Gender as something you choose: the result

[fpb]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8454002/Puberty-blocker-for-children-considering-sex-change.html
This strikes me as one of those things of which people should say that just because you can do it, it doesn't mean you should. In fact, you shouldn't. The amount of things that could go wrong, and that will, is so enormous as to immensely outweigh any potential good that could be done to any child who was, ex hypothesi, so uncharacteristically clear about such things, and so open about the mattter, as to give a trustworthy answer to the question. This seems to me like an invitation to children to treat their own body and identity as something to play games with, to follow adult suggestions (the idea that all adult experts will be honest and trustworthy,clear about themselves and about their reasons, and not out to prove personal theories or indulge hobby-horses, is nothing except laughable), to receive and seek suggestions they would never have received, and, in the upshot, to have their lives ruined.

Let me be clear: I know that such things happen. As it happens, and by pure chance, I have had more experience of real transsexuals than almost anyone who is not a professional in the field. But one of the things I have seen at close hands is that twelve is much too early to know. The TS I have known have made their decisions well into adulthood - one, indeed, in his/her fifties. To give a child a choice in such a matter is criminally dangerous. And yes, I know that children who become TS often have a hard time: two people have told me so, independently of each other, with long stories of their grim times as children. But does anyone know how many OTHER children have hard times? A happy childhood is by no means the norm, and what is more teen-agers are inherently self-dramatizing and tend to treat their lives as miserable even when they aren't. You want to give a child whom you would not trust to vote which corrupt politician should steal your money, or to drive a goddamn car, with a decision that could ruin every living moment of his or her remaining life? Are you quite demented, good people and ruling classes of Britain?

Comments

[helixaspersa.livejournal.com]

These drugs are already fairly routinely used though in cases of premature puberty; in rare cases where the physical changes of puberty, or the prospect of them, is causing very great or intolerable psychological distress, it doesn't seem wrong to me to postpone these changes temporarily while the causes of that distress are properly explored (which would rightly, as you point out, include exploring the possibility that the child is subject to pressure or transference from parents or other adults about the whole question). Postponing adolescence for a year or two is a long way from committing a child to the sex-change procedure itself. I find the use of similar medications to postpone puberty in severely disabled children more bothersome. But clearly the whole area is very difficult and must be agonising for the families involved.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I already dealt with the issue of severely disabled children, though I'm not sure I can find the post. If I can, I'll link you. meanwhile, I will underline the "even if you can, you shouldn't" argument. Quite frankly, every precedent in the UK - including the monster-mother of them all, abortion - gives one absolutely no confidence that supposedly extreme measures would be handled with any responsibility. My guess is that within a decade there will be one such clinic in every county; and that one decade after that, we will begin to hear a chorus of howls by people whose lives have been ruined by careless procedures in ways we cannot even imagine now. Ever heard of unintended consequences? And quite frankly, you seem to be taking the idea of altering the natural development of human bodies rather more coolly than it warrants.

All the same, and though I am confident I will not even begin to make you reconsider this, may I say that it's a pleasure to hear from you? You turn up so rarely, even on Facebook.

[affablestranger.livejournal.com]

I've mused often and warned frequently that the Law of Unintended Consequences is the only law that absolutely everyone obeys, whether they know or ever even understand it or not.

It's also always floored me at how more and more people over time view not only their psyches but their bodies as little more than handily modifiable consumer products.

It's floored me ever more than more and more people believe that younger and younger people are capable of making major life decisions without the benefit of life experience but with the advice and understanding of so-called experts.

This sort of thing does not bode well for civilization. But then again, civilizations do seem bent on their own destructions anyway. I reckon I ought not be too surprised at all the latest crazy.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

It's also that children should not be weighted with so much responsibility. Waiting is also what childhood is about.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yes, well - a few years ago, in a far less potentially damaging matter, I found myself suggesting that those who made laws about children seemed never to have been children themselves - they certainly knew little enough about it - but to have been lab-grown and unleashed upon the workd at a kind of artificial fourteen years of age, their mental age ever after.

[lectorpoemarum.livejournal.com]

I agree.

I wonder how many of the problems of the modern West can be traced down to this screwy attitude towards childhood? The mess of an education that leaves us with no connection to our past (I was rather lucky, having the right combination of exceptional teachers at the right moment; but that has made me rather an alien in my generation) and prolongs dependence and 'childhood' to ridiculous ages; the destruction of family or the idea of any obligations relating to the next generation...

The modern concept of adolescence is IMO itself suspect.

this is where I said it, in a comment:

[fpb.livejournal.com]

http://fpb.livejournal.com/223823.html

[lectorpoemarum.livejournal.com]

Ick.

I have never, ever gotten the gender-as-optional thing.

I am leaning towards the idea that 'gender' as used by modern leftists is not even a coherent concept -- they seem to flicker back and forth between meaning 'sex' (though believing, somehow, that it is culturally constructed...) and 'gender roles', and it's rarely clear which they mean at any one moment. (Possibly not even to themselves.) At one time, when I was more liberal, I thought this incomprehension was my problem -- now I think it may simply be because there is in fact no 'there' there.

abut severely disabled children

[fpb.livejournal.com]

This: http://fpb.livejournal.com/253625.html - is the link I was looking for. It includes a link itelf, to the testimony of a person who has experienced that kind of procedure on her own skin.

Re: this is where I said it, in a comment:

[lectorpoemarum.livejournal.com]

A wonderful essay... and things people often don't like to talk about (it often seems that even mentioning that false charges of rape do in fact happen is equated, somehow, with supporting rape) or refuse to try to fix (you hear plenty of complaints about the divorce rate, but nobody ever seems to suggest simply repealing the no-fault divorce laws: which would be done on a state-by-state basis, and is thus far more simple legally than abortion.)

Re: this is where I said it, in a comment:

[lectorpoemarum.livejournal.com]

Also, the phrase "cose che non stanno ne’ in cielo ne’ in terra" is wonderful...

The link I offered was broken. This one works.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/escaping_from_peter_pans_prison/