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If a kid is in horrible pain, and their parent refuses to do anything about it, and the kid is actively looking to escape? Yeah, I think it's pretty reasonable to remove the kid. Would you tolerate a parent neglecting a broken leg because they think all surgical intervention is blasphemous butchery? Are you okay just watching a kid die from cancer, a totally preventable cancer, just because surgeries carry a bit of risk?
Heck, let's go mental illness specifically. A kid is starting to develop schizophrenia. We just invented a magic pill that can prevent it from getting any worse. The parents refuse to medicate them. You're cool with this? You don't think, at some point, somebody should step in and help the poor kid?
If a kid is terrified their parents will find out about them getting a tooth fixed, wouldn't you be a bit concerned about how the parents are treating that kid? Would you really feel guilty for sneaking your son's best friend to the dentist to help him deal with a cavity that's been getting worse for years?
I'm not saying every kid is right, but you don't get that sort of fear of your parents from nowhere. I was a horrible gremlin of a kid and I never went anywhere near that far to cover something up.
If you can point me to an epidemic of kids getting abducted against their will, I'd probably change my tune. But I get the sense that most of the kids in question are quite happy with the decision. I haven't seen anything that suggests they're particularly prone to regretting it later, either.
There are a few issues with convenience-sampling transfolk in trans-friendly spaces and claiming this to demonstrate effectiveness of the treatment.
Oh, woah, I hadn't realized that you were ex-trans. Have you given a description of what things were like for you somewhere? Your life history? (If so, where? If not, I'd be interested.)
Fairly-boring story TBH (which I have told elsewhere, but not IIRC anywhere that's not login-gated).
My mum's a misandrist (as in, she literally taught me the Y chromosome is a defect), she divorced my dad when I was 3 and got custody, and I'm effeminate in some ways. Fast-forward to puberty and she's accusing me of sexist abuse every time I turn around because now I start registering to her as "man" rather than "child". I developed dysphoria, wanted to transition.
Around this point, I ran away from Mum (who was not supportive of me transitioning; she was at the time a TERF although she's objected to transphobia since so I don't think she still is), because she confiscated my computer for a month and semi-starved me for a week, I ran amok and manhandled her (for the first and only time), and she called the police on me. Went on finasteride, got permission from a psychiatrist for cross-sex hormones, but procrastinated over the fertility problem long enough for the dysphoria to dissipate (and stopped taking the finasteride). Still probably qualify as "genderqueer" - I'm not exactly upset at having moobs from the finasteride - but the intense dysphoria, with phantom-limb and disgust at my penis, is gone. Hence, I qualify as ex-trans although not really a detransitioner.
Thank you!
Given that you have more experience than most, then, what do your opinions look like on trans-related issues?
As I said to @TokenTransGirl, this isn't really my cause area and I don't have sufficient trustworthy information to be able to opine on the big Ought questions of proper treatment. There certainly exists a population that will desist if not "supported", and there almost certainly exists a population that won't; trustworthy data on how big these two populations are and whether it's possible to distinguish between them is the key determinant of the correct answer, but it would seem extremely difficult to acquire and I certainly don't have it. Some of the experiments you'd want to run don't even seem like the experimental protocol could successfully be followed (e.g. the obvious and central "what percentage of people who want transition in current Western society will resolve positively if transition is denied long-term"; in current Western society, how are you going to stop them?), and the studies that can be (and are) done frequently have huge bias issues (in both directions, depending on the allegiance of the researchers).
On the smaller questions, I oppose pro-trans censorship (both in the academic publishing system and more generally in social spaces) and I oppose people who try to portray the anti-trans movement as being inherently senseless and hateful. No surprises there. My personal stance on pronouns is "I won't use a pronoun someone doesn't like in front of that person, but I won't intentionally use neopronouns or singular "they" under any circumstances and I occasionally won't use a he/she/it pronoun if I think it's inappropriate (e.g. if the person is clearly insane in other ways and I suspect it's just a phase/delusion); I am prepared to spam names if necessary to thread that needle" (as noted above, my position on other people using pronouns is "free speech lol"), and my stance on deadname-erasure (on e.g. Wikipedia) is "fuck off with this Orwellian shit" although I'm willing to use the new one going forward.
If you want something else, ask.
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I mean, you can say #1 about everything. We can never know the counterfactual of any decision we make. We still have to make decisions. And it's not like there aren't TONS of decisions out there that people DO regret.
#2 doesn't explain the general absence of ex-trans spaces. Keep in mind I'm the sort of person who does look in places like this.
#3: If the suicide rate goes down post-transition, then we have clear evidence that transition helps even if it isn't a perfect cure-all. We have no evidence that "alternate" treatments work. From my own biased standpoint, I'd say we actually have plenty of evidence against alternate treatments. Can you pull up a study from any sort of vaguely-neutral (or positive) organization that suggests a specific alternate treatment actually has anywhere near the success rate in reducing suicide rates?
I'll throw out #4: There are scientific studies on regret rates, and they suggest remarkably low numbers: https://theconversation.com/transgender-regret-research-challenges-narratives-about-gender-affirming-surgeries-220642
I will admit, I have not checked the methodology, but I also haven't seen any studies that suggest a concern here. I'll also say that number is low enough to make me a bit suspicious. I think the real number is probably higher than 1%. But I do think this is pretty solid evidence that, in general, transition results in good outcomes and that if anything, we're being overly cautious.
Everyone who brings up the suicide discourse to score a point is contributing to the problem. We know that suicide, like many other things, spreads socially; that's why newspapers try not to cover suicides too much. But for some reason, we decide to convince teenagers that the proper way to spite people who won't give them the gender treatment that they want is by suicide. No wonder suicide rates are astronomical.
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The issue here is that one side of the trans debate controls the education system, which means that if they're right there's no systematic error here but if they're partially or wholly wrong there's a systematic error of kids underestimating desistance rates.
I'm not going to engage you on the studies; that's not really my area of expertise. I think @ArjinFerman and maybe @gattsuru might be more interesting to talk to on that one.
The study referred to in the article is relatively fresh, so didn't make it to any of the systematic reviews published in the last years, and I can't even access it on sci-hub.
Studying desistence and detransition is a tricky subject. Clinics don't necessarily want to hear from detransitioners (who wants to parade an unsatisfied customer in front of potential ones?), and for that matter detransitions don't necessarily want to talk to people who feel they wronged them either. Criticism of the older studies on regret rates has reflected this - typically they're criticized for low follow-up rates (there was one popular study going around citing a 94+% satisfaction rate, but had a 63% dropout rate), another issue typically cited is short follow-up periods.
On the flip side there's a recent German study showing a >50% rate of desistence of medical treatment over a 5 year period, but this also needs to be studied further before it's declared a slam-dunk for the anti side.
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Here's the problem - it's very much debatable whether this "horrible pain" is actually something requiring medical treatment. I know you think it does. We are all familiar with the rhetoric that gender dysphoria is so real and urgent and painful that not allowing the child to transition is likely to lead to suicide, and akin to refusing to let a child receive treatment for schizophrenia. So you frame it as, essentially, parents letting their children die because of their bigoted religious beliefs. But this is almost never the case. Parents almost always treat a child being "trans" as a psychological issue, a child in distress who needs help - but you will not accept that "help" could be anything other than affirming their entity and even allowing them to begin medically transitioning, when there is good reason to think help should actually be helping them work through their gender dysphoria (if it is really gender dysphoria), becoming comfortable in their bodies, and perhaps choose to transition when they are an adult if they still feel that's what they need. Can you at least acknowledge that this is a reasonable, loving, and non-abusive response, even if you think it's not the correct one?
Again with the "terrified." I'm sure there are children in abusive households who still face abuse, or being thrown out on the streets, if they are revealed to be gay or trans. This happens and those are extreme cases that may require state intervention, as with any other abuse. But almost all the cases I have seen are not of trans kids with parents who will reject and abandon them for being trans, but parents who simply don't agree with putting their kids on hormones, wearing binders, planning to get surgery, etc. Refusing to change the pronouns they use for their son or daughter might upset the child, but it's not abuse!
I don't agree with @WhiningCoil's framing of hordes of children being abducted by the state, but I would ask you in return, do you have any numbers regarding parents who are actually abusive and neglectful of their trans children, such that state intervention is required? Do you think schools should socially transition children secretly if the child says their parents won't go along?
You "get the sense" that most of the kids are quite happy with the decision, but this seems to be vibes and personal bias. I think the actual level of regret is very hard to evaluate. I'm sure you hate Jesse Singhal, but I have yet to see a trans activist who can actually dispute his numbers and his deep dives into studies on the subject.
That's... basically exactly what the actual standards of care say to do? You start with therapy and just discussing the issue to get a feel for where the kid really is. You don't just drop them on HRT instantly. There's puberty blockers, so that they can make an informed choice as an adult in either direction, rather than make any permanent changes. For the kids who have a really clear sense of who they are, AND whose parents support it, you might see HRT before 18, but again, the parent IS actually involved in that decision. Basically no one is getting surgery before 18. Getting surgery usually takes YEARS of waiting, even as an adult who knows exactly what they want.
What part of that process are you objecting to?
Would you be okay if I consistently misgendered people on this forum? You're an adult who can walk away from the conversation, so presumably this is a thousand times less bad than having it come from your own parents. I think most people here would get pretty reasonably upset with me if I leaned into trolling like that.
And if you won't tolerate it here, why in the world should we expect kids to tolerate it?
I mean, c'mon, you're objecting to an article of clothing? Teach the kid how to do it safely rather than forcing them to risk it with ace bandages and overly tight compressions.
What happened to "perhaps choose to transition when they are an adult if they still feel that's what they need"?
I read scientific studies, hang out in trans communities, keep my ear out for about news, and so forth. I mean, if nothing else, I'm involved in numerous trans communities, have numerous trans friends, and presumably have a much better vantage point into the community than you do. I'm the sort of person that shows up here, looking for people who disagree with me, so I'm clearly not cherry-picking my sources. Short of being a credentialed expert, I'm not sure how you get a better perspective than mine?
If people really regret it so much, it should not be nearly this difficult for me to find those people.
Is there some specific source here, or am I just supposed to spend a week deep-diving him? I'm happy to take a peek, but I will absolutely admit that I don't think he's a source worth investing a lot of time in, right now.
Depends what you mean by that. There've been about 5,700 gender affirming surgeries performed on minors between
20172019 and 2023. Some might call ~1K per year it "basically no one", but I've heard claims from pro-trans people claiming it's single digits annually, so I want to make it clear that if this is what you meant to imply, you're off by 3 orders of magnitude.Also, @Amadan - in case you wanted a source.
Yeah, that's some suss methodology
i.e. there's absolutely no reason to think these codes aren't also used for other things, they just happen to show up commonly in gender-affirming care.
The article itself notes that this contradicts basically every other study out there.
"We just assumed this stuff was accurate" should not inspire any confidence in these results
The explicit disclaimer...
The other explicit disclaimer...
Oh, okay, are we including intersex people in this? I thought this was a conversation about transition.
This is listed under surgical codes...
Electrolysis.
I'm sorry to say this report is hot bullshit.
Looks like naraburns link is a lot more reliable: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9555285/ gives us 209 patients over a 7.5 year period, so 30 instead of 5,7000
His paper is from a single clinic, not the whole country, and it's for a single type of surgery. A rough eyeball-extrapolation of that into the entirety of US would give you roughly the number from my link.
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Your source says 2019-2023, not 2017-2023. The latter would only be two orders of magnitude bigger than "single digits annually".
Thanks for the correction.
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In practice, the motte has- numerous times- provided sources showing that this is not what actually happens.
There are exceptions, yes. The ones I've seen all involve parental consent.
Is your complaint just that the SOC aren't being followed rigorously enough? Or would you still be upset even if they were being followed to the letter?
At least post-WPATH SOCv8, the standards of care no longer require an age of 18 or majority at any point, and have largely reframed talk therapy into a very strict division between required 'gender-affirming care' and prohibited 'conversion therapy'. At the risk of self-citation, I think the summary of distinctions from v6 to v7 to v8 here is pretty decent, and if you've grounded your expectations around personal experiences interacting with the system before 2020 or summaries from before 2018 you may be surprised.
There are a number of good (and pro-trans) doctors that are skeptical about surgical or hormonal interventions within the earlier limits of the new SOC, especially before puberty (and, from the other direction, I'm not convinced that 16-18 is that big of a deal), and there are a number of (sometimes unintuitive) serious flaws with the v6-era rules, but it's a lot harder to just point to the SOC and motion around them being uncontroversial.
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You know, it does not convince me you are arguing in good faith when you say "It basically never happens" and when someone points out it does happen, you say "But that involves parental consent." First of all I'm no more convinced you're being accurate (or honest) about parental consent than you were about it happening in the first place. Second, we're having a whole discussion about parental consent where scared parents are convinced by medical professionals that they can choose between "a dead son or a live daughter." It's hard for me to be convinced that it's informed and non-coercive consent.
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So here's the problem - I hear that this is how it works. This is how it is supposed to work. A child with gender dysphoria will receive multiple, comprehensive counseling sessions and only after a long and deliberate, informed process will the child and his/her parents elect to move forward with transition. That seems reasonable.
What I have actually seen, in multiple cases, is schools and counselors alike uncritically jumping on board the transition bandwagon with very little intake process or evaluation beyond the child's self-evaluation and expressed desires. Usually expressed as you do, that it's such an urgent and immediate need that you risk the child committing suicide if you don't immediately affirm and validate them and let them do what they want.
I would like to believe that the first case is the usual and standard procedure and these latter cases are exceptions, but that does not appear to be the case in the US. It did not appear to be the case in the UK and Sweden and several other countries until recently, when a plague of scandals forced lawmakers to reevaluate the agencies they had given responsibility for these decisions.
This is one of those claims where each side claims "Yes it's happening" or "No it's not," and I am not well-informed enough to say who's right, but there seems to at least be enough anecdotal evidence that it has happened that I am skeptical of your blanket denial that it ever happens.
No one here is a minor (at least to our knowledge) and no one here has parental authority. People are not allowed to be rude to you; they are allowed to say they don't believe someone born with a penis is a woman. You might perceive that to be rude, and a child might perceive that to be emotionally distressing.
So your answer is yes, parents who refuse to go along with a child's self-identification as the opposite sex should risk having the child taken away from them for abuse?
I mean, c'mon, you're pretending this is about objecting to an article of clothing? But yes, sure - parents are allowed to make decisions for their children, including controlling what they wear. By the time they are teenagers it's usually counterproductive to try tell them what they can and can't wear, but parents do still exercise this authority ("You may not wear that in public!") And binders specifically have a lot more significance than merely stylistic expression, and they do pose a risk. So yes, I think parents are entitled to expect that schools will not secretly encourage their children to wear binders without their knowledge or approval.
Honestly, I am allowing for the possibility that it might make medical sense to allow a minor to transition in some rare cases. My actual belief is that this is a terrible idea in pretty much all cases and I think it shouldn't happen, but with sufficient evidence I'd be willing to defer to medical authorities on this. I would not be willing to allow them to supersede parental approval on this, however.
Sure, and I'm sure they all think being trans is wonderful and they should all be validated. If you hung out in Christian communities I'm sure you'd be very aware of what Christians think and how wonderful Jesus is and how God truly manifests in people's lives. If that sounds a little bit snide, it's because I do actually think that trans ideology has much in common with religious belief (including a vibes-based conviction in things that make you feel good without any rational evidence).
There's a whole subreddit about detransitioners. Multiple detransitioners and regretters have YouTube channels. They may be a minority, but they certainly exist. And a common story from them is how they essentially got shunned by the trans community when they detransitioned because they are seen as having betrayed trans people, or are potentially giving ammo to their enemies. If you are a trans person who has doubts but know that if you detransition you will lose essentially your entire social network, and you are already a psychologically vulnerable person (as most trans people are), it's not hard to see how the actual numbers are probably greater than what might show up in the surveys that allege regret is something ridiculously low like <2%.
I am not arguing that most trans people regret their transition. I am arguing that enough do that children shouldn't be allowed to make permanent decisions about their bodies, and that parents shouldn't be judged unfit for refusing to agree with their decisions.
I mean, he's got a Twitter account, he's got a Substack, he's published dozens of articles over the years. No, I don't expect you to do a deep dive on him, but since you're clearly familiar with him, I'd like just once for someone to pick apart one of his studies (or his picking apart of studies) with more than just ad hominems and bad faith impugning of his motives. Because from my perspective, he goes into the numbers and the research methodology in detail, in every case finds serious, objective flaws in the studies, often finding that they literally say the opposite of what activists say they do, and the response is never "Here's why you're wrong and here's what you missed, you misunderstood these numbers, you made an error here," etc., but essentially "You are bad person for asking these questions and we don't need you to tell us about trans lived experiences." Jesse Singhal isn't a perfect person (he cares too much what people think of him, he's argumentative, and he probably is obsessed on certain topics), but I haven't found him to actually be in error on this topic. Not only that, he's clearly not anti-trans, and yet he gets the JK Rowling treatment for questioning the narrative.
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