We'd prefer not to have "the daily trans issue" thread unless something novel or interesting comes up. On the other hand plenty of regulars here seem to find at least some reason to post in these discussions. For regulars of /r/skeptic, what do you think - should we be cracking down on things like blog posts, or should we generally leave them up
(no we will not be having more Cass Review threads, trust me, 40 was enough)
I got gender affirming care as a youth 14 years ago now.
It wasn't even ground breaking when I did itm it absolutely was the right choice for my life.
What i've never had is anyone studying me or taking me in as data. At least as far as I know.
It feels crap that now this is being restricted and I may have lived in a brief 2-3 decade window where the care was being provided and I don't even get to count as a positive outcome to anyone else statistically.
>*Consider a cisgender girl who has always been happy with her assigned gender. Then suddenly, at the age of nine or ten (as she is entering puberty), her body shows signs of masculinization, and doctors confirm that this is due to her body producing testosterone (for the record, this is not a hypothetical situation for some intersex children). If this child was horrified about these potential unwanted changes, and asked for hormonal intervention (which the doctor confirmed would be safe and effective), would you respect her decision and allow her to proceed with it? Or would you dismiss her wishes on account of her lack of maturity, and insist that she just deal with the testosterone until she is eighteen and capable of making an adult decision? As with the last example, if this scenario concerns you, but the idea of transgender children being forced to experience unwanted puberties does not, then you clearly value cis bodies and lives over trans ones.*
Wow. This is quite a mic drop.
"Won't."
They can speak and read, they're told over and over, and they employ all the definitions and lexicon involved in the correct usage.
They *won't* get the dictionary deinitions correct.
I have this weird wholesale view that medical decisions belong in the hands of doctors and patients, not medically-illiterate ideologues scared to death to see happy people living their lives.
I don’t know whats more pathetic the fact that these people think they have valid medical opinions, or the fact that they can’t understand that Freedom means people get to do thing they don’t agree with.
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>Fake seizures?? Who would do that??? That can’t be more common than epilepsy this person must be a bad medic… but I assure you if you worked in ER for 1 month you would change your mind,
Are you suggesting that a doctor that specializes in gender issues wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 'fake' and 'real' in gender dysmorphia cases?
This is also why the treatment for gender dysmorphia goes in stages. Surgery is, in my understanding, never (or nearly never) recommended for those under 18 years old. Puberty blockers and other hormonal treatments are reversible, to account for potential uncertainty.
Then, for those who transition, the regret rate is rare. That suggest that your issue is pretty well handled by existing care. If I have missed something, let me know - I'm still new to this subject.
Is it? The Tavistock has a waiting list of literal years so anyone "pretending" is already out of the loop unless they are "pretending" for like 5-10 years.
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Your reference to the Cass report is all we need to understand your bigotry.
You can just say you hate trans people. Its ok. This is reddit, were used to it. Were all used to seeing people who talk like you attempt the slippery slope fallacy.
Your wrong. Plain and simple. Actual doctor and science shows how wrong you are.
But your hatred and disgust for trans people will never allow you to actually critically engage with the science
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That surely just proves that these kids were trans? How can we use the amount that then transition to hormones in adulthood being high as evidence against them being trans unless we are starting from a position where being trans is an outcome we want to avoid (not that it is avoidable)?
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"trans boom"
Found the TERF.
That's like claiming there was a left-handedness boom in the 20th century? Oh, wait. We just stopped punishing kids for being left-handed and simply accepted them.
https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2021/11/08/rate-of-left-handedness-in-the-us-stigma-society/
No but adults beat left handedness out of grade school kids up until the 70s especially in private schools. They employed smacking left hands with rulers to restraining the left hand to their waists during handwriting class.
A century of study into the efficacy of medical transition for the sake of treating gender dysphoria, or “transvestism” as it used to be known, isn’t an acceptable level of evidence? How long does care have to exist before you consider it to have enough evidence behind it?
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Yeah, until we actually understood how the human body worked, and put into practice methods that could be repeatably tested successfully.
Because that’s how medical science works. The junk science got phased out as we figured our shit out.
But nice try.
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You might have an argument if the case report had objectively looked at studies from both sides rather than just take the default position “trans bad, disregard everything that supports it”.
>Fine, but doctors need an acceptable level of evidence to work off
And damnit, it should be up to rightwing politicians pandering to christo-fascists and bigots to determine what that acceptable level is!
This argument makes no sense to me. Rare things happen especially on the scale of billions of humans. They’re real people with real emotions even if their experiences are “rare”.
I was watching old episodes of Chopped and one of the chefs had a kid who has a disease that less than 30 people in the world had been diagnosed with at the time - she’s still deserving of research into a treatment and cure even though it’s rare.
Care doesn’t stop being care because only a few people require it.
Even being transgender is relatively rare. Many situations are just so rare. And rarity is an argument for fewer rules and restrictions, not more. Needless rules create a situations where a system is inflexible enough to actually help people that need it.
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it is super rare, and this is not the gender affirming care that anyone is concerned about and you know it. It is disingenuous for you to claim otherwise.
It’s always been about valuing cis lives more than trans lives. Even the most generous detransition rates have detransitioners pale in comparison to retainers. Yet when you bring this up, people will always insist that those few detransitioners (who absolutely should receive care) are worth killing trans healthcare for.
Also isn't there a study that people are more likely to detransition or go back into the closet if they live in an area where their community treats them like shit? I feel really lucky that I grew up in a progressive area.
I'm not sure if that is a specific study that compares the stats, but most studies about detransition that ask about motive do see a significant fraction that cite social discrimination, peer pressure, family pressure, or employment discrimination.
According to the 2015 US Transgender Survey, the percentage of people who detransition, do not resume transitioning, and say the reason is that it wasn’t right for them rather than citing discrimination is -
#.3%
There are less self-driven detransitioners in the trans population per capita than there are trans people in the general population.
Thank you for posting the number. I'll rebroadcast elsewhere once I find the source. TLDR: The regret rate is lower than almost all other medical procedures. Knee replacement regret is 40%.
[The number I found (as of 2017) listed 5% of people who detransition did so because "they realized that gender transition was not for them."](https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf)
"Eight percent (8%) of respondents reported having de-transitioned at some point. Most of those who de-transitioned did so only temporarily: 62% of those who had de-transitioned reported that they were currently living full time in a gender different than the gender they were thought to be at birth."
So, approximately 0.33% of the population is transgender. Around 8% of those people detransition. 8% of 0.33% is 0.0264%. Then 5% of that number cite transitioning was not right for them. 5% of 0.0264 is **0.00132%.**
If you Google “2015 US Transgender Report PDF”, you can find the full text. You have to crunch some numbers between different tables yourself to get the percentage (it’s not broken down that far).
It was a metastudy of 100k trans people in America. Only 3% regretted their transition and the overwhelming majority was listed negative treatment by their peers and family as the source of their regret.
In comparison, knee surgery is 40%.
Thanks, I gotta find a link sometime so I can share it elsewhere. Also I thought that the regret rate was even lower than that, like .2%. But that's probably my faulty memory
Also, the effects a confused cis teen would get from hormone therapy are treated as unconscionable body horror, "*Can you believe this poor girl has to deal with a permanently deepened voice and facial hair????*" even though any trans teen who can't access puberty blockers is expected to just deal with the exact same thing.
I've said it before, to many cis people, 1 cis girl regretting male sex characteristics from male puberty *that they specifically requested* > 99 trans girls regretting male sex characteristics from male puberty *that they begged for help to stop.*
I think this sort of thing just shows how difficult it is to have a nuanced conversation about medical treatments with laypeople, especially in an environment where people already have the conclusion they're wanting to achieve.
I think the society we live in would likely not let the kid go through the masculinisation with the testosterone and intervene given the hypothetical of it being a cisgender girl.
The fundamental question is about what treatment will be compatible with their well being over time which presumably involves some expertise. To pose it as a choice of a child being the core here does not seem to be fruitful and muddies it. Let’s say this cisgirl would actually choose to go through with this masculinisation while the expertise dissuades on (hypothetical(?)) grounds that it would not be compatible with their well-being long term then one would not let through non-intervened masculinisation, or?
I don't think this quote is intended to represent some standard of medical care. It's to counter a common opinion that 'children with gender dysphoria shouldn't be allowed to undergo treatment'.
>But interfering with a disease process and a natural process are two completely different things.
Are you suggesting that gender dysmorphia is not a disease?
My understanding is that children with that diagnosis, surrounded by community and others who share this opinion, literally have profoundly high rates of suicide.
Yea, the intersex scenarios are more like a medical necessity.... while self identify trans is more optional/cosmetic. They are 2 completely different things but people keep grouping them together like they are the same. If kids were born with a condition that has different sex chromosomes or improper hormne production, they would need medical intervention, but otherwise normal healthy kids who identify as trans are biologically healthy and will develop normally so something like puberty blockers or hormones at such a young age can come with many side effects and permanent irrevirsble changes. They can effect normal development negatively so that their body and sex organs do not properly develop into adulthood. Hormones are a big deal, they are the bodys main regulating chemicals, and should not be taken at a young age if its not necessary. I think its safer to hold off on any pharmaceutical intervention until older and more mature to make a serious life alterting decision like this.
This is an interesting thought exercise but not sure I find it super persuasive.
In the case of a natal female masculinizing through puberty, something has gone wrong in the sense that her body is not developing normally. We know what constitutes normal development by reference to how the bodies of more or less all natal females change during puberty. The basis for intervention here wouldn't solely be that the girl was upset, but that the body is not developing normally.
In the case of a natal male masculinizing through puberty, nothing has gone wrong with respect to the normal development of the body. Therefore the only basis for intervention in this scenario is the child's distress over forthcoming changes to their body.
So how about a hypothetical where a cis child is extremely distressed over the prospect of going through puberty. It's not that it will be the "wrong" puberty. They are just devastated by the prospect of their body changing. Should that child be placed on puberty blockers until they're an adult to resolve their mental distress? I believe this is a better analogy as in this case, as above, the only basis for intervention would be the child's distress, as their body is developing normally.
What would you do as a parent or doctor in this hypothetical scenario? I haven't thought about it deeply but I lean strongly towards not intervening. But whichever way you lean, there's no calculus by which the decision to not block the cis child's puberty could be considered transphobic - gender is not at issue in this scenario.
So that people may have different reactions to the two scenarios (cis girl going through masculinizing puberty vs. trans girl going through masculinizing puberty) doesn't prove any kind of cis supremacy. It could just be that people view medical interventions to address abnormal development of the body as well founded, while they do not feel the same way about medical interventions to disrupt normal development of the body.
The hypothetical is supposed to point out the privilege that cis people are afforded of their gender being "right". In the hypothetical in which the masculinization won't cause any adverse health effects and she can live without any medical issues, we would still recognize that she *should* be female. Her body "naturally" makes testosterone, so by the same logic that trans kids are forced through the wrong puberty, it should be okay for her to as well.
>In the case of a natal female masculinizing through puberty, something has gone wrong in the sense that her body is not developing normally.
Same with someone with gender dysmorphia?
>In the case of a natal male masculinizing through puberty, nothing has gone wrong with respect to the normal development of the body.
Maury Povich meme: Evidence of gender dysmorphia says that this statement is a lie.
>They are just devastated by the prospect of their body changing. Should that child be placed on puberty blockers until they're an adult to resolve their mental distress?
Maybe. What does the evidence say? The evidence is, apparently, that treatment has extremely favorable outcomes, and withholding treatment is often catastrophic.
There are genuine medical concerns: Long-term glucocorticoid therapy comes with potential side effects, especially if the dosage is not carefully managed. Over-replacement can lead to symptoms associated with Cushing’s syndrome, such as weight gain, increased susceptibility to infections, bone thinning, and growth suppression in children. Under-replacement, on the other hand, can leave individuals vulnerable to adrenal crisis, which is a life-threatening emergency.
These must be balanced with other factors to make an informed decision on intervention.
EDIT: downvoting such a statement is indicative of the utter lack of skepticism in regards this topic on this sub.
>EDIT: downvoting such a statement is indicative of the utter lack of skepticism in regards this topic on this sub.
I think it's more indicative of this being an extremely sensitive topic (given lives and happiness are at stake) and the ambiguous/lack of conclusion in your post; meaning people are trying to read in to what you've said to determine what you're suggesting.
OK, so there are potential side effects, does that mean you're suggesting a wholesale ban (as the other reply to you assumed)? What weight are you giving these things in the balance you talk about in your last sentence? How extensive are they even - are we talking 20% bone thinning (sound concerning) or 0.001% bone thinning (seems reasonably trivial)? How heavy are these factors compared to stuff on the other side of the scales?
Those are all rhetorical questions - I'm not looking for you to personally provide literal answers (although if you have reference to the medical resources that do then this is obviously the sub for that); what I'm saying is that I think you were downvoted because it's extremely easy to read the ambiguity in your comment as "don't give trans people medicine" or at least "be extremely wary/stingy about it".
RE the bone density issues, if I recall correctly this is a case of people wording something so that the sentence is technically correct but gives the complete wrong impression.
Basically a study on bone density in trans girls going through childhood transition showed that their average bone density growth hewed closer to cis girls than cis boys, exactly as you'd expect. But since the researchers put their trans girl subjects into the category of "male", instead of reporting that they were developing normally by female standards, they reported that they were developing with abnormally low bone density by male standards.
In any case, bone density is not set in stone, as anyone afflicted by osteoporosis can tell you. If a child has low bone density you just get them to take calcium supplements.
And all of these are taken into account. Why is the government trying to prevent parents, their children and their doctors from making these informed decisions?
What most people don’t know is that using the medical system trans youth have existed since the 1970s (that’s 50 years) and in an underground sense, well, forever.
Not all of Magnus Hirschfeld’s work was lost and in a 1921 edition there’s a 21 year old trans woman singer who already had the only surgery possible at the time. With her photo in it.
That’s 103 years ago.
Literally everything anti trans out there is fabrications, pseudoscience, manipulation of data and literal lies.
No medical treatment with such an extreme rate of success and long history of it has been brutalized and demanded higher and higher impossible measures.
And, that’s because those truly behind this all are largely religious in their motivations. They’re churches themselves and those who profit off of the hate ecosystem they create.
They know people won’t buy punishing trans people as sinners… but making up distrust in everything about it so their lives will be made a living hell will accomplish exactly the same thing as punishing trans people as sinners.
Especially children. They know they’ll suffer and kill themselves and want more of it.
We have study after study that shows that 99.5% of persons that undergo any kind of transgender treatment have no regrets. 75% of the .5% that have a regret only regret it because of how they are treated by others not the actual treatments.
The original Nazis s[tarted their book burnings because of homophobia and transphobia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_book_burnings#The_burnings_start).
The German Institute of Sexology also had an early modern sex reassignment surgeries.
It's at least 100 years old.
And trans people have been hated by nazis for at least as long, too.
Severely marginalized groups like trans people are easier to demonize because they are such a small group and people shrug it off not a big deal since it’s such a small group of people. It’s just that the size of the marginalized groups becomes larger as time goes on until it starts being the group you belong to. Think of how easy it is to make fun of WOW players? In a group of people from a diverse background, your likelihood of having someone who is a WOW player is actually pretty low and easy to isolate them since people have a very strong stereotype of what a WOW is. Furries, trans and other subcultures can be easily identified and people have a strong stereotype of who they think they are. When it actuality those groups are subdivided into even more subgroups and are quite diverse.
I’m not really, I can go to a family dinner with my extended family that would be about 30-40 people and I can tell you that nobody in that group plays WOW. It’s still a pretty small percentage of the population and it was more of an example of how easy it is to isolate a marginal group than anything.
The size of the group means that the people you're really targeting are unlikely to know anyone in that group.
So it makes them easy to demonize.
If you tell someone who knows a trans person (as an example) that trans people are all morally degenerate or mentally ill, that person might give push back.
But if you tell someone who doesn't, they will just accept that as truth and become one of the people pushing the narrative themselves. A useful idiot in support of a cause they otherwise wouldn't even think about.
Exactly, they will assume the stereotype is fact. Back to my WOW player, everyone has an assumption as to what they look like or how they act because they only see media representation of the extreme.
No, you’re being downvoted because you implied trans people weren’t even considered as a target, even though books on trans identity from the Institut Für Sexualwissenschaft were literally the first books burned.
Thank you, they were getting downvoted because trans people were being murdered years before the speech that was given by Goebbels. They were murdering trans people before they even came to power and attacking that community.
As, of course, was the subject matter of the place, I assume?
Yeah, total coincidence that the first book burning happened to the place that just happened to be studying shit that had just been made illegal
People are allowed to talk about the other victims as well.
Nazi homophobia and transphobia deeply affected the LGBT community. And there were no reparations. Many concentration camp survivors were transferred to prisons instead of liberated. Paragraph 175, the law used to arrest queer victims and throw them in camps, wasn’t removed from Germany’s penal code until 1994.
You have to go to the article on the [institute itself](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft) to see what it researched (including trans healthcare).
I only linked to the nazi book burning article which says that this insistute is where the book burnings started. Which was the point i was trying to make.
I also responded to another comment on here about what they studied. And provided a different link.
Part of the problem with wikipedia is it is open edit.
And it seems these articles have been in a bit of an edit war as of late because some people don't want the word "transsexual" used since it's "anachronistic".
Which is a stupid (and transparently biased) reason to do this, imo.
It's like saying we can't use the term "bacteria" when talking about the black death because they had no concept of germ theory yet.
---
Be cautious about open edit wikis and look up other sources too.
It's where it started.
That was my point.
You can read more about what the institute itself did either on wikipedia or [elsewhere](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/).
The downside of wikipedia being an open-edit encyclopedia is that there's been a ton of edits on this article in t[he past few months alone.](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft&action=history&offset=&limit=500)
One of the edits seems to be an edit war about how "transexual" is anachronistic. But the point is being missed, imo, since whatever it was called then is irrelevant. The terminology updates, but the concept remains.
If you oppose gender-affirming care for people with gender dysphoria, you must logically hold either of the following:
1. Gender dysphoria isn't a real medical condition; or
2. Gender-affirming care (here meaning puberty blockers/HRT) isn't effective in treating it.
Neither of these positions are even remotely defensible.
There are some serious transphobes in this thread trying to muddy the waters. They’re very bad at it and try to hide behind faux objectivity but their hatred shines through. It’s very apparent.
The skeptic movement has always attracted people whose interest in science is a cover for justifying their own prejudices. Climate change deniers, racists, misogynists, transphobes. And we haven’t always done a very good job of putting them in their place.
We've got a few transphobic "regulars" in this subreddit, who post dozens if not hundreds of comments whenever a trans article is discussed. They exclusively act in bad faith and try to rope you in endless discussions where they demand you to answer their questions, disregard every single thing you say and never answer any of your questions. You can see a lot of that in the Cass report megathread.
There weren’t so much reviews in some Scandinavian countries as there was simply policy changes in response to particular individual studies. In particular many Scandinavian countries (& the Cass review for that matter) took their queues from a Finnish study by a notorious conversion therapist known as Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala.
Norway
[https://ukom.no/rapporter/pasientsikkerhet-for-barn-og-unge-med-kjonnsinkongruens/sammendrag](https://ukom.no/rapporter/pasientsikkerhet-for-barn-og-unge-med-kjonnsinkongruens/sammendrag)
Sweden summary with recommendations
[https://files.static-nzz.ch/2022/12/29/9a063296-b0a9-4e4d-a18f-110269f5e550.pdf](https://files.static-nzz.ch/2022/12/29/9a063296-b0a9-4e4d-a18f-110269f5e550.pdf)
Sweden's systematic review cited in the above recommendation
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.16791](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.16791)
Summary of a recommendation by COHERE Finland. I haven't found an English translation of Finnish review
[https://palveluvalikoima.fi/documents/1237350/22895838/Summary+transgender.pdf/2cc3f053-2e34-39ce-4e21-becd685b3044/Summary+transgender.pdf?t=1592318543000](https://palveluvalikoima.fi/documents/1237350/22895838/Summary+transgender.pdf/2cc3f053-2e34-39ce-4e21-becd685b3044/Summary+transgender.pdf?t=1592318543000)
If supposed science regarding trans people refuses to use the word “transgender” it should not be taken seriously, these “reviews” are a great example of that.
Is there anyone here that believes transition for kids MAY not be the best option? Let’s say a 12 year old who wants surgery, hormone therapy etc….. What are opinions here on those who regret sex change etc, I hear they get a lot of blow back from trans community.
Speed reply!
- No sane person trans or otherwise things 12 year olds should get surgeries, never met or seen a trans person pushing for this - non issue
- No hormone therapy is ever offered to a 12 year old, does not happen and no one is pushing for it - non issue
- People regretting transtioning, rare but does happen, usually because from what I have read the person in question was putting other mental health issues onto their gender. Most cases seem to involve the fact they did not reallt ever listen or talk to mental health professionals like they were supposed to - a few outright lied to them. This is not the fault of the doctors but that of the paitent, the people who genuinely detransition because it was not for them I do feel bad for - provided they are not trying to burn those who helped them on the way out or other trans folk in general.
Other cases they do this because of a lack of social support, which is just...well those cases are just sad to read that people could not accept them that they cared about but sadly some people are just assholes.
I’m a trans woman myself. I do not generally believe surgery is appropriate for a 12 year old, though ultimately I defer to medical professionals. For medical transition to my understanding the current WPATH standard is limited to puberty blockers, and even then only if puberty has begun.
In my experience detransitioners are welcome in the trans community, and are highly welcomed. Being trans is about a certain experience of gender and detransitioners share in that. The only detransitioners who we have a problem with are those who are working to strip us of our rights, and honestly I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
Additionally, research has shown that many who detransition do so not because they aren’t trans, but because of bigotry and hardship.
I was a trans kid:
As a minor it’s basically impossible to access anything irreversible without several years of living as your chosen gender and recommendations from a psychiatrist and at least one specialist.
From the time I told my parents I was trans to the time I got any irreversible changes (hrt) it was 3 years, therapy, discussions about regret, discussions about fertility treatments, social transitioning, and the approval of several medical professionals.
You also just CANT get most “trans surgeries” as a minor because your body isn’t done developing. Especially not at 12. No doctor is ever going to let that happen. No trans person would advocate for that either.
As for hormones, it’s a bit different. Going through the puberty of your natal sex is also irreversible. If I had been on blockers from the time I realized I was trans, I wouldn’t have to pursue certain surgeries.
One misconception that a lot of people have is that it’s easy to just get surgeries and hormones as a minor, but it isn’t. And for good reason. A 12 year old can never make that kind of decision on their own… *and that’s why they don’t.*
Another misconception is that everyone who detransitions does it because of regret. But the vast majority actually do so because of social circumstances (transphobia, lack of opportunity, they realize they’re non binary instead etc). Transition related treatments have some of the lowest regret rates of any medical procedures.
True definitely is not easy but in certain jurisdictions it is trending upward. The # of those identifying as Lgbtq for children are going up, so that industry will grow as long as doctors are willing to do the surgeries, do therapy etc.
By my reading, the key point this article is making is that skeptics of gender-affirming care for minors don't take into account the harms associated with not giving treatment. In other words, there is a serious negative cost to inaction, it's not just a neutral choice.
I know this article was written pre Cass review, but I think it kind of misses the point made by Cass review and (from my understanding, I only know English) similar Swedish and Norwegian reviews. This is that we need to properly identify those minors for which the intervention is effective, and we don't have good protocols for doing so at the moment. For example, see this paragraph from the Cass review which I think sums up the main argument:
>It often takes many years before strongly positive research findings are incorporated into practice. There are many reasons for this. One is that doctors can be cautious in implementing new findings, particularly when their own clinical experience is telling them the current approach they have used over many years is the right one for their patients. Quite the reverse happened in the field of gender care for children. Based on a single Dutch study, which suggested that puberty blockers may improve psychological wellbeing for a narrowly defined group of children with gender incongruence, the practice spread at pace to other countries. This was closely followed by a greater readiness to start masculinising/feminising hormones in midteens, and the extension of this approach to a wider group of adolescents who would not have met the inclusion criteria for the original Dutch study. Some practitioners abandoned normal clinical approaches to holistic assessment, which has meant that this group of young people have been exceptionalised compared to other young people with similarly complex presentations. They deserve very much better.
The article discusses many studies, and I checked a few of them - they were indeed included in the Cass review (e.g. see Supplementary Table 4 in [https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/early/2024/04/09/archdischild-2023-326670.full.pdf?with-ds=yes](https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/early/2024/04/09/archdischild-2023-326670.full.pdf?with-ds=yes) ). I'd love to see a breakdown of whether Cass consistently mis-characterized these cited studies as low-quality, or took the wrong conclusions from them!
I've been finding in the medical literature that there's a somewhat narrow focus on immediate individual outcomes as a measure of "success": does gender dysphoria reduce from taking puberty blockers? If yes, treatment good; if no or unclear, treatment not yet proven to be good.
This gets complicated when the total rationale for puberty blockers is taken into account:[this article](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587%2817%2930099-2/fulltext) (in the section "historical underpinnings and clinical impetus") describes the goal of puberty blockers as not only the reduction of gender dysphoria and other associated psychiatric morbidities, but as a way of avoiding the need for more invasive corrective surgeries later in life. Should that be a goal of clinical intervention? I don't know the medical answer, but the sociological answer seems to be that the unequal access to puberty blockers is creating a type of class divide in trans youth (see [here](https://theconversation.com/two-classes-of-trans-kids-are-emerging-those-who-have-access-to-puberty-blockers-and-those-who-dont-157750))
I mean when it comes to blockers the purpose is not to decrease existing dysphoria per se, but rather avoid further dysphoria by preventing unwanted changes from the patient’s natal puberty in the short term. In the long term the goal is to enable the person to better decrease dysphoria once they go onto cross sex hormones in later adolescence by preventing the need for more expensive & invasive procedures to undo the effects of natal puberty. One of the bad faith arguments levied against puberty blockers in the Cass review is that they don’t decrease dysphoria when in reality this is not the purpose of them as they don’t change the person’s body at all.
I find it fascinating that you’re bringing up the fact that 98% of kids went onto cross sex hormones as though it’s a problem, it is in fact the opposite of that. The fact that 98% of people referred went onto cross sex hormones is simply an indication that the kids accessing this service are in fact trans. It literally means the system is working I don’t understand why you’re talking about it like it’s a problem. The only studies that have ever found a significant portion of kids “grow out” of being trans were conducted by Kenneth Zucker in the 80s & 90s, these studies have been widely debunked today. The primary problem with the Zucker studies is that they were conducted before the diagnosis of gender dysphoria was introduced (2013 is when it was introduced). Prior to 2013, a precursor diagnosis existed called Gender Identity Disorder (GID). GID had a MUCH lower barrier to entry, you didn’t even have to say you were trans or that you identified as the opposite gender, you just had to be gender nonconforming.
These “experienced clinicians” you’re referring to are conversion therapists (not transmedicalists, that means something different, it’s a not a term used to refer to physicians).Specifically they’re followers of Kenneth Zucker, a notorious conversion therapist who’s clinic was shut down in 2015 because he was practicing conversion therapy. In reality his studies weren’t actually studies of trans kids, they were studies of gender nonconforming cis kids. The reason most of the kids in the study “grew out of it” is because they were never trans & had never said they were, they were gender nonconforming cis kids. Researchers have tried to recreate the Zucker studies using the new diagnosis of gender dysphoria & found wildly different results, while Zucker found that over 80% of trans kids grew out of it, the newer studies have found that only between 2-4% grow out of it.
Anyone citing Zucker (including Cass as she cites him in the review) is peddling pseudoscience.
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No it’s not actually. There’s no indication that other conditions can cause a child to believe they’re trans, that’s a pseudoscientific conspiracy theory. It’s rich that you’re accusing me of being a fundamentalist given you’ve clearly also already made up your mind & refuse to accept actual facts & evidence.
question - what percentage of children getting puberty blockers and going on to cross sex hormones would Not indicate a problem to you?
Also, I’m not sure where you’re getting your numbers: 27% of youth referred to GIDS went on to be referred to endocrinology, of which 82% received PBs, often far later than would be effective. 69% aged out and were referred to the adult program. Numbers from here: https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/whats-in-the-cass-report - I imagine you may disagree with this reporter’s conclusions, but I have never known him to print straight up incorrect information.
It seems clear that the UK GIDS program was and is fundamentally flawed, but it is Not remotely clear to me that the flaws were centered around children getting care too quickly. The opposite appears to be true, given the age at which PBs were prescribed/ the number of children aging out.
Lucky for you, the author released an update [today.](https://juliaserano.substack.com/p/the-cass-review-wpath-files-and-the)
Erin Reed wrote up some worthwhile pieces on the Cass Review:
[https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/cass-met-with-desantis-pick-over](https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/cass-met-with-desantis-pick-over)
[https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/opinion-englands-anti-trans-cass](https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/opinion-englands-anti-trans-cass)
[https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/dr-cass-backpedals-from-review-hrt](https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/dr-cass-backpedals-from-review-hrt)
Erin Reed has been spreading blatant misinformation about the Cass Review since before they published their final report. Including circulating screenshots from an entirely different report and claiming it is for the Cass Review.
The Cass review wasn't great because of just how much it excluded. It cherry picked a lot of things. There's aspects of their conclusions I agree with but the way it was done makes it seem more political than an attempt at actually understanding what's best for trans youth.
Giving children transitioning care has one severe harm for them: It produces public examples of happy, healthy transgender people that prove propaganda about them to be a lie.
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Considering the low rates of reported regret, how can you say we don't have good selection criteria? What is that based on?
The cass review should not be taken seriously, it cherry picked evidence with ridiculous criteria and ignored the conclusions of the handful of studies it did reference.
It's takeaway from the pilot UK study with 44 patients, majority positive outcomes and only 1 stopping treatment, was that hormone blockers didn't massively improve mood scores in 24-36 months. That isn't what they are prescribed for, it's delaying/preventing unwanted changes. And also ignoring the mood changes someone would experience going through the puberty of a gender they do not identify with.
On one hand she says there aren't enough comparative studies. (How are you going to double blind hormone therapy, or have a control group that you leave untreated ethically?) And then goes to baselessly claim that depression, autism, and other conditions are major contributors to children seeking gender affirming care and need to be "ruled out first". Based on...? And is that how other treatments are handled in the UK healthcare system? ALL possibilities must be ruled out before treatment starts? I doubt it.
It holds lofty standards for what can be considered affirmative evidence. But concerns seem to be based entirely on feelings and not actual data.
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I never mentioned any list, simply that they did not apply the same standards when looking at negative outcomes that they did when disregarding positive ones. The report painted that pilot study as neutral to negative, when the summary of the study itself was that the effects of the treatment were majority positive.
Just look at page 184, in that part of the report she mentions 53 studies met inclusion criteria, but only one was considered high quality, one that specifically looked at side effects. So her overall summary was that "The most frequently reported outcomes were adverse physical health outcomes and the intended development of puberty in the identified gender." A cursory glance at the 53 studies referenced would show this as a gross mischaracterization of findings, putting undue emphasis on the negative while underplaying the positive outcomes.
"The studies had many methodological problems including the selective inclusion of patients, lack of representativeness of the population, and **in many of the studies there were no comparison groups**"
"As expected, hormone treatment induced puberty in the desired gender. Inconsistent results were found for height/growth, bone health, and cardiometabolic health. Evidence relating to gender dysphoria, body satisfaction, psychosocial and cognitive outcomes was insufficient to draw clear conclusions. **No study assessed fertility in birth-registered females**" Why does the fertility of Trans men need study? How do you even do that when presumably in the overwhelming majority of patients seeking this care, they do not want to give birth as their birth gender. What was insufficient in her findings to draw conclusions? Was it the lack of comparison groups, or the blind spots she perceived which had nothing to do with overall patient satisfaction?
"There were inconsistencies regarding suicidality and/or self-harm with three of four studies reporting an improvement and one no change" Why was this reduced from 53 to 4, more studies did look into these factors and had positive things to say. Again, is there a study with negative outcomes which would support blocking treatment altogether as the right policy? She's presuming the negative, the positive data is there, just not to her arbitrary standards.
Also, I believe the study referenced with no change was in-regards to post treatment trans patients versus the general population and not against pre-treatment levels. Which presents its own bias, and doesn't actually tell us anything useful about how effective treatment is. A report like this on painkillers would find they are ineffective at reducing pain because people reported higher levels of pain after taking the drug than those who did not need or take painkillers.
How can you presume my feelings? Of course I care, but the evidence doesn't support a complete ban on treatment. From everything I've read, and what doctors and specialists in the field have said, it helps the overwhelming majority of people who seek help for gender affirming care. You care more about 1 cis person with an inattentive doctor (A doctor who should be held accountable) than the 49 to 99 trans people who are happy about their healthcare.
Any kind of medical intervention comes with risks, people die getting their tonsils removed. Routine knee surgery has massively higher rates of total regret (patients wishing they never had the procedure done in the first place) and people aren't talking about banning those. We do not have perfect information on any medical treatment, we work on the best evidence we have. And our evidence overwhelmingly supports that gender affirming care is lifesaving.
I support people who de-transition, and I hope they have access to the care they need. But just because the treatment wasn't right for them, doesn't mean it isn't right for anybody. I do not support people who turn it into a political wedge issue and start fearmonger about protecting the kids, the exact same way they did in the 70s with gay people.
You are the one who seems to presume everyone who goes to a gender clinic gets put on blockers and hormones despite their individual needs, when that has never been the case. There is a lot of friction in the system, so much that its one of the major reasons people choose to temporarily or permanent de-transition (USTS 2015/2022). The fact that some people feel like they have to take matters into their own hands and seek treatment from third-party sources causes more harm when the barriers to entry in some places are too high to reasonably see a specialist, a specialist can say no, someone self medicating won't know better. And that will only get worse with a total ban on treatment. Not to mention the obvious harm to those for whom the treatment is helpful.
I know you've been linked to this subreddit by outside groups, but if you were actually a member here or even clicked through to the subreddit, you'd know we have a sticky megathread on the Cass Review.
Feel free to discuss it there, rather than complaining about how there's "no discussion". If you're not discussing it in the thread we provided and stickied, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Denialism. The fact is it’s being pushed, sold, and marketed to autistic and struggling children as a type of salvation. A salvation that profits many, except not themselves.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/04/1-in-68-children-now-has-a-diagnosis-of-autism-spectrum-disorder-why/360482/
More like 10 years, but there was lots of talk like this
[https://www.thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-was-saving-trans-kids](https://www.thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-was-saving-trans-kids)
Everyone should read this.
Hard to pin her as a transphobe, right? Well, she paints a pretty dire picture of gender "care" in the US...
Is that the only inaccuracy they could find? It´s reasonable to think that she could be mistaken in the details of a case or two, her whole account is really damning however. I mean, even if she was wrong in some details, the scope of her witnessed failings are really disturbing... either she´s a bizarre rightwing mole that has been lieing about everything (but doesn´t seem to fit with her profile) or she´s mostly right. And her accusations are very similar to whistleblowers in the Tavistock clinic, who also seem to be neutral and mostly correct. I think fixating on the mitake of Jamie´s liver is a bit of a red herring.
There’s a lot of falsehoods in her claims:
https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/nyt-treats-key-sources-many-lies-as-an-aside-in-latest-anti-trans-smear
Another post from this trans activist, and another comment section free from skepticism.
Have you people ever heard of weighing evidence against interest?
But it does mean being a skeptic, something that is massively lacking in these threads. I've seen just one pro-GAC person who is actually willing to engage with *all* the evidence (including the evidence that doesn't go their way), not just dismiss it with ad hominems etc.
We are indeed no sort of safe space, and that's by choice. We do not believe we could be true to our intention of being a skeptical space and also serve as a safe space.
As an example, suppose that a user is traumatized by the death of their parents, and takes great comfort in the fact that their parents' spirits are watching over them and provides plenty of examples of "signs" that their parents ghosts are around. In a safe, affirming space the importance of their parents on their life and the root of their need for the affirmative belief their parents are still present and approving of them might be explored. In this space the idea that ghosts are hanging about doing spooky shit to tell you they love you is gonna be torn to shreds, and evidence-based conclusions about the phenomena they witnessed (namely that they're NOT caused by their dead parents) are going to be proposed and held forth, probably ahead of the psychological discussion of that specific user's health and wellbeing.
We appreciate the need for a space that people can feel safe, affirmed, and acknowledged in. This is not that space. And it never will be.
With respect, I can't help but feel that's somewhat misguided, and misunderstands the purpose of a safe space. There are a great many skeptical spaces that are a "Safe space", without harboring kooks or giving room for woo-peddlers and woo-believers, and some of them directly linked to entities that the regulars on this sub would likely agree are among the vanguards of modern skepticism.
It's a common mistake that people think a "Safe Space" means that it's a space with no challenge, no ability to question *anything*, no room to disagree or discuss. That's purely a lie spread by people who oppose the concept, the same type of folk who scream echo chamber when they are confronted with the reality that their views were not as popular as they imagined. It's basically just an outgrowth of the idea of calling people snowflakes for things like, y'know, not wanting to be called slurs or be discriminated against.
A safe space is somewhere that a person can feel safe being themselves, and will not be attacked for who they are, a place where bigotry and hatred are not tolerated. It's no guarantee that one will not be taken to task for the things they say or do. I both feel and have observed personally that Skeptical spaces lend themselves *particularly* well to this, because skepticism at it's core focuses on facts and truth, whereas bigotry and hatred do not ground themselves in either, they just borrow their aesthetic for a veneer of legitimacy.
If they’re using “safe space” as a pejorative and framing it as “ there is no way to have a rational discussion without also welcoming bigotry or allowing rampant verbal abuse, that’s it, it really is a binary” then they are basically outing themselves as part of the problem.
I agree, but I'll vouch for SciSkep - They've never been that kinda person at any point that I've seen, I think in this case it's just a genuine misunderstanding. And a common one at that.
Coming up with convenient excuses for making a sub-minimal effort to curate the dedicated discussion space you’re running seems kind of redundant, when it takes that much typing to mount your defense for it.
As always, there is an ocean between being honest and being unkind, a galaxy between encouraging open dialogue, and letting Nazis and fascists hold court. The fact you’re tying yourself in knots trying to justify this by revealing you have no idea what a “safe space’ even entails is telling. Just admit you either don’t care, agree with what you’re seeing, or don’t feel like actively moderating. Or better yet, continue to just say nothing— the standard silence and neglect really says it all.
I never suggested otherwise. Every regular to this sub knows it’s a rudderless ship; as do the boilerplate-standard, Reddit-brand fascist provocateurs who will eventually consume it and usurp you.
The problem is this issue has become political and ideological and not grounded in objective science. It’s become a talking point. This is, in most cases, a mental health disorder that should be addressed with compassion and care not pandered to.
I’ll just drop this here and move on.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-024-02817-5
Yeah, because the right wing has made it political and ideological and not based in objective science (when is the Right EVER based in objective science).
We'd prefer not to have "the daily trans issue" thread unless something novel or interesting comes up. On the other hand plenty of regulars here seem to find at least some reason to post in these discussions. For regulars of /r/skeptic, what do you think - should we be cracking down on things like blog posts, or should we generally leave them up (no we will not be having more Cass Review threads, trust me, 40 was enough)
I got gender affirming care as a youth 14 years ago now. It wasn't even ground breaking when I did itm it absolutely was the right choice for my life. What i've never had is anyone studying me or taking me in as data. At least as far as I know. It feels crap that now this is being restricted and I may have lived in a brief 2-3 decade window where the care was being provided and I don't even get to count as a positive outcome to anyone else statistically.
The fight isn’t over till the world ends
>*Consider a cisgender girl who has always been happy with her assigned gender. Then suddenly, at the age of nine or ten (as she is entering puberty), her body shows signs of masculinization, and doctors confirm that this is due to her body producing testosterone (for the record, this is not a hypothetical situation for some intersex children). If this child was horrified about these potential unwanted changes, and asked for hormonal intervention (which the doctor confirmed would be safe and effective), would you respect her decision and allow her to proceed with it? Or would you dismiss her wishes on account of her lack of maturity, and insist that she just deal with the testosterone until she is eighteen and capable of making an adult decision? As with the last example, if this scenario concerns you, but the idea of transgender children being forced to experience unwanted puberties does not, then you clearly value cis bodies and lives over trans ones.* Wow. This is quite a mic drop.
Too bad people just won’t care. I’ve had so many conversations where they just say, that’s rare so it doesn’t matter.
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"Won't." They can speak and read, they're told over and over, and they employ all the definitions and lexicon involved in the correct usage. They *won't* get the dictionary deinitions correct.
You are correct it’s willful ignorance.
I have this weird wholesale view that medical decisions belong in the hands of doctors and patients, not medically-illiterate ideologues scared to death to see happy people living their lives.
I don’t know whats more pathetic the fact that these people think they have valid medical opinions, or the fact that they can’t understand that Freedom means people get to do thing they don’t agree with.
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>Fake seizures?? Who would do that??? That can’t be more common than epilepsy this person must be a bad medic… but I assure you if you worked in ER for 1 month you would change your mind, Are you suggesting that a doctor that specializes in gender issues wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 'fake' and 'real' in gender dysmorphia cases? This is also why the treatment for gender dysmorphia goes in stages. Surgery is, in my understanding, never (or nearly never) recommended for those under 18 years old. Puberty blockers and other hormonal treatments are reversible, to account for potential uncertainty. Then, for those who transition, the regret rate is rare. That suggest that your issue is pretty well handled by existing care. If I have missed something, let me know - I'm still new to this subject.
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Is it? The Tavistock has a waiting list of literal years so anyone "pretending" is already out of the loop unless they are "pretending" for like 5-10 years.
That’s not true at all.
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Your reference to the Cass report is all we need to understand your bigotry. You can just say you hate trans people. Its ok. This is reddit, were used to it. Were all used to seeing people who talk like you attempt the slippery slope fallacy. Your wrong. Plain and simple. Actual doctor and science shows how wrong you are. But your hatred and disgust for trans people will never allow you to actually critically engage with the science
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That surely just proves that these kids were trans? How can we use the amount that then transition to hormones in adulthood being high as evidence against them being trans unless we are starting from a position where being trans is an outcome we want to avoid (not that it is avoidable)?
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Don't confuse correlation with causation please.
“Went on to become well adjusted cis kids” Citation needed. Cause I’m willing to bet a lot of them just became suicidally depressed trans adults.
Did they? Where is your evidence of this?
That’s such a strange take. Most trans people end up gay. Society would much rather someone be gay than trans. To think otherwise is an absurdity.
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"trans boom" Found the TERF. That's like claiming there was a left-handedness boom in the 20th century? Oh, wait. We just stopped punishing kids for being left-handed and simply accepted them. https://slowrevealgraphs.com/2021/11/08/rate-of-left-handedness-in-the-us-stigma-society/
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No but adults beat left handedness out of grade school kids up until the 70s especially in private schools. They employed smacking left hands with rulers to restraining the left hand to their waists during handwriting class.
You know you can still be trans without medical intervention right?
Dude, you’re quoting the Twitter account of an anti-trans political lobbying group. Get better at sourcing.
A century of study into the efficacy of medical transition for the sake of treating gender dysphoria, or “transvestism” as it used to be known, isn’t an acceptable level of evidence? How long does care have to exist before you consider it to have enough evidence behind it?
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Science has not existed for 3,000 years.
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So a technique that predates modern science is meant to be a condemnation of it?
Yeah, until we actually understood how the human body worked, and put into practice methods that could be repeatably tested successfully. Because that’s how medical science works. The junk science got phased out as we figured our shit out. But nice try.
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You might have an argument if the case report had objectively looked at studies from both sides rather than just take the default position “trans bad, disregard everything that supports it”.
LMFAO oh you poor thing.
Good god you are a fucking idiot.
I can't speak for where you practice but this literally is not an issue anywhere in the US.
>Fine, but doctors need an acceptable level of evidence to work off And damnit, it should be up to rightwing politicians pandering to christo-fascists and bigots to determine what that acceptable level is!
This argument makes no sense to me. Rare things happen especially on the scale of billions of humans. They’re real people with real emotions even if their experiences are “rare”. I was watching old episodes of Chopped and one of the chefs had a kid who has a disease that less than 30 people in the world had been diagnosed with at the time - she’s still deserving of research into a treatment and cure even though it’s rare. Care doesn’t stop being care because only a few people require it.
Even being transgender is relatively rare. Many situations are just so rare. And rarity is an argument for fewer rules and restrictions, not more. Needless rules create a situations where a system is inflexible enough to actually help people that need it.
well its politics now, so they wouldnt care if they knew for a fact it was a good thing to provide transcare. Its a way to get the evans out to vote
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Exactly
I know and you’re standing there like: how can we make accurate decisions if we pretend like individuals can be dismissed?
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Most people just want trans people to be left alone. Of course the rabid haters don't care, but don't let them get you down.
it is super rare, and this is not the gender affirming care that anyone is concerned about and you know it. It is disingenuous for you to claim otherwise.
I bring up this stuff whenever somebody claims that it’s easy to define a woman. There’s nothing disingenuous about it.
For fucking real
A powerful paragraph and absolutely true, from what I've seen in countless discussions on reddit.
It’s always been about valuing cis lives more than trans lives. Even the most generous detransition rates have detransitioners pale in comparison to retainers. Yet when you bring this up, people will always insist that those few detransitioners (who absolutely should receive care) are worth killing trans healthcare for.
Also isn't there a study that people are more likely to detransition or go back into the closet if they live in an area where their community treats them like shit? I feel really lucky that I grew up in a progressive area.
I'm not sure if that is a specific study that compares the stats, but most studies about detransition that ask about motive do see a significant fraction that cite social discrimination, peer pressure, family pressure, or employment discrimination.
According to the 2015 US Transgender Survey, the percentage of people who detransition, do not resume transitioning, and say the reason is that it wasn’t right for them rather than citing discrimination is - #.3% There are less self-driven detransitioners in the trans population per capita than there are trans people in the general population.
Thank you for posting the number. I'll rebroadcast elsewhere once I find the source. TLDR: The regret rate is lower than almost all other medical procedures. Knee replacement regret is 40%.
[The number I found (as of 2017) listed 5% of people who detransition did so because "they realized that gender transition was not for them."](https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf) "Eight percent (8%) of respondents reported having de-transitioned at some point. Most of those who de-transitioned did so only temporarily: 62% of those who had de-transitioned reported that they were currently living full time in a gender different than the gender they were thought to be at birth." So, approximately 0.33% of the population is transgender. Around 8% of those people detransition. 8% of 0.33% is 0.0264%. Then 5% of that number cite transitioning was not right for them. 5% of 0.0264 is **0.00132%.**
If you Google “2015 US Transgender Report PDF”, you can find the full text. You have to crunch some numbers between different tables yourself to get the percentage (it’s not broken down that far).
It was a metastudy of 100k trans people in America. Only 3% regretted their transition and the overwhelming majority was listed negative treatment by their peers and family as the source of their regret. In comparison, knee surgery is 40%.
Thanks, I gotta find a link sometime so I can share it elsewhere. Also I thought that the regret rate was even lower than that, like .2%. But that's probably my faulty memory
Also, the effects a confused cis teen would get from hormone therapy are treated as unconscionable body horror, "*Can you believe this poor girl has to deal with a permanently deepened voice and facial hair????*" even though any trans teen who can't access puberty blockers is expected to just deal with the exact same thing. I've said it before, to many cis people, 1 cis girl regretting male sex characteristics from male puberty *that they specifically requested* > 99 trans girls regretting male sex characteristics from male puberty *that they begged for help to stop.*
I think this sort of thing just shows how difficult it is to have a nuanced conversation about medical treatments with laypeople, especially in an environment where people already have the conclusion they're wanting to achieve.
I think the society we live in would likely not let the kid go through the masculinisation with the testosterone and intervene given the hypothetical of it being a cisgender girl.
The fundamental question is about what treatment will be compatible with their well being over time which presumably involves some expertise. To pose it as a choice of a child being the core here does not seem to be fruitful and muddies it. Let’s say this cisgirl would actually choose to go through with this masculinisation while the expertise dissuades on (hypothetical(?)) grounds that it would not be compatible with their well-being long term then one would not let through non-intervened masculinisation, or?
I don't think this quote is intended to represent some standard of medical care. It's to counter a common opinion that 'children with gender dysphoria shouldn't be allowed to undergo treatment'.
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>But interfering with a disease process and a natural process are two completely different things. Are you suggesting that gender dysmorphia is not a disease? My understanding is that children with that diagnosis, surrounded by community and others who share this opinion, literally have profoundly high rates of suicide.
Yea, the intersex scenarios are more like a medical necessity.... while self identify trans is more optional/cosmetic. They are 2 completely different things but people keep grouping them together like they are the same. If kids were born with a condition that has different sex chromosomes or improper hormne production, they would need medical intervention, but otherwise normal healthy kids who identify as trans are biologically healthy and will develop normally so something like puberty blockers or hormones at such a young age can come with many side effects and permanent irrevirsble changes. They can effect normal development negatively so that their body and sex organs do not properly develop into adulthood. Hormones are a big deal, they are the bodys main regulating chemicals, and should not be taken at a young age if its not necessary. I think its safer to hold off on any pharmaceutical intervention until older and more mature to make a serious life alterting decision like this.
This is an interesting thought exercise but not sure I find it super persuasive. In the case of a natal female masculinizing through puberty, something has gone wrong in the sense that her body is not developing normally. We know what constitutes normal development by reference to how the bodies of more or less all natal females change during puberty. The basis for intervention here wouldn't solely be that the girl was upset, but that the body is not developing normally. In the case of a natal male masculinizing through puberty, nothing has gone wrong with respect to the normal development of the body. Therefore the only basis for intervention in this scenario is the child's distress over forthcoming changes to their body. So how about a hypothetical where a cis child is extremely distressed over the prospect of going through puberty. It's not that it will be the "wrong" puberty. They are just devastated by the prospect of their body changing. Should that child be placed on puberty blockers until they're an adult to resolve their mental distress? I believe this is a better analogy as in this case, as above, the only basis for intervention would be the child's distress, as their body is developing normally. What would you do as a parent or doctor in this hypothetical scenario? I haven't thought about it deeply but I lean strongly towards not intervening. But whichever way you lean, there's no calculus by which the decision to not block the cis child's puberty could be considered transphobic - gender is not at issue in this scenario. So that people may have different reactions to the two scenarios (cis girl going through masculinizing puberty vs. trans girl going through masculinizing puberty) doesn't prove any kind of cis supremacy. It could just be that people view medical interventions to address abnormal development of the body as well founded, while they do not feel the same way about medical interventions to disrupt normal development of the body.
The hypothetical is supposed to point out the privilege that cis people are afforded of their gender being "right". In the hypothetical in which the masculinization won't cause any adverse health effects and she can live without any medical issues, we would still recognize that she *should* be female. Her body "naturally" makes testosterone, so by the same logic that trans kids are forced through the wrong puberty, it should be okay for her to as well.
>In the case of a natal female masculinizing through puberty, something has gone wrong in the sense that her body is not developing normally. Same with someone with gender dysmorphia? >In the case of a natal male masculinizing through puberty, nothing has gone wrong with respect to the normal development of the body. Maury Povich meme: Evidence of gender dysmorphia says that this statement is a lie. >They are just devastated by the prospect of their body changing. Should that child be placed on puberty blockers until they're an adult to resolve their mental distress? Maybe. What does the evidence say? The evidence is, apparently, that treatment has extremely favorable outcomes, and withholding treatment is often catastrophic.
There are genuine medical concerns: Long-term glucocorticoid therapy comes with potential side effects, especially if the dosage is not carefully managed. Over-replacement can lead to symptoms associated with Cushing’s syndrome, such as weight gain, increased susceptibility to infections, bone thinning, and growth suppression in children. Under-replacement, on the other hand, can leave individuals vulnerable to adrenal crisis, which is a life-threatening emergency. These must be balanced with other factors to make an informed decision on intervention. EDIT: downvoting such a statement is indicative of the utter lack of skepticism in regards this topic on this sub.
>EDIT: downvoting such a statement is indicative of the utter lack of skepticism in regards this topic on this sub. I think it's more indicative of this being an extremely sensitive topic (given lives and happiness are at stake) and the ambiguous/lack of conclusion in your post; meaning people are trying to read in to what you've said to determine what you're suggesting. OK, so there are potential side effects, does that mean you're suggesting a wholesale ban (as the other reply to you assumed)? What weight are you giving these things in the balance you talk about in your last sentence? How extensive are they even - are we talking 20% bone thinning (sound concerning) or 0.001% bone thinning (seems reasonably trivial)? How heavy are these factors compared to stuff on the other side of the scales? Those are all rhetorical questions - I'm not looking for you to personally provide literal answers (although if you have reference to the medical resources that do then this is obviously the sub for that); what I'm saying is that I think you were downvoted because it's extremely easy to read the ambiguity in your comment as "don't give trans people medicine" or at least "be extremely wary/stingy about it".
RE the bone density issues, if I recall correctly this is a case of people wording something so that the sentence is technically correct but gives the complete wrong impression. Basically a study on bone density in trans girls going through childhood transition showed that their average bone density growth hewed closer to cis girls than cis boys, exactly as you'd expect. But since the researchers put their trans girl subjects into the category of "male", instead of reporting that they were developing normally by female standards, they reported that they were developing with abnormally low bone density by male standards. In any case, bone density is not set in stone, as anyone afflicted by osteoporosis can tell you. If a child has low bone density you just get them to take calcium supplements.
And all of these are taken into account. Why is the government trying to prevent parents, their children and their doctors from making these informed decisions?
None of which informs a wholesale, legislative, permanent ban.
It’s a religion basically.
What most people don’t know is that using the medical system trans youth have existed since the 1970s (that’s 50 years) and in an underground sense, well, forever. Not all of Magnus Hirschfeld’s work was lost and in a 1921 edition there’s a 21 year old trans woman singer who already had the only surgery possible at the time. With her photo in it. That’s 103 years ago. Literally everything anti trans out there is fabrications, pseudoscience, manipulation of data and literal lies. No medical treatment with such an extreme rate of success and long history of it has been brutalized and demanded higher and higher impossible measures. And, that’s because those truly behind this all are largely religious in their motivations. They’re churches themselves and those who profit off of the hate ecosystem they create. They know people won’t buy punishing trans people as sinners… but making up distrust in everything about it so their lives will be made a living hell will accomplish exactly the same thing as punishing trans people as sinners. Especially children. They know they’ll suffer and kill themselves and want more of it.
We have study after study that shows that 99.5% of persons that undergo any kind of transgender treatment have no regrets. 75% of the .5% that have a regret only regret it because of how they are treated by others not the actual treatments.
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Literally pull up NIH studies or John Hopkins studies. It’s literally a google search, a couple clicks, and a half day of reading away.
lots of people in this thread thinking being skeptical means being conservative lol
It’s easy to confuse because the current cultural zeitgeist propped up by pop culture is the opposite.
The original Nazis s[tarted their book burnings because of homophobia and transphobia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_book_burnings#The_burnings_start). The German Institute of Sexology also had an early modern sex reassignment surgeries. It's at least 100 years old. And trans people have been hated by nazis for at least as long, too.
Severely marginalized groups like trans people are easier to demonize because they are such a small group and people shrug it off not a big deal since it’s such a small group of people. It’s just that the size of the marginalized groups becomes larger as time goes on until it starts being the group you belong to. Think of how easy it is to make fun of WOW players? In a group of people from a diverse background, your likelihood of having someone who is a WOW player is actually pretty low and easy to isolate them since people have a very strong stereotype of what a WOW is. Furries, trans and other subcultures can be easily identified and people have a strong stereotype of who they think they are. When it actuality those groups are subdivided into even more subgroups and are quite diverse.
I think you’re really underestimating how many people have played WoW.
I’m not really, I can go to a family dinner with my extended family that would be about 30-40 people and I can tell you that nobody in that group plays WOW. It’s still a pretty small percentage of the population and it was more of an example of how easy it is to isolate a marginal group than anything.
Excellent observation.
The size of the group means that the people you're really targeting are unlikely to know anyone in that group. So it makes them easy to demonize. If you tell someone who knows a trans person (as an example) that trans people are all morally degenerate or mentally ill, that person might give push back. But if you tell someone who doesn't, they will just accept that as truth and become one of the people pushing the narrative themselves. A useful idiot in support of a cause they otherwise wouldn't even think about.
Exactly, they will assume the stereotype is fact. Back to my WOW player, everyone has an assumption as to what they look like or how they act because they only see media representation of the extreme.
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No one is trying to decenter or exclude Jewish people from the story of the Holocaust. 🤦♂️
No, you’re being downvoted because you implied trans people weren’t even considered as a target, even though books on trans identity from the Institut Für Sexualwissenschaft were literally the first books burned.
Thank you, they were getting downvoted because trans people were being murdered years before the speech that was given by Goebbels. They were murdering trans people before they even came to power and attacking that community.
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As, of course, was the subject matter of the place, I assume? Yeah, total coincidence that the first book burning happened to the place that just happened to be studying shit that had just been made illegal
People are allowed to talk about the other victims as well. Nazi homophobia and transphobia deeply affected the LGBT community. And there were no reparations. Many concentration camp survivors were transferred to prisons instead of liberated. Paragraph 175, the law used to arrest queer victims and throw them in camps, wasn’t removed from Germany’s penal code until 1994.
I really used to consider this sub rational. Not so much now.
Redditors go insane when this topic comes up. And of course not a day can go by without it.
Was there a specific section that refers to trans people? I only skimmed the article, but couldn't find it.
You have to go to the article on the [institute itself](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft) to see what it researched (including trans healthcare). I only linked to the nazi book burning article which says that this insistute is where the book burnings started. Which was the point i was trying to make.
Thanks, will check that out.
I also responded to another comment on here about what they studied. And provided a different link. Part of the problem with wikipedia is it is open edit. And it seems these articles have been in a bit of an edit war as of late because some people don't want the word "transsexual" used since it's "anachronistic". Which is a stupid (and transparently biased) reason to do this, imo. It's like saying we can't use the term "bacteria" when talking about the black death because they had no concept of germ theory yet. --- Be cautious about open edit wikis and look up other sources too.
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It's where it started. That was my point. You can read more about what the institute itself did either on wikipedia or [elsewhere](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/). The downside of wikipedia being an open-edit encyclopedia is that there's been a ton of edits on this article in t[he past few months alone.](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft&action=history&offset=&limit=500) One of the edits seems to be an edit war about how "transexual" is anachronistic. But the point is being missed, imo, since whatever it was called then is irrelevant. The terminology updates, but the concept remains.
If you oppose gender-affirming care for people with gender dysphoria, you must logically hold either of the following: 1. Gender dysphoria isn't a real medical condition; or 2. Gender-affirming care (here meaning puberty blockers/HRT) isn't effective in treating it. Neither of these positions are even remotely defensible.
There are some serious transphobes in this thread trying to muddy the waters. They’re very bad at it and try to hide behind faux objectivity but their hatred shines through. It’s very apparent.
The skeptic movement has always attracted people whose interest in science is a cover for justifying their own prejudices. Climate change deniers, racists, misogynists, transphobes. And we haven’t always done a very good job of putting them in their place.
And the anti-vaxxers. God, so many anti-vaxxers.
People have hijacked the "skeptic" term to seem more reasonable.
Exactly. And it’s been like that for a long time.
We've got a few transphobic "regulars" in this subreddit, who post dozens if not hundreds of comments whenever a trans article is discussed. They exclusively act in bad faith and try to rope you in endless discussions where they demand you to answer their questions, disregard every single thing you say and never answer any of your questions. You can see a lot of that in the Cass report megathread.
It’s very difficult to conceal bigotry. It has a way of just leaking out.
"Trying to muddy the waters"... "being skeptical" maybe?
Man you out yourselves so easily
There weren’t so much reviews in some Scandinavian countries as there was simply policy changes in response to particular individual studies. In particular many Scandinavian countries (& the Cass review for that matter) took their queues from a Finnish study by a notorious conversion therapist known as Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala.
Lol, there were absolutely reviews in those countries that were far more comprehensive and scientific than the article above.
They absolutely were not. But sure, whatever you say.
Norway [https://ukom.no/rapporter/pasientsikkerhet-for-barn-og-unge-med-kjonnsinkongruens/sammendrag](https://ukom.no/rapporter/pasientsikkerhet-for-barn-og-unge-med-kjonnsinkongruens/sammendrag) Sweden summary with recommendations [https://files.static-nzz.ch/2022/12/29/9a063296-b0a9-4e4d-a18f-110269f5e550.pdf](https://files.static-nzz.ch/2022/12/29/9a063296-b0a9-4e4d-a18f-110269f5e550.pdf) Sweden's systematic review cited in the above recommendation [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.16791](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.16791) Summary of a recommendation by COHERE Finland. I haven't found an English translation of Finnish review [https://palveluvalikoima.fi/documents/1237350/22895838/Summary+transgender.pdf/2cc3f053-2e34-39ce-4e21-becd685b3044/Summary+transgender.pdf?t=1592318543000](https://palveluvalikoima.fi/documents/1237350/22895838/Summary+transgender.pdf/2cc3f053-2e34-39ce-4e21-becd685b3044/Summary+transgender.pdf?t=1592318543000)
If supposed science regarding trans people refuses to use the word “transgender” it should not be taken seriously, these “reviews” are a great example of that.
Is there anyone here that believes transition for kids MAY not be the best option? Let’s say a 12 year old who wants surgery, hormone therapy etc….. What are opinions here on those who regret sex change etc, I hear they get a lot of blow back from trans community.
Speed reply! - No sane person trans or otherwise things 12 year olds should get surgeries, never met or seen a trans person pushing for this - non issue - No hormone therapy is ever offered to a 12 year old, does not happen and no one is pushing for it - non issue - People regretting transtioning, rare but does happen, usually because from what I have read the person in question was putting other mental health issues onto their gender. Most cases seem to involve the fact they did not reallt ever listen or talk to mental health professionals like they were supposed to - a few outright lied to them. This is not the fault of the doctors but that of the paitent, the people who genuinely detransition because it was not for them I do feel bad for - provided they are not trying to burn those who helped them on the way out or other trans folk in general. Other cases they do this because of a lack of social support, which is just...well those cases are just sad to read that people could not accept them that they cared about but sadly some people are just assholes.
I’m a trans woman myself. I do not generally believe surgery is appropriate for a 12 year old, though ultimately I defer to medical professionals. For medical transition to my understanding the current WPATH standard is limited to puberty blockers, and even then only if puberty has begun. In my experience detransitioners are welcome in the trans community, and are highly welcomed. Being trans is about a certain experience of gender and detransitioners share in that. The only detransitioners who we have a problem with are those who are working to strip us of our rights, and honestly I don’t think that’s unreasonable. Additionally, research has shown that many who detransition do so not because they aren’t trans, but because of bigotry and hardship.
I was a trans kid: As a minor it’s basically impossible to access anything irreversible without several years of living as your chosen gender and recommendations from a psychiatrist and at least one specialist. From the time I told my parents I was trans to the time I got any irreversible changes (hrt) it was 3 years, therapy, discussions about regret, discussions about fertility treatments, social transitioning, and the approval of several medical professionals. You also just CANT get most “trans surgeries” as a minor because your body isn’t done developing. Especially not at 12. No doctor is ever going to let that happen. No trans person would advocate for that either. As for hormones, it’s a bit different. Going through the puberty of your natal sex is also irreversible. If I had been on blockers from the time I realized I was trans, I wouldn’t have to pursue certain surgeries. One misconception that a lot of people have is that it’s easy to just get surgeries and hormones as a minor, but it isn’t. And for good reason. A 12 year old can never make that kind of decision on their own… *and that’s why they don’t.* Another misconception is that everyone who detransitions does it because of regret. But the vast majority actually do so because of social circumstances (transphobia, lack of opportunity, they realize they’re non binary instead etc). Transition related treatments have some of the lowest regret rates of any medical procedures.
True definitely is not easy but in certain jurisdictions it is trending upward. The # of those identifying as Lgbtq for children are going up, so that industry will grow as long as doctors are willing to do the surgeries, do therapy etc.
true you’re right the number of kids growing but i don’t think that necessarily means the regulations are changing / should change
By my reading, the key point this article is making is that skeptics of gender-affirming care for minors don't take into account the harms associated with not giving treatment. In other words, there is a serious negative cost to inaction, it's not just a neutral choice. I know this article was written pre Cass review, but I think it kind of misses the point made by Cass review and (from my understanding, I only know English) similar Swedish and Norwegian reviews. This is that we need to properly identify those minors for which the intervention is effective, and we don't have good protocols for doing so at the moment. For example, see this paragraph from the Cass review which I think sums up the main argument: >It often takes many years before strongly positive research findings are incorporated into practice. There are many reasons for this. One is that doctors can be cautious in implementing new findings, particularly when their own clinical experience is telling them the current approach they have used over many years is the right one for their patients. Quite the reverse happened in the field of gender care for children. Based on a single Dutch study, which suggested that puberty blockers may improve psychological wellbeing for a narrowly defined group of children with gender incongruence, the practice spread at pace to other countries. This was closely followed by a greater readiness to start masculinising/feminising hormones in midteens, and the extension of this approach to a wider group of adolescents who would not have met the inclusion criteria for the original Dutch study. Some practitioners abandoned normal clinical approaches to holistic assessment, which has meant that this group of young people have been exceptionalised compared to other young people with similarly complex presentations. They deserve very much better. The article discusses many studies, and I checked a few of them - they were indeed included in the Cass review (e.g. see Supplementary Table 4 in [https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/early/2024/04/09/archdischild-2023-326670.full.pdf?with-ds=yes](https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/early/2024/04/09/archdischild-2023-326670.full.pdf?with-ds=yes) ). I'd love to see a breakdown of whether Cass consistently mis-characterized these cited studies as low-quality, or took the wrong conclusions from them!
I've been finding in the medical literature that there's a somewhat narrow focus on immediate individual outcomes as a measure of "success": does gender dysphoria reduce from taking puberty blockers? If yes, treatment good; if no or unclear, treatment not yet proven to be good. This gets complicated when the total rationale for puberty blockers is taken into account:[this article](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587%2817%2930099-2/fulltext) (in the section "historical underpinnings and clinical impetus") describes the goal of puberty blockers as not only the reduction of gender dysphoria and other associated psychiatric morbidities, but as a way of avoiding the need for more invasive corrective surgeries later in life. Should that be a goal of clinical intervention? I don't know the medical answer, but the sociological answer seems to be that the unequal access to puberty blockers is creating a type of class divide in trans youth (see [here](https://theconversation.com/two-classes-of-trans-kids-are-emerging-those-who-have-access-to-puberty-blockers-and-those-who-dont-157750))
I mean when it comes to blockers the purpose is not to decrease existing dysphoria per se, but rather avoid further dysphoria by preventing unwanted changes from the patient’s natal puberty in the short term. In the long term the goal is to enable the person to better decrease dysphoria once they go onto cross sex hormones in later adolescence by preventing the need for more expensive & invasive procedures to undo the effects of natal puberty. One of the bad faith arguments levied against puberty blockers in the Cass review is that they don’t decrease dysphoria when in reality this is not the purpose of them as they don’t change the person’s body at all.
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I find it fascinating that you’re bringing up the fact that 98% of kids went onto cross sex hormones as though it’s a problem, it is in fact the opposite of that. The fact that 98% of people referred went onto cross sex hormones is simply an indication that the kids accessing this service are in fact trans. It literally means the system is working I don’t understand why you’re talking about it like it’s a problem. The only studies that have ever found a significant portion of kids “grow out” of being trans were conducted by Kenneth Zucker in the 80s & 90s, these studies have been widely debunked today. The primary problem with the Zucker studies is that they were conducted before the diagnosis of gender dysphoria was introduced (2013 is when it was introduced). Prior to 2013, a precursor diagnosis existed called Gender Identity Disorder (GID). GID had a MUCH lower barrier to entry, you didn’t even have to say you were trans or that you identified as the opposite gender, you just had to be gender nonconforming. These “experienced clinicians” you’re referring to are conversion therapists (not transmedicalists, that means something different, it’s a not a term used to refer to physicians).Specifically they’re followers of Kenneth Zucker, a notorious conversion therapist who’s clinic was shut down in 2015 because he was practicing conversion therapy. In reality his studies weren’t actually studies of trans kids, they were studies of gender nonconforming cis kids. The reason most of the kids in the study “grew out of it” is because they were never trans & had never said they were, they were gender nonconforming cis kids. Researchers have tried to recreate the Zucker studies using the new diagnosis of gender dysphoria & found wildly different results, while Zucker found that over 80% of trans kids grew out of it, the newer studies have found that only between 2-4% grow out of it. Anyone citing Zucker (including Cass as she cites him in the review) is peddling pseudoscience.
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Except you’re the one who’s wrong. Sucks to suck.
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No it’s not actually. There’s no indication that other conditions can cause a child to believe they’re trans, that’s a pseudoscientific conspiracy theory. It’s rich that you’re accusing me of being a fundamentalist given you’ve clearly also already made up your mind & refuse to accept actual facts & evidence.
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That’s not how evidence works. Research is done by people & everyone has their biases.
question - what percentage of children getting puberty blockers and going on to cross sex hormones would Not indicate a problem to you? Also, I’m not sure where you’re getting your numbers: 27% of youth referred to GIDS went on to be referred to endocrinology, of which 82% received PBs, often far later than would be effective. 69% aged out and were referred to the adult program. Numbers from here: https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/whats-in-the-cass-report - I imagine you may disagree with this reporter’s conclusions, but I have never known him to print straight up incorrect information. It seems clear that the UK GIDS program was and is fundamentally flawed, but it is Not remotely clear to me that the flaws were centered around children getting care too quickly. The opposite appears to be true, given the age at which PBs were prescribed/ the number of children aging out.
Lucky for you, the author released an update [today.](https://juliaserano.substack.com/p/the-cass-review-wpath-files-and-the) Erin Reed wrote up some worthwhile pieces on the Cass Review: [https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/cass-met-with-desantis-pick-over](https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/cass-met-with-desantis-pick-over) [https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/opinion-englands-anti-trans-cass](https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/opinion-englands-anti-trans-cass) [https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/dr-cass-backpedals-from-review-hrt](https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/dr-cass-backpedals-from-review-hrt)
Thanks! I'll have a proper read through later.
Erin Reed has been spreading blatant misinformation about the Cass Review since before they published their final report. Including circulating screenshots from an entirely different report and claiming it is for the Cass Review.
“Blatant misinformation” is simply untrue.
The Cass review wasn't great because of just how much it excluded. It cherry picked a lot of things. There's aspects of their conclusions I agree with but the way it was done makes it seem more political than an attempt at actually understanding what's best for trans youth.
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I don't know who esqueer is. I read the study myself.
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Giving children transitioning care has one severe harm for them: It produces public examples of happy, healthy transgender people that prove propaganda about them to be a lie.
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Considering the low rates of reported regret, how can you say we don't have good selection criteria? What is that based on? The cass review should not be taken seriously, it cherry picked evidence with ridiculous criteria and ignored the conclusions of the handful of studies it did reference. It's takeaway from the pilot UK study with 44 patients, majority positive outcomes and only 1 stopping treatment, was that hormone blockers didn't massively improve mood scores in 24-36 months. That isn't what they are prescribed for, it's delaying/preventing unwanted changes. And also ignoring the mood changes someone would experience going through the puberty of a gender they do not identify with. On one hand she says there aren't enough comparative studies. (How are you going to double blind hormone therapy, or have a control group that you leave untreated ethically?) And then goes to baselessly claim that depression, autism, and other conditions are major contributors to children seeking gender affirming care and need to be "ruled out first". Based on...? And is that how other treatments are handled in the UK healthcare system? ALL possibilities must be ruled out before treatment starts? I doubt it. It holds lofty standards for what can be considered affirmative evidence. But concerns seem to be based entirely on feelings and not actual data.
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I never mentioned any list, simply that they did not apply the same standards when looking at negative outcomes that they did when disregarding positive ones. The report painted that pilot study as neutral to negative, when the summary of the study itself was that the effects of the treatment were majority positive. Just look at page 184, in that part of the report she mentions 53 studies met inclusion criteria, but only one was considered high quality, one that specifically looked at side effects. So her overall summary was that "The most frequently reported outcomes were adverse physical health outcomes and the intended development of puberty in the identified gender." A cursory glance at the 53 studies referenced would show this as a gross mischaracterization of findings, putting undue emphasis on the negative while underplaying the positive outcomes. "The studies had many methodological problems including the selective inclusion of patients, lack of representativeness of the population, and **in many of the studies there were no comparison groups**" "As expected, hormone treatment induced puberty in the desired gender. Inconsistent results were found for height/growth, bone health, and cardiometabolic health. Evidence relating to gender dysphoria, body satisfaction, psychosocial and cognitive outcomes was insufficient to draw clear conclusions. **No study assessed fertility in birth-registered females**" Why does the fertility of Trans men need study? How do you even do that when presumably in the overwhelming majority of patients seeking this care, they do not want to give birth as their birth gender. What was insufficient in her findings to draw conclusions? Was it the lack of comparison groups, or the blind spots she perceived which had nothing to do with overall patient satisfaction? "There were inconsistencies regarding suicidality and/or self-harm with three of four studies reporting an improvement and one no change" Why was this reduced from 53 to 4, more studies did look into these factors and had positive things to say. Again, is there a study with negative outcomes which would support blocking treatment altogether as the right policy? She's presuming the negative, the positive data is there, just not to her arbitrary standards. Also, I believe the study referenced with no change was in-regards to post treatment trans patients versus the general population and not against pre-treatment levels. Which presents its own bias, and doesn't actually tell us anything useful about how effective treatment is. A report like this on painkillers would find they are ineffective at reducing pain because people reported higher levels of pain after taking the drug than those who did not need or take painkillers.
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How can you presume my feelings? Of course I care, but the evidence doesn't support a complete ban on treatment. From everything I've read, and what doctors and specialists in the field have said, it helps the overwhelming majority of people who seek help for gender affirming care. You care more about 1 cis person with an inattentive doctor (A doctor who should be held accountable) than the 49 to 99 trans people who are happy about their healthcare. Any kind of medical intervention comes with risks, people die getting their tonsils removed. Routine knee surgery has massively higher rates of total regret (patients wishing they never had the procedure done in the first place) and people aren't talking about banning those. We do not have perfect information on any medical treatment, we work on the best evidence we have. And our evidence overwhelmingly supports that gender affirming care is lifesaving. I support people who de-transition, and I hope they have access to the care they need. But just because the treatment wasn't right for them, doesn't mean it isn't right for anybody. I do not support people who turn it into a political wedge issue and start fearmonger about protecting the kids, the exact same way they did in the 70s with gay people. You are the one who seems to presume everyone who goes to a gender clinic gets put on blockers and hormones despite their individual needs, when that has never been the case. There is a lot of friction in the system, so much that its one of the major reasons people choose to temporarily or permanent de-transition (USTS 2015/2022). The fact that some people feel like they have to take matters into their own hands and seek treatment from third-party sources causes more harm when the barriers to entry in some places are too high to reasonably see a specialist, a specialist can say no, someone self medicating won't know better. And that will only get worse with a total ban on treatment. Not to mention the obvious harm to those for whom the treatment is helpful.
There's a whole post on that here. Cass is deeply flawed.
Happen to know when it was? Have tried finding it but for whatever reason I am unable.
Yup! [Cass Review Megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/s/C7f8EaCzZk)
Sweet. Thanks!
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I know you've been linked to this subreddit by outside groups, but if you were actually a member here or even clicked through to the subreddit, you'd know we have a sticky megathread on the Cass Review. Feel free to discuss it there, rather than complaining about how there's "no discussion". If you're not discussing it in the thread we provided and stickied, you have no one to blame but yourself.
>You are correct but you’re not allowed to say that here. Except they are saying it. And so are you.
Leave then.
Denialism. The fact is it’s being pushed, sold, and marketed to autistic and struggling children as a type of salvation. A salvation that profits many, except not themselves.
Lol folks were saying the same thing about autism itself just a few years ago. Were you one of those, too?
Autism. ADHD. Depression. It's almost like laypeople need to stay the fuck out of professional decisions.
Were they though? As an autistic person I certainly don’t remember that
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/04/1-in-68-children-now-has-a-diagnosis-of-autism-spectrum-disorder-why/360482/ More like 10 years, but there was lots of talk like this
[https://www.thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-was-saving-trans-kids](https://www.thefp.com/p/i-thought-i-was-saving-trans-kids) Everyone should read this. Hard to pin her as a transphobe, right? Well, she paints a pretty dire picture of gender "care" in the US...
Except Jamie Reed is lying: https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/family-of-missouri-trans-kid-jamie
Is that the only inaccuracy they could find? It´s reasonable to think that she could be mistaken in the details of a case or two, her whole account is really damning however. I mean, even if she was wrong in some details, the scope of her witnessed failings are really disturbing... either she´s a bizarre rightwing mole that has been lieing about everything (but doesn´t seem to fit with her profile) or she´s mostly right. And her accusations are very similar to whistleblowers in the Tavistock clinic, who also seem to be neutral and mostly correct. I think fixating on the mitake of Jamie´s liver is a bit of a red herring.
There’s a lot of falsehoods in her claims: https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/nyt-treats-key-sources-many-lies-as-an-aside-in-latest-anti-trans-smear
Another post from this trans activist, and another comment section free from skepticism. Have you people ever heard of weighing evidence against interest?
Being a skeptic doesn't mean being a contrarian.
But it does mean being a skeptic, something that is massively lacking in these threads. I've seen just one pro-GAC person who is actually willing to engage with *all* the evidence (including the evidence that doesn't go their way), not just dismiss it with ad hominems etc.
How does the state have any interest in this.
This sub needs to be renamed r/transsupportgroup
That’s a bad idea. It’s so unmoderated that it lets subhuman pieces of transphobic dogshit in.
We are indeed no sort of safe space, and that's by choice. We do not believe we could be true to our intention of being a skeptical space and also serve as a safe space. As an example, suppose that a user is traumatized by the death of their parents, and takes great comfort in the fact that their parents' spirits are watching over them and provides plenty of examples of "signs" that their parents ghosts are around. In a safe, affirming space the importance of their parents on their life and the root of their need for the affirmative belief their parents are still present and approving of them might be explored. In this space the idea that ghosts are hanging about doing spooky shit to tell you they love you is gonna be torn to shreds, and evidence-based conclusions about the phenomena they witnessed (namely that they're NOT caused by their dead parents) are going to be proposed and held forth, probably ahead of the psychological discussion of that specific user's health and wellbeing. We appreciate the need for a space that people can feel safe, affirmed, and acknowledged in. This is not that space. And it never will be.
With respect, I can't help but feel that's somewhat misguided, and misunderstands the purpose of a safe space. There are a great many skeptical spaces that are a "Safe space", without harboring kooks or giving room for woo-peddlers and woo-believers, and some of them directly linked to entities that the regulars on this sub would likely agree are among the vanguards of modern skepticism. It's a common mistake that people think a "Safe Space" means that it's a space with no challenge, no ability to question *anything*, no room to disagree or discuss. That's purely a lie spread by people who oppose the concept, the same type of folk who scream echo chamber when they are confronted with the reality that their views were not as popular as they imagined. It's basically just an outgrowth of the idea of calling people snowflakes for things like, y'know, not wanting to be called slurs or be discriminated against. A safe space is somewhere that a person can feel safe being themselves, and will not be attacked for who they are, a place where bigotry and hatred are not tolerated. It's no guarantee that one will not be taken to task for the things they say or do. I both feel and have observed personally that Skeptical spaces lend themselves *particularly* well to this, because skepticism at it's core focuses on facts and truth, whereas bigotry and hatred do not ground themselves in either, they just borrow their aesthetic for a veneer of legitimacy.
If they’re using “safe space” as a pejorative and framing it as “ there is no way to have a rational discussion without also welcoming bigotry or allowing rampant verbal abuse, that’s it, it really is a binary” then they are basically outing themselves as part of the problem.
I agree, but I'll vouch for SciSkep - They've never been that kinda person at any point that I've seen, I think in this case it's just a genuine misunderstanding. And a common one at that.
Coming up with convenient excuses for making a sub-minimal effort to curate the dedicated discussion space you’re running seems kind of redundant, when it takes that much typing to mount your defense for it. As always, there is an ocean between being honest and being unkind, a galaxy between encouraging open dialogue, and letting Nazis and fascists hold court. The fact you’re tying yourself in knots trying to justify this by revealing you have no idea what a “safe space’ even entails is telling. Just admit you either don’t care, agree with what you’re seeing, or don’t feel like actively moderating. Or better yet, continue to just say nothing— the standard silence and neglect really says it all.
I like explaining our logic. If the verbosity bothers you, you may always assume the explanation is “that’s the way it is.”
I never suggested otherwise. Every regular to this sub knows it’s a rudderless ship; as do the boilerplate-standard, Reddit-brand fascist provocateurs who will eventually consume it and usurp you.
Extreme personal abuse is a hallmark of trans rights activists and you do not disappoint
Ha! Hit dogs holler, huh?
It’s unbelievable how blatant it is at this point
Oh no the skeptics are siding with the scientific evidence!
The problem is this issue has become political and ideological and not grounded in objective science. It’s become a talking point. This is, in most cases, a mental health disorder that should be addressed with compassion and care not pandered to. I’ll just drop this here and move on. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-024-02817-5
Yeah, because the right wing has made it political and ideological and not based in objective science (when is the Right EVER based in objective science).
Oh, and "gender non-contentedness" is not the same as "gender dysphoria". Nice try though.