Hey! Teachers! Leave Those Kids Alone!
You are Not Helping Them, You are Harming Them.
The barely Republican-majority New Hampshire legislature managed to pass a pair of bills that unequivocally protect children from abuse. One suggests that it is unhealthy and dangerous to give children (hormone) drugs linked to a rise in the incidence of heart attack and stroke (and that neutering them might not be in their best interest). The other acknowledges that men are stronger than women and allowing them to compete athletically side by side is dangerous to women and girls.
Neither of these things is scientifically or biologically inaccurate. Yet, when protesters opposed to these common-sense protections (for children and young women) collected like plaque in the hall leading to the Governor’s office, the local TV outlet declared that they were asking Mr. Sununu to veto these “anti-trans” bills.
“Pro” Tip
There is nothing anti-trans about them. These bills are pro-child, pro-trans, and pro-girls and women. Speaking to the trans issue specifically,
The drugs are poorly regulated, over-prescribed, and can cause cancer and death. The surgery cannot make you a different gender, but advocates pretend that it will align the mental confusion they created with a physical person. This isn’t true either. Even the best surgeons can’t make a boy into a girl. If you’ve got enough money and time and tolerance for pain and pain drugs you can never stop taking, it is possible to come close to the affectation, but no one seems to care about the endless physical and mental suffering that is more likely to end in suicide than if you’d left them the hell alone.
Banning puberty blockers and genital surgery for minors protects “trans youth” from medical-intervention profiteers.
It protects them from overzealous partisan cultural abuses. It allows them to be who they are now, and since gender is a fluid experience (subject to change not just daily but hourly), hormones and surgery prohibit them from being any other gender at any moment between now and the age of majority.
Puberty blockers and irreversible surgery are contraindicated if gender is on a spectrum.
What are the surgical alternatives? Male to female, female to male, in transit from one to the other. I suppose you could opt for the traditional alien look. No visible parts, shave your head (gray spray tan), but that’s not likely to solve the mental health problem, and it certainly won’t lead to fewer suicides. Speaking of which, from the UK Cass Review,
80. The original rationale for use of puberty blockers was that this would buy ‘time to think’ by delaying onset of puberty and also improve the ability to ‘pass’ in later life. Subsequently it was suggested that they may also improve body image and psychological wellbeing.
…
82. However, no changes in gender dysphoria or body satisfaction were demonstrated. There was insufficient/inconsistent evidence about the effects of puberty suppression on psychological or psychosocial wellbeing, cognitive development, cardio-metabolic risk or fertility.
Hey. Teacher! Leave Those Kids Alone
Puberty Blockers, hormone drugs, and surgery make doctors, hospitals, and big Pharma rich, cashing in on rearranging deck chairs on someone else’s Titanic. Changes that do nothing to address the mental health issues or external influences that created the dysphoria.
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has since banned puberty blockers for minors based on this extensive research. The health risk isn’t worth the lack of any measurable benefit.
The best thing you can do for a child is to
stop confusing them about gender. Why are you talking about sex with children? Why are you advocating or defending it? It is a form of mental abuse that causes dysphoria that leads to dangerous drugs and irreversible surgery.
If a child is asking questions on their own, be supportive of the curiosity and be a friend, but be honest. It’s normal, most kids outgrow it, and drugs and (especially) surgery don’t really help. The drugs must be taken…forever. The surgery will harm you and cannot be reversed.
Adults with any interest in children's health should not convince them to take this journey. They should protect the child until they are an adult, and then that adult can decide for themselves. And the idea is catching on. Western nations are increasingly backing away from the practice.
New Hampshire and America should, too.