I don't think many people working outside pediatric healthcare really have an understanding about how comfortable healthcare providers are prescribing interventional care.
When diagnosing and treating a patient we come up with a plan of care that is weighted on total outcomes. Now this isn't a perfect system, for example we may not completely understand the potential harm of new medications. However, we are creating the plan of care with the best information we have at the time. Taking potential side effects and weighing it against the potential harm that could occur without any treatment.
I specialize in pediatric orthopedics and rehabilitation....so take anything I say about gender affirming care with a grain of salt. However, the potential outcome for not treating gender dysphoria as I understand it is pretty bad....self harm and suicide are about as bad as an outcome as one could imagine. Now weigh that against the medications that are usually prescribed for gender affirming care which are well known, and most often prescribed without negative effect for a plethora of treatments ranging from precocious puberty, to monitoring rate of which growth plates close.
Hormone replacement therapy has been going on for decades and is very common place at any hospital that atends to pediatric patients. To claim that intervention isn't appropriate for something with a potential total outcome as bad as suicide, based off "kids can't consent" is a ridiculous notion considering that the same drugs are often prescribed to make sure a child doesn't develop a limb length discrepancy after an orthopedic surgery.
Invalidating ADHD doesn't make trans people feel better, it only perpetuates ableist and medically misinformed views on ADHD.
Particularly women, minorities, and non-binary people, who have historically been severely underdiagnosed and neglected as is. Girls are 16 times less likely than boys to receive an ADHD diagnosis and treatment.
Women who speak out about their ADHD are often dismissed on social media as ‘self diagnosed pick me girls’ just seeking attention. In reality, many are speaking up against the ongoing crisis of medical neglect.
Untreated ADHD can put already vulnerable people into higher risk of developing clinical depression and other comorbid mental health issues. ADHD medication can be life saving, and calling it meth only serves to stigmatize the mental health issues ADHD patients go through, as well as discourage them from getting the help and medication they need.
If you call yourself an ally to trans people, that includes trans people with ADHD. There is no need to add to their intersectional struggles when they already have so much on their plate.
Dexies != meth.
many intersex people had impromptu surgery performed on them after being born because the doctor determined that their genitalia did not conform to their standards of male or female. this typically happens with no parental support or consent, but even if the parents are made aware, it isnt exactly made apparent the ramifications of what will be done.
Then there's kids playing contact sports. Rugby is fucking brutal.
This is something I know little about and want to be better informed on by anyone willing. Web searches don't pull up much and I'm hesitant to ask people in my IRL community.
So most kids don't regret it right? But it seems so iffy to let developing people make decisions like that. I had a three year phase from around 13-16 where I desperately wanted to remove my nose. Completely. (It's an ugly nose and I was an especially dumb kid). I think I would have done it/had it done if it were easier. And less painful. And maybe I'd still be chill with it if I had but man was I a strange kid. But I'm kind of glad there wasn't a good way to do it. Is this a false equivalency? And why? What age should they be allowed to begin HRT? What impacts does it have if reversed? Should kids also be allowed stuff like tattoos and alcohol? I don't like the argument that you can give kids amphetamines or make other life changing decisions for them as I'm pretty against the system that allows it and so I don't think if that's the justification I'm on board on that basis necessarily. I'm genuinely asking as I usually don't engage on this topic because it can get spicy. I'm open to opinions from anyone with one.
Even career choices are altering people's lives. Even if I have my guitar, sometimes I regret putting so much time, energy, and money into it, partly because of a very depressive period in my life, partly because some potential medical conditions I have make bending strings upwards on the fretboard extremely painful as it feels like my nail wants to separate from my skin, partly because my taste in music shifted a lot away from metal music. I wish I was spending that on art or something else, IDK. Still I don't want to introduce a bill that would forbid people learning the guitar before the age of 25.
I get the point, but it's not a good way of defending it. The ADHD medication might be okay, but here is framed as an exaggeration, and the other one is not good.
Furthermore, many of those interventions are detrimental or at least dangerous. Mine was orthodontics and it ended terribly; today, I would need a surgery to correct all the damage caused. While I was a difficult case, it's not uncommon. In recent years, braces are being reconsidered as they alter a developing skull, often atrophiating something while repairing something else. Sports in childhood can have an impact in adulthood. This one I'm also living it closely as my mother was one of those girls inspired by Nadia Comăneci to start gymnastics. Today, she's living a hard late adulthood.
We've normalized not listening to children and thinking of them as our properties. Medical interventions (I literally pointed out the problem with my treatment and I was ignored) or the lack of them can be a sign of this. We need to balance their developing cognitive abilities with their autonomy, not shadowing their autonomy all together. That's the argument. Telling people "things are already done, so what's the problem?" is fallacious at best and counterproductive at worst.
It's just "muh parental rights" and people clinging onto their power over others.
Essentiallly, if you're not excercising overt control over your children, then you're showing to those children that do get that kind of overt control, that there's an another way of life. You have to essentially micromanage your children's life well into their adulthood, just because some scummy adults that managed to steer their children into unwanted relationships and/or shitty jobs, and you'd offend them for it.
I kind of got that kind of treatment when it comes to jobs. My stepmother really wanted me to have a "manly job" instead of becoming a programmer, because she was "concerned of me" that I will end up too weak, and also she hated working on computers because they crashed thus she believed they're "just a fad" (until facebook came). All while being too disabled to do said jobs. Things that shouldn't hurt at all are really painful for me, likely due to a mixture of pain hypersensitivity (due to then undiagnosed autism) and some skin/collagen condition. But all of these did not matter, because parents even have the right to make mistakes from time to time, and they can't be right all the time unfortunately. Result: starting college with minimal programming knowledge, while others already dabbled into OOP by that time.
For the reactionary, a parent's horrible mistake is million times more important than the child's own will, that could sometimes even save them.
