Change their mind or operate on their body?

[Whistleblo]

If a young person thinks they are in the wrong sex body, is it best to:
1 Help them change their mind
or
2 Give them hormones that damage their health and make them infertile and operate on their genitalia?

Definitely not 2, but a better way to phrase 1 would be to talk at length to the child or young adult and explore what they think it means to 'live as a woman' or 'live as a man', and then try to tease out why they think that, what aspects they reject, how they think life would change, and so on and so forth. So much of this seems to come from not grasping that gender stereotypes are cultural. You can reject them and live your life as you see fit. It doesn't mean you're not a woman if you're female, or not a man if you're male. The only real difference your sex makes in life is your reproductive role, including making sure you don't reproduce if you don't want to, and the physical differences that follow from that, e.g. height, physical strength, having to cope with periods, which could affect sports, hobbies, choice of career.

Help them accept their body as an integral part of who they are with limited capacity for change, and show that it need not limit their self expression in any way.

I don't think anyone would argue that accepting the reality of the situation would be the ideal.

However it is a mental health issue and it's believed that 'living as...' helps to relieve the issue. Hopefully 'living as' just means proscribing to stereotypes for that sex, which is fine since there shouldn't be stereotypes.

Medicalisation and surgery should not be necessary or desirable. I guess adults can do what they like.

A lot of such young people are gay, abused, or autistic. So not so much about changing their minds as giving them gentle support to slowly realise where it’s actually coming from, and learn to accept themselves.

This.

You can't change their mind for them, and some people actually are in the wrong body, but you can give them a real therapeutic space where they can understand the reality, whatever it is. This takes years, though.