Ongoing puberty suppression should be an available treatment option for non-binary ad

[Freija]

Puberty blockers at 11. I'm out of words.

The hypothetical scenario in the OP involved a subject born female or in today's PC parlance, assigned (or by genital inspection determined to be) female at birth.

In females, puberty usually starts between ages 8 and 13 and in males, between 9 and 15 with the averages somewhere in the middle. Gonadotropin releasing hormone agonists (GNrHa) commonly referred to puberty blockers are prescribed for a variety of conditions such as endometriosis in women and precocious (early) puberty in children. At puberty, the pituitary gland releases a chemical signal, the gonadotropin releasing hormone, that tells the gonads to start ramping up the production of estrogen and testosterone so they are effective in pausing puberty in both males and females. GNrH agonists simply block this signal from being sent. If they are discontinued, puberty proceeds naturally. If puberty has already happened, they have no effect on secondary sex characteristics.

In that case, in MTF (male-to-female) trans folks undergoing medical transition are given testosterone blockers (anti-androgens) that work by either preventing the testicles from producing testosterone or prevent the body from absorbing it. Male and female bodies produce both estrogens and androgens in widely different ratios. Testosterone is vastly more potent than estrogen. In FTM trans folks, testosterone injections alone are enough to counter the effects of endogenous estrogens.

Getting that of the way, I realize doesn't address your concerns but I will delve into those later on after I’ve addressed a few other comments.

I think puberty suppression is just wrong and unethical. If you want to be any gender other than how you were born, you have to wait til you are 18 years old. And I would fully support you then, but not before then.

This is for both you and Beez. What is so magical about 18? When did you know you were a boy? Were you more sure at 18 than you were at 8 or 9? One thing about trans kids that most people fail to realize is that simply dealing with this serious of a problem causes most of them go grow up emotionally earlier than kids that don’t have to deal with such adult issues at a young age. Many of them are surprisingly mature and fully aware of the situation they are in.

Authentic and properly diagnosed transgender children are just as sure about their gender as non-transgender children.

Transgender Kids Show Consistent Gender Identity Across Measures
Transgender children sense their gender identities at young ages
Young Trans Children Know Who They Are

Puberty blockers are not prescribed on demand and by recommendation of the Endrocrine Society, not until Tanner Stage 2 of pubertal development. In the majority of cases cross-gender identified children and their families have been under professional observation and counseling by a multi-disciplinary team of physicians, psychologists and psychiatrists for several years prior to the use of puberty blockers which in all cases must be wholly driven by the child’s desire to take them, not that of the parents as many want so strongly to believe. This course of treatment is not forced on anyone by any measure. Without insurance in the US, puberty blocking injections run between $1200 to $2000 per month with a 12 to 14 month implant in the neighborhood of $18,000 to $20,000.

Knowing they are available, the kids themselves are the ones begging for them as the fear and thought of developing their natal secondary sex characteristics is a horrifically depressing nightmare for them. For those of you with daughters, how would they have felt developing deep voices, facial hair, an Adam’s apple, muscles and a masculine bone structure and frame or those with boys developing breasts, curves, wide hips and an ass like Kim Kardashian? I cannot picture having happy kids in this scenario.

Resources:
Hormone treatment to halt puberty in transgender adolescents is safe and effective
Puberty blockers linked to lower suicide risk for transgender people
Puberty suppression in transgender children and adolescents (attached below)
Impact of Early Medical Treatment for Transgender Youth (attached below)
Gender Development in Transgender Preschool Children (attached below)

To me what would be unethical and abusive would be to allow these deeply unwanted changes causing immeasurable and seriously irreparable emotional harm when they could have been prevented from happening in the first place. I hate to drag it out because it’s almost become a meme but if one wants to put a reason on why so many trans kids and adults self-harm, think about or attempt suicide? This is one of them as once natal puberty has taken place, reversing those changes is very expensive, very painful and often unsatisfactory leading to a low quality of satisfaction with life and difficulty fitting in as their experienced gender.  

Now before I go further, I realize even the concept of cross-gender identified transgender prepubescent and adolescent children is contentious and even I have several mixed feelings about this. Extreme cases of severe and clear cut gender dysphoria in young children is extraordinarily rare and probably more so than stories in the media and pop culture would like us to believe but they do in fact exist. My concern is weeding out the wheat from the chaff so to speak and think the diagnostic criteria needs to be reined in a little (or maybe a lot)?

Young transgender kids do not receive any medical treatments other than counseling, observation and therapy at least until the beginning of puberty and only then after exhibiting persistent, consistent and insistent behavior and desire to live and be seen as the opposite sex. Many of these kids end up with some hefty mental health issues such as depression and anxiety to the point of being uncooperative and non-functional and in those cases, a social transition strategy is employed to ease their distress. Social transition is often accompanied with a change of name and pronouns, hair style and manner of dress, not drugs or surgeries.

I get that there are concerns. Many clinicians have them as well. Puberty blockers are known to have an effect on bone growth and density and the report if they can cause cognitive deficiencies is still out and controversial. Adults on long term use of GNrH analogues for treatment of other illnesses have reported serious side effects including death but these have not been reported in trans youth. Generally in the treatment for trans youth, blockers are only prescribed for a few years when they are either discontinued or cross-sex hormones are begun. Under the NHS in the UK, adolescents are not allowed to start cross-sex hormones until age 16. In the US, they are often started after several years of blockers at 14 or 15. Anecdotal as it may be, I know a 25 y/o young woman that started on blockers at 12, estrogen at 14/15 and had sex reassignment surgery shortly before turning 18. She is one of the most intelligent and together people I have ever known.

Regarding the risks, consider we are talking about children with severe problems often causing impairment and dysfunction, which not a popular concept I'm likely to get reamed for, is the epitome of illness and the risks of doing nothing are usually higher than doing something. If a kid says they are transgender, take them to the doctor.

I suppose they could after the age of 18 select to take Puberty Suppressions and go to the philippines and other countries and become a ladyboy.

In Thailand, and some other Asian countries, "ladyboy" is the preferred term which is the English translation for Kathoey but in most western cultures, ladyboy is considered a derogatory slur for trans people. In the Philippines they are called baklâs and are considered a third gender.

In those countries, hormones are readily available without prescription and many begin taking them young, usually by around age 12. Ladyboy culture in those societies is more or less accepted and their beauty pageants are a really big deal. Many of them are quite beautiful and besides the ladyboy bars in Bangkok, many of them live regular lives as normal women.

I would appreciate if you would share some more light on the subject because I come from a simpler  time and place . I had a few gay friends in the past when I was younger , non sexual friendships, and that is about all I know. Heck, I have good buddies at work who are homophobic as hell and it's funny to mess with them.

I'm not ignorant, just maybe not fulling really willing to understand.

Thank you @kdog for your interest and willingness to evaluate more information about this. It is appreciated. Here’s a few more tidbits. (well okay, here’s an overload of info)

* Many people associate being transgender or transsexual with homosexuality when they’re really not in the same category. The approved modern transgender activist narrative even denies there’s any connection between being trans and a person’s sexuality at all whereas certain unpopular psychological theorists and sexologists insist there is absolutely a connection. I won’t go into detail but somewhere in the ballpark of 50% or more of adult MTF trans women with late onset gender dysphoria are sexually attracted to the opposite sex i.e. as transgender women they are interested in women and become pseudo lesbians. Personally, I think the way we express our gender is one of the means we advertise our sexuality and that gender and sexuality are intertwined and or overlap.

* Somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% of the trans community are what are referred to as having late onset adult gender dysphoria with the average age of transition around 40. Those considered to have early onset GD range from young children up to mid-20s with the average age of transition between 18 and 20. In the past these groups were categorized as having primary (classic/traditional) or secondary (pseudo) transsexualism. Obviously these distinctions have been obliterated by the transgender mafia as it paints the majority in a poor light and is offensive.

* Only about 12% to 20% of transgender women that transition to live full time as women have what is euphemistically called “bottom surgery” AKA sex reassignment surgery (SRS) or gender confirmation surgery (GCS/GRS) also crudely and inaccurately called in the past, a sex change operation but that doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t live normal lives or that they’re men in a dress running around and using their penises. Take conservative YouTuber Blaire White for example. She’s very pretty and feminine and engaged to be married to her straight boyfriend and has made a video saying she isn’t interested in having SRS. Higher numbers are publicized but by my calculation adding up all the surgeons who have performed SRS since the 1950s and how many surgeries each of them is reported to have done, there aren’t more than maybe 50,000 people in history that have actually had a “sex change”.

* Another concept proposed by the pioneering [/url]Dr. Harry Benjamin is that of “psychosexual inversion” that I almost prefer to gender dysphoria when discussing young trans children which is a simplified concept for being from birth of “having the brain/mind of a girl in a boy’s body” and vice versa as some of these kids are so completely like the opposite sex in every measure.

* Another point of some debate is that the majority of those with early onset transsexualism, that is those with complete psychosexual inversion, are attracted to the same biological sex or in other words they grow up like normal girls/women and are attracted to men. This group is rarely seen publicly. Rather than desiring to change culture and society demanding to be accepted as transgender women, they want nothing more than to be quietly blend into society and disappear as “normal” women and men.

* Most people think the LGBQxyz community is one big happy rainbow family sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya which is how things are promoted for solidarity and political clout but is often far from the actual case. Many lesbians don’t like transgender women with penises invading their space and many gay men don’t like trans women because it reduces the number of available men that might otherwise be gay. Behind the scenes, it’s a shitshow.

I could keep going but nobody is going to read this anyway. I’d be happy to answer any questions I can on this subject. Sorry for getting carried away.

Is there a prize for the longest post ever?