Hello comrades!
I think it’s important for our comrades to have a safe place where they can ask questions about trans identities and trans issues in good faith.
The first step in garnering support is education, however asking every single trans person to constantly take on the burden of educator is, frankly, ridiculous, especially when so often the questions are not being asked in good faith, and there are very real consequences to the spread of misinformation.
As such, I know that there are likely comrades here who have questions they have been too scared to ask, or feel like it would be inappropriate to pose to some stranger.
Trans or questioning comrades are also welcome to ask questions here, of course, and are welcome to answer any questions they feel comfortable answering. The thing about the trans experience is that it is different for everyone. We all have different material conditions, we all have different interactions with ourselves and the world around us, and so, of course, there is no universal truth that governs what it means to be trans.
I can’t guarantee that we’ll have an answer for everything, and I can’t guarantee that the answers we do have will be satisfactory, but I can guarantee that as long as you are asking out of a genuine desire to inform yourself and learn more, then I will do my best to engage with you as a comrade and an ally.
I’m going to repost a reply I made to a couple people a while back asking about trans youth healthcare. I’ll post the questions I saw, edited for clarity/brevity.
Q1: Does having doubts about the push for things like gender reassignment surgery under 16 years make me a nazbol/redfash?
Q2: I am confused about these puberty blockers. Are they not dangerous? The human body is a bit tricky, and it doesn’t seem prudent to just forcefully halt a process, especially one as complex as what happens during puberty.
I really have never met anyone advocating for sex reassignment surgery for teenagers. Maybe someone advocates for this, but I have never heard of someone advocating that (Edit: @seanchai mentioned in the reply below that there have, in fact, been some teenagers age 16 years and up who have successfully advocated for their personal right to access surgery, although this is rare).
Also, there are a variety of different surgery options for trans people, not really one universal surgery. Some trans people will get no surgery, some might get only 1, some might get a few, depending on what they need/want.
To be clear, usually the medical steps that a teenager might take could be puberty blockers, which is a hormone-blocking medicine (NOT surgery) that will just hold off the kid’s natural puberty from happening for a while, so they can have more time to think about what they want to do (for example by testing out their gender presentation before taking more medical steps).
Puberty blocking medicine has been in use already for about 40 years, for children who start their puberty too early. Now it can also be used for children who, upon beginning puberty, start experiencing or continue to experience gender dysphoria. The medicine is not used on children who have not begun puberty.
Children can go off these blockers and resume their natural puberty when they want to, or, when they are a bit older (I believe in the U.S., it’s after 16) they may start hormone therapy that gives them the opposite sex’s hormones.
The article linked above notes: “Puberty blockers are generally safe when used on a short-term basis. They’ve even been used to treat conditions like prostate cancer, breast cancer and endometriosis.”
The main ill effect of puberty blockers is that it can limit bone mineral density, so the child’s doctor will monitor the child’s vitamin D levels and make sure they receive enough calcium.
If a teen is taking cross-sex hormones, then they will go through the puberty of that sex for the most part. They can also stop doing that if they want to, and let their body’s natural puberty take over. Hormone treatment has some permanent effects but it also has many reversible effects. It is generally taken on a daily or weekly basis, and changes are incremental. This leaves a lot of time for a person to determine whether they are comfortable with the changes they are having. If they stop, there will be some changes that remain, but also many that will go away.
I can imagine that some older teenagers might want to receive some of the surgeries that exist, but I imagine for most of those surgeries, they wouldn’t be allowed to do it, not only because of their young age but also because it may not be viable. For example for some surgeries you actually need to have been on hormones for a long amount of time, or you need to have grown certain body parts to a certain degree. I won’t get into it because it would be beside the point. I think most people will not be having surgery until after they are legal adults, although I imagine some teens would want to pursue this and might succeed (Edit: As @seanchai mentioned below, there have been some cases of teens 16 and up who successfully advocated for their personal right to surgery).
As a final note, when it comes to doctors doing irreversible, mutilating, non-consensual surgeries on children, this is actually the reality that happens currently to many intersex children, who are often mutilated soon after birth, often without even their parents knowledge, or their parents are pressured into it by the doctor and often keep it secret from their children. Many intersex children grow up with strange unexplained scars, symptoms, and signs of their intersex condition and are lied to about their bodies. Sometimes at puberty they begin to experience the “wrong” puberty, or a “atypical” puberty. Sometimes they don’t find out about their condition until well into adulthood, and of course many may live their whole life never knowing. Some intersex people are also trans/some trans people are also intersex and there are some areas where these two communities can have overlapping issues. However, intersex issues are often overshadowed by the current discourse around trans issues, and people can sometimes incorrectly or opportunistically mix the two community’s different problems up. The mutilation of intersex children’s natural genitalia and the lying and secret-keeping done to them is a deeply traumatizing phenomenon for the intersex community and I encourage people to learn more about it if you are concerned about the issue of irreversible genital surgery on children, which plagues the intersex community, who often find that the surgeries done to their natural bodies were not only un-consensual but also were entirely medically unnecessary and damaging. (More about this here and here)
Thank you so much for this thoughtful answer. There have, in fact, been some teenagers (16 years and up) who have successfully advocated for their personal right to access surgery, however this is rare, and in general when people speak of surgery it is for adults.
Many gender confirmation surgeries are already currently available to cis people as well, including some surgeries that are available to cis people who are not yet adults, and yet very little, if any, emphasis is placed on this when people look to demonize trans surgery access.
I appreciate your inclusion of surgery performed nonconsensually on intersex individuals, often times as young as at birth. It is important for people to note that, in the US for instance, the current rash of anti-trans medical bills contain explicit exemptions for intersex individuals. Meaning they want to ban the consensual, sought after surgeries of trans adults, but leave in place the nonconsensual, often secret surgeries performed on intersex individuals, which makes it abundantly clear that the bills have nothing to do with protecting the “sanctity” of the natural-born body, and everything to do with attacking the queer, trans, and intersex communities.
Thank you for the clarification about cases of some individual 16+ teenagers pursuing surgery. I’ll edit my post to reflect this.