What is the general view on here when it comes to medical transitioning for children under the age of 18?
What do you consider to be ethical?
What are some good points I can tell folks who tell me "BUT THE LEFT WANTS TO LET CHILDREN TRANSITION!?!".
If we lived in a world where being trans was something people understood, someone could have looked at me at 12 and said “hey that sounds like trans stuff, let me ask you some questions about gender”.
This this this!
I knew since I was in elementary school it wasn't socially acceptable for me to wear a dress because I saw no other boys wearing one. So I crafted elaborate fantasies where I was "forced" to wear girls clothes because I couldn't bear the idea of being responsible for wanting to be feminine.
I'm well into my adult life now and finally accepted myself, and a really backhanded compliment I got was "at least now that you're older you know what you want". Thankfully I was very willing to point out to them: what if I had seen so many other boys my age wearing dresses? What if being trans was normalized then? I guarantee I would've started presenting as a girl as a early as elementary school if I didn't feel like I would've been judged or punished for it. Then I would've had years before puberty to discern whether this was something I wanted to commit to.
So yeah, the idea that kids can't make those decisions is completely transphobic. No one should have a problem with stalling puberty; if they're too young to decide, then their body shouldn't make that decision for them. It's literally a question of bodily autonomy that no one else should have the right to decide.
ask them at what age they had crushes, attractions ect. for most it should be before puberty
And I'd wager it's before 18 for everyone who has that sort of experience. Seems like this is the beginning and end of the conversation.
Tons of kids go through puberty at the age of 12 without a fuss. I honestly think they should have the right to choose which one, or to block it for the moment and decide later.
Every kid is gonna go through puberty eventually, we just want to make sure trans people go through the right one. For every cis kid who is "just confused" and regrets taking hormones to transition, there are thousands of trans kids forced to experience the wrong puberty due to societal barriers.
The mainstream way to do this is to use puberty blockers til 18 then HRT, but some people transition earlier than that if they can and I'm super jealous tbh.
I was on the wrong hormones til about age 21 (testosterone, naturally) and its done permanent damage to my body (especially my voice, male puberty lowers your voice but female puberty doesnt raise it). I really wish I had access to hormonal resources much earlier
Children should definitely be able to take hormone blockers and transition when it's appropriate to have puberty. Cis children have hormonal treatment all the time. One of my cis brothers took spironolactone (a testosterone blocker) for his acne.
Conservatives scaremonger about endocrinology because the vast majority of the population doesn't know shit. Trans kids get consultation and treatment from professional endocrinologists, and the treatment is just as safe as any other puberty.
That said, most endos just put kids on blockers up until they're 18 and then move on to estrogen and testosterone from there through informed consent.
AFAIK puberty blockers are safe and reversible. On the other hand forcing someone to be the wrong gender is a recipe for mental disorders. There are no good reason to deny trans kids medical care.
Transphobes love to cry "what about the children" but children transitioning just means using a different name/pronouns and maybe clothes.
Medical transition usually only happens when the kid is about to go through puberty since that's a major source of dysphoria. Puberty blockers are a good first step since they just delay puberty and can be taken off (and have the original puberty go through) with fairly few side effects. By the time actual HRT is started there's usually enough time for the kid to decide their general transition path.
Like a lot of trans related stuff, there is definitely room for criticism and concern but almost everytime it gets piggybacked by reactionaries looking to concern troll.
Most times, when somebody is whining about "THE CHILDREN ARE DOING A TRANSITION!", they don't give a fuck about the children in any other facet of their life / policy. Children starving? Children being evicted? Children being forced to work in sweat shops, in prisons? These people usually won't know or give a shit about any of that.
But suddenly, when a child realizes they are trans and want to do something about it, it's "Save the children! By blocking their self-determination!" (implying they could or should come to regret being an icky trans person accidentally) It's patriarchal as fuck. If a person is making this argument to me, it makes me think they're more likely to align with the reactionaries, than to side with me in thinking.
Transitioning as a physical, medical procedure is only relevant immediately preceding or during puberty. Before that, sexual dimorphism is quite limited - kids assigned to either gender at birth tend to be quite similar to each other in most physical characteristics (except for the obvious), and if a child of that age were to "transition" it'd be limited to the realm of the social - things like clothes, names, pronouns, and haircuts, which could easily be reverted anyways. I am 100% in favor of allowing minors to undergo medical transition once they reach the relevant phase of their life cycle, and frankly it should be an obvious conclusion. You wouldn't keep someone from getting treatment for a broken leg just because they might "change their mind" about it later, would you? It's a serious medical ailment, not a flight of fancy. The consequences of waiting until after puberty has been allowed to run its course unabated, on the other hand, can be positively disastrous. By that time there will be many physical differences which have formed that need to be painfully undone, in ways which are significantly more expensive and may not give the same results as having taken action earlier, not to mention the lasting trauma of being forced to live in a body you hate. If you break your leg and you don't attend to it, it's only going to get worse. It could cause internal bleeding, or get infected, or shatter further without proper support, and it's only going to get harder and harder to address the longer you sit on it. The other responses here go into great detail about why the actual mechanics of the process are hardly the irreversible jump off a skyscraper many love to make it out as. Although this issue is most acute in the area of gender dysphoria, particularly in terms of frequency, legislative action, and severity of consequence, it is also a significant issue for those who deal with other mental issues, where physicians refuse to grant a diagnosis or proper treatment to those suffering from them who aren't adults.
Some good resources:
- HRC - Supporting & Caring for Transgender Children
- UCSF - Health considerations for gender non-conforming children and transgender adolescents
- https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSocialScience/comments/ergxo7/what_is_the_ideal_way_to_treat_children_with/ff3ttzi/
- In a survey of trans people in the U.S. (not just those who got treatment as children), only about 0.4% of people who transition detransition because "they realized that gender transition was not for them." It is much more common for people who detransition to do so because of other reasons, such as discrimination. page 111
Treatment should probably be more radical than what they suggest, but the vast majority of trans people face far worse conditions.
Gender identity in children:
Gender Identity Development in Children
UCSF - "Health considerations for gender non-conforming children and transgender adolescents"
Children as young as 18 months old have articulated information about their gender identity and gender expression preferences.
Youth recognized gender incongruence at a mean age of 8.3 years (standard deviation = 4.5), yet disclosed to their family much later (mean = 17.1; standard deviation = 4.2).
"The role of gender constancy in early gender development"
Results indicated a general pattern of an increase in stereotype knowledge, the importance and positive evaluation of one's own gender category, and rigidity of beliefs between the ages of 3 and 5.
"Desisting and persisting gender dysphoria after childhood: A qualitative follow-up study"
Adolescents with persisting gender dysphoria (persisters) and those in whom the gender dysphoria remitted (desisters) indicated that they considered the period between 10 and 13 years of age to be crucial. They reported that in this period they became increasingly aware of the persistence or desistence of their childhood gender dysphoria. Both persisters and desisters stated that the changes in their social environment, the anticipated and actual feminization or masculinization of their bodies, and the first experiences of falling in love and sexual attraction had influenced their gender related interests and behaviour, feelings of gender discomfort and gender identification. Although, both persisters and desisters reported a desire to be the other gender during childhood years, the underlying motives of their desire seemed to be different.
Gender Cognition in Transgender Children
In the current study, we adopted methodological advances from social-cognition research to investigate whether 5- to 12-year-old prepubescent transgender children (N = 32), who were presenting themselves according to their gender identity in everyday life, showed patterns of gender cognition more consistent with their expressed gender or their natal sex, or instead appeared to be confused about their gender identity. Using implicit and explicit measures, we found that transgender children showed a clear pattern: They viewed themselves in terms of their expressed gender and showed preferences for their expressed gender, with response patterns mirroring those of two cisgender (nontransgender) control groups. These results provide evidence that, early in development, transgender youth are statistically indistinguishable from cisgender children of the same gender identity.
Thank you so much for your comment, the effort is appreciated. o7
OP, thank you for asking this question.
I'm a dumb person the resources dropped in threads like these are invaluable.
Yes, I thought it was about time that I understood this stuff better! Glad I asked the question.
Just watch “I am Jazz.” Letting trans kids be who they are is better than them killing themselves because they are being rejected by a hostile and uncaring society.
