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Been reading an article about the child "transgender" story and something really caught my attention. The quote first:
So there I realized even though I am very far from woke, the propaganda has warped my understanding of the issue too. I was thinking what happens in such cases is some child suddenly starts very strongly feeling that they are the opposite gender, and then the system gets involved and "affirms" them in their delusion. But what is happening here is nothing of the sort. It's more like childish fascination with the unknown and unexplored and cool, which gets turned into much bigger thing that it should be by both the parents who are completely unable to provide the child the necessary structure ("just be what you are", wtf is that, that's not a kind of help the confused child lost in a confusing world needs) and the system which actively problematizes and medicalizes any case it can get the hold on.
The result is predictable - the system deploys the tactical nuke of "if you won't transition now, you child will surely kill himself and it'll be your fault", the parents fold like wet paper, child gets put on puberty blockers, develops severe mental problems, has to take five medications at the same time, becomes suicidal, the system reacts "see, we told you! if we didn't rescue them in time, them'd be dead already!" and refuses to budge. The parents finally see what a huge fuckup they did and start running around, screaming and writing articles.
The article worth a full read, but this was the part that struck me the most. It was how easy it was to get from a childish curiosity about "you can do that weird thing? really? let me try it on!" to being pulled into the machine and turned into a case and somebody whose life would forever be dependent on the medical system (and, of course, forever "oppressed"). I thought it's more like "X has a severe problem and it's hard to solve it and looks like the system doesn't always do the right thing the right way" but it's more of "X has been playing and waded too far into the woods, and the ideological ogres captured him and made his life into a problem with which he'll now have to live forever". Which is quite infuriating to me in its pure evilness.
It's worth pointing out that Blue Tribe is crowing about how this story has been debunked, because an unverified twitter account claiming to be the child in question is saying, despite all the facts in the article being correct, that they don't place the same emotional valence or cause and effect on it that the mother in the story does. They especially and annoyingly split hairs in that they admit the doctors said trans teens kill themselves without treatment, but the doctors never said they would specifically. See, totally no longer pressuring the parent! And it goes on and on with more of the same.
Of course my favorite, and typical, reaction is here at The Hill. Robby Soave, who seems to have made a career out of being insulted by irate leftist for plainly stating correct facts gets the typical reaction you'd expect when he brings up that children are being sterilized. I wish we could see the look Brie gives him when he brings that up, but the camera isn't on her. We can assume it was a helluva stink eye from how you can see her face turning before the camera turns away, and from how quickly Robby tries to ameliorate whatever offense she shows she took.
Ah yes, the regulators don't let us to tell you your kid will kill himself if not put on puberty blockers, but since we can't tell you your kid will kill himself we can tell you other kids, who are totally not your kid, kill themselves all the time, but we're not talking about your kid, because the regulators would not allow us that. So, no pressure, totally your decision whether you want your kid to kill himself or not, we have no idea what'd happen, or at least we're not allowed to tell you what's happen, only that all other kids who are completely not your kid, did kill themselves, so you can choose anything you like. Also please sign here that we totally didn't pressure you about anything like telling you your kid would kill himself.
I think this proves too much.
Consider bariatric surgery on an obese patient. It's elective, and it has risks and benefits. It's shown to cut the risk of cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes in half. If your doctors tells you, look, we can't tell you that you will die of a heart attack, but people who don't get this surgery die of heart attacks all the time, so no pressure, it's your decision whether you want to have a heart attack, we have no idea if that'll happen, at least we can't tell you whether it'll happen or not because the regulators won't let us, so you can choose anything you like, and please sign here that we totally didn't pressure you about anything like telling you that you'd have a heart attack.
If you think that puberty blockers don't actually reduce the risk of suicide, then that's a real objection, a matter of fact, and someone is right and someone is wrong.
But in the world where puberty blockers do significantly reduce the risk of suicide in teenagers with gender dysphoria, what's the right thing to do? Not tell their parents about it? Informed consent is complicated, but communicating the risks and benefits of an elective procedure has to be part of it.
The objection is that it is an experimental treatment, and that they're using the risk of suicide to push it, even though they have no evidence that it reduces the risk. There's place for experimental treatments, but you shouldn't scare people into trying them out.
Okay, that's fair! So, to be clear, this is a question of fact, and if the best estimate we currently have says that puberty blockers are, in particular circumstances, linked to a lower risk of suicide, then you wouldn't have an objection?
I'm aware of Turban et al. (2020) and Tordoff et al. (2022). Note that as of 2018, a literature review concluded that "the psychosocial effects of gender-affirming hormones in transgender youth have not yet been adequately assessed". So at that point, the right thing to tell patients and parents would be different. But it looks like you can reasonably say that puberty blockers are indicated in certain circumstances, and not using them carries an increased risk.
I agree that Tordoff et al.'s work is of lesser quality, and that there simply doesn't exist gold-standard evidence on this issue. I find Turban et al.'s work more convincing.
To be clear, we're talking about puberty blockers, which "are falsely claimed to cause infertility and to be irreversible, despite no substantiated evidence".
The WPATH standards, which are on the radical side of global medical opinion (Scandinavian rules, as @arjin_ferman points out, are much more restrictive) emphasize social transition, then possibly puberty blockers, then possibly cross-sex hormones, then possibly surgery. To the extent that it looks like this standard of care isn't being followed, those reports are themselves untrustworthy.
If you're upset about something going on in the world, it behooves you to make sure you're clear on what's actually going on.
While your response is ok in the context of raggedy's bombastic claim, I'd like to caution that this "falsely claimed without evidence" business is itself rather bombastic. What they most likely mean by that ist that there is no evidence blockers directly, permanently, and reliably cause infertility. What they most likely don't mean by it is that there is no evidence for any impact on fertility.
Right off the bat, we are talking about a drug that is also used for chemical castration, so it would be wild if it didn't have at least a temporary impact on fertility. Secondly there's the question of when the puberty blocking is started, if you block puberty at or before stage Tanner II, where by WPATH's Marci Bowers' own admission even your ability to orgasm is seriously impeded, would that have no impact on fertility? Various gender clinics are quite cautious on that:
I found another paper that seems to have a more sober tone, and even your Lancet article seems to have resulted in a lot less bombastic follow-up, but SciHub not being what it used to be, I couldn't verify what exactly they said.
EDIT: Originally I thought they meant "irreversibly cause infertility", but I just noticed that the reversibility claim is made separately from the claims about fertility:
That's just an outright lie. There is no way to bring a person back on their original development trajectory after they have been affected by blockers. Neither the article, nor the paper cited under "no substantial evidence" link addresses the reversibility of the effects puberty blockers have on a person.
I want to emphasise that it's shaping up to be a European, not just a Scandinavian thing. The UK also restricted their standards, the French National Academy of Medicine issued a statement urging caution, and the Belgian Center for Evidence-Based Medicine is throwing heavy shade at the state of research as well.
Maybe this is what you meant by "on the radical side" but it's worth noting that after publishing the original version of the SOC, that various researchers actually signed on to, they immediately issued a correction removing the minimal ages for gender affirming procedures. There's a whole bunch of other controversies resulting from the latest SOC which, personally, put the credibility of the entire organization in question, but that's not related to your point.
Keep in mind that the reports that these reports are untrustworthy, are themselves untrustworthy. The people who were originally casting doubt at Reed's story are now claiming she/journalists committed HIPPA violations by providing evidence.
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