Does it?
I guess self-mutilation is a civil right? And doctors encouraging and performing mutilations is also a civil right? Doctors giving 12-year-olds puberty blockers also a civil right?
How many lives does “gender-affirming health care” (i.e. breast/penis removal, cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers) end?
I wonder if the ACLU really is that confident about the long-term joy and relief of these drastic physical interventions.
Well, if chemical castration was good enough for Alan Turing…
Meanwhile, the ACLU chose the models for the photo with an eye to their intended audience.
I knew someone who lost a lot of weight in a short period of time and had the resultant large lump of sagging skin surgically removed. They said that now it feels weird. That there’s a section of their lower torso that has no feeling at all. It’s surrounded by the rest of the body that has feeling, so it’s like there’s a void.
What do people really think is going to happen if a surgeon slices through all their nerve endings and rearranges everything? That they’re going to retain all their sensitivities? Or that they’ll magically develop the sexual sensitivity they imagine the genitalia they’re trying to emulate feels? In the case of transwomen, it seems that some admit that dilation is painful or at least bothersome. For some it’s probably the case that they feel very little down there.
The consistent refusal to acknowldge the existence of de-transitioners, the outright denial of the dangers of puberty blockers, the absence of long-term studies for post-op health, the demonization of any criticisms, means that getting an accurate picture is impossible.
An ideology that’s this dependent upon delusion, fantasy, and the supposed power of wish-fulfilment over reality, doesn’t want an accurate picture of the consequences of its beliefs.
Even if puberty blockers were all safe and warm and comfy and only paused puberty until a person knew their “True, inner gender self,” the physiological damage of not going through puberty and being held in a pre-pubescent state is huge. Teens need to go through puberty to develop mentally and physically, and it can’t make sense to anyone that keeping someone in a child’s body will help anything.
Here’s something that Jane Clare Jones retweeted; a letter written by a detransitioner to her “top” surgeon.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ratfunk/status/1464442794479693827
Michael,
Yes, I think it has to be damaging. As must standing still while your peers pubesce around you. This is hardly ever mentioned, though. I doubt there are many (any) studies about it yet. But it has to be something to be wary of at the very least.