Legislators in at least two U.S. states are citing a recent decision in England to restrict gender transitions for young people as support for their own related proposals.

They weren’t the first to turn to other countries, notably in Europe, for policy and research ideas. Lawmakers across the U.S., where at least 23 states now have tightened or removed access to transgender health care for minors, have routinely cited non-U.S. research or policies as justification for their legislation.

Yet leading health organizations in the United States and Europe continue to decisively endorse gender-affirming care for both transgender youths and adults.

Among other things, they argue that restrictions on things like hormone therapy tend to single out transgender youths, even though other young people also can benefit from them. And transgender advocates and allies see a political attempt to erase them, cloaked as concern for children.

  • BombOmOm
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    -228 months ago

    safe

    Hormone blockers and surgeries cause irreversible changes to people’s healthy bodies. Such life altering, irreversible, elective changes are incredibly dangerous territory for minors to wade into and is why we are seeing such irreversible, elective changes being increasingly barred from minors.

    • @rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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      188 months ago

      Children are not receiving gender affirming surgery. That is a flat out lie. Hormone blockers are not irreversible, it’s literally in the name.

      • BombOmOm
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        -168 months ago

        Children are not receiving gender affirming surgery.

        Then banning such elective surgeries for minors is not a problem.

          • BombOmOm
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            -138 months ago

            Nobody is talking about mastectomies to remove cancer. We are talking about banning minors from elective surgeries.

            • @rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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              98 months ago

              Depending on the circumstances, surgery to excise cancer can be elective. Don’t even fight me on this one, my family has a history of elective surgery to remove cancer.

              • BombOmOm
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                8 months ago

                Again, we aren’t talking about mastectomies to remove cancer. We are talking about elective mastectomies (and other surgeries) classified as gender affirming care. Removing cancer is not gender affirming care.

                • @rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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                  108 months ago

                  Again, my family has had elective mastectomies to excise cancer. This is relevant, because these laws are in the same vein as “abortion is banned, except to save the life of a mother”. We’ve seen how that turns out.

      • BombOmOm
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        -168 months ago

        Hormone blockers are not irreversible, it’s literally in the name

        The years of blocked puberty is not reversible. You don’t get that time back. Nor does the body properly deal with a stunted puberty years after it was supposed to happen.

        • @rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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          138 months ago

          Delayed puberty is still puberty. It’s not going to adversely affect a person’s life. However, going through the wrong puberty will irreversibly and greatly harm the health of a trans teen.

        • knightly the Sneptaur
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          8 months ago

          Better a delayed puberty than a wrong or precocious one.

          And yes, studies have shown that puberty continues as normal once they’re off hormone blockers.

          You’re just mad that there’s medication that makes trans people stop being suicidal. If your goal was to protect kids then your ire would be directed at churches for their role in the circumcision and molestation epidemics.

    • Cogency
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      8 months ago

      With a 1% regret rate it is not something that trans people have an issue with. You can count on one hand the number of trans individuals that have gone back permanently. Also puberty blockers are completely reversible, it’s not until months on the actual hormones that people start getting permanent changes. And even then that isn’t that irreversible.

        • @rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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          98 months ago

          Dysphoria is not a universal trans experience, and dysphoria will go away when people can express the gender they identify as.

          • BombOmOm
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            8 months ago

            that study is about sexual identity, ie- sexual preferences, not gender identity ie who one is.

            You didn’t even get past the title which clearly describes it is about gender identity disorder: “A Follow-Up Study of Boys With Gender Identity Disorder”. It also has info about sexual preferences, but that portion isn’t relevant to this discussion.

            At follow-up, gender identity/dysphoria was assessed via multiple methods and the participants were classified as either persisters or desisters…Of the 139 participants, 17 (12.2%) were classified as persisters and the remaining 122 (87.8%) were classified as desisters.

            • Cogency
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              8 months ago

              Read your own damn study. You are selectively omitting the words right before "of the 139 participants "

              "Sexual orientation was ascertained for both fantasy and behavior and then dichotomized as either biphilic/androphilic or gynephilic. Of the 139 participants, 17 (12.2%) were classified as persisters and the remaining 122 (87.8%) were classified as desisters. Data on sexual orientation in fantasy were available for 129 participants:… "

              • BombOmOm
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                8 months ago

                At follow-up, gender identity/dysphoria was assessed via multiple methods and the participants were classified as either persisters or desisters. Sexual orientation was ascertained for both fantasy and behavior and then dichotomized as either biphilic/androphilic or gynephilic. Of the 139 participants, 17 (12.2%) were classified as persisters and the remaining 122 (87.8%) were classified as desisters. Data on sexual orientation in fantasy were available for 129 participants: 82 (63.6%) were classified as biphilic/androphilic, 43 (33.3%) were classified as gynephilic, and 4 (3.1%) reported no sexual fantasies. For sexual orientation in behavior, data were available for 108 participants: 51 (47.2%) were classified as biphilic/androphilic, 29 (26.9%) were classified as gynephilic, and 28 (25.9%) reported no sexual behaviors. source

                • Gender identity/dysphoria had 139 participants, classified as persisters or desisters; of which 87.8% were desisters

                • Sexual orientation in fantasy had 129 participants, classified as biphilic/androphilic or gynephilic; 63.6% biphilic/androphilic

                • Sexual orientation in behavior had 108 participants, classified as biphilic/androphilic or gynephilic; 47.2% biphilic/androphilic

                Read your own damn study

                It states the terms ‘persisters’ and ‘desisters’ are for gender identity/dysphoria; of which 87.8% were desisters.

                • knightly the Sneptaur
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                  38 months ago

                  And?

                  It sounds like you’re admitting that the sampling method used by this study is biased, and that you didn’t read the conclusion:

                  It can, however, be said with certainty that the vast majority of boys were seen during a particular period of time when the therapeutic approach of recommending or supporting a gender social transition prior to puberty was not made. Indeed, in the current study, there was only one patient who had socially transitioned prior to puberty (at the suggestion and support of the professionals involved in this individual’s care) and this particular patient was one of the persisters with a biphilic/androphilic sexual orientation. Second, it should also be recognized that, for the boys seen in the current study, none who were in late childhood and had (likely) entered puberty (Tanner Stage 2) had received puberty-blocking hormone treatment (GnRH analogs) to suppress somatic masculinization (142, 143) until sometime during adolescence.

                  In contrast, in recent years, it has become more common for some clinicians to recommend a gender social transition prior to puberty [e.g., (69, 144–147); for discussion, see (148–150)]. It has also become more common for parents to have already implemented a gender social transition on their own, without any formal input from a health professional (151). As argued by Zucker (64, 152), this is a very different type of psychosocial treatment designed to reduce gender dysphoria when compared to the other kinds of treatments noted above that have been recommended over the years.

                  The study by Steensma et al. (51), which found the highest rate of persistence, included some patients who had made a partial or complete gender social transition prior to puberty and this variable proved to be a unique predictor of persistence (see the Introduction). Rae et al. (153) recruited from a variety of community groups a sample of 85 markedly gender non-conforming children (Mean age, 7.5 years), none of whom had socially transitioned at a baseline assessment. At the time of follow-up, at a mean of 2.1 years later, 36 (42.3%) had socially transitioned and 49 (57.6%) had not. Using a composite of various metrics of gender identity and gender role behaviors, Rae et al. found that those who subsequently socially transitioned had more extreme gender-variant behavior at baseline than those who had not. Thus, this short-term follow-up study was consistent with the longer-term findings reported on by Wallien and Cohen-Kettenis (52), Steensma et al. (51), and the present study.

                  Who’d have thought that trans kids who are forced through the wrong puberty would face more pressure to repress their gender variance than those who haven’t?

        • Tar_Alcaran
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          78 months ago

          That’s a great study, but it ignores one massively important point: you can be trans and not dysphoric, quite a few trans people aren’t dysphoric.

          Dysphoria is distress you feel because a gender mismatch. It’s entirely possible for a 7 year old boy to hate the fact that he was born male and be very upset over that. And that same person at 20 could be completely at peace with it.

          They might be happily going through life as a male, female, or anything else, the paper doesn’t say. If you stop being upset over the gender assigned at birth, you’re not dysphoric anymore, that’s all that’s measured.

          This paper doesn’t say “most dysphoric boys stop wanting to be girls before they’re 20”. It says “most dysphoric boys stop hating the fact they were born as boys before they’re 20”. Hell they might have fully transitioned, the paper doesn’t say.

    • RedSeries
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      38 months ago

      You could have all of the evidence in the world show you the contrary, but you’ll bend over backwards to assert that the earth is flat jews run the government sperm are fully qualified children gender affirming care is wrong or harmful. You’ll use children to do this, even though the care given to trans youth is overwhelmingly social and reversible puberty blockers. People like you want to shove kids back in the closet. I’m so, so sorry that kids are more mature than you were growing up. I have to wonder who hurt you.