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[–]circlingmyownvoid2 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (15 children)

And the countless studies that lead to transition being accepted in the first place? The studies from like 2 years ago showing that parents supporting a trans teenagers identity lead to substantially improved mental health? You are at brietbart levels of tinfoil if you honest believe this.

[–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

And the countless studies that lead to transition being accepted in the first place? The studies from like 2 years ago showing that parents supporting a trans teenagers identity lead to substantially improved mental health? You are at brietbart levels of tinfoil if you honest believe this.

Please link to these "countless studies" including "the studies from like 2 years ago" about parents of trans--identified teens.

On the topic of teens: it's your right to do as you wish with your own adult body, but please lay off other people's kids. You don't appear to be aware of how unseemly & inappropriate it is for adult male supporters of transgenderism to be so insistent that they/you know best about how other people should raise & treat their own troubled, "gender confused" children - especially when the "expertise" of those adult males seems to come entirely from their/your own personal experience & the experience of other adult males similar to them/your own selves.

Your posting history doesn't give me the impression that you've raised any children, studied child & developmental psychology, have child/teen teaching credentials, are qualified to be a coach, youth group leader, counselor, babysitter or otherwise have worked with or done any caring for children of any age in any way. I also don't have the impression that you are trained in safeguarding.

If my impressions are erroneous, I apologize in advance.

Now I'm off to put a shine on my tinfoil hat.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

If I had citations ready I would have given them. I read the study not committed it to memory.

But here’s an article about a study confirming the effectiveness of surgery on mental health outcomes.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1266033

And here’s a study showing that transitioning with supports leads to children with less elevated anxiety and other mental health issues than typical or gender identity disorder cases (meaning not significantly different than baseline youth population)

https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/137/3/e20153223

On the topic of teens: it's your right to do as you wish with your own adult body, but please lay off other people's kids. You don't appear to be aware of how unseemly & inappropriate it is for adult male supporters of transgenderism to be so insistent that they/you know best about how other people should raise & treat their own troubled, "gender confused" children - especially when the "expertise" of those adult males seems to come entirely from their/your own personal experience & the experience of other adult males similar to them/your own selves.

Affirming identities in teens leads to reduced suicide risk and improved overall happiness. But I also don’t think any medical invervention for minors is appropriate until at earliest maybe 16 and even then only with psychiatric supervision. I’m pro informed consent for adults but not for minors.

I won’t share the details of my life here but I have a background that has had some working with children. Though that’s ultimately well beside the point.

[–]BiologyIsReal 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

The paper from Pediatrics measured parental reports of anxiety and depresion among trans identified children aged 3 to 12 years old who have "socially transitioned" compared to non trans identified children of the same age. They didn't used trans identified children who didn't undergone "social transition" as control (typical from pro-"transition" studies, I must say). We also don't know what level of anxiety and depresion they had before transition, so we can't conclude whether "transition" has been effective or not. In addition, depresion is uncommon in prepubescent children and rise in adolescense -something the authors themselves admit.

Moreover, this is so unnecessary. Why allow these kids to undergone a "social transition" when most trans identified children desist if left alone?

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

You are conflating identity and dysphoria.

[–]BiologyIsReal 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

And what that is supposed to mean? Arguing that the children from the paper from Pediatrics were not dysphoric doesn't help your cause.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It means you are misquoting a paper you cited to say something that it doesn’t.

[–]BiologyIsReal 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

And what exactly did I get wrong according to you? If you're going to acuse me of being dishonest, then back up your claims at least.

[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I apologize for making the assumption that you don't have experience working with children or qualifications to do so. That was prejudiced of me. I sincerely am sorry.

I carefully read both "studies" you cited, and have concluded that neither can be taken at all seriously as proof - or even as flimsy evidence - of their own claims, which BTW are actually more modest than the sweeping claims you say these studies make and prove.

The first one certainly cannot be said to "confirm" "the effectiveness of surgery on mental health outcomes." It's also not a "study." Rather, it's an "invited commentary" - in other word an opinion piece commissioned by an editor of JAMA Surgery, a publication whose raison d'etre is promoting surgeries and the interests of surgeons - that isn't based on investigating the outcomes of actual "trans surgery" patients who've been seen & followed up on face to face. Rather, it draws unsubstantiated conclusions from "an analysis" of the responses of anonymous persons to an online questionnaire meant to survey the US trans population circa 2013-14 that was published by the Williams Institute in 2015. Nobody even knows if the people who answered that online questionnaire actually are "trans" - and there's no way to tell how many, if any, were truthful in their answers.

Moreover, the people who did this "analysis" and wrote the opinion piece/commentary are two plastic surgeons who do "gender affirming" surgeries and a specialist in "gender medicine" who funnels patients to the surgeons. In other words, the authors are three people heavily invested in promoting surgeries as "the answer" for people with "gender issues" because that's how they all make their living - and their entire reputations and financial wellbeing are based on other medical professionals, the general public and potential patients seeing the sorts of surgeries they do and promote in a positive light.

And here’s a study showing that transitioning with supports leads to children with less elevated anxiety and other mental health issues than typical or gender identity disorder cases (meaning not significantly different than baseline youth population)

I don't have time to go into this other study in full detail here, but if you actually read it carefully & look at the methods used, you'll see that it has HUGE flaws.

Moreover, it doesn't say what you allege. It says right from the outset that the 73 kids age 3-12 in the study who were "socially transitioned" with full support of their parents and other adults in their lives had more anxiety than the baseline youth population and their closest age siblings.

Significantly, the levels of depression and anxiety in the 73 "trans" children studied also weren't determined by mental health professionals interviewing, observing and assessing the kids directly. Rather, the "trans" kids' levels of depression and anxiety were determined by having the parents of these children fill out standardized PROMIS forms which solely recorded the parents' perceptions of their children's mental health status by providing responses to such statements as "my child cries a lot" and "my child likes to be alone." And the study authors chose to use the very brief "short PROMIS forms" too, not the longer PROMIS forms that they had available to them, they could just as easily have used and which might have provided a fuller picture.

Since the parents of these very young children who filled out these brief forms are also the same people who "transed" these same kids, it seems reasonable to suspect they might have been inclined and incentivized to see and to report that the children they'd already deemed "trans" and were dressing and rearing according to the regressive sex stereotypes associated with the opposite sex were doing much better in terms of mental health than they actually were doing. After all, none of us parents like to have our parenting decisions, methods and styles called into doubt; and none of us likes to think that we have made parenting choices that have ended up harming our kids.

Yet even these clearly not impartial parents still reported that the the kids they had transed had higher levels of anxiety than the controls - including when the controls were the transed kids' own siblings who were closest in age.

Also, I don't think the fact that the transed kids in the study were perceived by their parents not to have become more depressed after being transed than they previously had been, and that they weren't seen as any more depressed than the controls either, is really the ringing endorsement of childhood "transition" that you seem to think it is.

The key issue is, all the kids in the study - both the transed kids who were the focus, and the kids who served as controls/comparators - are from a generation of children with vastly higher rates of depression (and other mental health problems) than any other generations previously in history. Why are so many kids nowadays depressed? And if early-in-life social "transition" really does lead to "improved overall happiness" in children and teens as you keep saying it does, why doesn't this study that you yourself have cited as an example actually show that? If early "transition" is so great, why aren't droves of transed kids actually happy?

Seems to me one of the reasons both these "trans kids" and other kids are suffering anxiety, depression and other MH problems at rates never seen before is their parents. In the case of parents with so-called "trans kids," why are so many adults nowadays so heavily invested in sex stereotypes and gender ideology that they'd go so far as to "transition" their pre-pubescent chidren? And why are such people being taken good judges of the mental health status of their kids - or of anything else? After all, these parents are the very same people who taught their children not only to believe in rigid sex stereotypes, but that they as little kids must conform to those stereotypes - or esle.

Why can't these parents just love and accept their kids as they are? Why can't they let their sons wear tutus and play with dolls and their daughters have short hair and play with toy trains, cars & trucks? Why tell these poor children that if their personalities & interests deviate even slightly from the strictest of sexist standards that it means they must have the brains of the opposite sex and were "born in the wrong body"?

[–]Penultimate_Penance 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Feel free to cite the studies you are referring to if you are so confident.

[–]Penultimate_Penance 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Those articles are sourcing legitimate studies and link directly to them so you can easily check out the studies for yourself. Trans activists have been so tyrannical with speech suppression that researchers and journalists who don't toe the party line have limited places to publish their findings and views. Sexual reassignment surgeries and wrong sex hormones harm the body. That is an objective fact. Do these surgeries actually cure gender dysphoria? That is very debatable. Is the price to a transgender's person health for their entire lives worth it? That is also very debatable.

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Do these surgeries actually cure gender dysphoria?

Sometimes. And the fact that it isn’t 100 percent is why there’s steps like psych reviews and time on hormones though.

Is the price to a transgender's person health for their entire lives worth it?

Yes. But also again I and many others removed from the burden of disphoria are better able to engage in self care and end up physically healthier. So I have to take a pill and can’t have children, what’s that compared to improved health on so many other levels?

[–]Penultimate_Penance 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

"In regard to the emotional effects of transition, many activists will refer you to a 2018 Pediatrics journal article entitled “Transgender Adolescent Suicide Behavior.” But the study reported therein was based on just three years of data—collected between 2012 and 2015. What matters is the long term. And in this regard, the gold standard is a study of 324 medically transitioned adults, based on 30-year longitudinal data. The authors found that completing sex-reassignment surgery was associated with “considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity” as compared to the general population. Kids who are suicidal before their transition will likely continue to be suicidal, and the most intense ideation often comes years after transitioning. (Transgender folks themselves sometimes speak anecdotally of a seven-to-10-year trans suicide “itch” observed within the community.)"

The study this quote is referring to

Crazy idea, but if trans activists stopped drinking their own koolaid it would make it easier for researchers to test and try out mental health treatments, potentially in combination with drugs that could effectively cure or at the very least alleviate gender/sex dysphoria. (These are the treatments that should be paid for by the public dime) Transition in the long run is worse than the disease it purports to cure. By transitioned people's public behavior it is clear that for many if not most transitioning is merely a band aid and they still suffer hyper sensitivity, gender dysphoria and other comorbidities which are common among trans identified individuals. Changing the body without treating the underlying mental illness/s is not a real solution.

"Of the 298 transgender women, 41.5%of participants had 1 or more mental health or substance dependence diagnoses; 1 in 5 (20.1%) had 2 or more comorbid psychiatric diagnoses. Prevalence of specific disorders was as follows: lifetime and current major depressive episode, 35.4%and 14.7%, respectively; suicidality, 20.2%; generalized anxiety disorder, 7.9%; posttraumatic stress disorder, 9.8%; alcohol dependence, 11.2%; and nonalcohol psychoactive substance use dependence, 15.2%." Psychiatric Diagnoses and Comorbidities in a Diverse, Multicity Cohort of Young Transgender Women

Gender/Sex Dysphoria is essentially BDD. We should treat sex dysphoria in the same/or similar ways to the way we treat Body dysmorphic disorder. You know what is not recommended? Giving BDD sufferers a bunch of unnecessary plastic surgeries. Physical transition breaks the Hippocratic oath of "Do no harm". If sex dysphoria wasn't so politicized we could much more easily be giving real solutions to dysphoric people that won't wreck their health and bodies for the rest of their lives.

Adults should be free for the most part to take on cosmetic surgeries to change their appearance, but that should always be on their own dime. Wrong sex hormone 'treatments' should also be on their own dime. I'm still on the fence whether these procedures and treatments should outright be banned, because of how harmful they are in the long run. Clearly mentally unwell individuals saying they'll commit suicide if they don't get them makes me lean more towards advocating for outright banning these harmful medical practices. Unethical Doctors who 'help' people with their transitions are preying on vulnerable people who will have to pay the price for their rest of their lives.

Forget What Gender Activists Tell You. Here’s What Medical Transition Looks Like For this trans man her transition was pretty fucking high price to pay. Explain to me how we should be encouraging/making it easier anyone to do this with their bodies? The very least we can do is not pay for it with the public dime to make it as difficult as possible for adults to engage in this level of self harm. All of these surgeries are unnecessary, many trans people have found harmless/significantly less harmless ways to cope with their gender dysphoria, sometimes solving other mental health problems like depression have been effective. Physical intervention should always be the last resort and it is a fact that trans people will not keel over if they can't afford hormones or surgery.

"During my own transition, I had seven surgeries. I also had a massive pulmonary embolism, a helicopter life-flight ride, an emergency ambulance ride, a stress-induced heart attack, sepsis, a 17-month recurring infection due to using the wrong skin during a (failed) phalloplasty, 16 rounds of antibiotics, three weeks of daily IV antibiotics, the loss of all my hair, (only partially successful) arm reconstructive surgery, permanent lung and heart damage, a cut bladder, insomnia-induced hallucinations—oh and frequent loss of consciousness due to pain from the hair on the inside of my urethra. All this led to a form of PTSD that made me a prisoner in my apartment for a year. Between me and my insurance company, medical expenses exceeded $900,000.

During these 17 months of agony, I couldn’t get a urologist to help me. They didn’t feel comfortable taking me on as a patient—since the phalloplasty, like much of the transition process, is experimental. “Could you go back to the original surgeon?” they suggested."

[–]circlingmyownvoid2 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Transition in the long run is worse than the disease it purports to cure.

No. It isn’t. I as a transitioned person can tell you definitively that is wrong.

I'm still on the fence whether these procedures and treatments should outright be banned,

Transition is life saving care. To ban it is to ban the only effective treatment for dysphoria and the fact you would even consider arguing for a ban reveals how deeply you obviously hate trans people. I won’t be responding further.

[–]Penultimate_Penance 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You still haven't cited your sources.

Edit: You also haven't proven that transition is the only effective treatment. There are many individuals who have chosen to not transition and have found other ways to manage their dysphoria. Many people with dysphoria desist over time. If transition was the only effective treatment why are there so many dysphoric people who have found other ways to effectively treat and/or manage their dysphoria?

You don't cite your sources. You only use your personal anecdotal life story, and completely disregard trans identified individuals who have found ways to cope without hormones and surgery. It shouldn't be surprising that I don't find your arguments convincing.