It's about a child whose parents stonewall ever reaching out to someone qualified to identify and treat gender dysphoria, until she decides for herself she's not dysphoric.
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"[The mother] thinks that if she and [her husband] had heeded the information they found online, [their daughter] would have started a physical transition and regretted it later." Cool, can they hook me up with the powerball numbers while they've got the crystal ball handy?
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Their daughter conscientiously researched transition, pushed her parents to seek professional help for her, then decided on her own about her own identity despite their unwillingness to help. Yet Jesse Singal is painting the daughter as the immature one?
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The story is a stock TERF narrative to boot: she's not actually trans, she's just suffering from mental illness (depressing and anxiety) instead. For some reason, this paternalist attitude does not extend to questioning her desire to continue living her life as a cis girl.
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"[The mother] recalled. 'We also took away her ability to search online but gave her Instagram as a consolation.'"
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A whole swath of data and stories from professionals about successfully supporting transitioning kids are swept aside with "These early results, while promising, can tell us only so much," a segue into nameless, credential-free "detransitioners" who have unspecified "concerns".
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This is, to damn with faint praise, Singal's most balanced article yet; he actually addresses the fact that affirmation is mainstream, broadly accepted by professionals, and supported by data before dismissing it out of hand and fearmongering about minors getting surgery.
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All of the anecdotes about detransitioners - which dominate the article - are backed by one single data point: a study that says detransitioners are rare (2.2%), which, again, Singal rejects out of hand.
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This probably has something do with the fact that Singal pushed flawed studies that exaggerated detransition for years and ended up having to walk back the basis of almost all of his work about trans people before this Atlantic article. https://www.dailydot.com/irl/jesse-singal-trans-children/ …
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The only expert who talks about detransition is a psychologist who emphasizes that the best way to prevent transition-detransition is... ...the exact same therapy that the parents in the intro denied to their daughter!
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This leads to the article's biggest omission: the message from gender therapists is that teenagers should seek a gender therapist before transitioning, which isn't bad advice
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Jesse Singal frames this as gender therapists being the necessary gatekeepers to transition, and kids pushing for hormones and surgery because they're too impatient and brainwashed by YouTube and affirmative websites
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As opposed to the (briefly mentioned) fact that gender therapists are overwhelmed with demand and psychologists are an extra bill on top of the cost of transition.
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Plus there are some infamously abusive sexologists that may make teenagers (and parents!) leery about the whole field. Singal doesn't mention them because he went to the mat to defend one of the most infamous, whoops
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The number of mentions or stories of teenagers who do not transition as teenagers despite the opportunity to do so and regret it later in life: zero
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This soft-focus, just-asking-questions, teach-the-controversy crap is intensely damaging. Jesse Singal only mentions the mainstream support of affirmative therapy in enough detail to make parents familiar enough with it to dismiss it.
@TheAtlantic should be ashamed of this.Afficher cette discussion -
All of the pull quotes are devoted to undermining affirmative treatment, the dek implies 14-year-olds are getting surgery (they are not), and the cover implies children are getting surgery (they are not) and irreversible hormone therapy as first-line treatment (take a guess)
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It isn't clear if Jesse Singal is responsible for this additionally damaging presentation, but
@theatlantic surely is.Afficher cette discussion -
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The article does not explain what puberty blockers are or what they do or where they came from, but does fearmonger about their potential negative side effects.
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Nowhere does Singal illustrate that teenagers can take puberty blockers, decide they want to live as their natal sex, and stop taking them and go through puberty.
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All of the detransitioners in his story are people who took further hormone therapy and regret it; there's nobody who took hormone blockers then reversed course.
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Jesse Singal is very invested in his narrative of hormone therapy being irreversible, so the fact that puberty blockers might have as-of-yet-undiscovered irreversible side effects is mentioned, but their main, reversible effect - blocking puberty temporarily - is never mentioned.
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Incidentally
@juliaserano is also shredding this mess, with more insight and expertise than I can bring to bearhttps://twitter.com/juliaserano/status/1008817734715490304 …Afficher cette discussion -
Affirming kids in their decisions might result in regrets. Here's 5000 words affirming parents in preventing kids from researching dysphoria
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