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Are puberty blockers chemical castration?
A follow-up to the discussion with @netstack
This was originally a deep-chain reply, but after a few spergy, reddit-tier replies on my end, and @netstack's saintly curiosity, the conversation resulted in a decent-quality argument, that I'd like to get more eyes on and see I missed any obvious objections.
I did some extra digging as well. The wiki for Lupron links to the paper "Reforming (purportedly) Non-Punitive Responses to Sexual Offending", and while it's about triptorelin instead of Lupron, it's another GnRH. In any case a systematic review of the use of GnRH on sexual offenders (sci-hub) should hopefully settle the matter.
As a side note this paper makes me think the difference between GnRH's and DMPA's is that the former have (or promised to have) fewer side effects, not that they work on a fundamentally different principle (and while we're on the subject, let me just say I'm rather bemused at all the handwringing in all these papers about the side effects of these drugs on convicted sex offenders, when I compare them to the dismissal of any such concerns around giving the same drugs to children).
No, it just completely went over my head, lol.
This is a fun one. From what I understand chemical castration is meant to be reversible. This is what the wiki for chemical castration says right on the top, and I saw, but failed to bookmark, a paper that made that claim about DMPA's specifically, but that seems to be the general consensus on chemical castration:
So if irreversibility is a necessary condition for classifying something as chemical castration... than it seems that chemical castration does not meet the standard.
Now, I'm somewhat sympathetic to the "non-central" argument, you can argue that something that's reversible doesn't quite have that quality of having one's balls cut off that you'd expect from a term like "castration". It is also true you're going to have a hard time finding sources about the reversibility of puberty blockers, since dr. Cass' team looked, and all they can say is:
But when gender care providers themselves tell me that "puberty blockers are reversible (asterisk)", the asterisk being you can't stay on them too long, or that if you start them too early you're never going to have an orgasm, when celebrity cases like Jazz Jennings say they don't regret going on blockers, but the downside was "there wasn't enough tissue to work with when it came to the surgery" (and also don't know what an orgasm is), when the industry comes up with procedures like sigmoid vaginoplasties or zero depth vaginoplasties to either hack around or throw up their hands about the issue, can we say that there are good reasons to suspect some of the changes may be irreversible? What is even supposed to be the mechanism for reversibility? For a fully developed adult it's just a question of restoring testosterone levels and sperm counts, but for a child that never went through puberty we're basically hoping their body will catch up with development as if nothing ever happened.
Yeah, I know that as far as evidence goes, this doesn't rise to the standard of a proper well-designed study, but like I said in the other comment, the gender industry isn't particularly transparent about results they don't like. I understand wanting to remain agnostic on the reversibility question, but if you grant that these concerns are reasonable, it seems like puberty blockers are an at least as, and may possibly turn out to be more of, a central example of chemical castration, than chemical castration itself.
This is one of the topics that really broke my trust with the medical 'experts', along with the covid stuff.
There are some basic common sense things to know about medicine and if someone is going to make a claim contradicting it they need to have a lot of evidence and some damn good explanations.
The idea that halting a major development milestone would be harmless breaks every bit of common sense about child health. The idea that infection with a sickness does not grant any kind of immunity is also insane.
I remember even 15 years ago, when all this seemed like a fever dream, the activist claims that "If a child decides they want to, they can just resume a normal puberty" seemed insane to me. My mind automatically went to all the wrestlers I knew in highschool who's growth was stunted from constantly having to make weight for 4 years. There was no catching up on that growth after they quit wrestling. The chip on their shoulder manlet former wrestler stereotype exist for a reason. They were tricked by their coaches into peaking at 15, and sacrificed the stature of an adult and the romantic successes that come with it.
I doubt your typical highschool female athletic encounters this, but I know with Olympic level female gymnast (and other sports) who've been lifers, they often struggle with fertility, though I think it's an open and debated question how much of that is permanent. There does seem to be some risk of permanence if the condition occurs at the wrong time or for a long duration.
So I mean, in the context of these pre-trans examples around how important healthy puberty is, and how you don't get a do-over, it was shocking to me that anyone believed the activist lie that it was "fully reversible".
While I am sure there are nonzero examples of this happening in wrestling, you have causation backwards, unless you were at one of a few programs I doubt almost anyone else on this board could name for a very specific time scenario, no one would agree with this.
That is because wrestlers are little because its one of the sports where being little is a competitive advantage because of weight classes. And thus kids get more into it when they are sick of being shoved around by 6'4'' 300 lb guys on the football field or basketball court.
Of course, wrestling is also a much higher barrier to entry sport than either of those. The number of elite wrestlers who did not start very young (or at least in a combat sport very young) rounds to zero, OTOH there are many elite NFL/NBA athletes who picked up the game as high school freshman. This further makes it a family sport. Short dads who are concerned their kid is also going to be short encourage them to wrestle as that is a sport they will have a chance of excelling at.
And, yes, in season weight cutting does exist, but all the good programs have been managing it extremely well since the 90s. And anything from before that is just as likely to be related to anabolic steroid and other doping use. The fact is that, once you are a good wrestler, there is nothing better for your career than for you to hit a massive growth spurt and surge into the upper weight classes. They are not nearly as competitive as the middle weights from the 130-165ish range. Get above that in high school and more than half the kids you are facing didn't touch a mat until high school. I used to, as a freshman at 125 lbs, beat our starters from the 160-180 lb range (but couldn't beat most of the 130-150 range). Those guys were just kids on the football team and the football coach also was a wrestling assistant. This pattern remains into college where the heaviest classes are not as skilled, and even weight deficits are oft overcome by skills (see Kyle Dake's career).
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Isn't the corollary to this that we should also ban teenage wrestling and gymnastics in addition to puberty blockers?
It is kind of sad that the only group of people with as many long-term health problems as the terminally sedentary are the sports nuts.
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Well there's an important distinction in that one is pursuit of competitive greatness and the other is entirely inwardly focused.
Though perhaps we split the baby and make transition a competitive activity. If you're on the varsity squad, which means you've put in your time and are able to trick a panel of judges into believing you're actually the gender you identify as, you get access to the best equipment and medical interventions.
If you're JV, well good for you, here's a used dress, a Party City wig, some Maybelline, and a couple of balloons.
Parents could rest easier if they could take a look at their kid and know that even if they were susceptible to some dangerous ideas, there's no way they could physically pass as the opposite gender. Or, you just know your kid doesn't have the grit to actually make it to varsity even if they have the figure for it.
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Not particularly? Or maybe properly informed parental consent is good enough? You see this a lot with football now, where the concussion risk is so high that parents won't let their kids play it anymore, and instead encourage other sports.
I'm of two minds about it. I'm a huge proponent of fitness, and I fucking loved the decade I spent in martial arts. The concussion I got from it was not so much fun. Nor the spots I still have in my vision, my torn ankle that aches at night if the sheets are tucked in, or the fact that I broke my right hand twice and the knuckles on my right hand line up different than the knuckles on my left now. But I suppose for a 10 year amateur career, that's not horrible, and those were the choices I made largely as an adult. Nobody rode my ass, I pushed myself exactly as hard as I wanted to, until I didn't anymore. And I wouldn't fault anyone for wanting their kids to do a sport, within the boundaries of safety and reason.
It seems somehow more sinister when coaches are pushing children beyond the limits of safety and reason, with health outcomes they would be in a unique position to be aware of, but which they ignore. And if there were programs or coaches that systematically abused children in that way, I would like to see them banned.
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Elite teenage wrestling / gymnastics (and possibly other sports). Sure, I'd be in favor of that. The benefit of sports is that it gets you off your ass, teaches you discipline, possibly team work, how to git gud, how to deal with failure, etc. etc., If kids are practicing sports to the point of predictable long-term health consequences, then things have gotten rather retarded.
The key is to encourage multi-sport focus rather than elite specialization. IMHO.
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Yeah all the steroids abuse by teen athletes seems like a natural experiment to look at. I'm not even sure steroids are as impactful as hormone therapy, but no one thinks steroids for kid athletes was good idea. The "medical" justification for both is kinda the same too, self hostage taking. "I'll be sad and kill myself if you don't let me take these drugs."
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Just as an anecdote, I do personally know a female former competitive gymnast who is now horribly sad because she's permanently infertile due to the physical stresses she was put through as a teen. Her husband's not in a great place with it either.
Definitely changed my perspective on encouraging my daughters to take up seriously-demanding physical activities.
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