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Nonsense? A Stanford affiliated pediatric endocrinologist defends a mother's choice to raise a child as trans from birth and sterilize it with cross sex hormones. Maybe it's a moral choice, maybe not. Tell us what you think. The Times (UK) on Hannah Barnes' new book archive.ph/3jhxE ---Clinicians were seeing increasingly mentally unwell …
Nonsense? A Stanford affiliated pediatric endocrinologist defends a mother's choice to raise a child as trans from birth and sterilize it with cross sex hormones. Maybe it's a moral choice, maybe not. Tell us what you think.
The Times (UK) on Hannah Barnes' new book
https://archive.ph/3jhxE
---Clinicians were seeing increasingly mentally unwell kids, including those who didn’t just identify as a different gender but as a different nationality and race: “Usually east Asian, Japanese, Korean, that sort of thing,” Dr Matt Bristow, a former Gids clinician, tells Barnes. But this was seen by Gids as irrelevant to their gender identity issues. Past histories of sexual abuse were also ignored: “[A natal girl] who’s being abused by a male, I think a question to ask is whether there’s some relationship between identifying as male and feeling safe,” Bristow says. But, clinicians point out, any concerns raised with their superiors always got the same response: that the kids should be put on the blockers unless they specifically said they didn’t want them. And few kids said that. As one clinician told Barnes: “If a young person is distressed and the only thing that’s offered to them is puberty blockers, they’ll take it, because who would go away with nothing?
Then there was the number of autistic and same-sex-attracted kids attending the clinic, saying that they were transgender. Less than 2 per cent of children in the UK are thought to have an autism spectrum disorder; at Gids, however, more than a third of their referrals had moderate to severe autistic traits. “Some staff feared they could be unnecessarily medicating autistic children,” Barnes writes.
There were similar fears about gay children. Clinicians recall multiple instances of young people who had suffered homophobic bullying at school or at home, and then identified as trans. According to the clinician Anastassis Spiliadis, “so many times” a family would say, “Thank God my child is trans and not gay or lesbian.” Girls said, “When I hear the word ‘lesbian’ I cringe,” and boys talked to doctors about their disgust at being attracted to other boys. When Gids asked adolescents referred to the service in 2012 about their sexuality, more than 90 per cent of females and 80 per cent of males said they were same-sex attracted or bisexual. Bristow came to believe that Gids was performing “conversion therapy for gay kids” and there was a bleak joke on the team that there would be “no gay people left at the rate Gids was going”. When gay clinicians such as Bristow voiced their concerns to those in charge, they say it was implied that they were not objective because they were gay and therefore “too close” to the work. (Gids does not accept this claim.)---
You know an article is reliable, trustworthy, and not pushing an agenda when it very badly misdefines common medical terms ("Gids treats children and young people who express confusion — or dysphoria — about their gender identity," - that is not even a slightly correct definition of dysphoria,) proceeds to make incorrect claimword, originally formulated to treat prostate cancer and to castrate male sex offenders," - at no point were puberty blockers used to 'castrate' anyone, except in the most hyperbolic and sensationalist use of the word. They reduce libido and can lead to erectile dysfunction while they are being taken, but the effect passes once the medications are discontinued,) then continues with bad science ("It is generally accepted now that puberty blockers affect bone density, and potentially cognitive and sexual development." This makes it seem like these are shocking new discoveries, when in fact standard of care for use of GnRH in children has always included regular bone density tests because this is something we've known for a very long time, and it is neither "generally accepted" nor remotely supported that the use of puberty blockers causes absolutely any long-term issues with sexual or cognitive impairment.)
But these are just things that popped out at me from a cursory skim of your source. And these are just the quantitative, objective signs that an article may not be interested in truth so much as in agenda. There is also plenty of qualitative evidence, such as beginning the piece with the radical but entirely unsubstantiated claim that someone with a published book and multiple high-profile interviews is somehow being censored, but we'll ignore those as being too wishy-washy and subjective.
Long-story short, Gids had issues. Mainly, being sadly underfunded and understaffed. What they didn't have was an issue with the medication itself, or frankly most of their prescription of it. It's telling that when the long-term study came out, it showed that most of the people put on puberty blockers ended up fully transitioning and that this was somehow spun into being an indictment of puberty blockers and the clinic, instead of a running endorsement that despite their troubles they had actually mostly got it right. And they did, because despite the very public lawsuit from someone unhappy with their transition, long-term trans satisfaction rates are actually significantly higher than long-term satisfaction with plastic surgery, bunion surgery, hip replacements — basically any kind of medical procedure. Think about that: more people regret getting hip surgery, something we typically call a medically necessary procedure, than regret their transition.
Marci Bowers: "Every single child who was blocked at Tanner Stage Two has never experienced orgasm, I mean it’s really about zero."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5V_gH01uII
I'm done with this.
If only there was a body of peer reviewed, published research on the topic so that we didn't have to take the word of a single genital reconstruction surgeon. Oh, wait, we do!
https://genderanalysis.net/2022/04/abigail-shrier-and-surgeon-marci-bowers-falsely-claimed-trans-girls-on-puberty-blockers-lack-sexual-response-after-vaginoplasty/
You can ignore the author as a biased source, but do browse the excellent collection of citations. And best of all, it's actual research and not a carefully couched, wishy-washy opinion in a video!
Bowers is the President of WPATH. But you knew that. https://www.wpath.org/about/EC-BOD
Repeating myself (see above)
"Here's a TED Talk by a pediatric endocrinologist about a 12 year old raised as trans from birth, started on blockers and estrogen at 10, and sterile at 12. So why not surgery?"
https://www.ted.com/talks/tandy_aye_is_the_surgical_world_ready_for_adolescent_gender_surgery?language=en
Jesus Christ, my man, is there some part of "peer-reviewed, published research" that is difficult for you? Because a Ted Talk isn't it, either. And neither of the anecdotes you posted contradict that there is body of research that demonstrates both the ability to orgasm AND the ability to conceive post-transition.
I understand most people do not have a strong scientific background and are lacking in even relatively basic skills related to finding and parsing scientific and clinical information because the education system in this country does a frankly terrible job of teaching scientific literacy. But even with that deficiency, you should be able to see that a Ted Talk, regardless of how much it supports your personal beliefs, is not a source for anything other than the speaker's opinions. And you should at the very least understand that a TedX Talk isn't even a Ted Talk, but a local pay-for-play offshoot of the original Ted Series where the only criteria for being a speaker is the willingness to pay a sponsorship fee.
So, would you care to try again, but with real sources? Or do you want to keep throwing out opinions and anecdotes and pretending they mean something?
https://profiles.stanford.edu/tandy-aye
Clinical Focus
Endocrinology/Diabetes, Pediatric
Pediatric Endocrinology
Healthcare of Gender Nonconforming Youth
Type 1 Diabetes
Academic Appointments
Professor - University Medical Line, Pediatrics - Endocrinology and Diabetes
Professor - University Medical Line (By courtesy), Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences - Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences
Member, Maternal & Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI)
Administrative Appointments
MEDICAL DIRECTOR, STANFORD PEDIATRIC AND ADOLESCENT GENDER CLINIC (2019 - PRESENT)
Fellowship Program Director, Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes (2011 - Present)
Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations
Board of Directors, Pediatric Endocrine Society (2021 - Present)
Member, Pediatric Endocrine Society Workforce Action Team (2019 - Present)
Committee Chair, Pediatric Endocrine Society Training Council (2017 - 2020)
Secretary/Treasurer, Council of Pediatric Subspecialties (2017 - 2020)
Member, World Professional Association for Transgender Health (2016 - Present)
All Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations (10)
Google "appeal to authority." Hint: a resume is not the same a peer-reviewed, published research. This really should not be a difficult concept, and I'm not sure why you're struggling to understand that regardless of how impressive a person delivering an anecdote may be, that doesn't change the fact that an anecdote is not research.
So, again, do you actually have any research to back up your beliefs or are you just going to continue to link to videos of people giving their opinion?
The Dutch Protocol for Juvenile Transsexuals: Origins and Evidence
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2121238
The Cass Review
https://cass.independent-review.uk/publications/
Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare: Care of children and adolescents with gender dysphoria
https://www.socialstyrelsen.se/globalassets/sharepoint-dokument/artikelkatalog/kunskapsstod/2022-3-7799.pdf
I've said it before. This is like arguing with Zionists.
Jesus Christ, dude, do you really not understand what "published, peer-reviewed research" is? You have one there, which is far better than you have been doing. I guess we can celebrate that you're 1 for 3 on this one, as opposed to batting a solid zero in every other one of your comments. The fact that you're getting frustrated because you don't understand why your poor-quality anecdotes aren't being taken seriously is just icing on the "I don't actually understand any of this but trans people are gross and I don't like them so here's some links I found on the Louder With Crowder website" cake.
So let's take a look at the one piece of actual published data you've provided. It's not actually research, so much as it's a meta analysis and review, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt given that you appear to have limited experience with professional science. There are a number of ways to evaluate the quality of published research, from quick and dirty estimates of quality down through to parsing out the research itself. The first thing we look at, though it's falling out of fashion, is impact factor: how often does the journal get cited. It's not remotely conclusive, but it gives you a place to start, asking with publisher ranking. For both of these, The Journal of Sex and Martial Therapy gives us a responding meh. It's a mediocre (leaning low) impact factor journal published by a very mediocre hit or miss publisher.
But that's judging a book but it's cover, right? Let's look at the actual "research" presented. How about looking at available charts and data? Well, that should be quick, as there are only two, one with N=54 and one with N=40. Both from studies that have been discredited and supplanted by much better ones. Which is great, because I hate doing research review on Sunday evenings! The rest of it goes about the same as your arguments: they point out a small-sample study, say "look how small their sample is!" and then refute it with either a case or an N<100 rebuttal. They conveniently ignore many of them much larger studies (see my link above) because refuting an N=700 piece of research is much harder with a single case. So it's a cherry-picked (not systematic) review of available literature. Which in science terminology we call "bullshit for gullible idiots by people pushing an agenda."
And as a final note, I think we can all stop freaking out about how trans therapies are "gay conversion" given that well over half of transgender people identify as gay, bi, or pan. The most common relationship for trans people is a same-sex couple. No one is turning little gay boys into little straight girls. At least not with any level of success.
P.S. And don't think I didn't catch that little bit of antisemitism at the end! Nice to know the kind of person I was speaking to.
I covered your "final note" up thread. I guess you've forgotten. For the rest, I've given enough data. I'm not trying to convince you of anything. But I'll quote Ken White:
"I get the feeling a lot of people you don’t agree with are deemed intellectually lazy and dishonest.
We can’t all be you, I guess." Also, I'm a Jew, and it was Herzl who said "The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies." I disagree. Her also worshipped Cecil Rhodes as a "visionary" and begged for his support. "It is not in your accustomed line; it doesn't involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor, not Englishmen, but Jews.... How, then, do I happen to turn to you, since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial."
I'm tired of all of this.