Economist Gender Clinics article

[Tootsweets23]

Didn't see this shared already www.economist.com/open-future/2019/12/03/gender-identity-is-hard-but-jumping-to-medical-solutions-is-worse

I think this is what people thought was happening but to read such an account is quite shocking. These poor people are being so let down by the very professionals who should be there to help them.

Good article, thanks for linking

There is a responsible middle path between making transgender people jump through hoops to access needed medical care and allowing people experiencing psychosis and delusions to have their testicles removed

You’re not fucking kidding

I have no doubt this will be the medical scandal of our age. Thanks OP.

Thanks for sharing. A balanced article.
While I'm against children and young adults being put on a medicalised pathway, adults are free to do with their bodies as they like. However, that shouldn't absolve medical professionals of safeguarding protocols and a way to ensure any adult desiring access to such life altering procedures is not under distress from other issues like mental health problems or trauma. There should be proper research and long term studies and procedures and pathways modified according to evidence rather than ideology and being fearful of activists.
I'm still astounded by the cavalier attitudes towards trans people's health both by the medical establishment as well as the supporters and activists.

"I know detransitioned people who later discovered they had autism-spectrum disorders, detransitioned people who came to recognise that they were experiencing traumatic dissociation, even detransitioned people who had such severe dissociation that they had multiple “alters” (ie, multiple identities) while being treated with hormones and surgeries."

This quote from the article ties in with the recent research just published. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3759320-Research-shows-gender-dysphoria-caused-by-trauma-which-should-be-treated-rather-than-entrenched-through-transitioning

Why aren't detranistioners being listened to?

Too many people are now invested in this self affirming approach. But you would like to think the medical profession would still be guided by do no harm.

A great article in a well respected magazine with a world wide circulation.

I would love to see a proper discussion with the author and people like Rose of Dawn covering the ethics around transition.

When the first GRA was proposed it was estimated that 5,000 people with gender dysphoria would be affected, and as the author acknowledges, the Swedish statistics based on transition with robust gatekeeping and before the TRAetc activism, resulted in very few de-transitioners. At the centre of any policy would be a desire to protect vulnerable people. As well as the issues that affect women, current approaches are failing to protect vulnerable people, children or adults, who are effectively allowed to self-diagnose with dysphoria.

I wonder who might sponsor a proper responsible discussion? One of the law firms?

While I'm against children and young adults being put on a medicalised pathway, adults are free to do with their bodies as they like.

I'm not so sure about this, I think it raises a lot of questions. Especially when you are asking doctors to prescribe powerful drugs with long term effects, or do irreversible surgeries. From the practitioners POV I think it's often a breach of medical ethics, whether or not people want to do it.

Perhaps Dentons to sponsor, and University of York to host?

Goosefoot I view it in the same way that I can't stop or prevent someone from smoking or injecting drugs or binge drinking or gambling. I don't think what they are doing is right or a good idea, but at the end of the day they are adults and they are free to make those choices, even if they are bad ones.

I did go on to say that there is still a wider responsibility by medical professionals to not shy away from doing the rigorous research needed to ensure what is being advocated for is the correct thing to do. This used to be a very niche area of medical practice that was shrouded in obscurity. It's fairly recent that it's become maintstream and now people are starting to ask questions and understand the ramifications. And there's mounting evidence that such treatments might be fraught with complications and problems.

There's clearly a case for the government to potentially enforce guidelines and restrictions in the same way we might have regulations around alcohol, gambling, cigarettes and drugs etc.

Thanks for sharing.

Putting children on an irreversible pathway of drugs and/or surgery is a child abuse scandal and the hill I'm willing to die on.

And when we talk of adults making 'free choices' well.. even if that's not at the expense of the NHS, then I turn to this article about those women whose lives have been ruined by Lupron.

www.revealnews.org/article/women-say-drug-used-to-halt-puberty-has-ruined-their-lives/

I also look at the poor woman on Newsnight last week who had taken hormones and undergone SRS, which she then bitterly regretted as it hadn't solved her issues (which included CSA).

As far as doing what they like — people who ride motorcycles without helmets end up costing society a great deal in medical expenses, and so where I live there is now a helmet law, despite fierce objections from riders who want to do with their bodies as they like.

We have NO idea what the long term effects of a lifetime on cross-sex hormones will be, but those costs will be borne by society, not by the individual who wants to do with their bodies as they like. This is true even in the US’s crazy healthcare system.

We can’t police smoking, drinking, and all sorts of other behaviours that create society-wide economic health expense risk, and I’m not at all advocating that we should.

But in gender clinics, doctors are actually inflicting disease state onto healthy bodies. The female body is not meant for male levels of testosterone — this created a disease state in Buck Angel that nearly killed Buck.

(Though perhaps oestrogen is actually healthy for males, since it’s protective against heart disease and also anti-depressant in males — who knows? It wouldn’t surprise my built-in irony metre one bit if gender medicine ended up being beneficial to male bodies and injurious to female bodies.)

Inflicting disease state is something doctors do to, say, cure cancer. But there is NO organic disease doctors are combatting when they inflict disease in gender clinics.