Daniel Peterson: "Gender Ideology Harms Children"

[_just me]

Do you have a reason to think that children are taking the blockers until age 17 or 18 and failing to achieve full sexual maturation because of it? Because otherwise it seems like we're just making up things to be worried about.

The articles we read suggested that previously the hormones weren't given until a later age, like 17 or 18, but now are starting to be given to such children at younger ages, like 13 or 14. If the blockers were given, but the hormones weren't given until 17 or 18, then yeah I suppose that happens. I have no idea how common any of this is.

I only saw the age 16. That's why I'm confused by the 17/18. But since they have found reasons to start even earlier, like 13, I guess it's a moot concern over the late onset of puberty.

I did read that out of a room full of trans adults when asked if any of them would NOT take the blocker had they been given the opportunity no one raised their hand.

I mean it costs a lot of time, money and pain to get rid of facial hair and an adam's apple.
Look at what Caitlyn Jenner has had to go through. From what I've read many are saying that it is much less painful (in several ways) to block the unwanted puberty from the get-go.

Not really the same thing as administering hormones at young teen years deliberately to alter the sexual development and maturation of a child's body.

I disagree that there is much difference. In either situation you are administering hormones to a child that have health ramifications.

I think that it is too bad that children do have to make very adult decisions sometimes, but I just don't think it is always preventable. In that case, we need to continue to do what does the least amount of damage on a case by case basis and learn from the results. Sadly, mistakes have been made and will probably continue to be made.

Agreed. I'm just not sure that "I know I have a penis, but I really think I'm a girl and would like my body changed into as close to that of a biological girl as possible" is really a decision we should be regarding children as sufficiently mature and competent to make.

That's why I believe it is best left to the best professionals and science we have available to us. I also think that at age 16 a child is going to make some life altering decisions. I think they are sufficiently mature to decide if they want to take hormones to develop as different than their natal sex. I think the puberty blockers are a good way to allow the child a few more years to decide if that is the best decision for them, along with the help of a competent doctor and therapist.

[_Blixa]

Some of my best friends are transgender... Just kidding. No, actually I don't know any transgender people, which either means I'm sheltered, or they just are awesome at it.

Probably both. I've known transgender people all my life (yes starting in Utah) and there are numerous trans people in the department I teach in.

Since we are, though, I'm sensitive to the feelings of those who would be very uncomfortable about someone of the opposite biological sex using the bathroom from the sex for which that room was designated.

I doubt they would know. Quite seriously. Trans people are not trying to draw attention to themselves. They just want a place to relieve themselves where they won't be targeted for "looking different" than the assumed population of the restroom. In a women's restroom, everyone is in a private stall. In a men's room, a transman who hasn't transitioned is not going to be using a urinal, but, will be in a private stall. No one will see a thing.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Well, maybe we should kickstart BYU's electroshock therapy program again... You know... To set people straight.

- Doc

[_Symmachus]

Anonymity is an interesting thing. I think one thing it does is force the discussion away from personality, and so it makes appeals to authority in argumentation much harder. For old FARMSians, its use among their critics is seen as cowardice. Of course, most of those old FARMSians have life-long job security, so their courage has never impressed me.

In fact, the name-recognition factor for Daniel Peterson is such that I don't think anyone would ever read a little blog called "Sic et Non" if it were authored not by the ex-provocateur of the FARMS review (who still feels the need to tell us that he began "as a mathematics major" at BYU) but instead authored by someone named tinfoilhat53. In that case, you'd have to judge the blog not upon the name of its poster but upon its poster's ideas.

A blog post like this by tinfoilhat53 would have been met with the silence it deserves.

[_Mary]

https://disruptingdinnerparties.com/201 ... gy-of-sex/

This is one of the most transformative articles I ever read on the subject of gender. It impacted me deeply and made me realise just how much gender is also a social construction.

The biology is interesting because it tells us we all start out the same. What's in a female embryo/fetus gets extended in a male.

It made me realise that gender is a continuum on so many levels. Biological, social, hormonal.

This is such a big, big problem for Mormon theology as it has developed because the brethren see gender as an eternal feature of who we fundamentally are and how we can function on earth particularly within church structure. To a great extent, Catholics are the same.

So conservatives like DCP have to take a hard line. Which is sad.

[_VNephi]

https://disruptingdinnerparties.com/2014/04/08/take-the-red-pill-the-truth-behind-the-biology-of-sex/

This is one of the most transformative articles I ever read on the subject of gender. It impacted me deeply and made me realise just how much gender is also a social construction.

The biology is interesting because it tells us we all start out the same. What's in a female embryo/fetus gets extended in a male.

It made me realise that gender is a continuum on so many levels. Biological, social, hormonal.

Reading through the article the science seems sound, but the conclusions seem rather biased and making heavy assumptions on "the medical community" being politically inclined to make decisions over the science itself.

You may have heard before that gender is socially constructed, while sex is biological. But I’m here to tell you that what you’ve heard isn’t true. Sex is socially constructed too.
...
These days, the standard used for assigning sex to intersex babies is chromosomal sex. XX, you’re female, XY, you’re male.

This is the standard method of identifying gender used, and the most efficient, given that the chromosomes themselves are what determines the gender. In situations with extra chromosomes, this principle is still in place. Whilst there are more than just XX and XY possible, the sex itself is still either male or female. The difference is in some cases it can be male and female, or neither, so whilst the binary is there, they aren't mutually exclusive positions, and it's in those instances that they get classified as "intersex."

A much more pragmatic definition of intersex, as proposed by Dr. Cary Costello at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is when a body does not fully differentiate into male or female. By that definition, people with PCOS are intersex, because the condition we were born with makes our androgen levels higher than most women’s and lower than most men’s.

Hormone levels will alter a person physically over time, but in cases like PCOS, they'd still be readily identifiable as female. Going by this definition seems more in place with the old method of identifying gender in this article:

For decades, the medical marker of maleness was a penis that fit the standards of masculinity: standing to pee, and having heterosexual intercourse. These standards had serious consequences. Any baby with a phalloclitoris that didn’t meet medical standards was subjected to unnecessary surgery to reduce the phalloclitoris to an “acceptable” size for a clitoris, raised as female, and kept in the dark for the rest of their life about the genitalia they were born with.

I've not been able to confirm this method's use, but under the assumption that this was a utilised method, it was indeed a barbaric practice, and it's a good thing it's no longer used.

When I was diagnosed with PCOS, my gynecologist offered me the option of hormone therapy to make my hormonal profile less androgenic and more typically female.
Children who are diagnosed with intersex conditions usually don’t get that choice.

I'd say it's for the children's benefit. If you have a condition which alters you to such an extent, working to correct it early on is better for the child than to have them adapt to the changes before going on to change themselves again. I also presume that their lack of choice is due to that decision being given to the parent, who could stop the treatment if their child were to express enough discomfort, and if that is indeed the case then it's no different from most laws involving children.

They’re folk tales we tell each other so we’ll keep believing in the great patriarchal fantasy that there are two sexes that are completely different from each other, and that one is better than the other. Because biology.

Biology does indeed say that the sexes are different, although not completely different. Biology says nothing on one being better than the other.


Whilst I do agree that gender is a social construct, biological sex is still determined through biology, and exists due to the biological development of species.

On another note, I can't find anything about the author of the article, "Luz Delfondo," on any other site, as well as having claimed to be a "scientist" with no specific field.

[_beastie]

Warning: I have not read all the posts on this thread and do not intend for this to be meant as a direct response to any of those posts. I decided that since transgender rights are an important issue today, for both my family and larger society, that whenever the topic arises, I would share one of the most informative pieces I’ve ever seen on the topic. This is taken from a reddit debate on the topic, posted by “Chel of the sea”. The original can be found here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/c ... f_wanting/

I take no credit for compiling this information. I hope that Chel of the sea would welcome sharing it. (I do not know Chel nor do I participate in reddit. Another family member researching the topic shared it with me.) I did add some bolding.

Historically, we were indeed considered mentally ill. The DSM (used in the US) recently declassified us as a 'disorder', but the ICD (used in much of the rest of the world) continues to classify us as a paraphilic disorder (essentially, a fetish). It's worth pointing out, however, that the ICD didn't declassify homosexuality as a disorder until the 90s (in fact, they did so in the current version of the ICD), two decades after the DSM declassified it. It also classifies the vast majority of the population as sex disordered, since things like enjoying kinky sex are disordered by the ICD's standards. The current draft of the upcoming new ICD edition also declassifies us as mentally ill, following the DSM's example.

But I would say we are not disordered, for three primary reasons: one, we show some basis in fact for our identification; two, unlike true delusional or somatoform disorders (which seem the most obvious comparison), psychiatric medication does not affect our feelings; and three, unlike true delusional/somatoform disorders, allowing us to pursue our feelings is far from destructive and in fact has exceptionally well-demonstrated positive results.

As best we can tell, gender identity is at least partially determined by brain structure formed very early in fetal development.

A few (http://www.journalofpsychiatricresearch ... 5/abstract) studies show (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21195418) patterns typical (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7477289) of our identified gender and not of our birth sex.

Moreover, transgenderism correlates strongly with endocrine conditions - if we look at people born with externally female bodies, those with PCOS (which raises testosterone) are much more likely (https://books.google.com/books?id=RUfMr ... sm&f=false) to ultimately identify as men; those with CAIS (which makes their bodies incapable of responding to testosterone) almost never do, to the point that single cases (http://link.springer.com/article/10.100 ... 010-9624-1) merit publication in their own right. On top of that, digit ratio (a marker of prenatal testosterone exposure) displays markedly low T exposure on average in trans women and high T exposure in trans men.

There's even some experimental evidence that, when cis (=not trans) people are categorized contrary to their birth sex, they experience the same distress that trans people do. Under the assumption that gender is malleable to social expectations, David Reimer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer) was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision. He found himself uncomfortable with the female role, displayed symptoms typical of what would be expected of a trans man (that's FTM, to be clear), and ultimately transitioned to living as a man as soon as he became aware of his status in his early teens. And on the flip side, an author named Norah Vincent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norah_Vincent) spent a year living as a man for the purposes of writing a book. By the end of that time, she was so depressed she checked herself into a mental institution because she was worried she might harm herself.

Additionally, trans feelings simply don't respond to psychiatric medication designed to 'cure' them. No professional organization in the world - even those that do classify us as a mental illness for (I feel) mostly historical/political reasons - recommends just giving us SSRIs or the like and sending us away. Traditional therapies simply do not work.

Compare this with Body Dysmorphic Disorder, a disorder that could be seen as an analog to trans people. BDD sufferers fixate on a small (e.g., a mole) or nonexistent part of their bodies, which they believe makes them hideous and unlovable. Some seek out treatment to remove the offending part. But BDD, unlike trans people, responds well (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1785390/) to both therapy and SSRIs (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3589080/) and does not respond to their desired interventions.

And finally, trans people show absolutely enormous improvement when allowed to pursue our identifications unimpaired. Here are a few studies, although far from all that exist on the subject:

• Heylans et al., 2014:(http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 3/abstract) "A difference in SCL-90 [a test of distress, anxiety, and hostility] overall psychoneurotic distress was observed at the different points of assessments (P = 0.003), with the most prominent decrease occurring after the initiation of hormone therapy (P < 0.001)...Furthermore, the SCL-90 scores resembled those of a general population after hormone therapy was initiated."

• Dhejne, et al. (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl ... ne.0016885) is much-cited by those who like to say that we have elevated mortality post-transition, and it does in fact say this...for the cohort who transitioned before 1989, in a far more hostile world and with less effective treatments. However, there was not a significant elevation of suicide or of other mortality in the post-1989 cohort.


• Colizzi et al., 2013:(http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 5/abstract) "At enrollment, transsexuals reported elevated CAR ['cortisol awakening response', a physiological measure of stress]; their values were out of normal. They expressed higher perceived stress and more attachment insecurity, with respect to normative sample data. When treated with hormone therapy [at followup, 1 year after beginning HRT], transsexuals reported significantly lower CAR (P < 0.001), falling within the normal range for cortisol levels. Treated transsexuals showed also lower perceived stress (P < 0.001), with levels similar to normative samples."

• Gomez-Gil et al., 2012: (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21937168) "SADS, HAD-A, and HAD-Depression (HAD-D) mean scores [these are tests of depression and anxiety] were significantly higher among patients who had not begun cross-sex hormonal treatment compared with patients in hormonal treatment (F=4.362, p=.038; F=14.589, p=.001; F=9.523, p=.002 respectively). Similarly, current symptoms of anxiety and depression were present in a significantly higher percentage of untreated patients than in treated patients (61% vs. 33% and 31% vs. 8% respectively)."


• Here (http://www.gires.org.uk/assets/Medpro-A ... _study.pdf) is a broad survey conducted in the UK. Unlike the previous links, it's not peer-reviewed, but the large sample size provides some corroboration of the above results. In particular, we have: (Page 15): "Stage of transition had a substantial impact upon life satisfaction within the sample. 70% of the participants stated that they were more satisfied with their lives since transition, compared to 2% who were less satisfied (N=671)" (Page 50): " Most participants who had transitioned felt that their mental health was better after doing so (74%), compared to only 5% who felt it was worse (N=353)." (Page 55): "For participants who had transitioned, this had led to changes in their self-harming. 63% felt that they harmed themselves more before they transitioned, with only 3% harming themselves more after transition (N=206)." (Page 59): "Suicidal ideation and actual attempts reduced after transition, with 63% thinking about or attempting suicide more before they transitioned and only 3% thinking about or attempting suicide more post-transition. 7% found that this increased during transition, which has implications for the support provided to those undergoing these processes (N=316)."

• de Vries, et al., 2014 (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/c ... 8.abstract) studied 55 trans teens from the onset of treatment in their early teenage years through a follow-up an average of 7 years later. They found no negative outcomes, no regrets, and in fact their group was slightly mentally healthier than controls.


• Lawrence, 2003 (http://link.springer.com/article/10.102 ... 4086814364) surveyed post-op trans folk: "Participants reported overwhelmingly that they were happy with their SRS results and that SRS had greatly improved the quality of their lives. None reported outright regret and only a few expressed even occasional regret."
This is not the case for (for instance) BDD sufferers - see the links above. If the offending part is removed or modified (e.g., dermatological treatments to get rid of a mole), they simply re-fixate on a new part. Trans people, in general, do not.
________________________________________
Setting aside the abstract, for a moment, I am a trans woman. I am:
• Stable: I have never been suicidal or anything more than moderately depressed. I have good control over my emotions (although less now than I once did - adjusting to the return of all the emotional turmoil of puberty takes work!). I can bear my emotional burdens, and I help many others to carry theirs too. I teach students who, in some cases, just go off the plane from countries where people like me are hanged - and I have the strength and stability to look them in the eye and not hide who and what I am.
• Happy: I smile when I look in the mirror. I see a face that, for the first time in my life, feels like a face that is really mine and not a mask I'm looking through. I sing happily as I go through my day. I do my very best to be cheerful and warm to everyone I know.
• Productive: I am financially self-sufficient and earned a Master's degree during my transition; a degree I never would have gotten otherwise. I pay my taxes, tip my waiters, and have enough to fill my belly and help a friend in need.

So let me turn this around - in what sense am I mentally ill? I made a choice for my own well-being after 18 months of careful deliberation. That decision, so far, has brought me nothing but joy for its own sake (you can read my story here https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comm ... ke/ck591nt). The worst parts are my worries about others and the occasional crappy treatment. I am not distressed, I am not impaired, I pose no threat to others, and I ask nothing but the courtesies already extended to half the human race. So where, exactly, is the illness?

My own comments:
I find it unfortunate and yet predictable that as public support for gay rights and aversion to prejudice against gay people grows, the far right is now using the transgender issue as their whipping post, whipping up frenzy amongst their adherents who are usually misinformed, or not informed at all, and don’t actually know any transgendered people. It’s the same old song, just slightly different lyrics. It’s repulsive to me to see this used as a political tool when lives – sometimes literally – hang in the balance.

[Guest]

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.

Interestingly, the risk with estrogen is primarily VTE (venous thromboembolism). Don't know about testosterone. It doesn't seem to affect overall mortality, though. More importantly, just like birth control pills, users are strongly to advised to quit smoking, as that is a known causality.

Puberty blockers are in place precisely because the doctor advised giving them more time before their secondary sex characteristics develop to live with their gender identity so they can decide whether to proceed later in life with hormone therapy.

http://www.endocrineweb.com/professiona ... tain-risks

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.

You seem to be under the impression that anyone can walk into a doctor's office and ask for sexual reassignment surgery and, voila, you're under the knife in no time. Patients looking for this type of surgery have to pass rigorous mental heath testing to insure that the situation is truly one of gender dysphoria.

My understanding is that under the age of 18, a child would still need permission from parent or guardian. I would have a very difficult time believing that a doctor would allow a family to make a decision for a child if s/he disagrees with such a line. My understanding is that teens don't receive this surgery.

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.

I work with a trans person. We use the bathroom together all the time. People need to get the f*** over it and quit borrowing trouble where there is none.

Edited for Tags

[_Blixa]

I work with a trans person. We use the bathroom together all the time. People need to get the f*** over it and quit borrowing trouble where there is none.

Agree.

[_Kishkumen]

I work with a trans person. We use the bathroom together all the time. People need to get the f*** over it and quit borrowing trouble where there is none.

Agree.

Indeed.