{"id":1238,"date":"2024-03-18T01:38:28","date_gmt":"2024-03-18T01:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juventudeemtransicao.pt\/?p=1238"},"modified":"2024-03-18T01:57:26","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T01:57:26","slug":"as-kids-they-thought-they-were-trans-they-no-longer-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juventudeemtransicao.pt\/index.php\/2024\/03\/18\/as-kids-they-thought-they-were-trans-they-no-longer-do\/","title":{"rendered":"“As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do”"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Artigo de opini\u00e3o publicado no New York Times<\/span><\/h4>\n

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Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy.<\/p>\n

Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn\u2019t feel comfortable in her own skin. She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made everything worse. She suffered from depression and was in and out of therapy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt so detached from my body, and the way it was developing felt hostile to me,\u201d Powell told me. It was classic gender dysphoria, a feeling of discomfort with your sex.<\/p>\n

Reading about transgender people online, Powell believed that the reason she didn\u2019t feel comfortable in her body was that she was in the wrong body. Transitioning seemed like the obvious solution. The narrative she had heard and absorbed was that if you don\u2019t transition, you\u2019ll kill yourself.<\/p>\n

At 17, desperate to begin hormone therapy, Powell broke the news to her parents. They sent her to a gender specialist to make sure she was serious. In the fall of her senior year of high school, she started cross-sex hormones. She had a double mastectomy the summer before college, then went off as a transgender man named Grayson to Sarah Lawrence College, where she was paired with a male roommate on a men\u2019s floor. At 5-foot-3, she felt she came across as a very effeminate gay man.<\/p>\n

At no point during her medical or surgical transition, Powell says, did anyone ask her about the reasons behind her gender dysphoria or her depression. At no point was she asked about her sexual orientation. And at no point was she asked about any previous trauma, and so neither the therapists nor the doctors ever learned that she\u2019d been sexually abused as a child.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish there had been more open conversations,\u201d Powell, now 23 and detransitioned, told me. \u201cBut I was told there is\u00a0one<\/em>\u00a0cure and\u00a0one<\/em>\u00a0thing to do if this is your problem, and this\u00a0will<\/em>\u00a0help you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Progressives often portray the\u00a0heated debate<\/a>\u00a0over childhood transgender care as a clash between those who are trying to help\u00a0growing numbers<\/a>\u00a0of children express what they believe their genders to be and conservative politicians who won\u2019t let kids be themselves.<\/p>\n

But right-wing demagogues are not the only ones who have inflamed this debate. Transgender activists have pushed their own ideological extremism, especially by pressing for a treatment orthodoxy that has faced\u00a0increased<\/a>\u00a0scrutiny<\/a>\u00a0in recent years. Under that model of care, clinicians are expected to affirm a young person\u2019s assertion of gender identity and even provide medical treatment before, or even without, exploring other possible sources of distress.<\/p>\n

Many who think there needs to be a more cautious approach \u2014 including well-meaning liberal parents, doctors and people who have undergone gender transition and subsequently regretted their procedures \u2014 have been attacked as anti-trans and intimidated into silencing their concerns.<\/p>\n

And while Donald Trump denounces \u201cleft-wing gender insanity<\/a>\u201d and many trans activists describe any opposition as\u00a0transphobic<\/a>, parents in America\u2019s\u00a0vast ideological middle<\/a>\u00a0can find little dispassionate discussion of the genuine\u00a0risks<\/a>\u00a0or trade-offs involved in what proponents call gender-affirming care.<\/p>\n

Powell\u2019s story shows how easy it is for young people to get caught up by the pull of ideology in this atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat should be a medical and psychological issue has been morphed into a political one,\u201d Powell lamented during our conversation. \u201cIt\u2019s a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laura Edwards-Leeper, the founding psychologist of the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States, said that when she started her practice in 2007, most of her patients had longstanding and deep-seated gender dysphoria. Transitioning clearly made sense for almost all of them, and any mental health issues they had were generally resolved through gender transition.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that is just not the case anymore,\u201d she told me recently. While she doesn\u2019t regret transitioning the earlier cohort of patients and opposes government bans on transgender medical care, she said, \u201cAs far as I can tell, there are no professional organizations who are stepping in to regulate what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of her patients now, she said, have no history of childhood gender dysphoria. Others refer to this phenomenon, with\u00a0some controversy<\/a>, as rapid onset gender dysphoria, in which adolescents, particularly\u00a0tween and teenage girls<\/a>, express gender dysphoria despite never having done so when they were younger. Frequently, they have mental health issues unrelated to gender. While\u00a0professional associations<\/a>\u00a0say there is a lack of quality research on rapid onset gender dysphoria,\u00a0several<\/a>\u00a0researchers<\/a>\u00a0have documented<\/a>\u00a0the phenomenon, and many health care providers have seen evidence of it in their practices.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe population has changed drastically,\u201d said Edwards-Leeper, a former head of the Child and Adolescent Committee for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the organization responsible for setting gender transition guidelines for medical professionals.<\/p>\n

For these young people, she told me, \u201cyou have to take time to really assess what\u2019s going on and hear the timeline and get the parents\u2019 perspective in order to create an individualized treatment plan. Many providers are completely missing that step.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet those health care professionals and scientists who do not think clinicians should automatically agree to a young person\u2019s self-diagnosis are often afraid to speak out. A\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0commissioned by the National Health Service about Britain\u2019s Tavistock gender clinic, which, until it was ordered to be shut down, was the country\u2019s only health center dedicated to gender identity, noted that \u201cprimary and secondary care staff have told us that they feel under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of the dozens of students she\u2019s trained as psychologists, Edwards-Leeper said, few still seem to be providing gender-related care. While her students have left the field for various reasons, \u201csome have told me that they didn\u2019t feel they could continue because of the pushback, the accusations of being transphobic, from being pro-assessment and wanting a more thorough process,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

They have good reasons to be wary. Stephanie Winn, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Oregon, was trained in gender-affirming care and treated multiple transgender patients. But in 2020, after coming across detransition videos online, she began to doubt the gender-affirming model. In 2021 she\u00a0spoke out<\/a>\u00a0in favor of approaching gender dysphoria in a more considered way, urging others in the field to\u00a0pay attention to detransitioners<\/a>, people who no longer consider themselves transgender after undergoing medical or surgical interventions. She has since been\u00a0attacked<\/a>\u00a0by transgender activists. Some threatened to send complaints to her\u00a0licensing board<\/a>\u00a0saying that she was trying to make trans kids change their minds through conversion therapy.<\/p>\n

In April 2022, the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists told Winn that she was under investigation. Her case was ultimately dismissed, but Winn no longer treats minors and practices only online, where many of her patients are worried parents of trans-identifying children.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t feel safe having a location where people can find me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Detransitioners<\/a>\u00a0say that only conservative media outlets seem interested in telling their stories, which has left them open to attacks as hapless tools of the right, something that frustrated and dismayed every detransitioner I interviewed. These are people who were once the trans-identified kids that so many organizations say they\u2019re trying to protect \u2014 but when they change their minds, they say, they feel abandoned.<\/p>\n

Most parents and clinicians are simply trying to do what they think is best for the children involved. But parents with qualms about the current model of care are frustrated by what they see as a lack of options.<\/p>\n

Parents told me it was a struggle to balance the desire to compassionately support a child with gender dysphoria while seeking the best psychological and medical care. Many believed their kids were gay or dealing with an array of complicated issues. But all said they felt compelled by gender clinicians, doctors, schools and social pressure to accede to their child\u2019s declared gender identity even if they had serious doubts. They feared it would tear apart their family if they didn\u2019t unquestioningly support social transition and medical treatment. All asked to speak anonymously, so desperate were they to maintain or repair any relationship with their children, some of whom were currently estranged.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/div>\n

Several of those who questioned their child\u2019s self-diagnosis told me it had ruined their relationship. A few parents said simply, \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve lost my daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

One mother described a meeting with 12 other parents in a support group for relatives of trans-identified youth where all of the participants described their children as autistic or otherwise neurodivergent. To all questions, the woman running the meeting replied, \u201cJust let them transition.\u201d The mother left in shock. How would hormones help a child with obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression? she wondered.<\/p>\n

Some parents have found refuge in anonymous online support groups. There, people share tips on finding caregivers who will explore the causes of their children\u2019s distress or tend to their overall emotional and developmental health and well-being without automatically acceding to their children\u2019s self-diagnosis.<\/p>\n

Many parents of kids who consider themselves trans say their children were introduced to transgender influencers on YouTube or TikTok, a phenomenon intensified for some by the isolation and online cocoon of Covid. Others say their kids learned these ideas in the classroom, as early as elementary school, often in child-friendly ways through curriculums supplied by trans rights organizations, with concepts like the\u00a0gender unicorn<\/a>\u00a0or the\u00a0Genderbread person<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After Kathleen\u2019s 15-year-old son, whom she described as an obsessive child, abruptly told his parents he was trans, the doctor who was going to assess whether he had A.D.H.D. referred him instead to someone who specialized in both A.D.H.D. and gender. Kathleen, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her son\u2019s privacy, assumed that the specialist would do some kind of evaluation or assessment. That was not the case.<\/p>\n

The meeting was brief and began on a shocking note. \u201cIn front of my son, the therapist said, \u2018Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?\u2019\u201d Kathleen recounted.<\/p>\n

Parents are routinely warned that to pursue any path outside of agreeing with a child\u2019s self-declared gender identity is to put a gender dysphoric youth at risk for suicide, which feels to many people like emotional blackmail. Proponents of the gender-affirming model have\u00a0cited<\/a>\u00a0studies<\/a>\u00a0showing an association between that standard of care and a lower risk of suicide. But those studies were found to have\u00a0methodological flaws<\/a>\u00a0or have been\u00a0deemed not entirely conclusive<\/a>. A\u00a0survey of studies<\/a>\u00a0on the psychological effects of cross-sex hormones, published three years ago in The Journal of the Endocrine Society, the professional organization for hormone specialists, found it \u201ccould not draw any conclusions about death by suicide.\u201d In\u00a0a letter<\/a>\u00a0to The Wall Street Journal last year, 21 experts from nine countries said that survey was one reason they believed there was \u201cno reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide prevention measure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, the incidence of suicidal thoughts and attempts among\u00a0gender dysphoric youth<\/a>\u00a0is complicated by the\u00a0high incidence<\/a>\u00a0of accompanying conditions, such as\u00a0autism spectrum disorder<\/a>. As one\u00a0systematic overview<\/a>\u00a0put it, \u201cChildren with gender dysphoria often experience a range of psychiatric comorbidities, with a high prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders, trauma, eating disorders and autism spectrum conditions, suicidality and self-harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

But rather than being treated as patients who deserve unbiased professional help, children with gender dysphoria often become political pawns.<\/p>\n

Conservative lawmakers are working to ban access to gender care for minors and occasionally for adults as well. On the other side, however, many medical and mental health practitioners feel their hands have been tied by activist pressure and organizational capture. They say that it has become difficult to practice responsible mental health care or medicine for these young people.<\/p>\n

Pediatricians,\u00a0psychologists<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0other clinicians<\/a>\u00a0who dissent from this orthodoxy, believing that it is not based on reliable evidence, feel frustrated by their professional organizations. The\u00a0American Psychological Association<\/a>,\u00a0American Psychiatric Association<\/a>\u00a0and the American Academy of Pediatrics have wholeheartedly backed the gender-affirming model.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Aaron Kimberly, a 50-year-old trans man and registered nurse, left the clinic in British Columbia where his job focused on the intake and assessment of gender-dysphoric youth. Kimberly received a comprehensive screening when he embarked on his own successful transition at age 33, which resolved the gender dysphoria he experienced from an early age.<\/p>\n

But when the gender-affirming model was introduced at his clinic, he was instructed to support the initiation of hormone treatment for incoming patients regardless of whether they had complex mental problems, experiences with trauma or were otherwise \u201cseverely unwell,\u201d Kimberly said. When he referred patients for further mental health care rather than immediate hormone treatment, he said he was accused of what they called gatekeeping and had to change jobs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized something had gone totally off the rails,\u201d Kimberly, who subsequently founded the\u00a0Gender Dysphoria Alliance<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0L.G.B.T. Courage Coalition<\/a>\u00a0to advocate better gender care, told me.<\/p>\n

Gay men and women often told me they fear that same-sex-attracted kids, especially effeminate boys and tomboy girls who are gender nonconforming, will be transitioned during a normal phase of childhood and before sexual maturation \u2014 and that gender ideology\u00a0can mask<\/a>\u00a0and even\u00a0abet homophobia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As one detransitioned man, now in a gay relationship, put it, \u201cI was a gay man pumped up to look like a woman and dated a lesbian who was pumped up to look like a man. If that\u2019s not conversion therapy, I don\u2019t know what is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI transitioned because I didn\u2019t want to be gay,\u201d Kasey Emerick, a 23-year-old woman and detransitioner from Pennsylvania, told me. Raised in a conservative Christian church, she said, \u201cI believed homosexuality was a sin.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she was 15, Emerick confessed her homosexuality to her mother. Her mother attributed her sexual orientation to trauma \u2014 Emerick\u2019s father was convicted of raping and assaulting her repeatedly when she was between the ages of 4 and 7 \u2014 but after catching Emerick texting with another girl at age 16, she took away her phone. When Emerick melted down, her mother admitted her to a psychiatric hospital. While there, Emerick told herself, \u201cIf I was a boy, none of this would have happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

In May 2017, Emerick began searching \u201cgender\u201d online and encountered trans advocacy websites. After realizing she could \u201cpick the other side,\u201d she told her mother, \u201cI\u2019m sick of being called a dyke and not a real girl.\u201d If she were a man, she\u2019d be free to pursue relationships with women.<\/p>\n

That September, she and her mother met with a licensed professional counselor for the first of two 90-minute consultations. She told the counselor that she had wished to be a Boy Scout rather than a Girl Scout. She said she didn\u2019t like being gay or a butch lesbian. She also told the counselor that she had suffered from anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. The clinic recommended testosterone, which was prescribed by a nearby L.G.B.T.Q. health clinic. Shortly thereafter, she was also diagnosed with A.D.H.D. She developed panic attacks. At age 17, she was cleared for a double mastectomy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thinking, \u2018Oh my God, I\u2019m having my breasts removed. I\u2019m 17. I\u2019m too young for this,\u2019\u201d she recalled. But she went ahead with the operation.<\/p>\n

\u201cTransition felt like a way to control something when I couldn\u2019t control anything in my life,\u201d Emerick explained. But after living as a trans man for five years, Emerick realized her mental health symptoms were only getting worse. In the fall of 2022, she came out as a detransitioner on Twitter and\u00a0was immediately attacked<\/a>. Transgender influencers told her she was bald and ugly. She received multiple threats.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought my life was over,\u201d she said. \u201cI realized that I had lived a lie for over five years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today Emerick\u2019s voice,\u00a0permanently<\/a>\u00a0altered by testosterone, is that of a man. When she tells people she\u2019s a detransitioner, they ask when she plans to stop taking T and live as a woman. \u201cI\u2019ve been off it for a year,\u201d she replies.<\/p>\n

Once, after she recounted her story to a therapist, the therapist tried to reassure her. If it\u2019s any consolation, the therapist remarked, \u201cI would never have guessed that you were once a trans woman.\u201d Emerick replied, \u201cWait, what sex do you think I am?\u201d<\/p>\n

To the trans activist dictum that\u00a0children know<\/a>\u00a0their gender best, it is important to add something all parents know from experience: Children change their minds all the time. One mother told me that after her teenage son desisted \u2014 pulled back from a trans identity before any irreversible medical procedures \u2014 he explained, \u201cI was just rebelling. I look at it like a subculture, like being goth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe job of children and adolescents is to experiment and explore where they fit into the world, and a big part of that exploration, especially during adolescence, is around their sense of identity,\u201d Sasha Ayad, a licensed professional counselor based in Phoenix, told me. \u201cChildren at that age often present with a great deal of certainty and urgency about who they believe they are at the time and things they would like to do in order to enact that sense of identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ayad, a co-author of \u201cWhen Kids Say They\u2019re Trans: A Guide for Thoughtful Parents<\/a>,\u201d advises parents to be wary of the gender affirmation model. \u201cWe\u2019ve always known that adolescents are\u00a0particularly malleable<\/a>\u00a0in relationship to their peers and their social context and that exploration is often an attempt to navigate difficulties of that stage, such as puberty, coming to terms with the responsibilities and complications of young adulthood, romance and solidifying their sexual orientation,\u201d she told me. For providing this kind of exploratory approach in her own practice with gender dysphoric youth, Ayad has had her license challenged twice, both times by adults who were not her patients. Both times, the charges were dismissed.<\/p>\n

Studies show that around eight in 10 cases of\u00a0childhood gender dysphoria resolve<\/a>\u00a0themselves by puberty and 30 percent of people on hormone therapy\u00a0discontinue its use<\/a>\u00a0within four years, though the effects, including\u00a0infertility<\/a>, are often\u00a0irreversible<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Proponents of early social transition and medical interventions for gender dysphoric youth cite a 2022\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0showing that 98 percent of children who took both puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones continued treatment for short periods, and\u00a0another study<\/a>\u00a0that tracked 317 children who socially transitioned between the ages of 3 and 12, which found that 94 percent of them still identified as transgender five years later. But such early interventions may cement children\u2019s self-conceptions without giving them time to think or sexually mature.<\/p>\n

At the end of her freshman year of college, Grace Powell, horrifically depressed, began dissociating, feeling detached from her body and from reality, which had never happened to her before. Ultimately, she said, \u201cthe process of transition didn\u2019t make me feel better. It magnified what I found was wrong with myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI expected it to change everything, but I was just me, with a slightly deeper voice,\u201d she added. \u201cIt took me two years to start detransitioning and living as Grace again.\u201d<\/p>\n

She tried in vain to find a therapist who would treat her underlying issues, but they kept asking her: How do you want to be seen? Do you want to be nonbinary? Powell wanted to talk about her trauma, not her identity or her gender presentation. She ended up getting online therapy from a former employee of the Tavistock clinic in Britain. This therapist, a woman who has broken from the gender-affirming model, talked Grace through what she sees as her failure to launch and her efforts to reset. The therapist asked questions like: Who is Grace? What do you want from your life? For the first time, Powell felt someone was seeing and helping her as a person, not simply looking to slot her into an identity category.<\/p>\n

Many detransitioners say they face\u00a0ostracism and silencing<\/a>\u00a0because of the toxic politics around transgender issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is extraordinarily frustrating to feel that something I am is inherently political,\u201d Powell told me. \u201cI\u2019ve been accused multiple times that I\u2019m some right-winger who\u2019s making a fake narrative to discredit transgender people, which is just crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

While she believes there are people who benefit from transitioning, \u201cI wish more people would understand that there\u2019s not a one-size-fits-all solution,\u201d she said. \u201cI wish we could have that conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0recent study<\/a>\u00a0in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, about 40 young detransitioners out of 78 surveyed said they had suffered from rapid onset gender dysphoria. Trans activists have fought hard to suppress any discussion of rapid onset gender dysphoria, despite\u00a0evidence<\/a>\u00a0that the condition is real. In its guide for journalists, the activist organization GLAAD\u00a0warns the media<\/a>\u00a0against using the term, as it is not \u201ca formal condition or diagnosis.\u201d Human Rights Campaign, another activist group, calls it \u201ca right-wing theory<\/a>.\u201d A group of professional organizations put out a statement urging clinicians to\u00a0eliminate the term<\/a>\u00a0from use.<\/p>\n

Nobody knows how many young people desist after social, medical or surgical transitions. Trans activists often cite low\u00a0regret rates<\/a>\u00a0for gender transition, along with\u00a0low figures<\/a>\u00a0for detransition. But those studies, which often rely on self-reported cases to gender clinics, likely understate the actual numbers. None of the seven detransitioners I interviewed, for instance, even considered reporting back to the gender clinics that prescribed them medication they now consider to have been a mistake. Nor did they know any other detransitioners who had done so.<\/p>\n

As Americans furiously debate the basis of transgender care,\u00a0a number<\/a>\u00a0of advances<\/a>\u00a0in understanding have taken place in Europe, where the early\u00a0Dutch<\/a>\u00a0studies<\/a>\u00a0that became the underpinning of gender-affirming care have been broadly\u00a0questioned<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0criticized<\/a>. Unlike some of the current population of gender dysphoric youth, the Dutch study participants had no serious psychological conditions. Those studies were\u00a0riddled<\/a>\u00a0with methodological flaws and weaknesses. There was no evidence that any intervention was lifesaving. There was no long-term follow-up with any of the study\u2019s 55 participants or the 15 who dropped out. A\u00a0British effort to replicate the study<\/a>\u00a0said that it \u201cidentified no changes in psychological function\u201d and that more studies were needed.<\/p>\n

In countries like\u00a0Sweden<\/a>, Norway,\u00a0France<\/a>,\u00a0the Netherlands<\/a>\u00a0and Britain \u2014 long considered\u00a0exemplars of gender progress<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0medical professionals have recognized<\/a>\u00a0that early research on medical interventions for childhood gender dysphoria was either\u00a0faulty or incomplete<\/a>. Last month, the World Health Organization, in\u00a0explaining<\/a>\u00a0why it is developing \u201ca guideline on the health of trans and gender diverse people,\u201d said it will cover only adults because \u201cthe evidence base for children and adolescents is limited and variable regarding the longer-term outcomes of gender-affirming care for children and adolescents.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in America, and Canada, the results of those\u00a0widely criticized<\/a>\u00a0Dutch studies are falsely presented to the public as settled science.<\/p>\n

Other countries have recently halted or limited the medical and surgical treatment of gender dysphoric youth, pending further study. Britain\u2019s Tavistock clinic was ordered to be shut down next month, after a National Health Service-commissioned\u00a0investigation<\/a>\u00a0found\u00a0deficiencies<\/a>\u00a0in service and \u201ca lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the American medical establishment has hunkered down, stuck in an outdated model of gender affirmation. The American Academy of Pediatrics\u00a0only recently agreed<\/a>\u00a0to conduct more research in response to yearslong efforts by dissenting experts, including Dr. Julia Mason, a self-described \u201cbleeding-heart liberal<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The larger threat to transgender people comes from Republicans who wish to deny them rights and protections. But the doctrinal rigidity of the progressive wing of the\u00a0Democratic Party<\/a>\u00a0is disappointing, frustrating and counterproductive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always a liberal Democrat,\u201d one woman whose son desisted after social transition and hormone therapy told me. \u201cNow I feel politically homeless.\u201d<\/p>\n

She noted that the Biden administration has \u201cunequivocally\u201d\u00a0supported<\/a>\u00a0gender-affirming care for minors, in cases in which it deems it \u201cmedically appropriate and necessary.\u201d Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,\u00a0told NPR<\/a>\u00a0in 2022 that \u201cthere is no argument among medical professionals \u2014 pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera \u2014 about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, politics should not influence medical practice, whether the issue is birth control, abortion or gender medicine. But unfortunately, politics has gotten in the way of progress. Last year The Economist published\u00a0a thorough investigation<\/a>\u00a0into America\u2019s approach to gender medicine. Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor, put the issue into political context. \u201cIf you look internationally at countries in Europe, the U.K. included, their medical establishments are much more concerned,\u201d\u00a0Beddoes told Vanity Fair<\/a>. \u201cBut here \u2014 in part because this has become wrapped up in the culture wars where you have, you know, crazy extremes from the Republican right \u2014 if you want to be an upstanding liberal, you feel like you can\u2019t say anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some people are trying to open up that dialogue, or at least provide outlets for kids and families to seek a more therapeutic approach to gender dysphoria.<\/p>\n

Paul Garcia-Ryan is a psychotherapist in New York who cares for kids and families seeking holistic, exploratory care for gender dysphoria. He is also a detransitioner who from ages 15 to 30 fully believed he was a woman.<\/p>\n

Garcia-Ryan is gay, but as a boy, he said, \u201cit was much less threatening to my psyche to think that I was a straight girl born into the wrong body \u2014 that I had a medical condition that could be tended to.\u201d When he visited a clinic at 15, the clinician immediately affirmed he was female, and rather than explore the reasons for his mental distress, simply confirmed Garcia-Ryan\u2019s belief that he was not meant to be a man.<\/p>\n

Once in college, he began medically transitioning and eventually had surgery on his genitals. Severe medical complications from both the surgery and hormone medication led him to reconsider what he had done, and to detransition. He also reconsidered the basis of gender affirmation, which, as a licensed clinical social worker at a gender clinic, he had been trained in and provided to clients.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re made to believe these slogans,\u201d he said. \u201cEvidence-based, lifesaving care, safe and effective, medically necessary, the science is settled \u2014 and none of that is evidence based.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garcia-Ryan, 32, is now the board president of\u00a0Therapy First<\/a>, an organization that supports therapists who do not agree with the gender affirmation model. He thinks transition can help some people manage the symptoms of gender dysphoria but no longer believes anyone under 25 should socially, medically or surgically transition without exploratory psychotherapy first.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a professional affirms a gender identity for a younger person, what they are doing is implementing a psychological intervention that narrows a person\u2019s sense of self and closes off their options for considering what\u2019s possible for them,\u201d Garcia-Ryan told me.<\/p>\n

Instead of promoting unproven treatments for children, which\u00a0surveys show<\/a>\u00a0many Americans are uncomfortable with, transgender activists would be more effective if they focused on a shared agenda.\u00a0Most Americans<\/a>\u00a0across the political spectrum can agree on the need for\u00a0legal protections<\/a>\u00a0for transgender adults. They would also probably support additional research on the needs of young people reporting gender dysphoria so that kids could get the best treatment possible.<\/p>\n

A shift in this direction would model tolerance and acceptance. It would prioritize compassion over demonization. It would require rising above culture-war politics and returning to reason. It would be the most humane path forward. And it would be the right thing to do.<\/p>\n

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IR PARA ARTIGO ORIGINAL<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artigo de opini\u00e3o publicado no New York Times Autor: Pamela Paul Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy. Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn\u2019t feel comfortable in her own skin. She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internacional"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juventudeemtransicao.pt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juventudeemtransicao.pt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juventudeemtransicao.pt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juventudeemtransicao.pt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juventudeemtransicao.pt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1238"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/juventudeemtransicao.pt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1247,"href":"https:\/\/juventudeemtransicao.pt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1238\/revisions\/1247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juventudeemtransicao.pt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juventudeemtransicao.pt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juventudeemtransicao.pt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juventudeemtransicao.pt\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}