I think some of it is just the latest version of teen rebellion against parents and society and some are truly gender dysphoric. I think those who are truly gender dysphoric probably know it early on and kids who are coming to it in their teen years are more likely just messing around and experimenting with different personas and sexualities. What is the ratio? I wouldn't venture a guess. But I expect the recent growth is more the latter.Judas Maccabeus wrote: ↑Sun Apr 07, 2024 12:48 amSo, do you think that much of this transsexual behavior is adolescents simply rebelling against societal norms and expectations? Just like many of the hippies became stockbrokers? That is fine, but if you add in the “treatment “ that is on offer, it will be more than changing clothes to get back. Many of these medical and surgical treatments have irreversible consequences.
Are there some who might go down the path and later regret it? Sure. But when it comes to minors, what I have observed is the following:
- It is a minority of LGBT or trans kids who avail the themselves of medical solutions. Despite what one might think, it is quite expensive and difficult to navigate our medical system to get any sort of counseling and treatment for anything. My wife is a senior doctor in an HMO with presumably a lot of connections and we struggled greatly to get any sort of counseling for our daughter a few years ago when she was going through severe depression. There are big wait lists for this kind of thing. So it's not exactly like hopping over to Walgreens. Consequently, a whole lot of teens, especially girls, are just messing around with identities, names, pronouns, etc. and not actually doing any medical interventions. Because it isn't actually easy to get.
- Of those minority of self-identified trans teens who avail themselves of medical solutions (hormones, etc.) it is a smaller minority who avail themselves of surgical solutions. A very small minority for genital surgery. The numbers are out there and they are tiny.
- Finally, of those who avail themselves of medical or surgical solutions, the percentage who come to regret it is a tiny minority. Do they exist? Sure. They are the ones who make the news. But they are a small minority and not representative of the whole.
At the same time, we are also a country that values freedom, medical autonomy, and also defers to parents and families. We let people by the tens of thousands refuse to take vaccines and instead follow quack treatments like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and as a result, kill themselves. Tens of thousands of people. Some in my own extended family. We let people who are mentally unstable have unlimited access to firearms and kill themselves. Tens of thousands more people. We let people make choices all the time that are not in their best interests. We do this because we value personal autonomy and freedom over taking away that freedom and overruling personal choice. Especially when it comes to personal medical decisions. And when it comes to personal medical decisions for teens, we normally defer to parents rather than the heavy hand of the state.
Is this an area where there is growing medical evidence and data? Yes. Should there be more data? Yes. Could medical best practices be adjusted and changed over time? Sure. But it should be the medical field not unformed legislators responding to ginned up political hysteria who should be making those adjustments. That is why we have medical boards and so forth. That seems to be what is happening in the UK. Which I'm fine with if it is evidence-based medicine not politics.
So are there some teens who are at risk of making irreversible medical decisions that they will come to regret? I'm sure there are. But there are millions of teens in this country who are at risk of making all manner of irreversible decisions that they will come to regret. And many who face all manner of bad outcomes through no choice of their own. In the end, how does this particular issue rank in terms of actual risk to American teens? Here's a few numbers I quickly googled up. You tell me which are the biggest risks facing American youth. And which ones are worth overruling person freedom, autonomy, and parental rights and wielding the heavy hand of the state to address.