Government announcement on petition to ban medical intervention to change gender for under 18s

[NiceHotBath]

I couldn’t see a thread about this, apologies if I’ve missed it. The Government has responded to a petition seeking to ban medical intervention to change gender for under 18s:
www.gov.uk/government/news/voice-for-justice-uks-campaign-about-gender-reassignment

I think the summary is that they’re not going to do so, but to keep the law as it is.

Umm, I don't have the evidence to hand, but I'm fairly sure that routine operation on intersex babies doesn't happen anymore? Not in the UK, anyway...

relaxitllbeok

I did know that. I have two sons!

I don't watch the I am jazz TV programme. Apparently it was on there.

Presumably it meant an erection in terms of libido induced masturbation. Or maybe one that was sufficient for penetrative sex?

Ugh, it feels wrong even speculating.

I think he had tried masturbation, and it hadn't 'worked'.

As I said, that's secondhand information because I can't bring myself to watch the programme.

Perhaps someone can answer question for me?

Presumably it's the influx of hormones that create an adult libido?

So if you are denied the hormones of your sex, in this case male hormones, does that mean your adult libido never materialises?

Would hormones of the opposite sex give you a libido generally associated with women, for instance? I.e. not testosterone lead.

Or do the puberty blockers effectively forever block that libido from emerging, as they work on the suppression of sex characteristics generally.

Every show or documentary about trans kids peddles the myth that puberty blockers are 100% reversible. The children and parents seem to think that if their child comes off the puberty blockers at any stage then they will go through puberty as normal.

I think that is probably correct. stopping the blockers will start the natural puberty.

It's when cross sex hormones are introduced that changes it.

And statistically something like 99% of children on blockers will go on to cross sex hormones.

Which is why the side-effects of puberty blockers cant be significantly studied . There are not enough children who come off them.

My understanding was children can only get puberty blockers before 16 (reversible apparently), sex hormones after 16 and surgery after 18. Sounds reasonable to me. Keeping a child pre pubertal up to 16 would not be done lightly. And any of those things require a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, not a young person or parents say so.

This is technically correct but misses the elephant in the room. Prescription of blockers leads to persistence.100% of minors prescribed blockers go on to cross sex hormones. Blockers create an irreversible trans pathway.

Without blockers, 80% of minors desist.

Is it? I've not been able to find proper research or information. Would a child who was put on blockers at 11/12/13/14 be able to come off them at 19/20/21/22 and go through regular puberty? I had thought that length of time on the drugs and the age at which you gone off them affected how the body reacted.

My sister was on PB over 30 years ago due to many medical conditions. It was controversial then, the doctor wanted to try delay her going through puberty as he felt it was adversely impacting all her other medical conditions (all autoimmune related), and my mum had a hard time deciding as she didn't get any information about side effects.

She was on it less than a year (6 months I seem to remember) and she did not start regular puberty after coming off the nedication. After a year she was then given a drug to see if she would go through puberty (medication caused her to have her period). She was told that because her period started after the medication she sound eventually go through puberty and she did, it was just delayed.

I am interested to know the true impact of PBs. I guess research in this area, on humans, would be problematic and sparse.

I do believe it's related to blockers affecting brain development. Without the maturation of the brain that happens in puberty, the child doesn't have the opportunity to develop the correct internal perception of themselves.

even newborn baby boys have erections so surely Jazz has experienced that

Oh, come on. There's a difference between a baby boy getting a proto-erection and an older boy getting an erection that could lead to orgasm and semen production. Jazz Jennings has never - and will never - experience the latter, a vital component of human sexuality, because Jazz was on blockers at 10 and hormones a few years later.

Yep I'm convinced that's it siren. There is something in the brain development at that age that allows kids to grow up, gain perspective, understand their sexuality and (in 80%+ of cases) reconcile with their birth sex. Kids who don't go through puberty don't get the chance to grow out of it. It pauses their mental as well as physical development.

Of course we can't be certain as there has been no actual research but it's a sound hypothesis.

There is also the point that puberty changes have the effect that in this household we call "teenageryness" - a vital part of growing up, developing independence, separrating from family, etc. A massive PITA while it is happening, but a key part of growing up.

These kids on puberty blockers- it's not just their bodies it's their brains as well. They aren't getting doused in a hormonal soup telling them that their parents are so embarrassing they never want to be seen near them, that developing and feeding obsessions with is an important way to spend your time, that sleep patterns need to change, that there are people out there to fancy wildly, and possibly that some risk-taking behaviour might be nice.

To STOP that and keep your child always as a child - that sounds appealing, in a way?

For the children who have this - they are still children in their heads, they haven't experienced this stuff, so how can they know if they want it? Pre pubescent children aren't interested in sex, they don't fancy people, not like older children and adults do, in fact many of them find the idea baffling and disgusting.

So. This really disturbs me. The mind is childlike as well as the body.

Sorry repeating much of previous post but in a more long winded way!

There is the point about "legal" children as well, that was mentioned earlier on. To have a 16 / 18yo with the body and thought processes of a child.... That sounds like someone that certain people would be very keen get their hands on.

Children are very trusting, they are easy to exploit. This is why we safeguard them, but our safeguards are built around age, unless there is mental incapacity. In these cases, how will it work? It's like something off black mirror.

I was confused about difference between blockers and actual hormones and it seems like lots are.

It seems you still are, Mummybear.

SnibbleAgain - yes to what you are saying. And even if blockers didn't cause persistence and some of the young people on them desisted - what then? A puberty unnecessarily delayed that puts them behind their peers in terms of development. This will be awful for them going forwards.

I am no expert Endocrinology but most hormonal systems work on a trigger/feedback system.

Much like lactation in women is usually triggered by the specific pattern of hormones that occur during pregnancy and birth, but if that process is interrupted or augmented (prem-birth) then lactation can be difficult to establish and in some cases impossible, I suspect that if the process if initiating puberty is interrupted then there will also some for whom re-activating it is difficult and perhaps in some cases, also impossible.

I would want to be 100% sure that puberty would just automatically kick back in if they desisted before stop cling an eleven year old on them that’s for certain.

Is it? I've not been able to find proper research or information
That's probably because there hasn't been any proper research or information. These children are guinea pigs for an untested theory.

Puberty blockers have been used for for children with premature puberty, and children are taken off them at the stage when puberty would normally start. There are some side effects, and these have been documented, and have to be weighed against the effects of early puberty.

The same drugs have also been prescribed to treat endometriosis and growth problems in children.

In all cases, side effects have been reported, and there are several law suits pending in the US.

I did find something. I'm not massively reassured by this statement though, and certainly don't read it as "puberty blockers are harmless and completely reversible"...

"There is reassuring evidence that gonadal function is reactivated soon after cessation of treatment. Again, the information is confined mainly to females. Mean time to menarche post-treatment is 16 months with normal pattern of menses"

www.eje-online.org/content/159/suppl_1/S3.full.pdf

Yes, Beyond, but that's for use in children with precocious puberty - the ages referred to in the paper are for girls under 8 and boys under 9, with drugs being withdrawn when they get to the age of 10 or 11 so that puberty can begin "normally".

So I'm not particularly reassured.

I too was given hormone treatment as part of fertility investigations, and the side effects, moodiness, hair growth, loss of concentration, weight gain etc etc that I suffered would put me off allowing my children to be treated with hormones for anything less than life-threatening illness. It even put me off going on HRT, the side effects were so bad.

Well indeed, it's a bit of a wishy washy statement anyway (and the length of time certainly isn't reassuring!), even when it's in relation to a medical need. The long list of side effects for children wasn't particularly nice to read either - and that's for the kids who actually need it :(

If something is being promoted as harmless and completely reversible for children, there shouldn't be "reassuring evidence" (no reference for that alleged evidence in the paper btw) - the evidence should be pretty damn certain

Why? Because when you start to grow and men start looking at you in a certain way (and worse) it is quite frankly very scary. These days many girls will have seen porn and understand from that what their sex lives will look like ie painful, brutal and for the pleasure of the man. Even ordinary sex looks pretty gross to an underage child (male and female), choking, anal, come on the face, slapping, yeah what girl wouldn't see that , start getting attention from men and think, no I want this to stop.

Yes I think so too. The social media friendship group my tween DN is a part of regularly shares sayings like "Not being straight is self care" which suggests they are deliberately trying to avoid relationships with boys as they are seen as too toxic/damaging.

Yes exactly.

Surely there should be different lines of acceptability for life-saving treatment than for "cosmetic" and "social" treatment - and don't give me all that guff about suicide stats, it seems to me that trans kids have no higher rate of suicide ideation than other troubled kids - those with mh issues, anorexia, autism, those who self-medicate with drugs etc etc. I have seen no studies that, having controlled for all the other issues that lead teenagers to commit suicide, leave being "trans" as a leading cause.

I don’t think there is any evidence that puberty will follow on cessation of puberty blockers (not including use in precocious puberty of course) as no research has been done. That’s the whole disgrace of it. It’s untested. It affects brain development at crucial stage. It might lead to permanent infertility (didn’t Lord Winston air his concerns about this recently?) plus a host of other problems.
Plus it’s recgonised that going through puberty leads to resolution of gender dysphoria in 80-95% of cases!!
Utterly shameful practice

Reading the posts I remembered that my friend who has a daughter with SN had her puberty delayed and that she's no longer on those drugs and her periods have started.

I don't know how long she was on it, I wasn't thinking about this topic at all when we had the conversation.

So, these drugs are used outside of precocious puberty and there must be plenty of people to see what the effects were, although if a person has SN of the type that mean it is desirable to delay puberty maybe they have got other things that are further up the list to track than what those drugs do / and it may be difficult to tell what is effect of those drugs and what of anything else they might have going on in terms of treatments etc.

That's an aside though,

I think they need to be digging deeper into why children want this, and why girls are the fastest growing group, and quickly.

Our authorities and institutions seem to be disinclined to put anything down to issues that women and girls face in our society though, it's such a big topic, important people like to pretend it isn't there, it's the remit of hairylegged feminists to talk about stuff like that and of course everyone is fine to ignore them.