Pronouns and References

[antaeus]

Except suicide rates have gone up since "yeah let's listen to what a 10 year old thinks about gender" became the norm.

And what is the causal relationship here? What causes the mental harm you identify?

young people being able to identify themselves as they please? Or young people having to deal with these kinds of posts constantly?

I.e. You'll need to put more effort into this off the cuff comment.

[Lord Thesaurian]

And what is the causal relationship here? What causes the mental harm you identify?

young people being able to identify themselves as they please? Or young people having to deal with these kinds of posts constantly?

I.e. You'll need to put more effort into this off the cuff comment.

It’s already been pointed out transitioned individuals are far more likely than the general population to die by suicide. Thus there is a mental health confounder influencing that trend independently of the alleged need to receive “gender affirming” drugs and surgeries. Given the false claim was that the latter prevents suicide, the truth is these lead to little or no improvement in gender dysphoria, mental health, body image and psychosocial functioning. In the few studies that did report change, the results could be attributable to bias or chance, or were deemed unreliable.

[PointOfViewGun]

Why are you comparing a transitioned individual to the general populace? Why not compare it to an individual that is barred from transitioning or even entertaining the idea?

[Lord Thesaurian]

Transgender individuals were compared before and after transition in the same, prior post.

[PointOfViewGun]

Transgender individuals were compared before and after transition in the same, prior post.

I can't see any post providing any substance on that. It also doesn't explain why you'd want to compare to the general populace.

[Lord Thesaurian]

I can't see any post providing any substance on that. It also doesn't explain why you'd want to compare to the general populace.

Your apparent inability to find or understand it isn’t a reason for me to repeat myself.

[Dave Strider]

It’s already been pointed out transitioned individuals are far more likely than the general population to die by suicide. Thus there is a mental health confounder influencing that trend independently of the alleged need to receive “gender affirming” drugs and surgeries. Given the false claim was that the latter prevents suicide, the truth is these lead to little or no improvement in gender dysphoria, mental health, body image and psychosocial functioning. In the few studies that did report change, the results could be attributable to bias or chance, or were deemed unreliable.

Again, they have a higher rate of suicide because everyone treats them like . Women have higher rates of depression than men. Black people have higher rates of depression than white people. Gay people have higher rates of depression than straight people. And trans people have higher rates of depression than cis people. Because they're discriminated against. Because, you know, when people constantly suffer abuse and harassment and discrimination for who they are, they tend to feel bad about themselves. Studies show that once you start treating people with respect, acceptance, and love, they stop wanting to kill themselves.

Which you'd think would be self-evident, because it makes sense on its very face! But apparently it's not self-evident, because people for some reason refuse to use common sense when it comes to trans people. They froth at the mouth and use the most absurd mental gymnastics to try to argue that "oh, actually, giving people respect and autonomy over their lives is a BAD thing, we should STOP doing that."

Seriously, are you listening to yourself? "Trans people kill themselves more than the general public. Therefore we should stop allowing people to be trans. Surely being less accepting of a vulnerable population will solve the problem of them committing suicide." In what universe does that make sense?

[Lord Thesaurian]

Emotive assertions are not a counter argument. You cant insist on one hand that hormones/drugs/surgery are necessary to prevent allegedly trans people from committing suicide, then turn around and dismiss your own premise to insist the reason that’s not the case is because people are mean. It has been empirically demonstrated that:

Those who have medically transitioned and surgically transitioned have higher rates of attempted suicide than those who have not.

A recent study based on the world’s largest dataset on patients who have undergone sex-reassignment procedures reveals that these procedures do not bring mental health benefits.

A 2016 review of available data by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services noted a lack of evidence gender reassignment surgery improves health outcomes

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.

[Sir Adrian]

And what is the causal relationship here? What causes the mental harm you identify?

I don't understand the purpose of this question. You just got served a perfect example on a silver platter. Do you need more horror stories?

young people being able to identify themselves as they please? Or young people having to deal with these kinds of posts constantly?

I.e. You'll need to put more effort into this off the cuff comment.

Ah yes because prepubescent children clearly have a perfect understanding of their sexuality and are capable of making perfectly objective life-altering decisions for themselves that they will 100% not regret later.

Maybe we should name one as president since they are so smart and mature.

[Dave Strider]

Emotive assertions are not a counter argument. You cant insist on one hand that hormones/drugs/surgery are necessary to prevent allegedly trans people from committing suicide, then turn around and dismiss your own premise to insist the reason that’s not the case is because people are mean. It has been empirically demonstrated that:

I am not dismissing my own premise, the two coexist. I've seen it in my own friends and people I know.

Trans people feel internal pressure from dysphoria and external pressure from discrimination from transphobes. Transitioning helps to alleviate the internal pressure, but visibly existing as a trans person elevates the external pressure. There are trans people who have killed themselves because they were unable to transition, there are trans people whose lives were saved by transitioning but who tragically die by suicide because of the way they're treated by their peers once they complete transitioning, and there are trans people who have managed to overcome both hurdles and now live their lives proudly. I know (and knew) people who fit into all three categories.

Those who have medically transitioned and surgically transitioned have higher rates of attempted suicide than those who have not.

Yes. As do all marginalized groups have higher suicide rates than those who treat them poorly, on account of being discriminated against. This is not something inherent to being transgender, this is something inherent to bullying people for who they are.

A recent study based on the world’s largest dataset on patients who have undergone sex-reassignment procedures reveals that these procedures do not bring mental health benefits.

Firstly, not all trans people undergo gender confirmation surgery. Comparatively few do, in fact, because it is cost-prohibitive. Many settle for social transition (i.e. changing their presentation, requesting people use a new name and pronouns for them) and hormone therapy. We aren't inherently talking about surgery here. Secondly, your information is out of date - a study last year showed gender affirming surgeries result in upwards of a 40% decrease in mental distress and suicidal ideation for those who underwent them compared to prior to surgery. And again, water is wet.

A 2016 review of available data by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services noted a lack of evidence gender reassignment surgery improves health outcomes

Which means we need more research, and is not grounds for preventing people from being who they are.

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.

Than the general population, yes. That part was never in dispute. This is because the general population isn't trans and isn't discriminated against for being trans. That proves precisely nothing. It's like saying that someone who's had their throat slit has a higher risk of bleeding to death than the person who slit their throat. There's some bad treatment involved that needs to be taken into account when assessing the statistics.

The proper comparison is suicide rates of trans people who have not had gender confirming surgery, as opposed to trans people who have had gender confirming surgery. And, more broadly, trans people who are not permitted to express themselves and live their truth, compared to trans people who are permitted to do so. And the data on this is just as obvious as you'd expect. Trans people who have access to supportive environments at home, school, and amongst friends are, SHOCKER, FAR less likely to attempt suicide than those who have unsupportive environments. And again, as mentioned above, people who undergo gender confirmation surgery have significantly better mental health than those who are unable to receive it.

[Dave Strider]

Ah yes because prepubescent children clearly have a perfect understanding of their sexuality and are capable of making perfectly objective life-altering decisions for themselves that they will 100% not regret later.

Maybe we should name one as president since they are so smart and mature.

Firstly, being trans isn't related to your sexuality. The two are often contemplated together, as (for example) someone who grew up assuming they were a straight woman, but discovering they are actually a man, and in turn discovering they are actually gay (because of course their sexual preferences remain the same even while their gender changes), is a common enough situation. But that's not the main point.

The main point is that gender is such an innate and inherent part of your self-concept and your identity, that you definitely know who you are by the time you're a teenager. It's like knowing if you're right-handed or left-handed. Teens are immature in the sense that all they think about is themselves. But that's just it. All they think about is themselves. So they know themselves pretty damn well. And they know who they are and what they are. So yes, a trans teen absolutely is capable of knowing that they are trans, just as a gay teen is capable of knowing that they are gay.

Humor me. When did you know that you were a man? If someone came to you and called you a girl when you were thirteen, you would have denied it fervently, right? But why would you do so? Because you feel that you're not a woman, right? Because it's just a fact you know about yourself to be true? What age did that feeling hit you? Damn near as young as you can remember, and certainly by the time you were a teenager, right?

[antaeus]

I don't understand the purpose of this question. You just got served a perfect example on a silver platter. Do you need more horror stories?

Ah yes because prepubescent children clearly have a perfect understanding of their sexuality and are capable of making perfectly objective life-altering decisions for themselves that they will 100% not regret later.

Maybe we should name one as president since they are so smart and mature.

Beautiful sarcasm that completely avoided the point I was making, and is thus irrelevant fluff.

The point being that you made a statement about suicide rates, insinuating that they have increased because 10 year olds are allowed input into how they define themselves, when you provided no evidence or substance to back the insinuation, or to establish that it is causal. I don't need horror stories, I need evidence that proves higher suicide rates are caused as per your insinuation, by 10 year olds being able to define themselves, rather than by some other cause.

Until you evidence that, as I have already said, you're talking irrelevant fluff.

As to Thesaurian, the statement I responded to insinuated the generalised "10 year old" not the specific "transgender children". So while I appreciate your position may have some validity within its context (although I'm suspicious of how causal that is too). If Sir Adrian was referring to prior argument in the thread, then Sir Adrian should have carried on it's terminology, rather than sarcastically throwing up a random generalisations. Therefore Thesaurian, I'm sorry your comment is also irrelevant fluff in this context.

[mishkin]

I would so much love some of these people attacking the trans community if any of them discovered one day they were born intersex... I would pay to see their face

[Lord Thesaurian]

I am not dismissing my own premise, the two coexist. I've seen it in my own friends and people I know.

Lol yeah. Happened to my buddy Eric one time.

Yes. As do all marginalized groups have higher suicide rates than those who treat them poorly, on account of being discriminated against. This is not something inherent to being transgender, this is something inherent to bullying people for who they are.

Lol. A variable cannot both prevent an outcome according to your claim, and also not prevent or even worsen it based on actual data. These are mutually exclusive outcomes.

Which means we need more research, and is not grounds for preventing people from being who they are.

Lol “we need more research until it confirms what my ideology demands.”

Than the general population, yes. That part was never in dispute. This is because the general population isn't trans and isn't discriminated against for being trans. That proves precisely nothing.

Even if that were the case, the above is a concession that your premise asserting the necessity of drugs/hormones/surgery to prevent those outcomes isn’t true.

The proper comparison is suicide rates of trans people who have not had gender confirming surgery, as opposed to trans people who have had gender confirming surgery.

That was provided up top. You dismissed it as “well of course, that’s because people are mean.”

Trans people who have access to supportive environments at home, school, and amongst friends are, SHOCKER, FAR less likely to attempt suicide than those who have unsupportive environments.

More self-reported survey data. Selection bias, etc. And anyway, this is entirely consistent with what I’ve been saying. If a man insists he is the Queen of England, he will obviously be in a better mood if people indulge his delusion vs not. He might even want drugs/surgery to look and feel more like old Lizzy herself. But a look at independently documented health outcomes in the years following said drugs and surgery shows they didn’t actually improve his health and may have even worsened it, because they didn’t treat the issues causing him to believe he’s the Queen, and thus he’s still much worse off than the average person. And that’s more or less what the data coming out is showing about transgenderism. The emperor has no clothes.

And again, as mentioned above, people who undergo gender confirmation surgery have significantly better mental health than those who are unable to receive it.

You keep asserting this without sufficient evidence, even as you insist the reason your assertion isn’t true is because people are mean. Lolol.

Firstly, not all trans people undergo gender confirmation surgery. Comparatively few do, in fact, because it is cost-prohibitive. Many settle for social transition (i.e. changing their presentation, requesting people use a new name and pronouns for them) and hormone therapy. We aren't inherently talking about surgery here. Secondly, your information is out of date - a study last year showed gender affirming surgeries result in upwards of a 40% decrease in mental distress and suicidal ideation for those who underwent them compared to prior to surgery. And again, water is wet.

Not true. The 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey found 61 percent of trans and gender nonconforming respondents reported having medically transitioned. Given the recent sharp increase in people seeking and obtaining such treatment, it’s safe to say most allegedly trans people seek to medically transition.

Looking at the study linked in your article, the authors point out the findings may not be generalizable due to the lack of baseline mental health data in the self-reported results in the data set, which look at just a one year window post surgery. Just 13% of the sample actually had undergone surgery in the first place. It makes sense that people are going to initially self-report improvement after they got what they supposedly wanted, due to sunk cost logic. Nobody wants to admit they ed up. The reason I would argue the study I posted is a better measure of outcomes is because it looks at a decade of independently documented health outcomes, from 2005-2015, and is a large, representative dataset taken from the Swedish Total Population Register. To your point, Sweden is probably a more welcoming environment than the US. Evidently it didn’t measurably impact the results.

The results demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care visits or prescriptions or hospitalizations following suicide attempts in that comparison.

Tl;dr 10 years of medical records from a whole country > a year of self-reported feels from a self-selected sample of survey respondents. Even if all things were equal, producing different results looking at similar things from large data sets means your assertions are not necessarily representative, let alone obvious.

[Sir Adrian]

Beautiful sarcasm that completely avoided the point I was making, and is thus irrelevant fluff.

The point being that you made a statement about suicide rates, insinuating that they have increased because 10 year olds are allowed input into how they define themselves, when you provided no evidence or substance to back the insinuation, or to establish that it is causal. I don't need horror stories, I need evidence that proves higher suicide rates are caused as per your insinuation, by 10 year olds being able to define themselves, rather than by some other cause.

Your point was very clear: pre-teens transitioning is perfectly normal and produces no harmful effects.

Meanwhile in the real world 82% of teenage trans have considered suicide and 40% have attempted it and trans teens are 7,6 time more likely to commit suicide.

I can't wait to see how you blame it on society, mean people and internal anti-trans feelings. I mean it's not like trans groups have more support infrastructure and funding that some forms of cancer. Oh wait, they do.

Until you evidence that, as I have already said, you're talking irrelevant fluff.

Right back at you.

I would so much love some of these people attacking the trans community if any of them discovered one day they were born intersex... I would pay to see their face

I do so love it when people use one of the rarest, but still very real, medical conditions as a platform for self-serving agenda pushing.

The main point is that gender is such an innate and inherent part of your self-concept and your identity, that you definitely know who you are by the time you're a teenager. It's like knowing if you're right-handed or left-handed. Teens are immature in the sense that all they think about is themselves. But that's just it. All they think about is themselves. So they know themselves pretty damn well. And they know who they are and what they are. So yes, a trans teen absolutely is capable of knowing that they are trans, just as a gay teen is capable of knowing that they are gay.

This is factually false and if you bother to do an ounce of research on the topic and/or simply ask a psychologist worth his salt you will see why. Your teenage years is the period when your identity is taking shape, you can't definitely know something that does not exist. Few people definitely know they are even in their early 20s. For some it takes until their mid 20s. But I do appreciate the mental gymnastics.

Also, do note we are talking about pre-pubescent children here.

[chriscase]

I don't really see how one goes from correlation to causation here. Maybe one individual becomes suicidal because of struggles with sexual identity; maybe another turns to options to change sexual identity as an explanation for mental distress that comes from somewhere else. How would we know?

Even more, how would we know how many "false positive" transitions would be prevented if care givers were more resistant, or perhaps just less receptive to a child's interest in transitioning? That seems like a number that would be practically impossible to estimate.

[Pontifex Maximus]

I can't see any post providing any substance on that. It also doesn't explain why you'd want to compare to the general populace.

Allow me to explain.

[antaeus]

I don't really see how one goes from correlation to causation here. Maybe one individual becomes suicidal because of struggles with sexual identity; maybe another turns to options to change sexual identity as an explanation for mental distress that comes from somewhere else. How would we know?

Even more, how would we know how many "false positive" transitions would be prevented if care givers were more resistant, or perhaps just less receptive to a child's interest in transitioning? That seems like a number that would be practically impossible to estimate.

I think the crux of the issue is in here. Leaving us debating with fragile evidence in line with our biases.

I think that growing up uncertain and dealing with Sir Adrian's judgement might negatively impact on my mental health (metaphorically). Sir Adrian seems to suggest that I might regret my choices and that will impact on my mental health. I'm not sure any data we have can isolate the causes of mental frailty. I imagine both contribute in different ways.

[basics]

There can be no doubt that some young males are exceptionally effeminate and in the case of girls a strong feeling of being manly something that has been passed onto them by their parents, why? There are two answers one of which is correct. Firstly, evolution has a lot to answer for and secondly, man's fall from the grace of God which I believe to be the answer as being the correct approach, why? Because it is written that for them in that situation who were born again of the Spirit of God no longer had these feelings. So, rather than condemn those in that situation we should love them and treat them with the dignity they deserve because they are what they are no fault of their own. None of us are perfect and we should remember that.

[Akar]

Firstly, evolution has a lot to answer for

So he does believe in evolution!