A study that reveals gender-confused young people mostly grow out of it and England’s ban on puberty blockers are both hailed as ‘vindication’ by ‘detransitioners’ – people who have reverted to their gender of birth after making the transition to adolescence.
Detransitioners told the Post they are living proof of a major study in the Netherlands that found that what psychiatrists call “gender dysphoria” — a desire to be the opposite sex — significantly decreases between adolescence and early adulthood.
And they also backed a report in England that said doctors should stop prescribing “puberty-blocking” hormones after an explosive audit of the country’s main gender clinic, Tavistock in London, found that teenagers in difficulty were receiving these medications without medical evidence proving they were safe. .
“These revelations are extremely vindicating,” Chloe Cole, a 19-year-old detransitionist, told the Post.
“It’s frustrating that it’s taken this long, but I’m grateful that this is finally becoming a mainstream conversation and people are finally starting to wake up to what we’re doing to children.”
In the Dutch study, researchers followed 2,700 children over a period of 15 years. They found that 11% of children had difficulty with their gender in early adolescence.
But by age 26, that figure dropped to 4 percent because, as the researchers note, “gender dissatisfaction, while relatively common in early adolescence, generally declines with age.” age”.
“This is a pretty sophisticated study, and the results don’t surprise me at all,” Dr. Erica Anderson, a clinical psychologist in California who works with gender-nonconforming children, told the Post.
A transgender woman herself, Anderson believes that medical professionals should exercise caution when it comes to the medicalization of transgender youth and take seriously the possibility that children will “give up” – the medical term for coming back – to their birth sex.
“This supports the assertion that some of us have been making for some time, which is that we should not assume that all of these children who come out will persist in their transgender identity,” she said.
Detransitioner Airiel Salvatore, 34, of Seattle, said he was “not at all surprised” that the study found that the majority of children who question their gender eventually become comfortable with their birth sex.
“This is very consistent with my experience, given what I’ve observed in many of my transgender friends,” Salvatore, who began hormone treatments in 2005 and underwent genital reassignment surgery in 2014 before detransitioning last year.
“Europe seems to have a head start,” he said. “It seems that the clinics here are more ideologically captured. It’s almost like they don’t want to know the answer because it’s really all about maladaptive empathy.
Cole, another detransitioner — who came out as transgender at 13, had a double mastectomy at 15, and finally detransitioned at 16 — acknowledges that America is also late in realizing that the medicalization of young trans people was a mistake.
So far, England, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark have all taken steps to limit medical interventions for transgender youth.
But in the United States, it has become a hot topic in the culture war, with progressive states like New York and California declaring themselves “safe havens” for trans children seeking treatment.
“The United States is more driven by money and politics, and that has become a major political tool, especially by the left,” Cole told the Post.
But the tide is turning — and so far, 22 states have limited medical care for transgender youth, according to Human Rights Watch.
“It’s slower here because our legislative process is not as national as in Europe,” Cole said. “But I think it is inevitable that the irreversible medicalization of children will be banned in all fifty states as well as at the federal level.”
Last week, England’s National Health Service (NHS) ended puberty blockers for children, following a four-year study by independent researcher Dr Hilary Cass.
“For most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress,” Cass writes in her report.
“For young people for whom a medical pathway is clinically indicated, it is not enough to offer it without also addressing wider mental health issues and/or difficult psychosocial issues. »
Marcus Evans, a British psychoanalyst who resigned as clinical director of adult and adolescent services at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in 2020 over concerns about the medicalization of trans young people, agrees with Cass’s conclusion.
“This basically confirms all my complaints, but why it took 15 years and so many children affected, only God knows,” Evans told the Post.
He says politics blindsided his NHS colleagues, causing them to push gender-confused children through the process of medicalization: “Politicization interfered with ordinary clinical practice. It has become a culture driven by political ideology rather than clinical thinking.
But Salvatore, Cole, Evans and Anderson all agree that these revelations from Europe also begin a much-needed reevaluation here in the United States.
“I think we are at the beginning of a step back,” Salvatore said. “Until recently, stating biological reality could directly get you canceled.
“But now I think people are starting to recognize the madness. We will look back on this period with a complete fascination for the human psychology at play.”
“It’s a shame that so many people have to suffer.”
New York Post
