An English ruling on transgender teens could have global repercussions

This is a touchy subject, but I feel the need to state the obvious, that 12 year old children think and do a lot of foolish things because they are figuring out themselves and the world. We need to trust parents to help them and protect them, that is our job. We know them better than anyone, we have experience, we even share DNA with them.<p>I know there are exceptions, but the default state should be to trust parents with their own children. Nobody is perfect and mistakes will be made. That’s life, we try to do our best. And no committee, politician, doctor, even therapist is going to be able to ensure they won’t make mistakes that are worse. And I love my kids much more than they ever could.

The problem with sex reassignment surgeries, is that they do not work:<p>”Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers.&quot;<p>Dr. Paul McHugh, the university distinguished service professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thepublicdiscourse.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;06&#x2F;15145&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thepublicdiscourse.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;06&#x2F;15145&#x2F;</a>

this is interesting as it is harder for an adult to get treatment to become infertile than it is for a child to get hormone drugs that can do the same thing<p>this seems to be in the interest of not having parents make knee jerk and unhelpful reactions, instead of the doctors actually evaluating potential underlying conditions of the patient<p>from my understanding, we are trying to accommodate body dysmorphia because it is easy to accommodate: give people what they want and the rest of us just say a pronoun so that they don’t feel marginalized, but for science this is a stopgap solution and there is interest in understanding and preventing the dysmorphia to begin with. It seems this message gets lost because people don&#x27;t want to be seen as transphobic or don’t want the “mental health” research to be misconstrued as “I want to ignore those crazy people”, as a lot of transphobes do consider things that way. While this is inherently a mental incongruence, it is easy to accommodate while we work to avoid it happening.

As a transgender person I find HN members to be somewhat transphobic in previous discussions unrelated to this article about transgender issues. So unsure if it&#x27;s a good place for discussion here. It would be nice if articles like the submitted one were moderated better. Feels like HN takes a stance of ignoring these gender topics or flagging them and while being more defensive of other non-gender topics that are controversial.<p>Puberty blockers are used for other medical issues and aren&#x27;t considered dangerous or life damaging. Anyway this topic is somewhat meaningful to me because I really don&#x27;t think people know how truly valuable it can be for someone to stall puberty when they desire to.<p>I find it appalling that cis society is quick to make sure no confused cis kid is harmed while ignoring trans kids that end up permanently disfigured by their voice &amp; appearance from the wrong puberty. It&#x27;s basically comparable to a cis kid having the wrong hormones damaging their body through puberty like a boy growing breasts and people just shrug their shoulders when it&#x27;s a trans kid.<p>For context I went through the wrong puberty (I&#x27;m only 30 years old) and recently have been diagnosed with cancer. I&#x27;m choosing not to get treatment for the cancer and so I can get Medical Assistance in Dying because Gender Dysphoria sucks while all surgeries to possibly fix voice or appearance is like putting a downpayment for a house. Also was disowned by parents and struggled through university years because of constant bullying. Anyway I really hope people can take the time to consider that some kids truly know they&#x27;re trans and it&#x27;s not a fad to them.

The &quot;medical&quot; practice of handing out out puberty blockers and arbitrary hormones to every confused teenager who even suggests not fitting within traditional gender norms, is going to end up in the same chapter in the history books as when Inuits (apocryphally) drilled holes in skulls to let out the bad spirits.<p>Sometimes doing nothing (at least for a while) is good medicine.

fyi, this disappeared from the Top 120 of HN. Not a good look dang

&gt; Gender and sex are different things<p>&gt; I think I&#x27;m a different gender<p>&gt; I&#x27;m going to try and change my sex<p>Explain to me how this isn&#x27;t absurd?

why is this on hacker news again?

Transphobia is common and widely accepted in the UK right now, and the UK is very culturally influential despite their current isolationist tendencies, so I suspect we&#x27;re going to see a lot of transphobic misinformation here in the comments.<p>So here&#x27;s one thing that is important to remember: Lupron, also known as Leuprorelin or Leuprolide, has no permanent side effects when taken alone. It stops puberty, but it doesn&#x27;t prevent it. If you stop taking the drug, the process of puberty will resume completely as normal. Its purpose is not to begin the sex change process, but to allow time for planning what the next steps are (usually, hormone replacement therapy), so you are not racing against a biological clock.