In Australia - starting them young

[TheSandgroper]

www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-19/transgender-children-in-queensland-face-mental-health-crisis/101060090

Years ago, I went on a public waiting list for surgery, for an extremely rare condition. I was looking at 18+ months wait. By the time the surgery may have been available in the public system, my specialist believed I would have become paralysed from the neck down, and only able to breathe on a ventilator.

The entire medical/healthcare system is under extreme pressure, there are insufficient resources, specialists, beds, etc. That isn’t a trans issue - it is a basic fact of an overburdened system that is failing everyone…..

So, while the US and UK are sending up alarms about medicalised treatment , the ABC is still pushing articles like this.

It is outrageous that they have quoted a medico saying that these children should be on the same treatment priority list as asthmatics and children with epilepsy.

The ratio on Twitter is very encouraging:

https://mobile.twitter.com/abcnews/status/1527045321741565952

Coming back to this, the Twitter reaction has been very good to see. Lots of sensible posts about the inappropriateness of the ABC using a child in this context, acknowledgement of the importance of puberty, and some interesting links as well.

I wonder if the ABC will take note?

I lost hope on that score NotBad around this particular issue. I doubt the ABC will back off and focus on balanced reporting.

Bloody hell @LunaLights that made me go cold, what a horrific place to be in! I'm assuming the worst didn't happen, but....words fail me.

@IcakethereforeIam - no, the worst didn’t happen, but no thanks to the public health system! I was looking at costs of around $250K to go private without insurance (the surgery was considered “experimental” and “elective”). After trawling through the fine print of the private health policy my parents had for our family, we found that I was still covered as a dependant university student. The gap amount took me years to pay off on credit card (especially as I had to have another 3 operations within 2 years of that one).