I also forgot to mention Littmans more recent research on adolescent girls(biological) being trans boys.
She investigates the possibility that some are following trends and social conformity.
This has also been controversial in the trans community because some see it as trying to prove that adolescents are confused about their gender identity and don’t deserve to have any autonomy over medical decisions like hormone treatments.
Now, as I said before. I believe that people have full autonomy over their own bodies. 100%.
However, I don’t extend this to children.
I think children don’t understand the risks associated with hormone therapy.
And I , who was once a teenager myself, agree that many teenagers are prone to following fads and trends of their peers.
I don’t see how anyone can deny that happens at a high rate in children and teenagers.
I also don’t deny that a teenager is capable of knowing themselves. They can. They do.
But it’s a time of development. It’s a time of exploring oneself and Identity. It’s not the right time to make permanent, life long, risky decisions, that someone who has only been alive for 15 years can actually understand what that means.
We don’t let teenagers get plastic surgery, tattoos, buy alcohol, or even lottery tickets. Because we understand that they can’t evaluate risks yet.
Are there (hormone injection) exceptions to be made for some teens. Absolutely.
Littmans research aims to discover which trans teens will continue being trans and which will flip back to their biological based gender. That way the kids who will benefit from hormones get the hormone intervention and those that it will harm, get supportive therapy instead.
It helps reduce the risk of kids taking hormone injections and permanently disrupting their sexual development because for 6 months they thought maybe they wanted to be in a different body.
I honestly would think the trans community would support this type of research because it’s going to help reduce the risk of regret transitioners.
But as with all research on trans, it is often weaponized against the community. So their concern is valid on that front.
But if we ignore this type of research or try to stop it; What could happen is we get people who start suing medical doctors and maybe have bad relationships with their parents. Because as a teen who was exploring their identity, the adults in their life quickly suggested hormones and allowed that to start when it shouldn’t have.
“I really wish my parents didn’t let me take hormones when I was 15 and depressed, and thought transitioning would fix all my problems. Now I’m sterile and don’t have the body I should have had”.
-these stories are going to be way more damaging to trans rights and more specifically, adolescents trying to take hormones that do need them.
There already are such people on social media. And the number will grow if we don’t find better ways to evaluate kids.
We have to find ways to determine which kids feel this way consistently and long term. And those following trends.
Especially young girls turning to trans guys. Because many young women see how women are devalued in our society and don’t want to be on the oppressed side.
Lots of things may influence teenagers. We need research to better help them
This argument is the one that pisses me off more than anything any adult does (and I’m around 50): I made these mistakes when I was young so I think we need to stop you from making the same mistakes. It’s so patronizing.
I often hear it from conservatives explaining why young people are voting the wrong way. I’ve heard it from the religious when explaining why young people will eventually come (back) to Christianity. I’ve heard it from anti-drug people for why marijuana should be illegal.
We certainly could use studies on this sort of thing, but this statement alone makes me suspicious of your personal views on the subject because people I’ve heard make this sort of statement are always coming from a biased position and they never realize it because it’s so foundational to their opinion on the topic.
Hormone therapy has long term consequences like permanent sterility.
I don’t think a 15 year old can understand what that risk is. I think an 18 still has limited abilities but even at that age, they have much more capability to understand these risks.
We need better tools to help identify and support kids at these times.
They are children. They have limits in their understanding of the world and long term effects and consequences of actions.
Adults should be there to help them, children do need guidance.
If adults didn’t decide things for kids, they would eat junk food for every meal, never bathe, play on their tablets 24/7 and any number of other bad behaviors.
What these people say? It’s not science. It’s bias, wearing a veneer of science, so that people who don’t like the idea of trans kids existing can point at something other than their own internal discomfort.
Thank you for the resource. I’m unsure as to why my comment above was removed as I received no notification about it and nobody gave me an explanation. I’ll start by saying that my field of research is quite different from social sciences and that I am absolutely not an expert regarding transgender people: I am not one and I only have few friends that are. I have not read the articles from the authors mentioned in this thread, I do not know whether their research is sound or not, @daannii above was saying their research is sound and I take it at face value; but the following stands even if that is not the case.
The review you linked does not appear to address these issues that are being discussed in here. They do find that gender transition tends to be positive and that in most cases people do not regret doing it.
Regrets following gender transition are extremely rare and have become even rarer as both surgical techniques and social support have improved. Pooling data from numerous studies demonstrates a regret rate ranging from .3 percent to 3.8 percent. Regrets are most likely to result from a lack of social support after transition or poor surgical outcomes using older techniques.
However this does not seem to address differences across demographics, such as could be transitioning when minor vs transitioning when adult. It would be interesting to know whether people who transition as child tend to have higher regret rates than adults.
We eliminated studies, for instance, that did not assess the outcomes of gender transition, that investigated minors instead of adults
In fact they specify in the methodology that they specifically did not address research involving minors and they excluded any paper that investigated minors.
Littmans research aims to discover which trans teens will continue being trans and which will flip back to their biological based gender.
This statement from above does make sense to me. I would not see one such research as damaging towards anyone. I don’t see how that is bias. In the review you provided is stated that some people, a vast minority, do regret transitioning. I don’t see how identifying those people before they do transition would be bad.
It’s not science. It’s bias, wearing a veneer of science
That could very much be, as I said I did not read the articles from the authors above. But the review you refer to does not disprove any of their findings.
Moreover it is an article that I would never myself reference. I am from a different field of study and probably we do systematic reviews in a different way, but if I was one of the peer reviews I’d be asking a major revision. This is not a scientific publication: it is not reviewed by anyone for what I can tell. They do at the very least show the methodology on how they selected the papers, which is nice, but they do not explain at all how they analyzed and reviewed the papers. This would at most classify as a review article and not a systematic review in any authoritative journal. They have no quantitative analysis of the papers, besides number of papers with negative results and only give some qualitative analysis of the aggregate results without justifying how they got to such conclusions. I’m not saying the results are incorrect or that their research is wrong, but there is also no way to verify it is, since they do not provide that fundamental information which would be required in any peer review process. It is nevertheless a good read as a piece of diffusion, to inform people who are not actively working in the field.
Here’s what the science actually says
Given that, this statement feels a bit out of place.
I am unsure on what was your point. It is very possible that the authors of this survey are not doing a good survey or that they are manipulating results, but then you should point that out rather than another (bad) piece of research which does not address the main point of the conversation.
Thank you for taking the time to write this
You shouldn’t. The person your thanking is promoting bigoted Pseudoscience
I also forgot to mention Littmans more recent research on adolescent girls(biological) being trans boys.
She investigates the possibility that some are following trends and social conformity.
This has also been controversial in the trans community because some see it as trying to prove that adolescents are confused about their gender identity and don’t deserve to have any autonomy over medical decisions like hormone treatments.
Now, as I said before. I believe that people have full autonomy over their own bodies. 100%. However, I don’t extend this to children.
I think children don’t understand the risks associated with hormone therapy.
And I , who was once a teenager myself, agree that many teenagers are prone to following fads and trends of their peers.
I don’t see how anyone can deny that happens at a high rate in children and teenagers.
I also don’t deny that a teenager is capable of knowing themselves. They can. They do.
But it’s a time of development. It’s a time of exploring oneself and Identity. It’s not the right time to make permanent, life long, risky decisions, that someone who has only been alive for 15 years can actually understand what that means.
We don’t let teenagers get plastic surgery, tattoos, buy alcohol, or even lottery tickets. Because we understand that they can’t evaluate risks yet.
Are there (hormone injection) exceptions to be made for some teens. Absolutely.
Littmans research aims to discover which trans teens will continue being trans and which will flip back to their biological based gender. That way the kids who will benefit from hormones get the hormone intervention and those that it will harm, get supportive therapy instead.
It helps reduce the risk of kids taking hormone injections and permanently disrupting their sexual development because for 6 months they thought maybe they wanted to be in a different body.
I honestly would think the trans community would support this type of research because it’s going to help reduce the risk of regret transitioners.
But as with all research on trans, it is often weaponized against the community. So their concern is valid on that front.
But if we ignore this type of research or try to stop it; What could happen is we get people who start suing medical doctors and maybe have bad relationships with their parents. Because as a teen who was exploring their identity, the adults in their life quickly suggested hormones and allowed that to start when it shouldn’t have.
“I really wish my parents didn’t let me take hormones when I was 15 and depressed, and thought transitioning would fix all my problems. Now I’m sterile and don’t have the body I should have had”.
-these stories are going to be way more damaging to trans rights and more specifically, adolescents trying to take hormones that do need them.
There already are such people on social media. And the number will grow if we don’t find better ways to evaluate kids.
We have to find ways to determine which kids feel this way consistently and long term. And those following trends.
Especially young girls turning to trans guys. Because many young women see how women are devalued in our society and don’t want to be on the oppressed side.
Lots of things may influence teenagers. We need research to better help them
This argument is the one that pisses me off more than anything any adult does (and I’m around 50): I made these mistakes when I was young so I think we need to stop you from making the same mistakes. It’s so patronizing.
I often hear it from conservatives explaining why young people are voting the wrong way. I’ve heard it from the religious when explaining why young people will eventually come (back) to Christianity. I’ve heard it from anti-drug people for why marijuana should be illegal.
We certainly could use studies on this sort of thing, but this statement alone makes me suspicious of your personal views on the subject because people I’ve heard make this sort of statement are always coming from a biased position and they never realize it because it’s so foundational to their opinion on the topic.
Hormone therapy has long term consequences like permanent sterility.
I don’t think a 15 year old can understand what that risk is. I think an 18 still has limited abilities but even at that age, they have much more capability to understand these risks.
We need better tools to help identify and support kids at these times.
They are children. They have limits in their understanding of the world and long term effects and consequences of actions.
Adults should be there to help them, children do need guidance.
If adults didn’t decide things for kids, they would eat junk food for every meal, never bathe, play on their tablets 24/7 and any number of other bad behaviors.
Removed by mod
Here’s what the science actually says https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people/
What these people say? It’s not science. It’s bias, wearing a veneer of science, so that people who don’t like the idea of trans kids existing can point at something other than their own internal discomfort.
Thank you for the resource. I’m unsure as to why my comment above was removed as I received no notification about it and nobody gave me an explanation. I’ll start by saying that my field of research is quite different from social sciences and that I am absolutely not an expert regarding transgender people: I am not one and I only have few friends that are. I have not read the articles from the authors mentioned in this thread, I do not know whether their research is sound or not, @daannii above was saying their research is sound and I take it at face value; but the following stands even if that is not the case.
The review you linked does not appear to address these issues that are being discussed in here. They do find that gender transition tends to be positive and that in most cases people do not regret doing it.
However this does not seem to address differences across demographics, such as could be transitioning when minor vs transitioning when adult. It would be interesting to know whether people who transition as child tend to have higher regret rates than adults.
In fact they specify in the methodology that they specifically did not address research involving minors and they excluded any paper that investigated minors.
This statement from above does make sense to me. I would not see one such research as damaging towards anyone. I don’t see how that is bias. In the review you provided is stated that some people, a vast minority, do regret transitioning. I don’t see how identifying those people before they do transition would be bad.
That could very much be, as I said I did not read the articles from the authors above. But the review you refer to does not disprove any of their findings. Moreover it is an article that I would never myself reference. I am from a different field of study and probably we do systematic reviews in a different way, but if I was one of the peer reviews I’d be asking a major revision. This is not a scientific publication: it is not reviewed by anyone for what I can tell. They do at the very least show the methodology on how they selected the papers, which is nice, but they do not explain at all how they analyzed and reviewed the papers. This would at most classify as a review article and not a systematic review in any authoritative journal. They have no quantitative analysis of the papers, besides number of papers with negative results and only give some qualitative analysis of the aggregate results without justifying how they got to such conclusions. I’m not saying the results are incorrect or that their research is wrong, but there is also no way to verify it is, since they do not provide that fundamental information which would be required in any peer review process. It is nevertheless a good read as a piece of diffusion, to inform people who are not actively working in the field.
Given that, this statement feels a bit out of place.
I am unsure on what was your point. It is very possible that the authors of this survey are not doing a good survey or that they are manipulating results, but then you should point that out rather than another (bad) piece of research which does not address the main point of the conversation.