Soon after my arrival at the Transgender Center, I was struck by the lack of formal protocols for treatment. The center’s physician co-directors were essentially the sole authority.
At first, the patient population was tipped toward what used to be the “traditional” instance of a child with gender dysphoria: a boy, often quite young, who wanted to present as—who wanted to be—a girl.
Until 2015 or so, a very small number of these boys comprised the population of pediatric gender dysphoria cases. Then, across the Western world, there began to be a dramatic increase in a new population: Teenage girls, many with no previous history of gender distress, suddenly declared they were transgender and demanded immediate treatment with testosterone.
I certainly saw this at the center. One of my jobs was to do intake for new patients and their families. When I started there were probably 10 such calls a month. When I left there were 50, and about 70 percent of the new patients were girls. Sometimes clusters of girls arrived from the same high school.
This concerned me, but didn’t feel I was in the position to sound some kind of alarm back then. There was a team of about eight of us, and only one other person brought up the kinds of questions I had. Anyone who raised doubts ran the risk of being called a transphobe.
The girls who came to us had many comorbidities: depression, anxiety, ADHD, eating disorders, obesity. Many were diagnosed with autism, or had autism-like symptoms. A report last year on a British pediatric transgender center found that about one-third of the patients referred there were on the autism spectrum.
Frequently, our patients declared they had disorders that no one believed they had. We had patients who said they had Tourette syndrome (but they didn’t); that they had tic disorders (but they didn’t); that they had multiple personalities (but they didn’t).
The doctors privately recognized these false self-diagnoses as a manifestation of social contagion. They even acknowledged that suicide has an element of social contagion. But when I said the clusters of girls streaming into our service looked as if their gender issues might be a manifestation of social contagion, the doctors said gender identity reflected something innate.
To begin transitioning, the girls needed a letter of support from a therapist—usually one we recommended—who they had to see only once or twice for the green light. To make it more efficient for the therapists, we offered them a template for how to write a letter in support of transition. The next stop was a single visit to the endocrinologist for a testosterone prescription.
That’s all it took.
Read this whole thing. What I quoted is just the tip of the iceberg. We were right about everything.
Important to note: this article was written by a far left lgbtq author. They and one dissenter were essentially kicked out of the clinic for being the ONLY two people asking for some brakes on the process.
"Because I was the main intake person, I had the broadest perspective on our existing and prospective patients. In 2019, a new group of people appeared on my radar: desisters and detransitioners. Desisters choose not to go through with a transition. Detransitioners are transgender people who decide to return to their birth gender.
The one colleague with whom I was able to share my concerns agreed with me that we should be tracking desistance and detransition. We thought the doctors would want to collect and understand this data in order to figure out what they had missed.
We were wrong. One doctor wondered aloud why he would spend time on someone who was no longer his patient."
Even if you believe transgenderism is a valid solution to gender dysphoria, the practice of medically and chemically transitioning is absolutely barbaric.
I'm with you up till the last line. That's like saying that because ADHD is overdiagnosed and overmedicated in school children, that treating legitimate cases of ADHD in a way that helps the person cope better is barbaric. That's stupid.
Discussion of wildly careless overdiagnosis is important! Don't shoot the argument in the foot by saying we should also not treat legitimate cases.
"Gender dysphoria is overdiagnosed" AND "Transgender people need access to medical transitioning" are both statements that coexist.
Like the above ADHD example, just because it is overdiagnosed doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Except chopping off body parts and taking hormones/blockers DOESN’T magically turn someone into the opposite gender. The former is self mutilation, and the latter causes severe hormonal imbalances that carry huge health complications. For example, post-menopausal women often deal with hot flashes and osteoporosis, and have to take either synthetic hormones or phytoestrogens to normalize everything. High testosterone in women can cause balding, changes in mood, and obesity, and that’s WITHOUT the previously mentioned low estrogen. I have Asperger’s/autism, which is a neurological condition which is SIGNIFICANTLY different for girls than boys, which is why it took so long for me to get a diagnosis. Your physiology and neurology are connected, and no ‘interventions’ can change that.
The CORRECT course of action is to use therapy to address the feelings of dysphoria, or any other comorbities. You don’t send someone into the woods if they think they’re an animal; you give them therapy and/or medications to treat the delusion. If someone’s views do not mesh with reality, you try to change their views, rather than try to warp reality to fit their notions.
Tell me, what would you call it if a woman from a family with a high incidence of breast cancer chose to have a preemptive mastectomy? What about when someone chooses to get a tattoo?
What would you do if someone does go through therapy, doesn't have any comorbidities that would make a gender dysphoria diagnosis iffy, and isn't helped by other medications?
You know what other population has to worry about balding, obesity, and mood changes? Cis men - half the entire human population - as well as anyone who doesn't exercise/eat right, and every single adolescent going through puberty.
When someone gets a mastectomy due to breast cancer, then it is taking physical measures to deal with physical problems. But such an individual will still be female. And show me such an individual, please, because so far they’re all been rushed into ‘transitioning’. And even if such an individual existed, I still wouldn’t recommend hormones and surgery, as those things are ultimately still harmful. As for the stuff in the last passage- yes, but it doesn’t change the fact that you shouldn’t do stuff to CAUSE these things. Plus, the low estrogen causes hot flashes, night sweats, osteoporosis, and even stroke. Those last two are much more severe conditions, and should absolutely be actively avoided.
Also, thank you SO MUCH for actually taking the time to rationally debate with me instead of yelling ‘tRanSPhObe!!!’ and/or using ad hominem abusive. Everyone likes calling this place a hellsite, but the fact of the matter is that response was better than 99% of my ‘debates’ (if you can even call being verbally attacked a debate) on YouTube or Instagram. So again- thank you for actually engaging with me!!!
I'm talking about preemptive mastectomies here. It's healthy tissue being removed, not cancerous. Heck, how about voluntary amputations?
Hi, hello, I am such an individual. I was in therapy, I tried a few antidepressants, I delayed any medical transition for ~3 years while I tried other routes. The only thing that helped me regain my ability to be a functioning member of society was HRT and top surgery. The only side effect I've had that's been unwanted has been some hair loss, which I consider a small price to pay for everything I've gained.
Low levels of sex hormones do cause many long lasting and immediately physically damaging issues including osteoporosis, blood clots, etc. It's important to have blood work done regularly and taper off any HRT instead of quitting it cold-turkey. That's not an effect of going on HRT - it's an effect of improperly going off it.
Even then, it would still be to avoid a physical, life-threatening problem. Also, regardless of the side effects (or supposed lack thereof) of hormones and surgeries, it still doesn’t change that they don’t do anything to actually change one’s gender. I also haven’t seen any long-term studies concerning the effects of the opposite hormone on one’s body, but I HAVE read many, many studies that show what lowered levels of hormone hormones do to the body- and from what I read, it doesn’t have anything to do with normal levels suddenly returning.
As for your case... I’m sorry about talking about this, since it’s clearly very personal. I don’t know what kinds of medications you took, or what kinds of therapists you saw. But at the end of the day, I view it as no different from someone with suicidal/dissociative tendencies cutting themselves in order to stay present. In other words, I still think of it as self harm. And no matter what you do to yourself, you will still be the gender you were born as.
