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Comment by oilslick | Hacker News Reader

Except that people undergoing these surgeries do so willingly, face massive barriers to ensure they are thinking clearly and understand the consequences, show minimal regret rates, often have to undergo extensive psychological counseling beforehand, etc...

Except for everything it's exactly the same.

Except that is not the case where many people who now wish to "detransition" claim neither them or their parents got a good explanation of the consequences of such surgical procedures or the medicine they'd be prescribed, from medical doctors, who guess what, are in it for the money.

It is hard to find good numbers on detrans minors, simply because there are so few minors who transition in the first place. But here's one study showing that the regret rate for gender affirming surgery in general is ~1% https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/

Detransitioners get so much media attention simply because it's good transphobia fodder. All there is to substantiate these claims is anecdotal stories from a handful of individuals. These cases should be investigated of course, everyone has a right to make fully informed decisions about their body and it's problematic if that wasn't possible for some reason. However, it is simply untrue that there's a systemic problem with this at the moment.

Again anecdotally, among the (few) detrans people I know, all of them agree they made their decisions fully informed, and take ownership of their decisions rather than blaming doctors.

But it’s so easy to portray doctors as money-hungry child predators! After all, doesn’t Beautiful Perfect American Capitalism encourage individuals to participate in the market, if not live their lives, as ruthless profit-seekers?

Aren’t politically and socially conservative, evangelical-proximal, moderately wealthy Tucker-Carlson-consuming Americans constantly re-trained into that frame of mind?

Is it so surprising that people see what they want to see, or expect to see, or have been taught to see, in everything around them?

“Many people” being substantially in the minority, like 1-5% of an already microscopic population. Non-surgical puberty blockers are completely reversible and do not sterilize. Please don’t spread irrelevant, hateful flamewar bait and FUD in random threads as a way to Cunningham yourself out of ignorance.

> Non-surgical puberty blockers are completely reversible and do not sterilize.

This is also an ideological stance.

Please see https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2... for an evidence-based review that contests this.

Edit: I'm not permitted to reply to the comment below, but I would like to point out that it's a rather shallow dismissal of a well-researched paper. I would recommend actually reading the whole paper, at the very least to challenge one's preconceptions on this issue. Personally, I find such challenge to be an intellectually stimulating experience.

This paper casts doubt on the current evidence for "completely reversible" as well as their efficacy without really providing evidence of the opposite. I would invite you to read further studies showing that puberty blockers are safe, reversible, and extremely important to trans youth's health:

- https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.01.20241653v...

- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03064...

- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2017.0052...

For example. There's definitely still studies to be done, but there is good evidence that puberty blockers are safe and reversible that this author seems to have missed

The blockers themselves are reversible. The treatments that may follow are not necessarily reversible.

Do you really expect to simply point at a single-author paper that came out last week to “win” this discussion? Why the hour-old account focused purely on promoting trans hate?

What percentage is “many”? What’s the absolute number?

>willingly

What are you talking about? Children can't give consent. Also don't talk like the only way for children to access this process is through legitimate methods while there are online HRT sellers marketing primarily to children.

Are you trying to say that people under 18 should never receive any surgery because they can't consent?

This comment chain is about gender affirming surgeries and _doctors_, not DIY HRT so I won't respond to that

These people always want to portray kids seeking treatment as just kids looking to do something rebellious instead of, you know, a tiny portion of kids being miserable because they have to lead a basically fake life while half the country tells them they are stupid and wrong and pedophiles

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