Renee Starlasky
Jul 20, 2017 · 4 min read

You in this response refers to all that apply:
There is so much wrong with this “group think” bashing. As you stand to support this minority group you invalidate a serious concern of a victim of rape. You can then brush off her experience as unique and not worthy of attention when in fact women are raped so often that we teach our daughters how to be careful before they can comprehend the message.

This should not be a discussion of who’s story is more important. Sure, transwomen and transmen need safe spaces, but so do cis women, and their children. And to your argument, there is a very good chance those places would be best accommodated in different settings. Switching the order of your wording a little, “Would we be okay with creating separate spaces for women of color because their experiences were different from those of white women?” There are gatherings distinctly for women of color where they can share their culture and experiences. Additionally, there unfortunately is an issue of men who claim to be women attacking women. [1] [2] [3] [4] Here are just a few to start you off. So yes, transwomen need a safe place, but should the laws force that upon women and children? If you can’t understand the concern, then you most likely don’t have room to advocate for children.

In this part of the article, “trans women are 4.3 times more likely than cis women to be murdered”, that statistic is questionable on many levels. First, I did read the publication. Second, that statistic was in a footnote. Third, those numbers were contrived by math manipulation, very similar to 3 out of 4 doctors surveyed prefer trident gum for their patients — when you have a tiny sample and then multiply it, it skews results. That statistic would never hold in a true scientific publication. Fourth, this publication was about transwomen of color. Adding the color aspect into a violence report drastically changes the statistic, thus increasing the percentage further. Once again, this is not to dispute that transpeople need safe places.

And regarding children who are transgender: There is so much data that indicates that children who are non-gender conforming grow to become normal, healthy gay or lesbian adults or desist altogether to become cis. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]The current pushed agenda is not scientifically proven on many levels. 1) Children are fluent in many identities as they grow. Affirming to a child that they are any of these things can lock them into that identity (girl, scientist, bad, a kitty) 2) Hormone blockers have medical side effects [1] [2] [3]. 3) It is not known what the long term side effects of hormones are, but there are some known side effects of each that children aren’t really in a position to fully understand or decide on such as blood clotting and infertility. 4) If a patient changes their mind, some side effects are not reversible. 5) Transgender teens are likely to attempt suicide, as are depressed teens, gender non-conforming teens, teens who are bullied. It is almost impossible to take these other co-morbid diagnoses out of this to provide specific data. However, if you look at teens in these categories who do not identify as transgender, their numbers are similar. Additionally, many of the children who do succeed in suicide were supported by their parents and community, even leaders in their community. Keeping that in mind, rushing to transition children is not necessarily the perfect answer.

The longest running study (30 years from Sweden) found that Transgender individuals, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism. This here says so much about how effective transgender surgery has been. It is fine to have this as an option, but other options to deal with a person’s anxiety over their body, feelings, place in society, sexuality should be “pushed” as well. Honestly, if you could live without anxiety, would you want to be a patient for life? And why is becoming the opposite sex an option? Because 1) Doctors learned how to do the surgeries and make money doing so and 2) Doctors have given up on trying to understand the many nuances of feeling transgender and have not been effective in helping patients through this.

Surprisingly there are people who have transitioned and not been happy. Please research and read about their stories as we will begin to see many more of them as we see more pediatric patients. Google these words: detransistion, retransition, reidentified, FtMtF, MtFtM.

You may consider that having an opinion does not make it right. Being loud does not make it true. Having a lot of people agree does not make it true either. The truth for one person does not equate to the truth for everybody else. Calling someone a name, such as stupid or ___phobic, does not prove your idea is correct. Sometimes there are not easy, black & white answers and many considerations need to be had.

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