Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online

The mode for treating trans kids is puberty blockers until they’re 18 and then they can choose their own treatment - but that pathway is being blocked by more and more laws and fear mongering about kids being transitioned against their will

Before engaging in what could be a huge discussion here, I suggest you do some quick searching about legal risks of performing life-saving abortion procedures, gender-affirming care for prison inmates, and workplaces choosing whether the health insurance they provide employees covers gender-affirming care as starting points to learn about the sad state of affairs.

We've always done so - popular opinion as reflected by the voters dictate that you aren't getting a prescription for arsenic (anymore? Or crack cocaine, for that matter.)

The government, for good or bad, regulates all healthcare, and that government is guided by its voters.

The majority of voters don't see this as a bigger problem than the issue they are currently voting on.

You sound surprised, so maybe you really don't know this: this state of affairs is how it's always been, and is likely to continue well into the future.

The government regulates all medicines, all medical procedures, and all medical practices.

It's literally one of the many jobs of government.

[Citation needed]

For a trans kid, going thru the wrong puberty is harmful. The best thing would be hormones at puberty. But given issues around informed consent, puberty blockers are a valid compromise.

Calling them harmful without considering the harm of the alternative is not honest.

“The Amsterdam Cohort of Gender Dysphoria Study (1972–2015): Trends in Prevalence, Treatment, and Regrets” (DOI: 10.1016/j.jsxm.2018.01.016).

The word “many” is misleading – it’s less than 1 %. It’s not nothing, but it’s low.

This conception of the "wrong puberty" as something that needs to be blocked is as absurd as all that "born in the wrong body" ideological nonsense.

Most importantly, children can't meaningfully consent to having their sexual function permanently damaged.

When patients are given puberty blockers, desistence rates are miniscule, in the single digits. Proponents of hormonal intervention insist that this is proof that doctors are selecting kids that would persist in a cross sex gender absent blockers. But that's hard to reconcile with psychologists previous failures to predict persistence. While they're billed as giving "time to think", it's pretty much impossible to deny that blockers are causing patients who would have desisted in their cross sex gender identity if they went through their natal puberty.

It's not just conservative American States that are changing course on blockers for children: Finland, Sweden, the UK, Italy, Denmark, and Norway have all stopped prescription of blockers in children. Plenty of other countries never allowed it in the first place.

This isn't the desistence rate of children, this is the regret rate of adults who transition.

All the studies among gender dysphoric children who are not prescribed puberty blockers show desistence rates over 70%

There are studies that show very low desistence rates - many in the single digits. But those are studies among children that are given puberty blockers.

Why do you think you can’t experience the wrong one? Also, unless you are saying there is only one sex, how could there only be one puberty?

Right.

> Many times rights of the minority have been ruled to be important, as in cases like abortion.

Correct, but it was with the agreement of the majority of voters! IOW, the majority opinion still prevailed.

We are not talking about tyranny of the minority by the majority; your example is literally the majority agreeing that those specific minorities rights be granted to them.

TBH, the opposition that we are seeing is opposition to medical intervention on minors who by definition alone cannot give informed consent.

Stop fighting that battle and I guarantee that this entire "issue" turns into a nothing-burger.

There is no reason to argue for medical interventions on someone who is unable to consent.

Given the definition of maturity is being fully grown, this comes across as an inherently unhelpful thing to ask. If we say “only once someone is fully grown they are able to determine if they experienced the incorrect puberty” then this makes it impossible to help children who are going to experience the incorrect puberty. Unless we have some way to determine a child is trans without any input from them, there becomes no way to help them.

The grandparent post didn't say "transgender treatments" they said "transgender issues."

Do you believe that the mere concept of questioning your gender identity or expression is something that should be kept from the minds of minors?

https://apnews.com/article/uk-transgender-health-care-childr...

Which... the VISA-Mastercard duopoly, backed by American soft power and with an American moral compass, already rather proves that point for anyone that's ever tried to pay for erotica outside the mainstream

You don't think that transgender treatments is a transgender issue? If you think it is then my response is perfectly on-topic.

> Do you believe that the mere concept of questioning your gender identity or expression is something that should be kept from the minds of minors?

Depending on your jurisdiction, there are messages you can't target to kids. Why should there be a special exemption for this?

Besides, my belief on this is irrelevant; the only transgender issue that has gotten pushback en-masse from the clear majority of people world wide has been transgender treatments on minors.

IOW, this (treatment for persons unable to give informed consent) is a very unpopular position.

I asked because I wanted to get a sense on if he conflating the two by accident, or if it was an attempt to steer the conversation away from free speech concerns.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44546443

Because the idea that the only acceptable gender norms a kid is allowed to be exposed to and express is the one tied to their genes is frankly a ridiculous concept.

There's nothing wrong with boys wearing dresses and playing with dolls. If you don't believe that harmless message should reach the ears of kids, then why? What is in that sort of message that you're afraid of?

That began in 1906; it's hardly something we've "always done".

I fully agree there's nothing wrong with boys wearing dresses and playing with dolls

I think the idea that a boy wearing dresses and playing with dolls must automatically be trans is actually very harmful and I do oppose that message reaching anyone

That is an extremely generous interpretation. I think you're giving way too much credit to the average person that uses that argument.

Also I really have to wonder how much of that desistance is giving up versus actually being satisfied.

If you ask trans people, "it's too late to live as my gender" is a common sentiment. You even see it in the gay community, where gay/bi people who come to acceptance of their sexualities late in life, feel like it's "too late" to live with that identity, and choose to continue to live and identify as straight people.

Hence the option for puberty blockers.

Turns out trans people will opt to go through the puberty that matches their gender if the opportunity arises, just as more people come out gay/bi/etc at an earlier age now that the opportunity arose.

Who are we to question God's natural order? If a 9 year old girl with precocious puberty is uncomfortable being oggled by old men, that's just fine because puberty can never be wrong.

Besides, she can't meaningfully consent to medically delaying puberty, anyway.

Same thing with gay people, as per your example. I'm sure some do remain closeted their entire lives. But plenty of them come out as gay later in life.

> Overall, 33% underwent transmasculine procedures and 67% transfemenine procedures. The prevalence of regret among patients undergoing transmasculine and transfemenine surgeries was <1% (IC <1%–<1%) and 1% (CI <1%–2%), respectively.

That's less than the regret rate for life saving surgeries lol

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8099405/

Plenty do, but the ones that don't give credence to the idea that forced closeting as a teenager makes it harder to follow your heart later. And that's in a situation where it doesn't get more difficult to come out later (if you're not married). Transitioning pre- and post- puberty is very different with current medical technology, so a lot more people will get "stuck".

> But plenty of them come out as gay later in life.

Some do, but statistics show that the majority don't. At some point it stops making sense to identify as a gay/bi person if you've been married for 20 years and have no intention of leaving. That ship has sailed, so to speak. The same thing happens with trans people for very practical and biological reasons post-puberty.

Here's what more reliable studies from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the largest professional group of pediatricians in the country, say[2]:

> Gender Identity 5 Years After Social Transition

> We found that an average of 5 years after their initial social transition, 7.3% of youth had retransitioned at least once. At the end of this period, most youth identified as binary transgender youth (94%), including 1.3% who retransitioned to another identity before returning to their binary transgender identity. A total of 2.5% of youth identified as cisgender and 3.5% as nonbinary. Later cisgender identities were more common among youth whose initial social transition occurred before age 6 years; their retransitions often occurred before age 10 years.

[1] https://downloads.regulations.gov/ED-2022-OCR-0143-141953/at...

[2] https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/2/e20210...

The study uses the DSM-III and DSM-IV criteria for gender incongruence disorder, or GID, now referred to as gender dysphoria. The sample ranges from 1989 to 2002 and those were the contemporary iterations of the DSM. The DSM-V wasn't published until 2013. At most the criteria is outdated by one decade, not "several decades". Furthermore, the author of the study would later write the criteria for gender dysphoria in the DSM-V. The criteria are not particularly different, and the author of the study I linked has stated in interviews that most of the sample would meet the criteria for gender dysphoria under the DSM-V (which, again, he wrote so this opinion should carry some weight). In short, the idea that if the psychologists had used the DSM-V the results would be substantially different is not likely.

And this isn't just one study that found low rates of persistence:

> In Green (47), the percentage of persisters was 2% (total n = 44; Mean age at follow-up, 19 years; range, 14–24); in Wallien and Cohen-Kettenis (52), the percentage of persisters was 20.3% (total n = 59; Mean age at follow-up, 19.4 years; range, 16–28); and in Steensma et al. (51), the percentage of persisters was 29.1% (total n = 79; Mean age at follow-up, 16.1 years; range, 15–19). Across all studies, the percentage of persisters was 17.4% (total N = 235), with a range from 0 to 29.1%.3

Are all these other studies finding low rates of persistence also tainted in some way?

The study you linked is among a group that were treated with an affirming model of care, where cross sex gender identity is actively encouraged, and a sizeable chunk of the sample were put on puberty blockers. This comports with what I have written: when gender dysphoric children are met with an affirming model of care and given gender affirming care, very few of them desist in their cross-sex gender identity. When they given a neutral, observational model of care not not prescribed puberty blockers, the majority of them desist. The study you linked just reinforces the former but does nothing to disprove the latter.

Look, if you want to debate your theory of contagious trans-ness, you should be open about that from the get-go.

The most impactful benefit of circumcision is the lower cervical cancer incidence. As evidenced by the lower rates in the US despite the much poorer healthcare than in European countries, particularly the Nordics that choose not to embrace science and advocate for circumcision.

Not at all

I just think that the clothes you choose to wear shouldn't have anything to do with gender identity

They may be related because it might relate to how you choose to express your gender

But the fact is that clothes are clothes, not genders

A more honest example would be something like “children with a male anatomy might actually be girls, depending not on physical but rather on psychological characteristics (i.e. ‘gender identity’)”. That’s a completely different claim, and one that fewer people would agree with, so your post is more or less a motte and bailey.

What are you going on about "contagious trans-ness"? Gender dysphoria isn't spread by a bacterial or viral infection. I have no idea what you mean by "contagious". The second sentence reads like a total non-sequitur.

The trouble about laws involving children is that you’re up against every parent who has a child. By default they’ll err on protection, because our biology says that’s the safest thing to do. But as you say, that’s not always the best approach.

Male circumcision is an interesting one. The correct thing to do isn’t to say "here’s an example of something screwed up" as a way to justify something else; instead, ban the screwed up thing.

Personally, I hope it’ll be banned one day. I once asked my dad whether I was circumcised. He laughed and said haven’t you looked? I still have no idea whether I am. Now I’d rather not know.

I'm not sure what my personal opinion is on the topic, since I'm principally against infant circumcision. But I have less problems with puberty blockers, since it can still be reversed once a person is old enough to give consent.

I feel like as a society we put trans people in a situation where it is controversial for them to transition as children, but also controversial for them to transition as adults. (The notion of a man in a dress no longer exists if the man never had male puberty, but not only is it controversial for such a boy to never have male puberty, we villainize the now-man's attempts to become a woman!) But then we say that outcomes for trans people are bad so them staying in the closet is good. Which is weird, because the cause of the bad outcomes is that there is no stage of their life where trans people can transition noncontroversially.

Would you mind citing some of the research supporting that it’s a good idea to take a knife to a baby’s penis? (Sometimes it feels like the word "circumcision" is a nice way to sidestep the implications.)

It seems strange to blame infant penises for higher cancer rates, but if there’s science to support the claim, it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

On the other hand, perhaps a higher cancer rate would be worth it. The question is, how much higher?

I used to have a problem with that idea too, until someone pointed out that puberty is an irreversible process with major consequences. The fact that everyone goes through it is a bit irrelevant; if it was happening to someone over 18, puberty blockers wouldn’t even be controversial.

As a parent, what to do? I look at my 2yo daughter and wonder if I’ll have to support her in a decision like that one day, or go against her wishes just because she’s 11. If there’s research indicating that delaying puberty doesn’t have major long term harm, then I’m more likely to endorse puberty blockers.

Then ultimately you and I agree on the main crux of this conversation, the part that actually matters.

First,

> In medicine, an indication is a valid reason to use a certain test, medication, procedure, or surgery.

From https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2128632/ ,

> What are the absolute medical indications for circumcision?

> Medical indications […] occur in 1.5% and 1% of boys respectively.

That is, the overwhelming majority (>98%) of circumcisions in the US are not done for medical reasons. As the article states,

> Nearly all circumcisions are carried out for cultural or religious reasons.

Lastly, this:

> The most impactful benefit of circumcision is the lower cervical cancer incidence.

Is an illogical argument for circumcision as it is being discussed here, at birth.

> It seems strange to blame infant penises for higher cancer rates, but if there’s science to support the claim, it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

… the claim is absurd. There's no science to support it.

The argument as raised above stands: why is circumcision — done at birth and without the consent of the patient — permissible, but puberty blockers — done far closer to adulthood and with the consent of the patient — are impermissible?

Visa and MasterCard disallow content depicting CSA, rape, incest, bestiality, necrophilia, scatological erotica, torture, extreme sexual violence, and revenge porn.

Now, you're probably confusing chattel slavery as the only form of slavery, of which you buy and sell humans as property. There are other types, now predominantly slavery by the state (as punishment of a crime).

As for children, it definitely looks like a slave-owner type arrangement.

Because you're not wrong, the mainstream is fairly narrow, but to say the credit card duopoly excludes only the most heinous and vile imagery that can only barely be covered under "artistic expression" isn't exactly an entirely accurate depiction of reality.

If you REALLY don't want to know, it might be best to remove this comment, in case somebody decides to grief you.

The fact is trans people are a tiny minority who are abused for political gain. I don't have hard numbers but it's probably not an exaggeration to say that to grant or withhold puberty blockers is probably no more common than a smorgasbord of other agonising medical decisions you may have to make.

Personally I don't like the idea of puberty blockers but if my 7 year old decided tomorrow that she was a boy, and lived that as authentically as they were able for years, then I think long and hard about it.

As someone else pointed out, the idea of gov deciding what our doctors can and cant give us is a VERY modern concept.

But your examples: arsnic & crack

1. Cocaine is legal for doctors to prescribe and use in specific circumstances. What is legally prohibited is recreational use. Most of the restrictions on use are due to the threat of addiction, not the threat of appropriate medical use.

2. Arsnic is similarly entirely legal for medical use. Restrictions are around putting it in FOOD because it’s POISON. Nobody is saying you can’t treat cancer with it, if it’s shown to be effective.

Your examples are not examples of the majority regulating medical care for individuals.

This is ideological nonsense.

Coulda said the same about homosexuality ~30 years ago. It’s a bad reason then, it’s a bad reason now.

Your line questioning is sort of revealing that this only points you are wishing to score. I have, after all, not taken a position on targeted messages at children (I only pointed out that there are still restrictions on messages targeted to children).

I have already clarified that the specific contentious "transgender issue" is "transgender treatment", and that the clear majority of people all over the world are opposed to that specific "transgender issue".

I have not taken any position on whether or not children should be targeted with messages across the spectrum, ranging from the extreme on one end "It's okay for boys to play with dolls", to the extreme on the other "You will be happier after castration".

The reason I have not taken any position on messages is because of the many times proponents use the former as examples of what the rules should allow while ignoring that the rule they are championing also allows the latter message.

My position on the messages that children are to hear will always depend on the specific message. This is because children (even some young adults to, TBH) are impressionable!

If I had adopted your method of arguing for/against a point, I would have asked "Why are you so afraid of having your access to children cut off?" but I did not. Since you appear to be arguing your point in bad faith, I'm just going to go ahead and ask it.

If you had any faith that your message was the correct one you wouldn't be on the internet arguing for access to other people's children.

Why are you so afraid of having the easily impressionable in society prevented from seeing your message? Are you really afraid that if you don't get to imprint them with your message at the correct age they might never buy it as an adult?

Interesting, I would like to see that evidence. Specially when compared with the vaccination against HPV. Because, as far as I'm aware, that's by far the best way to prevent cervical cancer.

Well, yeah. That's because it literally was a passing phase that the child experienced. That's why there's so many studies (some of them linked in this thread) showing that if you simply defer the decision until the minor is a major , the majority of gender dysphoria desists.

IOW, once the child has actually matured a little, their identity confusion goes away.

Deferring is the path of least harm; is it any wonder then that most of the people in the world, including highly secular countries, go that route?

On objective metrics, certainly. Never on subjective metrics.

Kid got a broken leg? Sure, doctors can intervene, often without even parental involvement (Emergencies, for example).

Kid feels like they have a broken leg? The doctor that cuts up that kid without doing any scans and working simply off the kid's self-reported feelings is going to be out of practice very very quickly.

Hell, doctors won't even prescribe antibiotics based off a kid's self-reported feelings; they'll confirm with a number of objective metrics (presence/absence of mucous in mouth/lungs, body temperature, pulse, etc).

So, no, we don't allow doctors to perform any procedures on children with only self-reported feelings as "evidence"[1].

[1] With the exception being male genital mutilation at birth, which is something I've always been vocally against.

Right, and my argument is "We should stop things like that" while your argument is "we should do more things like that".

Which sounds more reasonable to you?

So slavery has taken MANY forms throughout history - the form most people are familiar with is american chattel slavery “a form of slavery where individuals are treated as personal property and can be bought, sold, or owned indefinitely”. There are lots of other forms of slavery many that don’t including purchasing humans, and the US prison labour system is slavery beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Why beyond the shadow of a doubt? Because the 13th amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.

Also, since the US prison system allows prison labour to be sold to private corporations, you can actually buy a prisoner’s forced labour.

Well there was never going to be a perfect solution, right? So a solution that results in the most number of satisfied adults is an okay goal.

(1) by transition i mean socially transition and go on puberty blockers if they want them.

That sword cuts both ways: if the reasoning for banning infant male circumcision is "they can always do it as an adult", then that's a perfectly good reason for doing it with puberty blockers too.

I've always been against infant circumcision. Why would I extend that exception to be broader? I'd rather narrow the number of things we can do to children, not expand them.

You can't block puberty as an adult. Most people are already past puberty once they turn 18.

There's a reason there's nearly 10x as many gay identifying people in recent generations compared to past, and you can't generalize it as being a "phase". The true rates are likely the same, but people who identify that way dip off as you go back generations.

You notice the same pattern with left-handedness and those who identify as left-handed over time.

"You can always transition as an adult" is that other edge, not "you can always block puberty as an adult".

- You can also decide to cauterize the nailbeds on your toes to get lifelong protection against ingrown toenails.

- You can preemptively put metal crowns over all your teeth to protect them from tooth decay - metals are stronger than enamel!

- You can also remove all your body hair with laser treatments, to get protection from ingrown hairs - those can get badly infected!

- You can also tattoo your blood type on your chest, like they did in the SS, to save precious time in case you need blood transfusion while unconscious.

You can do all of these things to yourself, as an adult with informed consent. But don't do it to infants.

Luckily, as you've said, we already have HPV vaccines, so maybe it's time to stop cutting off pieces from little boys' penises?

There are no studies on this Bec doing such studies is considered grossly unethical and evil, same as studying brain lobotomies in infants. As such we have no science on this, there are just people who have decided one thing and are performing live experiments without any controls. However, it should be noted that until very recently there was no significant incidence of unexplained child suicide, there was no significant incidence of unexplained teenage suicide, nor was there a significant incidence of unexplained young adult suicide. This is 100% social contagion, exacerbated by evil greedy pharmaceutical orgs who have latched on to small childhood insecurities and used them to build a multi-billion dollar industry mutilating and disfiguring healthy people.

Left handedness increased from about 5% to 12% over the span of more than 60 years: https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/history-of-left-handedness

By comparison rates of transgender identification among minors has increased by a factor of a hundred over the span of just 10 years: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Rates-of-newly-recorded-...

We're talking about an increases that are multiple orders of magnitude greater, over a fraction of the time span.

Mere gender non-conformity isn't enough for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, despite what you're claiming. These are the DSM criteria for diagnosis of gender dysphoria in children:

---

A. A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months’ duration, as manifested by at least six of the following (one of which must be Criterion A1):

1. A strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender).

2. In boys (assigned gender), a strong preference for cross-dressing or simulating female attire; or in girls (assigned gender), a strong preference for wearing only typical masculine clothing and a strong resistance to the wearing of typical feminine clothing.

3. A strong preference for cross-gender roles in make-believe play or fantasy play.

4. A strong preference for the toys, games, or activities stereotypically used or engaged in by the other gender.

5. A strong preference for playmates of the other gender.

6. In boys (assigned gender), a strong rejection of typically masculine toys, games, and activities and a strong avoidance of rough-and-tumble play; or in girls (assigned gender), a strong rejection of typically feminine toys, games, and activities.

7. A strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy.

8. A strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics that match one’s experienced gender.

B. The condition is associated with clinically significant distress or impairment in social, school, or other important areas of functioning.

---

> If you had any faith that your message was the correct one you wouldn't be on the internet arguing for access to other people's children.

Classy as ever implying that trans people are grooming children to be trans.

It seems like the opposite happens to me: parents with attitudes like yours will attempt to keep the existence of trans people secret in an attempt to groom their child to be cis, but if their child is gender dysphoric, it's not going to work and they're just going to suffer worse dysphoria-induced distress during puberty and transition as adults.

Instead, I only offer a gentile reminder of the Hacker News guidelines, along with a genuine wish that you are having a fulfilling day. :)

Higher rates of suicidality: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7011156/

~4x the rate of depression: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

Even if these disparities are due to discrimination, those disparities still exist. We don't measure health outcomes based on what hypothetically would happen in an ideal world where people genuinely do not recognize or distinguish between the sexes. We measure health outcomes based on what happens in real world.

> Besides, she can't meaningfully consent to medically delaying puberty, anyway.

Yes, indeed she can't.

To take female puberty as an example, this is the growth and development of the uterus, ovaries, labia and breasts to reach their mature form and function. Most importantly, the menstrual cycle begins, making pregnancy possible.

If a boy has testosterone blocked and is given estrogen instead, he doesn't experience any of this, except perhaps some breast tissue growth and redistribution of fat. His penis and testicles will not develop further and he will probably remain sterile.

However, he doesn't have a female reproductive system, so this is not more similar to female puberty. What he's experiencing is stunted male development, a pharmaceutically-induced eunuch state.

There is no option for him to go through female puberty rather than male puberty, because he lacks the type of reproductive system that would make this possible. As female puberty is not an experience available to him, it makes no sense to describe male puberty as being the "wrong puberty" for him.

Likewise for girls and the impossibility of experiencing male puberty.

> You are counting kids with GNC behavior who never talked about transitioning themselves stopping said GNC behavior.

These children met the criteria for GID in the contemporary iteration of the DSM. The author of the study I linked would go on to write the criteria for gender dysphoria in the DSM-V. The idea that we'd see a substantially different rate of desistence if the DSM-V was used is not likely: the author of the study has stated that most of the children would have met the criteria for gender dysphoria under the DSM-V.

> You are also counting kids who end up repressing (some of which end up transitioning with worse outcomes years down the line)

The study followed up with patients for an average of over 10 years. Do you have any actual evidence that a significant portion of desisters in this study transitioned later in life? Or are you just stating this without evidence?

People have not offered a good explanation why these rates of desistence are false. They either insist that the criteria used was wrong, or baselessly claim that desisters are repressing a desire to transition.

I wonder how many left handed people were beaten into becoming right handed, and remained right handed. In a society where left handed people continue to be beaten, would these people be considered happily right handed since they continue to use their right hand? How would we be able to tell?

I wonder if we existed in a world where soft boys were beaten into becoming less emotional, who grow up to be unemotional men. In a society where adult men are beaten if they express softness, are these men considered happily unemotional? How would we be able to tell?

How do we tell if someone is cis when it is stigmatized to be trans or express gender dysphoria? Genuinely not sure, honestly.

This is why talking about what the outcomes would be in some hypothetical world is pointless. Doctors are striving to deliver the best outcomes in the real world, not the outcomes in some hypothetical world that doesn't actually exist and probably never will.

> yet also use the discrimination against trans people as a justification to discriminate against children exploring gender, i.e. trans children.

Children are free to explore their gender. Just not with powerful drugs that have lifelong effects. Refusing to prescribe puberty blockers to a child experiencing gender dysphoria isn't discrimination any more than it is to refuse to prescribe artificial testosterone to a boy that has normal levels of testosterone for his age. We "discriminate" against this boy that wants to explore hypermasculinity, too.

> I wonder if we existed in a world where soft boys were beaten into becoming less emotional, who grow up to be unemotional men. In a society where adult men are beaten if they express softness, are these men considered happily unemotional? How would we be able to tell?

You would measure their health outcomes: do the latter experience depression or other negative mental health conditions at different rates? Do they die by suicide at different rates? I haven't dug deeply into the effects of corporal punishment, but presumably it's discouraged because we've observed negative outcomes.

> How do we tell if someone is cis when it is stigmatized to be trans or express gender dysphoria? Genuinely not sure, honestly.

I'm not sure what you mean by "how do we tell if someone is cis". I think you mean something along the lines of "how do we tell which gender dysphoric children will or won't continue to experience dysphoria in their cis gender past natal puberty?" If that's the case then the answer is "we can't". Psychologists tried, for decades, and failed to predict the minority of patients that would persist in cross sex gender identity. We know that ~80% become comfortable in their cis gender after natural puberty. This is why it's hard to justify prescribing puberty blockers. Suppressing natal puberty will help someone pass better in a cross-sex gender, but the benefits of passing better need to be weighted against the probability that the child would live comfortably in their cis gender without dysphoria absent blockers.

Which is the better health outcome? 5 trans people who medically transitioned before puberty, or 4 cis people who live comfortably without dysphoria in their cis gender and 1 trans person who transitioned after natal puberty? Ideally we'd be able to predict the 1 patient that would persist, and transition them medically before puberty. But again, we don't have that ability. Thus, it's insufficient to justify prescription of puberty blockers by pointing to the one trans person who medically transitioned as an adult and say that they would have had a better live if they were able to transition medically before puberty. This is the big reason why advocates for puberty blockers tend to dislike discussion of persistent rates with versus without puberty blockers. It's fairly easy to justify them in the simplistic world where all gender dysphoric youth are guaranteed to persist. But factor in the persistence rates without blockers and it becomes vastly harder to make the case for them.

Learning about adverse side effects by talking about their experiences is LITERALLY what you’re advocating for a ban on. I’d say by any basic morality you’re not allowed to cite that as evidence if you want it banned.

Puberty blockers are a huge step. Not one taken lightly. Kids who are unsure, by and large don’t take that step.

I injured my wrist a few years back. Doctors offered me pt or surgery + pt. They clearly advised me that given the low severity of my injury, surgery would likely improve some things while causing other impacts. I declined the surgery.

This is how most medical choices are made. Doctor advises, patient listens and choses best option. For patients who are also minors - their parents are also involved. Every day a parent and child choose between consequences of the intervention and consequences of non intervention. The only difference with trans kids is apparently you and the gov want a say in the choice. It’s not your body, nor your kid. It’s none of your business.

You will say "but then you were not a desister" but I would be counted as one, just like the other kids in my position.

> Do you have any actual evidence that a significant portion of desisters in this study transitioned later in life?

I don't have enough funds to perform such a research, maybe there exists such a paper but I have not looked for it. In general trans topics are woefully underfunded. But I know enough people that ended up desisting either due to conversion therapy or due to shame and lack of support from their family, and transitioned years afterwards (5-15+ years) after living shitty and depressing empty lives pretending to be cis.

What's next, gene therapy because the embryo might want to be a different race when it grows up?

And how long until the current criteria is outdated?

> But I know enough people that ended up desisting either due to conversion therapy or due to shame and lack of support from their family, and transitioned years afterwards (5-15+ years) after living shitty and depressing empty lives pretending to be cis.

This is called "anecdote". As I said, the claim that a sizeable chunk of desisters transition later in life is being made without evidence.

And again, with a mean followup time of over 10 years, most of the people who transitioned 5-15 years later would be counted as persisters, not desisters.

Well, first off - we trust children to make life-altering decisions every day - sometimes without good access to info about potential downsides. A great example is sports. Many sports (ballet, football) can and do have life-long health and quality of life impacts. Minors can commit to those and yet there’s no widespread moral panic about it.

The thing is I actually do trust children to figure out what’s best for themselves. Children are impulsive, yes - they have poor in-the-moment judgement. But medical transition isn’t something that can be done impulsively. It takes years of consistent action, not minutes or hours.

In the UK, Canada, most of the rest of the world? Single payer public health systems mean trans healthcare isn’t more profitable than any other type of health care. Doctors have no profit incentive, as there are easier less controversial specialities that have larger patient bases and higher patient thru-put.

> This is called "anecdote"

When you are lacking proper research all you are going to get are anecdotes. Let's not put our heads in the sand.

> with a mean followup time of over 10 years, most of the people who transitioned 5-15 years later would be counted as persisters, not desisters.

10-15 years means that you are 25-30 if you came out at 15. At that point people often self-medicate with hrt and nobody ends up knowing. The mean age of 10 years is because they tracked younger children, if you came out at 7 its unlikely that you will transition at 17 with unsupportive parents, especially back then.

I am talking about d6e

I'm vehemently against the "transing" of anyone who exhibits behavior or preferences that are outside of cultural norms for their biological sex

They might be trans, yes. But they might not. I'm very very very against putting people in the trans category when they shouldn't be

Of course not. There is an assessment period. They are assessed for gender dysphoria, and if diagnosed they may be prescribed puberty blockers to treat their gender dysphoria. And what is the criteria for diagnosing a patient with gender dysphoria? Whether or not you think the criteria in the DSM are effective, at the end of the day these are the criteria that would be used to approve puberty blockers. If you think these criteria erroneously include kids who aren't "trans kids" then we're approving puberty blockers for patients who aren't "trans kids".

Of course a longer follow up time is strictly better, but it's not valid to simply fill in a gap in data with whatever better suits your worldview. If a study measuring rates of detransition follows up with patients for 10 years, then patients that detransition after 10 years would not be counted. Is it valid to point to a couple anecdotes of detransition, and then claim that the study's finding are false because there's loads of people who detransitioned after 10 years? Of course not. But that's the same flawed criticism you're making here.

You and I are on the exact same page. If you still don't think so, please make the distinction clear.

Why the scarequotes? For the record I don't think I have used these two words together, but I obviously do think that kids can be trans just like anyone else, is that even debatable?

> don't get prescribed blockers

I am quoting here out of context but correct, there is no point in puberty blockers before the "natural" puberty.

> There is an assessment period. They are assessed for gender dysphoria, and if diagnosed they may be prescribed puberty blockers to treat their gender dysphoria

Sure, and we have been saying that these criteria are unscientific, inaccurate, and based on social stereotype.

> at the end of the day these are the criteria that would be used to approve puberty blockers

The difference being that teenagers who don't explicitly seek them because they don't consider themselves as trans are never considered for undergoing puberty blockers. All that study shows is what we have been saying all the time about the DSM.

> If you think these criteria erroneously include kids who aren't "trans kids" then we're approving puberty blockers for patients who aren't "trans kids".

No, because teenagers who don't consider themselves trans do not seek puberty blockers and are therefore never considered for them. The main distinguisher between trans and nontrans people is their self identification.

> Of course a longer follow up time is strictly better, but it's not valid to simply fill in a gap in data with whatever better suits your worldview. There certainly seems to be a pattern.

I don't think it's surprising or debatable that trans people who undergo conversion therapy or grow up in oppressive/conservative environments often end up repressing.

1. Expressed a cross-sex gender identity. They were trans kids, as you choose to term it.

2. Met the assessment criteria that would be used to approve a patient for blockers.

Yes, the desisters in the study would most likely be prescribed blockers if they went to a gender clinic that prioritized affirmation.

> The difference being that teenagers who don't explicitly seek them because they don't consider themselves as trans are never considered for undergoing puberty blockers

Again, these patients did express a cross-sex gender identity, or "consider themselves as trans" to use your language. If they never did, then they can't desist from a cross sex gender identity if they never expressed one in the first place.

> No, because teenagers who don't consider themselves trans do not seek puberty blockers and are therefore never considered for them. The main distinguisher between trans and nontrans people is their self identification.

To re-use your terminology, studies found that ~80% of the children who considered themselves trans stop considering themselves trans and become comfortable and no longer experience gender dysphoria in their cis gender after natal puberty. It seems like the root of the problem is the lack of understanding that the children in the study did "consider themselves trans", as you choose to put it.

If all you're going to do is continue to erroneously claim that the patients in this study weren't expressing a cross sex gender identity ("consider themselves trans"), or baselessly claim that the desisters are actually just repressing a trans identity then there's no value in continuing this.

Because we make a lot of medical decisions for children and this one is extremely minor with wide raining results.

The same paper you linked showed multiple pathologies that are significantly reduced by circumcision including penile cancer and HIV. That paper also cuts off at 1999. More recent studies show even greater effects.

> the claim is absurd. There's no science to support it.

No it's not, compare the rate of cervical cancer in countries with and without circumcision. It's considerably higher in countries where the majority of males are uncircumcised, even when those countries have higher vaccination rates and better overall health care.