...I could have told you that ๐คท
Source: https://x.com/BriannaWu/status/1984574165643403370
Not my usual kind of source (Xitter), but I want any centrists out there who ask trans people to "just get along" / compromise with actual hate groups that want them eradicated to know that it doesn't work.
There is no such thing as a reasonable bigot, by definition.
I don't believe parents should be able to make any permanent decisions about a child's body.
This includes hormones, tattoos, genital mutilation of any kind, plastic surgery, piercings.
Children cannot provide consent for anything.
You're right - which is why puberty blockers should be required by law for all children until they're 18 and can decide for themselves which puberty is right for them.
I agree parents should not force kids to have piercings. However trans health is a healthcare issue, like other health conditions. There is a problem that is causing suffering. In healthcare, we typically rely on parents as guardians to give legal consent, but kids also have to give their "assent" which carries crucial moral weight in the situation. While kids might not have the capacity to give fully informed consent, they can give assent based on their best understanding.
We apply this to things like cancer treatment, corrective plastic surgery, counselling, and mental health medication for kids. Some of these can be even more permanent and life-altering than hormone blockers for kids (we don't allow bottom surgery for kids).
This is why transcare, like most healthcare for kids, should involve a team of healthcare professionals, guardians, and crucially the child themselves in patient-centered decision-making.
Do bad decisions happen? Yes. Are there misguided professionals, guardians, and kid patients? Yes. But this kind of care as standard is far better than parents deciding, or kids being left alone to figure it out themselves, or worse, policy-makers, who don't give a shit about evidence-based healthcare, deciding no trans kids get care. That's right, banning transcare is also making a decision for people with the consequence that trans kids continue to experience profound suffering without care.
Good thing puberty blockers are reversible.
But you don't actually care about that do you? You'll just move the goalposts.
Unfortunately doing nothing is still a choice. And things aren't better just because they are natural.
It is morally abominable to believe that it is better for 100 trans kids to go through the Hell on Earth of the wrong puberty than for one cis kid to mistakenly go on puberty blockers or HRT. It shows that you fundamentally believe the life of 1 cis person to be worth the lives of 100 trans people. You do not believe in the equal moral value of every human life. You fundamentally, in your heart of hearts, believe trans people to be subhuman, because you do not place the value of their pain anywhere near that of cis people.
I think that ratio is an important one in this debate. Is it actually around 1% (of those reporting dysphoria ) that decide it was a mistake post puberty?
Also sorry if dysphoria is the wrong word.
HRT has a success rate over 90%, measured as more than 90% of people who go on HRT report an improvement in their quality of life compared to before HRT. Of that other roughly 10%, the majority report reasons outside of regret for stopping HRT. Things like: medical complications, financial reasons, loss of jobs or housing due to being visibly trans, loss of friends and family due to being trans, assault or rape, etc., and most report that they would start HRT again as soon as possible. Only a small portion of that 10% say that they regret taking HRT and that it was a mistake.
So is it literally 1%? I don't know, but it's certainly less than 10%, which gives HRT one of the highest success rates in the field of medicine. By comparison, antidepressants have a success rate somewhere around 36% and knee replacement surgery hovers a little over 50%.
The biggest regrets reported by those who take HRT are that they didn't start sooner, and/or being forced through an unwanted puberty with permanent life-altering effects as a child - which is why puberty blockers are a critical component of trans healthcare. Puberty blockers have been in use for young girls since the 80s for what's known as "precocious puberty" - when a girl starts puberty at a very young age, usually around 8 but can be as young as 4. Nobody cared when it was cis girls taking them so that they would start puberty at a normal age. But when trans people started taking them to avoid permanent, life-altering changes until they're old enough to consent to whether or not they want to go on HRT, puberty blockers suddenly became this untested drug being forced upon young boys by nefarious outside forces in the public eye.
Do you feel the same about all life saving medicine as you do about trans health care?
Sorry kid, we can't remove your appendix. Kids can't give consent and I can't give it as your parent. So, I guess you'll die.
Children don't consent to being brought into existence and yet we constantly do so. They can't consent, as one reply pointed out, to medical care either.
Children can't consent to being refused anything that they ask for either.
And even if the denial is on the basis of "their own good" they'll grow to rightfully resent being denied things if it has a significant impact on them into adulthood and rightfully fucking hate their parents for it. Gender transitioning is one such thing.
Children are not ours to own and control and we owe them for dragging them into existence to critically think about their long term well being not just blindly applying some truism to every decision you make about their lives under your care.