Some gay people think that organizations set up to fight for gay rights made a mistake in throwing their weight behind trans activism. In an open letter in the Times in October, some prominent gays and lesbians accuse Stonewall, Britain’s biggest LGBT charity, of “uncritically adopting a form of transgender politics which undermines…the concept of homosexuality itself.” (It added “T” for transgender to its “LGB” (lesbian, gay and bisexual) mission in 2015.) More than 7,000 people have now signed a petition in support of the letter. Yet Stonewall’s CEO, Ruth Hunt, has denied any need for a rethink, saying that “trans equality is at the heart of our mission for acceptance without exception.”
Gay Youth at Risk
Quillette is one of the few outlets willing to address the issue of how radical transgender activism endangers gay and lesbian youth, in no small measure by promoting the idea that gender nonstereotypical behavior (“effeminate” boys/”masculine” girls) indicates not homosexual orientation but transgender identity, and that these kids should be placed on puberty blockers as the first step to transitioning into the other gender (after which, presumably, they can live heterosexual lives). That sounds a lot like conversion therapy except with surgical finality. And yet LGBTQ movement groups have made transgender theory and activism their new central mission, and woe to anyone who questions the new transgender orthodoxy.
Helen Joyce delves into these risks in great depth in her article “The New Patriarchy: How Trans Radicalism Hurts Women, Children—and Trans People Themselves.”
Here’s another excerpt from Helen Joyce’s article:
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8 Comments for “Gay Youth at Risk”
posted by Jorge on
“That sounds a lot like conversion therapy except with surgical finality.”
Hormone therapy does not carry surgical finality. You’re sounding a bit like a Donald Trump caricature. No, Pat Robertson would be more accurate.
Neither does spending a year acting as the opposite sex.
Don’t snip until they turn 19. Problem solved.
(19?)
Live the year as the opposite sex first.
Like every single gay man and lesbian on the face of the Earth who doesn’t hate himself or herself.
Self-hatred (a concept I consider largely a liberal invention designed to bludgeon minorities whose politics don’t conform to theirs) leads to many kinds of defects. One may hate the so-called oppressor, not wanting to show any weakness for shame. One my express love instead, believing the shame. Why should self-hatred only manifest in one political position and not the other?
posted by David Bauler on
1. I dont know any trans folk who act like the trans folk described by the political right. The trans folk i have met are actually pretty dull, even slightly conservative. Tossing them under the bus is just lame.
2. This ain’t a video game. Its not like someone gets points or magical powerups for deciding whether ‘sissy’ boys are gay or trans or both.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Quillette is one of the few outlets willing to address the issue of how radical transgender activism endangers gay and lesbian youth, in no small measure by promoting the idea that gender nonstereotypical behavior (“effeminate” boys/”masculine” girls) indicates not homosexual orientation but transgender identity, and that these kids should be placed on puberty blockers as the first step to transitioning into the other gender (after which, presumably, they can live heterosexual lives).
I have seen absolutely no evidence that parents are forcing teenage gays/lesbians to begin transitioning in so that “they can live heterosexual lives”. Even if misguided or malevolent parents wanted to force the issue in that direction, gender dysphoria treatment is a complex, long-term process that involves doctors and therapists from a number of disciplines, with evaluation/diagnosis/ethical safeguards in place, and the parents would not likely be successful. Have you? What evidence and where is it reported?
That sounds a lot like conversion therapy …
Conversion therapy is the province of quacks and barely trained religious extremists, conducted in almost all cases without outside review and/or safeguards, and has been shown to be both ineffective and (in almost all cases) harmful. Not so gender dysphoria treatment.
Treating gender dysphoria in children and adolescents presents extraordinarily difficult questions. With puberty come broad and irreversible physical changes, and that hard fact pushes a decision based on imperfect, elusive facts. If medical intervention is withheld, then puberty proceeds normally according to birth-gender, and transition by transgender adults is made more complicated and less successful. But if medical intervention occurs, then children and adolescents may be misdiagnosed and face the consequences of having failed to go through a normal puberty at a normal time.
Parents, therapists, doctors and everyone else involved in the process are human, and even with all the safeguards in place, sometimes mistakes are going to be made, and treatment will have to be adjusted or reversed. That is what happens in an imperfect world, when the best we can do is the best we can.
… except with surgical finality.
Bosh. As Jorge pointed out, gender reassignment surgery is undertaken only after a person reaches adulthood.
posted by Jorge on
Conversion therapy is the province of quacks and barely trained religious extremists, conducted in almost all cases without outside review and/or safeguards, and has been shown to be both ineffective and (in almost all cases) harmful. Not so gender dysphoria treatment.
I think you are failing or refusing to distinguish between science and popular culture. This makes it difficult for you to tell when they move toward becoming enmeshed–you only see the result.
Some self-identifying transgender people have little to no access to regular health care for reasons of income or poverty. Obviously, some self-identifying transgender people do.
And some are in-between. Going back to poverty (which Mirriam-Webster defines as as a lack of money or material possessions considered usual or socially acceptable), information summarized by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty explains that people can enter poverty through losses/changes in the head of household and loss of income. Higher education has a protective effect, while household structure (i.e., single female head of household with children) can correlate with it.
Take a working poor single mother-headed family with limited education and unstable income. Or even take a non-working such family whose head of household has to attend many public assistance appointments. Where is the time to attend to “extraordinarily difficult questions”? For “complex, long-term process that involves doctors and therapists from a number of disciplines, with evaluation/diagnosis/ethical safeguards in place”?
And yet, as you say the child is gender dysphoric anyway. Now, where did the child get any idea that he’s transgender and wants to live as the other sex from, if not these clinically trained experts working under safeguards you consider so highly?
I’ll tell you where: quacks and barely trained religious extremists operating out of LGBT safe zones.
Now why is it that one form of conversion therapy practiced upon the ignorant is bad, and another is good?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Some self-identifying transgender people have little to no access to regular health care for reasons of income or poverty. Obviously, some self-identifying transgender people do. … Where is the time to attend to “extraordinarily difficult questions”? For “complex, long-term process that involves doctors and therapists from a number of disciplines, with evaluation/diagnosis/ethical safeguards in place”?
We all know (or should know) that the availability and adequacy of health care differs greatly between urban and rural areas, and across income/class lines. To my way of thinking, we should be approaching that problem by working to ensure that everyone in this country has access to good medical care, not by throwing up our hands and giving up on treating people.
And yet, as you say the child is gender dysphoric anyway. Now, where did the child get any idea that he’s transgender and wants to live as the other sex from, if not these clinically trained experts working under safeguards you consider so highly? I’ll tell you where: quacks and barely trained religious extremists operating out of LGBT safe zones.
I know only a dozen or so transgender men and women personally, and only three of them well enough to drink coffee with around the kitchen table. So what I am going to say is anecdotal, not the result of a study. I assume studies exist, but I’m not familiar with them.
All three of the people I know well (and one of them I’ve known since grade school) tell me that they had the sense that they were living in the wrong body very early in life, as children. They didn’t have a word for it, or even a concept of what was out of whack, because all are my age, and their experience was similar to my own experience coming to understand that I am gay. As they grew older, their self-awareness in this respect grew deeper and more insistence, as did my own awareness about my sexual orientation.
The bottom line, though is that I don’t think that anyone is “planting the idea” that mind and body are out of whack in these kids, any more than anyone is convincing straight kids that they are gay or lesbian instead of straight.
I think that what is happening is that these kids are now getting tools to “name” the condition, just as my eyes were opened when I read about homosexuality as a teenager. I remember the “ah ha” moment even today, 50-60 years later. I finally knew what was going on. My friends remember the moment when they were able to “name” what was going on, too, about their own situation — they remember the moment when they finally understood. You probably experienced something somewhat similar in your own life, even though I suspect that you are half my age, if that, and information about homosexuality is much more available to young people now than it was back then.
As a side note, a woman that I’ve know for a long time (she is in her eighties) but not one of the three, once told me that she thought that she was “a gay man in a woman’s body”. I didn’t ask and don’t know why she decided that, or when she first experienced the sense of dysphoria, but I mention it only to point out that gender dysphoria is not related to sexual orientation.
In any event, I trust the witness of my three friends about the early sense that they were living in the wrong body, just as I trust my own memories about my growing awareness of my sexual orientation.
Now why is it that one form of conversion therapy practiced upon the ignorant is bad, and another is good?
We’ve been around this track at least a few times, but let me simply say two are different in that:
(1) The goal of the two therapies are different. The goal of conversion therapy is to change a person’s sexual orientation, to change them from gay/lesbian to straight. The goal of gender dysphoria treatment, on the other hand, is not to change a person’s perception of gender (that is, the sense that “I am male …” or “I am female …”) but to allow a person to live with and adjust to the fact that they are gender dysphoric. In some cases, therapy is enough to allow them to live with the dysphoria. In other cases, hormone treatment and lifestyle changes are all that are needed. In other cases, sex reassignment is the best answer. But in none of the cases is the goal to convince them that they are “wrong” and should “change”.
(2) Conversion therapy lacks the protocols and safeguards that are applicable in gender dysphoria treatment. We’ve discussed that at length. The fact that some people who experience gender dysphoria don’t have access to proper medical treatment doesn’t change that fact.
(3) Conversion therapy, by all reputable accounts, is both ineffective (that is, it doesn’t change orientation, but only serves to put a lid on it, temporarily) and harmful (most of the time increasing stress, depression and low self-esteem). Most teenagers who undergo conversion therapy seem to come out of the process worse off rather than better off. That is not true, to my knowledge anyway, of treatment for gender dysphoria.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
FRAUDULENT POSTS ROADMAP as of 9:47 pm GMT, December 12, 2018:
THREAD: Gay Youth at Risk, by Stephen H. Miller on December 6, 2018
This post is intended to provide a roadmap of fraudulent posts in this thread to facilitate removal of the posts.
The following posts were not authored or posted by the purported author, Tom Scharbach:
(1) FRAUDULENT COMMENT: 300988
DATE POSTED: December 11, 2018
PURPORTED AUTHOR: Tom Scharbach
CONTENTS OF FRAUDULENT COMMENT: “Turning faggots into girls isn’t the same as turning faggots into normal heterosexuals because faggots already are girls.”
(2) FRAUDULENT COMMENT: 301010
DATE POSTED: December 11, 2018
PURPORTED AUTHOR: Tom Scharbach
CONTENTS OF FRAUDULENT COMMENT: “Trans the little faggots and dykelings as early as possible so we can start raping them and profiting off of them as early as possible.”