Link: https://www.compactmag.com/article/how-gender-medicine-set-itself-up-for-disaster/

https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1s9n06o/how_gender_medicine_set_itself_up_for_disaster/

The damage that maximalist trans activists have done to the left is enormous and ongoing.

Many of them are as we speak very angry at Zohran Mamdani. As a trans woman, these activists leave me feeling depressed & anxious.

They literally think practicality, discourse & nuance is "respectability politics". They never take accountability for their disastrous activism because they claim it is the fault of right-wing billionaires.

Of course right-wing billionaires are going to use this money to highlight their litmus tests on 20/80 issues. That isn't an excuse for disastorous activism.

If there were a one time pill or procedure that perfectly changed an individuals natural hormone production, genitals, chromosomes, and reproduction mechanism to that of the opposite sex I wouldn't have any issue with it.

Especially if it was reversible and, crucially, free. Said sci-fi pill or procedure would have to be objected to on different grounds than a lot of the criticism "gender medicine" receives. Any step closer to that sort of pill being available is a good thing, at least in my opinion. I don't personally consider male vs female to be a spiritual category, so my objections were always in terms of biology and the inability of current medicine to make those changes effectively and in a healthy way.

The maximalist position that WPATH and many other trans maximalists took was as if said perfected medicine already existed. Any position that requires skeptics to disbelieve their lying eyes is inevitably going to crash hard into reality. It's a shame that plenty of reasonable trans people are now suffering backlash due to the hubris of doctors, some of which were likely true believers but others I suspect just wanted the $$$ that comes with HRT and surgeries. There was always going to be blowback from the religious right over this, but it's much worse than it otherwise would have been and they have fewer allies in this fight because of said maximalists.

Discourse on this was poisoned from all sides. As usual, bumbling rightoids managed to sabotage any discussion over perverse incentives by insisting trans people were groomers rather than asking the tougher questions of what doctors and pharmaceuticals might gain from SRS and HRT in a for profit healthcare system. As usual, clueless libs then assumed everyone criticizing gender medicine was equally bigoted and made any moderation impossible and effectively did the rights work for them. What a fucking shit show from start to finish.

The WPATH conference videos reveal a group of people enclosed in a bubble, one they filled with so much hot air that it sent them soaring close to the sun.

Great article, bookmarked for later. I had lib friends who called me transphobic for being even slightly skeptical that this medicine was being conducted ethically and they've come around since then, insisting that they were never blindly supporting it of course and they had their doubts too. Very brave of them to morally grandstand after the fact, but I'm sure that doesn't make things better for trans people who are now being blamed for all sorts of things they should fall squarely on the shoulders of doctors.

I do wonder how this period of experimental medicine is going to be remembered in decades from now. Hopefully we won't completely give up on the idea of any kind of these treatments just because the well has been poisoned.

This is propaganda. Regret rate of GAC is less than 1%. If, as this person claims, this is "experimental surgery" performed "unnecessarily" to enrich doctors, how are they getting some of the lowest regret rates in the field of medicine?

WPATH standard requires 3 years, if I remember correctly, of therapy during which the patient is insistent, persistent and consistent in their gender identity to even BEGIN to be allowed to access care. There's reasonable evidence that the current requirements might be depriving some children of care they need. Acting like medical professionals acting extremely cautiously on the best evidence we currently have is some crazy experimental cowboy shit is about as bad as vaccine denialism.

Let's look at the flip side of the coin: without access to GAC, trans people have hugely increased risk of suicide and self-harm. It is absolutely not an overstatement to say that trying to further restrict access to GAC will cause the needless death of children.

The author of this piece, Benjamin Ryan, is a known anti-trans activist.