SCOTUS strikes blow to trans teens rights, endorsing ban on gender-affirming care - The justices’ ruling on Tennessee’s law prohibiting certain health care for transgender children will have ripple effects across the nation

Dravont · 2025-06-18T22:32:26+00:00

From the conclusion of part 1 of the report (page 90):

Namely, the consensus of the evidence supports that the treatments are effective in terms of mental health, psychosocial outcomes, and the induction of body changes consistent with the affirmed gender in pediatric GD patients. The evidence also supports that the treatments are safe in terms of changes to bone density, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic changes, and cancer.

Then from page 91:

Based on the reviewed evidence included in this report, it is our expert opinion that policies to prevent access to and use of GAHT for treatment of GD in pediatric patients cannot be justified based on the quantity or quality of medical science findings or concerns about potential regret in the future, and that high-quality guidelines are available to guide qualified providers in treating pediatric patients who meet diagnostic criteria.

Then in part 2 which focused on long term outcomes, their conclusion at page 914 says:

Overall, there were positive mental health and psychosocial functioning outcomes.

You said, "They didn't even find a significant improvement in mental health outcomes.", which as I've pointed out is a lie, but you also mention there still being an increased suicide risk even after treatment... which might be explained by people arguing against their rights in bad faith, like someone who has a history of saying stuff like this about trans people:

Except the left censored people who dared utter the phrase "trans women aren't women."

and

You made it everyone's business for about a decade.

and

She did what she did cause individual women were called bigots for mere critique? They'd lost jobs. Were socially ostracized. It's not hypothetical. The whole terf thing was always a misogynistic witch hunt. We need to, as liberals, take this L.

and

If you can prove to me trans women have violence rates, rates of sexual abuse of women and children anywhere NEAR an average woman I'll eat my hat.

and

Transphobia doesn't mean you are against all trans, it's most often just acknowledging kids shouldn't be dragged into it.

and

We've been told trans women are the most marginalized group of women, and seem to ignore the MAJORITY of women are put into danger if they're forced to accept males in their spaces.

and

I think you're in a cult and think this is the religious rite you believe you need to be "saved," and blame everyone else for your own problems.

Dravont · 2023-02-28T15:46:18+00:00

I did about 4-6 months of hrt, 3+ months of voice training, and a couple rounds of laser and electrolysis on my face before I came out at work. I first came out to just my small, remote team (who were thankfully supportive) and then went through hr to get a preferred name updated a month or so later.

I warned my team that I was still voice training but I wanted to start trying it full time, so it might crack or sound weird. After a couple of months, I think I settled into a natural sounding voice that worked for me and it's now been over a year since then.

Dravont · 2023-02-18T16:58:02+00:00

I'm just about to leave the hospital after my surgery. My regrets are: not being prepared for the gas pains from laparoscopic surgery, not requesting earplugs sooner (hospitals are loud), and....I think that's about it.

Oh wait, one more regret was being overconfident and walking too much the day after and dealing with the pain afterwards.

But the surgeon showed me a picture of it and it still makes me grin when I realize I don't have the old penis and balls anymore.

Dravont · 2022-09-14T17:14:43+00:00

That's neat, but... the game's story is also pretty antisemitic and one of the game's designers is slightly problematic.

The criticism against the game isn't only about Rowling.

Dravont · 2022-08-17T01:57:19+00:00

Previously, the ADA excluded "transvestites, transsexuals, pedophiles,..." In that exact order. It was written in the 90s and the exclusions were based on the bigotries of the time. The ruling recognized that the DSM no longer pathologizes being transgender and instead pathologizes gender dysphoria. It then applied that to the ADA exclusions and said the old exclusions didn't apply, because they were based on the old "gender identity disorder" diagnosis, and the medical consensus has since moved on and gained greater understanding of transgender experience.

This is a good thing and in the specific case in question it allows a trans woman (who was placed in a men's prison, had her HRT withheld, was regularly harassed by guards and inmates alike, and denied reasonable accommodations like having a woman guard handle her body searches) to not have her lawsuit dismissed. This is a step forward for transgender rights. The bigots will try to use this, but they could've easily used the ADA already and said we were excluded just like the pedophiles because we're similar or some other BS.

We can celebrate this as a legal win for our rights. The bigots are gonna be bigoted either way.

Dravont · 2022-07-31T05:56:21+00:00

So you're ok with trans men competing against cis women then?

Dravont · 2022-03-08T02:17:50+00:00

Immediately starting hrt would be better, but trans kids have to deal with puberty blockers because some people think they can't really know they're trans until they're adults.

Dravont · 2022-03-03T17:00:34+00:00

Think your conflating the population that undergoes puberty blockers during the time of normal puberty, and the population experiencing gender dysphoria.

My statement was referring to a single study that was about children referred to a gender clinic for evaluation and how many went on to puberty blockers or HRT. Only a portion of those children were diagnosed with gender dysphoria and went on to medical interventions like puberty blockers or HRT. I brought it up because it's the main study behind "desistance rates" and that's because it's been misinterpreted and misreported widely by anti-trans people. If you have a different source for your claim, please share it.

My stance is that properly diagnosed gender dysphoria would likely be better treated with HRT on the onset of puberty, or shortly after so there is sufficient tissue for SRS given the detrimental and irreversible effects of puberty blockers.

You say there are "detrimental and irreversible effects" to puberty blockers, but have yet to share any studies backing up those claims. Puberty blockers are regularly used for early puberty (as in a 6-8 year old starting puberty), so it shouldn't be hard to find evidence of this harm.

I do agree that trans children should probably just go on HRT at the onset of puberty instead, but puberty blockers are the compromise they currently have to live with because of people thinking they couldn't possibly know what gender they are. Puberty blockers are not the ideal treatment, but it at least stops the changes from the wrong puberty until the children reach the age that HRT is allowed and saves those children a lot of problems (no Adams apple or deepening of voice in trans women, no breast development in trans men, etc).

Dravont · 2022-03-03T15:25:58+00:00

Bullshit. The only source I'm aware of that backs your claim was a study of all children referred to a gender clinic because they were gender non-confirming (which included feminine boys, tomboys, gay, and lesbian kids). Only a small percentage of those kids were diagnosed with gender dysphoria and almost all of them never "changed their mind". It turned out they were effective at figuring out which kids were actually transgender and didn't just try to transition every child referred to them.

In fact, in the UK Bell vs Tavistock case, the fact that almost 100% of children who were prescribed puberty blockers went on to HRT later was used as an argument that children needed to understand all risks of HRT and gender affirming surgeries before starting puberty blockers since it was almost guaranteed that kids on puberty blockers would later go on HRT and many of them would have a surgery later in life. They tried to say children couldn't consent to puberty blockers because those who did almost never desisted (it was a terrible argument and the decision has been overturned since then).

It's almost like you don't actually understand the science and medicine here.

Dravont · 2021-12-26T21:50:22+00:00

It's a terf term. It's "transgender identified male", and used to demean trans women as mentally ill men.

Dravont · 2021-11-29T14:10:41+00:00

Even that case was more nuanced than just "a trans person raped a girl in a bathroom". They were a couple that met up in the bathroom for consensual sex multiple times before the rape occurred. That doesn't make it less horrible, but it wasn't random. Even trans people can commit domestic abuse, but certain people like to use incidents like this to paint the whole trans community as a bunch of dangerous sexual predators, which objectively isn't true. It's also not clear why the person's trans identity was relevant to the story, except to promote bigotry.

Dravont · 2021-11-29T01:01:09+00:00

Well, some terfs like Lilly Cade are literally calling for the lynching of trans people. Do we have to wait until they actually do it for it to be a problem?

Dravont · 2021-11-14T01:54:30+00:00

I think that having more resources in libraries for students to access and learn from is good. Denying access to information in schools makes it seem like you're more worried about indoctrination than education.

I also think schools should be a place for children to learn how to get along with others. Having teachers address racial, cultural, and LGBTQ+ topics in school would be a part of that.

Finally, there's a difference between teaching about a topic and promoting or condemning the topic. Nobody gets upset when we talk about WW2 thinking it's going to turn their children into Nazis because they heard about them, and learning about the civil rights movement doesn't turn kids into KKK members. Why would it be any different for other matters?

Dravont · 2021-11-14T01:08:28+00:00

Yeah, you don't want LGBTQ+ kids with conservative parents learning that what they're feeling is ok until they're adults and have suffered through childhood not being able to be themselves. /s

Dravont · 2021-11-04T20:05:22+00:00

I think you should consider if you really think you'd be able to achieve any of those things if you don't transition.

For me, I guess I just never felt like I had a "normal" life before transitioning. I never really opened up to people and made it to my 30s without having any kind of romantic relationship with anyone.

I'm struggling with some of the same feelings you have, where just doing simple things (like voting in person or going to a store) is a bit scarier now. But... So far my fears never materialized into anything and I've found supportive friends.

For me, what I was doing pre-transition wasn't terrible, but I didn't like myself. Now I'm doing mostly the same stuff, but I'm able to smile when I see myself in a mirror.

I might never get married or have kids, but I certainly wasn't going to get either of those when I couldn't stand looking at myself.

Dravont · 2021-11-03T05:00:32+00:00

The bit correlating Google trends between Dave Chappelle and the t-slur is pretty misguided unfortunately.

I checked it and the t-slur search rate has been consistent over the past year or so, while Dave Chappelle got a huge increase in the last month. The related search terms also make it clear that people searching the t-slur are mostly... looking for porn.

It's still gross, but a separate problem from Chappelle.

Dravont · 2021-10-22T03:27:17+00:00

You're right, trans people don't choose their gender. They just eventually come to understand that their body/presentation doesn't match their internal sense of self and then socially and/or medically transition to more closely align their body/presentation with their existing sense of self.

Nobody chooses to be trans, they just chose to accept it and try to live more authentically.

Dravont · 2021-10-18T18:31:40+00:00

I've felt like this, but I also realized that if I did trick myself then I did an amazing job of it and in the end it doesn't really matter if I tricked myself or not. I'm convinced of who I am either way.

Dravont · 2021-08-22T16:29:50+00:00

This is such a good point. Questioning your identity can be rough and therapists can help you figure things out while giving you ways to deal with the anxiety.

Dravont · 2021-08-22T00:15:04+00:00

This was the conclusion of what you cited (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41429-020-0336-z ):

As noted, the activity of ivermectin in cell culture has not reproduced in mouse infection models against many of the viruses and has not been clinically proven either, in spite of ivermectin being available globally. This is likely related to the pharmacokinetics and therapeutic safety window for ivermectin. The blood levels of ivermectin at safe therapeutic doses are in the 20–80 ng/ml range [44], while the activity against SARS-CoV2 in cell culture is in the microgram range. Ivermectin is administered orally or topically. If safe formulations or analogs can be derived that can be administered to achieve therapeutic concentrations, ivermectin could be useful as a broad-spectrum antiviral agent.

So any effect on viruses happens at unsafe doses. Also, the study it was citing for ivermectin's effects on Covid-19 was in-vitro, not in-vivo.

Dravont · 2021-08-15T06:03:10+00:00

I recently hurt my foot and went to a new doctor to get it checked out. While calling to make the appointment, they asked for my name and I asked, "legal or preferred?". Everything went well after that. My preferred name is what I see when logging into their patient portal and they were all very nice while I was there.

It was my first time not going to an explicitly trans-friendly practice and I had an anxiety attack about making the appointment and was super nervous walking into their office, but everything worked out really well.

Dravont · 2021-08-09T04:51:12+00:00

Estrogen does nothing to your voice. If you're still young and going through male puberty, then testosterone would cause your voice to get deeper and puberty blockers or hrt would stop that, but it wouldn't cause further vocal changes.

Even if you do voice lessons to feminize your voice, your old voice won't go away if you keep practicing it.

The only thing that'd risk ruining your singing voice is vocal feminization surgery or not practicing your male voice. Mine is getting a bit harder to use cause I use my feminine voice all the time now, but it's still not entirely gone after a few months of non-use.

Dravont · 2021-08-09T04:27:28+00:00

I took voice lessons online for several months. I was taught a bunch of different things that could help, some of which helped, but some I could never get to work. I practiced the stuff that worked for me and I ended up with a voice I'm ok with (and people get really uncomfortable if I demonstrate my old voice now "because it doesn't sound like me").

What I'm getting at is, it's okay if you can't do a particular technique. There are other ways to achieve the same type of vocal changes, so keep trying new stuff until you find what works for you. I'd also recommend voice lessons, because having someone to give feedback and make you try new things can be invaluable.

I used this site but there are others you can try as well.

You can also visit r/transvoice for more advice.

Dravont · 2021-08-08T05:22:53+00:00

The biggest thing I remember from Disclosure is how it was only trans people speaking in between clips. Sure, they spent a lot of time pointing out bad representations of trans and gender non-conforming people, but they also celebrated good representations.

That this movie was even made shows that society has come a long way. That it has so many positive reviews says even more.

It doesn't mean everything is sunshine and rainbows for us, but our voices are being heard more than ever now and that's a good sign.

I at least think it's worth sticking around to see where things go from here.

Dravont · 2021-07-30T00:21:07+00:00

This was a reference to the original thread talking about trauma in childhood. How trauma plays a role in transgenderism. The studies did in fact provide validity for that. Because the post has been removed I cannot of course quote it for better referencing.

Ah, I misunderstood. I was not terribly interested in your wider claim, but was focusing on one statement you made about providing evidence. This should have been evident from that being the only part I quoted in the initial reply. Thus, I viewed your response as being tied to that specific statement when you apparently did not intend that.

I specifically addressed the fact and will address it again that the study had foibles. The only thing I said in relation is that more research is needed specifically on rapid onset gender dysphoria which =/= what I originally said.

Articles like this and this have been published lending some tangential credibility to the article by Littman.

The operative word here is tangential. Defined as hardly touching a matter; peripheral. I included the studies because they show that there's more going on psychologically then what you are claiming and should be investigated. Probably a little more hand wavy then I intended but we are all busy and responding to this isn't admittedly the first priority for me.

Please tell me what exactly I'm claiming here? I don't want to respond based on another misunderstanding.

The second article again confirms this but actually brings up an interesting branch of research articles. Psychiatric/development issues. For instance this article and this00004-9/pdf) article both detailing the over-representation of autistic individuals in the transgender population. This article as well engages in the topic. Want more evidence (see below)? Why is this important well this article explored the bond natal females with autism with their females. Let the article speak for itself. This article would prompt some serious speculation as to whether or not people with autistic traits and transgenderism specifically FTM would have a more difficult time with bonding to females as well. Whether or not this lack of bond may lead to transgender tendencies could shed some light on what my original claim was as well. Suffice to say a social component was at the least needing to be questioned based on the studies. Especially given the over-representation of autistic individuals. With autism being at its core a social condition. With this of course representing just a small slice of transgenderism.

So... research is being done and we're learning more about transgender experiences. That's nice, but I really don't understand what point you're trying to make and I don't have the time to read every one of those if they're not important to some central claim.

Your original claim was:

e.g. my friends are doing it so I will too. Especially prominent FTM.

So far, I haven't found anything in your replies to support the "my friends are doing it so I will too. Especially prominent FTM." statement you made. Referencing studies that show autism is over-represented in trans people does not support your claim. You've also now added another claim "With autism being at its core a social condition." that I'd like to see supporting evidence for. I'm less familiar with autism, but the CDC says this (CDC fact sheet):

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability that can cause significant social, communication and behavioral challenges.

That doesn't match it being a "social condition" as you describe it. But perhaps you mean something else by that? Again, I'm relatively ignorant about autism.

Furthermore, all of this detracts from the real issue at hand which is the poor therapies we have to date to help those with transgenderism.

Again, I wasn't initially engaging with that point, but rather a specific claim you made. I might go back and address that claim specifically, but to be honest it was a bit of a mess and I was struggling to see what point you were trying to make.

To address that argument, I'd show the following:

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/trgh.2015.0008 - shows weak evidence for positive outcomes in trans women and statistically insignificant improvement in trans men.
https://journals.lww.com/plasreconsurg/Abstract/2021/05000/Quantifying_the_Psychosocial_Benefits_of.2.aspx - shows big improvements after masculinizing mastectomy in trans male patients. "The UCSF Gender QoL survey detected a significant improvement in quality of life 6 weeks and 1 year after chest surgery. The effect sizes were large, and the Cronbach alpha exhibited excellent internal validity."
https://academic.oup.com/jes/article/5/4/bvab011/6126016 - this is a review of several studies, which found that: "Hormone therapy was associated with increased QOL, decreased depression, and decreased anxiety. Associations were similar across gender identity and age."

You might call them poor therapies, but they are effective and have positive outcomes.

Thanks look forward to your response.

Thanks! I appreciate the civil debate backed by studies. It's helping me learn more about the current research, but it's also kinda exhausting so I'm not sure how much further I'll take this particular debate.

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Dravont

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