There are studies and documentation about trans healthcare dating back further than Nazi Germany (medical research on trans people were one of the first books to be burned by the Nazis).
While there is always a risk when having to take drugs for anything, the outcome compared to trans individuals who were force to go through puberty out-weight this risk.
As far as I know, yes. Generally speaking, the medical establishment was far more restrictive (overly so) in giving trans people the treatment they needed back then.
I encourage you look into reports from amnesty international, they document such stuff well. They are usually a year behind on stuff, the German report about 2022 reads
> Darüber hinaus wurden in verschiedenen Bundesstaaten Dutzende von Gesetzentwürfen eingebracht, die darauf abzielten, den Zugang zu gender-bestätigender Gesundheitsversorgung ("gender-affirming healthcare") für trans Jugendliche einzuschränken. [1]
Which i would loosely translate: Different states introduced dozens of law proposals which aim to reduce access to gender-affirming health care for trans teenagers.
In 2023 a lot more stuff has happened [2] and might be in preperation.
Gender-affirming care is as far as the data suggests the best way to treat ICD-10 F64.0 and sub categories. Denying people those treatments to a legitimate and internationally recognized diagnosis is depriving them health care. Health care is a human right [3].
While this is certainly an interesting take, it seems like you're cherry-picking data to tell a story that ends in the following conclusion:
>you'd expect a well-off socially accepted trans woman on HRT to live longer than a genetically identical cis man. She has an improved immune system due to lower testosterone...
I don't think this is a very factual conclusion. When it comes to the long term physical and mental outcomes of transgender hormonal therapy, we simply don't know. If we don't know the long term implications of infusing our bodies with synthetic hormones, then I would consider that to be a health risk.
While I fully support adult's decisions to put whatever chemicals they want to into their bodies, hormonal therapy seems like a health risk and is certainly, by any definition of the term, unnatural. I don't believe I am a bigot because of this opinion, either.
The ethics of using risky dangerous drugs on children (who grow out of GD over 50% of the time) is pretty clear cut to me.
You risk permanent bone damage for the minority of cases where it has some advantages? The "advantages" are apparently easier transgender surgery, which in its current form is essentially a disaster. The operation is brutal and the results are rarely good. The majority of the time there are serious, life-changing consequences. All this risk for something that I think even transgender people would agree isn't there yet in terms of utility nor aesthetics.
After all that, the suicidality of transgender people post-operation is virtually the same as pre-operation.
For those reasons, I find it extremely hard to support the use of risky drugs and a very rocky pathway for children who have GD. The fact transgender people tend to ignore these risks, paper over them and encourage questioning people onto this path isn't a good look.
The drugs are dangerous, irreversible and have a very questionable upside. Full stop.
That second source was written by someone with an obvious agenda of whining against political correctness [1].
As for the first source: an interesting study indeed - the question is, what weighs higher: a potential risk of inability to have an orgasm, or the very real risk of suicide attempts and successful suicides? Usually, medicine goes for "least harm". The last paragraph is particularly telling:
> Laidlaw has called the Endocrine Society’s position “highly deceptive.” Most gender-dysphoric children experience other psychological or familial problems or pre-existing trauma or autism, he said. “These kids, given time and compassionate care, should be able to become comfortable in their bodies without the harmful interventions of hormones and surgeries.”
The core issue is: access to mental health care or getting children removed from abusive families outside of actual, massive physical violence is incredibly rare. CPS and its worldwide equivalents often barely have the resources to keep up with children being sexually and physically abused, and life in shelters or being constantly shuffled around foster families is a hell on its own - not to mention moving out of strongly "conservative" areas or out of the school district to escape bullies is often financially impossible for way too many families.
So again, from a harm reduction perspective, it's obvious that providing puberty blockers and, later on, a way to transition is the more realistic and better outcome way. Besides, even when one assumes the statement of "most" trans people having had prior issues as true (which I haven't seen data yet except a correlation with autism [2]), there will also be a lot of people with absolutely zero history of abuse or other issues beyond being trans who will be trans, and so you need a framework in place to help these as well.
That is an insane thing to say. Qanon level insanity. Trans activism is big pharma selling HRT to kids? First off, HRT is expensive, but not that expensive. Whatever made up narrative you have for them convincing kids to support trans people would be entirely too expensive to justify. Second, trans people have existed for MUCH MUCH longer than pharmaceutical companies have existed.
> and these medicines are known to reduce that risk
I'd known the first, but I've seen very few sources for actual studies on this. Do you happen to know of any? Even a 5 year study of people transitioning vs people denied the ability to transition would be greatly appreciated. There's a lot of people out there saying that transitioning doesn't lower lifetime suicide risks and I'd love something to push back on that.
Well, the issue is that a lot of the trans research that had been conducted by then got burned by the Nazis. The modern idea of gender identity which is now widely recognized as the best possible explanation for the empirical outcomes we see was just being formed, and the dominant players in the field were still "sexologists" who decided whether someone was trans based on how attracted they personally were to their patient.
(John Money, who created the idea of gender identity in the 50s, was wildly off base about the specifics, which resulted in the tragic human rights violation of David Reimer, a cisgender man forced to live as a girl with crippling gender dysphoria. He also lied about the success of his forced gender reassignments, which resulted in routine intersex genital mutilation -- the one procedure that every single right-wing US bill banning gender-affirming healthcare for minors carefully excludes!)
Or at least that's my read of the situation! I could be wrong.
For some trans people, the alternative is no gender-affirming care at all, which tends to lead to bad health outcomes (e.g., suicide).
To be trans is to live on the edge of the law and on the very cutting edge of biopunk medical science. A lot of shit is off-off-off-label, where there are no guarantees of quality, but something is better than nothing which is what you'd get if it were up to your parents and doctors.
It's a tradeoff. At least we can all agree that adults have the right to transition under an Informed Consent model. Countries like the UK, without IC, are hellholes for trans medical care. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eWIshUzr8
I would have a much bigger problem with what Keffals was doing if it were possible to actually get HRT as a teenager in most of the world. The structural injustice is a million times more serious.
BTW, trans people used to be routinely tortured by the medical system not that long ago (and are still now in most of the world). At that time, what you derisively call "bathtub HRT" is how most trans people used to bypass the medical system. It isn't just out of nowhere, there is a long history of this. I've also seen people test the products of that pharmacy and say that it's medical-grade.
There are also suicides among treated "trans kids". Don' just use the selective statistics the trans lobby throws around. Or look into the details when they cite actual studies.
Do you think it's beneficial for the US military to accept transgender people who, according to dozens of studies, have substantially higher rates of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and other negative side effects?
Additionally, some of the hormone blocking drugs can cause bone loss (presenting a real physical risk).
Obviously, this has innumerable risks in a military environment from an objective standpoint. In fact, even post-transition, suicidal ideation is still orders of magnitude higher than average.
The evidence of the efficacy of some of the treatments for gender dysphoria like hormones are among the very best we see in mental health, we see outcomes just a bit below what we see for stimulants for ADHD, and they smack the shit out of crap like SSRIs. One can question the quality of this evidence, and how strong of an endorsement we should be giving, but things look good.
My biggest point of caution is that the past is not the present, and the amount of patients has exploded to such an extreme that said evidence is very arguably irrelevant because we're not treating the same body of patients as we were when most long-term evidence was gathered. We're seeing a tripling in the amount of people identifying as transgender. I question if we truly know how these drugs affect the MAJORITY of people seeking them.
Yeah, I was watching a gender doctor on youtube who was saying something like 'suicide rate in trans people who don't go on HRT as a teenager is 40%, so we put teenagers on Lupron and send them to therapy until they're sure if they want to transition or not. Increased chance of osteoporosis in old age isn't much of a risk compared to 40% suicide rate' (my words from memory, not a direct quote)
Yes, and like hormonal imbalance in cis people, the evidence is clear the benefits of the treatments outweigh the risks also for trans people. This is how we make medical decisions, not as a proxy for moral panic.
The only disingenuous framing is hormone blockers as "transition".
I'm extremely cynical about Amazon's move qua their own ethics, here but I also understand where the internal pressure is coming from given how rapidly the UK mainstreamed such deep transphobia.
While there is always a risk when having to take drugs for anything, the outcome compared to trans individuals who were force to go through puberty out-weight this risk.
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