If you look at the actual science of sex re-assignment surgery, it doesn’t make a good case that these procedures actually deliver results.
Here’s the latest from Daily Signal:
The world’s largest dataset on patients who have undergone sex-reassignment procedures reveals that these procedures do not bring mental health benefits. But that’s not what the authors originally claimed. Or what the media touted.
In October 2019, the American Journal of Psychiatry published a paper titled, “Reduction in Mental Health Treatment Utilization Among Transgender Individuals After Gender-Affirming Surgeries: A Total Population Study.” As the title suggests, the paper claimed that after having had sex-reassignment surgeries, a patient was less likely to need mental health treatment.
Well, over the weekend, the editors of the journal and the authors of the paper issued a correction. In the words of the authors, “the results demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety disorder-related health care.”
But it’s actually worse than that. The original results already demonstrated no benefits to hormonal transition. That part didn’t need a correction.
So, the bottom line: The largest dataset on sex-reassignment procedures—both hormonal and surgical—reveals that such procedures do not bring the promised mental health benefits.
In fact, in their correction to the original study, the authors point out that on one score—treatment for anxiety disorders—patients who had sex-reassignment surgeries did worse than those who did not:
individuals diagnosed with gender incongruence who had received gender-affirming surgery were more likely to be treated for anxiety disorders compared with individuals diagnosed with gender incongruence who had not received gender-affirming surgery.
You would think patients suffering from gender dysphoria would want to know that.
Previously, I had blogged about another study that found that the choice to go transgender was enormously susceptible to peer pressure and teacher pressure.
Here’s how the study was first reported by Science Daily:
This month, a Brown University researcher published the first study to empirically describe teens and young adults who did not have symptoms of gender dysphoria during childhood but who were observed by their parents to rapidly develop gender dysphoria symptoms over days, weeks or months during or after puberty.
[…]The study was published on Aug. 16 in PLOS ONE.
Peer pressure / The Internet:
The pattern of clusters of teens in friend groups becoming transgender-identified, the group dynamics of these friend groups and the types of advice viewed online led her to the hypothesis that friends and online sources could spread certain beliefs.
[….]”Of the parents who provided information about their child’s friendship group, about a third responded that more than half of the kids in the friendship group became transgender-identified,” Littman said. “A group with 50 percent of its members becoming transgender-identified represents a rate that is more 70 times the expected prevalence for young adults.”
“Friends and online sources could spread certain beliefs”.
Mental disorders / traumatic events:
Additionally, 62 percent of parents reported their teen or young adult had one or more diagnoses of a psychiatric disorder or neurodevelopmental disability before the onset of gender dysphoria. Forty-eight percent reported that their child had experienced a traumatic or stressful event prior to the onset of their gender dysphoria, including being bullied, sexually assaulted or having their parents get divorced.
“experienced a traumatic or stressful event prior to the onset of their gender dysphoria” such as “having their parents get divorced”.
When you read studies like this, it almost makes you think that we shouldn’t be rushing children into sex-reassignment surgery, doesn’t it? But then what would the adults who are desperate to feel good about themselves do to feel good about themselves? It makes them feel good to let children do whatever they want. And it feels so bad to tell children no when they want something. The important thing for these selfish adults is to let the children do what they want right now. That’s called “compassion”.