Quote:Doctors are now considering allowing children to undergo hormone therapy at earlier ages in order to change their bodies.  Under current guidelines, that type of treatment is reserved for children 16 and older. However, authors of the new guidelines are considering striking that age requirement so children could begin hormone therapy earlier.
...
“It gives them more time to understand who they are without the clock ticking,” said Rosenthal, who has treated Jack and hundreds of other transgender children. “What you are doing is you're basically putting their puberty on hold. You're not promoting the development of either male or female physical characteristics at that point.”

Rosenthal believes halting puberty can lead to an easier and more successful physical transformation for transgender people long term.

“If you intervene with a medication that can put their puberty on pause, after puberty has not progressed too far, you can probably prevent the irreversible physical changes that go along with pubertal development,” Rosenthal said. “This way, a person who is truly transgender doesn't have to face the expense of surgical procedures and the risks.”

Doctors, including Rosenthal, recommend kids get off the puberty blocker by the time they turn 14 for fear of potential side-effects, including the weakening of bones.  Once children reach the allowable amount of time on the puberty blockers, they must decide whether to continue the transition process by taking hormones for the rest of their life or stop taking drugs completely to restart their natural puberty process.

Quote:“I think it’s putting a lot on the shoulders of these children,” said Dr. Eric Vilain, a pediatrician and geneticist who heads the Medical Genetics division at UCLA. “It’s putting them on a path that will have a lot of medical and surgical consequences.”

Vilain believes early social transitions unfairly push children to thinking they should identity as the opposite sex. He said these transitions can lead to unnecessary medical interventions for transgender kids.

“People telling me that these boys who behave like girls are in fact girl inside -- I’m saying well, where is the girl?” he asked. “Is their brain different? Are their other genes different? I still have not seen that.”

According to Vilain, physicians are far too willing to recommend social transitions for children.  As a result, Vilain believes the vast majority of children currently undergoing social transitions in the U.S. might not actually be transgender and, thus, might not be best served by embracing a sex that doesn't match their gender.

"If the children are pushed in this belief it will be much much harder for them to get out of this belief because everyone will have agreed on it very, very early on," Vilain said. "What worries me is that, indeed, there might be in the upcoming years a considerable number of these children that are placed on a path that we don’t fully know the outcome."

Quote:An estimated 1.4 million adults and 150,000 teens in the U.S. identify as transgender. Population figures for younger children, however, are largely unknown. That said, Bay Area gender clinics provide care to more than 550 children, according to data collected by the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit.

Quote:While teams of pediatricians and therapists provide ongoing medical and emotional care for transgender children, there is a lack of research detailing which children should transition socially and at what ages.

“We just don’t have definitive data one way or another,” said Dr. Kristina Olson, a research psychologist at the University of Washington who is leading a first-of-its-kind study that aims to provide a treasure-trove of data involving the long-term of trans children.

“To be able to, hopefully, answer which children should or should not transition,” she said.

Olson and her research team are studying 300 trans kids from around the U.S. and Canada and tracking them over the next two decades.

Quote:Megan, like many parents of transgender children, point to studies, including those from the Williams Institute at UCLA, that have shown trans kids are nearly 10 times more likely to commit suicide than non-trans children.

(30 Apr 2020, 00:03 )jadefortyfour Wrote: Ra had asked if I might participate

(30 Jun 2020, 17:40 )Like Ra Wrote: Then we have Joan Rowling's story

JK Rowling Wrote:Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?

(11 Aug 2020, 15:50 )Frank Wrote: However, the movie was made 21 years ago by the Wachowski "brothers".

(11 Aug 2020, 15:50 )Frank Wrote: https://web.archive.org/web/200601150618...id/9138137 This provides some insight into what Lily, formerly known as Larry, went through during his/her transition. Some BDSM, crossdressing, dominatrixes, humiliation, hypnosis, and possibly blackmail. It reads like a fictional story.