this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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No I'm genuinely interested to hear your perspective and why it was a point of contention
No worries. Sorry for being defensive. I’ve received death threats before so you can imagine my reticence to speak freely.
Forgive the brevity. The topic is quite personal to me. I had a trans person in my family until recently. They committed suicide. I took it upon myself to research the topic to the best of my abilities. My current stance is that, while I support the right for adults to do with their body as they wish, I do not support the practise of transitioning children; be it medically or socially. In all my research I couldn’t find a single study, anywhere, demonstrating an objective quality of life improvement. These would be measurable metrics like:
It’s not for lack of trying, either. I’ve never seen so much funding go to any single topic in academia. Given this lack of evidence, researchers turned to subjective measures of improvement. The primary being “suicidality.” They ask subjects how they feel about suicide. This is an effective proxy for, “are you happy with the major medical procedure you just asked for?” Unsurprisingly, this is subject to enormous bias.
Instead, I found evidence that not transitioning is a much better, much more effective treatment for children. This study found that only 37% of children still identified as dysphoric five years later. This study found that 88% had desisted (they were no longer dysphoric). This mirrors other historical research into various areas of child psychology. Children frequently change identity and beliefs around identity.
The primary arguments appear to be, a) if we don’t transition children, they will commit suicide. As above, I believe this is false. The second premise is, b) puberty blockers are completely reversible. This isn’t true either. These are the expected side effects of puberty blockers:
Osteoporosis and diabetes are absolutely life altering. Sweden went all-in on "temporary" puberty blockers for gender affirming care until children started experiencing life-long injuries. They are now effectively banned for gender affirming care for children.
Further, there is a growing body of evidence to show high risk of infertility after prolonged use of these drugs.
And these are just the dangerous irreversible side effects. The cosmetic side effects are devastating, and include men with child-sized penises and testicles, and women without breasts. This is one such case. The teenager had taken puberty blockers, resulting in a small penis. With insufficient penile tissue, doctors attempted to remove and use part of his colon to create a fake vagina. He died less than a day later from complications.
Ultimately, I believe I am very open to evidence. I have reached my position precisely by pouring over research. I am open to honest discussion and debate. I don't belittle or minimise anyone's experiences or beliefs. I simply want the best outcomes for children. For this opinion, I have been banned on many subreddits. I have been sent death threats. I have been called every disgusting name in the dictionary, and then more. I hope that Lemmy is a place which allows respectful discussion.
What the hell is this? Trans person here. This is not the thread to start concern trolling about trans issues. If you really want a space to talk freely about your concerns you can start a community or even your own instance.
Yeah, this is just run of the mill transphobic sealioning. They even complain about reddit having been run by tankies and repeated the "current thing" conservative reactionary trope. I'm totally fine if this kind of person doesn't feel welcome here.
I hate to say it but they were asked - what they have to say may be unappealing but someone did tell them to say it.
He's literally responding to a user who said
So he explained his perspective. Concern trolling lmao.
If you want a space where you don't encounter other perspectives, there are plenty of spaces like that both in the real world and on the internet.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml this is exactly why tone policing is bullshit moderation policy.
Your modteam is allowing this transphobic screed to exist, and has in fact unbanned the user that posted it despite the very very obvious fact that they are a transphobe doing concern-trolling and "just asking questions" style veiled bigotry, while simultaneously banning everyone that has reacted to their behaviour by rightfully calling them the names they deserve to be called.
This policymaking is what results in people in the left calling someone a terf or a fascist getting banned while the fascists and terfs roam free. The site will be taken over by this and the left will slowly be banned and pushed out by it. The fact that the team can't seem to get into their heads that trans people might get a little fucking heated when bigots are allowed to exist and clearly defended by some of the incompetent members the modteam is another part of the problem.
You should get some trans people on your team to keep the rest of the idiots on it making these shit decisions in check. This nerd should absolutely be rebanned and every other person that copped a ban over this shit should be unbanned.
Demanding that lgbt people, racial groups and the lower classes engage with their oppressors in a suitable “tone” without ever getting heated is unrealistic. The outcome of tone policing is that the oppressed get banned from spaces when they don’t behave with the right tone when discussing their oppression while those doing the oppressing (this fucker) come to dominate it more and more. The oppressed come to be alienated by it (leaving the space as a result) while the oppressors come to be empowered by it. Tone policing should NEVER come before principle and protection of the marginalized.
ty for articulating this so well o7
It's pleasant to see that the Lemmy team saw reason on this. I intentionally used a few names in it for effect and that was a risk to me getting banned but seemed to work out demonstrating that a person can be completely correct and should be listened to despite their tone. Wasn't even really intentional either I was just fucking heated over the way this was being handled. Lemmy does need some on-point trans mods that are willing to argue with the rest of the team internally over poor decision making and do some internal education.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml please reconsider reprioritizing civility fetishism, particularly in defense against transphobia. The course of events here was extremely uncool and is tantamount to making this space systemically transphobic.
All it will take to drive trans people off is for you to ban them when they defend themselves against transphobic hate. And all it will take for transphobes to make that happen is for transphobes to harass people here until they react. This pattern has happened many times on many platforms and I'm surprised if you're not aware of it.
You're saying you haven't found any evidence and that proves there isn't improvement but it's impossible for any properly done study to prove any changes to those categories. The simple reason is there is no environment that has existed for long enough to do a comparison. It's impossible to conduct a proper study on the life expectancy of trans people if they transition at 12 years old or 20 years old because the treatments have not been around long enough and people can live a long time. Even a study that tracks suicide rates over 5 years based on treatment type takes much more than 5 years.
The only studies that can be done need to use historic data and we can't change the past plus retroactive comparisons are super dicey and very prone to bias. Remember how dead patients were added post-moterm to that COVID trial published from Egypt which totally skewed the results? That study lead to large numbers of people taking ivermectin and fueled the antivax movement worldwide https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/93658
The absence of research studies can not be used to prove or disprove something and should not form your opinions based on this. As least people aren't trying and doing it poorly then people write catchy articles about it and it creates whole industries (I'm looking at you, nutritional science).
I am completely appalled at this instance right now for allowing this absolutely vile comment to persist on here, but since some reactionary admin decided your disgusting falsehoods should remain up, allow me to provide an extremely easily-found data point you "couldn't find" in your search:
Regret rates for sex reassignment surgery are among the LOWEST for ANY type of surgery OF ANY KIND. They're even lower than the complication rate! (Yes, really!) How's that for hard data?
Given the fact that this was incredibly easy for me to find (a single Google search pulled it up easily), I can only conclude that you "couldn't find" evidence that transitioning is beneficial because you weren't actually looking for it; you were looking for evidence of exactly the opposite point.
If this comment is indicative of things you said to your relative who took their life, then you should absolutely feel partially responsible; this kind of patronizing pseudo-concern BS is exactly the kind of toxicity that makes trans people feel that they will never be accepted by the people in their lives.
They're probably simply overloaded right now. Traffic has shot up several fold over the course of a few days and many of the people don't understand the rules yet. From my recollection, these sorts of comments would usually be removed fairly promptly. For a comparison of mod teams, /r/moderatepolitics has 18 moderators (plus bots) compared to this community's 3. Likewise, the instance has 7 moderators.
Exactly. Removed it now. Sorry for the growing pains.
This comment is well researched and helpful! Thank you