Compromise idea for sex change hormones in young teens

Right now there is a big controversy about young teens taking hormone blockers and sex change hormones. They are starting these children on them as young as 10 or 11.

I have a compromise idea, for you all to consider, which I think is not too extremely unreasonable.

Allow the child to be put on low doses of hormone blockers. Not enough to totally block their adolescent development, but enough to reduce their gender-specific development traits a little bit.
An independent party could subjectively assess the appearance of the parents and allow the child to go on slightly higher doses of the hormones if the parents have above or below average gender-specific features.

This way a child of a certain gender who does not want their body to develop the traits characteristic of that gender could reduce the expression of those traits.
This would put them in a better position to be able to make a decision later when they reached adulthood. If they wanted to undergo a gender transition later, their body would not have formed too much like the gender they don't want to be. But if they later decided they did not want to transition into a different gender, their body would also not be too messed up.

Females could be given very low doses of androgens and testosterone, to shape their body to be just a little more masculine. Males however would not be given any estrogen. The reason for that is that they could always go on estrogen later if they wanted to develop breasts.

The idea would be to keep the gender uncertain child in a more "androgynous" state, so that whatever decision they want to make later will be possible.

I think it is somewhat cruel to force a child to develop strongly gender specific traits in adolescence if they don't want to. I don't think it is too unreasonable to allow the child to keep their body in a more gender androgynous state.

This is a compromise because the goal would be to try to prevent or reduce any irreversible gender-specific changes happening to the child's body as they enter adolescence.

This will allow them to be in a good position to become either gender that they choose later, when they are old enough to make the choice. A person, especially a teen, with a more androgynous body will still not have too much difficulty passing for either gender that they wish.

A child born a boy that wanted to be a girl would still have to let their body develop into a boy, but only a little bit. Their body wouldn't have to develop fully to a boy in the typical natural way. Maybe the aim could be to block 50 or 60% of their male hormones.
A child born a girl that wanted to be a boy could totally block their development of female-specific traits. Maybe they would only be allowed to take 30% the level of hormones in a typical adolescent male.
If they later decide they do not want to transition into a different gender, then not too much permanent developmental harm has been done. But if they do later still want to transition into the other gender, then they are in a much better position to do so.

 

How is your proposal any different to what is ALREADY happening?

 

OP, I want you to explain why this should be done except for kids who are starting puberty too early and are cis.

 

I'm sorry, I don't understand the question. Could you try to be more specific and elaborate?

 

Sure. Puberty blockers aren't just for trans kids. They're for cis kids too who are starting puberty much too soon. My question is, assuming that being trans isn't the issue, then why not give cis kids fewer puberty blockers as well even though we know what they need?

 

Kaz can certainly speak for themselves, but there was nothing within their posts that led me to believe that they were at all dismissing current uses of the blockers outside of the transgender context. Think of it similar to discussing the various other medical uses of Viagra, and then being called out on ignoring the use of the drug for ED. Just because they didn't address the standard use didn't mean that they were seeking to no longer use the blockers as such. They were only addressing the use within a specific context.

 

Um... I don't know where to begin with that. Hormone blockers are not an appropriate solution for kids who are starting puberty too soon.
Unless you are talking about in extreme situations (like starting at age 5) but that is extremely rare.

The kids with this rare medical problem would get hormone blockers in this case only to try to keep them on the normal course of development.
What you might not understand is that entering puberty too soon can carry certain medical complications (although they are mostly not too extremely severe), and not entering puberty during adolescence may make it too late to ever develop in certain ways after that. Both of these would cause irreversible effects.

If you want to get very philosophical, I suppose we could conjecture that the child might for some reason be opposed to ever wanting to go through puberty and undergo physical developmental transformation into an adult.

I totally see the analogy you are attempting to make here, but I don't think it's a good one.

 

Oh, by the way, I just find it so cute and amusing how you used the non-gendered pronoun to reference to me, a pun in this thread that is about transgender issues and keeping kids in a gender neutral ambiguous state. That was a subtle pass not a lot of people reading this would get.

 

Right. So what I'm trying to do is set up the idea that if we're worried about puberty starting too soon, why would you reduce the efficacy of puberty blockers in trans kids but not cis kids? Which should then lead to the answer of; being trans is the issue (relies on a naturalistic fallacy). And since it's a bigoted opinion, we can reject it on said bigotry.

Oh no I understand completely. That's my point. Cis kids who start puberty too soon will undergo potentially serious trauma and harm. So too will trans kids. Why then would you reduce the efficacy of one but not the other?

 

Look, if a child with a medical disorder strongly objected to taking hormone blockers, I would take the same approach and use a compromise, to still allow them to develop sooner but not too soon. The same principle would apply.
Otherwise, we would attempting to make the child develop in a normal and natural way. But it would be mainly about putting them on a normal timeline of development. Because if they are very far off that timeline, then we all understand that something is wrong with the child.

For trans kids, this is not the same. Something is not "wrong" with them in the same sense that something is wrong with a child with very abnormal development.
We cannot even be sure they will want to stick with their decision, which is the whole point of withholding hormone blockers and hormones.

We have to compare the state that the child is in to the state the child could be in with a course of treatment.
Let's ignore the word "need" here because that just obfuscates the actual issue.

Making a child like 99% of other children would not be unreasonable. Especially when it puts them in any way in better health, either now or in the future. (And I am talking about physical health here) There could also be some social reasons for wanting a child to grow along the lines of the normal course of development, but I admit that this is a weaker reason. It is not unreasonable to grant a child's wish if it is the normal course of development. The normal natural is usually regarded as giving the best outcome. So in this situation there is no need to withhold those hormone blockers or hormones.

In the case of a transgender, it is more complicated. The current state they are in is already natural, though they seek to be in a different state, which is kind of natural in some way (for the other gender) but is also not (since the transformation will not exactly turn them into the other gender in every way). The argument here is much weaker, since they were already in a natural state to begin with. Many people would regard there being nothing physically wrong or unusual about the child. So it is more difficult to justify resorting to extreme measures.

But the big issue is that we can not really be sure that the child will want to stick to the decision they make. Some of this is about protecting the child. We don't want them to start a transformation that they will later want to reverse when much of the transformation they have undergone will be irreversible.

This also isn't really about turning the child into the normal other gender, but rather it is a little bit of a different species. What the child is being turned into isn't exactly one of the genders or the other, but rather something that is in some ways a little bit of something in between.
We can argue about the normative value of being "normal" here, but I believe it becomes at least somewhat ethically problematic to argue for transformation of a child from something normal into something that is abnormal.

You can see how this isn't exactly equivalent to a child with hormone development issues.

 

Because if they do not start development at the appropriate time, in some ways it could be too late.

Right now the medical technology does not really exist to make a person fully go through the gender specific development of puberty later in their life if their normal development during adolescence had been prevented with hormone blockers.

It's the same for non-gender-specific development, although that would not be an issue here with a trans child.

 

So what you're saying is... we should have trans kids go through a potentially traumatizing puberty because it's "normal"? Naturalistic fallacy aside and really messed up implications for how kids should understand puberty, cis kids can potentially go through a traumatizing puberty as well if they start it too soon, and that's natural. Their body is doing what's natural. Your argument is simply bigoted because it downplays the experiences of trans kids. Your argument rests on the idea that it's 'normal' for trans kids to go through puberty because their trauma isn't worth being treated for. That's just textbook bigotry.

 

I understand the issue of "naturalistic fallacy". But trying to be naturalistic is not completely without its merits.

Think about in most situations. Very rarely is promoting someone into being natural and normal ever a form of abuse. It is regarded as good goal, and not without good reason. It's a "safe" choice, has been well tried and tested.

Even the transgender. Almost all of the time what they are aiming for (at least mentally in ideal) is not to be something abnormal but rather to be normal - but just the other gender. If they could, they would want to be the normal version of the other gender.

 

How long do you think puberty blockers last?

 

Yeah so I have nonbinary friends who dispute that claim completely. And even then, that's not a good answer. It's natural to be hungry if people don't eat, so starve them? You have to smuggle in other arguments to justify something as ridiculous as that claim, which is what I'm accusing you of doing here.

 

Well, first off we have to specify a little bit. The issue is not them going through puberty. The issue is them going through gender-specific changes in puberty.
Can we agree on that?

I agree it is somewhat ethically problematic to force them to undergo something they don't want to go through. But it is also ethically problematic to allow it not to happen. Either of those choices will lead to irreversible effects. Which is why I suggested a compromise somewhere in between those two choices.

I am okay if a girl wants to avoid the development of breasts, because she could always grow those much later if she wanted. That is not something that is irreversible. Similarly, it is probably not good for a boy to be allowed to grow breasts, because that is going to be somewhat difficult to reverse if he later does not like it, and it would leave obvious scar marks if he wanted to have it reversed.

I think growing breasts against one's will would be more traumatic than not growing breasts when one wants them... but knowing it would not be too difficult to be able to grow them later.

 

Why not just remove all reproductive related organs at birth and call it good. We can reproduce in test tubes as the government deems necessary. .....after all, we are just worker drones here at the service of the "elite" who actually knows better than all of us what is best. Boys can be girls and girls can be boys.......just a lot of uneccesary confusion.

 

It's my understanding that if a boy goes on puberty blockers for more than 2 or 3 years it will lead to reduced male appendage size. If the puberty blockers last for 5 or 6 years it likely could lead to permanent micropenis which will never be able to reach normal size.

Of course the developmental growth of the male appendage is probably not the only body part to be affected.

 

1.I'm going to say there isn't a meaningful distinction in this case but I see the point you're trying to make. As I understand how puberty works, you can't have one without the other.
2. Prove that second claim.
3. And that's my point completely. Why are you saying trans men should go through a puberty they don't align with when there will be long term negative consequences?

 

I'm trying to propose a compromise. As you can see, both sides seem to be displeased and take issue with that.

So often, the two sides can never mentally bring themselves to a compromise on anything, and as a result the law often suddenly swings from one extreme to the other extreme, all or nothing.

 

And how long do you think trans kids need to decide if they're trans or not?

 

There could be long term negative consequences if they don't, and later change their minds.

My compromise proposal tries to minimize the chances and level of negative consequences in either eventuality.

 

There will be long term consequences. I can pretty much guarantee it.

 

I personally think they need a longer period of time than just reaching 18, to be able to be more sure, but reaching 18 is when they get legal choices over their own body.

This compromise proposal would still put them in a good position by the age of 18 if they still desired to transition.
Maybe not the absolute most optimal position, but still a fairly good one.

 

And so we should try to mitigate those irreversible long-term consequences, preparing for either eventuality that could happen.

Look, even if the child later goes on to have a sex change, this will still provide some benefit to them if they ever later change their mind and want to transition back.