Children of 12 to be allowed gender drugs to prepare for sex change

[femtastic]

Do you consider this to be a positive development?

Children of 12 to be allowed gender drugs to prepare for sex change

CHILDREN as young as 12 are to be allowed drugs to prepare them for changing sex.

The controversial treatment halts puberty, stunting sex organs and preventing the growth of facial hair and sperm in boys, and breasts in girls.

The injections, previously available only to over-15s with gender identity disorder, are being made available to younger people under an NHS study after pressure from families and doctors.

Doctors admit most children with the problem do not go on to have a sex change, often turning out to be gay. But blocking puberty hormones can make surgery easier if they need it.

Dr Polly Carmichael, who runs Britain?s only GID clinic in London, said several under-16s were prepared to sign up for the jabs, until now available only in the US, Holland and Germany at that age.

She said: ?The majority of our referrals are 15-plus. Of the children aged 12 and 14, there?s a number who are keen to take part.?

The study was approved by the ­National Research Ethics Service, which oversees hundreds of NHS projects.

The only trans person i ever knew was FTM...

A gentle,kind FTM.

Who was sniggered about behind his back...and probably to his face.

I consider myself a feminist but also a humanist (is that the right term?) and would accept any 'man' who was willing to put himself through what must be a traumatic and painful experience in order to become what he feels he is/should have been........ a woman.

The world is a hard enough place without us making it any harder for people of any gender.

Dittany, whilst I am sure that there are some very vocal MTF seeking to have 'the best of both worlds' allowing them to derail a discussion about the general provision is surely surrendering to their patriarchy.

Reductively, they want the world only to be seen in one way, and rather than saying there is a spectrum - a wide spectrum - feminists are supposed only to fight against that particular section of MTF whilst ignoring the needs wants and desires of everyone else.

Don't you see that this has shades of the SN argument - gradations of grey with no definite beginnings or ends.

Transphobia from feminists is very depressing. It's a bit like people from one oppressed ethnic group insisting that other oppressed ethnic groups should fuck off and stop moaning because their ethnicity is less immediately obvious (eg travellers).

DBennett, your link refers to DSM IV, not DSM V, and even in the link you have posted to for DSM IV, section B is discomfort with his or her sex or sense of inappropriateness of gender role.

So it does not require to have anything other than gender inappropriate behaviour in both category A or B to receive a diagnosis. In fact all that would be required under category B would be 'a marked aversion toward normative feminine clothing.'

There is no requirement to have any negative feelings towards your body, or desire for a body of the opposite gender in order to be diagnosed with GID as a child, according to the criteria you have linked to.

DBennett, the paper you have linked to is really useful. It actually covers the basic points about the condition. There is a section called the 'pros and cons of early hormonal therapy' which succinctly covers most of the relevant points made on this thread, so it is really worth reading.

The main issue for me is that this paper (like the ones other people have quoted from, says:

Multiple longitudinal studies provide evidence that gender-atypical behavior in childhood often leads to a homosexual orientation in adulthood, but only in 2.5% to 20% of cases to a persistent gender identity disorder (3, 6, 22). Even among children who manifest a major degree of discomfort with their own sex, including an aversion to their own genitalia (GID in the strict sense), only a minority go on to an irreversible development of transsexualism.

So we are still talking about giving hormone treatments to children who are mostly going to grow up to be simply gay, not transsexual, as has been pointed out right from the beginning of this thread.

But no doubt people will continue to discuss this as a trans issue, not a gay rights issue.

how about a persons right to choose for themselves issue?

instead of a gay rights issue

or a transgender issue?

or a feminist issue?

how about leaving people alone to choose for themselves what is right for them as individuals and leave them be?

why is it impossible for people to live and let live?

this makes a mockery of any debate because its a minority group telling another minority group how to go suck eggs.
what if a whole load of the transgender community piled in here to say all gays should be counselled and taught to be what "nature" intended? ffs.

not all woman are feminists. but a lot of feminists are bigots if this thread is anything to go by.

im hiding it.
to sit on some moral high ground because you born with tits takes the biscuit.

Oh Vicar wish you weren't going.

I believe in an individuals right to be whatever the fuck they choose. I don't agree with Dittany or for that matter with Milly R.

People are people ffs. They have a responsibility to do no harm to others but their own personal responsibility for themselves is their own bloody business.

I don't care if the majority of children who feel in the wrong gender grow up to be gay. I don't care if they decide to change sex. I have no right to tell them how to be - I'm not them.

Surely for those (and the difference between 2.5 and 20% is statistically bizarre) who feel a level of discomfort with themselves the option should be there. The opposite view surely leads to massive teenage depression with the resulting attempted suicides. And that should be avoided wherever possible - surely?

Dittany, if you want to live in a cage and only eat raw fish then that is your personal decision (though I'd recommend Southern California - it's warmer there).

Bizarre though it may seem to me, it won't hurt anyone, so why not?

Your definition of female seems to me to be so narrow - the biology - born with ovaries and the reproductive ability. My mum is no longer the possessor of any of those things, yet she is still a woman. Her essence is female.

My dogs have no idea of their genitalia (poor sods) but one is identifiably 'the girl' and the other 'the boy'. It's just who they are.

Do you have any friends who are trans? Ever met any? I have a pretty large sprinkling of gay friends (both male and female) and as I explained earlier one FTM friend. I don't care about their decisions in the bedroom/wardrobe because it has nothing whatsoever to do with my life.

What does it have to do with your life?

I don't agree that VicarinaTutu was being in any way misogynistic. I would say that she hates your comments - not you as a woman or indeed a person.

I do think that you are being far more guilty of intolerance.

The essence of being female is surely inside each person's head separately and cannot be defined, just as my perception of green could be different to your perception. It makes neither of us wrong per se, just with a different viewpoint.

To tell another person that they cannot feel something is incredible.

Dittany: if someone wants to be a cat, or a dog, and decides to undergo surgical alterations to their bodies and sleep on the floor or whatever, surely it's up to them? The fact that some transpeople may be obnoxious arseholes is no reason to say that transpeople should just shut up, go away and hopefully drop dead. Some women are horrible, pushy bullies. Not all feminists are wonderfully supportive, or ethical people. Lots of transpeople just want to get on with their lives in a body/with an appearance that they feel more comfortable in.

This geezer for instance - while not everyone would want to live like that, how is it harming anyone else if he cses to do so?

I am not telling people how to be, GAGU or telling people what nature intended VIAT. I'm not arguing that just because most children with GID grow up to not want to change sex, that it is an appropriate outcome for all children with GID. I am not arguing that because most of children with GID grow up to be gay and not want to change sex, that it is an appropriate outcome for all children with GID.

What I am saying is that as only a minority of children with GID will be transsexual in later life, and we have no way of knowing which children with GID will feel that way, it is unjustifiable to give children with GID hormone treatments to keep them in a pre-pubescent state with all the related difficulties that involves.

The reason that we don't give individuals the right to choose is because those individuals are children, and adults in society do not let children have medical treatments that will cause them harm and in the overwhelming majority of cases will not have any benefit to them in later life.

The point with the outcome of 2.5 -20% GAGU is that the medical profession has no way of knowing which children will be in that group as adults, so we cannot offer the choice to those particular children because we have no way of predicting which ones they will be. Even if we could predict who will be that group of trans adults, we have no way of predicting in childhood which ones within that group will want to have surgery and which will want to be trans gender without surgery.

So with all those name calling and pretences at tolerance, nobody has yet explained to me why it is acceptable to offer this treatment to any individual child when we have no way of knowing which child will benefit from it.

Because the treatment is only offered? It needn't be accepted? Because it is a concrete method of demonstrating to those children at a terrible point in their lives that no-one is judging them for these feelings? Because it may help them in their decision? Because, presumably, none of them will receive the treatment without considerable amounts of counselling?

Because the knowledge that this treatment is there may prevent one troubled teen from killing themselves?

My discomfort with the statistics is that to say between 2.5 and 20% is such a huge variation in number renders their research meaningless. Would you defend any other piece of medical research where these numbers were used?

Oh and Dittany, the essence is in ones mind/soul/spirit - the thing that makes a person real, not just a body. Simple stuff really.

Finally, and it is final because I'm going to hide these threads, I would rather allow individuals happiness than cause them despair in the 'greater good'. Each of these statistics is someone's child, brother, sister, grandchild.

Going now, different time zone.

Such children in UK do already have a range if support available (whether it's enough is a separate question). But that's not the same as asking about whether it is appropriate to use puberty-dealing regimes of uncertain long-term health effect on a population where mis-assessment is more common than an accurate one.

The treatment is already available however in US, the Netherlands and Germany. Does anyone know anything about the efficacy of the intervention as carried out there? Or is it still too soon to know?

Dittany: is calling a penis a willy sexist?

GAGU, yes I accept the medical research, on the basis that is is a literature review of longitudinal studies, and as usually happens, there are a range of results from different studies. The fact is that the highest figure from all studies is 20% - a minority - of children with GID still have GID as adults.

It is a choice being offered to children. While I see it as good parenting by people in a very difficult situation to take a child who has serious body issues to see experts and potentially get a diagnosis of GID, that parent is then going to be advised on what kind of response to make to their child based on the particular beliefs of the experts they have seen, and the child will be counselled based on the beliefs of that expert. There is huge controversy within the medical profession of how parents should respond and how children should be treated. So within the US some parents are told to present the child with a mainly gender neutral home life and activities, other experts believe the child should be encouraged to adopt the opposite gender, and others believe the child should be put into a rigid gender role of their own sex. How as a parent are you meant to navigate that? How do you know that you are getting the right advice, when the experts themselves cannot agree? How can a child make a choice when they are being directed by adults in either one direction or another? That is not the fault of the parents - they cannot resolve such a situation and are only attempting to act in the best interests of their child.

And within the US (and I can't tell from DB's useful link which diagnostic criteria the UK is using), children can be taken by their parents to an expert, and diagnosed with GID purely based on non-conformist gender behaviour. When my sister was a child, she grew up wearing boys clothes, being called a boy's name (by choice), with short hair, playing with boys and playing with boys toys. She wanted to be a boy. Nobody sent her to a doctor. Nobody made out that was unacceptable. Nobody pathologised her desire to have a different gender role. If as a feminist and a sister I cannot say that it is wrong to pathologise a girl's desire to act like a boy and behave as if there is something wrong with her, then I may as well give up on believing we can ever live in a liberated world. And if my sister had been taken to a doctor, and made to feel that she was abnormal and needed treatment over what was solely a gender issue - not a biological sex issue, then that would have had a profound psychological impact on her. How can a child in that position be said to making any kind of real choice?

dittany, i think you really over-stepped the mark in talking to lockets earlier in the thread. it's really not okay to imply that someone's family member is being abused in order to score points in a debate.