Comment on Baroness Cass wants to push age for starting transitioning to 25 (NHS Adult Gender Identity Clinics)
floofloof@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
That would make it so much more difficult for people and cause so much needless suffering. I know people who left it late to start transitioning, and some of them struggle with regret that they didn’t do it earlier while their body was still developing. Why should trans women who know as a teen that they want to transition have to suffer a decade of living with a body and an identity they find unbearable every day? How many more people will succumb to despair along the way? It’s cruel, which I suppose is usually the point.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 5 days ago
There are also people who transition at a younger age and regret it. I think 18 is fair game as you can decide basically anything else at that age in the UK, as it’s the age of majority.
AbsolutelyNotSpez@lemmy.world 5 days ago
A) That’s pretty rare (less than %1) and even for that tiny group the main reason for reconsidering are due to discrimination.
B) 18 could maybe be a fair age if blockers were still available, which they aren’t, thanks to bogus NHS claims.
Inform yoursef first before posting stuff like this, especially if it’s about something that absolutely doesn’t concern you in any way.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
I found this article interesting because it discusses the complexity of regret and of estimating rates of regret, and it discusses why the estimates vary so widely:
slate.com/…/transgender-youth-health-care-regret-…
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 5 days ago
I’d trust what the NHS has to think about it over some random on lemmy
It doesn’t work that way- it is something that concerns me, because in the United Kingdom, individuals under 18 years of age don’t have full autonomy. Therefore, under 18s are the concern of those who are on the electoral register. 18 is when we have decided people can make every life altering decision, so the precedent makes sense.
Your attitude may have caused us to mistakenly build an escalator system- where only people who seem to agree with a narrative get a say in the matter. So if someone has questions regarding said matter, they are only given one side of the argument. If they indulge that side, they are only encouraged. So no, nobody should be excluded from this discussion.
My position is simply that the topic is so complicated and nuanced that it’s only fair that we let an individual reach an age of understanding in order to make a life altering and irreversible decision over their personage and body.
paks@feddit.uk 5 days ago
Agreed that you shouldn’t trust random Lemmy comments. But the NHS on this issue is very driven by politics, rather than actual evidence of what provides the best outcomes for people. Here’s a well referenced analysis from a few years ago. And for example, the Dutch Health Council has a very different position than the NHS - I mention that mostly to illustrate that any given national health organisation isn’t inherently right, but I do also believe the Dutch one follows the scientific evidence more closely.
I get where you’re coming from but I fear that by making a point about “regret”, you’ve (perhaps unwittingly) contributed to scaremongering in contradiction to the available evidence (which points to that being only a tiny fraction of trans people). I don’t think it’s unfair to ask you to check your facts before posting and/or acknowledge a correction.
Not providing healthcare is also a life altering and irreversible decision. As others have commented here, the later in life treatment is started, the more irreversible dysphoric changes will happen to that person’s body in the meantime, with generally poorer mental health outcomes. In particular, puberty blockers’ function is to pause those irreversible changes, not to cause changes.
AbsolutelyNotSpez@lemmy.world 5 days ago
There’s no point in talking to you about this subject. Research proper studies (including the many ones debunking the NHS bullshit), read proper LGBT articles on the matter and find out why early medical (not necessarily any kind of surgery) is very important to keep young trans people safe or just stay out of this topic. I lost too many LGBT friends thanks to terrible medical care availability, constant harassment and discrimination, and so on.