A UK forum is encouraging a desperate parent of a trans identified male to seek out DIY hormones, without consulting health care professionals, how is this dangerous advice legal?

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

OP "If anyone could help me to understand, I would be extremely grateful. I just want my daughter to be alive and happy in her own skin as much as possible ."

Responses: "diy is reliable and safe, there are communities that will be able to help, and really all it is getting a blood test every now and then to check how low or high a couple numbers are and adjusting accordingly."

Full details here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1rw0bac/please_help_parent_to_a_16_year_old/

How is this even slightly legal? The pro anorexia sites were shut down right? The pro suicide?

This boy needs psychotherapy from a psychiatrist who is interested in treating the root cause of this boy's mental health issues not one using a faddish label to inflict even more damage.

Forums are just that and anyone taking medical advice from them and not a medic that is life changing is daft.

@FlumpyLump If your child has come to you about changing their sex and DIY hormones they’re hanging out far too much on Reddit and Discord.

Your child has been encouraged by people online. And you’ve sought their affirmation too by posting on there.

You will not be made aware of the medical downsides to cross sex hormones because Redditors don’t want you to think that. They want your kid to join their club. The idea that your child will not survive unless they take cross sex hormones is not true. They have been told the this is the best way to frighten a parent into doing what they want. You also need to be aware of the number of dubious characters who have moderated Trans and LGBTQ boards. Be mindful of this when you do your own “research” on there. Maybe a little googling of that would be an eye opener.

I have walked in your shoes and I can assure you your child will be far sicker if they take huge doses of cross sex hormones. My child and I have an excellent relationship. I believe in evidence based medicine. She’s at present doesn’t. I am there for her when she becomes incontinent, thyroid stops working and hopefully not the hormone related cancers that are prevalent in our family. Let your child experience life without harm. Let them understand it is indeed fine to be gay and so many men have walked in those shoes, believing it would be better to be something else. Talk to those gay men in real life not Redditors.

Reddit is never ever a good place to go to for sane balanced advice. Talk to health professionals that don’t make money from selling hormones and surgery. Don’t be annoyed that the Gender identity clinic is no longer a guaranteed hormone provider. They have your child’s best interests rather than the clinics that want to give you whatever you ask for.. Actual medicine doesn’t work on a “what the customer wants” basis. Let your gay son be fabulously gay. Don’t trans it away.

@FlumpyLump Read and digest what @tinkerella1 said about the Reddit board you have posted on. It is not there to help or support you.

Reddit is a public forum, by the way. Anyone can read your comments on there. Such as this one:

I have seen and replied to the mumsnet post that has a thread discussing this and in all honesty, they should be more worried about their husbands search histories than having an unwanted opinion on other people’s lives.

@FlumpyLump

Please stop and think.

Your child will one day be an adult. If you allow them to transition, they will never have a sex life, never be able to have children, need to take hormones forever, and so on. Is this what you want?

Why not find the root of your child’s problems, such as autism or being gay? Yes, it will take longer, but it will be far more effective and kind.

I'm amazed why anyone wastes years at med school when any random person on the internet thinks they can give useful medical advice.

Id sooner have a happy transgender child than a dead child.

The Cass review said this

“It has been suggested that hormone treatment reduces the elevated risk of death by suicide in this population but the evidence found did not support this conclusion.”

If your son takes oestrogen he will be 10x more likely to have a stroke & 5x more likely to have a venous thromboembolism (VTE) like a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in the calf or a pulmonary embolus (PE). These complications can be fatal.
The downside of cross sex hormones don't get discussed on Reddit as the moderators delete posts & ban posters who inject a little realism.

It should not be legal, but unfortunately it is. I see a lot of really dangerous advice on Mumsnet too regarding health matters

Brilliant post @tinkerella1 - that sounds truly from the heart

That Reddit forum is not helpful, is an absolute echo chamber, and as for the redditor comment added by @Greyskybluesky, they should put their own house in order with the recent revelations regarding Reddit mods!
The posters can be really offensive yet the nastiness is deemed to come from people critical of gender ideology???? Give me a break

I thought the theory re 'alive TG child vs dead child' was long gone??

The reason your child can’t get an NHS prescription for these drugs is that there’s no evidence they would help him.

No evidence. Anyone who tells you they are lifesaving is simply lying.

Also, you need much tighter parental controls on your family internet. Do this for any younger children, even if you let your older one read dangerous rubbish. You seem to be able to swallow the self-destructive ideology your son has adopted, but the ideas any siblings get into might to be so palatable for you.

What exactly @FlumpyLump would these drugs be 'treating' and why is sterilising your child the cure?

Good grief @FlumpyLump. You should be encouraging your child to be happy in his own skin. You've already said you suspect he is gay. How is sterilising him and putting him on a lifetime of drugs compassionate parenting?

There is a good reason that these drugs are not available to children.

@FlumpyLump
Id sooner have a happy transgender child than a dead child.

That has been debunked. Once by Cass and then a later report was commissioned regarding this particular myth. I can't recall the name but I'm sure someone will link it. It was in the mainstream press. It is a myth designed to scare, it is not reality.

If HRT, replacement bring the operative word, is highly monitored by GPs and other medical professionals, then why do you think putting hormones from the opposite sex is fine without medical oversight or agreement? Use your brain and actually think this through.

Edit - found it.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-suicides-and-gender-dysphoria-at-the-tavistock-and-portman-nhs-foundation-trust/review-of-suicides-and-gender-dysphoria-at-the-tavistock-and-portman-nhs-foundation-trust-independent-report

80% of the kids at the Tavistock were gay. Many had homophobic parents who would rather have a trans child than a gay child.

Reddit is an echo chamber and even when not logged in the use of DIY is openly discussed and coded messages about where to get these dangerous drugs are provided.

This is general comments not aimed at the parent:
Illegally importing from China etc when you don't have a clue about their authenticity or ingredients is dangerous.

Rushing along your child's wants will not help. Maybe he needs to come to terms with being a feminine gay boy?

He will never be any kind of girl or woman. They are feeling pain and hurt but they need you to put in boundaries to keep them safe.

@FlumpyLump What indicates to you that your child is a girl, other than gender stereotypes? And you are aware that a neutered male with small breasts is not a female nor doesn't stop being a male, right? Because that's effectively what he will be doing to himself. For God's sake, don't take medical advice from a pro-trans Reddit forum.

@FlumpyLump Your comments on both this board and the reddit board make me wonder whether your male child has inadvertently absorbed a 'men are bad' mentality from you.

Two things stand out:

I am a victim of child sex abuse so she is more than aware of how the presence of “males” and their genitalia in a female only environment can affect wellbeing.

and

I have seen and replied to the mumsnet post that has a thread discussing this and in all honesty, they should be more worried about their husbands search histories than having an unwanted opinion on other people’s lives.

I'm reminded of a line in About a Boy when Toni Collette's character says of her son "you cannot stop someone expressing themselves" and Hugh Grant replies "He's not expressing himself, he's expressing you!."

CAMHS advised me to reach out to transgender support networks and groups with any questions I may have or if I needed advice

If they did, they shouldn’t have.

This doesn't surprise me at all.

Our local CAMHS asked my autistic daughter if she was a boy, based solely on the fact that she was gender non - conforming. There is a reason why most autistic girls in our area now identify as boys or non - binary.

@FlumpyLump
My advice would be to have your child give you unrestricted access to his Discord and Reddit chats and messages and you spend a couple of hours reading through it. I am almost certain you will find unwholesome porn and deeply unsavoury approaches. I say this because there is an enormous correlation between grooming and a boy going trans. I don't say this to mock. I really suggest that this might make you aware of some things you probably are not in your child's life.

I know that this post isn’t going to sway anyone’s mind here, but before judging anyone’s situation, walk in their shoes!

This is mumsnet. Transgender social contagion is rife amongst young people. It should be obvious to you that many of us do walk in your shoes. This is a concerning trend, not because girls and boys want to dress differently but because adults that should be protecting them are actively harming them.

Reddit is the worst place for young people questioning their gender expression. If a 13 year old posts on mn we will advise them to speak to a parent or other trusted adult, rather than strangers on an internet forum.

When they post on reddit they are advised to get puberty blockers and cross sex hormones any way they can and to hide it from their family.

Think about it before you judge other parents.

@FlumpyLump - welcome to the discussion. Unlike Reddit, here you will receive the full range of opinions and nobody will be voted down.

Please, please stay here and speak to all of us, openly and gain some more different perspectives. We won't force you to do anything.

But please stay and speak

(Incidentally, I do walk in just the same shoes you are wearing)

I have never, ever waded into these topics on MN because they’re such a minefield. But @Greyskybluesky , you need to hear this:
@tinkerella1 shared from the point of view of a parent, and I’m sharing this from the point of view of a child who definitely survived without hormones. But yes, when I was 15 and hated absolutely everything about my body and wanted to be a tomboy, I might easily have been led into this type of stuff. The difference was that I had a lot of good gay and lesbian role models, so I grew up learning that how you dress doesn’t dictate who you are, and if you want to dress androgenously or like the other gender, or you like the same sex, or you’re a boy who wants to play with makeup; it should be made clear that you do NOT have to transition to be “who you are.” I’m still not a “girly girl,” which is accepted in the wider lesbian community - some people are femme, some people are butch, a LOT of people are neither. I’m now openly bisexual and married to a man, but that’s just how it worked out; I might easily have married a woman instead. But the point is that knowing all kinds of gay people - people who were very straight-presenting, people who were very effeminate, people who were very “butch,” just everything - deeply affected my world view about how vastly differently I could display my gender and sexuality without changing anything.

I could not agree more that you need to get yourself and your child off Reddit and talk to some real gay people. We ALL have an identity crisis while growing up, but making permanent changes just isn’t logically a good idea. Can you think of a single life-changing choice that you would have trusted your 15-year-old self to make? I can’t.

I am in NO WAY accusing the mother on that thread of not being a good mother. She wants to be one, she’s trying to do the right thing - and Redditors who live an trans life are telling her they’re happy and she must do this if her child has any chance of being happy; they’re giving her affirmation, so of course, she’s not going to enjoy being judged on MN. Who would? The point is just that this isn’t about judgment or good or bad parents; it’s about making sure, in regards to hormones and side effects, that your child doesn’t give up any choices about their future without realizing it.

Is it the right place to point out the reddit Trans mod who last week was outed as a child sex offender, and who had been protected by the Reddit Moderation team?

All is not well in the land of Reddit Trans Moderators.