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!?!".

  • aru [they/them,any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Some good resources:

    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.

    "Baseline Physiologic and Psychosocial Characteristics of Transgender Youth Seeking Care for Gender Dysphoria"

    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.