I'm delighted to see an official body call the current transgender propaganda what it is.
The American College of Pediatricians warns educators and legislators that “a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex” is dangerous for children.
In a strongly worded statement issued today, the professional association of pediatricians says “a person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking.” It describes such thinking as problem that exists in the mind and not the body and “it should be treated as such.”
. . .
The American College of Pediatricians will release a full statement this summer. The statement released today explains, “human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: ‘XY’ and ‘XX’ are genetic markers of health — not genetic markers of a disorder.”
The statement goes on:
The exceedingly rare disorders of sex development (DSDs), including but not limited to testicular feminization and congenital adrenal hyperplasia, are all medically identifiable deviations from the sexual binary norm, and are rightly recognized as disorders of human design. Individuals with DSDs do not constitute a third sex.
The statement points out that such gender confusion should be treated as a psychological disorder called “gender dysphoria” and is “a recognized mental disorder in the most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-V).”
The group is most concerned about the regimen of drugs that are given to children to block puberty. “Children who use puberty blockers to impersonate the opposite sex will require cross-sex hormones in late adolescence. Cross-sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen) are associated with dangerous health risks including but not limited to high blood pressure, blood clots, stroke and cancer.”
Rates of suicide among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex change reassignment surgery are “twenty times greater” than the rest of the population even in such trans-friendly places as Sweden.
The doctors argue that “Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse.”
There's more at the link.
I couldn't agree more. With very few exceptions (less than 1% of the general population, as far as I'm aware), one's chromosomes are either XX or XY. That, and that alone, determines a human being's physical gender, irrespective of any psychological or psychiatric issues one may have. The latter should be treated as the disorders they are, rather than pandered to surgically or by hormonal treatments - political correctness be damned!
Peter
Agreed! It's time to stop the PC and pandering...
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't trumpet any support of this organization just yet. They're a very small offset of the American Academy of Pediatrics (<200 members), and are anti-gun, among other things.
ReplyDeleteThis group formed in response to the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsing same-sex adaption in 2002. They're explicitly religious and socially conservative.
ReplyDeleteThey make things way to simple.
ReplyDeleteGender is NOT just a thing determined by XX and XY chromosomes.
There have been (not representative by to small a test group) studies where they examined the brains of deceased people, who donated their bodies to science.
Among them where a few men who professed being transgendered.
And surprise, the brains where structurally more female than male.
It is known that all embryos (regardless of gender) begin as female and later certain hormones (triggered by the XY-chromosome) change it to male structures.
True TG is almost always a problem in these hormones (during pregnancy) that either give a XX child male structures (too many of the hormones) or a XY child female structures (too few of the hormones).
Of course it is rarely possible to discern these "deformities" until the brain can be examined (usually after death), and I would think it hard to definitely place the "brain gender" before puperty. The "roles" of girl or boy are mostly impressed on the child.
Wow. Be accurate when quoting your pseudoscience, please. When you couple your delusions with deliberate misstatements of the results of the pseudoscientific studies you pretend support your delusions and delusional justifications for mutilating the bodies of children you do yourself and your cause no favors. Granted, your cause is so abhorrent that there are few things you could say or do that wouldn't be a detriment to that same horrific cause, but still...if I had as little credibility and dignity left as you and those like you have, I'd cling to those ragged threads as tightly as I could. To each his/her/its own, I suppose. ...Good day, sir/xir/insert nonsense here.
DeleteI'm a simple person. They are not old enough to pick their bedtimes. Much less...
ReplyDeleteMy heart goes out to the men, women, and children who suffer from this mental disorder. It's good to see at least one group stand up against the horrible abuses that are going on. I don't understand why so many would rather celebrate the disease rather than using all that passion and energy to find a cure--or to at least understand the disorder well enough to find some coping mechanisms in the meantime. Going along with the delusion doesn't ease the pain--rather it allows it to fester and grow.
ReplyDeleteCan we please have some compassion for true hermaphrodites? They need all the help they can get from the medical profession. This is not a mental disorder, they are anatomically mixed-sex.
ReplyDeleteGender dysphoria is, indeed, a mental disorder. I don't think anyone is lacking compassion for true hermaphrodites. (Which are very few in number compared to the number of people claiming to be transgender.) Either disorder (mental or biological) would be heck to have to deal with. It isn't a light load they're carrying.
ReplyDeleteBut when we're talking about parents whose children (some as young as six that I've seen reported) adopt the sex their child feels they are truly--and insists that everyone else acquiesce to this distorted reality--I'm glad people are finally starting to call it what it is: abuse. It may be done lovingly, and with the best of intentions, but that doesn't change the outcome. If a child were plagued with hallucinations, there would be more than a few words said if their parents not only pandered to those hallucinations, but fought to shame and get laws passed that gave those hallucinations credence. Reality *will* intervene, and it doesn't really care about our feelings. Yet instead, we have parents hailed and celebrated for going along with their child's whims or genuine mental disorder. And anyone who dares to question this--or point out that other people have rights and feelings too--gets called names and shamed.
It's interesting that John Hopkins--who I believe pioneered in sex change operations--no longer offer them because they saw that it didn't really help with the depression, suicide rates, or problems faced with people who have gender dysphoria. Biologically--except in the rare cases of hermaphrodites--you are either male or female. It doesn't matter what operations you have or how many hormones you pump through your body. If people cared as much about these people--especially children whose brains are still immature--as much as they say they do, they would be seeking to find a cure, not distorting reality that will eventually snap back in place.
Even a monster like Stalin spoke truths upon occasion. (...The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.)
ReplyDeleteEven if this group is not creditable they spoke a truth. Feeding hormones to AnyBody has consequences; be they adults or children. If the hormones are not medically necessary to restore that individual to good health then it is malpractice on the part of the physician and abuse by the parent.
If it's a mental disorder to believe that one should have body parts amputated, why isn't gender dysphoria? They're both beliefs that one should have body parts removed and/or added in order to be "complete." Yet one gets medical treatment and counseling, while the other gets encouragement and applause. Why?
ReplyDeleteIt's really quite simple, really. The "homosexual lobby" (read: liberal homosexual movement) has adopted gender dysphoria as part of itself, because it de facto involves culturally abnormal sex. They've taken a medical issue and turned it into a societal, cultural, and yes, political issue, in order to bolster their own position. Since gender dysphoria IS a medical/mental issue, they get some of the cover from "I'm not to blame for this!" attitude from mental illness; they deny that it actually IS a mental illness, because that would taint them by association. "I was born this way!" is their oxymoronic battle-cry, for gender dysphoric people were NOT born as the opposite gender from reality; the simple presence of a Y chromosome (or lack thereof) is proof enough of this. But by claiming dysphoria is genetic, they legitimize their own claim of genetic homosexuality.
Regardless of whether or not one believes homosexuality is a sin and therefore wrong, this whole gender-identity thing is so much objective bovine excrement. It's demonstrably false under scientific definitions, and it's only a "thing" in order to bolster a political and social movement.
To "MadMcAl":
Brain wiring is as much a development and training issue as it is genetic. Pathways and patterns in the brain that are used more often get stronger. You can literally "train your brain." Culture has a BIG part in this, as does one's own personal beliefs. Hook up someone from the Orient on a brain scanner, someone from the West, and someone from the Middle East, and test how they react to basic concepts such as marriage, family, and morals. They will all show different brain activity in response to these concepts. Or look at language skills and brain patterns; someone who has been learning new languages all their life and is reasonably literate will respond differently than someone from "the hood" who thinks "bae" is a real word.
That some "transgendered" people's brains react more similarly to the opposite gender than their own is simply an indicator of how they have trained their brain to think, not of any sort of genetic disposition.
Judy has hit on another good point: male and female bodies react differently to male and female hormones, especially in the brain chemistry. Attempting to force a genetically male individual into a physically and hormonally female body has more and greater repercussions than those visible. Doing so from an early age only magnifies these repercussions. We've seen how crazy people on psychotropic drugs since childhood can act; what does forcing a biologically incompatible brain chemistry upon them do? We don't know, and it's socially, culturally, and morally reprehensible to do it anyway heedless of the long-term consequences.
ReplyDeleteFrom the OP: "Rates of suicide among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex change reassignment surgery are “twenty times greater” than the rest of the population even in such trans-friendly places as Sweden."
ReplyDeleteThe study this comes from has been quoted a lot lately, so I'm glad to have a chance to challenge how it has been represented.
The study is available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/ . Since it compares post-transition transpeople to the general population, rather than to transpeople who do not transition, the authors warn that "this study design sheds new light on transsexual persons' health after sex reassignment. It does not, however, address whether sex reassignment is an effective treatment or not." It's mistaken to conclude from this study that transition is more harmful than the alternative, just as it would be mistaken to assert that shall-issue concealed carry promotes murder because the US has higher rates of murder than various European countries. The populations are not comparable, and the correct comparison is the population, before and after the intervention, compared with a similar population who did not receive the intervention. However, as the authors say, they were not attempting to perform this comparison.
That aside, consider the data from the study, at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/table/pone-0016885-t002/ . Indeed, transpeople show worse results across a variety of categories -- all-cause mortality, suicide attempts, crime rates, etc. -- than the general population. However, the adjusted hazard ratios for the group that transitioned in 1973-88 and the group that transitioned in 1989-2003 are provided separately. In every category, the 1989-2003 group did better. In fact, 1989-2003 adjusted hazard ratios of all-cause mortality, suicide attempts, and crime rates do not show a statistically significant difference from the general population (they all include 1 in their 95% confidence interval).
Sweden, and just about anywhere else, in 1988 was not trans-friendly by western 2016 standards. Transpeople were more likely than now to be ostracized, to be expected as a condition of transition to cut off contact with everyone from their past -- who would often cut them off anyway -- and to have great difficulty finding work. Annihilating one's social connections will hurt one in all sorts of ways, and their results show it. By 2003 Swedish, and all Western, society was better toward transpeople, with better results for people transitioning then. Things have improved a great deal from 2003 to 2016, too. Results would likely be better today, based on the improvement the 1988-2003 group already showed.
@Anonymous 4:34 PM: "It's interesting that John Hopkins--who I believe pioneered in sex change operations--no longer offer them because they saw that it didn't really help with the depression, suicide rates, or problems faced with people who have gender dysphoria."
Johns Hopkins were not the sole pioneers (they were being done outside the US before they got going in the US. Lynn Conway, of Mead-Conway fame, went to Mexico in 1968 for her surgery, when the Johns Hopkins program was still experimental), and stopped offering them because of the lifelong vendetta of Paul McHugh against transpeople. The state of the art progressed elsewhere.
@Kermit: "Judy has hit on another good point: male and female bodies react differently to male and female hormones, especially in the brain chemistry. Attempting to force a genetically male individual into a physically and hormonally female body has more and greater repercussions than those visible."
Indeed, which makes it very interesting that many transpeople who take hormones of their identified gender report feeling better, mentally speaking, than they ever had before once they start on them, and feeling much worse if they forget to take them. (I'm not sure if this has been subjected to double-blind testing, though.)