In state after state, conservative lawmakers this year have banned medical procedures for transgender youth. Now, a growing number of federal judges are blocking those laws from taking effect.
It’s their scare tactics. They want to make it seem like trans people are a legitimate concern to cis people so they pull a lot of this " Of you were young today you could have been chemically castrated just because you liked Barbie as a kid!"
Meanwhile the team that actually works with trans kids is most often a team of four. A social worker, a therapist trained and familiar in dealing with trans paitents, a pediatrician and an endocrinologist. Surgery isn’t an option until late teens and those surgeries are usually just breast reductions that normal regular old cis girls are also able to get if they want. HRT isn’t offered unless they have an incredibly solid psych profile and the kid has been socially living as the other gender for literal years and they use reversible puberty blockers as long as they can. Yeah, physical transition that young does mean that infertility is a likely outcome… But not everyone looks at having genetically related kids as being a nessisary part of their experience.
People don’t tend to pick interventions if the medicine is worse than what ails you. These kids are capable of making reasonable decisions in their late teens with the assistance of multiple experts who walk them through every potential physical drawback of their choice and these kids already know the social cost of being openly trans and of being closeted. That’s part of the process. They are an incredibly personally educated demographic because to successfully get HRT as a late teen you need to be an eloquent and enthusiastic self advocate in the face of medical inertia. If they don’t think you are reasonably mature and intelligent to make that decision they err on the side of therapy.
They certainly get a lot more help and support before they begin any non-surgical procedure compared to teen girls who get nose jobs because their parents can afford to pay for them. And no one calls that mutilation or says that kids are too young to decide whether or not they should get a nose job. Do they consult doctors or therapists before deciding to get one? No. They just go to the plastic surgeon and set up a time for the surgery.
It’s their scare tactics. They want to make it seem like trans people are a legitimate concern to cis people so they pull a lot of this " Of you were young today you could have been chemically castrated just because you liked Barbie as a kid!"
Meanwhile the team that actually works with trans kids is most often a team of four. A social worker, a therapist trained and familiar in dealing with trans paitents, a pediatrician and an endocrinologist. Surgery isn’t an option until late teens and those surgeries are usually just breast reductions that normal regular old cis girls are also able to get if they want. HRT isn’t offered unless they have an incredibly solid psych profile and the kid has been socially living as the other gender for literal years and they use reversible puberty blockers as long as they can. Yeah, physical transition that young does mean that infertility is a likely outcome… But not everyone looks at having genetically related kids as being a nessisary part of their experience.
People don’t tend to pick interventions if the medicine is worse than what ails you. These kids are capable of making reasonable decisions in their late teens with the assistance of multiple experts who walk them through every potential physical drawback of their choice and these kids already know the social cost of being openly trans and of being closeted. That’s part of the process. They are an incredibly personally educated demographic because to successfully get HRT as a late teen you need to be an eloquent and enthusiastic self advocate in the face of medical inertia. If they don’t think you are reasonably mature and intelligent to make that decision they err on the side of therapy.
They certainly get a lot more help and support before they begin any non-surgical procedure compared to teen girls who get nose jobs because their parents can afford to pay for them. And no one calls that mutilation or says that kids are too young to decide whether or not they should get a nose job. Do they consult doctors or therapists before deciding to get one? No. They just go to the plastic surgeon and set up a time for the surgery.