Puberty Suppression as ‘Treatment’ for Gender Dysphoria
Who’s for pumping confused kids full of hormones to suppress the onset of their puberty? It’s a common “therapy” given to boys who think they are girls and vice versa.
According to the must-read new paper “Growing Pains: Problems with Puberty Suppression in Treating Gender Dysphoria” by Paul W. Hruz, Lawrence S. Mayer, and Paul R. McHugh in The New Atlantis, puberty suppression “Advocates argue that it represents a prudent and ‘fully reversible’ way to give young people with gender dysphoria and their families time to sort out the difficult issues surrounding gender identity.”
Gender dysphoria is the learned name for the mental malady of men thinking they’re women and vice versa.
The problem as Hruz and the others outline it is that drugging kids up is a “radical and experimental” procedure “based more on subjective judgments and speculation than on rigorous empirical studies”. The so-called treatment is “being applied in an uncontrolled and unsystematic manner” and is endangering kids.
Worse is that “the claim that puberty-blocking treatments are ‘fully reversible’ is not supported by scientific evidence, and possible side effects include abnormal bone and muscle development, neurological problems, and infertility.”
And worst “these treatments may make it more likely that patients whose cross-gender identification would not have persisted past childhood will continue to identify as the opposite sex into adulthood”. Given the faddish and hip nature of transgenderism, where experimentation is increasing, this is no small worry.
As the authors rightly point out, “children are not fully capable of understanding what it means to be a man or a woman. Most children with gender identity problems eventually come to accept the gender associated with their sex and stop identifying as the opposite sex.” Drugging confused kids and guiding them with “gender-affirming” words transforms what would ordinarily be a temporary infatuation and creates a lifelong affliction.
Now some medical groups, such as the Endocrine Society and World Professional Association for Transgender
Health, advocate giving kids who are confused about their biology chemicals to slow the onset of puberty. They do this because, they claim, “gender dysphoria ‘rarely desists after the onset of pubertal development” and because, they claim, “suppression causes no irreversible or harmful changes in physical development and puberty resumes readily if hormonal suppression is stopped”.Slowing puberty “gives adolescents more time to explore their gender nonconformity” and—and this a big and—the treatment “may facilitate transition [to living as the opposite sex] by preventing the development of sex characteristics that are difficult or impossible to reverse if adolescents continue on to pursue sex reassignment.”
[…]
Be a man—or a woman—and click on over.
Hitler loved these kinds of experiments, so it must be okay.
The modern person seldom things that decisions to deliberately try to foil Mother Nature has real and perhaps negative consequences.
By the time the children reach puberty they may have tired of the gender-bending charade, but they are powerless to stop it because their parents have invested so much (psychologically and with cash) in their child’s alternate identity. It takes a child of iron will to insist to his or her parents they wish to remain the sex they were assigned at birth, to used the current parlance.
Because of this movement, the imaginative life of children has been compromised. Kids don’t know that if they play around and say silly things that their parents, doctors, and social workers will take them entirely seriously. What about children who yearn to be a puppy or a robot? Are their parents any less loving because they don’t immediately seek out motherboards or find a doctor willing to do ear and wet-nose transplants)?
Remember the East German women’s Olympic team? Those women were given male hormones and they had all kinds of medical problems. From what I have read, even hormone replacement therapy has risks.
I wonder how history will judge this. And I thought the so-called first oath of medical professionals is do no harm.
There are medical mistakes made all the time prescribed and accidental. Many during the process of discovery of good practice. Many people with zero experience working in medical fields seem to be of the belief that the science is pure. That the practitioners directly reflect the research, that common sense doesn’t prevail in clinics, that rules are not stretched in order to maintain the system, private or public, by all individuals on a routine basis. There is a lot of idealism chat imagined by people who know nothing of what actually happens.
Nobody had internet access or TV when people were being thrown into asylums for tinnitus, for example.
Or children were having their tonsils removed whether they needed it or not and with consequences which would otherwise not have occurred.
or ACL’s were being ripped out and replaced with artificial carbon fibre by over enthusiastic orthopaedic surgeons in the states on their American footballers (with disastrous consequences).
This is about sex so it draws attention, sells papers of all types. Gives some people an excuse for some more hand wringing.
I wonder what the motive might be of someone who disguises their gender and wishes to remain gender neutral.
Briggs,
It is hypocrite of you to claim caring about the well being of these or any child.
The legal age of marriage in the USA remains at around 13 year old in the 50 states and recent attempt to remedy it have failed because of caring republican like Chris Christie who vetoed a bill banning such marriage.
http://www.politico.com/states/new-jersey/story/2017/05/11/ban-on-child-marriages-conditionally-vetoed-by-christie-111987
And here are your dear institution like the church and the scout are actively fighting the removal a the statute of limitation in the Child Victims Act.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNKPVAlp_jc
Also lets make sure that those pesky ladies who dare get raped or abuse by their father have those unwanted babies brought to a life of misery. Lets also make that these women have the hardest time to access health care and that they are ruin if they do. After the USA only have the worst record in any developed countries with 18 women dying of their pregnancy per 100000 birth.
Maybe you should care about real issue instead of speaking of something you do not know.
Transegender children that reach hormono-suppression therapy are followed for years by psychologist and doctors who have their best interest at heart. They don’t favor an outcome or another for the child other than his happiness and well being.
Dav,
This should interest you.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/sniper-world-record-canadians-1.4174155
Sylvain,
I realize that English is not your first language, but using Google translate would have quickly shown that your Chris Christie link does not support what you’ve said in the paragraph directly before the link.
Steve E,
I admit that my writing in English is not the best, but my understanding of a text is A okay.
“Instead, the governor proposed putting more restrictions on New Jersey’s current law, which allows 16- and 17-year-olds to obtain marriage licenses with parental consent, and grants them to those under 16 with a family court judge’s permission.”
From a ban for all under 18, he went to 16-17 with consent and under 16 with judges consent. Which means that a 13 year old can still be married by a 30 + year old man.
Sylvain,
Now read what you wrote:
“The legal age of marriage in the USA remains at around 13 year old in the 50 states and recent attempt to remedy it have failed because of caring republican like Chris Christie who vetoed a bill banning such marriage.”
They don’t say the same thing at all.
If this gender identity business is truly a part of our current culture, well…so be it. Why not make this business, a business ? I am calling out to any and all on-line, bootstrap, capital finders; The company will be called “Camel toe” jeans. Each pair will come with a pair of puffy lobes at
the crotch front. Boys will be able to try out the stare bait, girls can give it a last shot… all for <$100 a pair! Is that win,win,win or what?
Which means that a 13 year old can still be married by a 30 + year old man.
That was about the age of Beatrix of Burgundy when she married the Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa in 1156, though I think the Kaiser was 34. The difference was that childhood was not as prolonged back then as it is today.
Now, what it actually means is that a 13-year old can be married by a 30+ year old man only with a judge’s consent, which is hardly likely to be forthcoming, especially when no kingdoms or alliances are at stake. Unless it’s a 13-year old boy; then to withhold consent would be homophobia. However, given that this has the law for a great long time in the US (and elsewhere) one might better ask how it was executed in practice rather than to invent theoretical possibilities. There is case law to consider, and precedent. Most kids today simply copulate without bothering to formalize a marriage.¹ If the girl gets pregnant, that’s her problem.
Note that the “age of consent” is actually the age at which the parents can no longer legally forbid a marriage. In Mississippi, it is 21; in Nebraska, it is 19. Elsewhere is it 18. In ancient Rome, it was never, so long as the paterfamilias was alive.
Notes:
1. formalize a marriage. The marriage as such is simply to perform the marriage act; i.e., to copulate. The old Germanic tribal law was “The act makes the marriage.” Everything else is for state regulation and/or inheritance and, of course, enforcement on the male against running off afterward. Roman law and Church law held that “Consent makes the marriage,” which helped guard against he-said/she-said, and required that the offer and the acceptance be made in public.
YOS,
Judges consented 200,000 since 2000.
I can say that I’m not surprised that you defend the practice.
Getting married at 13 when life expectancy is around 25 is one thing. When it is over 80 it is quite another.
Steve E,
Chris Christie is only cited as one example.
Other recent example include New Hampshire
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2017/03/09/girl-scout-fights-to-change-law-allowing-13-year-olds-to-marry-in-nh/
New York actually modified the law a few days ago.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-york-marriage-laws-marital-age-raised-14-178-governor-andrew-cuomo-a7800986.html
This might cut down on both unwed births and abortions without promoting promiscuity.
Joe, nothing is worth the cost of damnation. Least of all your “pragmatically” supporting the mutilation of the young.