"Her penis" - not at all Orwellian - argh

[Revoltingest]

The problem with that approach is that hormone therapy is dangerous and irreversible and is NOT proven to make them feel better.

Is denying them hormone treatment proven better for the range of cases?
Note that denying them hormone treatment has some irreversible effects too.

If you argue only the down side of treatment,
& ignore the downsides of what you advocate,
it's not really an argument...it's too incomplete.

 

[icehorse]

Is denying them hormone treatment proven better for the range of cases?
Note that denying them hormone treatment has some irreversible effects too.

If you argue only the down side of treatment,
& ignore the downsides of what you advocate,
it's not really an argument...it's too incomplete.

These are really good questions.

Let me reiterate from a few posts back:

Hormone therapy is dangerous and irreversible and is NOT proven to make them feel better.

Would you agree that - as a general approach to healthcare - we should not pursue dangerous interventions until we know they help?

==

So to me, step 1 is to first determine whether hormone therapy is better than talk therapy. We can guess that the answer will be "sometimes".

So now it seems to me we have a complex moral / ethical problem, given that we do not know, for any given GD kid, whether the will end up wanting to be trans or not:

- Given that these drugs are dangerous and irreversible, should we give them to kids that might not want to be trans?
- Given that if a kid DOES end up wanting to be trans, I agree that sometimes starting drugs sooner is better than waiting.

Seems like a thorny issue to me. But it should start with transparency, and given how political this issue is, we see far too little transparency.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Three reasons (at least):

1 - I'm not talking about transwomen, I'm talking about bad men taking advantage of the situation.
2 - I'm talking about ALL safe spaces for women, not just rest rooms
3 - I never claimed there would be a "rapefest".

So heathen's post misrepresented my arguments in at least these three ways. If that's not strawmanning, then can you define strawman?

Bad men have always taken advantage of situations, like janitors and security gaurds installing hidden cameras in bathrooms and changing stalls.
Your rhetoric is dangerous, transohobic and has misogynist implications and consequences.
For one it not only overlooks overlooks the reality that women who are sexually assaulted are generally attacked by someone they know. Male relatives amd authority figures are especially a risk factor. You throw this out like trans people opened the door, but sports coaches have been doing it long before most people ever heard of a transgender person outside of Jerry Springer.
It also starts witch hunts where people wanting to "protect women" target women who fall outside of what the wanker finds acceptable. They decide she's too hairy, too tall, has too masculine of a face, hips too narrow amd they get harassed and attacked.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

for any given GD kid, whether the will end up wanting to be trans or not:

"Wanting to be trans" makes it sound like a fetish. It's not "I want to be trans." You can't make yourself trans no more than you can make yourself gay.

 

[Laniakea]

"Wanting to be trans" makes it sound like a fetish. It's not "I want to be trans." You can't make yourself trans no more than you can make yourself gay.

If you consider the context of the statement within the post, it's obvious that it was in reference to those who decide to start taking drugs in order to make themselves appear to be the opposite sex, which is a decision.
And yes, they can make themselves trans, just as a person can make any other number of fetishes, such as pretending to be a dog or cat, and wanting to use a litterbox.

 

[Tamino]

fwiw, I prefaced by saying "it sounds like", because I didn't want to put words in your mouth.

Thank you, I guess. Still implicated it...

Let's say we had a crystal ball, and we knew which GD kids would have their GD resolved naturally.

By "resolved naturally" you mean: they just randomly decide after a year or two that being a boy/girl is perfectly fine with them after all?

Do you think that the non-medical interventions you describe above are without negative side effects for these non-trans kids?

Yes. I strongly belief that the chance to test their boundaries and learning to challenge needless or harmful stereotypes is useful for anybody. Especially if you have supportive parents and a therapist available who are helping you monitor and reflect your experiences.

Hormone therapy is dangerous and irreversible and it's efficacy is unproven.

- most prescription drugs are dangerous. That's why we have experts to prescribe them
- the hormonal changes of puberty are also partly irreversible.
- we can only get better data on hormone therapy to further prove its efficacy if we allow it to happen. The current, limited results are promising.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

If you consider the context of the statement within the post, it's obvious that it was in reference to those who decide to start taking drugs in order to make themselves appear to be the opposite sex, which is a decision.
And yes, they can make themselves trans, just as a person can make any other number of fetishes, such as pretending to be a dog or cat, and wanting to use a litterbox.

No, you can't make yourself something you're not. Like furries, there's no appeal in for me, no amount of trying will make it enjoyable or desirable to me.

 

[Laniakea]

No, you can't make yourself something you're not. Like furries, there's no appeal in for me, no amount of trying will make it enjoyable or desirable to me.

Such as a man making himself a woman, or vice versa?

 

[icehorse]

Bad men have always taken advantage of situations, like janitors and security gaurds installing hidden cameras in bathrooms and changing stalls.
Your rhetoric is dangerous, transohobic and has misogynist implications and consequences.
For one it not only overlooks overlooks the reality that women who are sexually assaulted are generally attacked by someone they know. Male relatives amd authority figures are especially a risk factor. You throw this out like trans people opened the door, but sports coaches have been doing it long before most people ever heard of a transgender person outside of Jerry Springer.

We're agreed that assault on women is an extremely serious problem and I have no reason to doubt your claims concerning where assaults occur. But let's pause for a minute, I'd like to see if you can help me out:

I frequently get this form of argument, and I can never understand how it's relevant in that moment of the conversation?

Specifically, the general logic appears to be: "x is already an issue, so why not make things a little worse?"

==

In other words, why should the fact that women are frequently assaulted in their homes have any bearing on giving bad men new loopholes to take advantage of? I can see that they are related, but in this context they seem independent of each other, no?

 

[Revoltingest]

These are really good questions.

Let me reiterate from a few posts back:

Hormone therapy is dangerous and irreversible and is NOT proven to make them feel better.

Would you agree that - as a general approach to healthcare - we should not pursue dangerous interventions until we know they help?

==

So to me, step 1 is to first determine whether hormone therapy is better than talk therapy. We can guess that the answer will be "sometimes".

So now it seems to me we have a complex moral / ethical problem, given that we do not know, for any given GD kid, whether the will end up wanting to be trans or not:

- Given that these drugs are dangerous and irreversible, should we give them to kids that might not want to be trans?
- Given that if a kid DOES end up wanting to be trans, I agree that sometimes starting drugs sooner is better than waiting.

Seems like a thorny issue to me. But it should start with transparency, and given how political this issue is, we see far too little transparency.

You're still not allowing for any benefit for transition.
This means we've no common ground.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Specifically, the general logic appears to be: "x is already an issue, so why not make things a little worse?"

==

In other words, why should the fact that women are frequently assaulted in their homes have any bearing on giving bad men new loopholes to take advantage of? I can see that they are related, but in this context they seem independent of each other, no?

That's just called a bad faith argument and assuming the worst. The data does not support your claim of the situation getting worse for perhaps the billionth time now.

 

[icehorse]

"Wanting to be trans" makes it sound like a fetish. It's not "I want to be trans." You can't make yourself trans no more than you can make yourself gay.

Sorry, I didn't mean to convey any sort of fetish implications.

The point is that when a kid gets GD, we do not know until much later whether that kid ended up trans or not-trans.

 

[icehorse]

By "resolved naturally" you mean: they just randomly decide after a year or two that being a boy/girl is perfectly fine with them after all?

exactly.

(And quite frequently they realize they are gay.)

 

[icehorse]

Yes. I strongly belief that the chance to test their boundaries and learning to challenge needless or harmful stereotypes is useful for anybody. Especially if you have supportive parents and a therapist available who are helping you monitor and reflect your experiences.

Sincerely, that's useful information, but it's not what I asked.

I want to know if you're claiming that these drugs are not dangerous and that they are reversible?

- most prescription drugs are dangerous. That's why we have experts to prescribe them
- the hormonal changes of puberty are also partly irreversible.
- we can only get better data on hormone therapy to further prove its efficacy if we allow it to happen. The current, limited results are promising.

Your three points:

1 - A doctor's prescription does not make a dangerous drug less dangerous.
2 - I would agree that puberty is mostly irreversible And we have 3.5 billion years of evolution that's led us humans to grow thru puberty as a normal, healthy stage of development.
3 - Yes, we need high quality data. So how would you design a study to obtain that data? Just broad strokes.

 

[icehorse]

You're still not allowing for any benefit for transition.
This means we've no common ground.

Sorry, maybe I was too terse. My last "given" in post #702 was meant to acknowledge that some percentage of the time transitioning appears to be beneficial. (But, given how this condition has grown in frequency, and very recently, I think we have to be transparent and acknowledge that there are SIGNIFICANT long term studies focusing on long term health benefits, that have not yet been done.)

 

[icehorse]

That's just called a bad faith argument and assuming the worst. The data does not support your claim of the situation getting worse for perhaps the billionth time now.

I asked you 4 questions, I don't know which one you're responding to here, can you clarify?

 

[SkepticThinker]

These are really good questions.

Let me reiterate from a few posts back:

Hormone therapy is dangerous and irreversible and is NOT proven to make them feel better.

Would you agree that - as a general approach to healthcare - we should not pursue dangerous interventions until we know they help?

==

So to me, step 1 is to first determine whether hormone therapy is better than talk therapy. We can guess that the answer will be "sometimes".

So now it seems to me we have a complex moral / ethical problem, given that we do not know, for any given GD kid, whether the will end up wanting to be trans or not:

- Given that these drugs are dangerous and irreversible, should we give them to kids that might not want to be trans?
- Given that if a kid DOES end up wanting to be trans, I agree that sometimes starting drugs sooner is better than waiting.

Seems like a thorny issue to me. But it should start with transparency, and given how political this issue is, we see far too little transparency.

How about we leave it up to them to decide what's best for them? You know, like we do with virtually every other psychiatric and medical treatment in existence. I mean, we don't go around injecting ourselves into the medical business of people who are taking antidepressants for their clinical depression or heart medication for their heart condition. Why is this any different?

I find it very bizarre that on this topic, suddenly everyone things they're qualified medical experts who should be making personal medical decisions for other people they know nothing about, save for some stuff they read on the internet.

 

[Revoltingest]

How about we leave it up to them to decide what's best for them? You know, like we do with virtually every other psychiatric and medical treatment in existence. I mean, we don't go around injecting ourselves into the medical business of people who are taking antidepressants for their clinical depression or heart medication for their heart condition. Why is this any different?

I find it very bizarre that on this topic, suddenly everyone things they're qualified medical experts who should be making personal medical decisions for other people they know nothing about, save for some stuff they read on the internet.

We can't leave important life decisions up to people
& their physicians. What if they make a mistaken
choice that causes woe?
Better to have government prohibit individual choice,
so that it makes bad some bad choices for us.

 

[icehorse]

How about we leave it up to them to decide what's best for them? You know, like we do with virtually every other psychiatric and medical treatment in existence. I mean, we don't go around injecting ourselves into the medical business of people who are taking antidepressants for their clinical depression or heart medication for their heart condition. Why is this any different?

I find it very bizarre that on this topic, suddenly everyone things they're qualified medical experts who should be making personal medical decisions for other people they know nothing about, save for some stuff they read on the internet.

Last time I checked, we were on a debate forum. We debate on a wide range of topics.

I find it very bizarre that on this topic, suddenly supporters of GAC don't want healthy debate

==

As for injecting ourselves, well we should have - collectively - raised a huge uproar while the opioid crisis was unfolding. The thing is, THIS topic has sadly become highly politicized and one side effect of that is that advocates spend a lot of time trying to obscure the facts and fight transparency.

European countries tend to have more centralized healthcare systems. This allows for a better distribution of true expertise. They are abandoning GAC.

One problem with the US system is that advocates often have an outsized voice in creating policies and protocols. It would be nice to think that every patient would be able to see top specialists, but the reality is far from that. So it's a lot more common that a non-specialist doctor is confronted with a new situation and they're bound to just fall back on established protocols - which again are often heavily distorted by activists and oligarchs.

 

[icehorse]

We can't leave important life decisions up to people
& their physicians. What if they make a mistaken
choice that causes woe?
Better to have government prohibit individual choice,
so that it makes bad some bad choices for us.

Before I respond in full, I have a related question for you. A lot of GAC advocates feel that teachers should NOT be required to disclose a kid's GD and/or gender identity to the parents. Where do you stand on this question?