Is being Transgender a choice?

[AgnosticBoy]

I'm of the opinion that gender expression is a result of social conditioning. I know I used the word "choice" in the title, but that's only because people tend to associate behavior that can be changed or conditioned as being a "choice" (borrowing from the debate on born this way vs. choice).

In this thread, I want to focus on being transgender. Based on my above opinion, I also believe that being transgender is also a result of social conditioning (i.e. childhood experiences, what they learn from society, etc). If I'm right then I think that the recent focus on transgenderism in the media, in Hollywood, in schools, could lead some children to become transgender. And there is nothing wrong with that.

I also bring these points up because when some parents complain about their kids learning about transgenderism in school, the reaction is that it won't impact (some say "groom" ) the child into becoming transgender. If my view is correct, I think the pro-trans crowd should acknowledge that it can potentially influence children AND there's nothing wrong with that.

For Debate
1. Is being transgender a result of social conditioning?
2. Edit: Removed. Teaching kids about gender identity can be a separate thread.

[historia]

We have over 50 years of long-term studies showing that on average 80% of children who experience gender dysphoria will naturally grow out of it as they go through puberty.

Given that data, do you think we should simply affirm the "wishes" of every 12-year old who wants to take off-label drugs to halt puberty, even though there is increasing evidence that those drugs can have permanent negative health consequences?

Where is this happening, at all?

Where are children as young as 12 being proscribed puberty blockers off-label to treat gender dysphoria?

Giving GnRH-analogs to children at Tanner Stage 2 (which starts around 9-12 years of age) has been part of the WPATH Standard of Care for many years now, and so has been widely adopted by 'gender-affirming' medical facilities throughout Europe and North America.

Well, until recently, anyway. After conducting systematic reviews of the literature on these hormonal treatments as part of formal evidence-based assessments, medical boards in Sweden, Finland, Norway, the United Kingdom and now Denmark have all independently concluded that, in the words of NHS England, "there is not enough evidence to support their safety or clinical effectiveness as a routinely available treatment." And so those countries have all in the past year or two now prohibited doctors from proscribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to anyone under 18, outside of tightly-controlled clinical trials (see New York Times).

[oldbadger]

Where has Cole indicated that the "wishes of all young people should be dismissed"?

Column: A transgender patient's lawsuit against Kaiser is ...

Los Angeles Times
https://www.latimes.com › business › story › transgender...
Chloe Cole transgender from www.latimes.com
2 Mar 2023 — California teenager Chloe Cole has become something of a star in the movement to deny treatments to transgender youth.

[oldbadger]

Where has Cole indicated that the "wishes of all young people should be dismissed"?

She is simply calling for the United States to adopt the same policy that is currently in place in the United Kingdom and the Nordic countries. What's wrong with that?

We have over 50 years of long-term studies showing that on average 80% of children who experience gender dysphoria will naturally grow out of it as they go through puberty.

Given that data, do you think we should simply affirm the "wishes" of every 12-year old who wants to take off-label drugs to halt puberty, even though there is increasing evidence that those drugs can have permanent negative health consequences?

....I don't think so......
Doctor Cantor collected that group of studies................

James Cantor vs. transgender people

Transgender Map
https://www.transgendermap.com › psychology › jam...
Doctor James Cantor. from www.transgendermap.com
James Cantor is an American-Canadian psychologist and online troll best known for promoting fringe and regressive beliefs he and his friends have about sex ...

[oldbadger]

Not useful at all because I'm asking about a world where we accept letting people start that path as children. I'm not saying Chloe Cole is correct to want to deny people access to transitions. I'm asking what we do with people like her who feel they were misled. Just as you would have me assume transgender people are being honest and not out to reap social status from catching people misgendering them (which I'm sure the vast majority are) I would have you assume that not every last detransitioner who feels they were robbed of something is an evil lying transphobe out to ban transitioning. I'm asking you an honest question about whether these people can be awarded damages or not, in your thinking, and why.

That's for a jury and or a judge to decide, each case being quite separate to all others.

I notice that Chloe is suing Kaiser in connection with her surgery, I wonder how that individual case will be decided?

[oldbadger]

It matters because it's related to this subject. I want to know if you think children are competent to decide and accept life-altering consequences in general, or only in a specific case. I think children should be allowed to smoke, vote, even maybe have sex if they prove they understand the risks, and I've always said so, but no one agrees with me, specifically because everyone believes children are incompetent to accept life-altering consequences, and that even in the case that it might help them, others need to shield them from those consequences at the potential expense of the happiness of the child. If you believe some number of proper steps can make a child competent to accept life-altering consequences, when the thing that makes it incompetent is that it is a child, then that logic should apply to more than one situation.

So you personally would support a child's decision to transfer gender?
I think it depends upon the child's age (maybe 13+?) and upon specialist's assessments of that child's maturity, and upon counselling.

And your sentence 'everyone believes children are incompetent to accept....' cannot be right because gthere is a wide variation of thought about that.

[oldbadger]

So I'll ask you again, what is proper to do with detransitioners who feel that they were misled when they were vulnerable children? Should they be allowed to be awarded damages?

Each case is individual. It's down to Courts to decide.

I don't know how many minors have transitioned when compared with how many minors claim to have been misled.

[oldbadger]

Where are children as young as 12 being proscribed puberty blockers off-label to treat gender dysphoria?

Giving GnRH-analogs to children at Tanner Stage 2 (which starts around 9-12 years of age) has been part of the WPATH Standard of Care for many years now, and so has been widely adopted by 'gender-affirming' medical facilities throughout Europe and North America.

Well, until recently, anyway. After conducting systematic reviews of the literature on these hormonal treatments as part of formal evidence-based assessments, medical boards in Sweden, Finland, Norway, the United Kingdom and now Denmark have all independently concluded that, in the words of NHS England, "there is not enough evidence to support their safety or clinical effectiveness as a routinely available treatment."

And so those countries have all in the past year or two now prohibited doctors from proscribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to anyone under 18,

outside of tightly-controlled clinical trials (see New York Times).

Yes, general practitioners are not allowed to prescribe many medications without first referring to specialists. I live in the UK and where, say, a 13 yr old has been referred for tests, specialist counselling, etc then medications to slow or halt puberty may still be prescribed.

But doctors generally? No.

[historia]

Where has Cole indicated that the "wishes of all young people should be dismissed"?

Column: A transgender patient's lawsuit against Kaiser is ...
Los Angeles Times

Nowhere in that opinion piece by Michael Hiltzik, a business journalist for the L.A. Times, does he quote Cole or give any consideration to what she has actually said. In fact, the vast majority of the article isn't even about her.

I think a more generous reading of Cole's public statements is that she is advocating that the United States adopt the same policy currently in place in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and the U.K. What's wrong with that?

After conducting systematic reviews of the literature on these hormonal treatments as part of formal evidence-based assessments, medical boards in Sweden, Finland, Norway, the United Kingdom and now Denmark have all independently concluded that, in the words of NHS England, "there is not enough evidence to support their safety or clinical effectiveness as a routinely available treatment."

And so those countries have all in the past year or two now prohibited doctors from proscribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to anyone under 18,

outside of tightly-controlled clinical trials (see New York Times).

Yes, general practitioners are not allowed to prescribe many medications without first referring to specialists.

That has always been the case, and is not what I'm describing here. The Nordic countries have recently put in place policies that prohibit endocrinologists from prescribing hormonal treatments to children under 18 for gender dysphoria.

I live in the UK and where, say, a 13 yr old has been referred for tests, specialist counselling, etc then medications to slow or halt puberty may still be prescribed.

I think you are not up to date on the latest policies.

As the N.Y. Times article above notes, in June, NHS England announced that going forward it would "limit the use of puberty-suppressing drugs to children enrolled in clinical trials," so NHS endocrinologists in England (I'm not sure about the rest of the U.K.) will no longer be allowed to generally prescribe puberty blockers to a 13 year old for gender dysphoria.

More importantly for our purposes, as I noted above, this decision came as the direct result of a systematic review of the relevant studies, which found that there is not enough evidence to support either the safety of efficacy of these kinds of treatments.

We have over 50 years of long-term studies showing that on average 80% of children who experience gender dysphoria will naturally grow out of it as they go through puberty.

Given that data, do you think we should simply affirm the "wishes" of every 12-year old who wants to take off-label drugs to halt puberty, even though there is increasing evidence that those drugs can have permanent negative health consequences?

....I don't think so......
Doctor Cantor collected that group of studies................

You shouldn't naively rely on activist websites aimed at smearing the reputations of those who disagree with them.

But, putting that aside, surely you recognize that this is a logically fallacious reply. It doesn't matter who assembled these studies on the above website. What matters here are the results of the studies themselves. Even practitioners of transgender medicine acknowledge that numerous studies have shown that most children experiencing gender incongruence will see that naturally resolve as they go through puberty.

So let me ask you again: Given the above data, do you think we should simply affirm the "wishes" of every 12-year old who wants to take off-label drugs to halt puberty, even though there is increasing evidence that those drugs can have permanent negative health consequences?

[boatsnguitars]

Tell us your medical history, please, let us all discuss whether or not we should allow you to take medications, get procedures, etc.

I am a twelve-year-old genius kid with Aspergers and a heart murmur who wants to smoke because I think it will make me happy.

I am willing to spend six months proving I am competent. I will start with a nicotine patch, use it for three months, prove to you I can quit, and prove to you that I have quit for three months. Then I want my cigarettes.

By that I mean, I want you, as a part of the society that upholds good laws and tears down bad ones, to support my right to smoke if I prove I understand the risks.

No, I think we should impose electroshock therapy, or maybe send you to a Imam to purge the demon from you...

[boatsnguitars]

We have over 50 years of long-term studies showing that on average 80% of children who experience gender dysphoria will naturally grow out of it as they go through puberty.

Given that data, do you think we should simply affirm the "wishes" of every 12-year old who wants to take off-label drugs to halt puberty, even though there is increasing evidence that those drugs can have permanent negative health consequences?

Where is this happening, at all?

Where are children as young as 12 being proscribed puberty blockers off-label to treat gender dysphoria?

Giving GnRH-analogs to children at Tanner Stage 2 (which starts around 9-12 years of age) has been part of the WPATH Standard of Care for many years now, and so has been widely adopted by 'gender-affirming' medical facilities throughout Europe and North America.

Well, until recently, anyway. After conducting systematic reviews of the literature on these hormonal treatments as part of formal evidence-based assessments, medical boards in Sweden, Finland, Norway, the United Kingdom and now Denmark have all independently concluded that, in the words of NHS England, "there is not enough evidence to support their safety or clinical effectiveness as a routinely available treatment." And so those countries have all in the past year or two now prohibited doctors from proscribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to anyone under 18, outside of tightly-controlled clinical trials (see New York Times).

I've bolded the claim: we should simply affirm the "wishes" of every 12-year old who wants to take off-label drugs to halt puberty


Can you at least admit it's not EVERY 12 year old wanting puberty blockers?

And, again, the point is, who knows this better - you or the doctors? After all, it seems the doctors have already done the studies and found results. You seem to believe them there, but not when they agree to puberty blockers, etc.