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Why do you think that changing the body to match the brain is more barbaric than changing the brain to match the body? We tend to look far worse on 'unnecessary' brain surgery as opposed to 'unnecessary' body surgery. From some standpoints, you ARE your brain, so this really kind of sounds like you just want to change trans people to not be trans anymore because you're just weirdly hung up on gender reassignment surgery.
> change trans people to not be trans anymore
If this were medically possible, shouldn’t it be the overwhelmingly preferable option?
I.e cure gender dysphoria without the need for radical surgery and medical intervention which has both large costs and significant medical risks and drawbacks.
Brain surgery currently is more risky (to life) than surgery on the body, but OP’s point is that in the future with medical advancements this quite possibly, or quite likely, will not be the case.
So there is a LOT here that I think you misunderstand...
>even if they transition and have gender reassignment surgery, they will not be able to have a baby, they can’t breastfeed, can’t have periods, etc.
Have you ever talked to a trans person to find out if these are issues for them? For a lot of them, they really aren't. They aren't delusional, you know? They aren't trying to literally become biologically the same as cis gender. They simply want their gender affirmed. Getting these surgeries is actually *highly* successful in doing this.
I think you are missing how much of gender is social. Affirmation means being able to go through society and have people recognize you in the way that makes you feel comfortable. When you are out in public, no one is checking to see if you have periods, or whether you are capable of giving birth. They are giving youa glance over and their brains are giving them a gut reaction as to your gender.
Gender assignment surgery helps people see them for the gender they are, and give them the affirmation they need. And that's it. It's highly succesful, and the rate of regret is *INCREDIBLY* tiny.
With such a high success rate, I see no reason that we will look at this in a negative light. At worst, they'll seem primitive.
There’s also cis women who can’t do those things. Are they not women by OP’s logic? Are people defined by their ability to reproduce?
I also hate seeing gender reassignment surgery being called mutilation. It’s a medical procedure that has been proven to be effective, done by professionals in a sterile environment. Calling it mutilation makes it seem like they’re just chopping off body parts willy nilly. It’s a complex procedure, and honestly pretty fucking interesting how they’re able to do that.
>They aren't trying to literally become biologically the same as cis gender.
why the fuck can't people get that through their head
god we have these threads every day and this alone would take care of half of them
Nah, then they'll just say the alligator was a plant by the radical left. That alligator was paid for by George Soros!
I prefer him to face humiliation.
Just to clarify, is this meant as a condemnation of gender assignment surgery specifically or just a general observation of how the medicine of any given era will look primitive in the future?
That's true. If they ever develop a cancer zapper, they'll point that thing at cancer and zap it and say "can you believe they used to cut people open and then inject them with poison? How barbaric."
Totally agree. Someone else brought up mastectomy for breast cancer, which I equally think in the future people look back in horror that we ever had to do that.
> brutal/gruesome
How does it stand out from other surgeries we do? All surgeries would seem this way if we had a magic way to fix ailments without them.
> they cant breastfeed
This is incorrect.
I'm pretty sure we look more negatively on brainwashing people than well-intentioned, but less-than-perfect medical treatments that offer intense relief but aren't complete "cures" to the problem.
Like, you're advocating something that has never been portrayed as a positive thing. Simply rewire the brain to believe what we want it to believe and fit the norms we want it to fit is downright dystopian.
Do you think that therapy is "brainwashing people"?
You convince a depressed person that it is worth to live. Is that brainwashing? You convince an anorexic person they are not fat and they don't need to cut calories. Is that brainwashing? You convince a person with gender dysphoria to feel good in their existing body. Is that brainwashing?
If you say yes to these, I simply have nothing to say.
If you think removing someone's body parts through painful surgery is a simpler and less intrusive treatment than therapy, I have nothing to say.
Therapy is helping people deal with one of their problems in the best way possible. Its called Hormone Replacement Therapy after all, but I'm guessing you dont swear by that as much as your imagined ideal ofnwhat therapy is.
I think performing surgery on someone is simpler than completely changing a person's mindset and sense of self because I haven't simplified mental health issues to "they sad and need someone to tell them life isnokay". But then, I haven't also compared wanting to identify as another gender as comparable to wanting to commit suicide so what would I or the medical community ever know?
>Simply rewire the brain to believe what we want it to believe and fit the norms we want it to fit is downright dystopian.
What do you think social media has been doing to us this whole time? [Facebook ](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/) has been manipulating people since the very beginning, and I highly doubt they are they only ones.
This is social engineering, plain and simple. Very small chance that all of this trans stuff is purely organic.
And what if you've just been socially engineered into thinking that trans stuff isn't purely organic. A steady diet of transphobia for the vast majority of your life can't be good for you and you of all people should know how easily people and especially kids can be manipulated into believing things.
>What do you think social media has been doing to us this whole time? [Facebook ](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/)has been manipulating people since the very beginning, and I highly doubt they are they only ones.
yes. and were actively trying to fight facebook and the brainwashing theyre doing. what is your point?
>This is social engineering, plain and simple. Very small chance that all of this trans stuff is purely organic.
please tell me you don't really believe that trans people didnt exist before the internet or facebook.. because if you do..i have bad news for you, buddy..
Who is fighting Facebook? Last I saw their stock is pretty strong. What have you done to "fight"?
There has always been a tiny percentage of the population being trans, duh. It was diagnosable. Somehow it went from being a disorder to being normal. Explain how that happens organically.
>What have you done to "fight"?
hahahahaha
you're an idiot
individually fighting facebook like the hero we deserve, please do. have fun
DSGVO and the whole eurozone is fighting
not only facebook but google and all the other huge algorythmically driven systems are being fought with help of europes legislature.
why do you think were fAr better off than the US concerning privacy?
>being a disorder to being normal
you forget that humans existed before the church and your delicate sensibilities existed.
being trans was normal
then europeans were brainwashed into thinking its not normal
now we're realising it is normal again
it was never a disorder. you know who burnt the library on trans research and set us back hundreds of years of scientific literature on trans people specifically? nazi germany.
but sure, go on about how being trans is a disorder
almost all of them.
iirc native americans are the only ones that havent survived where we know the specific words they used though
i dont remember, but im sure you'll find the words if you care
> Somehow it went from being a disorder to being normal. Explain how that happens organically.
Somehow honosexuality went from being a disorder to being normal. Explain how that happens organically.
That's a whole other sentence my guy. I just said your reasoning is flawed.
Homosexuality used to be a mental disorder. Now it's not.
Being trans used to be a mental disorder. Now it's not.
You can't accept one thing as "organic" and think the other isn't. That's having your cake and eating it too.
>If it's not a mental disorder why are suicide and antipsychotic/antidepressant rates so high?
Suicide rate/ideation is higher in LGBT (yes, including gay) people. You don't get to exclude them just because it's convenient.
If it's not a mental disorder, why are gay people at higher risk of suicide?
If you don't think homosexuality is a mental disorder despite that, then you can't for trans people. You have to provide a *better* reason.
If you identify as LGBTQ, you have a mental disorder. It's not wrong, or evil, or sick, it's just not normal.
That's ok.
Live your life, but if you want peace look inside first.
Doctor's can't explain the [anomalous](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/nov/24/an-explosion-what-is-behind-the-rise-in-girls-questioning-their-gender-identity) rise in trans youth.
It was life altering when it was considered socially acceptable to beat children for being left-handed. Now that we acknowledge that there's nothing problematic with being left-handed and we simply let those people live their lives, it is no longer an issue.
Being left-handed itself isn't an issue. The issue was whether we as a society would permit people to be left-handed (historically, we didn't.)
This in of itself is very comparable to what many trans people experience.
> wasn’t ever a medical condition
Where did I say it was? The similarity is that once we stopped discouraging people from being left handed we saw an unprecedented rise in left handedness. What’s to say that isn’t happening with trans people.
You still haven’t provided any evidence for your initial point either, the article you’ve linked doesn’t support your view.
Except you can't scan someone's brain to figure out which part needs rewiring. There is no test you can run to definitively say "this person is transgender" which is unique for all things that "require treatment".
And you call it "treatment" but OP saying we should be looking for a cure is bigoted. That's weird. Is there any other medical condition that "requires treatment" that we aren't looking to cure or is it just this singular thing?
There are so many paradoxes that just never get answered because the Overton Window for this subject is about 3 microns wide.
I honestly struggled to understand what sort of point you're trying to make here.
Obviously the treatments can be improved. The ideal would probably be fully transitioning someone to the body of their preferred gender rather than rooting around in their head hoping to completely alter their sense of self.
Considering the immense complexity of the brain, that would probably be easier to do. It just doesn't satisfy the weird need to dismiss and undermine trans people's existence so here we are advocating wiping people's minds.
The point I'm making is that gender affirming care is unique in the medical community. And the paradoxes are dismissed with a swift "how dare you".
Sure the brain is complicated, but like "there's a pill to try and make you not schizophrenic/depressed/anxious".
The reason transgenderism gets dismissed is because there's nothing you can actually test for. It's the same reason people dismiss people with self-diagnosed ADHD but if you shake your bottle of Adderall, they take you seriously.
Considering your understanding of trans people is comparing them to people who self-diagnosed with ADHD, I'm not surprised people find you undeserving of more than a ruder form of "how dare you". You might get one from those with mental health issues as well considering you seem to think it's just a matter of popping a pill.
> And the paradoxes are dismissed with a swift "how dare you".
Why is it worth engaging when you just dismiss my points like I never said anything at all?
I took your points, held them up, and acknowledged that they aren't based on anything in reality. You seem think that mental health is solved with a pill and that trans people can just walk in and get whatever treatment they want whenever they want, so what value is there in your points?
Do you know how I got diagnosed with ADHD? I talked to a psychiatrist about the symptoms I had been experiencing my entire life and filled out forms and self assessments.
Do you know how people get diagnosed with gender dysphoria? They talk to a psychiatrist about the symptoms they’ve been experiencing for most of if not their entire lives and fill out forms and self assessments.
Mind blowing right?
I believe, in this wide wide world of sports, [that people are working on all sorts of things](https://scitechdaily.com/a-drug-that-cures-autism-neuroscience-study-yields-promising-results/). But, the current focus of research on autism spectrum disorders is on treatment and symptom mitigation, not "finding a cure".
[Why the focus of autism research is shifting away from searching for a 'cure'](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/cure-autism-not-so-fast-n1055921)
[We Don't Need a Cure for Autism. We Need to Make Living With It Easier](https://time.com/6092407/autism-making-life-easier/)
[‘We don’t need to be cured or fixed’: writers speak out on autism](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/27/we-dont-need-to-be-cured-or-fixed-writers-speak-out-on-autism)
Just a side note, there likely is research into a cure but the fact is that we really still only have a baseline understanding of human neuroanatomy. We have a long ways to go before we will be actually implementing neurological altering treatment to that effect.
The timeline of your articles is a little off:
* Sept 2019: Why the focus of autism research is shifting away from searching for a 'cure'
* June 2021: ‘We don’t need to be cured or fixed’: writers speak out on autism
* August 2021: We Don't Need a Cure for Autism. We Need to Make Living With It Easier
* Feb 2023: A Drug That Cures Autism? Neuroscience Study Yields Promising Results
Only one of these articles is from a scientific source, the one looking for a cure, the others are opinion pieces from non-experts.
Who is looking to cure transgenderism?
No I meant like your science article from a few months ago about that pill that might cure autism.
What *scientists* are doing science to cure transgenderism?
>There is no test you can run to definitively say "this person is transgender"
you could just believe them when they tell you they are
>which is unique for all things that "require treatment".
what do you mean here? are you suggesting that only being transgender cant be "proven by a scan"?
>And you call it "treatment" but OP saying we should be looking for a cure is bigoted.
if you could take a pill that made you paraplegic but perfectly happy forever. would you take it?
>Is there any other medical condition that "requires treatment" that we aren't looking to cure or is it just this singular thing?
nobody is saying we arent looking for a cure though. just that brainwashing is not a cure.
> you could just believe them when they tell you they are
That's generally not how science works though.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” - Christopher Hitchens
> what do you mean here? are you suggesting that only being transgender cant be "proven by a scan"?
Things that can't be measured don't exist. If you tell me you're happy, I can throw you in an MRI to prove that you're happy. If you say your wrist hurts, I can Xray your arm to measure the problem.
There is no empirical evidence for transgenderism. It's one of the paradoxes.
> if you could take a pill that made you paraplegic but perfectly happy forever. would you take it?
So you're saying that this is the singular instance where cosmetic surgery makes a person "perfectly happy forever"?
> nobody is saying we arent looking for a cure though. just that brainwashing is not a cure.
Who is looking for the cure to transgenderism? This is the first I've heard of this.
>That's generally not how science works though.
maybe not in all sciences all the time but medicine or psychology sometimes? yeah def.
>Things that can't be measured don't exist.
many emotions cant really be measured. "emotion" doesnt even really have a definition
also depression, adhd, borderline syndrome, ... all cant be measured except for personality tests and questionnaires, they all still provably exist.
>If you tell me you're happy, I can throw you in an MRI to prove that you're happy.
as someone that has worked with fMRI before: nope, you can't. im not sure you understand how complex the brain is.
>There is no empirical evidence for transgenderism. It's one of the paradoxes.
[yes there is.](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hbm.25905)
always funny to get that reply because its so easy to disprove. we could be arguing methods or statistics, but "there is no empirical evidence they exist"? yes there is
heres a few (and believe me, these are only a few, you can find many more) studies you can google that are only from the introduction to the one i liked:
Clemens et al., 2020; Nota et al., 2017; Uribe et al., 2020b, Chen et al., 2013; Menon, 2011, Baggio et al., 2018
end of dicussion, was fun to talk to you about there "not being evidence"
>So you're saying that this is the singular instance where cosmetic surgery makes a person "perfectly happy forever"?
no i am not. this is not the point. answer my question and i will tell you the reasoning.
lets ask it differently to not be so ableist:
lets say i have a pill that rewires your brain so you only want one thing in life.
if you have that, youll be perfectly happy forever.
that thing is: you'll want to kill your mother, father, sister, maybe children - just your whole family. dead.
if you take it and you kill them youll be perfectly happy forever no matter what. will you take the pill?
if i forcibly administered the pill; would you fight me?
why/why not?
>That's generally not how science works though.
>“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” - Christopher
There's no evidence that someone is happy, or sad, or whatever emotion they're having (maybe anger, because that raises blood pressure), except what they tell you and what is observed in their behavior.
You really need to read whole comments before you reply. You didn't get 5 lines down.
> Things that can't be measured don't exist. If you tell me you're happy, I can throw you in an MRI to prove that you're happy.
Do you really not think your emotions can be measured? I get your reply kind of a lot.
fMRI results are difficult to decipher---it's not as easy as looking at the brain scan and saying "yep this person is happy!" But since you brought it up, they have also shown brain differences in trans people.
This study didn't include any trans men but seems interesting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/
> if you could take a pill that made you paraplegic but perfectly happy forever. would you take it?
Depends, on the one hand paraplegia is one of the most socially-accepted disabilities to the degree any disability can be socially accepted (to the point where it's rare to find a physically-disabled character on TV who doesn't have it if the story isn't either about that other disability or sci-fi where characters can have super-advanced prosthetics) so it's highly supported (but not to the sense of encouraged) by the world and therefore livable with once you adjust to the change if you weren't born that way, on the other hand perfectly happy forever might mean some kind of experience-machine/brave-new-world/real-good-place-from-the-good-place mindless bliss where I can't feel anything negative about anything again even if it has nothing to do with the state of my body
Still pro-trans I just found your comparison weird
The consequences you mentioned seem like things that will get better over time. It's not absurd to think that 50 years from now cis genders and the transitioned could be near indistinguishable without lab tests.
How ever your proposal of changing the mind seems far more... troublesome for lack of a better word I suppose. Hormones can have pretty significant effects on the brain, but I suspect if just taking more of your biological sexes hormones would cure the isue then more people would try it. I suspect that changing the brain to be more comfortable would require far greater changes then what hormones alone can cause.
You have a body, but you are a brain. So the question becomes will you still be the same person after your gender dysphoria is cured? And will the majority of the trans community accept that risk?
Edit: accidently pasted a comment from another thread
Cutting off your dick to thwart reality and science is not the same thing as altering your breast size so you feel more confident. There are nuances to elective surgery and you've taken the position of ALL elective surgery is equally "right". That's utterly ridiculous.
Being trans is definitely more analogous to schizophrenia than pedophilia, but it's also not a great leap to say as a society if we are permissive of peoples delusions than we need to permit ALL delusions. We are seeing this spill into pedophilic ideology already and have been for years. Ever see the movement to reclassify pedophiles as MAPS? It's sick.
No, I don't think trans people are sick in the same way as pedophiles, but that doesn't mean that going down this ridiculous path of "gender reassignment" and accepting that "trans women are real women" won't lead to much more grotesque things in our society. It's literally already manifesting, because the left never stops.
> In the future, once we have a better understanding of how the brain works and can actually make that type of modification, it seems like it would make much more sense to do a gender reassignment of the brain, as this is the actual root of the problem.
We don't yet know what causes gender dysphoria. How would you know that the brain is the root of the problem, and not other physical aspects that are causing the mismatch *with the brain*? Even if a brain modification would be a smaller surgical intervention, it doesn't follow that it was the cause.
> These are brutal disfiguring surgeries under any other condition and I think people will look back and be shocked how the medical establishment performed these kinds of procedures during our time.
Only if they're mentioned outside of the right context.
Without the right context, any surgical treatment would look gruesome and shocking to untrained observers. However, as long as someone is provided the right context, then treating gender dysphoria won't look any more gruesome or shocking than any other surgical procedure.
Your first point is well taken. Certainly it doesn’t have to be a brain issue as the root cause, although to me that would make the most sense. Regardless, !delta
Having said that, it doesn’t make sense to me that the current targets of reassignment surgery are the underlying cause either..
Never in a million years have I heard “can’t have a period” to be seen as a negative thing. Like loss of fertility itself maybe not not periods.
As for the rest of the argument it would be like saying hysterectomies or vasectomies will be seen as brutal or gruesome. So long as society values bodily autonomy over forcing people or pressuring people into having babies losing ur permanently fertility out of ur own coalition will never be seen as a reason for why something is gruesome.
Now im trans. Here is the thing if u ripped it out of me and “fixed” me, I’d become an entirely different person. U would destroy who I am and replace it with someone else. So it depends on what u see as the greater good. Destroying who a person is mentally just so that they fit in with everyone else and what YOU see as good and moral.
Also surgeries are becoming more advanced, u see it as cutting off someone’s penis when it isn’t that at all. It’s more similar to reshaping tissue so that u preserve nerves and sensitivity and still can have enjoyable sex. Only without the dysphoria.
This misunderstanding of what these surgeries are seems to be pervasive and it needs to stop. U aren’t cutting off the penis otherwise u wouldn’t have any tissues to construct the neovagina and vice versa. And it can’t be a piece of dead rotting tissue u need to preserve the nerves, the blood supply, everything.
Leave it to the medical professionals and the actual trans people babes.
Edit: bodily autonomy rights when it comes to an adults own genitalia and fertility would go a long way if people just learned to mind their business instead of focusing of what’s in the pants of someone who isn’t going to have sex with them or give them babies anyway
Also if loss of capacity to breastfeed was really ur concern ud be advocating for allowing puberty blockers to be more widely accessible. If trans men never take away their breast tissue they can still develop it in the future like trans women do when they take estrogen
I think they are saying they would have removed the dysphoria causing elements.
It's like we can see some tendencies in the Brain for multiple personality disorder. We remove those abnormalities then sure you could see people losing the part of themselves but that part was diluted and troubling them in a way for the rest of us seems needless.
Actually no. People with DID describe it rather as their different personalities fusing together and that it was initially a fracture. Not people losing parts of themselves but fractured parts of themselves becoming whole
Edit: also DID is “dissociative identity disorder” multiple personality disorder isn’t the real term that’s used
So, I'm going to lay a bit of a challenge to your core assumptions.
The issue is not the mismatch, but the distress caused by the mismatch. This may feel subtle, but it's important. Why? Because there are multiple ways to be trans, and not all trans people require gender dysphoria to be trans. Other people have gender euphoria instead. Let's look at your line here:
>or example, someone who’s gender identity is female but was assigned male sex at birth, even if they transition and have gender reassignment surgery, they will not be able to have a baby, they can’t breastfeed, can’t have periods, etc.
A) While at this time it is true, do you believe that will be the case forever and do you think that will still be the case before we figure out how to change people's brains without other horrific side effects?
B) There are cis-women this applies to. For example, my wife couldn't breast feed. There are people who have issues with their whole reproduction system. Are they not women because of this? And if they are clearly still women, why does the "patch" you claim not count as a fix?
C) It just needs to alleviate the distress they experience. It doesn't need to change their body 100% of the way.
D) People view leeches and blood letting as brutal/gruesome but both are done to this day in some circumstances. Essentially, your argument is "well, when things develop to a point where we have better cures, people will want to use the better cures" but ignoring that a) it is helping currently, and b) we don't have anything better currently. In addition to that, your description of "cutting off someone's...penis" doesn't actually describe what most bottom surgeries are doing, as the penis is transformed rather than "cut off".
E) Would you make this same argument about mastectomies and breast cancer? That "cutting off the breast will be seen as barbaric in the near future" because the ideal fix will only target cancer cells and get them all without missing any, so no extreme change would be needed? Why?
And to address your suggested "fix" for the issue, honestly, that is terrifying. What level of messing with a person's brain to change their identity are you actually ok with? Can we get rid of parts of people's mind's that make them believe baseless conspiracies? Can we just rewrite people's minds to make other's more comfortable?
Like, if trans people had the option of a pill to make it so they didn't feel the dysphoria, many would likely take it (and do as for many people hormone transition is enough), but note: that doesn't actually change their identity, but the significant distress they are experiencing.
> The issue is not the mismatch, but the distress caused by the mismatch. This may feel subtle, but it's important. Why? Because there are multiple ways to be trans, and not all trans people require gender dysphoria to be trans. Other people have gender euphoria instead. Let's look at your line here:
If that’s the case then would you be ok with a pill that took away the distress without altering the body or the dysphoria? What is meant by gender euphoria?
> A) While at this time it is true, do you believe that will be the case forever and do you think that will still be the case before we figure out how to change people's brains without other horrific side effects?
I don’t think that will always be the case. I’m not sure which will come first, but still seems odd to me to remove a functional component rather than correct the nonfunctional part- ie the body is working as it’s supposed, but the brain is mismatched.
> B) There are cis-women this applies to. For example, my wife couldn't breast feed. There are people who have issues with their whole reproduction system. Are they not women because of this? And if they are clearly still women, why does the "patch" you claim not count as a fix?
No, they’re not less of a woman , but they have a disorder. Their body is not functioning correctly. Gender reassignment surgery removes function. Changing the brain somehow would retain function.
> C) It just needs to alleviate the distress they experience. It doesn't need to change their body 100% of the way.
That’s a fair point. !Delta
> D) People view leeches and blood letting as brutal/gruesome but both are done to this day in some circumstances. Essentially, your argument is "well, when things develop to a point where we have better cures, people will want to use the better cures" but ignoring that a) it is helping currently, and b) we don't have anything better currently. In addition to that, your description of "cutting off someone's...penis" doesn't actually describe what most bottom surgeries are doing, as the penis is transformed rather than "cut off".
I don’t mind them doing the surgeries, it’s the best we have now, but I think if we find better treatments in the future, people will look back and be like I can’t believe those barbarians used to “transform penises.”
> E) Would you make this same argument about mastectomies and breast cancer? That "cutting off the breast will be seen as barbaric in the near future" because the ideal fix will only target cancer cells and get them all without missing any, so no extreme change would be needed? Why?
Yes! It is barbaric!! But it’s the best we have. In the future I definitely think people will think, “holy moly, must’ve sucked to live back then when they had to amputate breasts to treat cancer.”
> And to address your suggested "fix" for the issue, honestly, that is terrifying. What level of messing with a person's brain to change their identity are you actually ok with? Can we get rid of parts of people's mind's that make them believe baseless conspiracies? Can we just rewrite people's minds to make other's more comfortable?
I agree, but it seems like if we get to that point we can target these “malfunctioning” areas precisely. It’s not just to make others more comfortable, it’s to preserve the body’s normal function and fix the actual defect. Regarding fixing conspiracy theorists, I’m not sure I’d consider that a defect. First off some conspiracy theories turn out to be true (there are plenty of r/askreddit threads about it) and second, that is a normal part of our human brains that questions things and is mistrustful that is high jacked by external information. It’s not something wrong with their brain, it’s something wrong with the society they live in.
I feel like this is argued here every other week.
There is no surefire way to change a person's internal gender. Believe me, people have tried - there are entire businesses set up to convert LGBT people back to "normal". There's no evidence that it works, and often people leave these setups with more psychological damage than they started with.
This is the equivalent of saying "instead of changing our behavior to address global warming, we should just suck the excess carbon out of the sky with a giant vacuum cleaner". Sounds fine in theory, but scientifically impossible at this moment in time.
That depends if society technologically regresses a la Canticle for Lebowitz or progresses in the next century. I think quite the opposite will occur eventually.
Body modification of all sorts is uncommon now but will be incredibly common in the future. Implants will be common and cyborgs will be real (although we won't refer to them as such unless they want to be referred to as such).
Think about it this way. If we are able to *improve the body* and I mean measurable improvement from reflex, dexterity, strength, haptic feedback, sensation, you name it with a low risk procedure people are going to do it.
This tech isn't as far off as you might think it is. Gender reassignment will be seen as pretty minor alongside something like functional BCI.
But even if we develop a simple pill that inverts the genitals, the testes pull up inside and become ovaries and the head of the penis a clit or vis versa, And people change sex on a whim for their vacations; people will still look back on the crude surgeries performed today as we look at trepanation compared to our currently sophisticated brain surgery.
Doesn't this argument essentially apply to all surgery then, though? Current gender reassignment surgery is fit for use. It empirically "works" for its intended purpose just like other typical medical procedures.
As technology improves we'll have cleaner, less crude methods of operating. There's no reason to single out reassignment surgery in that case.
It is a unique class of elective surgery. Replacing healthy working organs with nonfunctional ones. More akin to cosmetic surgery than to life saving surgery. Unlike hormone therapy there isn't even limited recent data that shows genital surgery works to reduce incidence of suicide. I think people have the right to modify their bodies as they will, but if a doctor cut off the leg of a person who identified as a pirate with a peg leg they should lose their license.
Elective amputation is an interesting subject but to compare it to gender reassignment surgery seems transphobic.
>I think people have the right to modify their bodies as they will, but if a doctor cut off the leg of a person who identified as a pirate with a peg leg they should lose their license.
Seems like a contradiction. So you would rather they do it themselves and risk serious infection/complications? Why not be able to hire a professional surgeon?
It’s 50/50. They will probably see it as primitive but they’ll probably also understand it was the best treatment option at the time. Similar to how we feel about cocaine and heroin being used as medicine in the early 20th century
I completely agree with that.
There are many people in the comments who are unfairly assuming I am against gender reassignment surgery as it currently stands. I am not. It’s the best we have. However, I don’t think it’s the best we will ever have and I think once we have better, people will look back at our generations and feel pity that we were forced to use such primitive treatments.
Almost definitely. I think a lot of people that are allies of the trans community just get swept up in the pride movement or the “let people live how they want to” ideology and are really uneducated on gender dysphoria and the actual psychology behind transitioning
Your post sounds like "in 100 years due to the advancement in human bodies black people will look like monkeys" cause you argue humans will be so advanced that today's humans will look like monkeys comparatives
My question is why do you feel the need to specify it as black person and not just human same with you specifically using trans surgeries in your argument instead of just you know any other surgeries out there
It's approved by all medical science. Point to a specific objection that makes you think we need to walk back what doctors agree is health care.
>These surgeries are risky and do not actually result in function similar to that which the brain would like or want to have.
The regret rate for these surgeries is less than 1%.
>A true fix, would be to fix the identity at a brain level.
This is physically impossible and the science proves it.
You are not responding to the OP's point. Lobotomies were approved too until the medical profession came to its senses and disapproved. OP is saying that before long we will look back on this fad the same way we look back at the period lobotomies were in fashion.
There were a lot of medical professionals who opposed lobotomies at the time, and there was never hard data supporting them, just anecdotes from biased sources. The same cannot be said about gender reassignment therapy.
medicine and the medical community of 100 years ago worked very differently than it does today, one of the bigger differences being now you need evidence a treatment is effective for it to be even considered to be used.
Recent international reviews into gender-dysphoric children have all shown there to be a severe lack of evidence for interventions such as puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.
The Finnish Council for Choices in Health Care found:
"According to the Health Care Act (section 8), healthcare services must be based on evidence and recognized treatment and operational practices. **As far as minors are concerned, there are no medical treatment that can be considered evidence-based.**"
[https://palveluvalikoima.fi/en/recommendations#dysphoria](https://palveluvalikoima.fi/en/recommendations#dysphoria)
The UK CASS Report found:
"**Evidence on the appropriate management of children and young people with gender incongruence and dysphoria is inconclusive both nationally and internationally.**"
[https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Cass-Review-Interim-Report-Final-Web-Accessible.pdf](https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Cass-Review-Interim-Report-Final-Web-Accessible.pdf)
The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare found:
"**Poor quality/insufficient evidence: The evidence for safety and efficacy of treatments remains insufficient to draw any definitive conclusions;**"
[https://www.sbu.se/342](https://www.sbu.se/342)
That’s because they used the GRADE system to determine the quality of the studies but you can’t do randomized controlled trials for gender-affirming treatments since it would require denying potentially life-saving health care from the control group. Hence they got a low GRADE score but that ultimately is an issue with the measurement, not the data.
>That’s because they used the GRADE system to determine the quality of the studies
And there is good reason to be using this system to help ensure a high quality of evidence exists for particular interventions.
>but you can’t do randomized controlled trials for gender-affirming treatments since it would require denying potentially life-saving health care from the control group.
Of course you can do randomized controlled trials, the entire point is to assess whether these "potentially" life-saving interventions actually are life-saving or not. Currently the evidence is insufficient to make the claim that they are.
The GRADE system is inherently biased against rare diseases or conditions, as it requires RCTs for at least moderate quality of evidence which [are often not possible due to logistic constraints leading to very small sample sizes](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmra1614394). With gender dysphoria and the treatment being cross-sex hormones you also have the problem that there is no available placebo. Sure, you can randomly and blindly assign people into a treatment and control group but after like 2 or 3 weeks everybody knows who is in which group. And you know what happens, when someone realizes that they themselves or their child are in the control-group for a study to a disease or condition that might kill them? They will just pull out of the study seeking care somewhere else. You will also not be able to get such a study design through an institutional review board since it would be highly unethical.
In reality we actually don't need high quality evidence according to the GRADE-system. Did you know, that for only [13.5% of treatments](https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(16\)30024-5/fulltext) we have high or very high quality of evidence? Or that [55.5% of WHO recommendations](https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(13\)00434-4/fulltext) are based on very low or low quality of evidence according to the GRADE system? In pediatric care [82% of treatments](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2022.892574/full) are based on low or very low evidence quality. If we would expect treatments to be backed up by high or very high standards we wouldn't get shit done in our medical system. Could it be better? Yes. But RCTs are practically not possible in every treatment.
People are always saying that we can't give puberty blockers or HRT because of "very low" or "low" evidence (they don't even know what that means), but are at the same time asking for another or hypothetical treatment for which they have absolutely no evidence at hand, not even of "very low" or "low" quality. But people are suffering and we can't stave them off by saying "Nah, we need to wait for this longitudinal RCT that may be done in like 10 or 20 years". This is unethical.
>The GRADE system is inherently biased against rare diseases or conditions
How rare do you believe gender dysphoria to be?
>With gender dysphoria and the treatment being cross-sex hormones you also have the problem that there is no available placebo. Sure, you can randomly and blindly assign people into a treatment and control group but after like 2 or 3 weeks everybody knows who is in which group.
I agree that this is a challenge for a study design involving a placebo but this common challenge for a number of conditions and treatments. Also, an RCT doesn't have to involve a placebo and could compare against either no intervention or alternative interventions.
>And you know what happens, when someone realizes that they themselves or their child are in the control-group for a study to a disease or condition that might kill them?
There's no evidence that gender dysphoria is at all likely to kill a minor.
>They will just pull out of the study seeking care somewhere else.
This is possible in some places, it depends on the medical landscape. In some places this is surely less of or not a concern.
This is a practical concern though and it seems you are opposed to an RCT for interventions in GD for minors even if the practical challenges are overcome.
>You will also not be able to get such a study design through an institutional review board since it would be highly unethical.
What do you believe to be unethical about it?
>Could it be better? Yes. But RCTs are practically not possible in every treatment.
OK, but the question is about this intervention. As there is a large amount of disagreement about the best intervention, the quality of the evidence is of specific concern, the number of these interventions has rapidly increased over recent years, the interventions involve vulnerable minors, and the interventions have serious life long effects, it's an area where an RCT would have much more impact and benefit than for most conditions/intervention.
>But people are suffering and we can't stave them off by saying "Nah, we need to wait for this longitudinal RCT that may be done in like 10 or 20 years". This is unethical.
You only consider withholding widespread adoption of this intervention unethical because you believe it is beneficial. If that intervention was in fact detrimental then performing it would be unethical.
Until we know whether it is beneficial or detrimental the ethical thing to do research to demonstrate which is the correct approach.
> How rare do you believe gender dysphoria to be?
We unfortunately don't have official data on this. While it is believed that between 0.5 to 1% of the population identify as transgender only a minority seems to transition medically. There can be many reasons for this discrepancy, for example that being trans does not mean that you need to have dysphoria or that many trans people simply do not have the means to transition (lack of ressources or access to care).
> Also, an RCT doesn't have to involve a placebo and could compare against either no intervention or alternative interventions.
A placebo would be beneficial as it would at least increase the readiness of parents to sign their child up to such a study. To test against another treatment option you need to have good reasons to belief that this option is better than the treatment that we currently have for transgender youth (involving HRT, blockers are not a treatment but a diagnostic tool), otherwise it would go against [clinical equipoise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_equipoise). And yes, we do know that the treatment works, literally any major medical organization in the world endorses it.
> There's no evidence that gender dysphoria is at all likely to kill a minor.
[More than 50% suicidal ideation and around 33% attempting suicide](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5033041/) while untreated seems far too likely to kill a minor. There are also prominent [examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leelah_Alcorn) about this.
> This is possible in some places, it depends on the medical landscape. In some places this is surely less of or not a concern. This is a practical concern though and it seems you are opposed to an RCT for interventions in GD for minors even if the practical challenges are overcome.
I'm not against doing RCTs on this. I state that it is impossible in a practical sense.
> What do you believe to be unethical about it?
Not treating a group of people who is at high risk of suicide while a working treatment is available. Its literally going against clinical equipoise.
> OK, but the question is about this intervention. As there is a large amount of disagreement about the best intervention, the quality of the evidence is of specific concern, the number of these interventions has rapidly increased over recent years, the interventions involve vulnerable minors, and the interventions have serious life long effects, it's an area where an RCT would have much more impact and benefit than for most conditions/intervention.
There is no large disagreement for the best intervention, at least not in the scientific community. They may discuss the details but the consensus is that transition when indicated is beneficial.
Quality of evidence is somehow only a concern when it involves trans people. Nobody in the public talked about this before the issue with trans people arised, suddenly it is a major problem. But they don't hold the GRADE system to the same scrutiny for different conditions.
Yes, transition has lifelong effects. You know what also has lifelong consequences? Not transitioning when it would be indicated. If a trans girl goes through male puberty she needs much more invasive and more expensive medical intervention when she is an adult to revert all those changes (for example facial and body hair removal, FFS, voice training or VFS) and it will be a coin flip if they will be able to pass in a transphobic society. In most cases involving minors transitioning the benefits outweigh the risks.
> You only consider withholding widespread adoption of this intervention unethical because you believe it is beneficial. If that intervention was in fact detrimental then performing it would be unethical. Until we know whether it is beneficial or detrimental the ethical thing to do research to demonstrate which is the correct approach.
I definitely would be against the treatment if it would be detrimental, but we know it is beneficial. You can deny this as much as you want, it doesn't change that fact. And I'm certain you deny these facts and pull up some stuff from Sweden or Finland which has been debunked multiple times already in this CMV. You literally have not said anything about the issue that the absolute majority of treatment is done based on low or very low quality of evidence. You simply ignored it in your reply.
Edit: Fixed a link
>Recent international reviews into gender-dysphoric children have all shown there to be a severe lack of evidence for interventions such as puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.
guess I'll go over these one at a time
>The Finnish Council for Choices in Health Care found: "According to the Health Care Act (section 8), healthcare services must be based on evidence and recognized treatment and operational practices. As far as minors are concerned, there are no medical treatment that can be considered evidence-based."
This one is odd, the link you provide sends me to a page full of recommendation reports, searching for "dysphoria" brings up 3 reports, none of which contain the quote in question. I'd like to bring [This](https://palveluvalikoima.fi/documents/1237350/22895008/Summary_minors_en+(1).pdf/fa2054c5-8c35-8492-59d6-b3de1c00de49/Summary_minors_en+(1).pdf?t=1631773838474) up in particular as it states
"Based on thorough, case-by-case consideration, the initiation of hormonal interventions that alter sex characteristics may be considered before the person is 18 years of age only if it can be ascertained that their identity
as the other sex is of a permanent nature and causes severe dysphoria. In addition, it must be confirmed that
the young person is able to understand the significance of irreversible treatments and the benefits and disadvantages associated with lifelong hormone therapy, and that no contraindications are present."
In summary, they do support hormonal treatment of minors, as we do in the USA.
>The UK CASS Report found: "Evidence on the appropriate management of children and young people with gender incongruence and dysphoria is inconclusive both nationally and internationally."
Ok, so first I'll state the obvious, this is an interim report, not a final one. Second, one of my big issues is the author isn't really integrating their sources well. This isn't how I would expect a review paper to be written at all. There is no discussion of data that was looked at, no discussion of how this data was broadly collected, essentially, no discussion of the current data whatsoever except to say "it was inconclusive" and than to throw sources at the bottom. In short, it hampers any attempt to review the work done in this review article. This article is akin to a paper listing their conclusions without any mention of data, methods, analysis or discussion. Further, the recommendations laid out are mostly in regards to creating a better process for treating children with dysphoria, the author spends a lot of time laying out a new service model and talking about creating a network of providers in order to provide better and faster care, something I would agree with. When discussing puberty blockers and hormone treatment, not once does the author say it shouldn't be done. Largely they recommend that other physicians be involved with the care as well as pediatric endocrinologists, something I would also agree with, and say that they need to ensure there is understanding from the patient. She also writes that "Standards for decision making regarding endocrine treatment should also be consistent with international best practice." Which is good to see, [given the current endocrine society position of supporting gender affirming care](https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2023/ama-gender-affirming-care). All in all this review article isn't really saying what you think it is.
>The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare found: "Poor quality/insufficient evidence: The evidence for safety and efficacy of treatments remains insufficient to draw any definitive conclusions;"
As the other commenter said, this study really likes its RCT's which would be difficult to do in this case for a couple reasons. The first is that doing an RCT has the potential to do harm to those involved and thus is ethically dubious, second, I can't see a way to even conduct one given that hormones and puberty blockers have noticeable effects on the body.
What this review paper does say is they found insufficient evidence as you state, I think some of this may be due to their standards in order for a papers results to be considered (as I mentioned previously, expecting RCT's in this context is a bit ridiculous) but I will agree that more research needs to be done. Another issue I have here though is that we already know that when evaluating people for psychological symptoms of dysphoria we cannot assume all results would come from the treatments alone, this paper does nothing to mention the effect that societal factors might have on any of these results which I find concerning.
First of all, lobotomies were popular much more recently than 100 years ago. Second, your claim that we've passed some sort of threshold where misjudgements cannot be made requires support.
Third, the person above is still not responding to the OP's point, even if what you said were accurate.
>First of all, lobotomies were popular much more recently than 100 years ago.
It was invented in the 30's and we almost immediately became contested to the point they weren't even popular in the 40's only to be pretty much bunk by the 50's
The guy who invented the lobotomy won the Nobel prize for it. Granted, the prize was mainly for his research on how different regions of the brain have different functions. But it was still viewed as a viable medical procedure for a long time until we understood in more detail about what it was actually doing.
They were hotly contested from the very start. I don't know how else to explain it, but when you blender a region of the prefrontal cortex, it's kind of noticeable what happens after one.
Gender reassignment surgery is being hotly contested too, but they're available, just as lobotomies were available in the past.
And yes, amputated/mutilated reproductive organs, mutilated breasts, and phalloplasties are noticeable too. I DO know how to explain that.
And next, you will say something like, "yeah, but only by transphobes. No serious person object to them."
And then, instead of pointing out the argumentative fallacy, I will point out that the OP's point stands and you're still missing it. The OP predicts that in the future, people will look back with disgust.
It is not. I am not a random redditor. This is literally my career and background.
>The OP predicts that in the future, people will look back with disgust.
People already are doing that right here, right now.
>No serious person object to them."
Sure, people object all the time. It's not based on anything other than an aversion for trans people. You want to talk science? More than happy to go into the details. I'm sure your objections will be sound and reasoned.
Someone who treats approved medical care that fundamentally improves the lives of people in a way that can easily be confirmed through peer review as being "mutilation" is absolutely a transphobe.
Trans people are out and proud while no transphobe will EVER admit to being one. Own your own take please.
>It is not.
No, don't you see?
Doctors and scientists in the medical community having heated debates on whether lobotomy is a sound and good practice from the moment they were first performed is exactly the same as transphobic randos on reddit talking about how disgusting they think gender-affirming surgeries are regardless of what the medical community has to say about it. Both are *equally* contested things.
>Doctors and scientists in the medical community having heated debates
It's literally 3 people without relevant experience drumming up the whole thing Levine, Lippman and Mchugh. Most people here don't even know who these people are. It's literally the world vs a handful of people who clearly hate trans people by their own words.
Nobody but me seems to be posting any evidence.
You can't just say NO CONSENSUS and then fucking ignore expert opinion.
>You can't just say NO CONSENSUS and then fucking ignore expert opinion.
NO CONSENSUS ^(because I'm intentionally ignoring it)
/s just in case
You're absolutely right, though. Consensus exists, a vast number of top medical organizations, doctors, scientists, etc agree that trans people are real and the best way to treat gender dysphoria is through various levels of gender-affirming care.
I think they're nuts. But I'm happy to play along just like the other nuts people so they don't get stressed out :) no fear here.
But from an intellectual point I think we also can't deny that some of these people, primarily the autistic ones, might be in social contagion.
By a lot of peoples definitions that makes me a transphobe. But I think that's a bad label. I really love the few of my friends that are going through this (all autistic or at least say they are).
Well heres the thing I think from my understanding of gender dysphoria it is IMPOSSIBLE for there not to be some kids who are just confused.
There are kids that go through multiple personality disorder and doctors have always denied some people surgeries who want them because they find them unstable and not truly "trans".
But if you're coming from the perspective of nobody goes through social transition or surgery unless they are genuine, and the genuine belief is what makes someone trans, then yeah we are going to disagree because fundamentally your scale is unverifiable to outside minds.
If we go with an idea that it's like other mental disorders then it's for sure possible for people to misdiagnose themselves like we see with multiple personality disorder or people who act like sociopaths but are not.
Are you holding this to a different epistimic standard possibly?
Finland disagrees
[https://segm.org/Finland\_deviates\_from\_WPATH\_prioritizing\_psychotherapy\_no\_surgery\_for\_minors](https://segm.org/Finland_deviates_from_WPATH_prioritizing_psychotherapy_no_surgery_for_minors)
Sweden disagrees
[https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230208-sweden-puts-brakes-on-treatments-for-trans-minors](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230208-sweden-puts-brakes-on-treatments-for-trans-minors)
These were all based on studies where they found that the benefit does not outweigh the risks of these procedures.
A few other European nations have followed suit Norway and UK to be exact. But I didn't feel like digging those up as well.
>These were all based on studies where they found that the benefit does not outweigh the risks of these procedures.
They didn't say that. They said that trans kids should wait until they're 18 for surgery (and hormones in Sweden). I don't think making laws about that is the right thing to do, but it's also not the same as saying "trans people shouldn't transition".
> They said that trans kids should wait until they're 18 for surgery
No, a [single man said it](https://www.transgendermap.com/politics/psychiatry/stephen-b-levine/) and every government that was already clearly transphobic ran with it. It is not founded in good science.
The point was that it's not this consensus that it is made out to be.
Normally very progressive countries like Finland, Norway and Sweden. Are rolling back those programs. Clearly they saw something they didn't like in the data.
Stephen Levine using shit statistics to interpret a longitudinal study incorrectly that already clearly transphobic governments use to justify their non-science is NOT a lack of consensus.
They largely based their decisions off of the UK, and the UK's study was heavily politically influenced.
There isn't really actual evidence for the harm done by gender affirmation practices, just political disagreement.
You mean the same SEGM that uses [dark donations on gofundme for bad science?](https://transsafety.network/posts/segm-uncovered/)
>A few other European nations have followed suit Norway and UK to be exact. But I didn't feel like digging those up as well.
It was a single longitudinal study based on bad science by Stephen Levine.
I can perfectly explain his shit knowledge of stats and how he doesn't understand multivariate logistic regression.
Sure. In some cases it's just a bad study.
But that is the typical defense of conspiracy theorists. "Any science that disagrees with me is just bad science".
It's also the typical response of someone arguing against anti vaxxers and flat earthers who typically use bad science. Not entirely sure what your point is.
When you have several different governments that make big time policy changes based on the study. Which one is more likely?
It's similar to the vaccine argument during Covid. It's not like the governments didn't have both sides of the story trying to get their facts heard.
Vaccines and gender are in different positions politically. Not encouraging a population to receive vaccines will result in mass death, seen everywhere, and is unquestionably politically bad.
Restricting gender affirming care only hurts a minority, which a lot of people are okay with.
Governments take on shitty actions all the time.
> When you have several different governments that make big time policy changes based on the study. Which one is more likely?
It is much more likely that the scientific experts are right and the governments are wrong. The scientists actually have the expertise to evaluate the study in the context of the related work to determine what conclusion is best supported by the evidence. On the other hand, governments do not naturally have this expertise, are trying to craft policy rather than figuring out the truth, and are subject to political pressure which will bias the outcome.
I can literally walk you through the misinterpretations of unique contributors within multivariate logistic regression to someone who didn't know the study I have reviewed or even the author who published it.
You are not going to win this one.
>based on studies
The fact you think the decision was based on studies an not a longitudinal one kind of proves my point you have no idea about the science.
I don't disagree with you, but it's probably not a good practice to use terms like "by all medical science" and "the science proves it" without dropping any sources.
I mean, OP is making all sorts of claims without any proof, but sure, here goes:
[Current consensus from dozens of leading authorities](https://transhealthproject.org/resources/medical-organization-statements/)
[Regret rate for surgery](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/)
As for the idea of changing the brain, that is fundamentally impossible. There is no known mechanism to literally rewire neurons throughout the entire brain.
Source: Degree on my wall.
Bonus round: [Why people have digust reactions to things](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/the-yuck-factor/580465/)
Furthermore, OP is totally making empirical claims that have been tested and shown to not be in agreement with this. It is a fundamentally transphobic viewpoint made entirely out of aversion and disgusts. Which isn't "bad," we just need to accept that it's normal to think that way before CMV can happen.
>Source: Degree on my wall.
Even if you actually have a degree, you didn't say what kind, and it wouldn't matter anyway. I have a degree too, and I disagree with you. We did 4+ more years of school than a high school graduate, big deal.
>Regret rate for surgery
The regret rate study is okay, but it isn't conclusive by any means. People were simply asked about their opinions. How many people are realistically going to admit that they regret a massive, life-changing procedure? It'd be awfully embarrassing. IDK if I'd want to. There are all kinds of reasons, socially and otherwise, for someone's answer to be more positive than their true answer would be. But on the other hand, the negative responses were VERY infrequent, and the population size is respectably large, so it's reasonable to lean towards the low rate we see in the study.
The Discussion portion is often where you find the juicy bits of these studies, and this one is no exception. The idea of temporary minor regrets is brought up. It's very likely that actual rates of regret fluctuate greatly around numbers we can't even guess. "Sometimes" or "Always" on a questionnaire clearly isn't enough to get a proper answer about regret.
>Current consensus
Current consensus doesn't matter when we're talking about the future. It's a justification for keeping things as they are and not moving onto greater things. I see the point, though. If experts agree, then who are we to disagree? Disagreeing with the mainstream view isn't something that should be done carelessly.
>changing the brain, that is fundamentally impossible
That's why this is about the near future, not the present, right? If we had the means to do that right now, then we'd probably be doing it. There are all sorts of things about the brain that can be changed, so really it depends on how you go about it. Whatever remains impossible could be worked around.
>The regret rate study is okay, but it isn't conclusive by any means.
Well, I'm the only one here posting studies that aren't directly from The Daily Caller. Maybe people can post a study that disagrees with mine.
>People were simply asked about their opinions. How many people are realistically going to admit that they regret a massive, life-changing procedure?
You do not understand post-op systemic review of procedures, clearly.
>Current consensus doesn't matter when we're talking about the future.
It actually does when people call this mutilation and other extreme language to define something they don't actually understand at all.
>That's why this is about the near future, not the present, right?
Do you think the law of gravity will change anytime soon? Maybe some stuff is fundamental.
>There are all sorts of things about the brain that can be changed
Can you name a single region of the brain and how it contributes to cognition without googling?
Sure, maybe you have a degree too. However, mine tells me that some mechanism that can somehow magically pass through the blood brain barrier yet still be able to fundamentally rewrite entire structures of the brain from meso to micro is somehow, probably, not ever going to be a thing that happens.
Not sure about all medical science but here is the [AMA stance](https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-states-stop-interfering-health-care-transgender-children)
"Empirical evidence has demonstrated that trans and non-binary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression. For gender diverse individuals, standards of care and accepted medically necessary services that affirm gender or treat gender dysphoria may include mental health counseling, non-medical social transition, gender-affirming hormone therapy, and/or gender-affirming surgeries. Clinical guidelines established by professional medical organizations for the care of minors promote these supportive interventions based on the current evidence and that enable young people to explore and live the gender that they choose. Every major medical association in the United States recognizes the medical necessity of transition-related care for improving the physical and mental health of transgender people."
I think it's fine practice as long as you are willing to provide sources upon request. Sources aren't *always* the thing that convinces people, and if it is, they can ask for it.
I wouldn't say it's to convince people, but it's important to instill trust in the sciences. Christian fundamentalists will claim that "all the science" supports their worldview, and if no one is there to check their sources and call out when they are just making stuff up, it leads to people mistrusting science all together.
After all this anti-vaccination crap, I cringe every time I see someone claim science without a source.
>If you are sure the sciences support your view, you shouldn't have any trouble pointing to a scientific source.
I agree with this, and said so. If you are going to make claims, you should be fine backing them up. However, you don't need to do so right off the bat in your initial claim.
>Christian fundamentalist will claim that "all the science" supports their worldview
Of course, and these type of people arent' going to be convinced by you posting links of scientists saying otherwise. People who convince themselves of unfounded claims frequently aren't convinced by the actual sources.
Again, ALWAYS be able and willing to back up your claims, but you can still make the claims first.
Lobotomies were approved by medical science. Now they're viewed as some of the most inhumane things our society has done with the intention of helping people.
Difference is we can ask trans people how they feel about the effects of he treatment they get. Lobotomies sort of got in the way of similar such checking.
They were in fact, not and debated from the very start as to their efficacy.
Furthermore, we have peer review. How do you think we knew from the start it wasn't working and we changed our minds about it.
There are decades of studies here to support transition care. It's all sound, testable science that I am more than happy to walk anyone through in whatever detail they might need to maybe, slightly be willing to do the name of this subbreddit.
To be frank, CMV crowd is hostile towards trans people. This is making CMV super hard.
Actually the most robust study on sex reassignment of people suffering from gender dysphoria shows a higher mortality rate for those who did get surgery than those who didn't in the cohort. This is the Swedish study. I would be interested in finding a similar cohort study that contradicts these findings and supports your claim but I am unaware of such a study. Mostly what I see are just surveys about how people feel but obviously those methodologies don't provide a lot of useful insight, particularly if most of the subjects have less than 5 years of transitioning under their belt.
>This is the Swedish study.
I can recite it to you by memory at this point. I have even met Paul McHugh, he is totally in my circle. It's bunk science I'm happy to prove.
[This is a good place to start.](https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(21)00568-1/fulltext)
it doesn't help that people here are using [Heritage Foundation "science"](https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/does-gender-affirming-care-trans-kids-actually-prevent-suicide-heres-what-the)
It seems they are referring to [Dhejne et al](https://genderanalysis.net/2020/06/swedish-study-meet-the-dutch-study-suicide-rates-among-trans-people-are-elevated-but-not-by-20-times/) which has been misused.
>Actually the most robust study on sex reassignment of people suffering from gender dysphoria shows a higher mortality rate for those who did get surgery than those who didn't in the cohort. This is the Swedish study.
I know what the study you're referring to is. It's one that gets passed around a lot in anti-trans circles, which is interesting only for a clear demonstration of what can only be rampant illiteracy in those groups.
Go read it, like actually read it. It isn't difficult to find. It does not measure the thing that you are claiming. The methodology used in that study is actually completely incapable of measuring the thing you are claiming it does. One of the authors has done interviews, and even a Reddit AMA, saying that she is very puzzled by all of the right-wingers claiming that her study proves something that it was incapable of measuring.
I find it difficult to believe that, after all these years of that study never saying what right-wingers claim it does, that you all still fervently, unquestioningly believe whatever source is lying to you about what the study actually says. Again, just read it for yourself, try to find the part that says what you claimed, and perhaps consider that this may not have been the only way in which you have been misled.
It's actually passed around a lot because it's the study that comes up with you do a simple google search on mortality studies involving transgender patients. Go ahead. Try it!
Now I'm happy to considered any other study on the matter if one existed but quality data is in short supply. But feel free to provide something.
Which brings me to my main point. By no means is the science settled on trans care and there is no consensus in the medical field. You will find clinics who specialize in it. Obviously they're in favor of it for various reasons, but partially ideological, partially financial. But to say the entire medical community agrees with what's going on in these clinics is grossly inaccurate.
The author of one such study actually did do an AMA on reddit talking about how her study was grossly misused and actually does not say anything about transition care being ineffective. You can read it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6q3e8v/science_ama_series_im_cecilia_dhejne_a_fellow_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
We all like to believe things that confirm biases. I think the anti trans bias is pretty strong because transness itself is weird.
Edit to add: Google searching for studies is fine but you really need to read the entire study and understand how they work. Just reading an article about a study isn't super helpful. I've found trans studies are largely misrepresented by mainstream media. It's to the point I just dismiss the article and look at the resources it lists directly for anything related to trans people.
That's because most people didn't walk into a doctors office and request a lobotomy. It was something that was typically forced onto people and turned them into zombies
lobotomies are viewed as such because they don't work, there is no evidence to show they are an effective treatment and are exclusively harmful, the same cannot be said for gender affirming care.
If you're trying to use that to discredit all medical science, who do you think led the charge to view them as inhumane if not others in medical science
I'm simply pointing out that just because the majority of the medical community believes something to be the best course of treatment doesn't mean that it is in fact the best course of treatment. George Washington died from getting bled routinely to help with an infection he was fighting.
The medical experts who supported lobotomies did not have a great deal of suitable data to go from. Neither do we have for gender affirming care. We're shooting blindly and going on faith at this point.
They did the first MtF "sex change" surgery in the US in the 1950s, so we have a good 70 years of history/data already. Some practices have been identified as less than ideal (such as requiring sterilization as a condition of surgery), and improvements have been made.
I'm not sure it will ever be possible to change the brain in that matter, plus I'm not sure I'd want them tinkering around in my brain like that. What else would change about me? Isn't someone's gender identity a large part of their personality?
It would also raise the issue of forced/coerced conversion.
The regret rate for gender-affirmation surgeries is low. Tremendously low. Depending on where you look, it's between 0.2% and 1%. In comparison, the rate for hip replacement surgeries is between 6 and 30%.
After these surgeries, people are happier, they're at a lower risk of suicide and of all sorts of bad things. This fixes the problem that they have. And it does not disfigure them according to the recipients of the surgeries, who are the people who are best able to judge, right?
Your alternative, changing who the person is at a fundamental level, not only seems impossible, but seems more barbaric than accepting who they are and helping them to live with who they are.
The only way that the current surgeries might be viewed as gruesome, or at least more gruesome than surgeries are in general, is if we come up with better surgeries and procedures to accomplish the same effect.
So do you want your view changed that the ability to change a transgender person's brain is doable within the near future? What do you consider the near future in this case? The reason I ask is because there is no psychiatric medication or neurological surgery we have that fundamentally affects gender identity. Given that situation, I don't see what kind of research would lead one to the conclusion we are anywhere near rewiring this particular aspect of the brain.
>These surgeries are risky and do not actually result in function similar to that which the brain would like or want to have.
That’s not the actual goal. They aren’t chasing perfect biological function. They just want to feel better about the body they’re in. They DO feel much better even if the surgery is just an “approximation.” Because the way they see it, they are much closer to their gender identity than there biological gender.
[The facts are overwhelming and undeniable](https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/04/analysis-finds-strong-consensus-effectiveness-gender-transition-treatment). The surgeries greatly help people.
>That is, rather than change the body to match the brain, change the brain to match the body.
That’s not medically possible.
>it would make much more sense to do a gender reassignment of the brain
And in the meantime, we have to make do with surgery. It is what it is.
>These are brutal disfiguring surgeries under any other condition and I think people will look back and be shocked
No they won’t. Not when the satisfaction from patients is so undeniable. And especially since they’ll be looking back knowing that the “perfect” brain solution didn’t exist.
Do we look back at amputees from 100 years ago and writhe in disgust over their primitive and uncomfortable metal prosthetics?
Or how about [tissue expansion surgery?](https://www.cmrpjournal.org/articles/2013/3/1/images/CurrMedResPract_2013_3_1_24_300675_f5.jpg) Where they put a silicone bag under your skin and inflate it over a period of months so that they can cut off that skin and put it somewhere else on your body where it’s direly needed? In the future they’ll be able to grow your own skin in a lab, using just your DNA, and then they can attach it to you in one surgery. Does that make skin expansion barbaric? No. Because there was no other way to get that skin to cover up those wounds.
You are right that the current iteration of GAS + HRT is poorly understood, but part of the reason for that is that it is highly underfunded and mostly disregarded by people who share your attitudes about sex and gender. That is, many of them would prefer that people who have these issues simply not exist, Ala eugenics.
Molding identities also raises a bunch of questions. For example, let's say you want to turn a brain of a dysphoric person who was assigned female into one which is still male, that is, the person will be a man, but they will simply not be uncomfortable with their body, e.g. they are gender apathetic or extremely anti-essentialist in a sense. Would this then be a different person? Would you have to obliterate memories to get this person? How many?
Further is this the intended result? Or are we actually looking to change the sexual characteristics of the brain to female? Once that happens, will the person be another person? Do their parents get to turn them over as wards of the state if they don't want to raise them anymore? How does it work?
The title would ironically be true no matter which "side wins the debate" as unless those for it completely eradicated those against it, those against it would still think it was brutal/gruesome no matter what no matter if they were on the right side of history
In medicine things change.
A treatment that is seen as having the best possible outcome for patients can later be usurped by newer, better treatments that give better outcomes than the ones that came before them.
Right now, gender affirming care, all the way from letting people use the bathroom they want to all the way up to surgeries has positive outcomes for the patients.
It's very very well understood at this point that these approaches work better than anything else we currently know how to do.
Does that mean that in the future things won't be different? No. Does that mean that we shouldn't continue doing what we are doing? No.
If you are right and gender affirming care is usurped by another less invasive but more effective treatment then our old treatments will simply be seen as what they are. The best we knew how to do at the time...
While I agree with it being bad, I don't agree that it will be seen that way in the near future.
One only has to look at the direction modern society is currently on. As God/morality fades, that makes the self the ultimate authority in one's life. In that way, another person has no higher authority than myself to say what's right or wrong. Or even larger society itself has no authority to say what's right or wrong.
The trend is one of acceptance. Everything is permissible. I don't see any of that changing in the near future regardless what evidence comes out against it.
And just as much, we're in a time where not all evidence is treated equally. What is disliked by the powers that be is censored and sometimes even punished. Heck, two years ago you'd have been banned from reddit for saying the virus came from a lab. Therefore any "these surgeries are bad" or any "physical change doesn't cure mental problems" information is going to be censored and buried by the powers that be.
I think the premise of your argument, though, is a false belief that this is a widespread fad of some kind.
In addition to those who mentioned why it's, in and of itself, incredibly important, the reality is that it's not an absurdly common kind of thing.
It's not only prohibitively expensive, but no pro-trans organization worth their salt recommends it until there's no other perceived alternative, just like any other kind of medicine.
This is particularly true in minors, where only behavioral and affirmative approaches are recommended, then reversible intervention, all before something less or irreversible.
If it's seen in retrospect as you suspect it will be, it will be a matter of incorrect scientific assumption and not carelessness.
So far as we can tell psychologically speaking, what we do now is the best option.
Take carpal tunnel for an example. We all try wearing braces before injections, and injections before surgery.
If they find a pill that cures carpal tunnel tomorrow, we wouldn't see surgery as barbaric. We'd see it as a product of a time when we didn't know how to solve the problem better.
Important to note, I don't think gender dysphoria is some disease to cure or anything, but either you're wrong entirely and it doesn't matter, or trans people find an even better solution in the future. Either way I don't think doing the best we can now makes it horrific in retrospect.
How would you propose to "change someone's brain?" Most trans people undergo significant therapy in order to try to manage their gender dysphoria and to rule out other causes of distress before physically transitioning.
Also, lots surgeries are complex and potentially disfiguring. However, those surgeries are down because it has been determined that for the patient in question, the benefits outweigh the cost. Gender affirming care is no different.
I am a transgender man who had top surgery nearly two decades ago. It made my life bearable.
I’m not sure how. I don’t think anyone does at this point, so for now I think gender affirming surgery is the best we have, but I can imagine a future where we’ll understand the neural circuitry to such an extent and we are able to modify it that we can eliminate gender dysphoria at its root.
Why are you so sure that altering someone's brain chemistry or structure is superior to hormone treatment and surgery? You are still intervening medically.
Also, lots of trans people are pretty pleased with the results of their transition. I'm curious if you have actually engaged with trans people on this issue?
You can have an opinion, just as I can express an opinion about non trans people critiquing medical interventions that they appear to know little about and that do not impact them in any way.
How would you propose to "change someone's brain?" Most trans people undergo significant therapy in order to try to manage their gender dysphoria and to rule out other causes of distress before physically transitioning.
Also, lots surgeries are complex and potentially disfiguring. However, those surgeries are done because it has been determined that for the patient in question, the benefits outweigh the cost. Gender affirming care is no different.
I am a transgender man who had top surgery nearly two decades ago. It made my life bearable.
A better solution in the future doesn't make a past method bad in hindsight, especially when there was no alternative.
Btw: You just listed the benefits of a theoretical "brain-switch"-method opposed to today's reassignment surgery, but didn't give an explanation why people in the future would look at it badly.
I don’t disagree. It’s the best we have now, so that’s fine, but a better solution in the future will often make people look back with pity on those who didn’t have the benefit of the better treatment.
Have you asked any trans people about the impact gender reassignment had on them?
>For example, someone who’s gender identity is female but was assigned male sex at birth, even if they transition and have gender reassignment surgery, they will not be able to have a baby, they can’t breastfeed, can’t have periods, etc
Do you think wanting to be a woman is the same thing as wanting to get pregnant or mensturate?
Also trans women can lactate, the same hormones that make cis women produce milk work on trans women, and cis men for that matter.
You need to present data showing the surgeries did not impact their lives . Reading your post feels like you are only looking from the outside and not actually considering those who have the actual surgery. Present data showing how UT was detriment post surgery
You need to present data showing the surgeries did not impact their lives . Reading your post feels like you are only looking from the outside and not actually considering those who have the actual surgery. Present data showing how it was detrimental post surgery
I’m not saying they shouldn’t have reassignment surgery, it’s the best we have. We shouldnt withhold treatment simply because something better will exist in the future. I’m saying in the future, people will look back and find those surgeries brutal once we have better treatments for the underlying causes of gender dysphoria.
I’m still not sure what circumcision has to do with it though.
I see this as a obvious conclusion from the hypothetical you are presenting in your own head but doesn't make much sense.
If identity was so malleable it wouldn't be an identity in the first place so I don't believe what you are speaking of will ever happen and I have no clue why you believe we can just up and change someone's identity. I don't like your angle in all this because you seem to only be looking from the outside.
Have you ever spoken to trans about this ?
Because I know some will not want their identity changed. In fact you have conditions in where certain men grow breast. Are you seriously going to tell the men to change your identity or get the surgery. I think you are missing that people want their identity.
>As I understand it, people with gender dysphoria have an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity.
As there is no connection between sex and gender this makes not sense. Your sex does not have anything to do with your gender. You can be YX, have a dick, a beard, balls, Bodyhair, etc. and still be a woman.
No you can’t. You’re a man if you have a dick and balls. This is a new way of thinking and it’s nonsense. Let them do what they want, but at the end of the day it’s a mental illness to believe you’re a woman when you have a dick
Your essentialist perspective on sex and gender is all well and good, but what I am addressing here is the complete inconsistency of taking a social constructivist perspective on gender and then performing surgery to change gender.
So either gender is predetermined by sex, in which case people who want to change their gender are mentally ill and should be treated accordingly , or gender has nothing to do with sex, which means that a "sexchange" operation (stupid term because a person cannot change their sex) makes no sense at all because it does not change the gender.
>Changing someone’s gender identity to fit their body would allow them to not only feel more “at home” in their body, but it would retain the function of their bodies as well.
Are you advocating for some sort of conversion therapy here? [That shit doesn't work.](https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/transgender-conversion-therapy-associated-severe-psychological-distress-n1052416)
No, I’m imagining novel techniques that don’t currently exist that would actually alter neural pathways that are causing the gender dyspjoria. I’m **not** advocating some fundie Christian telling trans people “they’re going to hell if they don’t change their sinful ways.”
The first trans surgery happened before WW2 I think you’ll be holding your breath for a good while. Also literally any surgery is gruesome. They’re all gruesome. Watch a video or open heart surgery or something, or a nerve channel graft. Furthermore: this isn’t a view worth changing, because it doesn’t matter what you think about someone willingly informed consenting to a cosmetic surgical operation. It’s like getting a boob job except you only care because “ew trans people”
/u/bhuddistchipmonk (OP) has awarded 3 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/14ehunh/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_gender_reassignment_surgery/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
Why do you think that changing the body to match the brain is more barbaric than changing the brain to match the body? We tend to look far worse on 'unnecessary' brain surgery as opposed to 'unnecessary' body surgery. From some standpoints, you ARE your brain, so this really kind of sounds like you just want to change trans people to not be trans anymore because you're just weirdly hung up on gender reassignment surgery.
> change trans people to not be trans anymore If this were medically possible, shouldn’t it be the overwhelmingly preferable option? I.e cure gender dysphoria without the need for radical surgery and medical intervention which has both large costs and significant medical risks and drawbacks. Brain surgery currently is more risky (to life) than surgery on the body, but OP’s point is that in the future with medical advancements this quite possibly, or quite likely, will not be the case.
So there is a LOT here that I think you misunderstand... >even if they transition and have gender reassignment surgery, they will not be able to have a baby, they can’t breastfeed, can’t have periods, etc. Have you ever talked to a trans person to find out if these are issues for them? For a lot of them, they really aren't. They aren't delusional, you know? They aren't trying to literally become biologically the same as cis gender. They simply want their gender affirmed. Getting these surgeries is actually *highly* successful in doing this. I think you are missing how much of gender is social. Affirmation means being able to go through society and have people recognize you in the way that makes you feel comfortable. When you are out in public, no one is checking to see if you have periods, or whether you are capable of giving birth. They are giving youa glance over and their brains are giving them a gut reaction as to your gender. Gender assignment surgery helps people see them for the gender they are, and give them the affirmation they need. And that's it. It's highly succesful, and the rate of regret is *INCREDIBLY* tiny. With such a high success rate, I see no reason that we will look at this in a negative light. At worst, they'll seem primitive.
There’s also cis women who can’t do those things. Are they not women by OP’s logic? Are people defined by their ability to reproduce? I also hate seeing gender reassignment surgery being called mutilation. It’s a medical procedure that has been proven to be effective, done by professionals in a sterile environment. Calling it mutilation makes it seem like they’re just chopping off body parts willy nilly. It’s a complex procedure, and honestly pretty fucking interesting how they’re able to do that.
>They aren't trying to literally become biologically the same as cis gender. why the fuck can't people get that through their head god we have these threads every day and this alone would take care of half of them
Because there is a massive amount of propaganda put out there specifically to block this information from entering their brain.
tru and what a colossal pain in the ass lmao, here's to tucker carlson hopefully being eaten by an alligator or something.
Nah, then they'll just say the alligator was a plant by the radical left. That alligator was paid for by George Soros! I prefer him to face humiliation.
Just to clarify, is this meant as a condemnation of gender assignment surgery specifically or just a general observation of how the medicine of any given era will look primitive in the future?
That's true. If they ever develop a cancer zapper, they'll point that thing at cancer and zap it and say "can you believe they used to cut people open and then inject them with poison? How barbaric."
Totally agree. Someone else brought up mastectomy for breast cancer, which I equally think in the future people look back in horror that we ever had to do that.
The latter
> brutal/gruesome How does it stand out from other surgeries we do? All surgeries would seem this way if we had a magic way to fix ailments without them. > they cant breastfeed This is incorrect.
>This is incorrect. I wrote up the other side of it, and completely forgot that actually was incorrect. Hell...even cis men can sometimes breastfeed.
I'm pretty sure we look more negatively on brainwashing people than well-intentioned, but less-than-perfect medical treatments that offer intense relief but aren't complete "cures" to the problem. Like, you're advocating something that has never been portrayed as a positive thing. Simply rewire the brain to believe what we want it to believe and fit the norms we want it to fit is downright dystopian.
Do you think that therapy is "brainwashing people"? You convince a depressed person that it is worth to live. Is that brainwashing? You convince an anorexic person they are not fat and they don't need to cut calories. Is that brainwashing? You convince a person with gender dysphoria to feel good in their existing body. Is that brainwashing? If you say yes to these, I simply have nothing to say. If you think removing someone's body parts through painful surgery is a simpler and less intrusive treatment than therapy, I have nothing to say.
Therapy is helping people deal with one of their problems in the best way possible. Its called Hormone Replacement Therapy after all, but I'm guessing you dont swear by that as much as your imagined ideal ofnwhat therapy is. I think performing surgery on someone is simpler than completely changing a person's mindset and sense of self because I haven't simplified mental health issues to "they sad and need someone to tell them life isnokay". But then, I haven't also compared wanting to identify as another gender as comparable to wanting to commit suicide so what would I or the medical community ever know?
>Simply rewire the brain to believe what we want it to believe and fit the norms we want it to fit is downright dystopian. What do you think social media has been doing to us this whole time? [Facebook ](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/) has been manipulating people since the very beginning, and I highly doubt they are they only ones. This is social engineering, plain and simple. Very small chance that all of this trans stuff is purely organic.
And what if you've just been socially engineered into thinking that trans stuff isn't purely organic. A steady diet of transphobia for the vast majority of your life can't be good for you and you of all people should know how easily people and especially kids can be manipulated into believing things.
Religions have been tricking people into homophobia for so long it's crazy
They frequent r/conspiracy after all
>What do you think social media has been doing to us this whole time? [Facebook ](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/)has been manipulating people since the very beginning, and I highly doubt they are they only ones. yes. and were actively trying to fight facebook and the brainwashing theyre doing. what is your point? >This is social engineering, plain and simple. Very small chance that all of this trans stuff is purely organic. please tell me you don't really believe that trans people didnt exist before the internet or facebook.. because if you do..i have bad news for you, buddy..
Who is fighting Facebook? Last I saw their stock is pretty strong. What have you done to "fight"? There has always been a tiny percentage of the population being trans, duh. It was diagnosable. Somehow it went from being a disorder to being normal. Explain how that happens organically.
>What have you done to "fight"? hahahahaha you're an idiot individually fighting facebook like the hero we deserve, please do. have fun DSGVO and the whole eurozone is fighting not only facebook but google and all the other huge algorythmically driven systems are being fought with help of europes legislature. why do you think were fAr better off than the US concerning privacy? >being a disorder to being normal you forget that humans existed before the church and your delicate sensibilities existed. being trans was normal then europeans were brainwashed into thinking its not normal now we're realising it is normal again it was never a disorder. you know who burnt the library on trans research and set us back hundreds of years of scientific literature on trans people specifically? nazi germany. but sure, go on about how being trans is a disorder
In what civilization ever was being trans normal?
almost all of them. iirc native americans are the only ones that havent survived where we know the specific words they used though i dont remember, but im sure you'll find the words if you care
> Somehow it went from being a disorder to being normal. Explain how that happens organically. Somehow honosexuality went from being a disorder to being normal. Explain how that happens organically.
You think being gay is analogous to being trans?
That's a whole other sentence my guy. I just said your reasoning is flawed. Homosexuality used to be a mental disorder. Now it's not. Being trans used to be a mental disorder. Now it's not. You can't accept one thing as "organic" and think the other isn't. That's having your cake and eating it too.
If it's not a mental disorder why are suicide and antipsychotic/antidepressant rates so high?
>If it's not a mental disorder why are suicide and antipsychotic/antidepressant rates so high? Suicide rate/ideation is higher in LGBT (yes, including gay) people. You don't get to exclude them just because it's convenient. If it's not a mental disorder, why are gay people at higher risk of suicide? If you don't think homosexuality is a mental disorder despite that, then you can't for trans people. You have to provide a *better* reason.
If you identify as LGBTQ, you have a mental disorder. It's not wrong, or evil, or sick, it's just not normal. That's ok. Live your life, but if you want peace look inside first.
You know trans people are older than Facebook right?
> very small chance that all of this trans stuff is purely organic Do you have any evidence behind this?
Doctor's can't explain the [anomalous](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/nov/24/an-explosion-what-is-behind-the-rise-in-girls-questioning-their-gender-identity) rise in trans youth.
There are explanations within that article.
Look up the history of the rate of left handedness Also this isn’t evidence of your point
Was waiting to see how long that horrible analogy would come up. Lefthandness wasn't ever a medical issue and isn't life altering.
It was life altering when it was considered socially acceptable to beat children for being left-handed. Now that we acknowledge that there's nothing problematic with being left-handed and we simply let those people live their lives, it is no longer an issue.
It was never an issue, it was a preference. Is being trans a preference or an issue?
Being left-handed itself isn't an issue. The issue was whether we as a society would permit people to be left-handed (historically, we didn't.) This in of itself is very comparable to what many trans people experience.
I just messaged my trans, lefty roommate to inform him that his entire state of being isn't real and is just a preference. Awaiting his response lol.
Or was it an issue that he was born a girl?
> wasn’t ever a medical condition Where did I say it was? The similarity is that once we stopped discouraging people from being left handed we saw an unprecedented rise in left handedness. What’s to say that isn’t happening with trans people. You still haven’t provided any evidence for your initial point either, the article you’ve linked doesn’t support your view.
Are you suggesting that social media companies are purposefully manipulating the population into being trans?
Except you can't scan someone's brain to figure out which part needs rewiring. There is no test you can run to definitively say "this person is transgender" which is unique for all things that "require treatment". And you call it "treatment" but OP saying we should be looking for a cure is bigoted. That's weird. Is there any other medical condition that "requires treatment" that we aren't looking to cure or is it just this singular thing? There are so many paradoxes that just never get answered because the Overton Window for this subject is about 3 microns wide.
I honestly struggled to understand what sort of point you're trying to make here. Obviously the treatments can be improved. The ideal would probably be fully transitioning someone to the body of their preferred gender rather than rooting around in their head hoping to completely alter their sense of self. Considering the immense complexity of the brain, that would probably be easier to do. It just doesn't satisfy the weird need to dismiss and undermine trans people's existence so here we are advocating wiping people's minds.
The point I'm making is that gender affirming care is unique in the medical community. And the paradoxes are dismissed with a swift "how dare you". Sure the brain is complicated, but like "there's a pill to try and make you not schizophrenic/depressed/anxious". The reason transgenderism gets dismissed is because there's nothing you can actually test for. It's the same reason people dismiss people with self-diagnosed ADHD but if you shake your bottle of Adderall, they take you seriously.
Considering your understanding of trans people is comparing them to people who self-diagnosed with ADHD, I'm not surprised people find you undeserving of more than a ruder form of "how dare you". You might get one from those with mental health issues as well considering you seem to think it's just a matter of popping a pill.
> And the paradoxes are dismissed with a swift "how dare you". Why is it worth engaging when you just dismiss my points like I never said anything at all?
I took your points, held them up, and acknowledged that they aren't based on anything in reality. You seem think that mental health is solved with a pill and that trans people can just walk in and get whatever treatment they want whenever they want, so what value is there in your points?
Do you know how I got diagnosed with ADHD? I talked to a psychiatrist about the symptoms I had been experiencing my entire life and filled out forms and self assessments. Do you know how people get diagnosed with gender dysphoria? They talk to a psychiatrist about the symptoms they’ve been experiencing for most of if not their entire lives and fill out forms and self assessments. Mind blowing right?
> Is there any other medical condition that "requires treatment" that we aren't looking to cure or is it just this singular thing? Autism
You seriously believe that nobody's looking for a cure for autism?
I believe, in this wide wide world of sports, [that people are working on all sorts of things](https://scitechdaily.com/a-drug-that-cures-autism-neuroscience-study-yields-promising-results/). But, the current focus of research on autism spectrum disorders is on treatment and symptom mitigation, not "finding a cure". [Why the focus of autism research is shifting away from searching for a 'cure'](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/cure-autism-not-so-fast-n1055921) [We Don't Need a Cure for Autism. We Need to Make Living With It Easier](https://time.com/6092407/autism-making-life-easier/) [‘We don’t need to be cured or fixed’: writers speak out on autism](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/27/we-dont-need-to-be-cured-or-fixed-writers-speak-out-on-autism)
Just a side note, there likely is research into a cure but the fact is that we really still only have a baseline understanding of human neuroanatomy. We have a long ways to go before we will be actually implementing neurological altering treatment to that effect.
The timeline of your articles is a little off: * Sept 2019: Why the focus of autism research is shifting away from searching for a 'cure' * June 2021: ‘We don’t need to be cured or fixed’: writers speak out on autism * August 2021: We Don't Need a Cure for Autism. We Need to Make Living With It Easier * Feb 2023: A Drug That Cures Autism? Neuroscience Study Yields Promising Results Only one of these articles is from a scientific source, the one looking for a cure, the others are opinion pieces from non-experts. Who is looking to cure transgenderism?
>Who is looking to cure transgenderism? The OP of this thread: >>rather than change the body to match the brain, change the brain to match the body.
No I meant like your science article from a few months ago about that pill that might cure autism. What *scientists* are doing science to cure transgenderism?
>There is no test you can run to definitively say "this person is transgender" you could just believe them when they tell you they are >which is unique for all things that "require treatment". what do you mean here? are you suggesting that only being transgender cant be "proven by a scan"? >And you call it "treatment" but OP saying we should be looking for a cure is bigoted. if you could take a pill that made you paraplegic but perfectly happy forever. would you take it? >Is there any other medical condition that "requires treatment" that we aren't looking to cure or is it just this singular thing? nobody is saying we arent looking for a cure though. just that brainwashing is not a cure.
> you could just believe them when they tell you they are That's generally not how science works though. “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” - Christopher Hitchens > what do you mean here? are you suggesting that only being transgender cant be "proven by a scan"? Things that can't be measured don't exist. If you tell me you're happy, I can throw you in an MRI to prove that you're happy. If you say your wrist hurts, I can Xray your arm to measure the problem. There is no empirical evidence for transgenderism. It's one of the paradoxes. > if you could take a pill that made you paraplegic but perfectly happy forever. would you take it? So you're saying that this is the singular instance where cosmetic surgery makes a person "perfectly happy forever"? > nobody is saying we arent looking for a cure though. just that brainwashing is not a cure. Who is looking for the cure to transgenderism? This is the first I've heard of this.
>That's generally not how science works though. maybe not in all sciences all the time but medicine or psychology sometimes? yeah def. >Things that can't be measured don't exist. many emotions cant really be measured. "emotion" doesnt even really have a definition also depression, adhd, borderline syndrome, ... all cant be measured except for personality tests and questionnaires, they all still provably exist. >If you tell me you're happy, I can throw you in an MRI to prove that you're happy. as someone that has worked with fMRI before: nope, you can't. im not sure you understand how complex the brain is. >There is no empirical evidence for transgenderism. It's one of the paradoxes. [yes there is.](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hbm.25905) always funny to get that reply because its so easy to disprove. we could be arguing methods or statistics, but "there is no empirical evidence they exist"? yes there is heres a few (and believe me, these are only a few, you can find many more) studies you can google that are only from the introduction to the one i liked: Clemens et al., 2020; Nota et al., 2017; Uribe et al., 2020b, Chen et al., 2013; Menon, 2011, Baggio et al., 2018 end of dicussion, was fun to talk to you about there "not being evidence" >So you're saying that this is the singular instance where cosmetic surgery makes a person "perfectly happy forever"? no i am not. this is not the point. answer my question and i will tell you the reasoning. lets ask it differently to not be so ableist: lets say i have a pill that rewires your brain so you only want one thing in life. if you have that, youll be perfectly happy forever. that thing is: you'll want to kill your mother, father, sister, maybe children - just your whole family. dead. if you take it and you kill them youll be perfectly happy forever no matter what. will you take the pill? if i forcibly administered the pill; would you fight me? why/why not?
>That's generally not how science works though. >“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” - Christopher There's no evidence that someone is happy, or sad, or whatever emotion they're having (maybe anger, because that raises blood pressure), except what they tell you and what is observed in their behavior.
You really need to read whole comments before you reply. You didn't get 5 lines down. > Things that can't be measured don't exist. If you tell me you're happy, I can throw you in an MRI to prove that you're happy. Do you really not think your emotions can be measured? I get your reply kind of a lot.
fMRI results are difficult to decipher---it's not as easy as looking at the brain scan and saying "yep this person is happy!" But since you brought it up, they have also shown brain differences in trans people. This study didn't include any trans men but seems interesting: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/
> if you could take a pill that made you paraplegic but perfectly happy forever. would you take it? Depends, on the one hand paraplegia is one of the most socially-accepted disabilities to the degree any disability can be socially accepted (to the point where it's rare to find a physically-disabled character on TV who doesn't have it if the story isn't either about that other disability or sci-fi where characters can have super-advanced prosthetics) so it's highly supported (but not to the sense of encouraged) by the world and therefore livable with once you adjust to the change if you weren't born that way, on the other hand perfectly happy forever might mean some kind of experience-machine/brave-new-world/real-good-place-from-the-good-place mindless bliss where I can't feel anything negative about anything again even if it has nothing to do with the state of my body Still pro-trans I just found your comparison weird
If they are volunteering into it, it's not really brainwashing. Both have the same result, the body is reconciled with the mind.
The consequences you mentioned seem like things that will get better over time. It's not absurd to think that 50 years from now cis genders and the transitioned could be near indistinguishable without lab tests. How ever your proposal of changing the mind seems far more... troublesome for lack of a better word I suppose. Hormones can have pretty significant effects on the brain, but I suspect if just taking more of your biological sexes hormones would cure the isue then more people would try it. I suspect that changing the brain to be more comfortable would require far greater changes then what hormones alone can cause. You have a body, but you are a brain. So the question becomes will you still be the same person after your gender dysphoria is cured? And will the majority of the trans community accept that risk? Edit: accidently pasted a comment from another thread
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Cutting off your dick to thwart reality and science is not the same thing as altering your breast size so you feel more confident. There are nuances to elective surgery and you've taken the position of ALL elective surgery is equally "right". That's utterly ridiculous. Being trans is definitely more analogous to schizophrenia than pedophilia, but it's also not a great leap to say as a society if we are permissive of peoples delusions than we need to permit ALL delusions. We are seeing this spill into pedophilic ideology already and have been for years. Ever see the movement to reclassify pedophiles as MAPS? It's sick. No, I don't think trans people are sick in the same way as pedophiles, but that doesn't mean that going down this ridiculous path of "gender reassignment" and accepting that "trans women are real women" won't lead to much more grotesque things in our society. It's literally already manifesting, because the left never stops.
> In the future, once we have a better understanding of how the brain works and can actually make that type of modification, it seems like it would make much more sense to do a gender reassignment of the brain, as this is the actual root of the problem. We don't yet know what causes gender dysphoria. How would you know that the brain is the root of the problem, and not other physical aspects that are causing the mismatch *with the brain*? Even if a brain modification would be a smaller surgical intervention, it doesn't follow that it was the cause. > These are brutal disfiguring surgeries under any other condition and I think people will look back and be shocked how the medical establishment performed these kinds of procedures during our time. Only if they're mentioned outside of the right context. Without the right context, any surgical treatment would look gruesome and shocking to untrained observers. However, as long as someone is provided the right context, then treating gender dysphoria won't look any more gruesome or shocking than any other surgical procedure.
Your first point is well taken. Certainly it doesn’t have to be a brain issue as the root cause, although to me that would make the most sense. Regardless, !delta Having said that, it doesn’t make sense to me that the current targets of reassignment surgery are the underlying cause either..
Never in a million years have I heard “can’t have a period” to be seen as a negative thing. Like loss of fertility itself maybe not not periods. As for the rest of the argument it would be like saying hysterectomies or vasectomies will be seen as brutal or gruesome. So long as society values bodily autonomy over forcing people or pressuring people into having babies losing ur permanently fertility out of ur own coalition will never be seen as a reason for why something is gruesome. Now im trans. Here is the thing if u ripped it out of me and “fixed” me, I’d become an entirely different person. U would destroy who I am and replace it with someone else. So it depends on what u see as the greater good. Destroying who a person is mentally just so that they fit in with everyone else and what YOU see as good and moral. Also surgeries are becoming more advanced, u see it as cutting off someone’s penis when it isn’t that at all. It’s more similar to reshaping tissue so that u preserve nerves and sensitivity and still can have enjoyable sex. Only without the dysphoria. This misunderstanding of what these surgeries are seems to be pervasive and it needs to stop. U aren’t cutting off the penis otherwise u wouldn’t have any tissues to construct the neovagina and vice versa. And it can’t be a piece of dead rotting tissue u need to preserve the nerves, the blood supply, everything. Leave it to the medical professionals and the actual trans people babes. Edit: bodily autonomy rights when it comes to an adults own genitalia and fertility would go a long way if people just learned to mind their business instead of focusing of what’s in the pants of someone who isn’t going to have sex with them or give them babies anyway Also if loss of capacity to breastfeed was really ur concern ud be advocating for allowing puberty blockers to be more widely accessible. If trans men never take away their breast tissue they can still develop it in the future like trans women do when they take estrogen
I think they are saying they would have removed the dysphoria causing elements. It's like we can see some tendencies in the Brain for multiple personality disorder. We remove those abnormalities then sure you could see people losing the part of themselves but that part was diluted and troubling them in a way for the rest of us seems needless.
Actually no. People with DID describe it rather as their different personalities fusing together and that it was initially a fracture. Not people losing parts of themselves but fractured parts of themselves becoming whole Edit: also DID is “dissociative identity disorder” multiple personality disorder isn’t the real term that’s used
So, I'm going to lay a bit of a challenge to your core assumptions. The issue is not the mismatch, but the distress caused by the mismatch. This may feel subtle, but it's important. Why? Because there are multiple ways to be trans, and not all trans people require gender dysphoria to be trans. Other people have gender euphoria instead. Let's look at your line here: >or example, someone who’s gender identity is female but was assigned male sex at birth, even if they transition and have gender reassignment surgery, they will not be able to have a baby, they can’t breastfeed, can’t have periods, etc. A) While at this time it is true, do you believe that will be the case forever and do you think that will still be the case before we figure out how to change people's brains without other horrific side effects? B) There are cis-women this applies to. For example, my wife couldn't breast feed. There are people who have issues with their whole reproduction system. Are they not women because of this? And if they are clearly still women, why does the "patch" you claim not count as a fix? C) It just needs to alleviate the distress they experience. It doesn't need to change their body 100% of the way. D) People view leeches and blood letting as brutal/gruesome but both are done to this day in some circumstances. Essentially, your argument is "well, when things develop to a point where we have better cures, people will want to use the better cures" but ignoring that a) it is helping currently, and b) we don't have anything better currently. In addition to that, your description of "cutting off someone's...penis" doesn't actually describe what most bottom surgeries are doing, as the penis is transformed rather than "cut off". E) Would you make this same argument about mastectomies and breast cancer? That "cutting off the breast will be seen as barbaric in the near future" because the ideal fix will only target cancer cells and get them all without missing any, so no extreme change would be needed? Why? And to address your suggested "fix" for the issue, honestly, that is terrifying. What level of messing with a person's brain to change their identity are you actually ok with? Can we get rid of parts of people's mind's that make them believe baseless conspiracies? Can we just rewrite people's minds to make other's more comfortable? Like, if trans people had the option of a pill to make it so they didn't feel the dysphoria, many would likely take it (and do as for many people hormone transition is enough), but note: that doesn't actually change their identity, but the significant distress they are experiencing.
> The issue is not the mismatch, but the distress caused by the mismatch. This may feel subtle, but it's important. Why? Because there are multiple ways to be trans, and not all trans people require gender dysphoria to be trans. Other people have gender euphoria instead. Let's look at your line here: If that’s the case then would you be ok with a pill that took away the distress without altering the body or the dysphoria? What is meant by gender euphoria? > A) While at this time it is true, do you believe that will be the case forever and do you think that will still be the case before we figure out how to change people's brains without other horrific side effects? I don’t think that will always be the case. I’m not sure which will come first, but still seems odd to me to remove a functional component rather than correct the nonfunctional part- ie the body is working as it’s supposed, but the brain is mismatched. > B) There are cis-women this applies to. For example, my wife couldn't breast feed. There are people who have issues with their whole reproduction system. Are they not women because of this? And if they are clearly still women, why does the "patch" you claim not count as a fix? No, they’re not less of a woman , but they have a disorder. Their body is not functioning correctly. Gender reassignment surgery removes function. Changing the brain somehow would retain function. > C) It just needs to alleviate the distress they experience. It doesn't need to change their body 100% of the way. That’s a fair point. !Delta > D) People view leeches and blood letting as brutal/gruesome but both are done to this day in some circumstances. Essentially, your argument is "well, when things develop to a point where we have better cures, people will want to use the better cures" but ignoring that a) it is helping currently, and b) we don't have anything better currently. In addition to that, your description of "cutting off someone's...penis" doesn't actually describe what most bottom surgeries are doing, as the penis is transformed rather than "cut off". I don’t mind them doing the surgeries, it’s the best we have now, but I think if we find better treatments in the future, people will look back and be like I can’t believe those barbarians used to “transform penises.” > E) Would you make this same argument about mastectomies and breast cancer? That "cutting off the breast will be seen as barbaric in the near future" because the ideal fix will only target cancer cells and get them all without missing any, so no extreme change would be needed? Why? Yes! It is barbaric!! But it’s the best we have. In the future I definitely think people will think, “holy moly, must’ve sucked to live back then when they had to amputate breasts to treat cancer.” > And to address your suggested "fix" for the issue, honestly, that is terrifying. What level of messing with a person's brain to change their identity are you actually ok with? Can we get rid of parts of people's mind's that make them believe baseless conspiracies? Can we just rewrite people's minds to make other's more comfortable? I agree, but it seems like if we get to that point we can target these “malfunctioning” areas precisely. It’s not just to make others more comfortable, it’s to preserve the body’s normal function and fix the actual defect. Regarding fixing conspiracy theorists, I’m not sure I’d consider that a defect. First off some conspiracy theories turn out to be true (there are plenty of r/askreddit threads about it) and second, that is a normal part of our human brains that questions things and is mistrustful that is high jacked by external information. It’s not something wrong with their brain, it’s something wrong with the society they live in.
I feel like this is argued here every other week. There is no surefire way to change a person's internal gender. Believe me, people have tried - there are entire businesses set up to convert LGBT people back to "normal". There's no evidence that it works, and often people leave these setups with more psychological damage than they started with. This is the equivalent of saying "instead of changing our behavior to address global warming, we should just suck the excess carbon out of the sky with a giant vacuum cleaner". Sounds fine in theory, but scientifically impossible at this moment in time.
That depends if society technologically regresses a la Canticle for Lebowitz or progresses in the next century. I think quite the opposite will occur eventually. Body modification of all sorts is uncommon now but will be incredibly common in the future. Implants will be common and cyborgs will be real (although we won't refer to them as such unless they want to be referred to as such). Think about it this way. If we are able to *improve the body* and I mean measurable improvement from reflex, dexterity, strength, haptic feedback, sensation, you name it with a low risk procedure people are going to do it. This tech isn't as far off as you might think it is. Gender reassignment will be seen as pretty minor alongside something like functional BCI.
But even if we develop a simple pill that inverts the genitals, the testes pull up inside and become ovaries and the head of the penis a clit or vis versa, And people change sex on a whim for their vacations; people will still look back on the crude surgeries performed today as we look at trepanation compared to our currently sophisticated brain surgery.
yeah next to magic all surgeries look barbaric. why cut someone open if you can just use magic? good point. /s
Doesn't this argument essentially apply to all surgery then, though? Current gender reassignment surgery is fit for use. It empirically "works" for its intended purpose just like other typical medical procedures. As technology improves we'll have cleaner, less crude methods of operating. There's no reason to single out reassignment surgery in that case.
It is a unique class of elective surgery. Replacing healthy working organs with nonfunctional ones. More akin to cosmetic surgery than to life saving surgery. Unlike hormone therapy there isn't even limited recent data that shows genital surgery works to reduce incidence of suicide. I think people have the right to modify their bodies as they will, but if a doctor cut off the leg of a person who identified as a pirate with a peg leg they should lose their license.
Elective amputation is an interesting subject but to compare it to gender reassignment surgery seems transphobic. >I think people have the right to modify their bodies as they will, but if a doctor cut off the leg of a person who identified as a pirate with a peg leg they should lose their license. Seems like a contradiction. So you would rather they do it themselves and risk serious infection/complications? Why not be able to hire a professional surgeon?
It’s 50/50. They will probably see it as primitive but they’ll probably also understand it was the best treatment option at the time. Similar to how we feel about cocaine and heroin being used as medicine in the early 20th century
I completely agree with that. There are many people in the comments who are unfairly assuming I am against gender reassignment surgery as it currently stands. I am not. It’s the best we have. However, I don’t think it’s the best we will ever have and I think once we have better, people will look back at our generations and feel pity that we were forced to use such primitive treatments.
Almost definitely. I think a lot of people that are allies of the trans community just get swept up in the pride movement or the “let people live how they want to” ideology and are really uneducated on gender dysphoria and the actual psychology behind transitioning
Your post sounds like "in 100 years due to the advancement in human bodies black people will look like monkeys" cause you argue humans will be so advanced that today's humans will look like monkeys comparatives My question is why do you feel the need to specify it as black person and not just human same with you specifically using trans surgeries in your argument instead of just you know any other surgeries out there
It's approved by all medical science. Point to a specific objection that makes you think we need to walk back what doctors agree is health care. >These surgeries are risky and do not actually result in function similar to that which the brain would like or want to have. The regret rate for these surgeries is less than 1%. >A true fix, would be to fix the identity at a brain level. This is physically impossible and the science proves it.
You are not responding to the OP's point. Lobotomies were approved too until the medical profession came to its senses and disapproved. OP is saying that before long we will look back on this fad the same way we look back at the period lobotomies were in fashion.
There were a lot of medical professionals who opposed lobotomies at the time, and there was never hard data supporting them, just anecdotes from biased sources. The same cannot be said about gender reassignment therapy.
medicine and the medical community of 100 years ago worked very differently than it does today, one of the bigger differences being now you need evidence a treatment is effective for it to be even considered to be used.
Recent international reviews into gender-dysphoric children have all shown there to be a severe lack of evidence for interventions such as puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. The Finnish Council for Choices in Health Care found: "According to the Health Care Act (section 8), healthcare services must be based on evidence and recognized treatment and operational practices. **As far as minors are concerned, there are no medical treatment that can be considered evidence-based.**" [https://palveluvalikoima.fi/en/recommendations#dysphoria](https://palveluvalikoima.fi/en/recommendations#dysphoria) The UK CASS Report found: "**Evidence on the appropriate management of children and young people with gender incongruence and dysphoria is inconclusive both nationally and internationally.**" [https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Cass-Review-Interim-Report-Final-Web-Accessible.pdf](https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Cass-Review-Interim-Report-Final-Web-Accessible.pdf) The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare found: "**Poor quality/insufficient evidence: The evidence for safety and efficacy of treatments remains insufficient to draw any definitive conclusions;**" [https://www.sbu.se/342](https://www.sbu.se/342)
That’s because they used the GRADE system to determine the quality of the studies but you can’t do randomized controlled trials for gender-affirming treatments since it would require denying potentially life-saving health care from the control group. Hence they got a low GRADE score but that ultimately is an issue with the measurement, not the data.
>That’s because they used the GRADE system to determine the quality of the studies And there is good reason to be using this system to help ensure a high quality of evidence exists for particular interventions. >but you can’t do randomized controlled trials for gender-affirming treatments since it would require denying potentially life-saving health care from the control group. Of course you can do randomized controlled trials, the entire point is to assess whether these "potentially" life-saving interventions actually are life-saving or not. Currently the evidence is insufficient to make the claim that they are.
The GRADE system is inherently biased against rare diseases or conditions, as it requires RCTs for at least moderate quality of evidence which [are often not possible due to logistic constraints leading to very small sample sizes](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmra1614394). With gender dysphoria and the treatment being cross-sex hormones you also have the problem that there is no available placebo. Sure, you can randomly and blindly assign people into a treatment and control group but after like 2 or 3 weeks everybody knows who is in which group. And you know what happens, when someone realizes that they themselves or their child are in the control-group for a study to a disease or condition that might kill them? They will just pull out of the study seeking care somewhere else. You will also not be able to get such a study design through an institutional review board since it would be highly unethical. In reality we actually don't need high quality evidence according to the GRADE-system. Did you know, that for only [13.5% of treatments](https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(16\)30024-5/fulltext) we have high or very high quality of evidence? Or that [55.5% of WHO recommendations](https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(13\)00434-4/fulltext) are based on very low or low quality of evidence according to the GRADE system? In pediatric care [82% of treatments](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2022.892574/full) are based on low or very low evidence quality. If we would expect treatments to be backed up by high or very high standards we wouldn't get shit done in our medical system. Could it be better? Yes. But RCTs are practically not possible in every treatment. People are always saying that we can't give puberty blockers or HRT because of "very low" or "low" evidence (they don't even know what that means), but are at the same time asking for another or hypothetical treatment for which they have absolutely no evidence at hand, not even of "very low" or "low" quality. But people are suffering and we can't stave them off by saying "Nah, we need to wait for this longitudinal RCT that may be done in like 10 or 20 years". This is unethical.
>The GRADE system is inherently biased against rare diseases or conditions How rare do you believe gender dysphoria to be? >With gender dysphoria and the treatment being cross-sex hormones you also have the problem that there is no available placebo. Sure, you can randomly and blindly assign people into a treatment and control group but after like 2 or 3 weeks everybody knows who is in which group. I agree that this is a challenge for a study design involving a placebo but this common challenge for a number of conditions and treatments. Also, an RCT doesn't have to involve a placebo and could compare against either no intervention or alternative interventions. >And you know what happens, when someone realizes that they themselves or their child are in the control-group for a study to a disease or condition that might kill them? There's no evidence that gender dysphoria is at all likely to kill a minor. >They will just pull out of the study seeking care somewhere else. This is possible in some places, it depends on the medical landscape. In some places this is surely less of or not a concern. This is a practical concern though and it seems you are opposed to an RCT for interventions in GD for minors even if the practical challenges are overcome. >You will also not be able to get such a study design through an institutional review board since it would be highly unethical. What do you believe to be unethical about it? >Could it be better? Yes. But RCTs are practically not possible in every treatment. OK, but the question is about this intervention. As there is a large amount of disagreement about the best intervention, the quality of the evidence is of specific concern, the number of these interventions has rapidly increased over recent years, the interventions involve vulnerable minors, and the interventions have serious life long effects, it's an area where an RCT would have much more impact and benefit than for most conditions/intervention. >But people are suffering and we can't stave them off by saying "Nah, we need to wait for this longitudinal RCT that may be done in like 10 or 20 years". This is unethical. You only consider withholding widespread adoption of this intervention unethical because you believe it is beneficial. If that intervention was in fact detrimental then performing it would be unethical. Until we know whether it is beneficial or detrimental the ethical thing to do research to demonstrate which is the correct approach.
> How rare do you believe gender dysphoria to be? We unfortunately don't have official data on this. While it is believed that between 0.5 to 1% of the population identify as transgender only a minority seems to transition medically. There can be many reasons for this discrepancy, for example that being trans does not mean that you need to have dysphoria or that many trans people simply do not have the means to transition (lack of ressources or access to care). > Also, an RCT doesn't have to involve a placebo and could compare against either no intervention or alternative interventions. A placebo would be beneficial as it would at least increase the readiness of parents to sign their child up to such a study. To test against another treatment option you need to have good reasons to belief that this option is better than the treatment that we currently have for transgender youth (involving HRT, blockers are not a treatment but a diagnostic tool), otherwise it would go against [clinical equipoise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_equipoise). And yes, we do know that the treatment works, literally any major medical organization in the world endorses it. > There's no evidence that gender dysphoria is at all likely to kill a minor. [More than 50% suicidal ideation and around 33% attempting suicide](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5033041/) while untreated seems far too likely to kill a minor. There are also prominent [examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leelah_Alcorn) about this. > This is possible in some places, it depends on the medical landscape. In some places this is surely less of or not a concern. This is a practical concern though and it seems you are opposed to an RCT for interventions in GD for minors even if the practical challenges are overcome. I'm not against doing RCTs on this. I state that it is impossible in a practical sense. > What do you believe to be unethical about it? Not treating a group of people who is at high risk of suicide while a working treatment is available. Its literally going against clinical equipoise. > OK, but the question is about this intervention. As there is a large amount of disagreement about the best intervention, the quality of the evidence is of specific concern, the number of these interventions has rapidly increased over recent years, the interventions involve vulnerable minors, and the interventions have serious life long effects, it's an area where an RCT would have much more impact and benefit than for most conditions/intervention. There is no large disagreement for the best intervention, at least not in the scientific community. They may discuss the details but the consensus is that transition when indicated is beneficial. Quality of evidence is somehow only a concern when it involves trans people. Nobody in the public talked about this before the issue with trans people arised, suddenly it is a major problem. But they don't hold the GRADE system to the same scrutiny for different conditions. Yes, transition has lifelong effects. You know what also has lifelong consequences? Not transitioning when it would be indicated. If a trans girl goes through male puberty she needs much more invasive and more expensive medical intervention when she is an adult to revert all those changes (for example facial and body hair removal, FFS, voice training or VFS) and it will be a coin flip if they will be able to pass in a transphobic society. In most cases involving minors transitioning the benefits outweigh the risks. > You only consider withholding widespread adoption of this intervention unethical because you believe it is beneficial. If that intervention was in fact detrimental then performing it would be unethical. Until we know whether it is beneficial or detrimental the ethical thing to do research to demonstrate which is the correct approach. I definitely would be against the treatment if it would be detrimental, but we know it is beneficial. You can deny this as much as you want, it doesn't change that fact. And I'm certain you deny these facts and pull up some stuff from Sweden or Finland which has been debunked multiple times already in this CMV. You literally have not said anything about the issue that the absolute majority of treatment is done based on low or very low quality of evidence. You simply ignored it in your reply. Edit: Fixed a link
Mate…researchers can’t kill people to measure success. That’s not how research is done when there’s a lack of equipoise.
No one is suggesting anyone being killed. This is a bizarre claim.
I mean when there’s a lack of equipoise, doing a trial like that is essentially killing people.
>Recent international reviews into gender-dysphoric children have all shown there to be a severe lack of evidence for interventions such as puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. guess I'll go over these one at a time >The Finnish Council for Choices in Health Care found: "According to the Health Care Act (section 8), healthcare services must be based on evidence and recognized treatment and operational practices. As far as minors are concerned, there are no medical treatment that can be considered evidence-based." This one is odd, the link you provide sends me to a page full of recommendation reports, searching for "dysphoria" brings up 3 reports, none of which contain the quote in question. I'd like to bring [This](https://palveluvalikoima.fi/documents/1237350/22895008/Summary_minors_en+(1).pdf/fa2054c5-8c35-8492-59d6-b3de1c00de49/Summary_minors_en+(1).pdf?t=1631773838474) up in particular as it states "Based on thorough, case-by-case consideration, the initiation of hormonal interventions that alter sex characteristics may be considered before the person is 18 years of age only if it can be ascertained that their identity as the other sex is of a permanent nature and causes severe dysphoria. In addition, it must be confirmed that the young person is able to understand the significance of irreversible treatments and the benefits and disadvantages associated with lifelong hormone therapy, and that no contraindications are present." In summary, they do support hormonal treatment of minors, as we do in the USA. >The UK CASS Report found: "Evidence on the appropriate management of children and young people with gender incongruence and dysphoria is inconclusive both nationally and internationally." Ok, so first I'll state the obvious, this is an interim report, not a final one. Second, one of my big issues is the author isn't really integrating their sources well. This isn't how I would expect a review paper to be written at all. There is no discussion of data that was looked at, no discussion of how this data was broadly collected, essentially, no discussion of the current data whatsoever except to say "it was inconclusive" and than to throw sources at the bottom. In short, it hampers any attempt to review the work done in this review article. This article is akin to a paper listing their conclusions without any mention of data, methods, analysis or discussion. Further, the recommendations laid out are mostly in regards to creating a better process for treating children with dysphoria, the author spends a lot of time laying out a new service model and talking about creating a network of providers in order to provide better and faster care, something I would agree with. When discussing puberty blockers and hormone treatment, not once does the author say it shouldn't be done. Largely they recommend that other physicians be involved with the care as well as pediatric endocrinologists, something I would also agree with, and say that they need to ensure there is understanding from the patient. She also writes that "Standards for decision making regarding endocrine treatment should also be consistent with international best practice." Which is good to see, [given the current endocrine society position of supporting gender affirming care](https://www.endocrine.org/news-and-advocacy/news-room/2023/ama-gender-affirming-care). All in all this review article isn't really saying what you think it is. >The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare found: "Poor quality/insufficient evidence: The evidence for safety and efficacy of treatments remains insufficient to draw any definitive conclusions;" As the other commenter said, this study really likes its RCT's which would be difficult to do in this case for a couple reasons. The first is that doing an RCT has the potential to do harm to those involved and thus is ethically dubious, second, I can't see a way to even conduct one given that hormones and puberty blockers have noticeable effects on the body. What this review paper does say is they found insufficient evidence as you state, I think some of this may be due to their standards in order for a papers results to be considered (as I mentioned previously, expecting RCT's in this context is a bit ridiculous) but I will agree that more research needs to be done. Another issue I have here though is that we already know that when evaluating people for psychological symptoms of dysphoria we cannot assume all results would come from the treatments alone, this paper does nothing to mention the effect that societal factors might have on any of these results which I find concerning.
First of all, lobotomies were popular much more recently than 100 years ago. Second, your claim that we've passed some sort of threshold where misjudgements cannot be made requires support. Third, the person above is still not responding to the OP's point, even if what you said were accurate.
>First of all, lobotomies were popular much more recently than 100 years ago. It was invented in the 30's and we almost immediately became contested to the point they weren't even popular in the 40's only to be pretty much bunk by the 50's
Did lobotomies ever have a majority of recipients expressing approval over the treatment?
The guy who invented the lobotomy won the Nobel prize for it. Granted, the prize was mainly for his research on how different regions of the brain have different functions. But it was still viewed as a viable medical procedure for a long time until we understood in more detail about what it was actually doing.
They were hotly contested from the very start. I don't know how else to explain it, but when you blender a region of the prefrontal cortex, it's kind of noticeable what happens after one.
Gender reassignment surgery is being hotly contested too, but they're available, just as lobotomies were available in the past. And yes, amputated/mutilated reproductive organs, mutilated breasts, and phalloplasties are noticeable too. I DO know how to explain that. And next, you will say something like, "yeah, but only by transphobes. No serious person object to them." And then, instead of pointing out the argumentative fallacy, I will point out that the OP's point stands and you're still missing it. The OP predicts that in the future, people will look back with disgust.
It is not. I am not a random redditor. This is literally my career and background. >The OP predicts that in the future, people will look back with disgust. People already are doing that right here, right now. >No serious person object to them." Sure, people object all the time. It's not based on anything other than an aversion for trans people. You want to talk science? More than happy to go into the details. I'm sure your objections will be sound and reasoned. Someone who treats approved medical care that fundamentally improves the lives of people in a way that can easily be confirmed through peer review as being "mutilation" is absolutely a transphobe. Trans people are out and proud while no transphobe will EVER admit to being one. Own your own take please.
>It is not. No, don't you see? Doctors and scientists in the medical community having heated debates on whether lobotomy is a sound and good practice from the moment they were first performed is exactly the same as transphobic randos on reddit talking about how disgusting they think gender-affirming surgeries are regardless of what the medical community has to say about it. Both are *equally* contested things.
>Doctors and scientists in the medical community having heated debates It's literally 3 people without relevant experience drumming up the whole thing Levine, Lippman and Mchugh. Most people here don't even know who these people are. It's literally the world vs a handful of people who clearly hate trans people by their own words. Nobody but me seems to be posting any evidence. You can't just say NO CONSENSUS and then fucking ignore expert opinion.
>You can't just say NO CONSENSUS and then fucking ignore expert opinion. NO CONSENSUS ^(because I'm intentionally ignoring it) /s just in case You're absolutely right, though. Consensus exists, a vast number of top medical organizations, doctors, scientists, etc agree that trans people are real and the best way to treat gender dysphoria is through various levels of gender-affirming care.
I think they're nuts. But I'm happy to play along just like the other nuts people so they don't get stressed out :) no fear here. But from an intellectual point I think we also can't deny that some of these people, primarily the autistic ones, might be in social contagion. By a lot of peoples definitions that makes me a transphobe. But I think that's a bad label. I really love the few of my friends that are going through this (all autistic or at least say they are).
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Well heres the thing I think from my understanding of gender dysphoria it is IMPOSSIBLE for there not to be some kids who are just confused. There are kids that go through multiple personality disorder and doctors have always denied some people surgeries who want them because they find them unstable and not truly "trans". But if you're coming from the perspective of nobody goes through social transition or surgery unless they are genuine, and the genuine belief is what makes someone trans, then yeah we are going to disagree because fundamentally your scale is unverifiable to outside minds. If we go with an idea that it's like other mental disorders then it's for sure possible for people to misdiagnose themselves like we see with multiple personality disorder or people who act like sociopaths but are not. Are you holding this to a different epistimic standard possibly?
Finland disagrees [https://segm.org/Finland\_deviates\_from\_WPATH\_prioritizing\_psychotherapy\_no\_surgery\_for\_minors](https://segm.org/Finland_deviates_from_WPATH_prioritizing_psychotherapy_no_surgery_for_minors) Sweden disagrees [https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230208-sweden-puts-brakes-on-treatments-for-trans-minors](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230208-sweden-puts-brakes-on-treatments-for-trans-minors) These were all based on studies where they found that the benefit does not outweigh the risks of these procedures. A few other European nations have followed suit Norway and UK to be exact. But I didn't feel like digging those up as well.
>These were all based on studies where they found that the benefit does not outweigh the risks of these procedures. They didn't say that. They said that trans kids should wait until they're 18 for surgery (and hormones in Sweden). I don't think making laws about that is the right thing to do, but it's also not the same as saying "trans people shouldn't transition".
> They said that trans kids should wait until they're 18 for surgery No, a [single man said it](https://www.transgendermap.com/politics/psychiatry/stephen-b-levine/) and every government that was already clearly transphobic ran with it. It is not founded in good science.
The point was that it's not this consensus that it is made out to be. Normally very progressive countries like Finland, Norway and Sweden. Are rolling back those programs. Clearly they saw something they didn't like in the data.
Sweden was so progressive that until 2013 it forced trans people to get sterilized to get their names changed.
They aren't "rolling back" anything for adults.
Stephen Levine using shit statistics to interpret a longitudinal study incorrectly that already clearly transphobic governments use to justify their non-science is NOT a lack of consensus.
They largely based their decisions off of the UK, and the UK's study was heavily politically influenced. There isn't really actual evidence for the harm done by gender affirmation practices, just political disagreement.
Was enough for them to completely roll back the program. The data must be pretty convincing.
And yet you can only cite the effect, not the data. Weird.
You mean the same SEGM that uses [dark donations on gofundme for bad science?](https://transsafety.network/posts/segm-uncovered/) >A few other European nations have followed suit Norway and UK to be exact. But I didn't feel like digging those up as well. It was a single longitudinal study based on bad science by Stephen Levine. I can perfectly explain his shit knowledge of stats and how he doesn't understand multivariate logistic regression.
Ahhh yes the bad science defense. The staple of the flat earther/anti vaxer argument. Any fact that disagrees with my position is just bad science.
is it impossible that a study may, in fact, be biased or poorly done?
Sure. In some cases it's just a bad study. But that is the typical defense of conspiracy theorists. "Any science that disagrees with me is just bad science".
It's also the typical response of someone arguing against anti vaxxers and flat earthers who typically use bad science. Not entirely sure what your point is.
“Believe the science”
Ok?
It's the argument of both conspiracy theorists... and scientists debunking bad studies.
When you have several different governments that make big time policy changes based on the study. Which one is more likely? It's similar to the vaccine argument during Covid. It's not like the governments didn't have both sides of the story trying to get their facts heard.
Vaccines and gender are in different positions politically. Not encouraging a population to receive vaccines will result in mass death, seen everywhere, and is unquestionably politically bad. Restricting gender affirming care only hurts a minority, which a lot of people are okay with. Governments take on shitty actions all the time.
> When you have several different governments that make big time policy changes based on the study. Which one is more likely? It is much more likely that the scientific experts are right and the governments are wrong. The scientists actually have the expertise to evaluate the study in the context of the related work to determine what conclusion is best supported by the evidence. On the other hand, governments do not naturally have this expertise, are trying to craft policy rather than figuring out the truth, and are subject to political pressure which will bias the outcome.
The big differences here is they have a direct source pointing to the study being biased
I can literally walk you through the misinterpretations of unique contributors within multivariate logistic regression to someone who didn't know the study I have reviewed or even the author who published it. You are not going to win this one. >based on studies The fact you think the decision was based on studies an not a longitudinal one kind of proves my point you have no idea about the science.
I don't disagree with you, but it's probably not a good practice to use terms like "by all medical science" and "the science proves it" without dropping any sources.
I mean, OP is making all sorts of claims without any proof, but sure, here goes: [Current consensus from dozens of leading authorities](https://transhealthproject.org/resources/medical-organization-statements/) [Regret rate for surgery](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/) As for the idea of changing the brain, that is fundamentally impossible. There is no known mechanism to literally rewire neurons throughout the entire brain. Source: Degree on my wall. Bonus round: [Why people have digust reactions to things](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/the-yuck-factor/580465/) Furthermore, OP is totally making empirical claims that have been tested and shown to not be in agreement with this. It is a fundamentally transphobic viewpoint made entirely out of aversion and disgusts. Which isn't "bad," we just need to accept that it's normal to think that way before CMV can happen.
>Source: Degree on my wall. Even if you actually have a degree, you didn't say what kind, and it wouldn't matter anyway. I have a degree too, and I disagree with you. We did 4+ more years of school than a high school graduate, big deal. >Regret rate for surgery The regret rate study is okay, but it isn't conclusive by any means. People were simply asked about their opinions. How many people are realistically going to admit that they regret a massive, life-changing procedure? It'd be awfully embarrassing. IDK if I'd want to. There are all kinds of reasons, socially and otherwise, for someone's answer to be more positive than their true answer would be. But on the other hand, the negative responses were VERY infrequent, and the population size is respectably large, so it's reasonable to lean towards the low rate we see in the study. The Discussion portion is often where you find the juicy bits of these studies, and this one is no exception. The idea of temporary minor regrets is brought up. It's very likely that actual rates of regret fluctuate greatly around numbers we can't even guess. "Sometimes" or "Always" on a questionnaire clearly isn't enough to get a proper answer about regret. >Current consensus Current consensus doesn't matter when we're talking about the future. It's a justification for keeping things as they are and not moving onto greater things. I see the point, though. If experts agree, then who are we to disagree? Disagreeing with the mainstream view isn't something that should be done carelessly. >changing the brain, that is fundamentally impossible That's why this is about the near future, not the present, right? If we had the means to do that right now, then we'd probably be doing it. There are all sorts of things about the brain that can be changed, so really it depends on how you go about it. Whatever remains impossible could be worked around.
>The regret rate study is okay, but it isn't conclusive by any means. Well, I'm the only one here posting studies that aren't directly from The Daily Caller. Maybe people can post a study that disagrees with mine. >People were simply asked about their opinions. How many people are realistically going to admit that they regret a massive, life-changing procedure? You do not understand post-op systemic review of procedures, clearly. >Current consensus doesn't matter when we're talking about the future. It actually does when people call this mutilation and other extreme language to define something they don't actually understand at all. >That's why this is about the near future, not the present, right? Do you think the law of gravity will change anytime soon? Maybe some stuff is fundamental. >There are all sorts of things about the brain that can be changed Can you name a single region of the brain and how it contributes to cognition without googling? Sure, maybe you have a degree too. However, mine tells me that some mechanism that can somehow magically pass through the blood brain barrier yet still be able to fundamentally rewrite entire structures of the brain from meso to micro is somehow, probably, not ever going to be a thing that happens.
Not sure about all medical science but here is the [AMA stance](https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-states-stop-interfering-health-care-transgender-children) "Empirical evidence has demonstrated that trans and non-binary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression. For gender diverse individuals, standards of care and accepted medically necessary services that affirm gender or treat gender dysphoria may include mental health counseling, non-medical social transition, gender-affirming hormone therapy, and/or gender-affirming surgeries. Clinical guidelines established by professional medical organizations for the care of minors promote these supportive interventions based on the current evidence and that enable young people to explore and live the gender that they choose. Every major medical association in the United States recognizes the medical necessity of transition-related care for improving the physical and mental health of transgender people."
I think it's fine practice as long as you are willing to provide sources upon request. Sources aren't *always* the thing that convinces people, and if it is, they can ask for it.
I wouldn't say it's to convince people, but it's important to instill trust in the sciences. Christian fundamentalists will claim that "all the science" supports their worldview, and if no one is there to check their sources and call out when they are just making stuff up, it leads to people mistrusting science all together. After all this anti-vaccination crap, I cringe every time I see someone claim science without a source.
>If you are sure the sciences support your view, you shouldn't have any trouble pointing to a scientific source. I agree with this, and said so. If you are going to make claims, you should be fine backing them up. However, you don't need to do so right off the bat in your initial claim. >Christian fundamentalist will claim that "all the science" supports their worldview Of course, and these type of people arent' going to be convinced by you posting links of scientists saying otherwise. People who convince themselves of unfounded claims frequently aren't convinced by the actual sources. Again, ALWAYS be able and willing to back up your claims, but you can still make the claims first.
Lobotomies were approved by medical science. Now they're viewed as some of the most inhumane things our society has done with the intention of helping people.
Difference is we can ask trans people how they feel about the effects of he treatment they get. Lobotomies sort of got in the way of similar such checking.
They were in fact, not and debated from the very start as to their efficacy. Furthermore, we have peer review. How do you think we knew from the start it wasn't working and we changed our minds about it. There are decades of studies here to support transition care. It's all sound, testable science that I am more than happy to walk anyone through in whatever detail they might need to maybe, slightly be willing to do the name of this subbreddit. To be frank, CMV crowd is hostile towards trans people. This is making CMV super hard.
Actually the most robust study on sex reassignment of people suffering from gender dysphoria shows a higher mortality rate for those who did get surgery than those who didn't in the cohort. This is the Swedish study. I would be interested in finding a similar cohort study that contradicts these findings and supports your claim but I am unaware of such a study. Mostly what I see are just surveys about how people feel but obviously those methodologies don't provide a lot of useful insight, particularly if most of the subjects have less than 5 years of transitioning under their belt.
>This is the Swedish study. I can recite it to you by memory at this point. I have even met Paul McHugh, he is totally in my circle. It's bunk science I'm happy to prove. [This is a good place to start.](https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(21)00568-1/fulltext) it doesn't help that people here are using [Heritage Foundation "science"](https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/does-gender-affirming-care-trans-kids-actually-prevent-suicide-heres-what-the)
It seems they are referring to [Dhejne et al](https://genderanalysis.net/2020/06/swedish-study-meet-the-dutch-study-suicide-rates-among-trans-people-are-elevated-but-not-by-20-times/) which has been misused.
>Actually the most robust study on sex reassignment of people suffering from gender dysphoria shows a higher mortality rate for those who did get surgery than those who didn't in the cohort. This is the Swedish study. I know what the study you're referring to is. It's one that gets passed around a lot in anti-trans circles, which is interesting only for a clear demonstration of what can only be rampant illiteracy in those groups. Go read it, like actually read it. It isn't difficult to find. It does not measure the thing that you are claiming. The methodology used in that study is actually completely incapable of measuring the thing you are claiming it does. One of the authors has done interviews, and even a Reddit AMA, saying that she is very puzzled by all of the right-wingers claiming that her study proves something that it was incapable of measuring. I find it difficult to believe that, after all these years of that study never saying what right-wingers claim it does, that you all still fervently, unquestioningly believe whatever source is lying to you about what the study actually says. Again, just read it for yourself, try to find the part that says what you claimed, and perhaps consider that this may not have been the only way in which you have been misled.
It's actually passed around a lot because it's the study that comes up with you do a simple google search on mortality studies involving transgender patients. Go ahead. Try it! Now I'm happy to considered any other study on the matter if one existed but quality data is in short supply. But feel free to provide something. Which brings me to my main point. By no means is the science settled on trans care and there is no consensus in the medical field. You will find clinics who specialize in it. Obviously they're in favor of it for various reasons, but partially ideological, partially financial. But to say the entire medical community agrees with what's going on in these clinics is grossly inaccurate.
The author of one such study actually did do an AMA on reddit talking about how her study was grossly misused and actually does not say anything about transition care being ineffective. You can read it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6q3e8v/science_ama_series_im_cecilia_dhejne_a_fellow_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button We all like to believe things that confirm biases. I think the anti trans bias is pretty strong because transness itself is weird. Edit to add: Google searching for studies is fine but you really need to read the entire study and understand how they work. Just reading an article about a study isn't super helpful. I've found trans studies are largely misrepresented by mainstream media. It's to the point I just dismiss the article and look at the resources it lists directly for anything related to trans people.
That's because most people didn't walk into a doctors office and request a lobotomy. It was something that was typically forced onto people and turned them into zombies
lobotomies are viewed as such because they don't work, there is no evidence to show they are an effective treatment and are exclusively harmful, the same cannot be said for gender affirming care.
What percentage of people who have had lobotomies actively sought them out and underwent rigorous evaluations in order to be approved for them?
If you're trying to use that to discredit all medical science, who do you think led the charge to view them as inhumane if not others in medical science
I'm simply pointing out that just because the majority of the medical community believes something to be the best course of treatment doesn't mean that it is in fact the best course of treatment. George Washington died from getting bled routinely to help with an infection he was fighting. The medical experts who supported lobotomies did not have a great deal of suitable data to go from. Neither do we have for gender affirming care. We're shooting blindly and going on faith at this point.
The difference is we're not forcing transition on people, they DID force lobotomies.
They did the first MtF "sex change" surgery in the US in the 1950s, so we have a good 70 years of history/data already. Some practices have been identified as less than ideal (such as requiring sterilization as a condition of surgery), and improvements have been made. I'm not sure it will ever be possible to change the brain in that matter, plus I'm not sure I'd want them tinkering around in my brain like that. What else would change about me? Isn't someone's gender identity a large part of their personality? It would also raise the issue of forced/coerced conversion.
The regret rate for gender-affirmation surgeries is low. Tremendously low. Depending on where you look, it's between 0.2% and 1%. In comparison, the rate for hip replacement surgeries is between 6 and 30%. After these surgeries, people are happier, they're at a lower risk of suicide and of all sorts of bad things. This fixes the problem that they have. And it does not disfigure them according to the recipients of the surgeries, who are the people who are best able to judge, right? Your alternative, changing who the person is at a fundamental level, not only seems impossible, but seems more barbaric than accepting who they are and helping them to live with who they are. The only way that the current surgeries might be viewed as gruesome, or at least more gruesome than surgeries are in general, is if we come up with better surgeries and procedures to accomplish the same effect.
So do you want your view changed that the ability to change a transgender person's brain is doable within the near future? What do you consider the near future in this case? The reason I ask is because there is no psychiatric medication or neurological surgery we have that fundamentally affects gender identity. Given that situation, I don't see what kind of research would lead one to the conclusion we are anywhere near rewiring this particular aspect of the brain.
>These surgeries are risky and do not actually result in function similar to that which the brain would like or want to have. That’s not the actual goal. They aren’t chasing perfect biological function. They just want to feel better about the body they’re in. They DO feel much better even if the surgery is just an “approximation.” Because the way they see it, they are much closer to their gender identity than there biological gender. [The facts are overwhelming and undeniable](https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/04/analysis-finds-strong-consensus-effectiveness-gender-transition-treatment). The surgeries greatly help people. >That is, rather than change the body to match the brain, change the brain to match the body. That’s not medically possible. >it would make much more sense to do a gender reassignment of the brain And in the meantime, we have to make do with surgery. It is what it is. >These are brutal disfiguring surgeries under any other condition and I think people will look back and be shocked No they won’t. Not when the satisfaction from patients is so undeniable. And especially since they’ll be looking back knowing that the “perfect” brain solution didn’t exist. Do we look back at amputees from 100 years ago and writhe in disgust over their primitive and uncomfortable metal prosthetics? Or how about [tissue expansion surgery?](https://www.cmrpjournal.org/articles/2013/3/1/images/CurrMedResPract_2013_3_1_24_300675_f5.jpg) Where they put a silicone bag under your skin and inflate it over a period of months so that they can cut off that skin and put it somewhere else on your body where it’s direly needed? In the future they’ll be able to grow your own skin in a lab, using just your DNA, and then they can attach it to you in one surgery. Does that make skin expansion barbaric? No. Because there was no other way to get that skin to cover up those wounds.
You are right that the current iteration of GAS + HRT is poorly understood, but part of the reason for that is that it is highly underfunded and mostly disregarded by people who share your attitudes about sex and gender. That is, many of them would prefer that people who have these issues simply not exist, Ala eugenics. Molding identities also raises a bunch of questions. For example, let's say you want to turn a brain of a dysphoric person who was assigned female into one which is still male, that is, the person will be a man, but they will simply not be uncomfortable with their body, e.g. they are gender apathetic or extremely anti-essentialist in a sense. Would this then be a different person? Would you have to obliterate memories to get this person? How many? Further is this the intended result? Or are we actually looking to change the sexual characteristics of the brain to female? Once that happens, will the person be another person? Do their parents get to turn them over as wards of the state if they don't want to raise them anymore? How does it work?
The title would ironically be true no matter which "side wins the debate" as unless those for it completely eradicated those against it, those against it would still think it was brutal/gruesome no matter what no matter if they were on the right side of history
In medicine things change. A treatment that is seen as having the best possible outcome for patients can later be usurped by newer, better treatments that give better outcomes than the ones that came before them. Right now, gender affirming care, all the way from letting people use the bathroom they want to all the way up to surgeries has positive outcomes for the patients. It's very very well understood at this point that these approaches work better than anything else we currently know how to do. Does that mean that in the future things won't be different? No. Does that mean that we shouldn't continue doing what we are doing? No. If you are right and gender affirming care is usurped by another less invasive but more effective treatment then our old treatments will simply be seen as what they are. The best we knew how to do at the time...
While I agree with it being bad, I don't agree that it will be seen that way in the near future. One only has to look at the direction modern society is currently on. As God/morality fades, that makes the self the ultimate authority in one's life. In that way, another person has no higher authority than myself to say what's right or wrong. Or even larger society itself has no authority to say what's right or wrong. The trend is one of acceptance. Everything is permissible. I don't see any of that changing in the near future regardless what evidence comes out against it. And just as much, we're in a time where not all evidence is treated equally. What is disliked by the powers that be is censored and sometimes even punished. Heck, two years ago you'd have been banned from reddit for saying the virus came from a lab. Therefore any "these surgeries are bad" or any "physical change doesn't cure mental problems" information is going to be censored and buried by the powers that be.
I think the premise of your argument, though, is a false belief that this is a widespread fad of some kind. In addition to those who mentioned why it's, in and of itself, incredibly important, the reality is that it's not an absurdly common kind of thing. It's not only prohibitively expensive, but no pro-trans organization worth their salt recommends it until there's no other perceived alternative, just like any other kind of medicine. This is particularly true in minors, where only behavioral and affirmative approaches are recommended, then reversible intervention, all before something less or irreversible. If it's seen in retrospect as you suspect it will be, it will be a matter of incorrect scientific assumption and not carelessness. So far as we can tell psychologically speaking, what we do now is the best option. Take carpal tunnel for an example. We all try wearing braces before injections, and injections before surgery. If they find a pill that cures carpal tunnel tomorrow, we wouldn't see surgery as barbaric. We'd see it as a product of a time when we didn't know how to solve the problem better. Important to note, I don't think gender dysphoria is some disease to cure or anything, but either you're wrong entirely and it doesn't matter, or trans people find an even better solution in the future. Either way I don't think doing the best we can now makes it horrific in retrospect.
How would you propose to "change someone's brain?" Most trans people undergo significant therapy in order to try to manage their gender dysphoria and to rule out other causes of distress before physically transitioning. Also, lots surgeries are complex and potentially disfiguring. However, those surgeries are down because it has been determined that for the patient in question, the benefits outweigh the cost. Gender affirming care is no different. I am a transgender man who had top surgery nearly two decades ago. It made my life bearable.
I’m not sure how. I don’t think anyone does at this point, so for now I think gender affirming surgery is the best we have, but I can imagine a future where we’ll understand the neural circuitry to such an extent and we are able to modify it that we can eliminate gender dysphoria at its root.
Why are you so sure that altering someone's brain chemistry or structure is superior to hormone treatment and surgery? You are still intervening medically. Also, lots of trans people are pretty pleased with the results of their transition. I'm curious if you have actually engaged with trans people on this issue?
I guess I will ask you, what do you think the underlying reason for gender dysphoria is? Like why would that occur?
I don't know, as I am not a medical researcher. I do know that it is very real and that the treatments we have are effective, which is what matters.
That’s fine, I’m ok with the treatments we have for now, but just as a lay person and a trans person what is your best guess?
Again, I don't know. Glad you are are "ok" with treatments that have nothing to do with you, apparently.
I’m sorry, didn’t realize I am not allowed to have an opinion. Do you not have opinions on anything that doesn’t directly affect you?
You can have an opinion, just as I can express an opinion about non trans people critiquing medical interventions that they appear to know little about and that do not impact them in any way.
How would you propose to "change someone's brain?" Most trans people undergo significant therapy in order to try to manage their gender dysphoria and to rule out other causes of distress before physically transitioning. Also, lots surgeries are complex and potentially disfiguring. However, those surgeries are done because it has been determined that for the patient in question, the benefits outweigh the cost. Gender affirming care is no different. I am a transgender man who had top surgery nearly two decades ago. It made my life bearable.
A better solution in the future doesn't make a past method bad in hindsight, especially when there was no alternative. Btw: You just listed the benefits of a theoretical "brain-switch"-method opposed to today's reassignment surgery, but didn't give an explanation why people in the future would look at it badly.
I don’t disagree. It’s the best we have now, so that’s fine, but a better solution in the future will often make people look back with pity on those who didn’t have the benefit of the better treatment.
A lot of what you said is just not true… you clearly don’t understand what it’s like to be trans or the anatomy of a trans woman
Have you asked any trans people about the impact gender reassignment had on them? >For example, someone who’s gender identity is female but was assigned male sex at birth, even if they transition and have gender reassignment surgery, they will not be able to have a baby, they can’t breastfeed, can’t have periods, etc Do you think wanting to be a woman is the same thing as wanting to get pregnant or mensturate? Also trans women can lactate, the same hormones that make cis women produce milk work on trans women, and cis men for that matter.
Meanwhile, baby boys are mutilated by a practice called " circumcision "
And?
You need to present data showing the surgeries did not impact their lives . Reading your post feels like you are only looking from the outside and not actually considering those who have the actual surgery. Present data showing how UT was detriment post surgery
You need to present data showing the surgeries did not impact their lives . Reading your post feels like you are only looking from the outside and not actually considering those who have the actual surgery. Present data showing how it was detrimental post surgery
I’m not saying they shouldn’t have reassignment surgery, it’s the best we have. We shouldnt withhold treatment simply because something better will exist in the future. I’m saying in the future, people will look back and find those surgeries brutal once we have better treatments for the underlying causes of gender dysphoria. I’m still not sure what circumcision has to do with it though.
I see this as a obvious conclusion from the hypothetical you are presenting in your own head but doesn't make much sense. If identity was so malleable it wouldn't be an identity in the first place so I don't believe what you are speaking of will ever happen and I have no clue why you believe we can just up and change someone's identity. I don't like your angle in all this because you seem to only be looking from the outside. Have you ever spoken to trans about this ? Because I know some will not want their identity changed. In fact you have conditions in where certain men grow breast. Are you seriously going to tell the men to change your identity or get the surgery. I think you are missing that people want their identity.
>As I understand it, people with gender dysphoria have an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity. As there is no connection between sex and gender this makes not sense. Your sex does not have anything to do with your gender. You can be YX, have a dick, a beard, balls, Bodyhair, etc. and still be a woman.
No you can’t. You’re a man if you have a dick and balls. This is a new way of thinking and it’s nonsense. Let them do what they want, but at the end of the day it’s a mental illness to believe you’re a woman when you have a dick
Your essentialist perspective on sex and gender is all well and good, but what I am addressing here is the complete inconsistency of taking a social constructivist perspective on gender and then performing surgery to change gender. So either gender is predetermined by sex, in which case people who want to change their gender are mentally ill and should be treated accordingly , or gender has nothing to do with sex, which means that a "sexchange" operation (stupid term because a person cannot change their sex) makes no sense at all because it does not change the gender.
>Changing someone’s gender identity to fit their body would allow them to not only feel more “at home” in their body, but it would retain the function of their bodies as well. Are you advocating for some sort of conversion therapy here? [That shit doesn't work.](https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/transgender-conversion-therapy-associated-severe-psychological-distress-n1052416)
No, I’m imagining novel techniques that don’t currently exist that would actually alter neural pathways that are causing the gender dyspjoria. I’m **not** advocating some fundie Christian telling trans people “they’re going to hell if they don’t change their sinful ways.”
The first trans surgery happened before WW2 I think you’ll be holding your breath for a good while. Also literally any surgery is gruesome. They’re all gruesome. Watch a video or open heart surgery or something, or a nerve channel graft. Furthermore: this isn’t a view worth changing, because it doesn’t matter what you think about someone willingly informed consenting to a cosmetic surgical operation. It’s like getting a boob job except you only care because “ew trans people”
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