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Comment by beecafe | Hacker News Reader

Entire article ignores trans experiences, elevates a cis "ally" who feels trans people are icky, doesn't mention that detransitoners make up a very small fraction of all cases and the vast majority of people who transition are glad to have done so. Hand wringing about the effects of T on young girls from seeing the female body as a sexual object that is "ruined" by it. The only thing the article gets right is that puberty blockers are generally bad, but they're used because doctors are reticent to prescribe hormones, so they delay the choice.

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> elevates a cis "ally" who feels trans people are icky

Are you talking about the author, who says at the start of the article that she is married to a trans man and spent years of her life working with and helping trans people? No matter what you think of the article, that claim is obviously wrong to anyone who read it.

> the vast majority of people who transition are glad to have done so

According to a study with a ~12 month follow-up period after transitioning? I read something similarly misleading recently.

12 months? What about 3, 5 or 10 years? Wouldn't that be more reasonable period to consider.

So you would think and the prospect doesn't necessarily look that rosy when you do.

I’m interested in the sources you’re referring to. Loss of follow-up seems well-cited as a potential weakness by legitimate sources in my brief investigation, but more importantly they have a reasonable amount of data from very old sources as well. I didn’t have to look hard.

I completely believe all those feelings are completely real but I fail to see how changing anything related to your appearance will bring true lasting happiness. To me it seems like the pinnacle of an image obsessed society. Additionally, let's be honest, most trans will never look 100% like their desired gender, none of them will look close without hormone therapy, and many are much less fortunate even with all the pills and operations. It's a spiral of self-delusion and refusal to accept boundaries and the limits of nature.

Your comment strikes me as interesting because you mention an image obsessed society but then you make some statements about image that seem to suggest a personal endorsement of this standard. Let’s hypothetically assume that your statements about failure to be perceived as they wish are 100% true as well as the idea that we should be less image focused are true too. Why should they or anyone else care if they never look like their desired gender if they feel better and lead productive lives?

I’ve certainly gotten dressed up to go nowhere, and I know women who put on makeup just for themselves too. I realize this doesn’t lie in exactly the same realm, but I hope you can see my point. Are we deluded? It seems to me that nature is a slippery slope.

If people say that the placebo effect will be diminished.

Suicide rates are the same before and after transitioning. There's something else going on that needs to be addressed, and simply screaming at and attempting to gaslight critical voices is going to end with the unnecessary deaths of a lot more people.

Are they? Where's the study? I couldn't find one on suicide rates, but this one on based on survey data (so people who are still alive to answer the survey), says that suicidal thoughts reduce after transitioning. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstrac...

The study you are citing appears to have been commissioned by the National Center for Transgender Equality (an organization that was founded by a transgender activist). That's like citing a study commissioned by Exxon-Mobil on climate change.

Forgive me for being extremely suspicious, given the multitude of other research to the contrary.

"The overall mortality for sex-reassigned persons was higher during follow-up"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/

> The study you are citing appears to have been commissioned by the National Center for Transgender Equality

Wrong. It was funded by a grant from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, which has no affiliation with any transgender activists. https://www.pcori.org/about/about-pcori

Forgive me for being extremely suspicious of your ability to evaluate evidence to come to rational conclusions.

Your study compares sex-reassigned people to the general population, not those who had surgery against those who wanted surgery but didn't get it. It is cited multiple times with a correct interpretation by the paper I gave you. The author herself points out you're using it wrong. https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6q3e8v/science_ama...

It's analysing the 2015 Transgender Study, which is an online study that was spammed in transgender online communities and was commissioned by the National Center for Transgender Equality, an activist organization.

>Forgive me for being extremely suspicious of your ability to evaluate evidence to come to rational conclusions

Did you read your own link? It cites the NCTE study clearly.

> Did you read your own link? It cites the NCTE study clearly.

Yes, I did. The study wasn't commissioned by the NCTE, unlike what you claimed. It uses data from a survey by the NCTE. The people answering the survey have no reason to lie, and the NCTE had no reason to believe that its data would be used in this study years later. You're grasping at straws trying to make your initial claim make sense.

So the study's data was provided by an activist organization with every reason to have their finger on the scale? Not to mention the numerous study issues that have been uncovered with this particular online survey including but not limited to: no protection against multiple entries, no protection against non-US entries, errors in the survey flow (multiple commenters remarked that the survey questioned them on conditions they said 'no' to -- indicating faulty survey design).

Would you trust a survey on sugar done by Coca-Cola? This is the same thing. Activist surveys are worthless. Conflict of interest doesn't even begin to describe it.

Seems likely from the evidence that gender dysphoria is a good indicator for the existence of an underlying mental condition rather than some sort of glorious lifestyle choice, whether or not the person with dysphoria actually "transitions". Unfortunately instead of helping these troubled people we are placating them and encouraging them to damage themselves (which, to be clear, should be there right if they are adults).

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