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okay, this THREAD is my reply to all who ask "so what's wrong with just asking questions?" w/regards to the articles about trans healthcare & children that Chase referenced in this RT. while I have my own thoughts on this subject, I am speaking now as someone... https://twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/1380150176795480069
...who's been following these issues for almost 20 years. here's my background. btw, unless specified otherwise, all screenshot quotes are from my essay Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation: A Guide for Understanding Transgender Children Debates...
https://juliaserano.medium.com/detransition-desistance-and-disinformation-a-guide-for-understanding-transgender-children-993b7342946e
https://juliaserano.medium.com/detransition-desistance-and-disinformation-a-guide-for-understanding-transgender-children-993b7342946e
...point #1, while "just asking questions" may sound innocent enough, it can be used in nefarious ways. if I raised concerns about the veracity of whether anthropogenic climate change is real, it would 1) be disingenuous, as the field is overwhelmingly in consensus that it is...
...and 2) waste precious energy "debating" largely settled ideas, when what we *should* be discussing and debating is what we should be doing to fix the problem at hand...
...point #2, while trans healthcare for children is certainly not "settled" to the same extent, there *has* been a growing consensus over the last 10-15 years, which I have witnessed evolve personally, and which you can read for yourself via the...
...World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care (SOC): https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc. Again, I don't 100% agree with everything in the SOC, but this is the current consensus. it represents a gradual shift away from...
...strict gatekeeping & gender reparative/conversion therapies (which favor cisgender outcomes at all costs) to gender affirmative approaches (that favor happy & healthy outcomes overall, whether those outcomes are cis or trans). as you will see from these quotes...
...the gender affirmative approach does *not* treat all kids the same, nor does it "rush kids into hormones & surgery." here is an actual research review paper on the subject. in addition to its efficacy (i.e., happy & healthy children)...
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amy-Tishelman/publication/264734637_Editor%27s_Corner_The_Gender_Affirmative_Model_What_We_Know_and_What_We_Aim_to_Learn/links/53ecec120cf26b9b7dbffd83/Editors-Corner-The-Gender-Affirmative-Model-What-We-Know-and-What-We-Aim-to-Learn.pdf
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Amy-Tishelman/publication/264734637_Editor%27s_Corner_The_Gender_Affirmative_Model_What_We_Know_and_What_We_Aim_to_Learn/links/53ecec120cf26b9b7dbffd83/Editors-Corner-The-Gender-Affirmative-Model-What-We-Know-and-What-We-Aim-to-Learn.pdf
...this approach has gained favor because of other research demonstrating the *very real harm* associated with *disaffirming* trans children's gender identities (such as studies cited in this review: https://www.cfp.ca/content/64/5/332.short). so in other words, this is a balancing act...
...between optimizing good outcomes & minimizing bad ones, as much of health care is. point #3: some parents (e.g., those who are anti-trans/LGBTQ+) prefer the old outdated approaches (favoring cisgender outcomes at all costs) over the gender affirmative approaches. and these...
...trans-skeptical parents started to organize around 2015 (as I document here: https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2019/02/origins-of-social-contagion-and-rapid.html). not coincidentally, this is precisely when all the "just asking questions" articles began to surface (even though gender affirmative approaches had been used for years)...
....in fact, the Atlantic article (which I'm most familiar with) relied heavily on one of these trans-skeptical parent groups & even pushed some of their main talking points (as described here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/19542136 )...
...point #4: because the Atlantic & similar articles were "just asking questions," they were free to not offer any solutions. some of them *strongly implied* (or at least, left readers thinking) that we need stricter gatekeeping & gender reparative therapy etc...
...but because these articles were all so ahistorical, they never bothered to mention to readers that YES, WE TRIED THAT BEFORE, WITH TRULY HORRIBLE OUTCOMES, WHICH IS WHY THESE APPROACHES WERE ABANDONED IN THE FIRST PLACE! ...
...even more laughable, some of these articles implied that "we need to not treat all of these children the same way, because they might not all be trans," when in actuality THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THE GENDER AFFIRMATIVE APPROACH IS DESIGNED TO DO! to treat children individually!...
...in conclusion: I am not opposed to questions. in fact, I'm confident that the *real* questions that do exist will be addressed by competent researchers in the field. but what I do oppose is ahistorical accounts of science & trans people, sloppy journalism, or even worse...
...journalists who prey on readers' unfamiliarity with a subject in order to push a heavily slanted retelling of it. if you have an agenda, that's perfectly fine, many ppl do, GO WRITE AN OPINION PIECE! just don't try to pass it off as "journalism"... FIN.
