Continuation Transwomen are not women - part 13

[Samson]

Originally Posted by Pixel42

For the same reason anything - pictures, quotes - is embedded. So that readers don't have click on a link to go to a different site to get the content, and then return.

In the case of youtube videos it also usually saves them having to endure sitting through at least one ad before the video plays.

Thank you but I still see no advantage.
I have a high regard for youtube despite it having demonetised all gender critical content. It is important to get to the video and the comments quickly.
Skip ads is 5 seconds.

[Pixel42]

I never click on a bare youtube link, but I do click the 'I agree' on an embedded one (which is instantaneous, much quicker than getting to it via a link) so I can at least see what it is before deciding if I want to watch it. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. So by not embedding youtube videos you are almost certainly reducing the number of people who bother to watch them.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by Pixel42

For the same reason anything - pictures, quotes - is embedded. So that readers don't have click on a link to go to a different site to get the content, and then return.

In the case of youtube videos it also usually saves them having to endure sitting through at least one ad before the video plays.

Originally Posted by Pixel42

I never click on a bare youtube link, but I do click the 'I agree' on an embedded one (which is instantaneous, much quicker than getting to it via a link) so I can at least see what it is before deciding if I want to watch it. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. So by not embedding youtube videos you are almost certainly reducing the number of people who bother to watch them.

I am a basic internet user, so had no idea bare links are shunned.

[Pixel42]

People want to know whether a link is worth clicking on before doing so. It's not hard to understand. But this tangent is hardly on topic, so let's leave it there.

[d4m10n]

Originally Posted by gnome

I feel like the topic is shifting to one focused on the medical legitimacy of certain procedures.

Originally Posted by Samson

I would posit that using this as a catch all thread is a good thing.

Agreed.





Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Matthew Best

Is there some reason you don't like to use Youtube tags?

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

and

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

There's no button for, it's something I struggle with. Then again, I almost never post youtube stuff so it doesn't come up often.

On the other hand, I really need to figure out how d4m10n gets those nifty wikipedia superscript link things in there.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Matthew Best

Meanwhile, "Washington University physicians will no longer prescribe puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to minors for purposes of gender transition."

This is because "Missouri’s newly enacted law regarding transgender care has created a new legal claim for patients who received these medications as minors. This legal claim creates unsustainable liability for health-care professionals..."

Story from UnHerd is here:

"Medical scandals tend to end quietly: the “chemical lobotomy” phased out the lobotomy-lobotomy. The Satanic Panic choked not on its own absurdities but in courtrooms and insurance offices. Public reckonings are few and far between. “Unsustainable liability” may be the beginning of the end for youth gender transition."

The risk of getting their pants sued off by patients who experience harm as a result of these 100% safe, life-saving, absolutely medically necessary interventions is just too high...

It makes me wonder if a solid chunk of the doctors at WU have been secretly opposed to this, and just couldn't speak out because of the torches-and-pitchforks response. Maybe they have just been waiting for a reason to say no?

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Elaedith

One of Australia's major medical indemnity insurers, MDA National has already changed its policy to limit cover for claims related to gender transition in minors.

'In response to the risk of potentially high-value claims arising from irreversible treatments provided to those who medically and surgically transition as children and adolescents, MDA National is restricting cover for practitioners in private practice. Effective 1 July 2023, MDA National will limit cover for certain claims arising from the treatment of gender dysphoria in children and adolescents.'

Oddly though, they will still provide cover for claims related to puberty blockers, but not for cross-sex hormones prescribed to minors under 18. This seems a little odd because my understanding is that cross-sex hormones are often prescribed from the age of 16 (although I'm not sure about typical practice in Australia) and we know that almost all children prescribed blockers go on to cross-sex hormones. It seems that blockers are being treated as reversible rather than the first step in medical transition, and doctors would currently be able to maintain cover if patients were kept on blockers but received no other transition until 18. If patients did experience later regret doctors would be able to argue that the irreversible change happened after they were 18.

Among the reasons for the policy they include 'there is growing criticism globally of the research that underpins medical and surgical transition of children in response to gender dysphoria' and 'recent studies suggest the real rates of detransition or discontinuance are much higher than the previously reported 1% or 2%'. Which of course we already know and have discussed on this thread.

I'm willing to take this as a win and withhold judgement on puberty blockers not being included.

There are legitimate uses for puberty blockers in minors - precocious puberty, certain cancers, and a handful of other rare conditions I can't recall. It's feasible that trying to tease out which diagnostic criteria are appropriate for those drugs might be challenging I guess.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by gnome

I feel like the topic is shifting to one focused on the medical legitimacy of certain procedures.

Shifting? That's been a topic in this discussion for YEARS.

[d4m10n]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

On the other hand, I really need to figure out how d4m10n gets those nifty wikipedia superscript link things in there.

You just use the [ wiki ] & [ / wiki ] bbcode:

 What is a womanWP

[gnome]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

Shifting? That's been a topic in this discussion for YEARS.

I thought it was about whether transwomen should count as women.

[theprestige]

Originally Posted by gnome

I thought it was about whether transwomen should count as women.

Feel free to give your views or make your case any time. Are transwomen women? In what sense? What should public policy have to say about it, if anything?

[JoeMorgue]

We're 46 pages into the 13th extension of only the most recent occurrence of this just version of this discussion.

I feel like at this point the actual question that we all (ostensibly) agree is the point just this aggressively not being ever answered has to be at least part of the point.

Cards on the table I have less grasp on what people think is "a woman" now then I did when we started. At this point you could tell me that transgender was a new crypto mining app I couldn't argue the point one way or the other.

I don't know anymore. A transgender person is a different from a cis person in a way that will literally never be defined outside of pure self declaration because it's a "subjective spectrum of subjectiveness subjecting along from one end of the subjective spectrum to another end of the subjective spectrum subjectively speaking if one was to look at is a spectrum."

You can be anyone from a biological male under going major surgery and hormonal treatments to be changed as much into the other biological sex as modern medicine can accomplish (leaving aside the "Can you actually change enough modern medical tech to actually become the other gender" aside) to someone who just woke up that morning and decides they "identify" as the other societal gender role soul and everything in between.

The terms covers too much, means too little, changes too much, applies to too many different things which are only thematically (can't think of a better word) related, and at this point the game seems to be "How meaningless can I demand an accommodation be and get away with it?"

Like at this point "Will you agree to just nod and agree before you understand to pass some test about 'tolerance.'" is almost feeling the point some of the time. Like this many people can't be this bad at just explaining in one sentence what the everloving hockey stick we're even talking about.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by gnome

I thought it was about whether transwomen should count as women.

That's a foundational premise for the thread, certainly.

But the reality is that it's impossible to discuss ANY aspect that touches on transgender topics without that fundamental question coming into play. Thus, all discussion of the myriad radial topics end up in this catch-all thread.

It's impossible to discuss the medical legitimacy of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and cosmetic surgeries without getting into the role that puberty plays in the development of a sexually dimorphic body type... and you can't discuss that without getting into whether or not it's good or bad to allow a child whose psyche hasn't fully matured to engage in those interventions because at age 13 they believe themselves to be transgender.... which inadvertently gets back to whether or not transgirls are *actually* girls, and transboys are *actually* boys.

It always eventually comes back to that foundation.

[Samson]

One of the policemen involved In the strategy to void protection for Kellie Jay Keen and the women who came to hear her speak in Albert Park is probably as valid a transwoman as you might find. He left a trans widow and children who call him dad. This article is very detailed, and I found helpful to contemplate a complete case study.
How Rohan became Rhona Stace.

https://interactives.stuff.co.nz/201...ecoming-rhona/

[Samson]

One of the policemen involved In the strategy to void protection for Kellie Jay Keen and the women who came to hear her speak in Albert Park is probably as valid a transwoman as you might find. He left a trans widow and children who call him dad. This article is very detailed, and I found helpful to contemplate a complete case study.
How Rohan became Rhona Stace.

https://interactives.stuff.co.nz/201...ecoming-rhona/

[d4m10n]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

It always eventually comes back to that foundation.

I've mentioned this a few times, but I'm going to do so again here. There is a fundamental belief within progressive circles that sex is either overridden or else determined by gender identity, in the event that the two are in conflict: "[S]omeone’s sex or gender is properly understood to be the same as their gender identity."

It is significantly more difficult to justify performing irreversible sex-related surgeries on patients under 20 y.o. without first affirming the belief that they have an immutable and unquestionable gender identity which tells them which sex they ought to be. Otherwise we'd be taking away healthy body parts from people who might well have enjoyed having them a decade or two down the line.

[gnome]

Originally Posted by theprestige

Feel free to give your views or make your case any time. Are transwomen women? In what sense? What should public policy have to say about it, if anything?

I gave my general take pages ago. To be honest I'm not completely settled on any of it.

[gnome]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

That's a foundational premise for the thread, certainly.

But the reality is that it's impossible to discuss ANY aspect that touches on transgender topics without that fundamental question coming into play. Thus, all discussion of the myriad radial topics end up in this catch-all thread.

It's impossible to discuss the medical legitimacy of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and cosmetic surgeries without getting into the role that puberty plays in the development of a sexually dimorphic body type... and you can't discuss that without getting into whether or not it's good or bad to allow a child whose psyche hasn't fully matured to engage in those interventions because at age 13 they believe themselves to be transgender.... which inadvertently gets back to whether or not transgirls are *actually* girls, and transboys are *actually* boys.

It always eventually comes back to that foundation.

I disagree on the end there. I think it comes back to whether it is harmful or beneficial in a medical/psychiatric sense. It is not necessary to resolve the philosophical question to observe this.

[d4m10n]

Originally Posted by gnome

I think it comes back to whether it is harmful or beneficial in a medical/psychiatric sense. It is not necessary to resolve the philosophical question to observe this.

Is anyone arguing for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones without smuggling in the key premise about identity overriding sex?

[Roboramma]

Originally Posted by d4m10n

Is anyone arguing for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones without smuggling in the key premise about identity overriding sex?

Here's someone who I think would agree on the "trans women aren't women" point, but still argues that puberty blockers (at least) are probably good:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/hig...ts-on-fetishes

(quoted text is from the sectioned titled "3: Comments That Were Very Angry About My Introductory Paragraph"):

Quote:

First and least relevantly, I disagree with them on the object-level question. I assume their concerns are about puberty blockers - drugs which are given to transgender minors to prevent them from going through their birth-sex puberty (ie natal men getting deeper voices and chest hair, natal women menstruating, etc). I’m not a child/adolescent psychiatrist and I don’t prescribe hormones, so I’m not an expert in this topic and this should be considered my amateur opinion only (although my impression is that the APA, AMA, and various other guideline-setting organizations agree with me). But I think these are overall good, for a few reasons:

The effects of birth-sex puberty are irreversible and will make it much harder to transition in the future. The effects of puberty-blockers are mostly reversible, and preserve the option to either transition or return to birth-sex in the future. Like all drugs there are potential side effects, some of which are irreversible, but in the case of puberty blockers these seem mild and comparable to other psychiatric interventions. I think the precautionary principle supports having confused children who don’t know what they want do the reversible rather than the irreversible thing.
The biggest studies suggest that about 98% of children who take puberty blockers do later go on to transition (nothing in real life is 98%, so I assume something is wrong with this study, but things do seem to lean towards a vast majority continuing). An optimistic interpretation is that the screening process is very good and they’re only given to people who really want them; a pessimistic interpretation is that they push children further onto the transgender path. I don’t think whatever “pushing” doctors can do is enough to produce these kinds of numbers - compare the success rate of doctors/parents trying to push kids away from transgender! - so I lean towards the optimistic interpretation. That makes it even clearer that we should do the reversible thing (which helps 98% of people and reversibly harms 2% of people) and not the irreversible thing (which helps 2% of people and irreversibly harms 98% of people).

There's more at the link.

(Note, I disagree with his take, but he seems to be a representative of the group you ask about)

[Samson]

Originally Posted by Roboramma

Here's someone who I think would agree on the "trans women aren't women" point, but still argues that puberty blockers (at least) are probably good:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/hig...ts-on-fetishes

(quoted text is from the sectioned titled "3: Comments That Were Very Angry About My Introductory Paragraph"):



There's more at the link.

(Note, I disagree with his take, but he seems to be a representative of the group you ask about)

He argues his case like a learned judge with no skin in the game. There are countless stories proving him wrong, the damage to families immeasurable and totally permanent.

[Samson]

Since Kelly Jay Keen had a gathering in Ireland today, this extended article from Aug 23 is worth reading.
to see the best arguments available for transitioning children, letting men in women's sport, prisons and changing rooms. The problems are clear in my view. The narrative always lands the label far right extremist on people who are against all the above.

https://www.thejournal.ie/transgende...98952-Aug2023/

[d4m10n]

Originally Posted by Roboramma

I disagree with his take, but he seems to be a representative of the group you ask about

It seems to me Dr. Siskind is implicitly "affirming the belief that [trans kids] have an immutable and unquestionable gender identity which tells them which sex they ought to be."

Here is exactly where that happens:

...we should do the reversible thing (which helps 98% of people and reversibly harms 2% of people) and not the irreversible thing (which helps 2% of people and irreversibly harms 98% of people).

These numbers make no sense unless you already believe that the 98% who went from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones would have fared worse only twenty years ago (prior to the widespread adoption of the endocrine treatment pathway) on account of their cross-sex gender identity. In Siskind's view, we can make strong counterfactual conclusions about how these kids would have turned out in the absence of the new treatment pathway, despite the lack of studies comparing it to other treatment pathways or no treatment whatsoever.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by d4m10n

It seems to me Dr. Siskind is implicitly "affirming the belief that [trans kids] have an immutable and unquestionable gender identity which tells them which sex they ought to be."

Here is exactly where that happens:

...we should do the reversible thing (which helps 98% of people and reversibly harms 2% of people) and not the irreversible thing (which helps 2% of people and irreversibly harms 98% of people).

These numbers make no sense unless you already believe that the 98% who went from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones would have fared worse only twenty years ago (prior to the widespread adoption of the endocrine treatment pathway) on account of their cross-sex gender identity. In Siskind's view, we can make strong counterfactual conclusions about how these kids would have turned out in the absence of the new treatment pathway, despite the lack of studies comparing it to other treatment pathways or no treatment whatsoever.

That is the issue. Normally science prevails, except where lawyers turned judges decide that science will not be adduced because it contradicts the desired result.
When justice is deliberately denied, it is exactly the prevailing method this 98% guy employs to get his argument across the line, until we spot the logical and mathematical catastrophe.

[Elaedith]

Article by Sonia Sodha in the Observer today about social transitioning in schools and the need for clearer guidelines. Apparently the EHRC will issue updated guidelines shortly after acknowledging that previous advice was wrong.

'Trans inclusion toolkits have been produced for schools that are uninformed by evidence on child development and safeguarding and include legal misinformation such as telling schools they must treat gender-questioning children as the opposite sex for all purposes. Many schools rely on relationship and sex education materials produced by external groups that teach gender ideology as fact, in a way that reinforces rather than challenges damaging sex stereotypes and may well encourage gender distress in vulnerable children.'

[theprestige]

Originally Posted by Elaedith

Article by Sonia Sodha in the Observer today about social transitioning in schools and the need for clearer guidelines. Apparently the EHRC will issue updated guidelines shortly after acknowledging that previous advice was wrong.

This news will be welcomed, I'm sure, by TRAs who get their guidance from the opinions of government.

[gnome]

Originally Posted by theprestige

This news will be welcomed, I'm sure, by TRAs who get their guidance from the opinions of government.

That seems fallacious on its face. Certainly advocates have an opinion distinct from those of some state governments.

Right or wrong, they seem to form their own opinion.

[Darat]

Originally Posted by Elaedith

Article by Sonia Sodha in the Observer today about social transitioning in schools and the need for clearer guidelines. Apparently the EHRC will issue updated guidelines shortly after acknowledging that previous advice was wrong.



'Trans inclusion toolkits have been produced for schools that are uninformed by evidence on child development and safeguarding and include legal misinformation such as telling schools they must treat gender-questioning children as the opposite sex for all purposes. Many schools rely on relationship and sex education materials produced by external groups that teach gender ideology as fact, in a way that reinforces rather than challenges damaging sex stereotypes and may well encourage gender distress in vulnerable children.'

The current UK government has been promising to provide its guidance for schools in England for quite sometime - schools have been asking for this for a long time - but has repeatedly delayed the guidance. Until the official guidance is published each individual school is having to create their own guidance, which is a sure way to ensure no consistency in handling, no best practice etc. This is something the UK government needs to stop vacillating about.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by gnome

I disagree on the end there. I think it comes back to whether it is harmful or beneficial in a medical/psychiatric sense. It is not necessary to resolve the philosophical question to observe this.

Originally Posted by d4m10n

Is anyone arguing for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones without smuggling in the key premise about identity overriding sex?

The timing on this is spectacularly apt:

Sex On Trial
As more states consider age restrictions on sex-trait modifications, defending the binary nature of sex in court will become increasingly vital.

Colin Wright echoes one of the impressions I've had for a while: Gender Identity is the new Irreducible Complexity.

Quote:

In addition to being glaring instances of metaphysics parading as science, both ID and sex denialism rely on a similar “argument from complexity” designed to stun audiences into adopting their perspectives. ID advocates, for instance, contend that biological systems and features are “irreducibly complex,” meaning that they couldn’t have emerged from gradual, unguided processes like natural selection and random mutation and must therefore have been directed by a supernatural “designer” (i.e., God). In a similar vein, gender activists argue that biological sex is so complex and irreducible to any single trait that all efforts to classify individuals as male or female are futile, and people should therefore be allowed to identify as any sex they like.

gnome - the actual legislation and debate on the topic of performing hormonal or surgical interventions on minors in order to alter their physical bodies to match their psychological image of themselves absolutely circles back to whether or not gender identity should be considered to override somatic sex. Or even more blunty, whether or not sex is even real in the first place, or whether it's so incredibly complex and arbitrary that a person's belief about the genderiness of their mind/soul/spirit should be considered more accurate than the material reality of their bodies.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Roboramma

Here's someone who I think would agree on the "trans women aren't women" point, but still argues that puberty blockers (at least) are probably good:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/hig...ts-on-fetishes

(quoted text is from the sectioned titled "3: Comments That Were Very Angry About My Introductory Paragraph"):

The author's assumptions in that paragraph are, simply put, wrong.

Puberty blockers can only be considered "safe and reversible" if used in adolescents for just a few months. They're not even safe for adults when used for longer than a few months. I was put on one of these drugs for three months prior to a uterine surgery. The primary FDA-approved use of these drugs are as temporary interventions for specific types of cancers and tumorous growths. The second approved use is as a treatment for precocious puberty. All of the arguments about how blockers are "safe and reversible" are lifted from their use for precocious puberty, and they are completely inapplicable when used in conjunction with normal pubertal processes.

One of the first things the author says is that "birth-sex puberty is irreversible". Well, duh. But let's also be clear - no other sex puberty is possible. A male cannot ever go through a female puberty; nor can a female ever go through a male puberty. And of course they're irreversible - every aspect of maturation is irreversible, from the first few days of division of a zygote all the way through eyes losing elasticity and teeth falling out. Puberty is no more reversible than being born is reversible. Noting that it isn't reversible is of no more value than noting that time does not go backwards.

The author then claims that the effects of blockers are "mostly reversible". This is false. First off, it's incredibly dependent on how long the blockers have been used for as well as during which specific stage of pubertal development. Puberty isn't a slow, smooth, process. It happens in fits and starts. While the entirety of puberty happens over the course of several years, some of the most fundamentally important changes happen over the course of only weeks or months.

Some aspects of puberty are like flipping a switch - it starts out off, and it gets turned on. There's no turning the light switch off again, only things that can block the light so the room is dark. In females, menstruation is one of those things. During puberty, a signal occurs that tells the pituitary to start releasing ova on a regular cycle associated with the balance of estrogen/progesterone in the body. It's a one-time thing. Blockers don't prevent that signal from occurring - they prevent the body from receiving the signal. It's as if your hand has already flipped on the light... but there's a piece of rubber stuck between the connection points so the current doesn't flow through the circuits. When the blocker is stopped, the rubber is removed, and the signal is received. Menstruation resumes.

Other aspects of puberty happen in bursts. These are things that occur in tandem with other systems, the most impactful of which is the adrenal system.

One of theses bursts that has long-lasting and irreversible impacts is the accretion of bone density. That occurs in tandem with a growth spurt and lengthening of the long bones to an adult stature, and closely followed by closure of the growth plates. Accretion is governed by the pituitary, which is the only system affected by blockers. Lengthening is a joint process that is mostly governed by the adrenal, but is also affected by the pituitary. Closure of the growth plates is governed by the adrenal. This is important, because puberty blockers prevent the accretion of bone density, but do not prevent the closure of growth plates. And once those are closed, a child cannot attain adult bone density. The mechanism has run its course, the goat is already out of the field and has grazed the neighbor's yard down to bare soil. Children who take blockers during the few months when this growth spurt occurs are looking at a lifetime of low bone density, with its attendant risks for breaks and injury.

Another of these spurts occurs in males - the lengthening of the penis and the dropping of the scrotal sack away from the body. If this fails to happen, the person is left with a child-sized penis, testes that cannot maintain the appropriate temperature to produce viable sperm (and potentially no ability to generate sperm at all), and a high likelihood of being unable to experience orgasm. In terms of transition, this also means that a male is left without sufficient penile tissue to create a pseudovagina. The next best "option" is to create a pseudovagina from colon tissue... and there are a lot of downsides to having a poopchamber for a fauxgina.

The author then goes on to talk about persistence rates for children who take blockers. They have an "optimistic" interpretation wherein screening is excellent, and only "true trans" are given blockers - we already know this is false. They have a "pessimistic" view that blockers push kids to transition - which they then summarily dismiss due to disbelief. What they are missing is that puberty includes significant cognitive development. Advocates of blockers for children present them as a "pause button" to let a child "decide what's right for them". The problem is that the pause literally prevents the child from gaining the maturation necessary to make that decision. The maturation during puberty includes becoming comfortable in an adult body, the neural processes associated with sexual arousal, mating instincts, and the formation of romantic bonds. From a cognitive perspective, the blockers lock the child into their initial belief and prevent them from being able to be reconciled to their body.

Originally Posted by Roboramma

There's more at the link.

(Note, I disagree with his take, but he seems to be a representative of the group you ask about)

Understood. Everything above is intended to be educational for everyone involved in the discussion, not targeted to you specifically.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by d4m10n

It seems to me Dr. Siskind is implicitly "affirming the belief that [trans kids] have an immutable and unquestionable gender identity which tells them which sex they ought to be."

Here is exactly where that happens:

...we should do the reversible thing (which helps 98% of people and reversibly harms 2% of people) and not the irreversible thing (which helps 2% of people and irreversibly harms 98% of people).

These numbers make no sense unless you already believe that the 98% who went from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones would have fared worse only twenty years ago (prior to the widespread adoption of the endocrine treatment pathway) on account of their cross-sex gender identity. In Siskind's view, we can make strong counterfactual conclusions about how these kids would have turned out in the absence of the new treatment pathway, despite the lack of studies comparing it to other treatment pathways or no treatment whatsoever.

The author is also ignoring the growing number of detranstioners and those who express regret over their transition. They also, clearly, seem to be under the impression that the hormonal and surgical interventions that occur as a result of locking a child into a pathway are also "reversible".

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by gnome

That seems fallacious on its face. Certainly advocates have an opinion distinct from those of some state governments.

Right or wrong, they seem to form their own opinion.

The sarcasm inherent in theprestige's post was obvious, at least for those of us who have long been involved in this discussion.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Elaedith

Article by Sonia Sodha in the Observer today about social transitioning in schools and the need for clearer guidelines. Apparently the EHRC will issue updated guidelines shortly after acknowledging that previous advice was wrong.

'Trans inclusion toolkits have been produced for schools that are uninformed by evidence on child development and safeguarding and include legal misinformation such as telling schools they must treat gender-questioning children as the opposite sex for all purposes. Many schools rely on relationship and sex education materials produced by external groups that teach gender ideology as fact, in a way that reinforces rather than challenges damaging sex stereotypes and may well encourage gender distress in vulnerable children.'

I look forward to the new guidance... And then I look forward to the 5 to 10 year wait as it slowly and painfully makes its way through the US.

Not sure it will ever make its way to the US's crazy hat though.

[Emily's Cat]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

The author's assumptions in that paragraph are, simply put, wrong.

Also... in case it actually needs saying... I'm a LOT hesitant to accept as reasonable the opinion pieces written in a blog based on an ancient hindu aspect of spiritual revelation and enlightenment.

[theprestige]

Originally Posted by gnome

That seems fallacious on its face. Certainly advocates have an opinion distinct from those of some state governments.

Right or wrong, they seem to form their own opinion.

I see it's been a while since LondonJohn has contributed to this thread. His thesis - and he's been very consistent and vehement about this - is that UK government policy and UK medical consensus is the source of truth about the question of whether transwomen are women, and what that means in terms of entitlements in public policy and healthcare.

I'm sure he's not the only one who takes this line.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

I look forward to the new guidance... And then I look forward to the 5 to 10 year wait as it slowly and painfully makes its way through the US.

Not sure it will ever make its way to the US's crazy hat though.

Trump favours a complete ban on puberty blockers and child mutilation. His term.
He is surprised he finds himself having to say it.
Just to cheer the panel up.

[Brainster]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

I look forward to the new guidance... And then I look forward to the 5 to 10 year wait as it slowly and painfully makes its way through the US.

Not sure it will ever make its way to the US's crazy hat though.

The insurers will shut it down well before that. Some lawyer, somewhere, is already airing commercials like this:

"Were you or a loved one diagnosed with gender identity disorder in your adolescence or teen years and prescribed puberty blockers by your doctor? Puberty blockers have been found to cause sterility and lots of other health problems. Contact the number on your screen to..."

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Emily's Cat

The author's assumptions in that paragraph are, simply put, wrong.

I want to add to this part of the author's claims you didn't really touch on but I think are important:

Quote:

The effects of birth-sex puberty are irreversible and will make it much harder to transition in the future.

You talked about the reversibility aspect, but the later transition aspect deserves some attention too. What are the consequences of transitioning later? Is it really harder? I don't think the author has backed up that claim.

From what I've been able to determine, the only sense in which it's "harder" is superficial cosmetic differences, and mostly for M-to-F and not F-to-M. If you go through male puberty, you'll develop facial hair, your bone structure will become more masculine, and your voice will deepen. Even with subsequent hormone treatment and surgery, you're likely to look less feminine than you would had you transitioned before puberty. So, that's a downside.

But there are upsides too, even if you do transition. There's the whole cognitive development issue, which is hard to get good data on, but shouldn't be discounted. You'll be able to experience sexual arousal, which is no small thing. And if you ever want to have vaginoplasty, there will be enough penile tissue to use so that you don't have to resort to using intestinal graft. Vaginoplasty is a really risky surgery with extremely high complication rates, and it's much safer if you aren't trying to graft intestinal tissue at the same time. So overall, an M-to-F transition post-puberty may produce inferior cosmetic results, but it's not harder. It's arguably easier.

For F-to-M, you'll develop facial hair whether you take hormones pre or post puberty, your voice will drop whether you transition pre or post puberty. You might get a bit more masculine bone structure if you transition pre puberty, but F-to-M pass more easily than M-to-F so that doesn't make much difference. A mastectomy done pre or post doesn't make a big difference either. You're cutting out more tissue post-puberty, but either way you're still cutting out tissue which is the main thing. And from what I can tell phalloplasty won't be any different either. Whether or not you've gone through female puberty doesn't seem to have much direct effect on F-to-M transitions.

[theprestige]

There's a huge begged question there, that the goal of transitioning is to successfully pass as the opposite sex, in everyday conditions.