasible, any time soon, in the US. You may have been perfectly capable of making this decision, but, in the most common case, most parents know that teenage brains driving almost adult bodies sometimes make really terrible decisions. And lots of us imagine we were much smarter than we actually were in adolescence. Moreover -- parents can be just as profoundly stupid. I'd imagine a teenage Melanie Griffith would say she was perfectly capable of consenting to the very adult relationship she had with Don Johnson, and to which, I believe, her parents consented, as well. In retrospect, I'm not sure adult Melanie Griffith would feel the same. Or at the very least she may not allow her daughter to do the same. Perhaps that's why we should willing to accept some guidance from things that at least can pretend to be objective -- science and journalism. Especially views critical of our priors and intuitions. And we definitely shouldn't seek to silence or de-platform anyone simply because they disagree. Please -- vote the bastards out of office who don't take your problems seriously, but also please don't silence journalists for suggesting that there is more to this question than two simple American Left and Right narratives. Some of us need that kind of help to understand the world.
DaSHacka 1y ago
> We should not allow parents to deny their children healthcare which leads to their permanent disfiguration. That's disgusting. So instead we need to enable parents to allow healthcare to disfigure their young kids when they predictably get influenced from social media and their peers? How is it 'disgusting' to try to let someone live as they were born?
- TimorousBestie 1y ago
  > How is it 'disgusting' to try to let someone live as they were born? Welcome to the cleft palate surgical repair denialism club!
- TheDong 1y ago
  It's a medical matter. If medical officials broadly agree that having a prosthetic limb gives someone better quality of life than having no limb, then yes, we should disfigure the human body by attaching a prosthetic. Medical officials fairly broadly agree that gender-affirming care improves the quality of life of patients, and so of course it should be allowed. It's disgusting to try and use the law to force medical professionals to give sub-par care for no good reason. > How is it 'disgusting' to try to let someone live as they were born? I assume you're opposed to cosmetic dental braces for children? Even though just like gender-affirming care, they can lead to better self-perception and better outcomes (but 'disfigure' the child by making their teeth more aligned with stereotypical norms)
  - Manuel_D 1y ago
    > Medical officials fairly broadly agree that gender-affirming care improves the quality of life of patients, and so of course it should be allowed. This is not really true any more at this point in history. European countries have either backed away from pediatric gender affirming care, or they never allowed it in the first place. It's increasingly the case that the US and Canada are the outliers in the broader consensus that the evidence for the benefits of endocrine interventions in children is too weak to justify routine prescription. > I assume you're opposed to cosmetic dental braces for children? Even though just like gender-affirming care, they can lead to better self-perception and better outcomes (but 'disfigure' the child by making their teeth more aligned with stereotypical norms) Are we really going to try and draw an equivalence between cosmetic dental braces and permanently-altering hormones? A wire pulling a kid's teeth into places is not comparable to chemically castrating the kid for a few years and giving them opposite-sex hormones in their mid-teens. The measured benefits to the latter have to be way higher to justify that level of invasiveness and permanent change. These kinds of blithe comparisons to the seriousness of gender-affirming care no small part of why trust on this issue has waned so fast.
bobsmooth 1y ago
I read a study that said a majority of trans kids grow up to be gay if they don't take puberty blockers. I think it's wrong to force a gay kid to be trans.