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Natalie's avatar

It’s just such an extreme, radical step to take. It’s bleeding obvious to me that the best and kindest way to handle gender dysphoria — for anyone, but especially kids — is to help them <become> comfortable in their body without resorting to cutting off major pieces of it.

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Theodric's avatar

“she wouldn’t force kids into a mental health exam before giving them insulin, so why would she make that a prerequisite for youth gender medicine?”

This is obnoxious from a supposed medical professional. The answer is obvious: because gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and type 1 diabetes isn’t.

Now before somebody runs off to Twitter cancel me, I understand why there are lots of social reasons why the average person would be uncomfortable with calling gender (or “chest”) dysphoria mental illness in casual conversation, and I don’t make a habit of running around calling trans people “mentally ill”. And I’m totally open to the idea that in at least some cases, the best treatment for gender dysphoria might be surgical transition.

But the reality is that by any definition that is remotely consistent, gender dysphoria is, medically speaking, a mental illness. And any medical professional needs to be cognizant of that and be willing to turn the best efforts of modern mental health care on the subject. To not do so is negligence.

“Trust the experts” only applies if the experts are willing to behave like experts, and that includes things like “doing the scientific method, not pantomiming it for activism”.

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