The trans thing is now making me genuinely sad

[MrsFionaCharming]

I have a friend, who until this year was a typical slightly butch lesbian.

Said friend is lovely, studying early years education, is a Rainbow leader, and volunteers with children with special needs.

But friend has now come out as 'male', and is seeking a medical transition, and suddenly has bad acne, suggesting testosterone therapy has already been started.

I'm struggling with the fact that friend (who adores children) is choosing to possibly make themselves infertile due to the pressure to fit in a neat little gender box. It's so sad to think they may wake up in a few years, and de-transition, but it could be too late to have children.

I fear de-transition might not necessarily help, even, after some years on testosterone, a hysterectomy is recommended, as the testosterone isn't good for the female organs and leads to complications. Fertility will be impaired long before the complications get so severe.
Let's hope she never wanted children and never will.

In any case, it ruins a perfectly healthy body; testosterone causes damage to the whole body, not just the reproductive organs.

Very sad. Must be heartbreaking to see this happen with a friend.

She's only 20. By too late, I meant too late to reverse the effects.

Seriously, steroids used to be Bad Things, bow one decade later they are Recommended. Shame she can't just "identify" as male without the drugs, then hopefully one day she'll realise women can have short hair and love other women without a rebrand.

I am about to write something very controversial here, but I need to say it somewhere.

I was watching the HBO film The Normal Heart about the initial wave of HIV cases in New York City, and it struck me that this trans-agenda is a second health crisis for young gay people, only this time it is an infectious meme that will destroy their lives rather than a biological virus.

If I were to don my tin foil hat, I might also be persuaded that the whole thing is intentional. These young trans-people are going to be reliant on strong pharmaceuticals for life. They are going to have extraordinary health problems; they are going to develop disabilities at a fairly young age.

I do not understand why no-one in the medical profession is shouting about this. I feel it is almost a form of eugenics.

I am not sure how intentional the lifelong disability is, but I am rather sure the whole surgery and hormones thing is a new version of "curing the gay".

Though it sure helps that some companies profit from customers that will need artificial hormones for life. (Though those probably are not part of any conspiracy but just taking advantage of the trend - the effect is the same)

I think there is genuine concern here. Things are moving so fast, I'm not sure anyone is ready or fully understands the consequences.
There is a mental health condition where people are alienated from their own body parts, and want them removed. They are very rarely permitted to do so, other treatment options are usually insisted on first.
I'm afraid as a society we may be missing something.

We must be a truly sick society if life is so intolerable in our born condition, whatever it may be.

There is no doubt the pharmaceutical companies are fully behind it. They are on the board of lots of trans organisations.

I think it's naive to imagine that someone, somewhere isn't benefiting from this. Whether it's bandwagon jumping or deliberate, I don't know. But I'm fairly cynical.

I believe hormones were used to delay the onset of very early puberty for small children, and were only done so with reluctance because of the side effects. We test most drugs, and their different used extensively to avoid doing harm.

I think it's Lupron that you are talking about. And yes it was used for precocious puberty. It has a bone thinning effect and can cause numerous other symptoms including depression.

I believe there are lawsuit pending. It has been a controversial drug for decades.

alltouchedout

You people are vile. Stop dressing your shit up as sadness and sympathy

What do you mean by "shit" exactly?

I agree, it is a tragedy that people are being convinced that their bodies, not societal expectations of their bodies, are wrong and need to be changed.

It is a form of gay eugenics, a literal conversion therapy.

The faith based aspect of all this is crazy. All the people who disregard the science and the ethics. But then some people don't believe in climate change, and others believe dinosaurs were put on earth as a trick by the devil.

The airy fairy pro trans chat which views any debate as heretical, without being able to make any good arguments to back up their POV. Their sweeping under the carpet of AGP, the likelihood of people abusing the new rules, the potential for adults to influence vulnerable children's decisions to mutilate their bodies, the sex in sex change. This is another hideous tragedy because the believers are so loud, so dogmatic about their beliefs, that non believers don't stick their head over the parapet.

But it's not all cool, live and let live when it is kids being taught in school that "hey, if you don't fit in the box, we can cut bits off you and fill you with drugs until you do". And it's so trendy and liberal to do so.

alltouchedout, I come to threads like this as a lesbian who is afraid that a whole generation of young gay people will be harmed (and possibly eradicated) by a series of ideologies and convictions that are being backed up by movements in medical science. I am not dressing my fears up as anything.

I and other posters give a lot of thought to the issues we discuss in this corner of MN. Please don't come on here and dismiss what we are saying and thinking as "shit". It's reductive and, I'm sorry to say, pathetic.

I'm astonished and sad in a similar way.
Up to now I have always found doctors so conservative (in a good way). It can be maddening when you want someone to do something swingeing and decisive, but in general (in my experience) they don't, they try things out slowly and do as little as possible when something might be self limiting.

Now suddenly it seems that any sort of caution, in this area, is regarded as hateful and unacceptable. It's so very strange.