assignedmale:

When your transgender brain is fully formed

One of the most bizarre proposals in the UK Cass-report on transgender health services is that everyone under 25 is to be treated as kids.

The minimum age for enlisting in the UK armed forces is 16. The voting age is 18 on polling day. You can come out with your sexual orientation at any age.

So what is the point with this proposal? To “protect” trans people against themselves? That is only half the story. The real point is to make cis people think that trans people are emotionally and intellectually immature, and that you can therefore dismiss their gender dysphoria as some kind of ideological infestation.

In this way you can uphold the idea that transgender identities are fake, while cis identities (which are never questioned) are natural and real.

I am sure Cass will admit that there are “real” transgender people out there, i.e. transgender people who are really suffering from gender dysphoria. But by infantilizing trans youth, she and her allies are able to keep the power to accept or dismiss such an incongruence in the hands of cisgender “experts”.

Imagine the uproar if cis people could not get their gender identity formally accepted without a psychiatric examination.

Make no mistake about it. The Cass report is just one of many ways an oppressive culture tries to protect their idea of “normalcy” keep gender variant people in check.

Jack Molay

See also:

• On why the Cass Review is heteronormative and anti-transgender
• The absurdities of the British Cass-report on transgender health care

Illustration by Sophie Labelle. Follow her on tumblr!

On why the Cass Review is heteronormative and anti-transgender

On 10th April 2024, the British Cass Review published its Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People: Final Report. Gender GP has published an article that documents that many of the claims and recommendations of report are inaccurate, empirically unsupported, ethically unacceptable, and grounded in prejudice.

Read the whole article here!

Here are a few important paragraphs from the article:

//This brings us to a worrying assumption underpinning the aims of the Cass Review:“Taking account of all of the above issues, a follow-through service continuing up to age 25 would remove the need for transition at this vulnerable time and benefit both this younger population and the adult population.” (p. 224, emphasis added)

This passage reveals the cisheteronormative agenda motivating the Cass Review. The desired outcome, “remove the need for transition”, indicates the assumption that being trans is something wrong that would be better to fix.

Here, the implications are that cisgender lives are judged to be more valuable or desirable than transgender lives and that healthcare services should prioritise encouraging youth to assume cisgender lives, regardless of the suffering that this causes (Horton, 2024).

Through its cisheteronormative agenda, the Cass Review is enacting the prejudice that trans people suffer in the United Kingdom. Instead of acknowledging and respecting trans identities as being legitimate and valuable identities in their own rights, it presupposes that cisgender outcomes are preferable to transgender outcomes and uses this to recommend the withholding of gender affirming medical treatment from trans youth.

This prejudice manifests in two further features of the Cass Review.

First, the recommendations of the Cass Review would impose even more obstacles to access to gender affirming medical treatment for trans people aged under 25, which amounts to a double standard between treatment for trans people and treatment for cis people. Cis people are not required to endure these obstacles when they seek interventions that aim to align their bodies to their gendered goals, such as testosterone for cis men diagnosed with hypogonadism, cis women who seek breast augmentation or reduction surgery, and puberty blockers for children who are deemed to be undergoing precocious puberty. To require trans people to endure these obstacles comprises an injustice.

Second, the Cass Review excluded any involvement from trans people, whether they are clinicians, academics, or service users (Kennedy, 2024). This is a serious omission, as it neglects the important viewpoints of people who have experienced the challenges of navigating a healthcare system that is set up for cis people. By including only cis people in the process, the Cass Review only serves to reinforce the cisheteronormative bias that permeates the healthcare system in the United Kingdom, rather than attending to the needs and values of trans community.

//

Read the whole article here!

Illustration from Assigned Male

24% Of Transgender Adults Report Access To Care Has Been Disrupted By New Laws In The US

A Data For Progress poll shows that 24% of all US transgender adults have seen their care disrupted or discontinued.
Erin in the Morning discusses the challenges faced by transgender adults in accessing healthcare services in a new article.

She highlights a Data for Progress study showing that 24% of transgender adults have encountered discrimination or lack of access to healthcare due to their gender identity.

The research underscores disparities in healthcare access for transgender individuals, including difficulties in finding transgender-friendly providers and insurance coverage limitations.

Her article emphasizes the need for improved healthcare policies and practices to address these disparities and ensure equitable access to healthcare for all individuals, regardless of gender identity.

Read the article here.

Some highlights from the study:

• Nearly 2 in 3 Transgender Adults Say Quality of Life Has Gotten Worse for LGBTQ+ Americans in the Past Year
• A Majority of LGBTQ+ Adults Say Recent Anti-LGBTQ+ Policies and Rhetoric Have Harmed Their Mental Health
• Transgender Adults Are Concerned About Various Actions Leading to Discrimination or Harassment
• Around 2 in 5 Transgender Adults Are Considering Moving Out of Their State as a Result of AntiLGBTQ+ Legislation
• Transgender Adults Report More Negative Experiences in the Past Year Than LGBQ+ Adults Who Do Not Identify as
  Transgender
• A Majority of Transgender Adults Report Having Heard Anti-Transgender Remarks in the Past Year

Photo: Wikimedia Commons (@Ted Eyten)

New study: Only 1 percent of transgender youth receiving gender affirming care detransition

A groundbreaking study out of Perth Children’s Hospital using innovative methodology determined only 1% of patients receiving GAC detransitioned/desisted, that does not suffer from loss to follow up.

Erin Reed writes:

A groundbreaking study from Perth, Australia, published in JAMA Pediatrics has found that only 1% of transgender youth receiving gender-affirming care at a clinic reidentified with their sex assigned at birth. This is in addition to the 4% who reidentified during the mental health assessment period or earlier and did not proceed with receiving gender-affirming care.

The study, based on 552 young patients from 2014 to 2020, is poised to significantly influence the debate on gender-affirming care due to its unique methodology, which does not suffer from loss to follow-up—the detransition status of 548 patients was successfully determined. It will likely be cited as the most compelling study on low detransition rates in the coming months.

More here.

The original paper here: Reidentification With Birth-Registered Sex in a Western Australian Pediatric Gender Clinic Cohort Blake S. Cavve, Xander Bickendorf, Jack Ball et al.

Photo: SB Arts Media

Fact Check: 216 Instances Of Factual Errors Found In Right-Wing “WPATH Files” Document

On Monday, anti-trans groups released a set of highly editorialized and decontextualized leaks dubbed the “WPATH Files.” A fact check reveals 216 errors, misrepresentations, and faulty citations.

Erin Reed presents the facts here.

You have probably seen how transphobes refer to corrective gender surgery and hormone replacement therapy as “experimental” and therefore “dangerous”. The fact is that there are few medical procedures that have so much history behind them.

In 1917, Alan L. Hart, an American tuberculosis specialist, became one of the first trans men to undergo hysterectomy and gonadectomy as treatment of gender dysphoria.

The first male to female patient of this kind was Dora Richter in Berlin in 1922.

In other words: We have had surgery and hormone treatments for trans people for more than a hundred years!

Trans woman and scholar of transgender history G. Samantha Rosenthal of Roanoke College writes:

I also learned that gender-affirming hormone therapies have been prescribed to cisgender youths for generations – despite what contemporary politicians may think.

Disability scholar Eli Clare has written of the history and continued practice of prescribing hormones to boys who are too short and girls who are too tall for what is considered a “normal” range for their gender….

For over half a century, legal and medical authorities in the U.S. have also approved and administered surgeries and hormone therapies to force the bodies of intersex children to conform to binary gender stereotypes.

Rosenthal concludes that that opposition to treatments of trans people is not about the safety of any specific medications or procedures, but rather their use specifically by transgender people.

More here.

Photo of Christine Jorgensen, who received gender-affirming treatments in the 1950s (Getty Images).

New study shows that the “regret rate” for gender-affirming surgery is less than 1%.

Three researchers from Johns Hopkins University presents new research in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They conclude that the “regret rate” for gender-affirming surgery is less than one percent:

“This rate of surgical regret among TGD [transgender and gender-diverse ] patients appears to be substantially lower than rates of surgical regret following similar procedures among the broader population, including cisgender individuals.

In fact, one systematic review found that the average prevalence of surgical regret was 14.4% among all research studies analyzed, which the authors suggested was relatively low.”

In other words: The regret rate for surgery in general (all types) is around 14 percent, which is considered low. That makes the regret rate for trans people having surgery extremely low.

Harry Barbee, Bashar Hassan, and Fan Liang: Postoperative Regret Among Transgender and Gender-Diverse Recipients of Gender-Affirming Surgery

See also News Medical: Johns Hopkins researchers find minimal regret after gender affirming surgery

Photo: Shapecharge

A guide to gender affirming care for transgender people

The Association of American Medical Colleges has published a good guide to gender-affirming care.

They write:

Gender-affirming care, as defined by the World Health Organization, encompasses a range of social, psychological, behavioral, and medical interventions “designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity” when it conflicts with the gender they were assigned at birth.

The interventions help transgender people align various aspects of their lives — emotional, interpersonal, and biological — with their gender identity. As noted by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), that identity can run anywhere along a continuum that includes man, woman, a combination of those, neither of those, and fluid.

The interventions fall along a continuum as well, from counseling to changes in social expression to medications (such as hormone therapy). For children in particular, the timing of the interventions is based on several factors, including cognitive and physical development as well as parental consent. Surgery, including to reduce a person’s Adam’s Apple, or to align their chest or genitalia with their gender identity, is rarely provided to people under 18.

“The goal is not treatment, but to listen to the child and build understanding — to create an environment of safety in which emotions, questions, and concerns can be explored,” says Rafferty, lead author of a policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on gender-affirming care.

Read the whole presentation here.

Photo: FG Trade

Top surgery is being included in a leading breast surgery textbook for the first time ever – and for Ioannis Ntanos, one of the UK’s leading gender affirmation surgeons, this moment plugs a “massive hole” in education for healthcare professionals to properly care for the trans population. 

The presentation is included in Breast Surgery, part of the Companion to Specialist Surgical Practice series.

Pink News has more.

The majority of Americans believe adults should be able to access gender-affirming care

Orion Rummler reports:

The majority of Americans believe adults, but not minors, should be able to access gender-affirming care — and opinions are significantly influenced by whether they personally know someone who is transgender, a new 19th News/SurveyMonkey poll finds.

But only 17 percent of Americans think that restricting access to gender-affirming care should be a focus for politicians, even as political rhetoric against transgender people continues to rise, and more states restrict gender-affirming care for both minors and adults. 

Fifty-seven percent of Americans expressed support for adults to access any kind of care designed to support and affirm their gender identity, including therapy, consultations with doctors, hormones or other medication, and surgery. Only 39 percent voiced support for trans minors to do the same. Surgery is rare for minors, and respondents were given that information beforehand.  

Read the whole article here.