For years, criticizing gender reassignment surgeries for minors would unleash a cancel campaign over being “transphobic” and intolerant. The media amplified such attacks. Then the issuance of the Cass Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People led countries to significantly curtail such procedures in Europe. However, many academics in the United States continue to push back on the Cass Report and the effort to curtail transitioning procedures for children. Now, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons has published a position statement recommending that surgeons delay gender reassignment surgeries until a patient is 19-years-old.
The ASPS represents more than 11,000 physicians around the world.
The release notes that:
“Available evidence suggests that a substantial proportion of children with prepubertal onset gender dysphoria experience resolution or significant reduction of distress by the time they reach adulthood, absent medical or surgical intervention. Evidence regarding adolescent onset presentation, which has become increasingly common since the mid-2010s, is more limited but similarly does not allow for confident prediction of long-term trajectories.”
This is an extension of a statement issued last year that added the specific age recommendation.
As many parents have argued, that “resolution” is part of maturation for many children. However, the complaint is that psychologists and other experts push parents to begin gender transitioning while children are still minors, often warning that failure to do so could lead to the death of their children by suicide.
That complaint was at the heart of a case this month that led to the first major verdict against doctors for such surgeries. In New York, a jury awarded $2 million to Fox Varian, 22, over the double mastectomy performed on her while she was a minor. Psychologist Kenneth Einhorn and surgeon Simon Chin were held responsible for failing to follow the standards of care of reasonable doctors.
I have no problems with the ASPS recommendations.
I have no problems with the use of Torts to hold the medical community accountable for
pushing either ideologically or for profit irreversible changes on minors.
But I have serious problems converting this to LAW.
I actually agree with the left that these choices belong with parents and teens, and that doctors and psychologists
participate as advisors.
Professionals should be held accountable when they shift from advisors to advocates.
Btu Governemtn should NOT be dictating in this or many other areas.
Govenrment should NOT be involved.
I strongly suspect that in 99.9% of cases or maybe even all that making these life altering permanent changes by choices is error.
We should NOT bar parents and children from making mistakes.
Bad parents are better than government.
I do not expect the world to be perfect,
I am not utopia.
People will make bad choices in life – sometimes permanently bad choices.
It is governments job to step in ONLY when those choices involve direct harm to others.
I am libertarian.
I think you are stupid if you want to shoot heroin – I am not going to prevent you from doing so.
I think you are stupid if you wish to attempt to surgically or chemically alter your body to that of the other sex – especially as a teen.
As a child – I am going to give your parents a veto over LOTS of potentially bad and especially permanent life choicies.
But I am not going to support Government preventing you from making choices I think are bad.
John, I really enjoy your well thought out and thorough comments but I have to disagree with you here. Frankly I am tired of “libertarians” and their moral high ground virtue signaling and I am afraid I think you crossed over that line with this comment.
You say being a libertarian you have no issue with people shooting heroin and you also say that government shouldn’t get involved with parental decisions made with the advise of counselors. Well what happens if the parent doesn’t agree with the counselor and decides a little hit of heroin will calm the teenager down? Should the evil government get involved?
Going to a less drastic and honestly less rediculous example I ask what if the libertine parents think it is fine for their 12 year old boy to go with daddy to the strip club? Should the evil government get involved? What about a tattoo saying I love Daddy? What about smoking? You might now claim that smoking is dangerous and therefore the child is barred, but isn’t amputating male genitals dangerous?
The problem with libertarians is that they end up arguing for the rediculous without having the ability or the desire to compromise. We see it with Kat Timpf on Gutfeld all the time and her arguments tend to be simple-minded and unserious. You end up being Rand Paul demanding the defeat of the good because it isn’t the perfect.
“We should NOT bar parents and children from making mistakes. Bad parents are better than government… People will make bad choices in life – sometimes permanently bad choices. It is governments job to step in ONLY when those choices involve direct harm to others.”
John, I’m not sure that a parent forcing permanent unnecessary medical procedures onto their children (direct harm to others, as you mention) especially the kind that will result in permanent physical injury and sterilization onto minors who can’t possibly have their own informed consent, is by default, ‘better than government”. As a hypothetical… if the minor child dies on the surgical table for an unnecessary removal of healthy body parts, should the parents have zero legal culpability? Your comments give that impression.
John, states regulate the practice of medicine and medical experiments in many ways. They define the boundaries of what is a permitted medical treatment or experiment and what is not. Many states have decided that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery are not permitted treatments for gender dysphoria in minors, because there is insufficient evidence that they are safe or effective. The Cass Review and the HHS study bear this out.
Legislation is needed because most medical associations have been corrupted by trans ideologues and the financial interests that support them — there is a lot of money to be made through the prescriptions and surgeries and a lifetime of medicalisation. Parents are being told they can have a live son or a dead daughter, so they better consent to “transition.” The state need not allow the medical profession to proceed in this way.
This should have never been a thing. It does not take a whole lot of logic to see that doing this to children is effed up beyond belief. I doubt they would’ve pivoted if they didn’t have to, just as with full-term abortions, and they can go blow. The credibility is not coming back, they are just covering their butts now that lawsuits are a thing, but we remember exactly who they are and what they advocated with enthusiasm. Pathetic and depraved, we have not forgotten the past six years and all that what was espoused during that time.
Teachers, school administrators, school boards and teacher’s unions that conceal a child’s gender dysphoria from parents should also sued for negligence and be held financially liable. If childhood gender dysphoria is considered to be a medical diagnosis, the actions of teachers and administrators to conceal this information from the child’s parents may also be criminally liable for practicing medicine without a license. This will only stop when some of them, especially the teacher’s unions, are successfully sued into oblivion.
. Of all that people have endured through these Obama times, the LGBT group takes the gold medal. IMO
And we were all looking forward to a revival of Castrato Music…….NOT!
Too bad the beautiful voices of Vienna Choir Boys have to compete with that history.
Finally. Someone/s have a degree of common sense. Another nail in the woke leftist coffin.
(1) I agree with the delay in gender-transforming surgeries and treatments, but for a reason not discussed: the underdevelopment of research into the role of chemical and environmental elements in creating or enhancing gender dysphoria and sexual identity, – especially endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Reread that sentence.
But don’t focus on my words. Simply use your search engine for words like “hormone disruption and gender dysphoria” or “EDCs and gender identity” or “gender fluidity and hormone disruption” or “chemical exposure and gender/sexual ambiguity,” etc. Even RFK Jr. (for all his medical “whims”) mentioned atrazine (an herbicide frequently found in U.S. drinking water supplies) and its gender-altering powers in an interview years ago.
(2) The increase in LGBTQ incidence in recent decades is well-documented, and goes well beyond simply the freedom to “come out” or engage in transgender dress/conduct. Without looking into causation, and whether or not the ^above (1) plays any role, ill-informed parents, the media, and Hollywood all play roles in “supporting” sexual ambiguity and transgenderism/LGBTQ in general. “Heated Rivalry” is the hot ticket this year. Added to this is the nascent lucrative medical market factor. Also, delay in transition treatment has been identified by some medical professionals as creating more complication and unnecessary surgeries if not treated pre-pubescently. This denies the role of eventual pubescent hormonal production and natural reversal/correction.
DON’T READ MY COMMENT ANY FURTHER UNLESS PREPARED FOR FRANK REFERENCES.
(3) Several years ago, a friend showed me a porn magazine that featured nude males with fully-developed genitalia, but who also had Dolly-Parton-like breast implants and were wearing bright red lipstick and mascara/false lashes, etc. It seems like, with all the overplay of “sex” in media and print over the years, especially visual imagery,-it is taking more and more “variations on a theme” for one-stop shopping these days!
yours truly, lin/linden/linette/linus/lincoln/linda/lindsey/linwood
Your points are interesting.
I have a broader and less specific one, but one that I believe is the most damning.
For most of human history every female had to produce 6-8 children to have reasonable odds that two would survive to adulthood.
We now believe that Homo Sapiens is likely nearly 900,000 years old.
Initial conditions were so bad it took 90% of human history to reach a population of several hundred thousand.
the whole of humanity was less than 5M 10,000 years ago.
If any consequential portion of the population was not reproductive for any reason or for all possibly reasons,
Homo Sapiens would have gone extinct long ago.
20th century max estimates homosexuals were 5%, for trans is 0.3%
I believe those estimates are too large because if they were true throughout history humans would have gone extinct.
The LGBTQ community likes to point out historical examples or examples in other animals.
These are either exaggerated in significance or most homosexuals – either in humans or other animals are actually bisexual.
Otherwise the species does not survive.
The left CONSTANTLY ignores the fact that nature is BRUTAL,
As Hobbes noted life in nature is “nasty,short and brutish”
The success, and prosperity of humans is unique in nature.
I have no personal beliefs regarding homosexuality or trans sexuality – beyond that it MUST be fairly rare for humanity to survive.
I have no idea if homosexuality or trans sexuality is a choice, genetic, a mental disorder. Whether it is immutable or not.
My suspicion is that like many many other things – sexuality distributes on a bell curve.
That there is almost no such thing as a homosexual or trans sexual, just a spectrum of people with a varying ratio of same sex and opposite sex attraction, and varying ration of identity with their biological sex.
That it it partly immutable and partly choice, and that almost no one is entirely straight, homosexual or trans.
But that is my GUESS – we do not have any biological test for sexual orientation, or sexual identity.
I think the survival of the species proves that immutably non reproducing humans are extremely rare.
and my belief is that sexuality is sufficiently fluid that we should not be making irreversible life choices as children.
The latter appears to be the conclusions of a growing body of medical professionals today.
Trans sexuality and homosexuality are real but MUST be rare.
While the extreme sexual fluidity of the past decade and a half is a fad – like the hula hoop.
Lest anyone be mislead to believe that the ASPS has somehow rediscovered their moral bearings (or even scientific foundations), the timing of the announcement hard on the heals of the New York jury verdict (and well after a full year of the final Cass report) tells the real story – its all about money. Notice also this is just a recommendation. Members in good standing may still engage in the barbarism of mutilating children. The ASPS is figuratively “washing their hands”.
Foster change! Don’t wait for the guys that make $$$ off these procedure to come around to an ethical decision process! That is just a facade.
Sue the pants off of every physician, every counselor, every facility that carried out these procedures. And, lest we forget, EVERY teacher/school administrator that groomed these child victims. Let the real games begin!
Foster change! Don’t wait for the guys that make $$$ off these procedure to come around to an ethical decision process! That is just a facade.
Sue the pants off of every physician, every counselor, every facility that carried out these procedures. And, lest we forget, EVERY teacher/school administrator that groomed these child victims. Let the real games begin!