Chase pushes the panic button
Chase Strangio is distraught over the Tavistock ruling.
It’s interesting and typical and a big part of the problem that CS resorts to hyperbolic emotional language at the outset. How “terrifying and sad and scary” – as if puberty blockers were ventilators and trans young people were being forcibly deprived of them.
I don’t think “people with large platforms” have much effect on courts of law. That aside, is it really true that “this care” i.e. puberty blockers has been deemed medically necessary, safe and effective by every major medical association? What does “medically necessary” even mean in this context? I could understand “psychologically necessary” (without necessarily agreeing with it) but medically? That doesn’t make sense. I suspect Strangio is padding out the claims here.
Strangio is simply ignoring the fact that there are people who took puberty blockers and now wish they hadn’t. It’s silly to forget that, because that’s what the case was about. Strangio is very sure that puberty blockers are good for all who take them, but Keira Bell brought the suit because they were not good for her and she thinks she was too young to decide to take them.
I find Chase Strangio pretty scary, to tell the truth.
I think I can agree that it has changed a generation of young trans people. I’m not sure for the better; how many of them will feel like Kiera Bell as adults?
Not sure. But I wonder if there isn’t a phenomenon at work — and I’m sure there’s a name for it, but I don’t know it — whereby the people who specialize in a particular area (here, medicine and psychology of transgenderism) are not representative of the field as a whole. Partly due to selection bias (doctors who gravitate to this field are more likely to have a general pro-TRA position), and partly due to incentive structures (you’re not getting or keeping a job at Tavistock if you’re skeptical of giving teens hormones).
It’s analogous to how, if you poll philosophers generally, a relatively small minority report believing in a deity; but among “philosophy of religion” specialists, the numbers flip. Although the phil of religion types no doubt would claim that their opinion carries more weight because they’re the “experts” in the field, it’s much more plausible that people enter and remain in that field because of preexisting inclinations. They don’t generally start off as atheists who then “learn” better and adopt religious views after they specialize.
“It has to stop … Someone is going to get killed.” (Georgia election official)
Oh, gawd, I hadn’t read Page’s rant. What a bunch of stale recycled catastrophizing garbage.
He needs to get more in touch with his inner Mussolini.
There’s also that thing about “reporting attempting suicide”. That gets you a lot of sympathy in trans communities (and frankly, in most communities). I report attempting suicide – my hospital records verify it, because, well, I actually attempted it, not just thought about it. So, yeah.
But this generic “report attempting suicide”? Let’s get some reality checks here. I suspect among any group of young people, there will be more reporting attempting suicide than actually attempt it, because of the sympathy factor (I want someone to give a damn about me; sad people have to attempt or pretend to attempt suicide to gain that) and also because there is, these days, a certain coolness factor. And if you are a member of the trans community, there is a level of authenticity granted if you have attempted suicide. You are real. You are the boss. You are special and wonderful and by the way, a nice statistic for us to use to hit those “Karens” and “TERFs” and gender critical feminists. If they won’t be sympathetic with that, they must be real monsters.
So, let’s get some real numbers, done in a robust way. How many have actually attempted suicide, vs how many have reported attempting it? Right now, we don’t know those numbers. And it can be difficult, because not all suicide attempts send you to the doctor or the hospital. Sometimes you just throw up the pills, or whatever, and no one ever knows. I had multiple attempts that did not hospitalize me, because I did a crappy job of it, but I was hospitalized several times as a result of suicide attempts. There is a difference between my suicide attempts and the times I was only having suicidal ideation.
@iknklast
So very, very sorry.
Re the trans suicide statistics, many critiques point out that transgenderism is almost always part of a package of other problems and conditions, many of which precede the ‘realization’ that one is trans. Depression, anxiety, cutting, anorexia, ocd, bipolar, trauma, alchoholism, abuse. Couple this with the popular assumption that most of these or any other problems are caused by repressing one’s true gender — and will go away as soon as you transition (or finally pass which you totally can) — and there’s serious potential for major letdown.
My understanding is that they haven’t really done many studies which tried to look at comorbid conditions with trans suicide. But a lot of data regarding comorbid conditions with trans.
Sastra, that’s very true, especially since the trans movement has claimed every aspect of the DSM as evidence of trans (as well as every other human behavior, including not having gender dysphoria). It also looks like they have never done a study differentiating between suicide ideation and suicide attempts, so there is a lot that needs to be done to unpack that claim.
The comorbidity is an important consideration. It’s like a study I read that compared children from broken homes with children from happy homes where the parents stayed together and found out, duh, they were happier if they came from the stayed together home. Didn’t consider at all those people who came from an unhappy home where the parents stayed together. Always look at just one parameter, and you never have to do multivariate statistics. Of course, as someone who actually likes doing statistics, I have trouble understanding that viewpoint, but I have been told by good authorities that I am weird (my sister has told me that, for one).
“Is it really true that “this care” i.e. puberty blockers has been deemed medically necessary, safe and effective by every major medical association?”
No. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“The women reported a wide range of symptoms: 30 percent cited severe joint pain, 29 percent, severe body aches; 26 percent, cracking teeth, and 20 percent reported osteoporosis. More than half reported moderate to life-threatening depression. Fifteen percent of the women rated their suicidal thoughts as life-threatening to severe.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/women-fear-drug-they-used-to-halt-puberty-led-to-health-problems