They’ve been used to help cis kids who would otherwise be going through puberty at like 6 or something for decades. You stop any permanent changes from happening due to puberty. The child can choose to go off them if they change their mind and go through a “normal”’puberty, or stay on them and decide to get on HRT as an adult.
In the long run, this means less medical intervention. If you don’t grow breasts you won’t need top surgery; if you don’t experience a testosterone puberty you won’t have your vocal cords deepen and need voice training or surgery.
It is the “let’s wait until you’re an adult and can make a choice” option.
If someone takes hormone blockers for several years before deciding to stop, does puberty proceed the same as in a younger person?
Since this is a controversial thread, I feel at liberty to say: while I was never trans, I was pretty ambivalent about my gender as a young person. It wasn’t until after I’d gone through puberty and had multiple years of estrogen (like, through the natural process of puberty) that I felt “feminine”. Gender kind of partly feels like a process you go through vs an identity.
This is actually one of the key things about cis versus trans psychological makeup. It’s kind of more useful to look at the majority cis experience as a sort of flexibility of sexual phenotype (- what looks or appears male or female). The majority of cis people are actually fairly fluid in their concept and Preferrence of not really gender - but sex characteristics and they mentally adapt to meet whatever gender expectations and circumstances they end up in usually as a path of least resistance.
Transness (and a small theoretical subset of cis people ) actually experience the opposite of this : sexual phenotype rigidity. It’s like there’s a setting in the brain dailed all the one to one side of the brain’s expectation of physical sex characteristics. Gender as a concept of “feminine and masculine” as categories of social expectations of behaviour and culture is kind of is just the performative baggage on top. What is really happening is almost 100% about the body’s characteristics and the reason social engineering is such a big deal is because language is a mirror. If someone calls you by the wrong name or pronoun that is actually mapping onto you perceiving your own body’s through someone else and you can’t control how the feedback makes you feel because you are rigidly stuck on an independent internal reward/punishment system. Disparity brings pain, matching the expectation brings joy. Nothing is neutral.
The “gender performativity” concept a’la Judith Butler is actually more in line with a cis person’s concept of gender than a trans persons and untangling the two is really difficult because there’s not as much backwards engineering what cis people are actually like to properly compare. I can tell you though after speaking to a lot of both cis and trans people about their experiences that this is actually more like two entirely unique theories of how the idea of “gender” works where “gender” is actually meaning two kind of related concepts but not quite 1 to 1. There’s a fundamental difference that lies deep under this thing.
If someone takes hormone blockers for several years before deciding to stop, does puberty proceed the same as in a younger person?
Pretty much, yeah. There’s legitimate concern regarding bone growth (height, density) but it’s usually fine and nothing compared to the known problems with being forced to live in dysphoria.
I was pretty ambivalent about my gender
Gender kind of partly feels like a process you go through vs an identity.
Gender is a lot of things and different for everyone. I remain very ambivalent about my gender as a man in my 30s. It’s probably most accurate to call myself agendered but biologically and socially I’m male so I don’t think it’s worth the fuss. It strains my imagination to contemplate “feeling masculine/feminine”. The point is that you can’t necessarily apply your (perfectly valid) experience to others and making trans people go through natural puberty dooms them to irreversible changes that can cause severe psychological distress.
Girls treated in childhood with GnRHa have normal BMI, BMD, body composition, and ovarian function in early adulthood. FH is not increased in girls with ICPP in whom GnRHa was initiated at about 8 yr. There is no evidence that GnRHa treatment predisposes to polycystic ovary syndrome or menstrual irregularities.
I also want to say here that I have known two kids to be on blockers. Both had to drive several hours out of state to access their treatment. One of them almost was removed from their home by the state solely because they were trans and receiving blockers - a family friend who has received death threats and harassment and has had to go to court several times because she recognizes her son for who he is. The right wing propaganda sphere likes to pretend blockers are being handed out like candy, but that is not the case.
Most children do not get hormones or surgery. Usually, the most intervention that happens is puberty blockers.
What are puberty blockers if not hormones?
More like they are “anti hormones.”
They’ve been used to help cis kids who would otherwise be going through puberty at like 6 or something for decades. You stop any permanent changes from happening due to puberty. The child can choose to go off them if they change their mind and go through a “normal”’puberty, or stay on them and decide to get on HRT as an adult.
In the long run, this means less medical intervention. If you don’t grow breasts you won’t need top surgery; if you don’t experience a testosterone puberty you won’t have your vocal cords deepen and need voice training or surgery.
It is the “let’s wait until you’re an adult and can make a choice” option.
If someone takes hormone blockers for several years before deciding to stop, does puberty proceed the same as in a younger person?
Since this is a controversial thread, I feel at liberty to say: while I was never trans, I was pretty ambivalent about my gender as a young person. It wasn’t until after I’d gone through puberty and had multiple years of estrogen (like, through the natural process of puberty) that I felt “feminine”. Gender kind of partly feels like a process you go through vs an identity.
This is actually one of the key things about cis versus trans psychological makeup. It’s kind of more useful to look at the majority cis experience as a sort of flexibility of sexual phenotype (- what looks or appears male or female). The majority of cis people are actually fairly fluid in their concept and Preferrence of not really gender - but sex characteristics and they mentally adapt to meet whatever gender expectations and circumstances they end up in usually as a path of least resistance.
Transness (and a small theoretical subset of cis people ) actually experience the opposite of this : sexual phenotype rigidity. It’s like there’s a setting in the brain dailed all the one to one side of the brain’s expectation of physical sex characteristics. Gender as a concept of “feminine and masculine” as categories of social expectations of behaviour and culture is kind of is just the performative baggage on top. What is really happening is almost 100% about the body’s characteristics and the reason social engineering is such a big deal is because language is a mirror. If someone calls you by the wrong name or pronoun that is actually mapping onto you perceiving your own body’s through someone else and you can’t control how the feedback makes you feel because you are rigidly stuck on an independent internal reward/punishment system. Disparity brings pain, matching the expectation brings joy. Nothing is neutral.
The “gender performativity” concept a’la Judith Butler is actually more in line with a cis person’s concept of gender than a trans persons and untangling the two is really difficult because there’s not as much backwards engineering what cis people are actually like to properly compare. I can tell you though after speaking to a lot of both cis and trans people about their experiences that this is actually more like two entirely unique theories of how the idea of “gender” works where “gender” is actually meaning two kind of related concepts but not quite 1 to 1. There’s a fundamental difference that lies deep under this thing.
Pretty much, yeah. There’s legitimate concern regarding bone growth (height, density) but it’s usually fine and nothing compared to the known problems with being forced to live in dysphoria.
Gender is a lot of things and different for everyone. I remain very ambivalent about my gender as a man in my 30s. It’s probably most accurate to call myself agendered but biologically and socially I’m male so I don’t think it’s worth the fuss. It strains my imagination to contemplate “feeling masculine/feminine”. The point is that you can’t necessarily apply your (perfectly valid) experience to others and making trans people go through natural puberty dooms them to irreversible changes that can cause severe psychological distress.
This study on several cis girls suggests that there’s nothing unusual about puberty post blockers.
I also want to say here that I have known two kids to be on blockers. Both had to drive several hours out of state to access their treatment. One of them almost was removed from their home by the state solely because they were trans and receiving blockers - a family friend who has received death threats and harassment and has had to go to court several times because she recognizes her son for who he is. The right wing propaganda sphere likes to pretend blockers are being handed out like candy, but that is not the case.