My thing is, even if a lot of teenagers are experimenting and trying on different identities, so what? Why not let them? I mean, my profession is a significant part of my identity, and I think many adults would agree… and yet, we actively encourage teenagers to explore many different career possibilities to find the one that fits them best. Experimenting with identity is not, itself, a problem. And if a kid feels the need to experiment and try out different gender identities to find the one that fits them best, let them do that, too. Maybe they’ll eventually decide on an identity that matches their chromosomes, maybe they’ll decide on the opposite, maybe they’ll decide not to settle on any one thing and remain genderfluid their whole life, or anywhere in between. What’s wrong with any of that?
Indeed! And in fact, the more we take such experimentation in our stride and resist the temptation to make a huge fearmongering fuss about it, the less appealing it becomes to the small minority of children who might be tempted to try it for genuinely unhealthy/disruptive reasons.
No fun making up a shattering melodramatic personal crisis to viscerally shock your family if your family just doesn’t happen to be shocked by it, after all.
I have a couple of trans women I’m close to IRL and the fact that they’re trans is the least interesting thing about them. Who cares? It’s not a big deal unless you’re a bigot.
It’s like getting bent out of shape because they have green eyes or something. Address real issues that matter, like healthcare and passing laws that protect democracy.
I guess hatred is easier than fixing real problems.
Anecdote:
I once attended a party where the theme was “wear pink”, and being considerably slimmer back then, I obtained a junior high school pink uniform (full on pinafore style) which was a tight squeeze but I fit it… just. I am a 6 foot man…
Even then, I managed to get flirted with and kissed a girl.
Agreed. I usually work the tent for my wife’s church at the local Pride fest. I saw a very familiar looking young man. I’d realized he was my son’s friend’s sibling, whom I’d know since he was a little girl. The GAHT had changed the shape of his face considerably, but the biggest change (and probably why I didn’t recognize him at first) was he was smiling. It was the first time in fourteen years that I’d seen him genuinely happy. I think the people who want to take that away are fucking monsters.
“The radical left wants to sharpen spoons. Do you want spoons competing against knives in your silverware drawer and using their slot in the dishwasher? Won’t someone please think of the cutlery?”
Everything Trump says boils down to one of two things:
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Make himself sound awesome
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Make the rubes angry
Transgender surgery for minors may be dead in the U.S.
But gender affirming surgery for cis minors is not a problem.
I’m all for free transgender treatment for anyone who wants it, except surgery on minors.
They were already extremely rare.
The study found no gender-affirming surgeries performed on TGD youth ages 12 and younger in 2019. This was expected, the researchers said, as current international guidelines do not suggest any medical or surgical intervention for TGD individuals prior to puberty. For teens ages 15 to 17 and adults ages 18 and older, the rate of undergoing gender-affirming surgery with a TGD-related diagnosis was 2.1 per 100,000 and 5.3 per 100,000, respectively. A majority of these surgeries were chest surgeries. When considering use of gender-affirming breast reductions among cisgender males and TGD people, the study found that cisgender males accounted for the vast majority of breast reductions, with 80% of surgeries among adults performed on cisgender men and 97% of surgeries among minors performed on cisgender male teens.
That means among teens from age 15-17 who were transgender or gender-diverse, 0.0021% got surgery done. It’s not much more for adults either, at 0.0053%. It’s not the epidemic that those on the right are pretending that it is. And it doesn’t happen, period, for people who haven’t reached puberty.
When teens get surgery, it is almost always cisgender males having breasts removed.
Here’s the actual statement from the ASPS.
Yeah, unsurprisingly, the ASPS seems to have changed nothing about its policy on gynecomastia surgery for male patients. They still assert that breast-tissue reduction surgery is indicated for, e.g., “men who are bothered by the feeling that their breasts are too large”, and add that “adolescents may benefit from surgery”.
Mind you, gynecomastia breast development in adolescent males is mostly 100% normal and temporary, due to hormone fluctuations in adolescent growth. And gynecomastia surgery risks are not trivial. But by golly, if a cisgender boy or man is feeling body dysphoria because he’s got boob bumps, heaven forbid we should recommend that the surgery option be taken off the table, right?
Yeah, this is usually what is happening for transgender teens as well. What I mean is, it’s substantially the same kind of surgery as far as I know.
As pointed out above, gender-affirming surgery on transgender minors is already extremely rare anyway.
But does your opposition to gender-affirming surgery on minors extend to, say, cisgender adolescent boys wanting gynecomastia surgery on their small (and most likely temporary) boob bumps? Or cisgender adolescent girls wanting breast augmentation to mask asymmetric breast development (one boob bigger than the other, which may also be a temporary developmenal phase)?
The ASPS doesn’t seem to have any problem whatsoever with keeping those surgical options on the table. Yet they carry just as much potential health risk as top surgery for transgender minors, and arguably are often being performed to treat much more transient and superficial conditions than severe gender dysphoria.
FWIW, I think that all forms of “appearance-focused” surgical procedures on minors should default to being deprecated and rare. But the societal hypocrisy of considering such procedures absolutely, horrifically unacceptable when the patients are transgender, while similar procedures on cisgender patients don’t even raise an eyebrow in most discussions, is absolutely glaring.
But but but I was reliably told that kids are going to school one day and having surgery to change their sex in the nurses office! And then when they go home their parents are surprised!
THE PRESIDENT of the United States said this. So it must be true. He would not lie to us would he?
Trump repeats false claims that children are undergoing transgender surgery during the school day
They’re not getting surgery to change their sex, they’re getting surgery to change their species, so that they can use the school litter boxes. Duh!
We had a person running for local office in Red Deer Alberta, who during the election claimed that this exact thing was happening in schools right in her home town.
She claimed this was absolutely true. Lifted directly from the fake stories from the BS spewing Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert.
(I’d like to ask MTG if she regrets the insane shit she spewed not so long ago.)
Good point. No, it does not.
She has said she does, actually. She has expressed regret and offers apologies.
I still think she’s a piece of shit though.
I was led to understand that it was already vanishingly rare to nonexistent and that when we talked about “gender affirming care” for minors we were talking about puberty blockers, not surgery?
Eta: further posts confirm this impression