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The gender ideology movement sort of feels out of the news cycle where I live, but remains very top of mind for me.
As I see it, the whole umbrella is actually multiple, almost unrelated strands, queerying category activists, social engineering progressives, AGPs, internet cults, all underpinned by unthinking legal activism and of course corporate profiteering. Did I mention an overtly political and enabling media environment bereft of any journalistic values?
I am fascinated by all these things but mainly I want to talk about the social mania aspect. I'm very interested in how smart people, who would inevitably class themselves as above-average in rationality and morality, are able to brush off child-safeguarding concerns, discarding the previous medical ethics consensus (first do no harm, evidence based medicine) in favour of ideas that barely existed even 15-20 years ago.
I have been looking into previous social manias such as the satanic panic and the child care workers given wrongful convictions and it's shocking how difficult it is to reverse the tide of mania once it's begun. Parents, police, the justice system, and media all fall into lockstep and condemn innocent people to terrible fates they and their families bear in almost total isolation, with only a few supporters able to parse the information in front of them and figure out what is going on.
I mean this is just human behaviour - we make movies about the Salem witch trials, we are modern people and have access to perspectives of humans across evolutionary time. Is it really true that people still don't know who we are, how we behave in herds?
I understand apathy, I understand things moving out of the news cycles, but I can't understand how people can maintain a neutral view on unnecessary surgeries on minors. When institutions such as medical bodies fail in their basic safeguarding responsibilities, suppressing dissent within their ranks, it is not hard to work out what is going on. How many manias does history need to present before people learn what we are?
A failure of courage I understand in any given context but the neutral middle doesn't even seem curious in private.
Can anybody enlighten me why people aren't more curious, why they're happy for children to be groomed into lifelong medicalisation, with their life choices pre-emptively narrowed before they even understand what consent means? The true-believers I understand, it's supposedly smart, moral people that aren't engaged that I'm confused about. Are they secretly true believers but just don't want to say?
Plain old cognitive dissonance?
Personally, I'm very happy it's out of the news cycle. I think the mania goes both ways and it's incredible how much both the left and right have completely blown out of proportion this private medical issue that affects a small amount of people, and I believe the ideological obsession over it (including from the left) does more harm than good.
I'll preface this by saying that I'm transgender, and I had dysphoria since I was a child myself, but I am a bit of an old-fashioned "truscum" as I don't really fully subscribe to the mainstream leftist trans views. I do know some people in the "neutral middle" - most of my more right-wing friends are opposed to the excesses of the trans movement, but otherwise either don't care or just passively go with the medical consensus.
Lifelong medicalisation happens anyway no matter when you transition, but if you do it as an adult, it's much worse. You have to pay huge sums of money (tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars) for very painful, potentially risky surgery - for MtFs, facial feminisation surgery - which is literally slicing your face open, shaving your bones with a saw, and stitching it back up - tracheal shave, voice feminisation surgery, hairline reduction, and some more. All of this you do if you want to pass as a normal member of the opposite sex instead of a freak that's the butt of jokes.
Meanwhile if you transition around the start of puberty, you don't have to do any of these surgeries - you'll go through the rest of your life as a normal-looking member of the opposite sex, and won't have to go through the trauma of watching your body turn into something that gives you psychological pain every day. There's only one surgery you might have to do and that's sex reassignment surgery, and there I don't have any issue with not allowing minors to go through it.
You know what pre-emptively narrows your life choices before you understand what consent means? Good old fashioned puberty. If given the option between a natural puberty that tortures you psychologically has you spend significant amount of effort and money trying to undo its consequences, and a different medically induced one that does not, what is the justification in going with the first one, apart from the naturalistic fallacy?
Now there is a risk of regret - catching teenagers that think they're transgender but later desist. This is where I'm against the leftist discourse glorifying the state of being transgender - you want to make it clear that it's an unpleasant, undesirable medical condition. From what I've seen, the rate of detransition is fairly low; say it was theoretically 10% (it is much lower than that from what I've read), why is preventing the regret of that 10% more important than preventing the regret of that 90% from not going through transition early?
I think that truscum, while I prefer it to transtrender (trans as a human right/existential lifestyle choice), still just begs the question of whether that is the best way to treat dysphoria. Ive noticed its being talked about less in any case these days with a preference for trans rights or existential transcendence narratives.
The low regret rates apply to a different cohort, being studies on older adults, mainly MtF and we don't know the rates for the recent so-called ROGD cohort. We know from one study that most of those with gender dysphoria who do not transition, desist from having dysphoria, with most of those turning out to be gay and in a recent study it was found that 30% of those prescribed hormones were found to have stopped them within 4 years.
Clearly we don't know enough to identify 'true trans', or 'true truscum' and given that early treatment with puberty blockers followed by hormones will result in infertility we have a high ethical bar, even for research. We know rates of mental illness are increasing rapidly in this cohort also and that there is frequently overlap with other conditions such as autism, OCD, anorexia/eating disorders, self harm, generalised anxiety etc.
I don't see why dysphoria is able to claim special status when it may only be a component of the actual condition the individual is caught in. Autism could easily involve a distorted self concept at its root, as well as a fastidious compulsiveness, and gender dysphoria be just the culture-bound manifestation of this for autistic people. Similarly we could think of the desire to be something different as resulting from some underlying OCD mechanism, with the gender content available to be the focus.
As I've said before, the rationale you raise for younger transition, indicates already that attempts to appear as the opposite sex are not necessarily effective in resolving dysphoria, especially when there are any cosmetic concerns. We don't know if some degree of persistent dysphoria, or dis-ease might be apparent in later in life, even for good-passers.
After all there is something existentially fragile about the reliance on passing in the first instance and I would speculate a fear perhaps of not being authentic could always be a risk.
As I've said before, this wish for young transition starts to fall into a transhumanism paradigm, as you acknowledge with your queering of the normative of puberty in human development. It's obviously better to treat somebody while causing the least harm. This is a normative claim we could all agree on surely. The big question beg is what's to say there won't be better treatments that don't involve risks to fertility or altering body parts? Lobotomy was also justified on their being no good alternative but then they discovered antidepressants/anti-psychotics.
The transhumanist desire for transcendence through technology along with anti-natalism is part of the broader frame of understanding the culture bound syndrome we are seeing expressed. We need to understand the cultural level if we are to remedy peoples distress in this regard as it's more and more apparent to me we are all stuck in a lack of meaning.
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Do you think there is such a thing as 'non-binary'? Is there something meaningful and connected to your experience of dysphoria in neo-pronouns?
I don’t understand or see the point of neo-pronouns. If anything I’d prefer if there were no gendered pronouns at all in English, like in Hungarian or Turkish.
Non-binary can have multiple meanings. It could mean having dysphoria, but not enough to make you want to fully transition - plenty of butch lesbians are like that. It could mean preferring an androgynous presentation and not being comfortable with being/looking completely male or female. Some straight people also adopt the label to be trendy.
What about in the more literal sense of being not male gendered or female gendered?
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I wonder about that. I think for 'delicate' or girly-looking boys, sure, you'll come out the other end of blocked puberty and then going on to female hormones as passing very well. But for boys who are chunkier or more 'masculine' in facial bone structure?
Other way round for girls, too; tall, heavier girls will make more convincing men, while the petite types are going to look like short, not very muscular, men.
But I don't know if anybody has done studies on "appearance prior to beginning, and after completing, course of puberty blockers in minors". I suppose I'd be inclined to think that part of dysphoria around appearance could well be involved with "I don't look like I should; I'm too girly for a boy/I'm too big for a girl" and that feeds into the trans part. Whether that's right or wrong, I don't know.
The list of surgeries is sobering, but unless you really, really, really want to pass as an ideal of 'the opposite sex' maybe you don't need all of them. Isn't that the caricature of the anime girl transgender female? Cis women can have big hands or strong jaws or deeper voices or sturdy builds or even thinning hairlines as they get older (especially post-menopause).
I do think that's part of the contention between cis women and trans women; that some (not all!) trans women have this idealised view of the perfect girlhood and how the 'real girl' should look, act and dress, and cis women are saying "that's not how it happens for a lot of us in real life". That the idealised perfect femininity of transgender aspiration is a collection of stereotypes that feminism has been working hard to dismantle for decades, and now we're bloody well back at "pink is for girls, blue is for boys; sugar and spice and all things nice".
If puberty blockers really are 'easily reversible, no side-effects' then maybe. Maybe. No harm to put someone on them for two to four years then they're old enough at the end to be sure that they really are trans - or not. But that's another thing I wonder about. What does that gap in development do? We mostly know puberty blockers from use in stopping premature puberty. I can't help feeling that there's a difference between "stop puberty happening at six, let it happen at eleven or twelve as it normally would have done" and "stop puberty happening at eleven or twelve, go through natal puberty or trans puberty at sixteen".
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Jazz Jennings seems to be going through plenty of psychological pain.
This not an honest presentation of the pros and cons of early transition. You are listing out the possible pros of early transition while forgetting the massive, elephant-in-the-room con: the child will likely be sterilized, they will likely never be able to have their own biological children, and may never have any proper sexual function or ability to orgasm. Again, see Jazz Jennings. No child is prepared to make that decision, no adult should be making that decision for a child.
On the other hand, you have people like Kim Petras, Hunter Schafer, Valentina Sampaio, etc., young transitioners who seems to be mostly ignored by the right. I also know some trans women that transitioned early-ish (~14) and they have no regrets or sexual dysfunction. If you're trans, you're very unlikely to care about being sterilised or not having biological children the "natural" way anyhow.
I think we have to differentiate between the normal trans people who just want to put their heads down and live their lives, and the more extreme Live My Life Online types.
The latter very much do care about having biological children, or children related to them, and the 'natural' way of raising them. A current minor scuffle over breastfeeding/chestfeeding: can trans women breast feed? Of course we can, says one side, and it's just as good as cis woman breast milk.
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Then why has language had this turn towards terms like "birthing parent" and why do we have a "pregnant man" emoji? I'm not being flippant: enough people cared enough to try and change common language and/or shove a new pictograph onto everyone's touch keyboards.
Some trans men don’t get dysphoric when it comes to pregnancy, or just want a biological child badly enough that they go through it anyway. Medical professionals should be aware of the fact that a person that looks like a man could be pregnant, as it’s a medical reality.
With regards to the emoji, current standard practice is to have a non-gendered, female and male version for every emoji. Given that pregnant trans men and non-binary people exist, why not be inclusive follow the standard? Although they did deviate from the usual, which is to make the default emoji non-gendered and have the gender be a modifier, for backward compatibility reasons.
Why are you pretending all of this is apolitical? Replacing the term mother with birthing parent might be appropriate in approximately 0.001% of pregnancies, but it is not helpful in any of the others. But it's the "Current standard practice" bit that is grinding my gears, because it was a direct result of queer lobbying. The concept of gendered emoji didn't even exist prior to 2017, the spy emoji wasn't a spy guy, it was just a spy, the runner emoji was just a runner. That was the standard practice in 2015, if current standard practice was a good enough justification we shouldn't have added any emoji whatsoever. But now it's something you like, so 'it's current standard practice!' is now good enough.
Emoji used to be universal symbols, a yellow circle with two dots and a line, representing every human, no matter their sex or race. But people invested in how they look said that every emotion is actually fifteen different ones (5 races, man, woman and neutral) and that emoji should reflect that. So now instead being beacons of unity of mankind, they veing marks of petty division.
It is ironic that a people so often accused of being nationalistic and gender conformative saw all human as having the same emotions, while the alleged anti-nationalists and feminists desired specificity.
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My understanding, is that the state of the art research on the topic, before the mania, was that the vast majority of gender dysphoric individuals ceased being dysphoric with the completion of puberty. Upwards of 90%. Part of the diagnostic criteria in fact demanded you wait, to make sure the dysphoria persisted, before you began throwing medical interventions at it. Because "do no harm" still reigned.
The current state of the art is that the 90% that would have had their dysphoria resolved, and required no medicalization, must now be medicalized before puberty to make the transition of the 10% who's dysphoria wouldn't have resolve easier.
In other words, 90% of kids with transient gender dysphoria are being irreparably harmed for the benefit of the 10% with permanent dysphoria.
I get that if you have permanent dysphoria, this sucks. It might seem unfair. I don't care. I value the 9 other kids that would have grown up to be gender nonconforming and/or gay adults with intact bodies over you.
Even so, if that was as far as it went, I wouldn't be half as hopping mad as I am. What has me incandescently furious are the local school districts around me pushing pornography on children, and fighting tooth and nail to transition children in secret. And I'm especially livid at gender ideology being pushed as early as Kindergarten. This article, framing it as if it's a good thing:
All I see is institutions, starting as soon as kids are verbal, amplifying neurosis around puberty, nurturing them relentlessly, and then medicalizing the children that they've brainwashed behind their parents back. As such, we're not letting our kid anywhere near those institutions.
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But how does anything like this make one a woman? I don't think women need to shave their bones etc to be 'women'.
Wouldn't it be easier to address the underlying psychological issues?
Allegedly, meditation and other buddhist practices aim to free one from their every desire, wouldn't such practices help liberate one from the desires of having shorter bones, higher voice, etc?
Alternatively, there are great advances in technology every day. If at the crux the issue is of self-perception, couldn't some version of virtual glasses help with that? AI software miniaturized in smart glasses + headphones could potentially overlay corrected audio-visual information in real-time. That way the patient would have the impression of a body matching their idealization of it, and in every social interaction, correct the pronouns, intonations, and speech content to avoid any misgendering distress.
One could even envision a program that gradually reduces the level of correction if the patient's condition somehow improves. Something that could be very finely-tuned.
If it is successful, it makes other people perceive you like a woman, which is one of the goals.
It's not purely a psychological issue. A large number of trans people have underlying hormonal issues - in FtMs, PCOS and congenital adrenal hyperplasia are very common, and there's growing evidence that a number of mutations and physical conditions are associated with it. The controversial trans health practitioner Dr Powers found he could treat gender dysphoria in natal females by administrating them anti-androgens, if it is done early enough. Otherwise, trans people report better functioning and mental health on cross-sex hormones even if they change nothing else.
Meditation and Buddhist practice help you come to peace with what you can't change, sure. But why accept suffering when you can change it? Transition might not be able to give me all of the changes I want, but I am exceptionally grateful for all the changes it did.
The audio-visual self-perception is only a small part of it. This sound similar in effect to giving amputees a headset that superimposes a CGI limb on top of their prosthesis - it can help a little, sure, but it does nothing for touch and proprioception, actual functionality. Others will still see an amputee, plus you'll be acutely aware that you're living a lie - in addition to having to occasionally take off the glasses.
What kind of medical treatment has other people than the patient as targets?
You seem to believe PCOS to be a symptom of gender dysphoria while it could very well be that gender dysphoria is a symptom of PCOS, or a symptom of another underlying cause causing both dysphoria and PCOS.
Source? They gave placebo hormones to transists and they compared results to transists with the real deal?
No, I think there is a certain component of it that has to do with examining your own desires and then being able to interact with them, and change them.
It is possible to learn how to break away from negative thought patterns (for example: this part of my body is male and I need to see a surgeon, instead of: I love how male this part of my body is!)
It seems to me that you are not your gender dysphoria. If you are a person who is bad at math, then you can study hard and get a to a certain skill level where you can be confident solving some math problems.
It appears to me that if you are a person who is bad at seeing herself in her birth sex, then this is something they can practice and grow more confident in, instead of lobbing off body parts and playing with disguises for their whole life.
What would that even look like? How would you know what the opposite sex proprioception feels like? Even if you took cross-sex hormones and then felt that your skin feels different, how would you know that this is the same feeling that somebody of the other sex feels?
I don't see in which version of 'gender-affirming therapy' you would not be aware that you had your bones shaved etc.
They could be surgically-implanted as well.
I don't entirely agree with @rae but you must recognise this is a very facile argument. If someone was in a car accident which permanently changed their facial appearance, surely we'd all understand how upsetting it is for that person when children recoil from them in fear and strangers can't bring themselves to look them in the eye. Cosmetic surgery to repair their face would be strictly "elective" but who could deny the improvement to their quality of life it would bring?
Ironic to make this argument on a thread about transgenderism, the promotion of which is in my opinion increasing the number of people out there with a serious deal of uncanny valley-face. Let's promote burn victim-acceptance and perhaps road safety awareness instead of telling victims to go get their face remade by a neo-butcher.
If it happened to me I'd become a masked vigilante who executes drunk drivers in cold blood or something.
If you're going to be facetious, you could at least try to be facetious in a way that's actually amusing.
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Any cosmetic surgery to correct a deformed but otherwise functional appearance?
I only said trans people often have those conditions, I didn't say anything about the causal chain. I agree that gender dysphoria could be a symptom of PCOS or another disorder. How else would treating the patient with antiandrogens work? If you read the post, the FtM patients had elevated testosterone levels, took medication to reduce those levels, and the gender dysphoria went away.
That's hard to do since hormones have obvious physical changes and you could tell easily you're in the placebo group. This is unfortunately only self reports from people that transition medically, but not socially (including some of the famous "detransitioners" on conservative media - a few said they detransitioned but admitted to still being on HRT).
I tried this, I tried seeing a therapist, I tried living as a gay male. I tried everything I could not to transition because I disagreed with the leftist trans movement, for many many years. Yet a few months after I started HRT, my quality of life hugely improved, and I finally had a decent dating life. If anything, refusing to accept that I was trans and telling people I was a gay male - that was the lie.
You're telling me I should stop HRT and go back to that state of suffering - what for? I already did break away from a huge amount of the negative thought patterns, compared to before, and I have no desire to go back.
Sexual secondary characteristics are a thing - trans women have differently distributed body fat, develop breasts, softer skin (others have confirmed this), trans men get hairier, develop deeper voices, larger muscles and grow a small sort-of micropenis. Spatial and verbal abilities also change following HRT (this is where the infamous brain scan study of transwomen comes from). Proprioception in terms of those characteristics is real - I don't care that this is the same feeling that someone of the other sex has or not, it's different from the feeling I had before and externally matches the opposite sex, and that's good enough for me.
The point is that other people see it too. A more interesting point would be, what if everyone wore these glasses and could alter how others saw them? Cosmetic surgery would be pointless in those circumstances, that I agree with.
The glasses wouldn't change how others treated me beyond the superficial - which pronouns and intonations absolutely are.
Rae: I'm glad that things worked out well for you, and I think that most people would be best served by treating transition more or less as you had: a last resort. I see it as a largely irreversible and major medical intervention that should be seen the same way we see things like spine surgery for herniated discs, or elective amputation, or other big, irreversible medical procedures. I'll also chime in as someone who's had mild to moderate gender dysphoria for a decade or more - from 9 or so till 19 - and decided against medical intervention: there's a spectrum of gender dysphoria or transness, and you're unfortunately at the far end of it. I wish medical science was better, to be honest.
Thanks!! The only thing I’d disagree with is that transition isn’t necessarily an irreversible all-or-nothing process. You can start by changing your presentation to something more feminine or masculine, transition socially, and even HRT is a very gradual process that leaves you with multiple months to decide and for MtF patients there’s one irreversible change and that’s breast growth, but they’ll rarely grow big enough that they would require double incision mastectomy should you detransition. FtM patients will get voice deepening, male pattern baldness, facial hair growth (although laser hair removal isn’t a big deal), and bottom growth, but it’s much easier for FtMs to socially transition than MtFs without hormones.
What made the gender dysphoria go away for you if I may ask? I was able to repress it for a while after adolescence, but it came back with a vengeance once the infamous “twink death” hit.
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Nope, that's the effect of testosterone on the clitoris. That's because both the clitoris and the penis develop, during gestation, from the same tissue:
A micropenis is a different thing:
To get a 'neo-penis' you need surgery.
There seems to be a lot of fascinating biology at work here:
That's from 2016, there's another study from 2021 which also records changes but it's murkier since both trans men and trans women had increases in certain area as contrasted with cis men and cis women:
A 2019 study suggests that there's a mosaic effect; male and female brains have differences, but also similarities, and you can't say that "this bit is specifically male, that bit specifically female"; brains of cis as well as trans individuals can have both male and female traits:
The 2019 study is really good, a lot of details about how brains and brain structures differ in the sexes.
EDIT: Though this now makes me wonder, what if the solution is not "this child suffers dysphoria, they're trans, put them on puberty blockers" but "this child suffers dysphoria, this is a result of natal lack of/excess of hormones in utero, put them on extra doses of natal sex hormones"? That might be one reason why there are kids who go through puberty and then decide they're not trans; all they needed was for the 'proper' dosage of hormones to kick in and adjust their brain chemistry to their natal sex?
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So women with a mental illness making them think that they are men took medication to reduce T levels (anti-androgens) and that helped them feel better about being women? Why aren't you taking anti-estrogens to cure your gender dysphoria then?
Sounds like pretty bad science to me. They should have at least given cocaine to some of them and see who reports feeling better.
Can you explain? The gay men that you were previously pursuing unsuccessfully finally took an interest in you after you grew your hair long and breasts? Or did you manage to attract a straight man who just can't wait to get married, 2 children and a white picket fence in the suburbs?
Only because you have a point of reference to what the opposite sex is like. If you moved to a male-only monastery for life eventually you would have no idea what a woman behaves like. You could also get smart glasses that correct every dumb thing any woman say around you and you'd get the impression that women are rational, pragmatic people while men are the irrationally angry, ditzy sex.
Well that's what the headphones are for.
I imagine they mean they are attracted to men, tried unsuccessfully to live as a gay man and did not like it for whatever reasons, then once presenting as a woman they were able to date straight men which is more satisfactory.
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This is an incorrect view of gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria isn't thinking you're the opposite sex, it's being uncomfortable about being the sex you are and feeling more comfortable if you adopt the characteristics of the opposite sex.
Cocaine doesn't last for very long and the side effects/crash are very severe, but there's other stimulants out there! Given the high proportion of trans people that have ADHD, giving them one like Adderall or Ritalin might not be a bad idea.
I dated and hooked up with plenty of gay men prior to transitioning. Gay men are actively uninterested in femininity and lost interest after I grew my hair long and such. I receive plenty of attention from bisexual/bicurious men - sexually speaking there's a ton of seemingly straight men that are very interested in trans women. I'm now in a long-term relationship with a bisexual man and we could certainly get married, adopt children (or go through surrogacy) and buy a house in a suburb. Ironically, I'm more comfortable now with having a family and the normal monogamous life that conservatives are a fan of, than I ever was before.
Why the thinly veiled misogyny? Your post has a fairly hostile, sarcastic tone in general. Is this a response informed from bad real life experiences with women and/or trans people?
Not sure I understand this part?
Which are pretty nebulous as far as I know. There are plenty of flat-chested short-haired females out there but you needed long-hair and neo-breasts to feel better about yourself.
Either way you provided evidence suggesting that women with dysphoria should get anti-androgens to be cured, not cross-sex hormones (androgens).
What about you, have you tried supplementing androgens instead?
So you had no issue dating before growing your hair long? Plenty of straight men go with women with short hair as well.
Idk about other conservatives but when I think "normal monogamous life" I'm not thinking about your situation. Also the guy you're dating, would he care if you told him to call you 'dude' instead of 'sweetie'?
No misogyny, I'm merely suggesting an hypothetical device that would simulate every single social interaction in such a way that you could attribute certain dispositions to one sex while every single individual is actually completely identical in their behavior with no sexual dimorphism whatsoever.
All I'm saying is that the glasses and headphones would come together to create the perfect 'I am a woman'-simulation, no matter what other people are actually saying.
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Lots of cosmetic surgery, esp surgery meant to correct various types of disfigurement.
Medical surgery is just called surgery. If there is no function being restored except 'I need to change other people's perception of me' then it seems to be frivolous, vain, a waste of everybody's time really.
That might be true in a universe in which humans' happiness is not often a function of the quality and degree of interactions with others, but that is not our universe.
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Say that after your face is melted in a fire.
I'd wear a mask. Plus if seeing it a little bit bothers people it's a them problem not a me problem.
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And ironic criticism of his proposal, given your preferred solution leaves you no better off in that regard.
How so? The changes from hormones and surgery are real, felt by your body, and perceived by others, instead of being an audiovisual illusion that only you can see. The parallel would be like having some sort of moderately advanced but not perfect prosthetic arm, versus superimposing a CGI limb that no-one else sees, and that you can't use for anything since it's just pixels on a screen.
Do note that I have a somewhat transmedicalist point of view, which is different from the mainstream leftist view or what conservatives call "gender ideology".
You'll never have functional genitals of the sex you desire, you'll never have children in the manner of the sex you desire. It's also difficult for me to distinguish the average trans person trying to "pass" from any other plastic surgery addict for whom nothing is ever good enough. They're always getting something done.
Can you honestly say that nothing about your current existence doesn't remind you that it's a lie?
"Never" is a strong word when it comes to technological progress, uterus transplants exist and egg cells could be made from stem cells.
How is my current existence a lie? I'm very aware that I'm not biologically female, but my male characteristics are causing me pain, and I can correct them and have a superior quality of life. After transitioning I became functional both romantically and sexually, and much less prone to anxiety, depression, and despairing over my physical appearance. People close to me know I'm trans, and I don't particularly care to correct strangers about the pronouns they use with me.
Body dysmorphia is a tragic thing and often co-morbid with gender dysphoria. But you can absolutely reach the point where you pass in your daily life to average people, and then reach diminishing returns.
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One justification is that the choice is itself a fallacy, a false dichotomy.
This acts as if we know with certainty that a child is a "trans child". But the entire point of debate - and what makes it a craze - is that we apparently don't.Tthere's a reason there've been rollbacks in treatment and criticism of diagnostic procedures across the West.
This is problematic given that puberty seems to resolve gender dysphoria for at least some people - and some people have comorbidities that seem to have been assumed to be caused by unaffirmed transness as opposed to the reverse.
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Presumably this is exactly what detransitioners experience?
It is indeed. The question is then what's the percentage of detransitioners, and how reversible the changes are. Even if there is say, a 80% detransition rate, but it happens all in the first month of puberty blockers, that's a very different situation from it happening 10 years down the line.
Unfortunately the statistics are currently very murky and the studies are ideologically charged. I could be swayed to opposed childhood transition if it was shown that the cons outweighed the pros, but unfortunately I'm going via my personal experience and biases for now.
The serious problems in my view are the higher cancer risk associated with fucking with the hormones, and the fact that this is seriously glossed over any time the discussion of puberty blockers is raised in a public setting.
For MtF patients, estrogen and anti androgens makes you risk of prostate and testicular cancer extremely low (did you know the medications trans women take for HRT are the exact same as those for people with prostate and testicular cancer?). Also, castration in animals tend to increase lifespan - Korean eunuchs lived an average of 14-19 years longer than other male aristocrats, and castrated mental asylum patients in the mid-20th century would live longer the earlier they were castrated.
Most likely, it would mean this effect is reversed for FtMs, unfortunately. But top surgery at least drastically reduced the risk of breast cancer, and some form of bottom surgery would do the same for various cancers associated with the female reproductive anatomy.
Yes, though I was under the impression that cancer treatments are extremely potent, and dangerous, and are only prescribed when you actually have cancer, rather than given out like candy as a prophylactic?
Either "some form" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, or this is plain unlikely to be true? Even WPATH kept the 18+ age limit for female bottom surgery, even as they abolished limits for every other procedure.
There are many kinds of medications used as cancer treatment. Chemotherapy would probably fit the description of extremely potent and dangerous, and you don’t want to go on it unless you have cancer.
Meanwhile bicalutamide is a popular cancer treatment for malignant prostate cancer, but is also given out to cis women with androgen-dependent conditions like acne, hirsutism, hair loss; it’s also given to men who have overly long erections. It has very few side effects except rare liver interactions (so you have to get frequent blood tests).
I was talking about hysterectomy, which many cis women get for cancer prevention (or treatment). Removing the uterus and ovaries will obviously go a long way in preventing uterine and ovarian cancer. The 18+ limit seems sensible to me in any case.
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I definitely know about the ovarian cancer thing with the FtMs but my entirely unscientific hunch is the puberty blockers thing for the MtFs will leave a trail of ugly in a few years. I might be pulling this out of my ass but I just feel like we definitely can't be monkeying with hormones and pay no price long term.
It's worth bearing in mind we know little about brain development in puberty, ergo we know little about the effects of bypassing puberty.
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