BBC at it again

Red

Teens cannot imagine long term physical pain and disability unless they're actually experiencing it. Therefore they cannot consent to that.

A teen who definitely shouldn't have PBs as both the anorexia and the pbs would have ruined her bone density for life.

I also need to point out that a number of sites and images on Instagram linked to self harm and anorexia are banned simply because teens with poor mental health are known to be influenced by such images and sites.

The process is similar to what media and charities like mermaids are doing, "this will help you."

Will it?

It's all about control and finding a community where people have commonalities.

Michele Moore describes at length a teen with anorexia who developed GD after a spell in an anorexia clinic, as two other girls had it too. Thereafter the anorexia was blamed on GD by clinicians.

Trans is quite simple to define really - it's the state of having a gender identity that is different to the sex

But what is a gender identity? I don't have one and nobody has ever been able to explain it to me without resorting to stereotypes. The nearest I can understand is that it is some internal sense of self which exists separate to the body. I can grasp that, as I was raised Catholic and still believe I have a soul - it is separate to my body and encompasses who I am. However, having a soul (gendered or otherwise) is a belief rather than a verifiable fact, and I would never condone physical alterations to a child based on a belief. That would be wholly unethical.

No one is "promoting" suicidal ideation in children, they are "reporting" it, and they need to do that because it's real

Suicide is known to have an element of social contagion about it, particularly among young people. And there is almost never a single cause. I will believe it is being "reported" rather than "promoted" when the groups involved stop relying on already debunked stats and start following the Samaritans guidance wrt reporting suicide.

The problem is positrans, is that this is your opinion, your experience. I'm sorry you experienced it. You say yourself you have come through and made the decisions that are right for you. That's ok, you are an adult.

However, I know many trans people who disagree with affirmation during the teen years. One even thinks it should be 21. Their experiences are entirely different. They suffered but they waited.

I appreciate your discussion though as it's very good to have civilised debate.

There are red flags for me in this programme in terms of how much YouTube influenced the individual. There needs to be a careful balance. Sweden has shown rates of trans teens being directly impacted by media sources.

Trans and suicide do go together. This is a well established fact.

Not according to this recent paper:
www.researchgate.net/profile/Kenneth_Zucker3/publication/345626543_Suicidality_in_clinic-referred_transgender_adolescents/links/5fa943dba6fdcc06242032de/Suicidality-in-clinic-referred-transgender-adolescents.pdf

Although our data suggest that elevated rates of suicidality are a clinical issue requiring attention in some transgender adolescents, it should, of course, be noted that the majority of the adolescents, either by parent-report or self-report, did not report such thoughts or behaviors

As I said - I told no one I was trans, and no one knew, so I wasn't being told anything about how I should feel. A lot of us kept extremely quiet about it in our childhoods.

I will just make a point about this. My sibling's retrospective memory about incidents in their childhood are rather different to mine. I'm three years older.

They insist that the idea came purely from them. I remember how fucked up it made me (and had massive consequences to me as a teenager and my own mental well-being) that my mother constantly told us from about age 8 (and 5) that we were 'born the wrong way around' and i should have been a boy and he should have been a girl. My sibling of course denies this (despite them having no memory of their childhood before about age 7 whereas mine goes back to age 2 which always astonishes my Mum).

Not only this but my parents invested hours and hours into trying to get them into sport, any sport because they were so worried about them being small, effeminate and 'a bit of a wimp'. They would think up ways to try and 'toughen them up'. This wasn't helped by me being a tomboy. Then they suffered really bad bullying at school along the same lines including being called 'a girl' or other such sexist namecalling.

There's other stuff too. That i was a first hand witness to.

But I'm supposed to swallow the bullshit that it 'all came from them' and there wasn't anything else going on to influence them. Cos to express my reality and recall my own life and memory of events is 'transphobic' somehow. My Mum in particular is annoying as fuck on this as obviously this affirms what she thought all along. (Spot the cognitive dissance on this from my mum who both acknowledges my recollection as accurate but also then says it came all from my sibling and was in no way an influence on her child)

Strangely enough my sibling has followed the strangely familiar pattern of getting into Japanese Anime and associated social media communities and suddenly finding their true authentic self which seems to be rather a strange coincidence if it were a naturally occuring phenomenon rather than a socially produced one. Obviously Japanese Anime is the obvious vehicle for people with gender identity 'finding each other' rather randomly because they just happened to like Japanese cartoons than these existing online communities promoting certain social values & ideas and propogating them and having certain common physical representations of idealised bodies and heavily stereotyped (and sexist) gender roles. Its definitely not got any parallels at all with pro-ana communities...

I note the article was recent enough to mention Elliot Page but Keira gerts no mention. The BBC seems to think that Hollywood stars are more newsworthy than English law.

So what the point?

Genuinely curious about what this achieves apart from a focus and goal oriented life for a few years, (which may provide a distraction and temporary relief) but doesn't solve the overiding problem that no one can change sex.

The response at this point seems to be to lash out at everyone else (including those who are supportive), blaming them of 'not understanding enough', not bending over backwards to put them first foresaking all else, rampant paranoia about prejudices and just blaming everyone for not becoming an amazing super highflyer simply because everyone else has to uphold and participate in a fantasy about life in general (which goes far beyond gender identity) which is unachievable.

You can not destroy material reality. It always still exists. Thats the problem at the heart of this that the ideology (and it is an ideology rather than an identity crisis - because its based on belief not anything more).

Totally agree with that. Children are children. They are growing still, developing brains and bodies. They need the right kind of support and help. I was more just trying to explain that what is not important as an adult can be very important to the child

That's quite an adult viewpoint. Children need to grow away from their parents and they need an identity and a place where they feel they fit in

But on the flip side " if Katy jumped off a cliff would you?" Was a common phrase in most of our childhoods . Yes we tried to carve out some space but ultimately we weren't allowed these things to take over our lives and we also were kept quite grounded with it. We were told no rather than indulged with everything to extremes. And those bkundries were important. We had to learn that although we were obviously special to our friends and family, that was as far as it went. We knew we were no more special than anyone else in the outside world

Thanks for posting those studies. I will definitely read them later.

However they are about adults and we are talking about children and teens. And the papers from the clinicians are about children and teens.

From the methodology

Our research protocol was developed in accordance with the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) Guidelines. We used the PICOS (Participants, Interventions, Comparisons, Outcomes, and Study Design) criteria to organize our approach to this research question:

Participants: Adults who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, who have transitioned gender, or who self-identify as transgender

positrans

The systematic review that you reference was limited to adults only. Therefore I do not believe that informs the discussion about potential impact of PBs in children.

From the methodology page:
Participants: Adults who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, who have transitioned gender, or who self-identify as transgender

most trans people wouldn't want a psychological solution because they would feel that it's attempting to turn them into someone else. That's conversion therapy.

That to me says gender identity is tethered to the body and the look of that body. So only the bodily changes you wish for will make it possible to realise your true gender identity. Is that what you're saying, @Positrans?

the sex you were assigned at birth.

No such thing happens. Come on. The sex of a baby can be observed waaay before they're born. Assigned a name, yes, assigned a sex, absolutely not.

Trans and suicide do go together. This is a well established fact. You can look at surveys of trans people from across the world covering thousands of individuals and suicidal feelings are always a major component.

First you say "suicide", then you say "suicidal feelings". These are not remotely the same thing. But attempts to blur the distinction are very common.

Puberty blockers are justified as "preventing suicide", when the number of child suicides attributable to dysphoria is not statistically distinguishable from zero. IIRC, the Tavistock had no reported cases.

All the stuff about "life-saving treatment" is just emotional nonsense. It's a physical treatment for a mental health condition, with unknown efficacy. The mental health condition normally resolves without treatment during puberty, and it's not clear whether puberty blockers do better in that regard.

A female child will never go through male puberty no matter how much testosterone you give them.

Is that what they're being told will happen?

As I said - I told no one I was trans, and no one knew, so I wasn't being told anything about how I should feel. A lot of us kept extremely quiet about it in our childhoods.

Not everything is about you, sorry.

Trans and suicide do go together. This is a well established fact.

No. The evidence says you're completely wrong. And also that this is a dangerous bit of propaganda to spread about.

Mermaids are a lifeline for desperate children - I fully support them and donate money regularly.

They are a desperate scam, telling frightened parents that their children are going to kill themselves, promoting the use of experimental drugs on children, and putting children in danger by ignoring all safeguarding.

RESULTS: Of the sample, 16.9% reported that they ever wanted pubertal suppression as part of their gender-related care. Their mean age was 23.4 years, and 45.2% were assigned male sex at birth. Of them, 2.5% received pubertal suppression.

good point WeeBisom - and it would be interesting if the survey had asked the 14 year old version of the respondents to see how the desire for pubertal suppression changed over a 9 year period because this survey is obviously just from people looking back at what could have been.

Supposing that the 'truer' impression of the desire for pubertal suppression is from the older age group @ 16.9% ie. they've got the maturity to understand the consequences - that would mean potentially sacrificing the long term health and well being of up to 83.1% (if all were offered pbs at age 14 and decided to take them as they would be if Posi's suggestion was enacted).

Is that what you would really advocate for Posi? Can you see that 14 year olds shouldn't really be allowed to make life changing decisions for themselves - they can't drive or have tattoos or have sex or drink alcohol for a very good reason.

No. I have been instructed to talk about my suicide ideation even though I had not expressed it.

Mermaids tag line better a live son than a dead daughter promotes the idea that trans children will kill themselves if they are not treated

People are pushing the line than trans children kill them selves. This was not seen in past generations, implying that talking about it is driving it. In fact I believe the Samaritans say this is a very real problem.

Positrans posted the results of a study earlier:" RESULTS: Of the sample, 16.9% reported that they ever wanted pubertal suppression as part of their gender-related care. Their mean age was 23.4 years, and 45.2% were assigned male sex at birth. Of them, 2.5% received pubertal suppression. After adjustment for demographic variables and level of family support for gender identity, those who received treatment with pubertal suppression, when compared with those who wanted pubertal suppression but did not receive it, had lower odds of lifetime suicidal ideation (adjusted odds ratio = 0.3; 95% confidence interval = 0.2–0.6)."

Have I interpreted it correctly that just 16.9% of the trans adults surveyed ever wanted puberty suppression? So essentially, almost 83% - the vast majority - did not want puberty suppression, or weren't fussed about it? Because that's quite shocking to me. We have been told that puberty suppression in children is essential, that without it they will kill themselves or will be miserable as adults, that they won't pass or lead fulfilling lives. And yet the vast majority of trans adults say they never wanted puberty suppression as part of their health care. Considering the awful side effects of puberty suppression, wouldn't it be better to tell trans kids that most trans adults get on fine without puberty blockers?

PaleBlueMoonlight

Psychological treatment doesn't mean turning you into someone else, it is (or should be) to help you come to terms with the reality of who you are, that includes your sexed body and how you feel about it.

Doesn't work that way for trans people. In fact, for transition to happen you have to come to terms with the reality of who you are - that's when you start to make progress.

I am not sure what you mean here (perhaps we mean the same thing?). Coming to terms with how you feel about your sexed body isn't the same thing as coming to terms with your sexed body.

No one is "promoting" suicidal ideation in children, they are "reporting" it, and they need to do that because it's real, and if they don't, people don't realise the extremity of distress that trans children suffer.

Thus children base identity on how they dress, the music and films they like, and teenage children are perhaps least likely to have friends of the opposite sex, because they are processing what sex actually means. So I think identity is important to teenagers in particular, and if you feel yours doesn't work, because other children do not fully accept you for whatever reason, it is terribly difficult. You don't want to be a freak, you don't want to be different, but you are.