Florida courts could take 'emergency' custody of kids with trans relatives | Hacker News Reader

Florida courts could take 'emergency' custody of kids with trans relatives

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So that it doesn't get buried under a downvoted branch of the comments, here is the original text of the bill for anyone who wants to read it directly: https://legiscan.com/FL/text/S0254/2023

While this is quite different to the usual content, I believe that sharing this information is important for members of our community and their families in order to prepare for the possible outcomes.

The title has been edited to fit.

The complete title is:

“Florida courts could take 'emergency' custody of kids with trans parents or siblings — even if they live in another state”

This sounds absolutely terrible. There's a lot that needs fixing in the US right now.

It does sound like common sense to me though... 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.

Either we consider kids to be kids, and thus not totally "settled" psychologically (for the lack of a better word), or we don't.

PS: the issue of taking kids custody out of trans parents is an entirely different matter though..And i agree that states "kidnapping" them is highly problematic.

Out of curiosity, how many minors do you believe undergo sex-reassignment surgery?

i do hope this isn't more than a couple per year, worldwide. I don't have the numbers, but my fear is the "trend" effect. The fact that this issue is becoming widely discussed can easily influence teenagers into believing this is the solution to their problem (that's what teenagers do : they get easily influenced).

Worldwide numbers are obviously complicated, but in the united states the median number per year is zero if you exclude intersex babies. Sexual reassignment surgery on minors is an entirely made up concern. Even HRT is unusual, and typically teens only receive puberty blockers specifically to let them defer the decision until adulthood.

Part of gender affirming healthcare - which also includes possibly affirming a gender congruent to their sex - is extensive therapy and investigations by psychiatrists.

People are not handed HRT like candies, nor do they undergo such surgeries on a whim.

By banning gender affirming healthcare you force kids and adults to seek HRT off the market, from possibly malicious and opportunistic actors.

It’s no different to drug policies really. The war on drugs has failed in every state and country that has attempted it, whereas the humanitarian approach taken by Portugal has shown to actually solve the issue.

If indeed there is a trend, doesn’t it make more sense to have the kids reviewed by certified and approved medical professionals and give them therapy and evaluation instead of making it harder and hoping that they don’t go to gray market?

There is an enormous amount of research done on the topic, and is definitely not new either.

> i do hope this isn't more than a couple per year, worldwide.

Why? Unless you are the person involved, or part of their family, why would you even have a concern about someone else’s gender choice? You’re not the one who has to live their life and there’s a pretty low chance you’ll have any knowing contact with them whatsoever.

because having the biology of one genre and the psychology of another seems a condition bad enough that i hope very very few people on earth experience it.

Feels like a lot of hand-wringing over a statistic you could actually look up.

Also, worrying about the "Trend" is dangerous given that there's just not that many trans people in society, and in recent years we've gone from "very few of them" transitioning to "some of them" transitioning.

If what you're legitimately concerned about is the "trend of people talking about this", then you should consider that this bill and bills like it are more likely to force people into a rash decision because if it takes effect, then there's no telling when they'd be able to transition, so maybe they should rush their transition. Think of this as a version of the Streisand effect.

If doctors and psychologists do this, why do you assume they haven't determined that it's a net positive given the evidence and thus a rational thing to do?

If the US were a sane democracy with a proven ability to have pragmatic and purely scientific debate on hot topic, i'd be following you. However, the topic is being highly politicized, and so i'm very sure the doctor and psychologists opinions aren't purely medical on this topic anymore.

> If the US were a sane democracy with a proven ability to have pragmatic and purely scientific debate on hot topic

This topic is being weaponized by the far-right because it triggers primal fears on the "you will not replace us" crowd.

I don't see anyone in the political left manufacturing outrage about this.

> 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.

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.

[Citation Needed]

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-equali...

The claim that this is current despite the massive uptick in children identifying as trans (again, a 30x increase), needs a current citation.

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/ <- 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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

> 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-pseu... . None of which should be surprising to anyone who read anything about hormonal treatments.

Here's the thing, if the right actually was honest, they would be supportive of social transitioning, because that is how a kid can figure out their transness. Maybe for some kids, it's an experiment and they're really cis, but for many (because honestly, socially transitioning is not exactly easy in many places), it is a life saving first step in understanding themselves and establishing evidence for medical professionals to warrant medical transitioning at some point.

However, the right is also banning social transitioning. They are not interested in letting kids figure themselves out. They are determined to eliminate trans people.

See the recent CPAC quote from Michael Knowles. This is a conference participant calling for the elimination of transgender people.

Trans people are not a hypothetical for cis people to discuss. We exist and have existed throughout history. Many cultures have ways of recognizing multiple genders. The idea that we should be eliminated should be horrifying on its own terms, never mind, that historically people do not stop with the elimination of one group. Eventually they come for others.

> Here's the thing, if the right actually was honest, they would be supportive of social transitioning, because that is how a kid can figure out their transness.

Local story... Boy who claims to be female and goes into the girls locker room to watch them change. He doesn't actually change or participate. Just a spectator. The girls try to hide from him. It's pretty clear by the details that he's a peeping tom just there to ogle the girls. One of the girls speaks up about how uncomfortable he has made life and many girls no longer want to change their clothes for gym, even asking for private spaces but this girl is ostracized and vilified by the local media for not being supportive.

It's pretty amazing how we went from being so protective of these spaces. Particularly from sexual predators. To one where we openly allow predatory behavior and tell the reporter of the incident that she is the bad one. Deny them privacy and security.

Numerous reports of trans males dominating girls sports, and from information that is the primary reason for the 'change'.

All these stories of particularly men going trans for transparently selfish reasons of advantage do not help the cause among people who really care about their daughters well being.

Do you have a source for this? Otherwise I’m calling bullshit.

This is dangerous, eliminationist, anti-trans rhetoric that should not be tolerated on HN (or any other forum).

Because a male could never actually pretend to be trans for selfish reasons?

Instead of a mutually beneficial compromise like give everyone private individual dressing spaces and listening to potential victims of trans abuse in gendered spaces. You go full offensive mode on me for even suggesting the possibility.

It seems that you don't want political allies, but rather political subjects...

If you're actually open to seeing the issue there are plenty of stories you can search up on this topic. What I mention is hardly unique, I see them with some frequency.

Ignoring these concerns will just cement the political divide and harden political opponents who want to protect female gendered spaces and youth from predators.

> Because a male could never actually pretend to be trans for selfish reasons?

I've seen a number of perverts in my life, but this one would be on a different level. The amount of bullying that boy would receive from other boys would hardly be compensated by him being able to go into the girl's locker when the whole content of the internet porn is readily available.

> What I mention is hardly unique, I see them with some frequency.

From reputable news sources?

Why would a male even bother to

- take HRT long enough to pass, which is in months if not years

- destroy their libido

- sterilize himself

- gain weight

- reduce the size of his penis

- experience near constant pain on his penis due to atrophy

- have his testicles shrink

- have erectile dysfunction

- experience all that bullying

- risk getting disowned by family

- lose friendships

so that he can commit an __opportunity__ crime?

Do you honestly find that reasonable?

Maybe the problem is not that trans women and girls exist, but that men and boys seem to be opportunistic predators.

If your claim is that the boy or man can just self-id as trans, and then enter the bathroom, then my question is, what stops them from entering it anyway? Why go through all the trouble of a possibly social transition and all that entails just to commit an opportunity crime when they could very well just go in?

None of this is required for a male to claim to have a so-called 'female gender identity' and be admitted to female-only spaces.

Just look at what is happening with prisons in jurisdictions where they have prioritized claims of 'gender identity' over sex. Women have been sexually assaulted, raped and even impregnated by such males. It's horrifying.

Exactly this. It should be a massive red flag that any of these males want to violate the boundaries of women and girls in the first place, knowing fine well that they are not welcome in what are supposed to be female-only spaces. Instead, it's seen as evidence that they should be permitted to do so.

One anecdote that sounds like it should have been handled by the administration of the school much better than it was.

Trans males should not be competing in girls sports. They are only doing so because of the right's insistence on unchangeable biological sex. As to the "primary reason for the change"... you're going to have to provide evidence because that's doubtful. People act like social transitioning is a walk in the park... it's not. People aren't doing it for the incredible benefits of being trans, believe me.

You sound like you have an axe to grind and maybe need to do more research and less believing the falsehoods about trans people.

It's interesting that you choose to make up a story without any anecdotes of someone claiming to be trans to harass women, versus the states and districts passing 'gender inspection' bills legalizing harassment by people that have no right to know/care. Or the known incidents [1] of men following cisgender women into the bathroom thinking they're trans or openly harassing them.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2016/5/18/11690234/women-bathrooms-haras...

These are growing pains caused by the U.S. being ahead of the curve in dealing with trans issues. So (if you think trans issues are legitimate), relative to the rest of the world, maybe the U.S. needs the least fixing. :p

> U.S. being ahead of the curve in dealing with trans issues.

Florida is, but only in the sense Republicans are working on a "final solution to the trans question".

It's all theater. Most of Florida's laws are getting struck down in the federal courts but that's not the point - the point is for Desantis to score political points in his bid for the 2024 presidential run. All that matters is he took the appropriate steps to "own" the libs. That's what passes for Republican governance these days. I'm old enough to remember when TV cameras were called idiot magnets. Now the idiots are TV camera magnets. Such is the way of the modern world.

Every law like this drags the Overton window further to the right by normalising the exclusionary discourse. The goal is not to get them passed at first try, but, if nothing is done, they will get passed at some point.

“child is "at risk of or is being subjected to the provision of sex reassignment prescriptions or procedures," according to the proposed bill text.

The proposed bill defines sex reassignment prescriptions or procedures as hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and surgeries or procedures that "affirm a person's perception of his or her sex if that perception is inconsistent with the person's sex" at birth

I still don't understand how a trans-parent makes a child at "risk" of getting hormones. Republicans have taken a Twitter issue and made it their only platform. I wonder how much traction a hate campaign will get you in an election. Going by the mid-terms, not that much.

This isn't a "Twitter issue," this is the result of a moral panic created by the political normalization of QAnon within the post-Trumpist Republican Party and their "groomer" conspiracy theories[0,1]. They believe trans identity is a vector for pedophilia and child abuse and that trans people want to forcibly "convert" children against their will. It's Pizzagate combined with the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, and unfortunately it seems to have no problem getting traction.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_grooming_conspiracy_theor...

[1]https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

That's a very hot take!

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