That was disturbing news to Angelica Jadunandan, who moved to New York from Florida with her two young daughters three years ago. Her older daughter, who is eight, is transgender, and Angelica wanted to move them to a safe blue state—somewhere her family’s medical care would not be called into question. New York is a self-declared “sanctuary state” for trans people. It seemed like a good option.
All gender affirming care that is or has been provided to minors at scale is reversible. The standard for providing gender affirming care to minors is puberty blockers and social transition, never anything permanent like surgery. Personally, I don’t see any cause for concern about potential harm to minors from providing gender affirming care, but I do see the harm that is done to them when that care is denied and find it far more concerning given that a common result of that harm is the most permanent and irreversible outcome possible, suicide.
Question, I know of a kid in my kids friend circle. She has been on puberty blockers and is starting to take estrogen. She is 16. I would have thought that starting to take estrogen wouldn’t be truely reversible. But I really don’t know much about it. Can a person theoretically stop the estrogen and the puberty blockers and go through a sort of normal male puberty?
The estrogen isn’t reversible but testosterone would still work. In short, if she were to detransition she would have a feminine bone structure, breasts, and would likely be a bit smaller, but should otherwise develop fine.
The bigger thing is that at 16 you’re really balancing risks here. Detransition of a 16 year old who’d been on puberty blockers is very rare. Hitting 18 without any puberty is socially isolating and developmentally awkward. And going through the wrong puberty has permanent effects too as well as feeling like some sort of body horror. A choice has to be made and the person who is nearly an adult and has to experience the consequences is the one most likely to get it right, especially when they’ve thoroughly discussed it with doctors and therapists.
You mention hitting 18 without any puberty. What does that actually look like. I assume a person of any gender would just be shorter in general, but I don’t even know if that is true. For female, there would be no breasts, but I assume one could wear something that would make it look like there were. That doesn’t cover person to person contact, but it at least covers some phsyical appearance. Of course word would get around at school, but at 18 that would likely end. But there must be more. I am just not sure what puberty blockers would prevent that would be socially obvious, and I am curious.
She’d have a childlike fat distribution. Her bones may fuse in an androgynous way. She’d not develop sexual desires. Her muscle structure would remain childlike. She’d be slower to adult bone density.
Hell, all the mental and emotional changes that come with puberty at 16 she’ll be pretty late to all of that, but having to wait to 18 is taking two more years from it. Those are two years hanging out with peers and rebelling against parents. Of teenage angst. Of early dating at an age where it’s understood to probably go nowhere so you can make mistakes. It’s also two years of her body still feeling wrong, of clothes not fitting right, of not seeing the face she’s already jumped through so many hoops in pursuit of. It’s the entire lived experience of being 16 and not allowed to go through puberty for two more years unless you take the one you really don’t want.
For someone who’s uncertain it may very well be a better decision than picking a puberty. But for someone who is certain and whose doctors believe seriously understands the choices being made it should be her choice
I also think it’s worth saying here, that as various citizens not involved and for the government the question isn’t “what is the right choice”, but rather whether or not we should restrict the freedom of bodily autonomy for the teenager and the freedom of medical professionals to do what they believe is best for their patients. The neutral option is to not interfere in someone else’s medical choices.
That’s good to know, thank you. It makes the angle pretty different.
An integral part of transgender care is also therapeutic evaluation and discussion with minors and parents to thoroughly understand what is needed at specific stages of the minor’s development.
The issue of parents/schools “promoting” kids to be a different gender is so insanely overblown. There isn’t any documented case of an adult coming forward to claim that they received gender altering medical intervention as a minor when they shouldn’t have.
Just wait. It’ll be the cool thing for youth pastors to claim soon. Like all the ones that claim they were strung out giving handies in truck stop bathrooms when Jesus called them.
“I’ve been there. I was told it would be great to be trans. They offered me money and candy. Then dressed me in girls clothes and did surgery on me in math class. Then Jesus came to me and said ‘No more’”.
Before 5 years later they complete the cycle by coming back out and not getting why the community can’t trust them or welcome them back
I believe you, I don’t think there is malice here at all.
You might find a lecture bio a professor from Stanford, named Robert Sapolsky, entitled ‘Neuro-biologu of trans-sexuality’ interesting.
I had been a little while since I watched it, but the thing that stands out in my memory is:
When you look at the differences between biologically male brains, and biologically female brains, there is this part that has nodes (I don’t remember exactly, sorry, nouns are not my forte) and they are always one size in male brains, and a different size in female brains.
In trans-sexual brains, these little nodes are the size of the nodes in the brain of their believed gender, not their biological gender.
People with similar experiences as a child certainly exist, and their and your experiences are valid, but there are many documented and studied experience that are different. Something like your experience, I would hope would be identified by the parents.
Thanks for the response. People are being pretty evil to me here. I appreciate your thoughtful, detailed response a lot.
You should probably edit your comment to include this information since somebody might see the misinformation in your original comment and might not see this comment correcting it
I’ll add a clarifier at the end but I didn’t specifically reference procedures, so I’ll probably leave the “like this” part unless that’s considered deceptive in some way?