A first principle of maintenance (and in my opinion is this applies to medicine as well) is that "run to failure" / "do nothing" is often the appropriate action.
If the commonly cited statistics are correct and 60-90% of people who question their gender before the end of puberty may end up adhering to their biologically assigned gender by the end of puberty[1][2], and if it isn't conclusive that surgical intervention is clinically helpful[3], and there are high rates of complications reported in current studies of reassignment surgery[4] you're taking something that might resolve on its own, taking major interventions that might not even help, and are very likely to have complications.
That being said, the science is horribly done on all sides from what I saw (the data I could find was not done well at all and did not ask the right questions to come to a useful conclusion), so all the above assumptions could be moved significantly by better science.
Am I saying not to support your kids if they think they're the opposite gender from their biological sex? No, of course not. For one thing, even if the data shows that 60-90% of people stop questioning their gender, that says that 10-40% of people continue to. We also know that a massive % of transgender individuals attempt suicide and a large % of them succeed, and part of that is because they don't have support from their families.
I think it's prudent, however, to hold off, and at the very least allow the kid to grow up and see who they grow into before making life-altering choices that may have complications. First do no harm.
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25231780/
[3] https://www.cms.gov/medicare-coverage-database/view/ncacal-decision-memo.aspx?proposed=Y&NCAId=282
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
In many states, they do not need parental consent to convince a depressed teenager to undergo surgery. Clinics lie and hide this from the parents, because there is a lot of $$ in these procedures
If the parent finds out and tries to stop it, its child abuse, and the state takes the kid away.
Woke states are hellholes.
masterofballs@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
I won't live in a state like that.