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A 4 panel comic. In the first panel, a character stands on a cliff, addressing an audience, and says “trans kids should not get puberty blockers”. In the second panel, the audience, armed and labeled “cis people”, looks content. In the third panel, the character on the cliff says “they should get hrt so they can go through the right puberty at the same time as their cis peers”. In the fourth panel, the audience, still labeled “cis people”, looks angry at the character.
if you’re cis and seeing this: keep your concern trolling to yourself.
I think puberty blockers should be an option for those with genuine uncertainty, but trans kids should definitely be allowed to start hrt early.
I heard someone say that puberty blockers are for the parents. Think about that a lot actually.
It’s literally “I don’t want my kid to be trans but I don’t want to alienate them by saying that so I’m just going to put the decision off so it’s no longer my problem to worry about” IMO
Just slightly better than outright bigotry and phobia by screaming at the child they’re “wrong”
This is also true. At the end of the day, the kid should have 100% percent of the decision making power, being able to get HRT without their parent’s consent. On the other hand, not everybody is sure about what they want; I certainly wasn’t. I just think the option shouldn’t be taken off the table because parents pressure their kids.
Counter-offer: put everyone on blockers so that they can be more mentally mature when they have to deal with their hormones going apeshit. If trans kids shouldn’t make irrevocable changes to their bodies when they’re too young to fully understand the ramifications, then cis kids shouldn’t either.
It is honestly such a great example of how disingenuous liberal support of trans people is when our “rights matter,” but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t suffer an intensely traumatic childhood for no other reason than the comfort of bigots. I can’t even begin to explain how much easier my life would have been, and so many of them do just think that’s a natural and inevitable thing that trans people have to experience and not like, an arbitrary and pointlessly cruel form of systemic violence.
Yet another study showed regret rates are minimal, so yes. https://www.advocate.com/health/transgender-health/transition-regret-extremely-rare
waow BASED BASED BASED BASED
Also to all the cis people giving their two cents in the comments: Stop. We don’t need a cis person’s opinions on trans people’s needs. The same reason we don’t need a straight person’s opinion on gay people or a white person’s opinion on black people. Just shut the fuck up.
At this point I’m my life I’m almost just half resigned to call myself a bitch with a beard. It’s overwhelming to think about all the aspects at 43 and all the challenges of starting some kind of hrt. They gave me so much therapy and medication in my youth, not much I was agreeable with or seemed to be incredibly helpful. I sometimes wonder how my life had been if they took into account inquiring about my identity, and we all had a break through at a session, and tried some blockers or hrt or something. I also wonder how much of my psychological state of affairs is a symptom of a life of not realizing exactly how repressed I was. It’s like they threw everything else at the wall hoping it would stick, but not once did anyone ever even think to touch base and explore that maybe the symptoms they wanted to help me with were a result of some kind of gender dysphoric identity crisis I didn’t necessarily comprehend I was in the midst of.
Like looking back now. I’m like fuck. There was probably a lot of telltale signs in my eyes. It was like I’m the obviously gay friend that’s coming out to current self and, in my self is like yeah I figured. And then my past self is shocked. Like how did you know. I would have thought some adults would have noticed something. But it’s like here. Take this speed and some antidepressants bub.
What you’re describing is yet another form of violence that these sorts of practices inflict, which is the refusal of self-recognition to trans/gnc people. This is a very common thing, and understandably so, because being forced to be cis when you aren’t is incredibly traumatizing and harmful to one’s mental health. Every disorder I have, I exhibit symptoms as a woman, and always have, which meant that I wasn’t diagnosed with major learning disabilities at a young age because I didn’t show symptoms that matched my gender at birth. Cumulative negative health effects are a major problem for trans people who so often experience depression, anxiety, and PTSD alongside negative effects from not only being refused gender-affirming care, but also even the self-understanding to recognize who they are and what they need.
I’m so sorry you’re dealing with that, and it is important to remember that it is never too late. I also started when I was older, and I’m being serious, I felt happy for the first time in my life within two weeks of starting HRT. I didn’t even realize that I had been experiencing derealization for most of my life until I was on HRT long enough to actually feel connected to my body and the world around me. That isn’t the case with everyone – and please do not think it hasn’t worked for you if you start and don’t feel “fixed” after two weeks – but I point this out because I also spent a very long time knowing I was trans and thinking I didn’t need the HRT, or that I didn’t need to make a big deal out of it, but a few injections was all it took to start healing from decades of trauma. Hope you get whatever you need.
Thank you so much for this sincere, kind hearted response.
Would you consider it violence if they didn’t actually know to go there? I know it was a different time 30 years ago. Not all my Drs were bad necessarily. And I was young enough thatI have a hard time recalling everything with every doctor. But even the one that cared most that started doing things with medications off label just for psychiatric conditions and seem to really care, she had gotten into it because her husband had committed suicide because he was having a psychiatric condition to do with mental illness. She seemed like she wanted to make a difference even. And I had never brought it up to anybody personally, and I’m not sure if I was still kind of being homophobic myself at that point in time, you know the '90s and everybody calls everything gay and, you sure don’t want to be recognized as gay because apparently that’s a bad thing since we’re calling everything. We don’t like gay. And we don’t want our friends to make fun of us for being bad and be outcast. And I was potentially at the point in time where I was leaning into trying to grow a beard and have long hair and wear only heavy metal band t-shirts, and cuss a lot and try to be edgy you know? Like I guess some sort of typical teenager stuff but. I’m not even sure I can blame it on the psychiatrists if I was being so withdrawn about all my feelings and concerns. But at the same time I wonder you know if they’re so observational about things that I can get labeled with you know attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defines disorder, major depressive whatever the fuck order, God I know there was more of you but I forgot. Run me through half a dozen, different stimulants and other half a dozen antidepressants of several different categories, and even a few medications that were used for other things. Like I said she was kind of experiment with all label use. at the same time though I mean if a Dr cared that much, it just confuses me to why that wouldn’t even be something. Consider going down the checklist when you have a patient That’s a teenage person that is allegedly very troubled and also getting into a lot of alleged trouble and having issues with self-harm and substance abuse, like why wouldn’t that at least be something you would spend 2 minutes asking about? Like I said I don’t know. Maybe it was just the times and they didn’t think to do that and I don’t know. Maybe they still don’t do that these days. The last time I even had a therapist I had to bashfully talk about how I had been talking to somebody online and she didn’t understand it first and thought I was just talking about making a friend, and I kind of kept going and she figured out it was a dating a site and I think she thought it was a girl. But I eventually managed to get her to understand that. I had been talking to a older gentleman and it seemed really nice and we’ve been in correspondence. I guess I’m just trying to give some of them the benefit of the doubt. Just seems though that if we’re going to try to diagnose things based on a whole plethora of symptoms. Maybe gender identity would be something you’d want to at least go over briefly and consider.
I guess I didn’t realize that they diagnosed things like PTSD and pressing them anxiety or those types of things based on gender. I mean that’s interesting to know too. I might have to look into that.
I do keep making casual comments and sarcastic comments to my friends and family about starting on HRT. I guess I just don’t really know where to start or where to go or what chemical compounds to look into. Although I’ve read a lot on here, I always pay attention to all the trans ladies posts evenI don’t make any comments. Then things like you know being too old, being too hairy, like my ex-wife would always talk about how it was so sexy that I had a Hairy chest and and she never liked it when I would shave my facial hair. I mean I guess I look like some kind of a Sasquatch lumberjack if I just let everything go you know. I wonder how that works on top of HRT. Like is there electrolysis needed on top of shaving and everything else? I already struggle with alcoholism and some substance abuse. Just think about adding other things on top of it. Concerns me too. Like in addition, if I’d be motivated to do things like worry about the body hair, how new pills are going to play into my poor abused liver and kidneys, heart or whatever. But I do fantasize about If I started and finally did, just feel like myself for the first time. And wonder if I’ve acted the way I have most of my life because I didn’t realize that I’d didn’t feel like myself, and between everything and society, doctors, parents, peers, just wasn’t able to even understand that that was a possibility that I was not vibing with life because I wasnt really myself. I know just in high School, it was incredibly difficult to fight through the emotions and the logic and the feelings I was having about realizing at that time that I was considering myself bisexual. And I thought there was some kind of liberation and that once I finally did and it’s kind of evolved from there to being even more open on that spectrum. But something still didn’t quite feel right. Anyway I guess yeah I don’t know much about the entire process and all the different options and physical changes and what not but. Even if I could just take something I don’t know what it would be estrogen or something, even if it didn’t create physical changes and just made me feel like more comfortable in my own body, that would be pretty fucking amazing because I’ve tried a whole plethora of pharmaceuticals that have been prescribed to me over the years to try to fix me up and make me feel like myself, and also a self-medicated with a plethora of recreational substances starting with curiosity, but it’s led to be maintenance to just not debilitated. And maybe all I or needed with something like astridge and all along. I guess I wouldn’t even know where to start though. Just talk to my primary care physician or a specialist online DIY and I just don’t know the thought of that becomes overwhelming to. You know it’s such a big hurdle to even consider. Trying to jump over and see how it goes. On top of all the questioning yourself, if that’s really what you need and the like. But I have heard a few different people or read their posts. I guess comments like you said it took you 2 weeks after you started and you weren’t sure about it and then you felt like yourself for the first time after some injections. So yeah I’m kind of just doing a speech to text here and this is going to be a wall of text so I apologize, but your comment was really appreciated and thoughtful and encouraging and gave me more to think about. So thank you for that
I’ve never understood that thinking. Well, I guess the whole point of it is the lack of thinking tbh.
Why would you not want every tool available for your kid? If blockers are what they need, they should get them. If they need different hormones than what their body is producing, they should get them. If they need different levels of what they’re producing, they should get them.
Shit, birth control pills are used for some very young people, and nobody freaks out at the fact of it. The freaking out is usually at the implication of someone very young having sex, not that the medication is useful in general.
We know that the outcomes are predictable for HRT, and that those outcomes are better when the person has access as early as medically possible (there are edge cases where delaying start allows for other medical care to occur first, but those are very rare). So what’s the big damn deal? There’s plenty of data on outcomes now. There’s plenty of data on regret now. Those rates are lower than cosmetic procedures for full adults getting them for non medical reasons (like nose jobs and facelifts, not reconstructions post injury).
It’s safe. It’s effective. It gives the highest probability of your kid, of anyone’s kid growing up as healthy as can be predicted. We know this because it is so much the majority outcome, and the drawbacks so minimal, that nobody that can be bothered to read the data could think otherwise. And it’s out there; might have to pirate some of it, but still.
It’s infuriating. The whole puberty blockers but not transition idea is so dumb. It’s so depressingly, boringly dumb.
I just… I don’t have a horse in this race. I’m a cis dude. This should just be between some other family and their doctors/therapists to decide what’s best.
I struggle with this.
I want to be supportive of anyone struggling to be who they are, but at the same time, I remember just how difficult and how long it took for me to really find who I am and what I see as my place. (I still struggle with that. My midlife crisis is that I no longer feel like I know who I really am anymore.)
So I hesitate when it comes to supporting someone to make a permanent, irrevocable change during a period of life that is considered the most in flux.
Both my daughters have traveled the spectrum, calling themselves straight, to bi, to gay, to pan, to trans, and back. It started at 8 and while not as dynamic now, they have settled a little bit at 14 and 12. The 12 year old likes girls and seems trans curious, while the 14 year old goes between liking boys, sometimes girls, or feeling asexual.
I wasn’t sure how to support them but at the same time, I was afraid they would make decisions that would affect a good part of their lives, based off something that was potentially transient.
I ended up telling them that I support them. That I am not telling them they are not who they say they are, but they should avoid jumping into assigning themselves a label. I tell them this age is about self exploration and finding that identity. But they have the luxury of time to explore and experience, and that the moment they box themselves into a label, then that is what they will become to the world.
My fear is them getting trapped into a supposed identity before they really know who they are.
I do not have personal experience with children who express gender dysmorphia at a young age to such an extent they want an externally driven change, so I don’t feel like I can argue in good faith.
And I also understand that the quality of life of someone who truly is trapped in the wrong gender would be much greater, were they able to transition much earlier.
So how do you know? How can you help and support someone, at that age, when everything about individual identity is still so new and unknown to them?
I’m sorry you went through such uncertainty, that’s certainly not rare with transitioning.
Personally, I have known for over 20 years, since I was a child, and my life would have had far less self-inflicted suffering if I had been allowed to transition then. Even blockers until 15-16 and then hrt would have gone a long way.
Isnt puberty reversible with hrt for adults? The whole point of hrt is to reverse one hormone to another, even after puberty already happened?
Edit: Okay, i now understand. The problem with puberty is not that it is irreversible, but that it is difficult and expensive to deal with reversing those changes. It is important for trans kids to get required treatment, to not deal with those problems as adults, as trans adults must do.
Edit 2: I did a mistake in wording about my question in changes reversible with hrt, while i should have asked about more difficult and expensive surgeries. Also i want to mention, is that i did end up enough androgynous after puberty, to get biased towards thinking that it is not a big issue, which is not the case, as many trans people can get more severe effects of puberty, which are more difficult to deal with, both emotionally and finacially.
There are physical changes the body undergoes during puberty. They cannot be undone. HRT will cause some changes, but they won’t undo what happened.
There is also the mental piece. Forcing someone to watch their body change to be farther and farther from what they know it should be. HRT later in life doesn’t undo the mental trauma.
I understand that it is mentally traumatic for kids to grow of undesired sex, but i dont understand what is the big deal with puberty if it is reversible. What physical changes do you mean which are not reversible with hrt for adults?
testosterone puberty permanently fucked up the shape of my face, shoulders, hips and waist, lowered my voice, grew a bunch of gross hair everywhere (which is slow, painful and expensive to remove), and made me lose a whole bunch of hair from my head, to name some of the most obvious things. none of those effects are reversible from taking estrogen.
and that’s not to mention the mental damage resulting from basically being an emotionally dead zombie for a decade until i started HRT.
Okay, i now understand. The problem with puberty is not that it is irreversible, but that it is difficult and expensive to deal with reversing those changes. It is important for trans kids to get required treatment, to not deal with those problems as adults, trans adults must do.
many aspects are irreversible, basically anything that happens to your skeleton cannot be undone. there is no surgery to remove my pelvic tilt or make my hands bigger, i just get to live with them for the rest of my life (this is as a result of estrogenic puberty)
edit: was busy earlier but thought it would be beneficial to elaborate on this
for all trans people, skeletal changes during natal puberty will often be irreversible; this includes general lengthening and thickening of bones for a natal-testosterone puberty, and a lack of lengthening and thickening of bones for a natal-estrogen puberty (late testosterone 2nd puberty can thicken bones, but not lengthen them, due to the fusion of the bone plates that make growth possible). this means that e.g. on average, trans girls will be taller than they would otherwise be, and trans boys will be shorter. idk if you’re aware, but height changing surgery is massively expensive and risky, so practically speaking, changing it is impossible
there’s nothing for hand size for either direction of puberty either. again, on average, trans girls will get bigger hands than they’d otherwise have, and trans boys will get smaller hands. as far as i’m aware, there are no surgeries for hands, which is probably good because they’re pretty densely complicated pieces of biological machines
i believe trans girls can develop the pelvic tilt after estrogen (?), but no widening of the pelvis itself will occur. similarly, there’s no way for trans boys to reverse their pelvic tilt nor narrow their pelvis
also, trans boys can get facial masculinization surgery, but there are limits to what it can do (e.g. brow ridge)
none of this touches on how “technically reversible with surgery or hormones” is an awful bar to hold for allowing a trans kid to go through natal puberty, but i’m hopeful that you’re in agreement with that and it doesn’t need to be spelled out
Did you miss the part where I said the changes cannot be undone? As in they are irreversible? You cannot go back in time regardless of what hormones you are on.
“…transformation of the brain, bones, muscle, blood, skin, hair, breasts, and sex organs…Puberty leads to sexual dimorphism through the development of the secondary sex characteristics, which further distinguish the sexes.”
I did not miss that part, but i incorrectly worded my question. What puberty changes are irreversible, with neither hrt, medication or excercises? From my understanding, almost every part of puberty can be reversed, so that i ask you to explain which changes are actually irreversible.
Nearly all of the changes are irreversible. HRT will change your body, but will not give you the body you would have had of you went through puberty with the proper hormones. Your skeletal structure, hair growth, breast development, vocal changes, genital development, and more cannot be undone.
Something being reversible quite obviously has nothing to do with it being traumatic for years regardless. How is that hard to understand?
I do understand, i lived through it.
many effects are quite hard to reverse
- breasts: don’t magically disappear on t. needs surgery
- deep voice: doesn’t magically get much higer through e. needs voice training
- bones: barely change afaik except for pelvic tilt on e if you start it early enough. including growing/shrinking and facial bone structure. needs surgery
- body hair: gets thinner and sometimes less on e but chest and facial hair stay. needs lazer hair removal or electrolizis
- balding: only minimally reverses on e. needs hair transplants
what second puberty can achieve:
- t:
- deepening voice
- new and thicker body hair including facial hair
- fat and muscles redistribution in masculine conotated way
- balding
- increasing clitoris size
- increase skin more oily
- e:
- breast growth
- redistributing fat and muscles in feminie conotated way
- thinning body and facial hair
- stopping some balding and slightly reversing it
- slight shrinking
- pelvic tilting
- make skin softer and less oily
i might have missed some things and of course everyones mileage may varie.
some aspects of first puberty can’t be reversed using hrt and they often are both used to invalidate trans people and can cause a lot of dysphoria. it’s why many trans people who get to medically transition are still quite unhappy.
As you said, those changes are hard to reverse, but they are reversible. And while bone structure does not change, and even after finfing out about it, i still dont understand in what way bone structure matters for trans people?
you are shifting the goal post now.
much of this reversing does not come from hrt as u initially claimed but from hard work and expensive as well as sometimes life threatening surgeries. it should absolutely be avoided if possible.
bones do not have to be a big deal if one is as lucky to get androgynous bones out of first puberty, or has a very excepting environment which does not care about these things and one does themselves not care much about them either. but in many cases trans people are as unlucky to end up with bones making them noticably larger/broader or shorter than the norm for their gender or with pronounced facial bones which despite fat redistribution and makeup cause them to be read as a gender that they are not. this can be extremely dysphoria inducing and make them more likely targets for harassment.
the way to change this (if there even is one) is through painful, dangerous, and very expensive surgeries. full facial feminization surgery for example will cost as much as 50k and is often not covered by insurance as well as often requiring people to travel to travel to foreign countries. this is not an option for many people. even if health insurance covered this, it would still be a giant pain and come with risks. there is no reason to not let people chose for themselves and avoid this situation in more cases.
Thanks for explanation. I did a real mistake in incorrectly wording my question about changes reversible with hrt, instead of asking what changes must be done with difficult and expensive surgeries. Also, i did end up enough androgynous after puberty to get biased towards not thinking that it might have much more severe effects for other transgender people.
uh… my forehead and nose and jaw are shaped all wrong, and look obviously masculine unless i’m wearing an uncomfortable amount of makeup? sure that’s “reversible” if i had 50 grand lying around to spend on surgeries (and months of time to recover from said surgeries), but i don’t and neither do most other people.
me explain simple
family guy peter griffin chin bad when want to look like girl
child bearing hips bad when want to look like boy
Male CIS Ally here. Friends of mine have a trans daughter. She is currently on blockers.
I think this topic deserves a real debate.
Here in Germany they had the choice if she should get treatment and what. They thought a lot about it. They asked their friends, they asked trans people.
And my autistic as had a new special interest for some weeks.
So. Their reasoning, what I learned and heard summarized:
- there are some kids that later find out they are non binary.
- if HRT starts before the “biological puperty” sets in, then permanent infertility is the logical result.
On the other side:
- having the same body change as the peers at the same time is for sure better
- kids my have a better time finding and holding friendships…
For trans boys, not having a puperty wile all other boys have is for sure a big issue. Trans girls seem to have a less hard time in blockers.
While having the choice here making it still is hard. Irreversible, physical, effects for sure with HRT. But what about irreversible psychological effects without it?
And the only persons that can make that decision are the effected trans kids and their parents.
![[CW: Transphobia] hot take: trans kids should have normal childhoods, actually](https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/eb280989-bc26-4156-aeb8-c1dc4c15465d.webp){kind=link}