As more have sought gender transition
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons has issued a broad recommendation against gender transition surgeries for youths, becoming the first major medical association in the United States to narrow its guidance on pediatric gender care amid a crackdown by the Trump administration.
Yessssss!
Never mind the Trump admin. It’s the only thing they’re right about.
A statement sent Tuesday to the group’s 11,000 members and obtained by The Washington Post recommends surgeons delay gender-related chest, genital and facial surgery until a patient is at least 19 years old. Fewer than 1,000 minors in the United States receive such surgeries every year, according to research published in JAMA, the American Medical Association’s journal, and the vast majority of the procedures are mastectomies, not genital surgeries.
But there’s an intense debate over when young people should be able to get medical interventions as more have sought gender transition and some systematic reviews have suggested the evidence for the benefits and risks of pediatric transition is insufficient. Supporters of transition care for youths have pointed to the widespread endorsement by U.S. medical organizations.
Ahhhhh no. That item is tainted. It’s tainted by years of frantic, enraged, threatening rhetoric about suicide and anguish and the divine wisdom of the trans communinny. People are pushed to endorse, they’re bullied and threatened and ostracized and shouted at and accused of monstrous cruelty and evil. I know what a fraction of that is like because I’ve had it done to me. I’m just a writer/arguer/nitpicker; imagine being a doctor and getting all that. In one way perhaps it helps being a doctor because you know a lot about bodies, but in another way, when all your colleagues tell you you’re wrong and evil, it wouldn’t help at all because why don’t your colleagues see what you see?
“This is a vulnerable, adolescent population,” said Scot Bradley Glasberg, past president of ASPS who did not vote on the new guidance but has been involved in discussions about the group’s stance. “We are mindful that some of these surgeries are irreversible.”
And another thing about them is that they don’t change the sex of the surgeried.
The group, which represents plastic surgeons primarily in the U.S., has evolved its stance on the issue. In 2019, the group opposed attempts by states to restrict transition care and said “plastic surgery services can help gender dysphoria patients align their bodies with whom they know themselves to be and improve their overall mental health and well-being.”
Except that they’re wrong about knowing themselves to be. If they know themselves to be a rabbit they’re wrong about that. People can know themselves to be anything, and lots of them do. Trump knows himself to be an enormously long list of things he isn’t. We see him enacting that confident knowledge and the gap between it and the reality every day. What people know themselves to be is not an accurate guide to anything, including what they will know themselves to be next year, or tomorrow. What’s in the mind is in the mind; it can’t cause us to grow wings or jump over houses or live on the ocean floor.
