Daniel Peterson: "Gender Ideology Harms Children"

[_just me]

And on and on, sky. You are right that we have so much evidence that allowing people to be who they are is the healthiest course of action.

[_Mary]

Sky, sad DCP deleted your comment. He's usually much more tolerant of differences of opinion on his Facebook page.

[_Jersey Girl]

It's basically a political group.


From the wiki intro:

The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a socially conservative association of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals in the United States. The College was founded in 2002 by a group of pediatricians including Joseph Zanga, a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), as a protest against the AAP's support for adoption by gay couples.[1][2] The group's membership has been estimated at between 60 and 200 members.[1][3] ACPeds describes itself as "a national organization of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals dedicated to the health and well-being of children... committed to fulfilling its mission by producing sound policy, based upon the best available research, to assist parents and to influence society in the endeavor of childrearing."[4]

Zanga has described ACPeds as a group "with Judeo-Christian, traditional values that is open to pediatric medical professionals of all religions who hold true to the group's core beliefs: that life begins at conception; and that the traditional family unit, headed by a different-sex couple, poses far fewer risk factors in the adoption and raising of children."[5] The organization's view on parenting is at odds with the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which holds that sexual orientation has no correlation with the ability to be a good parent and to raise healthy and well-adjusted children.[3][6][7] The American College of Pediatricians has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "hate group" with "a history of propagating damaging falsehoods about LGBT people

So, what I would say in response to DCP's blog entry that contains the article, is that it's misleading as all hell and agenda driven. What is most disturbing is that folks who rely on DCP to do their thinking for them will take this as evidence and use it as a weapon against transgendered persons.

In other words, it's irresponsible of DCP to use this particular article in terms of the position he holds in the minds of many.

kmn

[_Jersey Girl]

So apparently Daniel C. Peterson did not like me posting this. Also noted is that he let the above comment stay, while deleting my response. These are all mainstream sources, but they seem to support a less conservative interpretation, so DCP would not have it!

I'm not looking where you are posting. I think it might have been more effective if you exposed the biases of the American College of Pediatricians for what they are. In other words, deal with the agenda driven group that produced the article instead of posting counter information.

That said, nothing will be very effective so long as censorship is being employed as a response.

[_just me]

The strawman that people just switch gender identities on a whim is tied and offensive.

[_Sethbag]

I can totally believe and acknowledge that the organization in question in really a political advocacy group. That said, I'm not sure I disagree that much with the particular statement they released.

They are talking about medical interventions on children on the basis of the belief that the biological sex the child was born into is somehow a medical problem to be dealt with using drugs or surgery or whatever. I'm uncomfortable with that too.

Children who use puberty blockers to impersonate the opposite sex will require cross-sex hormones in late adolescence. Cross-sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen) are associated with dangerous health risks including but not limited to high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke and cancer.

One might well object to the use of the word "impersonate," so strike that word if you must and replace it with one you deem more accurate or less offensive, but the medical ethical dilemma still remains: is it medically ethical to subject pre-pubescent children to puberty blockers and sex hormone treatments which might (if their references are correct) bring with them substantial health risks?

If an adult wants to subject themselves to such treatments who I am to say they shouldn't, so long as they are adequately informed and take the responsibility for their decisions personally? But is a child really competent to make such decisions? And is it ethical for parents to make that decision for the child? I very dubious about that.

Again, though, I admit I don't fully understand all of the conflicting claims and ideologies of the whole transgender question. I don't think there is one single ideology against another single ideology. It seems to me more like a morass of various beliefs not easily dissected into two ideologically pure camps.

[_Sethbag]

The strawman that people just switch gender identities on a whim is tied and offensive.

The statement by the political advocacy group ACPeds dealt specifically with children, not "people" in general. Does that fact change in any way your position in this thread?

Hypothetical here:

1) 35-year old biological male expresses the belief that he is really a girl and wishes to have his penis surgically removed. Is it OK for him to make this decision and have the procedure carried out by competent medical professionals?

2) 8-year old biological male expresses the belief that he is really a girl, and wishes to have his penis removed. Is it OK for the parents to decide to have this surgery performed on their child, and have it carried out by competent medical professionals?

Do you see a difference here? It's not the same question at all.

Now switch "surgically removed" with chemical and hormone treatments designed to alter the natural biological develop of said child, and you have the dilemma commented upon by ACPeds.

They may well have an opinion on transgendered or transexual adults, but that's not what the quoted statement was about. It was about children.

[_Jersey Girl]

I can totally believe and acknowledge that the organization in question in really a political advocacy group. That said, I'm not sure I disagree that much with the particular statement they released.

They are talking about medical interventions on children on the basis of the belief that the biological sex the child was born into is somehow a medical problem to be dealt with using drugs or surgery or whatever. I'm uncomfortable with that too.

Children who use puberty blockers to impersonate the opposite sex will require cross-sex hormones in late adolescence. Cross-sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen) are associated with dangerous health risks including but not limited to high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke and cancer.

One might well object to the use of the word "impersonate," so strike that word if you must and replace it with one you deem more accurate or less offensive, but the medical ethical dilemma still remains: is it medically ethical to subject pre-pubescent children to puberty blockers and sex hormone treatments which might (if their references are correct) bring with them substantial health risks?

If an adult wants to subject themselves to such treatments who I am to say they shouldn't, so long as they are adequately informed and take the responsibility for their decisions personally? But is a child really competent to make such decisions? And is it ethical for parents to make that decision for the child? I very dubious about that.

Again, though, I admit I don't fully understand all of the conflicting claims and ideologies of the whole transgender question. I don't think there is one single ideology against another single ideology. It seems to me more like a morass of various beliefs not easily dissected into two ideologically pure camps.

Early hormonal interventions are what I tried to draw out in my earlier response to Kish. Personally, I'd be opposed to introducing such treatment in the developing child. The possibility of cancer alone (which is the case for some adults undergoing hormone replacement therapy) would be enough for me to object to such practices in children.

[_Jersey Girl]

The strawman that people just switch gender identities on a whim is tied and offensive.

The statement by the political advocacy group ACPeds dealt specifically with children, not "people" in general. Does that fact change in any way your position in this thread?

Hypothetical here:

1) 35-year old biological male expresses the belief that he is really a girl and wishes to have his penis surgically removed. Is it OK for him to make this decision and have the procedure carried out by competent medical professionals?

Yes.

2) 8-year old biological male expresses the belief that he is really a girl, and wishes to have his penis removed. Is it OK for the parents to decide to have this surgery performed on their child, and have it carried out by competent medical professionals?

No, and that's the one place where I think the article is sound. That's exactly what I focused on. I also noticed that the article mentions intersex children but it doesn't factor them into the overall position statement.

Do you see a difference here? It's not the same question at all.

Now switch "surgically removed" with chemical and hormone treatments designed to alter the natural biological develop of said child, and you have the dilemma commented upon by ACPeds.

They may well have an opinion on transgendered or transexual adults, but that's not what the quoted statement was about. It was about children.

Agree.

[_Sethbag]

My guess on what they mean by "gender ideology harms children" is the assumption that an ideology surrounding gender is invoked to remove questions of basic medical ethics or the physical health welfare of children from the question of whether parents (or children themselves) should be allowed to make potentiallly health-endangering decisions on medical interventions on these children.

They do make some judgments such as calling a child's self-identity of another gender than their biological sex "confusion," and I suppose that judgment may be reasonably argued with. The main gist of the argument, though, deals not with the labeling of such a condition, but on the medical interventions that may be imposed in reaction to that identity.