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?

I don't know how her local CAMHS could not see what is going on, unless she did not disclose as much as she did here and on Reddit. It's visible from outer space!

If she is serious about getting appropriate mental health support for her child then a good place to start would be https://www.therapyfirst.org/

I had a vaginoplasty.

I've been a bad trans person and went years where I'd not bothered with HRT. This was to my detriment as I now have osteopenia. During that period, I experienced night sweats, hot flashes, my skin thinned and dried considerably, my hair thinned, I gained weight...and generally I looked much older than my age. I probably did other systems of my body some harm as well. I didn't die, I didn't feel especially miserable. When I returned to HRT the above disappeared, I seem to be reversing the osteopenia somewhat (exercise, horse leveling amounts of vitamin D and calcium have helped). I do feel better on HRT. I feel stronger and healthier.

I was in my 30s and my GP at the time suggested I get serious about HRT as she recommended not spending the next 50 years hormonally deficient. Last time I had blood levels tested without HRT, My adrenals were producing a 'normal' level of testosterone and my oestrogen and progesterone levels were in the middle of "Postmenopausal" on the report (0.9nmol/L, 40pmol/L and 0.4pmol/L respectively). My FSH and LH were in "Postmenopausal" as well (57.3 IU/L and 13.1IU/L).

I would have to assume my body would return to relying on my adrenal hormone production. I would definitely survive without HRT, as anyone else does on lowered hormone levels.

If your son says he is transgender it's because he has friends who are following a fad or he is online with groomers.

Taking puberty blockers and opposite sex hormones will not change reality but will mess up his body - possibly forever.

If he is threatening suicide if he does not get hormone treatment, he needs a psychiatrist. The rate of suicide goes up AFTER hormone treatment, chemical castration or surgery. The cause of suicide is the realisation that the person has messed up their body and that they have been lied to and also lied to themselves.

If he is same sex attracted but refuses to accept this then you need to find out why. Has he been brought up in a religion that teaches him that being gay is evil? What is his father's attitude to gay men - that is often another factor.

Also, you need to check what websites he has been visiting.
If he has gone down a rat hole on reddit or other sites sick men with a fetish may have been grooming him to believe he must be a woman for their sexual pleasure.

No boy is a girl.
No girl is a boy.

You need to do more to protect your son from himself and from groomers.

Legal medical pathways should exist. They effectively have been removed from the NHS.

In the face of no health care, trans people are forced to explore less ideal options available through mutual support systems. This was also true when access to medical care was highly restricted to a handful of people a year when I transitioned.

Legal medical pathways should exist. They effectively have been removed from the NHS.

...because those medical pathways are not safe. They are experimental. We should not be experimenting on children, mutilating their bodies or not letting their brains reach adulthood.

IT IS ABOUT SAFETY.

I think we should say it bigly.

Legal medical pathways should not exist if the drugs are not considered to be safe enough to prescribe!

All medicine is experimental using this definition. No drug is free of side effects. Plenty of conservatives believe piercing and tattoos are mutilations. It's debatable whether brains actually stop developing at 25, or the brain study itself coincidentally just sent everyone home, turned off its lights and published after everyone turned 25.

There was no concern for decades while treatment occurred and lives progressed quite fine. There's what, a 1-3% dissatisfaction rate on trans treatment at any age depending on the study? Just because the UK excludes and ignores the majority of trans medicine studies does not make them disappear.

A small number of detransitioners who have unfortunately submitted themselves to trans treatment do not invalidate the successful treatment of the vast majority of happy and healthy trans people.

Yes. It's the first thing I noticed. Very obvious. But CAMHS is all about the validation these days I think I doubt they looked any further than "trans"

Let's make this short and sweet so you understand.

All medicine is experimental using this definition.
Consenting ADULTS agree to test new medication under strict guidelines.

CHILDREN CANNOT CONSENT. AT ALL.

The argument that children should not receive any medical treatment at all because they are not adults is not a persuasive one.

Can I ask what you feel the difference was between your own surgery and the Ritchie Herron's surgery (which you described as "barbaric")?

Experimental treatment. Subtle difference.

You are being deliberately obtuse but fortunately any lurkers will also notice that. Thanks 😏

Not sure why my legitimate question was deleted earlier. Lots of holes in this thread now…feels a bit retro 😂

Oh you are a one. 😂

Experimental treatment to save lives is very different to experimental treatment for purposes of extreme body modification to make a body fit a desired identity.

It is very harmful to confuse these treatments.

@SingleSexSpacesInSchools I hadn't realised that your son had been through a difficult time. Apologies if you mentioned it on other threads and I missed it 💐

I really hope that the Reddit mum is still here (I've not found any posts yet to suggest she is but haven't yet RTFT) and is still open to the idea of listening to different viewpoints.

This forum is the place where different viewpoints are shared. The Reddit forums are heavily moderated to become echo chambers of affirmation.

When my daughter became gender questioning I took sought out different viewpoints. At one point I spent a lot of time looking at Jammiedodger videos to understand what a transman view might look like.

I'm really glad I listened to so many different angles and that I remained open-minded about my daughter's future for a very long time. But ultimately, it became soooooooooooo obvious that on the one hand, biological reality is fixed and on the other, that permanently changing one's body to match a belief in "gendered souls" is not a good idea. The NHS is reverse-ferreting on cross-sex hormones right now because it too has clearly realised that this really is not a good idea.

Off the top of my head? My surgery does not cause me constant pain. My physiology was not surgically mangled to the point of urinating on myself and everything else within a metre. I am not numb. I function sexually and find the experience pleasurable.

Trans youth medical treatment is decades old in the UK and longer, elsewhere. It is not experimental just because a group stamps its collective feet and calls it experimental while demanding it be reevaluated to its satisfaction.

There are clear pathways for approving drugs for use in children (and adults), involving clinical trials.

Cross-sex hormones have not gone through this approval process for transitioning children. They are prescribed what is called 'off-label', and outside their licensed use.

Homeopathy has a much longer history of use as treatments for various ailments than the use of cross-sex hormones for transitioning children. Many people would swear that homeopathy 'worked'. However, when they ran proper clinical trials, it all turned out to be bollocks and homeopathy stopped being offered on the NHS.

It's not a safe medical route for children. Not youth, children. No idea if it's decades old in other countries because they aren't the UK so it doesn't really matter for this thread. America have bleached their chickens for years but that doesn't mean we have to blindly follow. Same with puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, or surgically mutilating children.

As for group stamping people - you mean those who want to safeguard CHILDREN. Wow.

HRT 28 day is an oestrogen/progesterone treatment with daily component taken by women still having periods.

Cross sex 28 day hormone for trans identifying males include testosterone blockers plus oestrogen. A “depot” intramuscular injection which slow releases dose over time.

Not a lot thats similar there

I think there are now multiple types including a terrifying selection of non binary options.

If it's not experimental, why is a "trial" of the treatment being proposed following the Cass review?

If it was just standard treatment, nobody would think there should be a trial.

I don't think anyone disputes clinical trials are a gold standard for studies. However, it is unethical and harmful to torture a child by withholding treatment in the name of double blind science when the treatment has been successfully delivered to thousands of other children before. I think the last time I heard the 'off-label' argument I learned the majority of paediatric drugs are delivered 'off-label. The vast majority of medical professionals support trans treatment.

I'm sure you're already well aware of this, but the addition of blockers to the treatment of pre-adolescent children was to provide a buffer so irreversible pubertal changes were delayed while a child developed an understanding of the lifelong affects of options available to them. Blockers are not hormones. When stopped, gonads will resume endogenous puberty if no change is desired. If exogenous hormones are desired, exogenous puberty will be initiated.

Trans medical care is not homeopathy. The lack of an unending stream of happy publicly trans faces everywhere doesn't mean we don't exist. One would have to be mad to upend a happy peaceful existence only to attract dozens of sex realist stalkers.

A small group of highly motivated conservatives and politically-connected religiously driven fanatics manipulated the system?