I would have asked for blockers and a mastectomy

Professionals will have an awareness of things like this and will have quite a rigorous process for assessing whether someone genuinely has gender dysphoria before giving out medications.

Sadly not. "If someone says they are trans, believe them". Any pushback risks being labelled conversion therapy - are you trying to convince a trans person they are really "cis"?

Have you heard of Gender GP?

"Professionals will have an awareness of things like this and will have quite a rigorous process for assessing whether someone genuinely has gender dysphoria before giving out medications."

An hours phone call or "counselling" as they called it is all it took for an acquaintances 14 yo daughter to get puberty blockers from a private GP. Rigorous!

As for me - I wanted to be a boy from around 4 (probably when I started school and was told I had to wear dresses or skirts that I hated) till I was around 15. My period started when I was 10. I hated it, along with the breasts that grew rapidly that caused a lot of attention and comments from people. I never fitted in with the other girls at school. I hated being a girl. I would have loved to have stopped it all!

Puberty is a shit time, periods are not fun, whatever age you are (47 and wishing they'd bugger off!)

I was diagnosed as autistic as an adult, which explains the awkwardness and never fitting in. If I was a kid now I could just be trans and find a group that would welcome me with open arms, like I always wanted. Scary!

If you’re being bullied, then adopting a trans identity suddenly means it’s no longer just bullying, it’s discrimination. That’s much more powerful in terms of getting defended by teachers, police and other pupils. I was so badly bullied that I would have said anything to make it stop. To add to the complexity, boys bullying girls often resort to sexual abuse, leading the female victims to repress and hide their bodies.

Professionals will have an awareness of things like this and will have quite a rigorous process for assessing whether someone genuinely has gender dysphoria before giving out medications.

I think loads of people feel this way, that perhaps they don't understand this whole thing but surely out there somewhere, medical professionals do and are carefully assessing which kids are truely trans adults in waiting and which are just kids that don't conform to gender stereotypes, those struggling with emerging sexuality, those who have dissociated from their bodies due to trauma, autistic kids struggling to fit in socially... etc.

Read Hannah Barnes book "Time to Think" documenting the development of the UK's NHS gender identity services for children and it's many failings.

Then to understand the situation in the US, a combination of listening to the stories of detransitioners like Chloe Cole, and reading "Irreversible Damage" will give you a feel for how much more accessible "gender affirming" "care" like puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgeries are to children in the USA.

Children and Parents are trusting health care professionals to make a diagnosis and tell them what treatment will help them. But HCPs are frequently taking the self diagnosis of the child and progressing them to Irreversible hormones and surgeries as if they were adults electing to do cosmetic surgery that is fully about their choices and desires rather than clinical need.

I understand you assuming there's some kind of gate keeping and safe guarding going on but in the UK different clinicians were wildly different in their assessments of complex cases and kids were falling through the gap of not receiving proper mental health care from their local CAHMS because they had been referred to the Tavistock GIDS service who became very overloaded with cases, and the only tool in their toolbox was referring on to endocrinology or into the adult gender services of the kid would age out of their service by the time they got to the top of the waiting list. Both seemed to assume that if they got a referral from the Tavistock service that meant the kids were already properly assessed.

No one was really taking responsibility to make sure that the kids were really trans whatever that means or even to make sure they were following up patients to see if the treatment helped them.

I think we trusted there was a proper process for this stuff but the health care systems have got this badly wrong.

Puberty is shit.

I expect I would have embraced the NB style. It would have been flag led, definitely.

I was a late developer so spent years wishing I had the body that my friends who hating as they spent all night before gcses rolling around with period pain and going green and fainting in chemistry.

At the same time, going shopping for training bras was horrific and I wished I wasn't.

I hated them at first as they got in the bloody way and I'd rather got used to not being like my mates by the time puberty hit for me.

My best friend called herself “Bill” and I called myself “Jim”, and we rode our bikes topless around the hot streets of Beirut because that’s what the boys did

Now that's a childhood!

On the eve of my 10th birthday I cried myself to sleep, because I knew being in double figures would be the start of my androgynous athletic body turning into a woman’s, with hips and breasts that I swore I’d cut off when they started to grow. I cried because I wanted to be 9 forever, and because I wanted to be a boy. My best friend called herself “Bill” and I called myself “Jim”, and we rode our bikes topless around the hot streets of Beirut because that’s what the boys did. (Definitely social contagion involved there, my parents told me I was “easily led” and they were right.)

Throughout this period I KNEW I was a girl, I KNEW I could never be a boy, and when my dreaded breasts did grow in, I bloody loved them, hoiked up my shirt to admire them whenever I was in a locked toilet/bathroom with a mirror. I grew up into a heterosexual woman who liked football and pool/snooker, liked/flirted with men and was liked/flirted with by them. Only in my 50s did I start wearing dresses and skirts.

All this is normal, and fine, and allowed. Puberty is awful/difficult/challenging for most people, but it’s an essential part of growing up, both physically and mentally. It’s also, inconveniently for trans rights activists, the only known “cure” for gender dysphoria, so it seems counter-intuitive to try to block that “cure”.

Nope. As I mentioned they have swapped one eating disorder for the other. On top of a few more acronyms / illnesses.

turns out double masectomy and hormone treatment doesn’t cure trauma caused by childhood sexual abuse.

Professionals will have an awareness of things like this and will have quite a rigorous process for assessing whether someone genuinely has gender dysphoria before giving out medications.
Have you read Time to Think? It's really not like that! Bear in mind that in some countries it's even worse and professionals are not even allowed to question whether a child is "really trans" or whether something else may be causing their discomfort. It's truly dystopian.

Professionals will have an awareness of things like this and will have quite a rigorous process for assessing whether someone genuinely has gender dysphoria before giving out medications.

No, that's been the issue. They don't.

And there's a very big market in private clinics.

I was so badly bullied at school it scarred me for life. If I had been presented with a chance to become the coolest girl in school by identifying as trans, I'd have leapt at it, no matter the cost. If it stopped the bullying and gave me the ability to report the slightest hint of disagreement - and have the teachers do my bidding and bollock the bullies - I would have transed myself in a heartbeat.

Professionals will have an awareness of things like this and will have quite a rigorous process for assessing whether someone genuinely has gender dysphoria before giving out medications.

I think it's much more common that people are made to wait years for these types of medications than are given them flippantly without thorough assessment. Honestly, I think it's unlikely that you would have got them, because in the assessment process it would have become clear that you did not actually have gender dysphoria. There's more to it than you going to a doctor and saying 'I want to be a boy'. That's what assessment is there for.

Your concern seems to be that you would have deliberately misused a prescription medication and doctors wouldn't have picked up on your lies. There are similar concerns for other prescription medications that should be for certain conditions only, and people doing themselves a lot of damage by taking them when they shouldn't. This is not unique to puberty blockers.

The point is that I had anorexia in the 90’s.
But now I wouldn’t have had anorexia, I would have decided I am a boy so that I could have taken puberty blockers.
Puberty blockers would have saved me from the changes puberty forced my body to go through. Changes I really did not like, because it made me very aware of my limitations in the world and I hated that.
Aquiring anorexia was the solution to this body dysmorphia at that time. Now the solution would most likely be puberty blockers instead.

@Abergale That sounds like quite a complex case and sounds like they carefully considered the anorexia and the treatment plan and did not jump straight to providing any treatment. Actually sounds like they withheld it which was a sensible decision.

Hope your friend is OK.

Yes.

Eating disorders are prevalent among autistic children too for a variety of reasons. So it's really complicated.

However, there it's recognised that it can be part of their sensory difficulties and or relating to extreme anxiety, PDA type control difficulties (which is also very driven by anxiety.)

For 'some reason' (which we know well) adopting a trans identity is not seen like this.

Incidentally, bulimia is evidenced to be socially contagious, with rates of x5 more women with it than men.

One thing I cant get my head around is how much time is spent teaching these kids how to be a victim. Entire jobs in schools etc set up around this.

I'm not saying that kids shouldn't be supported if going through stuff. But the problem with anything around the therapy stuff is that there is no money in the cure. Wheres the incentive to make them not need you? I'm not saying all thrse people are bad or scammers etc but just that its a situation where its wide open to create problems so that you can spend weeks/months / years treating and solving them and have them coming back the entire time.

Where were all these kids 30 years ago. We were told to get on with it then. To behave. Do as we were told. We had to keep most stuff for our own time. I was sent to the office to remove my nail polish. Not celebrated for some made up identity that allowed to to flout rules everyone else had to live by.

The worse thing you can do to people who's brains are still developing and who are still fighting out who they are and what they want to do, is to teach them.they are a victim and teach them never to question anything or anyone. We are creating self absorbed mindless drones with no critical thinking skills who think the answer to everything is therapy and pills and a gazillion labels.

I knew someone personally back around 2003-2007. It was a bone of contention because they withheld them till my friend gained some weight. We would have been 14-17 at time. Of course my friend thought being trans caused anorexia and that male hormones and a mastectomy would cure the eating disorder so they were being unfair.

They have persisted as transgender into adulthood and whilst we’ve lost touch I know they still struggle with mental illness and an eating disorder (although bulimia rather than anorexia now).

I would've transitioned too because of abuse and misogyny/sexism. I even spent a few years dressing as boy and trying to pass. I still remember the thrill when another boy that didn't know me would shake my hand , as boys did.

I was just looking for safety, acceptance and more freedom (like boys had). Everything I did or wanted to do was wrong because I was a girl, but it would've been ok if I was a boy.

I was born in the 80s. I was what most would have called a " tom boy". Back then you could just get on with it. Having to wear a skirt to school or put a nice dress on for grannies birthday was seen as just what you did . No one died. The world kept turning.

The difference now is that it seen as literal violence because apparently one must he able to display and bang on about their " identity" 24/7

Instead of teaching resilience and how to behave within certain settings. We teach kids that loving parents are the enemy. We teach them that the most self absorbed attention seeking narcissistic behaviour is acceptable. And we teach them that they really do need to pathologise perfectly normal feelings about their bodies and growing up.

There really is such a thing as killing with kindness.

I dread to think what would have happened to me had I been born now. I had no friends in primary. I was a mis fit who hung around with the other social rejects. I hated my fat arse and thighs. I hated my fat body with no boobs. I had the dodgy fringe the wonky feet the big nose. My face didn't fit. I hated wearing skirts and argued the toss about how unfair it was girls couldn't wear trousers. Id have been a perfect candidate for all of this. Luckily I got a slap if I mis behaved and the rest got the attention it deserved. Ie- none.

Spiliadis saw many girls with chronic eating disorders at GIDS. “Most anorexics are natal females who reject their femininity and are repulsed by their secondary sex characteristics. They were being put on puberty blockers, which is awful as they’re already not developing because of their eating disorder. So you are double-blocking them.”

From one of the many reports into GIDS at the Tavistock.

Here's Michele describing those cases.