An English ruling on transgender teens could have global repercussions
economist.com
economist.com
I know there are exceptions, but the default state should be to trust parents with their own children. Nobody is perfect and mistakes will be made. That’s life, we try to do our best. And no committee, politician, doctor, even therapist is going to be able to ensure they won’t make mistakes that are worse. And I love my kids much more than they ever could.
Someone's ability to join the army and be used as cannon fodder is hardly proof of their ability to think intelligently for themselves.
In England if you're 16 or older you can consent to get any medical treatment. If you're 18 and older you can decline any medical treatment if you're competent to do so. If you're 16 or 17 you cannot decline life-saving medical treatment, the courts will decide.
If you're under 16 your healthcare team will test to see if you're Gillick Competent. If you are Gillick Competent you can consent to any medical treatment. Doctors will always try to get the parents involved, and will always try to get agreement of the parents, but sometimes that's not possible and in those cases they can use the child's consent.
However, for treatment with puberty blockers there was a different protocol: the child, and the parents, and two different healthcare teams had to all agree that PBs were the right thing and that the child had capacity to make this choice.
This court case is saying that this is not sufficient, and that even if the parents and children and treatment teams all agree the courts still need to rule.
This thread was even flagged, no doubt by members of this group who consider any attempt to have an open discussion on the issue as a threat to their agenda.
I'd guess it's only your love for your children that compelled you to express your views on this issue in the face of potential hostility.
I'll add that this trans-rights radicalism is borne out of a justified fear of discrimination against a group that faces tremendous hardship in society: people who self-identify as a gender they were not born as.
But I have no doubt that the damage done by trying to suppress open discussion, both directly by not allowing people to intelligently discuss critically important trans-related issues like children undergoing gender transition hormone therapy, and indirectly in degradating the customs and institutions that guarantee free speech, will vastly outweigh the good it does.
(I am trans, and also a parent.)
You seem to misunderstand this court case. It did not say that PBs can cause infertility. It said that people who take PBs often go on to take hormones, and the hormones cause infertility.
In the UK you cannot get hormones if you're under 18.
”Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers."
Dr. Paul McHugh, the university distinguished service professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University
They actually have a lower rate of patient regret than LASIK.
This is a study:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-014-0300-8
n = 767. Over fifty years. Lower rate of patient regret than LASIK.
Further, sex reassignment surgeries aren't the only treatment, and they aren't even one relevant to the article.
"The regret rate is defined as the number of sex reassigned individuals at the time period when they did their first application that will later apply for reversal to the original sex"
The study also did not account for suicides or being sanctioned in their regret rate.
Unfortunately, therapy alone generally isn't shown to make suicide rates or gender dysphoria go away.
Elsewhere in this thread I posted a link to a great talk that has the leading expert in transgender care go into extreme depth on methods of treatments for transgender patients. If you want a doctor's perspective, and one that has probably the most experience tied to it (he sees an incredible volume of transgender patients), I definitely recommend checking it out.
this seems to be in the interest of not having parents make knee jerk and unhelpful reactions, instead of the doctors actually evaluating potential underlying conditions of the patient
from my understanding, we are trying to accommodate body dysmorphia because it is easy to accommodate: give people what they want and the rest of us just say a pronoun so that they don’t feel marginalized, but for science this is a stopgap solution and there is interest in understanding and preventing the dysmorphia to begin with. It seems this message gets lost because people don't want to be seen as transphobic or don’t want the “mental health” research to be misconstrued as “I want to ignore those crazy people”, as a lot of transphobes do consider things that way. While this is inherently a mental incongruence, it is easy to accommodate while we work to avoid it happening.
Pretty much nowhere is it standard practice to administer hormones to anyone below 18, and few people are advocating for that.
The rate of attempted suicide in people yet to transition with gender dysphoria is 41%. That is the highest rate of any physical or mental condition we have on the books. This rate drops when you put them on hormone blockers (in cases of minors) and it drops when you put them on cross-sex hormones (in cases of adults).
Getting HN to come around on this issue is likely impossible, but if you want to hear from an actual expert (effectively the expert on the topic), here's a presentation you might find interesting from a medical doctor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fefu33e8O-0
If not for compassion, you should check it out for intellectual curiosity. The talk goes into a lot of detail on how a general human's endocrine system works, has some interesting medical information even if you're not trans, and takes a really balanced approach to the issue.
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[Note] Fertility returning by simply stopping anti-androgens isn't necessarily a given, but getting it back is actually entirely doable. If you take the time to watch the talk, the doctor goes into how he's managed to get 100% of patients desiring it fertility back.
there seems like there can be significant overlap in an individual, but when discussing transitioning exclusively is it that gender dysphoria conveys the topic more specifically?
Gender-related body dysmorphia is somewhat unique because unlike the general case, therapy hasn't been shown to be effective in treating it.
Gender dysphoria is a broader term and includes body dysmorphia.
It is not possible for children in the UK to get cross sex hormones.
Currently we're talking about at most a couple of hundred children (out of a population of 60m people in UK). Very many more adults have vasectomies.
Puberty blockers are used for other medical issues and aren't considered dangerous or life damaging. Anyway this topic is somewhat meaningful to me because I really don't think people know how truly valuable it can be for someone to stall puberty when they desire to.
I find it appalling that cis society is quick to make sure no confused cis kid is harmed while ignoring trans kids that end up permanently disfigured by their voice & appearance from the wrong puberty. It's basically comparable to a cis kid having the wrong hormones damaging their body through puberty like a boy growing breasts and people just shrug their shoulders when it's a trans kid.
For context I went through the wrong puberty (I'm only 30 years old) and recently have been diagnosed with cancer. I'm choosing not to get treatment for the cancer and so I can get Medical Assistance in Dying because Gender Dysphoria sucks while all surgeries to possibly fix voice or appearance is like putting a downpayment for a house. Also was disowned by parents and struggled through university years because of constant bullying. Anyway I really hope people can take the time to consider that some kids truly know they're trans and it's not a fad to them.
Btw, most people don't consider that being denied something like I was and that has life long consequences as way more hurtful while knowing you were right; and others prevented you. Thinking about things in my life I've been wrong about, such events are way less painful because it felt like my fault when people weren't involved by stoping me from what was right. The painful events are when people involved prevent what was right for you. Basically, it's way more awful when you undergo the wrong circumstances because of someone else that prevented what you knew was right instead of undergoing what was wrong by your own mistake. I tried my best to make that not confusing before I go to sleep.
Could a case be made that they failed to get you the help you needed earlier and thus ought to foot the bill now?
Is it reasonably possible that you might earn enough to pay for it?
Could you raise money from others to do so?
Why not all 3 raise and earn money for it while trying to recoup expenses in court?
In Canada I haven't had success getting surgeries coverage for fixing either my voice or face from what characteristics people gender me. I tried for a few years to get coverage and even appealed my insurance's decision against my psychiatrist's letter saying the surgeries are medically necessary. I went to a surgeon that's the head surgeon for the surgeries transwomen get and he said none of his colleagues understand Gender Dysphoria to know why the surgeries should be medically necessary. The public insurance only cares about the surgeon's opinion.
So I've basically given up on coverage. I find it even more irritating nowadays since I've read about the common cancers when I was diagnosed. Women that get breast cancer have no problems getting full coverage for breast reconstruction under the public insurance. I think that obviously should be a thing but it feels like added sting to my situation since I've not even had success with breasts from HRT by starting after puberty.
Anyway I tried enough I think and worked hard, but life just never wanted things to work out. I think I'm just cursed in life so MAiD makes sense. The judgement is found here for the coverage request if you're interested: http://citoyens.soquij.qc.ca/php/decision.php?ID=C97168147E6...
I am sure you have so much good to experience in this world if you find the right environment and people around you.
If you want to talk please send a hi and we can go from there, email is in my profile.
One mistake leaves a person sterile. One doesn't.
Parents have a right to force their beliefs onto their children if their beliefs are reasonable. Their children will often thank them for it when they've become adults.
You're dismissing sterility as a non-issue when it is a massive issue for many people, and moreover, you're obfuscating the fact that this is about children, and the potential to undergo life-altering treatment with no psychiatric evaluation and little-to-no consultation.
Either you know that and don't care, or you don't know that, but either way it means you're not discussing in good faith.
> Parents have a right to force their beliefs onto their children if their beliefs are reasonable.
This court case said that combined parental consent and child consent was not enough, and that the court could ignore the wishes of the parent.
> and the potential to undergo life-altering treatment with no psychiatric evaluation and little-to-no consultation.
Simply untrue.
But way to score a point on pedantic grounds.
>This court case said that combined parental consent and child consent was not enough
I was responding to the OP's point, that claimed I was arguing for forcing my beliefs on others. I was making the point that in principle, it can be perfectly okay for parents to force their beliefs on their children.
It depends on the circumstances and the specific details of the case. I was not making an argument for or against parental privilege for any specific case.
Sometimes doing nothing (at least for a while) is good medicine.
> I think I'm a different gender
> I'm going to try and change my sex
Explain to me how this isn't absurd?
So here's one thing that is important to remember: Lupron, also known as Leuprorelin or Leuprolide, has no permanent side effects when taken alone. It stops puberty, but it doesn't prevent it. If you stop taking the drug, the process of puberty will resume completely as normal. Its purpose is not to begin the sex change process, but to allow time for planning what the next steps are (usually, hormone replacement therapy), so you are not racing against a biological clock.