Why aren’t parents worried about the effects of hormones on their children.

[Sidewalksue]

3rd person I know has put on FB their daughter is now identifying as male and what a disgrace it is that they can’t access hormones and have to go through puberty.
Not one is going, all this might fuck my children for life, make them infertile, leave them with a catalogue of issues decades down the line. And what if as pre-teens they haven’t made a good decision that they can’t reverse. Maybe it’s a good idea to hang back and wait before filling my children full of unnecessary drugs.
One works in the medical profession and I am bewildered by the lack of thought past this moment in time.
How many children are going to blame their parents for wanting to give in so easily (luckily they do have to wait for hormone treatment).

Following up on what @thinkingaboutLangCleg said, if you dare to point out that this is social contagion
... Could you do just that? Reply to their b**y Facebook post, pointing out that it is just social contagion & that all hormone treatments should wait until after puberty because most cases of ROGD resolve themselves by then?
And include some useful links?

I know that I don't know the full circumstances etc etc, but I hate to think of us mumsnetters walking past on the other side (as it were) whilst this abuse of children goes on.

Good luck

Fear that their child will kill themselves otherwise. Lack of awareness that there are other approaches (talk therapy if you have the money and can find a private therapist who will take a neutral approach). Getting sucked into the world of Mermaids which sells “easy” solutions. Trusting the NHS when they diagnose GD and say this is what is needed.

There are the transhausen parents as well. I hope their numbers appear larger than they actually are, that it is just down to their vocalness.

It’s incredibly difficult to fight when your child is surrounded by a world of affirmation, where everyone celebrates it and you are the only voice of caution, where their school, their peer group, peer group’s parents, social media etc all push affirmation, and you are the bad guy and described as “emotionally abusive”. Very difficult.

My daughter’s school reported us to social services for not affirming her. That’s pretty difficult for any family to go through (and yes, a school who chooses to actively undermine the advice of professionals who have assessed my daughter, referred us to social services for following said advice) and parents know the threat is there just bubbling under the surface.

I think the biggest problem is that medicalisation is sold as “life saving” and so I think it then becomes “life saving” for many purely because they truly believe it is the only option. If other paths and ways to manage GD were promoted, I think the numbers demanding medicalisation would quickly drop.

I know parents who are very opposed, like me.

Generally we have subsequently had breakdowns of the family - the child telling us that their online ‘friends’ know more than us.

I stand my ground, the drugs are bad for you, especially when bought on the internet without medical support. I can not change my son, I can change my response to him. I don’t believe he can become a woman. I will not go along with that lie.

I am still a mother of 3 children, one however only contacts me when they want money, like a drug addict or alcoholic.

I also think some people think it “pauses” puberty and will be reversible by just stopping taking the tablets

This whole misrepresentation of suicide rates is so concerning. This script that says hormones save lives is based on nothing.

I truly don't believe people have an understanding of the impacts of not going through puberty and then having a lifetime of hormone treatment. How could they when there is so little research?

Hormones aren't well understood within the general population. I guess they might have something like the contraceptive pill in mind and see it as an equivalent.

As a PP said, hormones are in no way a validates therapy for suicidal thoughts!

We really need a sceptical narrative in the public domain to enable parents to question and resist ridiculous medicalisation. Schools also have a job of work to do as well!

On detransitioners awareness day (last week?) I read a few accounts from people who had detransitioned. They were all supporting that for many people transition is a positive pathway, however in their case the medical opinion was the only path offered. I think typically you wait for a referral (often a long wait with no support or treatment/investigation of any other issues that maybe going on so the family is left in crisis) and then you will have a few consultantions. If you choose not no go on PB I don't think there is another treatment plan?

That must be awful for parents. It seems like an utter failing in our NHS. I had an eating disorder as a teen but the help available was woefully inadequate. Unless you were very underweight and needed in patient care there was pretty much nothing. It almost encouraged you to get more ill to fit into the right box to get help.

I don't know much about other mental health conditions but I think many teens with depression are just offered medication (which is life saving for many but much more effective when offered with therapy). I think the wider issue is the lack of investment in supporting good mental health for children and young people and accessing help quickly when it's needed.

Parents of teenagers know what a challenge it is to maintain a good relationship while allowing them to seek independence. The fact that adults in schools / random adults on the internet can interfere in family life, enabling children to transition while positioning parents as bigots is unethical and dangerous.
Those of us with children not going through this can support by challenging schools who have unthinkingly bought into the lobby groups with their anti safeguarding policies.

The blindness to side effects and lack of risk/benefit alanysis is impossible to understand. Contrast to that with the response to possible emerging side effects of Covid vaccines. I'm not saying that is wrong just why are the two responses so different.

Excuse the typos

The suicide thing is another example of cognitive dissonance. What would a parent do if their daughter came to them saying she wanted to break up with her boyfriend but he told her he'd kill himself if she did? They would recognise it as a form of coersion. How many people would advocate staying in an unhealthy relationship because it's "literally saving a life"? Yet we are told to support our children make irreversible decisions about their bodies using the very same line of argument.

The fact that adults in schools / random adults on the internet can interfere in family life, enabling children to transition while positioning parents as bigots is unethical and dangerous

Exactly! And the support of those adults encourages the child to think they must be correct in feeling they need to transition. Like if an adult told a child with anorexia that yes, actually they are a bit fat and their cruel parents are trying to keep them fat for nefarious reasons.

Any genuine concern that’s raised can be dismissed as bigotry and so people are reluctant to speak out because they don’t want to be labelled bigots and because they need to choose their battle in that if they’re dismissed as bigots early on they’ll have lost any influence or goodwill they might have had whereas going along with things for a while then commenting mildly might have more effect.

Why can’t organisations go into schools and help children understand that what they’re feeling is normal and passes in the vast majority of cases?

worriedstar, rogdmum, biggreenolives, blackwave and all the other parents having to deal with this, sending you support and solidarity

You and your children are one of the reasons I won’t shut up about this. The simplistic, pat, one size fits all model of affirmation doesn’t serve your children, it’s not good enough and we absolutely must keep talking about the complexity of what’s going on. I know you know this and I’m teaching granny to suck eggs, but just wanted to chip in with my support.

Is it possible that they have only seen wholly positive renditions such as I Am Leo and that Butterfly miniseries? Have there been enough questions asked in mainstream media that it is impossible they are not aware?

I know that after seeing I Am Leo, for a very long time I didn’t question whether this was a branch of medicine progressing with full scientific backing as I naively trusted both the BBC and the NHS. It sets out with an attitude that doesn’t even trigger the thought that there is any doubt regarding diagnosis and the required treatment protocol.

I’m sure I would not have proceeded without looking into it deeply because I don’t allow any treatment on my children until I’ve looked at it carefully from every angle, but is it impossible that they are still acting in good faith?

Thank you so much Sophocles - it means an awful lot. I quite often think I am going absolutely mad because everyone I know IRL is of the same horrified viewpoint. Why then is no one in a position of authority questioning it? Or do some quietly agree with us but are too far in to row back?

I came across the term ‘Munchausen Moms’. I wonder if there might be some truth in it in some cases.

I am always suspicious when an all-boy family have one who transitions and is suddenly wearing dresses, pigtails and doing ballet.

Because puberty blockers are fiiiiiiiine

They are fully reversible

Anyone who is objecting to the use of blockers is just a hateful bigot

Your child will kill themselves if you don't allow them these unlicensed drugs

Better a daughter than a dead son

Etc etc etc

The problem is, older TRA’s (most of whom do not transition, interestingly) bang on about “literally killing us” and “trans kids being driven to suicide”. I do wonder if parents are terrified of losing their DC to suicide if they don’t go along with this nonsense.

I agree. It's shameless, given that the suicide myth is based on one very small, study that has been long been discredited.

Useful information with references here:
www.transgendertrend.com/the-suicide-myth/

And so may parents won’t let their kids eat non organic or fast food because y’know ‘hormones’

I also don't understand the push because of the vocal minority of trans adults who shout about #truscum or *transmedicals, seem to believe that no medication or diagnosis is required to be trans.

It's completely incoherent. Why can't adults say 'by all means socially transition, but look, you don't need to change your body to do it - look at these people' (not that I generally think the ' suck my ladydick' types are role models, but this is a strand of the ideology too.)

Yet somehow the only thing being pushed on children is medical transition.

I find breast binding a thorny issue too. It's not benign and can cause permanent tissue damage too, but you can't actually stop a girl from doing it unless you keep her locked in her room.

'Is it possible that they have only seen wholly positive renditions such as I Am Leo and that Butterfly miniseries? Have there been enough questions asked in mainstream media that it is impossible they are not aware?'

The mainstream media and arts seem to have gone full 'pro-ana' on this. With any other sudden onset phenomenon there'd be Panorama programmes looking into the background, Tumblr, Reddit, MRAs, mental health, porn and the trendy new misogyny, the desire for celebrity, the pharma and surgery industry, lobby groups' behind the scenes role, the blacklisting, death threats and doxxing, interviews with detransitioners themselves, so many stories that in any other era journalists and writers would be desperate to cover but here, tumbleweed.

I’ve seen the word ‘brave’ been used a lot. I was slightly scared how positive the parents were about wanting to do it without being terrified of the results. I’m hyper aware as I am going through menopause myself at the moment, what if I had been taking testosterone for 30 years, what would happen.
Express yourself with clothes and hair. No way would I allow my pre-teen to make lifelong decisions themselves.

The 14th episode of the excellent gender through a wider lense podcast talks about the many different ways that gender dysphoria can be approached, rather than jumping to instant medicalisation.

I deal with suicidal children and teenagers on a regular basis. They are assessed, their intent evaluated, and a safety plan is put in place. Usually this safety plan involves constant supervision at home with safeguards in place. If the risk is deemed very high and/or full supervision of a child who has real intent cannot be provided, the child is admitted to a mental health unit. This is very rare, compared to the number of presentations. The vast majority of the time a child can be kept safe and prevented from serious self-harm at home, with good outpatient mental health support. Obviously mental health support for children and adolescents isn’t as good as it could be, and is geographically variable but management does not include acquiescing to the demands of the child.

I have yet to have it explained to me how children who are apparently suicidal from their lack of gender affirmation are inherently harder to keep safe than others who present for other reasons. Are they more committed to their suicidal ideation? If that is the case, why aren’t inpatient child mental health units full of children who are suicidal because of lack of gender affirmation? And if they are more committed to their suicidal ideation, does that mean the solution is to acquiesce and give them treatments that don’t offer any psychological benefit but incontrovertibly lead to physical harm, or escalate their mental health support?

The Tavistock admitted that suicide in their experience has been rare, one case, and their own evidence shows the children don’t benefit psychologically. So the reasons they still want to give children puberty blockers are....what? What else is there?

The answer is, it’s a lie. Children who want medical gender affirmation are no more likely to be presenting to the emergency departments, waiting for acute mental health assessments, taking up beds in inpatient mental health units than any other children. Puberty blockers are actually given to meet an ideal that has been created, that it will be wonderful for a child to be able to be more like the sex they want to be when they’re older. I know this because I know children who have expressed exactly zero suicidal ideation who have been put on puberty blockers. The suicide stats are just a front, because none of the gender clinics want to admit they’re using puberty blockers out of a pursuit for an ideal that adults have told them they want current children to have that they didn’t have: to “pass” better. When Norman Spack said he was “salivating” at the idea of giving children puberty blockers, he wasn’t talking about “salivating” about the idea of reducing suicidal ideation.

Parents are incredibly vulnerable and they’ve been led to believe, by clinics and certain organisations, that this is the only pathway to true happiness, so when asked to consider risks and negatives of these drugs, it’s very difficult. There are a number of professionals around the world who deserve a great deal of scrutiny for this.

There’s been a constant drip drip of TV and films presenting so called trans children. I was watching the American series Good Girls, which is very enjoyable except suddenly the non conforming girl says she’s a boy and demanding that her mother buys her puberty blockers which she can’t afford. Not sure where the story is going but it seems very insidious as it’s just affirmation all the way