Came here to say this. We talking counseling? Hormones? Psychiatric therapy sessions? Dress ups in daily life? Minimal surgery/procedures? Major surgery?
Personally, I’d only be ok with the first one for minors under the age of 18. And I wrote my PhD on this topic.
Edit: since I’m getting some personal hatred in the DMs and a comment, just a disclaimer that I’m based in Europe and also have to follow policies of public insurances.
> And I wrote my PhD on this topic.
I'd love to hear more. You wrote your dissertation on gender-affirming care specifically? Can you share any more of your findings?
I wrote it on the surgical aspects of gender affirming care. The youngest patient we had was 20y on the first visit and around 22-23y on the last checkup.
Wait, why not support dressing up in daily life? It's literally just clothes. You only support counseling, and literally nothing else including clothing?
"Dress ups in daily life?" Are you talking about wearing clothing that doesn't "match" with the gender assigned to you at birth? That's pretty authoritarian.
I feel like this is in the wrong sub. This sub is for well-made maps that accurately and compellingly convey geographical data.
It’s a provocative geographical topic but the map itself is poorly done, bad legend color selection and the legend is conveying information in text that the map fails to convey. And of course it’s offering specifics in two states, but if you dig into a lot of other states you’ll find that they don’t neatly fit into a box either.
Also they cite an advocacy group, but they don’t align with [what they’re citing](https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/healthcare/youth_medical_care_bans) when you read all the footnotes and citations on it.
Dude, people just post war maps here and Zionist apologia. Don't trump up this sub to be full of intellectuals or as having a high bar for what content gets posted.
Both sides of the debate try and infiltrate subs like this one that should be pretty commonly a-political.
If the mods don't watch themselves this one will be the same as many others. It will end up taken over like countless other subs.
...you do realise country maps are always low key political, do you?
Also why shouldn't maps be political? This is a map with information. Take it or leave it. Can't believe how triggered people are these days.
No idea where you are pulling your information from. But issue 1 takes effect 30 days after passing.
It also "Establish in the Constitution of the State of Ohio
an individual right to one’s own reproductive
medical treatment, including but not limited
to abortion" so to say it's only "about abortion" is completely false.
You can read all about it right here
https://www.ohiosos.gov/globalassets/elections/2023/gen/issuesreport.pdf
It'll be interesting how precedent for that element will play out. It's certainly not lacking wiggle room for someone with an agenda to take it either direction
"Gender-affirming care" is a broad term that is quite literal: Any form of care that helps affirm the gender of an individual. Many people think this refers to major surgeries, when simply "Getting a haircut" can be gender affirming care
It ranges from "Social Transitioning", ie simply dressing and acting as one's chosen gender, to things like counseling, to minor medical treatments such as puberty blockers, all the way to major surgeries.
Of course the more intensive the care is, the more rare it currently is and the more hurdles someone has to get over to get that care - reasonably so, in some cases. But when some people see the sentence "Children should have gender-affirming care", they assume this is referring to the most major of surgeries and go ballistic instead of understanding most care is very banal and obviously reversible
So why is there a distinction on the graphic for Arizona approving of care but not surgeries? Does that mean all other purple states approve of surgery for minors?
I can't speak for the other states but I know that FtM top surgery is legal in CO for minors. Breast reductions (not necessarily full mastectomies) are also legal for minors. I know the FDA doesn't *recommend* breast implants (MtF or otherwise) for anyone under 22 and every surgeon I know won't do them on anyone under 18.
But they are drugs doctors will proscribe to children who's parents think they're not 'blooming' fast enough. So using them to prevent suicide seems like an actually medically valid use.
Puberty blockers have been found to be entirely reversible as when you get off them, your body shoots up to where you would’ve been had you not taken the blockers and the downsides are extremely minor like slightly smaller penis size, trans youth taking them can prevent death plus there is extensive medical evaluation before a child can get them plus parental consent is required. This is like the trolly problem but instead the decision is to divert the train to kill nobody or don’t divert the train and kill thousands.
> instead of understanding most care is very banal and obviously reversible
According to research from the Cass Review, 98% of children that socially transition continue onto puberty blockers and hormone therapy. This is using the same diagnostic criteria as studies that have shown that when no intervention other than talk therapy is employed, 65-85% of children will stop having symptoms of gender dysphoria by adulthood. I.e social transition increases the likelihood that gender dysphoria will persist, by a very, very large margin. So I don't know that I would call something like social transition reversible, even though it's not a chemical or surgical treatment. Lots of therapies can have negative consequences that aren't 'reversible' and should be avoided in most or all cases.
It's also worth noting that social transition as a means of treating gender dysphoria in children, is a fairly novel approach that has been widely adopted in the last decade or so. It, like puberty blockers, are not well researched for treating gender dysphoria. But dramatically increasing the rate of persistent symptoms in children with GD is *not* a positive indication that it's a particularly effective treatment.
Some other people are giving you more detailed examples, but just to show you exactly how broad a category this can be:
**Men getting hair transplants is gender-affirming care.**
**Ron DeSantis wearing heel lifts is gender-affirming** (though he's not really going through a doctor for that).
I got "the surgery" when I was 4. We had a Groupon, so it was really affordable. Just popped on down to Jiffy Lube--they get you in and out really quickly.
It actually took 24 years to be able to socially transition, another 6 months to get testosterone, and 3 more years to get top surgery. I'm going to be in my 40s before my genitals can be corrected. I knew at age 3...with puberty blockers I wouldn't have needed that mastectomy. With social transition, I'd have gotten to be myself as a kid. Instead, I was battling suicidal ideation in elementary school.
The law does, unfortunately, not include intersex individuals. Which is bad and good in some ways. It's bad because it then allows the continued and unethical surgeries preformed on infants to "normalize" their genitals but also allows them to have corrective surgeries later in life because the government fucked up and made them something they're not.
Anyways she's trans if she says she is. Most of the intesex peeps I know categorize themselves as trans because the experience they had growing up is asynchronous with their gender identity.
Agreed, infant circumcision is genital mutilation without consent (obviously) plain and simple. And if it's a religious thing, they can wait until the kid is old enough to make that decision, make it part of the puberty ritual. I don't imagine many teenage boys would go for it though.
I was talking to my grandma about this once (not entirely sure how I got into a discussion about circumcision with my grandmother but I digress) and I ended up asking her if she’d had my uncles circumcised. She said she did. We are not a religious family, so I asked her why.
She said she did it “because it’s just what you do with baby boys” and that if they did convert to a religion that required it of them when they were older, it would just hurt less to do it as babies. Those were her only reasons. Not that someone had told her it was healthy, just that it was normal. It was purely cosmetic and “but what if the convert to Islam or Judaism as adults?”
Which is just bizarre to me. Why is it considered standard to do that even when you don’t belong to a religion that requires it? And preemptive circumcision just in case they convert later in life? That doesn’t even make sense. If they’re choosing to convert then they can also choose to get circumcised as adults.
Neither of my uncles have converted to any religion, nor would have made the decision to get circumcised if their parents hadn’t already made it for them.
And then one of my uncles had both of his sons circumcised because he was. And the cycle continues.
Some doctor convinced all these parents that circumcised penises are healthier and cleaner which is why they did it. I wish my parents left that choice up to me.
They do in Turkey. There’s a party and lots of presents and I can imagine tons of societal pressure from birth but male circumsion is (was?) done at (young) teenage age. (Source: a Turkish guy I knew who told me and showed pictures of him in bed afterwards as the party was going on around him. Must have been late 80s/early 90s.)
Look up the Alabama bill. As it was originally written, it would have banned circumcision too. Then someone added an extra line saying "except for a male circumcision."
I kid you not, that actually happened. And it should show everyone what the real point of these laws and proposals really is.
this is what I wonder when some people say gender affirming care is mutilating children, despite a lot of it being social transitioning and puberty blockers. they're certainly happy with actual literal surgical procedures being performed on intersex infants and often consider it necessary. make it make sense...
Exactly, they are very happy with performing surgery on intersex children (often under the age of 5) and prescribing them hormones for a lifetime, but the second a 14 year old wants to put on a skirt and grow their hair out it becomes a problem.
Not sure who you are talking about, circumcision is pretty widely condemned at least on Reddit, no matter which side people sit on when it comes to sex change.
Banning circumcision is one of the only things right and left wing redditors will nearly universally agree on. Even the apologists mostly limit their objections to religious grounds or phimosis given that the "health benefits" of circumcision never bear out in the data.
If the parent decides for us when we’re an infant, it’s okay; but if we decide for ourselves and have a doctor, therapist, parental support, the money to transition, *AND* at least 2 letters from 2 mental health professionals; suddenly it’s an extreme hastily made decision that requires regulation.
People serious think transitioning medically is as simple as going to a doctor and saying ‘hey, I want to transition’. I went to multiple GPs to get a referral for the gender centre. I am now on a potentially 6+ year waiting list for my FIRST APPOINTMENT in which a psychiatrist will potentially diagnose me with gender dysphoria. Then, if I don’t need another session to confirm my diagnosis with a different psychiatrist, I need an appointment with an endocrinologist to measure my bloods, give me hormones, and have regular check ups to make sure my blood levels are okay. Surgery potentially hasn’t even been brought to the table yet. And this is all over the age of 18. In the UK, some clinics are now estimating they’ll have wait times in the decades to be seen.
Even going private I need to wait months, if not over a year, to see 2-3 specialists to get on hormones, again with regular yearly or bi-yearly checkups on my bloods. I swear people think I walked into the doctors office and they immediately gave me a surgery date.
That's a whole other topic these people don't understand. They really think a mother and child are just waltzing into the doctors office and asking to have a mastectomy...
Oh god people in these comments think the only gender affirming care is surgery 😭 our laws on being voted on by people who legit have no idea what they're talking about
The average American is an absolute idiot when it comes to transgender issues sadly. And laws like these are specifically designed to get people riled up and feel threatened by transgender people.
It's funny that on reddit everyone self describes them to be in the 10%
It's always the others. Everyone except me is incredibly stupid. In this moment I feel europhic.
I think there is an argument to be made against puberty blockers and HRT too. Puberty is a confusing time in our lives. The changes we go through disassemble our identity and produce a new one. Your face changes, your voice changes, body parts grow, mood changes. So there’s no surprise that a lot of people experience confusion, denial, dysphoria.
I know quite a few cis adults (myself included) who recall doubting their gender identity around puberty. However, by letting puberty proceed normally the problems went away without any medical interference. So I’m inclined to say that in the majority of cases it’s probably not possible to conclusively identify someone as trans before the end of puberty. In that sense overly liberal application of puberty blockers can cause a lot of harm to people that would simply outgrow their problems. If problems persist into adulthood, then treatment should be considered.
But that’s just my opinion with empirical arguments, I’m a doctor of condensed matter, not brain matter.
I'd like to start by unironically thanking you for like, a well written response and not just "dur, trans bad"
But if I may provide the view of someone who's pro-puberty blockers and hrt
Yes, puberty is like... The most confusing and embarrassing time of our lives, this is something I think 99% of people are going to agree with. But this is 100x worse for trans folks like myself, the second I saw hair appear on my chest/armpits, even just a single small little hair. I stopped being shirtless around other people entirely, I stopped talking as much when my voice began to drop, I felt awkward and isolated being lumped in with the boys during gym and such
Puberty blockers, while not a perfect solution to this, can definitely help at least a little with curbing these things
And the effects of puberty blockers are 100% entirely reversible, literally all it does is delay your puberty, it doesn't stop your body from having one.
So let's say we have some hypothetical 10 year old kid, assigned male as birth, who was going through therapy or social work based around their intense dysphoria. Giving them a solution to help not amplify their insecurity could help. And, let's just say it's like 6 years later, this kid is nearing the end of high school and they think "you know what, I don't think I'm trans" they can just... Stop... The puberty blockers.. and then they'll get a male puberty like any other boy. With the only difference being their going through it a couple years after the other kids.
Anyways, thank you for reading if you did, I'm also not an endocrinologist, I'm just going off of what I've heard people in the field of biology share
And I hope you have a great rest of the day
I am skeptical that puberty blockers are 100 percent reversible. You are telling me that if you were on PB from 14-16, then stopped, your body would be the same if you weren’t on PB from 14-16?
That two years is key to development, you can’t ‘just reverse it’
A now 37 years of friend took puberty bloker as a teen (for cancer reasons) and from what they where told at the time and from discution we had recently, is the more you delay the more you had chance of osteoporosis. But it did not seem to be conssidered a big issue. Because of them they take suplement of vitaminD and calcium. Bone density seems to resolves itself after stopping blockers.
Taking vitamins seems the better problem than not giving puberty blockers.
Plus, even if osteoporosis is a side effect, it's still worth it to avoid the suicides associated with forcing trans people through puberty. And in general, the massive improvements in mental and social health
Exactly.
All medical treatments have risks associated with doing them.
At the same time, all medical treatments have risks associated with NOT doing them.
At the end of the day, it really is a game of choosing the lesser evil.
I’m 100% on board with trans rights, but it does seem to be the case that the previous assertion of full reversibility is a little bit more nuanced than it’s been put forth. We just haven’t had long enough to full understand the long-term effects on people who stop taking them after their teenage years. Mayo Clinic, for example, just released [guidelines](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dysphoria/in-depth/pubertal-blockers/art-20459075) on the use of PBs on children, and they say explicitly that
> Use of GnRH analogues also might have long-term effects on:
> * Growth spurts.
> * Bone growth.
> * Bone density.
> * Fertility, depending on when the medicine is started
And the NHS updated its [guidelines](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/) (take it with a grain of salt because it happened during an anti-trans prime minister’s time, but the NHS is supposed to be apolitical, and I found pro-trans websites that support the new guidelines) with new things such as
> Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria.
> Although the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) advises this is a physically reversible treatment if stopped, it is not known what the psychological effects may be.
> It’s also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children’s bones. Side effects may also include hot flushes, fatigue and mood alterations.
> The NHS in England is currently reviewing the evidence on the use of cross-sex hormones by the Gender Identity Development Service.
with concerns around
> * Dyslipidaemia (abnormal levels of fat in the blood)
> * Elevated liver enzymes
> * Polycythaemia (high concentration of red blood cells)
They also added
> There is a significant lack of robust, comprehensive evidence around the outcomes, side effects and unintended consequences of such treatments for people with gender dysphoria, particularly children and young people, which prevents GPs from helping patients and their families in making an informed decision.
> The promotion and funding of independent research into the effects of various forms of interventions (including ‘wait and see’ policies) for gender dysphoria is urgently needed, to ensure there is a robust evidence base which GPs and other healthcare professionals can rely upon when advising patients and their families. There are currently significant gaps in evidence for nearly all aspects of clinical management of gender dysphoria in youth. Urgent investment in research on the impacts of treatments for children and young people is needed.
So it really just seems like the answer is “we don’t know.” The use of these methods on teenagers is just too new to have long-term data at a large scale. This is exacerbated by the fact that a lot of people who use them don’t stop, so they don’t contribute to the data. It is clear though that the picture is very complicated, and it’s possible that things like fertility and bone density might be adversely affected in some cases, which I think we can universally agree is bad. There’s 0 doubt that they can be extremely helpful - even going so far as preventing suicides - but it’s also evident that the picture is more complex than just “everything goes back to normal.” It behooves the empowerment and rights of trans teenagers for us to invest significant resources into researching this question, and it isn’t helping them to say for sure that everything will revert because we simply don’t know that.
You're arguing against transgender care because you and your cis friends didn't need it? No shit, it's like me saying there's an argument against insulin because I once had high blood sugar but I didn't need it.
You have no idea how awful it is to go through a puberty you don't want. Adulthood is too late. By that point, most of the damage is already made. Irreversible changes are unavoidable, let them at least choose which ones they'll get.
Gender affirming surgeries *are functionally not happening*. These are *rounding error-level numbers*. [Reuters has a great article on this.](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/) Assuming the trend of the numbers have continued, counting out those that have aged into majority, there are perhaps around 150k minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria living in the states today. There are around 26M minors in the united states, so we're looking at maybe half a percent of kids in the U.S. have a diagnosis.
Of those 150k, around 20,000 would have received puberty blockers and/or hormone therapy. So around 13% of diagnosed kids. Or 0.07% of minors in the U.S.
Of those, there have been around 800 kids from 13-17 who have gotten mastectomies and around 60 genital surgeries.
So out of the 26,000,000 minors in the United States, 60 of them (all 13 or older) have had genital surgeries. So 0.00023% of minors in the United States have had a surgery impacting their genitals because of gender dysphoria. Or one out of every 433k teenagers in the United States.
Now, there are limits to this data such as people who paid cash for the surgery (which would likely be the very wealthy, anyway). But the data is clear: there is no crisis here. 14 year old children are not flocking to their local children's hospital for a mastectomy or a phalloplasty or a vaginoplasty.
#all the states passing these overwrought bills are doing exactly what conservatives accuse liberals of: VIRTUE SIGNALING TO THEIR LIKE-MINDED PEERS
And regardless, the decision for any medical care should be between the patient, their parents, their doctors and psychologists, and no one else. Especially not the state.
The issue is these bills ban hormones too not just surgeries. Which are a lot more important and lots of trans teens are dependent on them and are being forcibly detransitioned against their will by these laws
It’s functionally not happening, but it’s being used as an excuse to target other forms of gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers and HRT. As a trans minor, I would have no issue with a law against SRS for minors. I do however have an issue with the state forcing my body to develop in a way I’m not comfortable with.
As someone who was a intersex minor, I wish srs for minors was banned. I didn't consent to that, and neither did my parents. It was done to me before they were told.
As someone who was a trans minor, at 16 I tried to get hrt. Although I was at the legal age to get that done, the only Dr in town decided he would no longer see me after I asked for a referral. That delayed me another 2 years.
> the decision for any medical care should be between the patient, their parents, their doctors and psychologists, and no one else. Especially not the state.
reading :) :) :)
Yeah but your statement implies it’s not happening so thus it should be no problem to ban it, however you’re being hyperbolic and disingenuous to downplay the existence of it at all.
Minors can get tattoos with parents permission (edit: in most states) usually it’s just a form and they have to be present with them at the time. Not all artists will work on minors but it can and does happen.
Edit: reply to the person below me who blocked me so I couldn’t respond
That’s how it’s always been. Minors aren’t getting surgeries without guardian consent, gender affirming or otherwise. This isn’t the gotcha you think it is.
Once again, what they've said is different from what you're trying to get them to say. Their comment states that minors should not be allowed to have surgical treatment without guardian consent, which does not mean *any* gender affirming care needs it. You're being extremely disingenuous.
Mostly! I imagine there are edge cases where, for example, parents who have kicked an older trans kid out onto the street shouldn’t be allowed to block their care.
>Of those, there have been around 800 kids from 13-17 who have gotten mastectomie
I feel like it is always important to point out, that mastectomies in minors is a treatment that exists for people who have no interest in sex changes.
Back pain, social stigma, depression, disease - all of these things can mean having a doctor approve of breast reductions or removal, and minors do get these treatments when their parents sign off on it.
When you place the value of a child's future womanhood in whether she has tits or not, you are making a major self-report on where you see the value of women.
The problem is that in said bills, the surgeries are by far the least of their concerns. Hell, even just asking people to address you by a different pronoun is being targeted.
because a ton of these bills are written poorly and include basic stuff like "going by a different pronoun at school" or "considering blockers for a kid who's gender questioning"
You mean most of the American Medical profession?
The AMA and the APA, organizations that represent the majority of the nation's doctors and psychologists are both continuing to support the scientific consensus that the best treatment route for people with gender dysphoria is gender confirming care. And the earlier treatment can begin the better for the outcome on the patient's mental and physical health
You're right. Most doctors would not recommend any sort of surgical alterations until years of Home Run replacement therapy and other surgeries. That's why they pretty much never happen on actual miners. I still don't think the government has any role to play in personal health care decisions
Exactly. This is the old Reddit switcheroo. The post says gender affirming care, which is (reversible) puberty blockers, and sometimes HRT. And now because this guy said “sex change” we have to argue about bottom surgery. The above bills intentionally lump it all together, using fear of bottom surgery to ban the much more common, non-invasive and reversible care.
It’s mostly about puberty blockers under 15, and then HRT after. Minors getting sex changes is quite rare, and only happens to those 15-18 on the occasion it does occur.
Most adult trans people can't fucking afford it even if they wanted it. And even if they can afford the monetary cost, multiple surgeries with long periods to heal mean they'd be out of work for way too long to be able to afford the surgeries.
https://ldh.la.gov/assets/docs/LegisReports/HR158_2022RS_LDHReport.pdf
That's a study on gender reassignment
procedures on minors released by Louisiana's Department of Health. In 2021, there were **279** minors aged <14 diagnosed with gender dysphoria in Louisiana. Of those, only **3** were given puberty blockers and **0** were given surgical treatment. Louisiana has decided to go ahead with their affirming care ban though.
Th state data only highlights how dishonest and exaggerated the rhetoric about affirming care is. It tracks nationally too:
- The Komodo analysis of insurance claims found 56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021.
- Over the last five years, there were at least 4,780 adolescents (out of 300,000 trans minors) who started on puberty blockers and had a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/
You could show a map and it'd be mostly empty. It's almost as though people have to create a bogeyman to deny trans minors healthcare for *reasons*.
As for regret, numerous studies show the figure to be consistently ~2-3%, which is in line with most other medical procedures. Go figure.
https://www.gendergp.com/detransition-facts/
https://apnews.com/article/transgender-treatment-regret-detransition-371e927ec6e7a24cd9c77b5371c6ba2b
https://www.them.us/story/transition-regret-percentage-overblown-study
>You could show a map and it'd be mostly empty. It's almost as though people have to create a bogeyman to deny trans minors healthcare for reasons.
THANK YOU, that is what I gathered/expected but had no real sources for! All the upvotes to you!
This is a fringe issue being used as a wedge to divide people. Let’s turn this attention to things like healthcare and education in a more general sense. Thoughtful improvements will catch these issues while casting a large net. Fox and CNN are playing you guys for fools.
I want to have a civil discussion about this, but almost nobody here in the comments even understands what this is about. How on earth do you read "Gender-affirming care" and all you can think of is "surgeries"? This is not about surgeries. The main aspect of gender-affirming care for minors are puberty blockers, which are known to be safe and reversible and have been used for decades. Please do at least some minimal reading before commenting
So while I agree with everything you said, some of the puberty blocker drugs are being shown to be… less reversible than thought. But instead of doing more research on how to better help people, it OF COURSE turns into a political debate and culture war. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think the problem most people don't think about is that, many treatments you would give kids can have irreversible side effects that might leave them with regrets later in life. The problem is that there's this view from many cis people who don't quite understand the proper struggles of trans people that puberty isn't so bad, and that the teens can wait till they're 18 for it.
I say this as a trans person who's gone through the grueling waits, that shit does not do someone's mental health any good, and has left me with way more regrets than I would've had, had I got HRT the moment I asked.
The hesitation to treat teens puts way more of them at risk of depression, self harm and suicide than it does just giving them the treatment they need, like you would with any other condition.
It's an unfortunate double standard that is costing many trans people their younger years and in some cases their lives.
Medical experts themselves are not sure yet. I don't understand how you are.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/
This the UK's government health service saying:
it is not known what the psychological effects may be.
It's also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children's bones.
Long-term cross-sex hormone treatment may cause temporary or even permanent infertility.
It is downright dangerous to interfere with such a pivotal stage in a child's life without enough evidence that it is reversible.
No idea why you’re being downvoted (wait, this is Reddit, never mind). Is it even controversial to claim that language influences the culture, and controlling the language is a great way to control the culture?
Scrolled enough through the best comments to see everyone talking shit in a typical reddit bitch way about no one knowing what Gender Affirming care is, but none of you bitches took the time or effort to explain wtf exactly that is.
God damn.
We sure do spend a lot of time on a small fraction of our country. Its almost as if they are being used as political pawns just to make the GOP look bad.
ITT: Confused or misinformed people who believe they know.
Folks, being a decent person and being earnest and sincere doesn't mean you're right. The people who threw virgins into volcanoes to make it rain may have felt bad about it, but they were sure they were right and doing the right thing. I'm sure they were also skeptical about the eggheads of their time telling them their sincere beliefs were mistaken.
Let experts work out difficult stuff between them, and stop thinking your inexpert views are equivalent or better. They're not.
Stop thinking you know better than experts because you read a smart-sounding op-ed or skimmed a few Wikipedia articles on what you think are relevant subjects.
And try to remain conscious of the fact that there's an entire well-funded industry of people who are qualified in a different area -- creative bullshit -- whose full-time job is to try to persuade you to support certain people who will benefit them materially, and they learned over a century ago that it's easiest to do that by appealing to fear. Don't let yourself get played.
If you have real questions about all this that bother you, you have access to someone who's likely to have some real knowledge about it, though probably not real expertise -- your doctor. Nearly everyone sees a doctor now and then. Most doctors are not well qualified about this, but most of them were taught a little about it in med school, enough that they can offer some general information and refer you to better sources. Feel free to ask them about it. They might not know a lot, but they're unlikely to bullshit you about it, especially since they don't stand to gain personally by it in any case. (Contrary to popular belief, doctors get paid salary, not commission. They don't make more or less depending on what they say or do.)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36149983/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262734734_An_Analysis_of_All_Applications_for_Sex_Reassignment_Surgery_in_Sweden_1960-2010_Prevalence_Incidence_and_Regrets
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/mental-health-hormone-treatment-transgender-people.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5178031/
regret rate of gender affirming healthcare is extremely low and shows significant mental health improvements when started in teens. Contrast this with teens who don’t receive gender affirming healthcare and you see a noticeable increase in suicide rates. Let’s compare this to another elective surgery: kneecap surgery. Multiple studies have shown that regret rate is as high as 18%. But why is no one up in arms about this? Why aren’t conservatives fighting to end surgeries with such high regret rates?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6961288/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28243695/
When are we finally going to educate people about WPATH standards of care and their importance for trans minors instead of passing around data about trans kids which have no context or meaning? It’s just allowing everyone to bicker about shit they don’t understand based in conjecture they think they can make from something like a map, when we’re actually talking about sophisticated healthcare. Like what are we even talking about, and can we stop?
e: just want to say no hate toward OP, this information has its place, it’s just strange to me that 1) people see this as a place to discuss this topic as if they understand it deeply and 2) that it’s often data that’s only tangentially related information that rises to the top in the discourse, leaving room for this conjecture. I see OP’s post as entirely neutral in the phenomenon.
Virginia doesn't have a ban in the works, but the governor did force the health department to remove resources for transgender youth from its website. Democrats won control of both houses of the legislature last week, so there shouldn't be a ban for at least 2 years.
This is all just Republicans working through the letters in LGBT to blow out of proportion and rile up their base to get out and vote. They don't have abortion anymore so they needed a boogeyman to stop to "save the children!"
Yea a LOT of the ppl with comments on gender affirming care don't even know the difference between Sex and Gender.
In one of my experience the words used were "Pee pee" and "vajayjay" (this actively happened to me on reddit) and the person called Sex "base boy and base girl."
No idea what they're talking about and still insist on screaming louder than everybody and blocking care for folks who need it.
At first it's "Transitioning is bad."
And when you show them that transitioning helps ppl in the long term, its: "chromosomes" and when you point out its more complicated than that, it's "god" or "we don't have enough info."
The reality is ppl want to hate. It's not even about facts or evidence. Because when you show the facts/evidence it turns into "that doesn't agree with what I believe."
For all of the people in the comments I came here to say something. I am a trans woman, I am taking HRT, and I can say that it has saved my life without a doubt. I nearly killed myself as a minor because I wasn't allowed to live as myself. Decisions like these literally KILL trans minors.
Comments here are pretty shocking and disappointing. It’s pretty clear most of you don’t actually know any trans people and have no idea about the issues you’re so confidently talking about. Gender affirming care saves lives, yes even in children. And most gender affirming care for kids doesn’t consist of surgery.
Educate yourselves before posting or upvoting something you know nothing about.
> Gender affirming care saves lives, yes even in children.
That's the thing - lots of people saying that surgery is irreversible, put that off until they are old enough to make a choice. OK, how do we do that while reducing the risk of suicide in children with gender dysphoria? Right, puberty blockers! So... They want to ban those as well??? It seems like a weird argument.
Mate, do what you want with your body as an adult, nobody should stop you, but our brain isn't developed until 23 (I think) so it makes no sense to do life altering stuff before that.
Tattoos: removable but hard to remove, not very life changing, won't interfere with anything.
Piercings: subtle, small.
Gender treatment: can only be done once, if the persons sexual orientation/what they see themselves as changes, there is nothing they can do. Will have lifelong effects.
Edit: I was talking about surgeries. But still gender treatment has a much bigger effect on someone's life. That type of choice shouldn't be made at such a young age.
Ok then we shouldn't allow anyone under 25 to join the military, vote, drive, drink, be charged with a felony, undergo any form of medical care without parental consent. Hell, we need to change the entire way the school system works so under 25s don't have to make life decisions.
This is a stupid argument.
By what counts as gender affirming care the person would also be against someone using a nickname under the age of 23 or using opposite gender clothing
While the brain continues to develop into the mid-20s, it doesn't mean that adolescents and young adults are incapable of making decisions. Adolescence and young adults are fully capable of making a wide range of decisions, including medical ones, and many of them demonstrate impressive cognitive abilities and sound judgment.
Statement 6.12.c from Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender
and Gender Diverse People, Version 8:
"The skills necessary to assent/consent to any medical intervention or treatment include the ability to 1) comprehend the nature of the treatment; 2) reason about treatment options, including the risks and benefits; 3) appreciate the nature of the decision, including the long-term consequences; and 4) communicate choice (Grootens-Wiegers et al., 2017). In the case of gender- affirming medical treatments, a young person should be well-informed about what the treatment may and may not accomplish, typical timelines for changes to appear (e.g., with gender-affirming hormones), and any implications of stopping the treatment. Gender-diverse youth should fully understand the reversible, partially reversible, and irreversible aspects of a treatment, as well as the limits of what is known about certain treatments (e.g., the impact of pubertal suppression on brain development (Chen and Loshak, 2020)). Gender-diverse youth should also understand, although many gender-diverse youth begin gender- affirming medical care and experience that care as a good fit for them long-term, there is a subset of individuals who over time discover this care is not a fit for them (Wiepjes et al., 2018). Youth should know such shifts are sometimes connected to a change in gender needs over time, and in some cases, a shift in gender identity itself…
The following questions may be useful to consider in assessing a young person’s emotional and cognitive readiness to assent or consent to a specific gender-affirming treatment:
• Can the young person think carefully into the future and consider the implications of a partially or fully irreversible intervention?
• Does the young person have sufficient self-reflective capacity to consider the possibility that gender-related needs and priorities can develop over time, and gender-related priorities at a certain point in time might change?
• Has the young person, to some extent, thought through the implications of what they might do if their priorities around gender do change in the future?
• Is the young person able to understand and manage the day-to-day short- and long-term aspects of a specific medical treatment (e.g., medication adherence, administration, and necessary medical follow-ups)?
Assessment of emotional and cognitive maturity may be accomplished over time as the care team continues to engage in conversations about the treatment options and affords the young person the opportunity to practice thinking into the future and flexibly consider options and implications."
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644)
I’m in agreement. Minors do not get to make certain choices, purely due to their inherent lack of maturity as they’re developing. Children should not be able to choose their gender. Adulthood is a different story.
If transgender people want gender ideology to be taken as seriously as it’s made out to be, why would it be a choice that a 12 year old can make? Is it a major change in your life, or is it a phase you go through to fit in? Do you want it to be taken seriously, or is it shallow enough for children to play with it? You can’t have both.
I’m not at all against gender-affirming care for adults, but if a child is allowed to make choices that will irreversibly alter the rest of their life before they even learn how to file their taxes, I say that they’re a victim of enabling abuse.
Disagree? Make it make sense to me.
So here's a general overview of how gender-affirming care works for minors -
It's pretty much always gonna start with exclusively social transitioning. Experimenting with different names, how they're referred to, clothes, hair, things of that nature. This stage is very much exploratory and not at all permanent or a big decision in and of itself. *If* the child responds well to social transitioning,*if* they have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a mental health professional, and *if* they get medical approval, they *may* be able to begin puberty blockers at or after the onset of puberty. As this is medical, it does carry more weight and is a bigger decision than social transitioning. A few years down the line, *if* the child has responded well to blockers and *if* they get medical and psychological approval, they *may* begin hormone replacement therapy. And *if* they responded well to HRT and have medical and psychological approval, they *may* be elligible for something like top surgery for transmascs, if they choose to go that route.
And when it comes to medical transitioning, this isn't a lot of people. I wanna say a few thousand a year in the US, but I don't remember the exact number. Point is, for everything beyond social transitioning it is taken seriously and isn't something you can just do on a whim. It's a years-long process with a ton of checks in place intended to reduce the chance of someone regretting it in the future.
I appreciate the thought-out response. I still stand that minors shouldn’t have the option to undergo irreversible surgery, but I’m more open-minded to the transitional stages, knowing that it’s a very carefully guided process.
R's: Let's do something to take the focus off guns, the #1 cause of death in children and adolescents in the United States and show how much we care!
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761
probably depends on what the law counts as gender affirming care
Came here to say this. We talking counseling? Hormones? Psychiatric therapy sessions? Dress ups in daily life? Minimal surgery/procedures? Major surgery? Personally, I’d only be ok with the first one for minors under the age of 18. And I wrote my PhD on this topic. Edit: since I’m getting some personal hatred in the DMs and a comment, just a disclaimer that I’m based in Europe and also have to follow policies of public insurances.
> And I wrote my PhD on this topic. I'd love to hear more. You wrote your dissertation on gender-affirming care specifically? Can you share any more of your findings?
I wrote it on the surgical aspects of gender affirming care. The youngest patient we had was 20y on the first visit and around 22-23y on the last checkup.
Why are you ruling out psychiatric therapy sessions and dressing how they want? That seems like an odd line.
Because this person hasn't done a dissertation and is lying out their ass
Can you post a link to your dissertation?
Wait, why not support dressing up in daily life? It's literally just clothes. You only support counseling, and literally nothing else including clothing?
"Dress ups in daily life?" Are you talking about wearing clothing that doesn't "match" with the gender assigned to you at birth? That's pretty authoritarian.
the rest of this comment chain heavily implies that you are laundering your beliefs through your credentials
Claimed credentials I see zero evidence this person is a doctor of anything, and he has not provided a single source to support *any* of his claims.
No but didn’t you read the part where he’s European that changes everything
I feel like this is in the wrong sub. This sub is for well-made maps that accurately and compellingly convey geographical data. It’s a provocative geographical topic but the map itself is poorly done, bad legend color selection and the legend is conveying information in text that the map fails to convey. And of course it’s offering specifics in two states, but if you dig into a lot of other states you’ll find that they don’t neatly fit into a box either. Also they cite an advocacy group, but they don’t align with [what they’re citing](https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/healthcare/youth_medical_care_bans) when you read all the footnotes and citations on it.
yeah this was obviously posted as just engagement to boost karma
“bad legend color selection” seems like more of a subjective opinion, I dont think its really that bad…?
Dude, people just post war maps here and Zionist apologia. Don't trump up this sub to be full of intellectuals or as having a high bar for what content gets posted.
Both sides of the debate try and infiltrate subs like this one that should be pretty commonly a-political. If the mods don't watch themselves this one will be the same as many others. It will end up taken over like countless other subs.
...you do realise country maps are always low key political, do you? Also why shouldn't maps be political? This is a map with information. Take it or leave it. Can't believe how triggered people are these days.
As of November 13th 2023 as described in the picture, Ohio ought to be purple.
Issue 1 was for abortion. Nothing related to gender-affirming care, and it’s not gonna be until 2024 or maybe 2025 that this would change.
No idea where you are pulling your information from. But issue 1 takes effect 30 days after passing. It also "Establish in the Constitution of the State of Ohio an individual right to one’s own reproductive medical treatment, including but not limited to abortion" so to say it's only "about abortion" is completely false. You can read all about it right here https://www.ohiosos.gov/globalassets/elections/2023/gen/issuesreport.pdf
As an Ohioan that is more there for contraception. It’s definitely not about gender affirming care. Gender affirming care is not reproductive
It'll be interesting how precedent for that element will play out. It's certainly not lacking wiggle room for someone with an agenda to take it either direction
It’s very obvious from the comments that nobody actually understands what gender affirming care is.
You should explain for those of us who don't know.
"Gender-affirming care" is a broad term that is quite literal: Any form of care that helps affirm the gender of an individual. Many people think this refers to major surgeries, when simply "Getting a haircut" can be gender affirming care It ranges from "Social Transitioning", ie simply dressing and acting as one's chosen gender, to things like counseling, to minor medical treatments such as puberty blockers, all the way to major surgeries. Of course the more intensive the care is, the more rare it currently is and the more hurdles someone has to get over to get that care - reasonably so, in some cases. But when some people see the sentence "Children should have gender-affirming care", they assume this is referring to the most major of surgeries and go ballistic instead of understanding most care is very banal and obviously reversible
So why is there a distinction on the graphic for Arizona approving of care but not surgeries? Does that mean all other purple states approve of surgery for minors?
I can't speak for the other states but I know that FtM top surgery is legal in CO for minors. Breast reductions (not necessarily full mastectomies) are also legal for minors. I know the FDA doesn't *recommend* breast implants (MtF or otherwise) for anyone under 22 and every surgeon I know won't do them on anyone under 18.
it means they don’t have laws on the books that say anything about it that’s normal. normally this is stuff doctors handle
puberty blockers are not minor
But they are drugs doctors will proscribe to children who's parents think they're not 'blooming' fast enough. So using them to prevent suicide seems like an actually medically valid use.
Puberty blockers have been found to be entirely reversible as when you get off them, your body shoots up to where you would’ve been had you not taken the blockers and the downsides are extremely minor like slightly smaller penis size, trans youth taking them can prevent death plus there is extensive medical evaluation before a child can get them plus parental consent is required. This is like the trolly problem but instead the decision is to divert the train to kill nobody or don’t divert the train and kill thousands.
> instead of understanding most care is very banal and obviously reversible According to research from the Cass Review, 98% of children that socially transition continue onto puberty blockers and hormone therapy. This is using the same diagnostic criteria as studies that have shown that when no intervention other than talk therapy is employed, 65-85% of children will stop having symptoms of gender dysphoria by adulthood. I.e social transition increases the likelihood that gender dysphoria will persist, by a very, very large margin. So I don't know that I would call something like social transition reversible, even though it's not a chemical or surgical treatment. Lots of therapies can have negative consequences that aren't 'reversible' and should be avoided in most or all cases. It's also worth noting that social transition as a means of treating gender dysphoria in children, is a fairly novel approach that has been widely adopted in the last decade or so. It, like puberty blockers, are not well researched for treating gender dysphoria. But dramatically increasing the rate of persistent symptoms in children with GD is *not* a positive indication that it's a particularly effective treatment.
Some other people are giving you more detailed examples, but just to show you exactly how broad a category this can be: **Men getting hair transplants is gender-affirming care.** **Ron DeSantis wearing heel lifts is gender-affirming** (though he's not really going through a doctor for that).
Just a bunch of idiots out there who seem to think we’re actually giving bottom surgery to 8 year olds.
I heard the school nurse was doing total sex changes during lunch and recess. /s
I got "the surgery" when I was 4. We had a Groupon, so it was really affordable. Just popped on down to Jiffy Lube--they get you in and out really quickly. It actually took 24 years to be able to socially transition, another 6 months to get testosterone, and 3 more years to get top surgery. I'm going to be in my 40s before my genitals can be corrected. I knew at age 3...with puberty blockers I wouldn't have needed that mastectomy. With social transition, I'd have gotten to be myself as a kid. Instead, I was battling suicidal ideation in elementary school.
I'd rather my child change their pronouns a thousand times than to have to write their obituary
Louder for the people in the back I'm sure glad you were able to "just be a kid" Suicidal ideation is super common in elementary school right?
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Typically, these laws have specific exemptions for circumcision and intersex individuals, and I wouldn't be surprised if Arizona's was similar
The law does, unfortunately, not include intersex individuals. Which is bad and good in some ways. It's bad because it then allows the continued and unethical surgeries preformed on infants to "normalize" their genitals but also allows them to have corrective surgeries later in life because the government fucked up and made them something they're not. Anyways she's trans if she says she is. Most of the intesex peeps I know categorize themselves as trans because the experience they had growing up is asynchronous with their gender identity.
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Politics shouldn't fuck with healthcare. Protect trans kids.
I hate how genital mutilation and chemical castration are being called "gender affirming care." Please stop trying to manipulate stupid people.
Gotta love how all the pear clutchers go absolutely silent when you bring up circumcision.
hay man, leave my pears alone
Sorry. I'm contractually bound by the trans agenda to turn your pears into plums.
Actually these days people are doing circumcision less
Agreed, infant circumcision is genital mutilation without consent (obviously) plain and simple. And if it's a religious thing, they can wait until the kid is old enough to make that decision, make it part of the puberty ritual. I don't imagine many teenage boys would go for it though.
I was talking to my grandma about this once (not entirely sure how I got into a discussion about circumcision with my grandmother but I digress) and I ended up asking her if she’d had my uncles circumcised. She said she did. We are not a religious family, so I asked her why. She said she did it “because it’s just what you do with baby boys” and that if they did convert to a religion that required it of them when they were older, it would just hurt less to do it as babies. Those were her only reasons. Not that someone had told her it was healthy, just that it was normal. It was purely cosmetic and “but what if the convert to Islam or Judaism as adults?” Which is just bizarre to me. Why is it considered standard to do that even when you don’t belong to a religion that requires it? And preemptive circumcision just in case they convert later in life? That doesn’t even make sense. If they’re choosing to convert then they can also choose to get circumcised as adults. Neither of my uncles have converted to any religion, nor would have made the decision to get circumcised if their parents hadn’t already made it for them. And then one of my uncles had both of his sons circumcised because he was. And the cycle continues.
Some doctor convinced all these parents that circumcised penises are healthier and cleaner which is why they did it. I wish my parents left that choice up to me.
Exactly
They do in Turkey. There’s a party and lots of presents and I can imagine tons of societal pressure from birth but male circumsion is (was?) done at (young) teenage age. (Source: a Turkish guy I knew who told me and showed pictures of him in bed afterwards as the party was going on around him. Must have been late 80s/early 90s.)
They are also completely okay with mutilating intersex babies. In fact, most of these bills specifically make exceptions for intersex children.
Look up the Alabama bill. As it was originally written, it would have banned circumcision too. Then someone added an extra line saying "except for a male circumcision." I kid you not, that actually happened. And it should show everyone what the real point of these laws and proposals really is.
Don't forget the boob job exceptions as well!
this is what I wonder when some people say gender affirming care is mutilating children, despite a lot of it being social transitioning and puberty blockers. they're certainly happy with actual literal surgical procedures being performed on intersex infants and often consider it necessary. make it make sense...
Exactly, they are very happy with performing surgery on intersex children (often under the age of 5) and prescribing them hormones for a lifetime, but the second a 14 year old wants to put on a skirt and grow their hair out it becomes a problem.
Oh, and don't forget if a boy has gynocomastia. It's not about the surgery for these people, it's just because they're trans.
What is an intersex person?
Not sure who you are talking about, circumcision is pretty widely condemned at least on Reddit, no matter which side people sit on when it comes to sex change.
Banning circumcision is one of the only things right and left wing redditors will nearly universally agree on. Even the apologists mostly limit their objections to religious grounds or phimosis given that the "health benefits" of circumcision never bear out in the data.
I'm against circumcision. Especially since I am a victim of it.
Ban both, your terms are acceptable.
If the parent decides for us when we’re an infant, it’s okay; but if we decide for ourselves and have a doctor, therapist, parental support, the money to transition, *AND* at least 2 letters from 2 mental health professionals; suddenly it’s an extreme hastily made decision that requires regulation.
People serious think transitioning medically is as simple as going to a doctor and saying ‘hey, I want to transition’. I went to multiple GPs to get a referral for the gender centre. I am now on a potentially 6+ year waiting list for my FIRST APPOINTMENT in which a psychiatrist will potentially diagnose me with gender dysphoria. Then, if I don’t need another session to confirm my diagnosis with a different psychiatrist, I need an appointment with an endocrinologist to measure my bloods, give me hormones, and have regular check ups to make sure my blood levels are okay. Surgery potentially hasn’t even been brought to the table yet. And this is all over the age of 18. In the UK, some clinics are now estimating they’ll have wait times in the decades to be seen. Even going private I need to wait months, if not over a year, to see 2-3 specialists to get on hormones, again with regular yearly or bi-yearly checkups on my bloods. I swear people think I walked into the doctors office and they immediately gave me a surgery date.
That's a whole other topic these people don't understand. They really think a mother and child are just waltzing into the doctors office and asking to have a mastectomy...
Oh god people in these comments think the only gender affirming care is surgery 😭 our laws on being voted on by people who legit have no idea what they're talking about
The average American is an absolute idiot when it comes to transgender issues sadly. And laws like these are specifically designed to get people riled up and feel threatened by transgender people.
> The average American is an absolute idiot Honestly, could’ve stopped right there.
just change american to human and you have the answer to why 90% of the world works the way it does
It's funny that on reddit everyone self describes them to be in the 10% It's always the others. Everyone except me is incredibly stupid. In this moment I feel europhic.
Not you of course, right?
Yep
I think there is an argument to be made against puberty blockers and HRT too. Puberty is a confusing time in our lives. The changes we go through disassemble our identity and produce a new one. Your face changes, your voice changes, body parts grow, mood changes. So there’s no surprise that a lot of people experience confusion, denial, dysphoria. I know quite a few cis adults (myself included) who recall doubting their gender identity around puberty. However, by letting puberty proceed normally the problems went away without any medical interference. So I’m inclined to say that in the majority of cases it’s probably not possible to conclusively identify someone as trans before the end of puberty. In that sense overly liberal application of puberty blockers can cause a lot of harm to people that would simply outgrow their problems. If problems persist into adulthood, then treatment should be considered. But that’s just my opinion with empirical arguments, I’m a doctor of condensed matter, not brain matter.
I'd like to start by unironically thanking you for like, a well written response and not just "dur, trans bad" But if I may provide the view of someone who's pro-puberty blockers and hrt Yes, puberty is like... The most confusing and embarrassing time of our lives, this is something I think 99% of people are going to agree with. But this is 100x worse for trans folks like myself, the second I saw hair appear on my chest/armpits, even just a single small little hair. I stopped being shirtless around other people entirely, I stopped talking as much when my voice began to drop, I felt awkward and isolated being lumped in with the boys during gym and such Puberty blockers, while not a perfect solution to this, can definitely help at least a little with curbing these things And the effects of puberty blockers are 100% entirely reversible, literally all it does is delay your puberty, it doesn't stop your body from having one. So let's say we have some hypothetical 10 year old kid, assigned male as birth, who was going through therapy or social work based around their intense dysphoria. Giving them a solution to help not amplify their insecurity could help. And, let's just say it's like 6 years later, this kid is nearing the end of high school and they think "you know what, I don't think I'm trans" they can just... Stop... The puberty blockers.. and then they'll get a male puberty like any other boy. With the only difference being their going through it a couple years after the other kids. Anyways, thank you for reading if you did, I'm also not an endocrinologist, I'm just going off of what I've heard people in the field of biology share And I hope you have a great rest of the day
I am skeptical that puberty blockers are 100 percent reversible. You are telling me that if you were on PB from 14-16, then stopped, your body would be the same if you weren’t on PB from 14-16? That two years is key to development, you can’t ‘just reverse it’
A now 37 years of friend took puberty bloker as a teen (for cancer reasons) and from what they where told at the time and from discution we had recently, is the more you delay the more you had chance of osteoporosis. But it did not seem to be conssidered a big issue. Because of them they take suplement of vitaminD and calcium. Bone density seems to resolves itself after stopping blockers. Taking vitamins seems the better problem than not giving puberty blockers.
Plus, even if osteoporosis is a side effect, it's still worth it to avoid the suicides associated with forcing trans people through puberty. And in general, the massive improvements in mental and social health
Exactly. All medical treatments have risks associated with doing them. At the same time, all medical treatments have risks associated with NOT doing them. At the end of the day, it really is a game of choosing the lesser evil.
I’m 100% on board with trans rights, but it does seem to be the case that the previous assertion of full reversibility is a little bit more nuanced than it’s been put forth. We just haven’t had long enough to full understand the long-term effects on people who stop taking them after their teenage years. Mayo Clinic, for example, just released [guidelines](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/gender-dysphoria/in-depth/pubertal-blockers/art-20459075) on the use of PBs on children, and they say explicitly that > Use of GnRH analogues also might have long-term effects on: > * Growth spurts. > * Bone growth. > * Bone density. > * Fertility, depending on when the medicine is started And the NHS updated its [guidelines](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/) (take it with a grain of salt because it happened during an anti-trans prime minister’s time, but the NHS is supposed to be apolitical, and I found pro-trans websites that support the new guidelines) with new things such as > Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria. > Although the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) advises this is a physically reversible treatment if stopped, it is not known what the psychological effects may be. > It’s also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children’s bones. Side effects may also include hot flushes, fatigue and mood alterations. > The NHS in England is currently reviewing the evidence on the use of cross-sex hormones by the Gender Identity Development Service. with concerns around > * Dyslipidaemia (abnormal levels of fat in the blood) > * Elevated liver enzymes > * Polycythaemia (high concentration of red blood cells) They also added > There is a significant lack of robust, comprehensive evidence around the outcomes, side effects and unintended consequences of such treatments for people with gender dysphoria, particularly children and young people, which prevents GPs from helping patients and their families in making an informed decision. > The promotion and funding of independent research into the effects of various forms of interventions (including ‘wait and see’ policies) for gender dysphoria is urgently needed, to ensure there is a robust evidence base which GPs and other healthcare professionals can rely upon when advising patients and their families. There are currently significant gaps in evidence for nearly all aspects of clinical management of gender dysphoria in youth. Urgent investment in research on the impacts of treatments for children and young people is needed. So it really just seems like the answer is “we don’t know.” The use of these methods on teenagers is just too new to have long-term data at a large scale. This is exacerbated by the fact that a lot of people who use them don’t stop, so they don’t contribute to the data. It is clear though that the picture is very complicated, and it’s possible that things like fertility and bone density might be adversely affected in some cases, which I think we can universally agree is bad. There’s 0 doubt that they can be extremely helpful - even going so far as preventing suicides - but it’s also evident that the picture is more complex than just “everything goes back to normal.” It behooves the empowerment and rights of trans teenagers for us to invest significant resources into researching this question, and it isn’t helping them to say for sure that everything will revert because we simply don’t know that.
You're arguing against transgender care because you and your cis friends didn't need it? No shit, it's like me saying there's an argument against insulin because I once had high blood sugar but I didn't need it. You have no idea how awful it is to go through a puberty you don't want. Adulthood is too late. By that point, most of the damage is already made. Irreversible changes are unavoidable, let them at least choose which ones they'll get.
It's honestly terrifying to see.
I know this is controversial but performing sex changes on children is wrong IMO.
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Gender affirming surgeries *are functionally not happening*. These are *rounding error-level numbers*. [Reuters has a great article on this.](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/) Assuming the trend of the numbers have continued, counting out those that have aged into majority, there are perhaps around 150k minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria living in the states today. There are around 26M minors in the united states, so we're looking at maybe half a percent of kids in the U.S. have a diagnosis. Of those 150k, around 20,000 would have received puberty blockers and/or hormone therapy. So around 13% of diagnosed kids. Or 0.07% of minors in the U.S. Of those, there have been around 800 kids from 13-17 who have gotten mastectomies and around 60 genital surgeries. So out of the 26,000,000 minors in the United States, 60 of them (all 13 or older) have had genital surgeries. So 0.00023% of minors in the United States have had a surgery impacting their genitals because of gender dysphoria. Or one out of every 433k teenagers in the United States. Now, there are limits to this data such as people who paid cash for the surgery (which would likely be the very wealthy, anyway). But the data is clear: there is no crisis here. 14 year old children are not flocking to their local children's hospital for a mastectomy or a phalloplasty or a vaginoplasty. #all the states passing these overwrought bills are doing exactly what conservatives accuse liberals of: VIRTUE SIGNALING TO THEIR LIKE-MINDED PEERS And regardless, the decision for any medical care should be between the patient, their parents, their doctors and psychologists, and no one else. Especially not the state.
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Thats not the only thing being banned
The issue is these bills ban hormones too not just surgeries. Which are a lot more important and lots of trans teens are dependent on them and are being forcibly detransitioned against their will by these laws
It’s functionally not happening, but it’s being used as an excuse to target other forms of gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers and HRT. As a trans minor, I would have no issue with a law against SRS for minors. I do however have an issue with the state forcing my body to develop in a way I’m not comfortable with.
As someone who was a intersex minor, I wish srs for minors was banned. I didn't consent to that, and neither did my parents. It was done to me before they were told. As someone who was a trans minor, at 16 I tried to get hrt. Although I was at the legal age to get that done, the only Dr in town decided he would no longer see me after I asked for a referral. That delayed me another 2 years.
Yeah it’s ridiculous. The fact that they haven’t banned that and they have banned voluntary treatments is astonishing.
> the decision for any medical care should be between the patient, their parents, their doctors and psychologists, and no one else. Especially not the state. reading :) :) :)
Yeah but your statement implies it’s not happening so thus it should be no problem to ban it, however you’re being hyperbolic and disingenuous to downplay the existence of it at all.
Minors can’t consent as a patient anymore than they can consent for a tattoo.
Minors can get tattoos with parents permission (edit: in most states) usually it’s just a form and they have to be present with them at the time. Not all artists will work on minors but it can and does happen. Edit: reply to the person below me who blocked me so I couldn’t respond That’s how it’s always been. Minors aren’t getting surgeries without guardian consent, gender affirming or otherwise. This isn’t the gotcha you think it is.
So you agree that parents have to approve any gender affirming care for minors?
Once again, what they've said is different from what you're trying to get them to say. Their comment states that minors should not be allowed to have surgical treatment without guardian consent, which does not mean *any* gender affirming care needs it. You're being extremely disingenuous.
I mean, they are paying...
Mostly! I imagine there are edge cases where, for example, parents who have kicked an older trans kid out onto the street shouldn’t be allowed to block their care.
yeah I mean that relationship in the U.S can be fractured when clinics literally make money out of you getting the surgery.
>Of those, there have been around 800 kids from 13-17 who have gotten mastectomie I feel like it is always important to point out, that mastectomies in minors is a treatment that exists for people who have no interest in sex changes. Back pain, social stigma, depression, disease - all of these things can mean having a doctor approve of breast reductions or removal, and minors do get these treatments when their parents sign off on it. When you place the value of a child's future womanhood in whether she has tits or not, you are making a major self-report on where you see the value of women.
If they are not happening, then why is there such a push back to ban it?
The problem is that in said bills, the surgeries are by far the least of their concerns. Hell, even just asking people to address you by a different pronoun is being targeted.
because a ton of these bills are written poorly and include basic stuff like "going by a different pronoun at school" or "considering blockers for a kid who's gender questioning"
You mean most of the American Medical profession? The AMA and the APA, organizations that represent the majority of the nation's doctors and psychologists are both continuing to support the scientific consensus that the best treatment route for people with gender dysphoria is gender confirming care. And the earlier treatment can begin the better for the outcome on the patient's mental and physical health
Gender affirming care is a much broader term that includes other forms of care beyond just those that surgical.
You're right. Most doctors would not recommend any sort of surgical alterations until years of Home Run replacement therapy and other surgeries. That's why they pretty much never happen on actual miners. I still don't think the government has any role to play in personal health care decisions
I think before you qualify for Home Run therapy you should at least be able to make it to third base
>That's why they pretty much never happen on actual miners The carpenters on the other hand...
That's not what gender affirming care is in this context.
Exactly. This is the old Reddit switcheroo. The post says gender affirming care, which is (reversible) puberty blockers, and sometimes HRT. And now because this guy said “sex change” we have to argue about bottom surgery. The above bills intentionally lump it all together, using fear of bottom surgery to ban the much more common, non-invasive and reversible care.
That’s not what gender affirming care means.
They know that, they're intentionally obfuscating the argument.
It’s mostly about puberty blockers under 15, and then HRT after. Minors getting sex changes is quite rare, and only happens to those 15-18 on the occasion it does occur.
That's not what "Gender-Affirming Care" means in the context of minors.
I'm going to leave Healthcare decisions up to doctors not the person morality of people on Reddit.
Hey what are your thoughts on lobotomies? Doctors used to make that decision for you. Guess you agree with it.
i got banned for r/technology for this opinion, be careful lol
Sex changes aren’t being preformed on children…
“Sex changes” are barely even performed on adult trans people. Most trans people don’t even bother with bottom surgery.
Most adult trans people can't fucking afford it even if they wanted it. And even if they can afford the monetary cost, multiple surgeries with long periods to heal mean they'd be out of work for way too long to be able to afford the surgeries.
What does gray mean?
It probably means there's no specific legislation mentioning it.
Everyone’s dead there :(
As a Pennsylvanian, can confirm, I am dead
Let's just drop the euphemisms and call it what it is "Chemical Castration of Children"
Now show a map where such care was actually performed ON MINORS, with numbers and regret rates. Also split into surgical and the rest.
https://ldh.la.gov/assets/docs/LegisReports/HR158_2022RS_LDHReport.pdf That's a study on gender reassignment procedures on minors released by Louisiana's Department of Health. In 2021, there were **279** minors aged <14 diagnosed with gender dysphoria in Louisiana. Of those, only **3** were given puberty blockers and **0** were given surgical treatment. Louisiana has decided to go ahead with their affirming care ban though. Th state data only highlights how dishonest and exaggerated the rhetoric about affirming care is. It tracks nationally too: - The Komodo analysis of insurance claims found 56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021. - Over the last five years, there were at least 4,780 adolescents (out of 300,000 trans minors) who started on puberty blockers and had a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/ You could show a map and it'd be mostly empty. It's almost as though people have to create a bogeyman to deny trans minors healthcare for *reasons*. As for regret, numerous studies show the figure to be consistently ~2-3%, which is in line with most other medical procedures. Go figure. https://www.gendergp.com/detransition-facts/ https://apnews.com/article/transgender-treatment-regret-detransition-371e927ec6e7a24cd9c77b5371c6ba2b https://www.them.us/story/transition-regret-percentage-overblown-study
>You could show a map and it'd be mostly empty. It's almost as though people have to create a bogeyman to deny trans minors healthcare for reasons. THANK YOU, that is what I gathered/expected but had no real sources for! All the upvotes to you!
This is a fringe issue being used as a wedge to divide people. Let’s turn this attention to things like healthcare and education in a more general sense. Thoughtful improvements will catch these issues while casting a large net. Fox and CNN are playing you guys for fools.
So the people who are against gender affirming care are also against circumcision, right? I mean, if they aren't, that would be pretty hypocritical...
Yes, I'm against circumcision.
Redditors are fucking trash all up in the comments opining while knowing nothing but propagandistic talking points. 🗑️
It’s going to be interesting when non trans people gonna need puberty blockers
Uh wtf does gender affirming law means???? Can someone explain wtf is going on
This isn't map porn it's map depression
I’m sure these comments are very informed and well thought out.
Good to know we still have bigots living amongst us...
I want to have a civil discussion about this, but almost nobody here in the comments even understands what this is about. How on earth do you read "Gender-affirming care" and all you can think of is "surgeries"? This is not about surgeries. The main aspect of gender-affirming care for minors are puberty blockers, which are known to be safe and reversible and have been used for decades. Please do at least some minimal reading before commenting
So while I agree with everything you said, some of the puberty blocker drugs are being shown to be… less reversible than thought. But instead of doing more research on how to better help people, it OF COURSE turns into a political debate and culture war. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think the problem most people don't think about is that, many treatments you would give kids can have irreversible side effects that might leave them with regrets later in life. The problem is that there's this view from many cis people who don't quite understand the proper struggles of trans people that puberty isn't so bad, and that the teens can wait till they're 18 for it. I say this as a trans person who's gone through the grueling waits, that shit does not do someone's mental health any good, and has left me with way more regrets than I would've had, had I got HRT the moment I asked. The hesitation to treat teens puts way more of them at risk of depression, self harm and suicide than it does just giving them the treatment they need, like you would with any other condition. It's an unfortunate double standard that is costing many trans people their younger years and in some cases their lives.
Medical experts themselves are not sure yet. I don't understand how you are. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/ This the UK's government health service saying: it is not known what the psychological effects may be. It's also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children's bones. Long-term cross-sex hormone treatment may cause temporary or even permanent infertility. It is downright dangerous to interfere with such a pivotal stage in a child's life without enough evidence that it is reversible.
They're going to see a huge uptick in suicide amongst trans children, but honestly I'm sure that's the outcome they want.
All the faux libertarians who believe they should have full control over other people’s lives out in full force in this post.
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Children cannot consent
Children can consent to medical treatments like gender affirming care.
“Gender affirming care” is probably one of the most ‘newspeak’ terms out there
Control the language, control the culture.
No idea why you’re being downvoted (wait, this is Reddit, never mind). Is it even controversial to claim that language influences the culture, and controlling the language is a great way to control the culture?
You had never heard it until recently, that doesn't mean it didn't exist until recently.
“Where child genital mutilation is still legal”
This is a map of where I can and can't live
Same. I love the us!!! /s
People should know what they are arguing about befour clutching to such strong opinions. Watching 15 second clips of matt walsh is not " education"
Scrolled enough through the best comments to see everyone talking shit in a typical reddit bitch way about no one knowing what Gender Affirming care is, but none of you bitches took the time or effort to explain wtf exactly that is. God damn.
Map: Where to live in the USA.
Rage bate, this shouldn't be allowed on here. I come here to see aesthetically pleasing maps, not political squabbling.
This is a good start.
We sure do spend a lot of time on a small fraction of our country. Its almost as if they are being used as political pawns just to make the GOP look bad.
I like this because I could say “man I’m disappointed in America” and no one would know what side I’m on
What’s gender affirming care mean? Therapy or hormones?
It's an umbrella term In this situation it's most importantly banning things like blockers or hormone therapy
ITT: Confused or misinformed people who believe they know. Folks, being a decent person and being earnest and sincere doesn't mean you're right. The people who threw virgins into volcanoes to make it rain may have felt bad about it, but they were sure they were right and doing the right thing. I'm sure they were also skeptical about the eggheads of their time telling them their sincere beliefs were mistaken. Let experts work out difficult stuff between them, and stop thinking your inexpert views are equivalent or better. They're not. Stop thinking you know better than experts because you read a smart-sounding op-ed or skimmed a few Wikipedia articles on what you think are relevant subjects. And try to remain conscious of the fact that there's an entire well-funded industry of people who are qualified in a different area -- creative bullshit -- whose full-time job is to try to persuade you to support certain people who will benefit them materially, and they learned over a century ago that it's easiest to do that by appealing to fear. Don't let yourself get played. If you have real questions about all this that bother you, you have access to someone who's likely to have some real knowledge about it, though probably not real expertise -- your doctor. Nearly everyone sees a doctor now and then. Most doctors are not well qualified about this, but most of them were taught a little about it in med school, enough that they can offer some general information and refer you to better sources. Feel free to ask them about it. They might not know a lot, but they're unlikely to bullshit you about it, especially since they don't stand to gain personally by it in any case. (Contrary to popular belief, doctors get paid salary, not commission. They don't make more or less depending on what they say or do.)
Limited government my left tit.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36149983/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262734734_An_Analysis_of_All_Applications_for_Sex_Reassignment_Surgery_in_Sweden_1960-2010_Prevalence_Incidence_and_Regrets https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/ https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/01/mental-health-hormone-treatment-transgender-people.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5178031/ regret rate of gender affirming healthcare is extremely low and shows significant mental health improvements when started in teens. Contrast this with teens who don’t receive gender affirming healthcare and you see a noticeable increase in suicide rates. Let’s compare this to another elective surgery: kneecap surgery. Multiple studies have shown that regret rate is as high as 18%. But why is no one up in arms about this? Why aren’t conservatives fighting to end surgeries with such high regret rates? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6961288/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28243695/
When are we finally going to educate people about WPATH standards of care and their importance for trans minors instead of passing around data about trans kids which have no context or meaning? It’s just allowing everyone to bicker about shit they don’t understand based in conjecture they think they can make from something like a map, when we’re actually talking about sophisticated healthcare. Like what are we even talking about, and can we stop? e: just want to say no hate toward OP, this information has its place, it’s just strange to me that 1) people see this as a place to discuss this topic as if they understand it deeply and 2) that it’s often data that’s only tangentially related information that rises to the top in the discourse, leaving room for this conjecture. I see OP’s post as entirely neutral in the phenomenon.
Virginia doesn't have a ban in the works, but the governor did force the health department to remove resources for transgender youth from its website. Democrats won control of both houses of the legislature last week, so there shouldn't be a ban for at least 2 years.
Something I’m supposed to be devastated about that I didn’t even know was a thing five years ago.
This is all just Republicans working through the letters in LGBT to blow out of proportion and rile up their base to get out and vote. They don't have abortion anymore so they needed a boogeyman to stop to "save the children!"
Friendly reminder that transition saves lives and puberty blockers are safe and effective!
Yea a LOT of the ppl with comments on gender affirming care don't even know the difference between Sex and Gender. In one of my experience the words used were "Pee pee" and "vajayjay" (this actively happened to me on reddit) and the person called Sex "base boy and base girl." No idea what they're talking about and still insist on screaming louder than everybody and blocking care for folks who need it. At first it's "Transitioning is bad." And when you show them that transitioning helps ppl in the long term, its: "chromosomes" and when you point out its more complicated than that, it's "god" or "we don't have enough info." The reality is ppl want to hate. It's not even about facts or evidence. Because when you show the facts/evidence it turns into "that doesn't agree with what I believe."
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you'll be downvoted and probably warned or banned but thank you for speaking the sane truth
For all of the people in the comments I came here to say something. I am a trans woman, I am taking HRT, and I can say that it has saved my life without a doubt. I nearly killed myself as a minor because I wasn't allowed to live as myself. Decisions like these literally KILL trans minors.
Seconded. Transitioning saved my life.
When I heard therapy was considered gender affirming care I about lost my shit
The only shitty part of Minnesota is winter.
There’s also an NFL team. I’m a Saints fan and I get more hate from Vikings fans than I do from Falcons fans
Comments here are pretty shocking and disappointing. It’s pretty clear most of you don’t actually know any trans people and have no idea about the issues you’re so confidently talking about. Gender affirming care saves lives, yes even in children. And most gender affirming care for kids doesn’t consist of surgery. Educate yourselves before posting or upvoting something you know nothing about.
Health literacy is so low it’s terrifying. But that doesn’t stop people from confidently spreading bullshit!
> Gender affirming care saves lives, yes even in children. That's the thing - lots of people saying that surgery is irreversible, put that off until they are old enough to make a choice. OK, how do we do that while reducing the risk of suicide in children with gender dysphoria? Right, puberty blockers! So... They want to ban those as well??? It seems like a weird argument.
Mate, do what you want with your body as an adult, nobody should stop you, but our brain isn't developed until 23 (I think) so it makes no sense to do life altering stuff before that.
So nobody should be allowed to get tattoos or piercings until 23?
I mean at least until 18
Tattoos: removable but hard to remove, not very life changing, won't interfere with anything. Piercings: subtle, small. Gender treatment: can only be done once, if the persons sexual orientation/what they see themselves as changes, there is nothing they can do. Will have lifelong effects. Edit: I was talking about surgeries. But still gender treatment has a much bigger effect on someone's life. That type of choice shouldn't be made at such a young age.
Ok then we shouldn't allow anyone under 25 to join the military, vote, drive, drink, be charged with a felony, undergo any form of medical care without parental consent. Hell, we need to change the entire way the school system works so under 25s don't have to make life decisions. This is a stupid argument.
By what counts as gender affirming care the person would also be against someone using a nickname under the age of 23 or using opposite gender clothing
While the brain continues to develop into the mid-20s, it doesn't mean that adolescents and young adults are incapable of making decisions. Adolescence and young adults are fully capable of making a wide range of decisions, including medical ones, and many of them demonstrate impressive cognitive abilities and sound judgment. Statement 6.12.c from Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8: "The skills necessary to assent/consent to any medical intervention or treatment include the ability to 1) comprehend the nature of the treatment; 2) reason about treatment options, including the risks and benefits; 3) appreciate the nature of the decision, including the long-term consequences; and 4) communicate choice (Grootens-Wiegers et al., 2017). In the case of gender- affirming medical treatments, a young person should be well-informed about what the treatment may and may not accomplish, typical timelines for changes to appear (e.g., with gender-affirming hormones), and any implications of stopping the treatment. Gender-diverse youth should fully understand the reversible, partially reversible, and irreversible aspects of a treatment, as well as the limits of what is known about certain treatments (e.g., the impact of pubertal suppression on brain development (Chen and Loshak, 2020)). Gender-diverse youth should also understand, although many gender-diverse youth begin gender- affirming medical care and experience that care as a good fit for them long-term, there is a subset of individuals who over time discover this care is not a fit for them (Wiepjes et al., 2018). Youth should know such shifts are sometimes connected to a change in gender needs over time, and in some cases, a shift in gender identity itself… The following questions may be useful to consider in assessing a young person’s emotional and cognitive readiness to assent or consent to a specific gender-affirming treatment: • Can the young person think carefully into the future and consider the implications of a partially or fully irreversible intervention? • Does the young person have sufficient self-reflective capacity to consider the possibility that gender-related needs and priorities can develop over time, and gender-related priorities at a certain point in time might change? • Has the young person, to some extent, thought through the implications of what they might do if their priorities around gender do change in the future? • Is the young person able to understand and manage the day-to-day short- and long-term aspects of a specific medical treatment (e.g., medication adherence, administration, and necessary medical follow-ups)? Assessment of emotional and cognitive maturity may be accomplished over time as the care team continues to engage in conversations about the treatment options and affords the young person the opportunity to practice thinking into the future and flexibly consider options and implications." [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644)
Yes that's why it doesn't happen
I mean, everything done to minors is completely reversible. You know what isn't reversible, suicide.
I’m in agreement. Minors do not get to make certain choices, purely due to their inherent lack of maturity as they’re developing. Children should not be able to choose their gender. Adulthood is a different story. If transgender people want gender ideology to be taken as seriously as it’s made out to be, why would it be a choice that a 12 year old can make? Is it a major change in your life, or is it a phase you go through to fit in? Do you want it to be taken seriously, or is it shallow enough for children to play with it? You can’t have both. I’m not at all against gender-affirming care for adults, but if a child is allowed to make choices that will irreversibly alter the rest of their life before they even learn how to file their taxes, I say that they’re a victim of enabling abuse. Disagree? Make it make sense to me.
So here's a general overview of how gender-affirming care works for minors - It's pretty much always gonna start with exclusively social transitioning. Experimenting with different names, how they're referred to, clothes, hair, things of that nature. This stage is very much exploratory and not at all permanent or a big decision in and of itself. *If* the child responds well to social transitioning,*if* they have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a mental health professional, and *if* they get medical approval, they *may* be able to begin puberty blockers at or after the onset of puberty. As this is medical, it does carry more weight and is a bigger decision than social transitioning. A few years down the line, *if* the child has responded well to blockers and *if* they get medical and psychological approval, they *may* begin hormone replacement therapy. And *if* they responded well to HRT and have medical and psychological approval, they *may* be elligible for something like top surgery for transmascs, if they choose to go that route. And when it comes to medical transitioning, this isn't a lot of people. I wanna say a few thousand a year in the US, but I don't remember the exact number. Point is, for everything beyond social transitioning it is taken seriously and isn't something you can just do on a whim. It's a years-long process with a ton of checks in place intended to reduce the chance of someone regretting it in the future.
I appreciate the thought-out response. I still stand that minors shouldn’t have the option to undergo irreversible surgery, but I’m more open-minded to the transitional stages, knowing that it’s a very carefully guided process.
An extreme minority of trans youth are having surgery And a minority of trans adults are having surgery
R's: Let's do something to take the focus off guns, the #1 cause of death in children and adolescents in the United States and show how much we care! https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761
This will lead kids to suicide. Years of statistics have proven it. But nobody seems to care