Treatment
The reporting is always so incomplete, not to say distorted.
Arkansas bans transgender youth treatment
It’s not “treatment” though. It’s not medicine to cure a disease. It is, at the very least, disputed whether or not it’s a good idea to give adolescents who say they are the other sex surgeries and/or puberty blockers and/or cross-sex hormones. None of that is straightforwardly “treatment.” Given the fact that some people who have gone through one or more of those interventions now regret it, it’s all the more dubious to call it “treatment.” Being female or male isn’t an illness, and doesn’t in itself require treatment. Responsible journalism should be cautious about adopting terminology that assumes there is an illness or condition that requires “treatment” to enable the patient to appear to be the other sex.
Arkansas has become the first US state to outlaw gender confirming treatments and surgery for transgender people under the age of 18.
But what are “gender confirming treatments”?
The bill also in effect bans doctors from providing puberty blockers, or from referring them to other providers for the treatment.
Puberty blockers are radical interventions, that do a lot of damage to young bodies, much of it permanent. It may be worth it to some people, but they’re very unlikely to know that at age 12 or so. The whole idea is risky at best, so it’s not just obviously wicked or tragic that doctors and providers can’t do the risky thing.
The bill has faced much opposition from groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics, which said the law would block trans youth from important medical care and increase their already high risk of suicide.
It isn’t medical care though. It may be a kind of psychological care, but it’s highly contested whether it’s good psychological care or not.
And the suicide threat is outright bad journalism. Journalists have been instructed not to promote suicidal ideation that way, but they keep doing it.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said it was preparing litigation, stating that the bill “will drive families, doctors and businesses out of the state and send a terrible and heart-breaking message to the transgender young people who are watching in fear”.
Maybe not. Maybe the ACLU is just wrong. Maybe the bill will save young people from doing irreversible damage to their own bodies. Maybe the ACLU isn’t thinking about this carefully enough.
Dr Jack Turban, a fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, told the BBC that access to gender-affirming care for trans youth is “consistently linked to better mental health outcomes”.
He added that much of the political discourse around this care has been shrouded in unscientific misinformation that implies “transgender youth are ‘confused’ or invalid.”
And Dr Jack Turban knows for sure that none of them are confused? Does that seem likely or even possible given the amount of bullshit there is being talked on this subject – including by Dr Jack Turban?
I wonder sometimes if it would be possible to write the legislation without any reference to the trans cult. Prohibit castrating children, no matter who does it or why.
Difficult. What about really bad cases of testicular cancer?
…and given the fact that boys who do not get the ‘treatment’ desist 87% of the time…
…and given the fact that that the long term side affects are poorly researched, but what is known is that they include genital underdevelopment, shorter stature, and weaker bones…
Yeah, treatment is a bit of a contested concept.
The Republicans are gonna keep doing this and they’ll have no problem with implementation… Did the woke really, *really* want this fight? I’ve already got one woke acquaintance that is getting upset about Republicans doing their culture war thing.
What the hell did you expect when you fucking handed them the opportunity?
The claim about blockers and cross-sex hormones improving mental health outcomes is a lie: report just came out in England saying there was no improvement.
I am truly baffled as to why there is such a push against “watch and wait” and for irreversible body damage. They call blockers reversible and never mention the bone damage and the negative effects on brain development they cause. And the rage unleashed on anyone who does point it out – what’s behind it? Why do they want to do this to children?
I received a canned “50 State Survey” from ACLU recently. I checked boxes on their survey, which was mostly about racism, but I went to town on the write-in section. I told them I’ve supported them for decades, but i can no longer, because of the T issue that overwhelms LGB. TAs demand “rights” that are not rights. No one has the right to lie about their sex. The T lobby hurts women, hurts LGB, and commits horrifying abuse against children. Essentially, T is “conversion therapy” inflicted on gay and lesbian kids. I told them to fire Chase Strangio, and come back to reality. Until then, no support from me.
There are zero reported cases of bilateral testicular cancer in children. Removal of one testicle is not castration.
I’ve seen receipts on Jack Turban getting money from pharma companies; if anyone would like them let me know and I’ll look and link (the women on Ovarit are good at finding and disseminating this kind of information). Also, interesting article on what happened to the ACLU:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-disintegration-of-the-aclu-james-kirchick
@guest #8, that’s a very good article. Also a very interesting magazine. Thanks for bringing it to the table. I’m now reading “The Woke Meritocracy” there:
As a rather square individual who never fit well into that well-rounded hole, father to an even squarer son, this resonates with me:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/merit-blake-smith
For puberty blockers to ‘work,’ they’d have to be administered to people who are still children. Too young to drink, smoke, vote, get tattoos or piercings. But now they’re old enough to potentially wreck their bodies?
Bruce Jenner did not have puberty blockers (were there such things back then?) and did not mutilate by amputation, or otherwise modify his body with cosmetic elective surgery before he was 18. So is Caitlyn Jenner any less trans? It sure looks to me as if being a ‘successful’ trans person doesn’t require any kind of risky cosmetic alterations or chemically induced retardations at all. How many lives would it save to pass these laws and force them to wait until they are more fully matured, and possess the judgement to make a well considered decision? By saved I don’t mean only keeping them alive, but keeping them from ruining their lives by setting them on unpredictable courses and irreversible consequences that they might be too immature to understand the implications of. Maybe Chasio is happy with her imaginary penis and cheesy moustache, but did she make this decision before she was 18? If not, then her hypocrisy is profound. Is she any less trans?