I can totally see what you are saying with this. At the same time though… it does seem like you are seriously underestimating the influence of the outside world on children. 

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You raise some interesting points here. There is such a delicate balance with teenagers, who tend to discount their parents’ advice and opinions about just about everything. And at this stage of life, it’s easy to want to act NOW, future consequences be damned.

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Pretty much what 4thwavenow said.

People seem to think that if one of my children came to me and told me they would rather be a different gender than I would suddenly hate them and throw them out onto the street, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. If I were ever faced with that, they would need me even more than ever and abandoning one of my children is never an option to me.

The bottom line is that I would find them the help they needed to get to the root of why they felt it necessary to transition as opposed to simply and suddenly forcing them into a transition they may regret.

Okay but what you’re describing sounds dangerously close to conversion therapy.

I know a lot of people (especially since John Jolie-Pitt started becoming a big media sensation) think that parents of transgender youth are the ones with all the agency when it comes to their children’s transition. In reality, a lot of us have to *beg* our parents to let/help us transition.

I appreciate the tone of your reblog. I think what I, and maybe some other parents, are trying to do is suggest that young people explore alternatives **first** before making the huge, permanently life-altering decisions involved in hormones and surgical treatments. And parents like me (and I am not like the religious nuts who talk about sin and hellfire), because we want to protect our kids from making decisions they may regret later, just aren’t down with financing and supporting these invasive medical interventions. 

With respect, I totally get that you and some others have felt thwarted by parents when you really, really feel medical transition is the right thing for you. But what alarms me is that the trend in society is toward speeding up transition, dismissing any doubts, even when those doubts are based on legitimate concerns about the permanent effects of hormones and surgeries. There is really no going back from many of the effects, especially for girls who transition. If you’ve spent any time at all reading the writing of women who have detransitioned,  they now have to struggle their entire lives with the changes wrought by “T” to their vocal folds, their reproductive organs, their hair follicles, and (in some cases) their brains (many talk about being much angrier than they were before). Yes, I know it all seems right now. Maybe it will STILL feel right to you when you’re 40, 60, 80. But you don’t know now. You CAN’T know. 

Why not just be gender nonconforming without tampering with your body until the frontal lobes of your brain are fully developed? Look it up: That doesn’t happen until the mid-20s. Do whatever you want short of medical intervention, then see how you feel in a few years.  And you know, making big medical decisions is an ADULT thing. You can be angry at your parents for not  agreeing with, and not paying for a decision you want to make, but it seems fair to me to ask a child to reach the age of medical majority, then work a job, or do whatever else it takes, to pay for and deal like an adult with transition, if that’s what they really want at age 18+. 

It’s hard, because a lot of therapists are also telling you that transition is the way. Why don’t those adults sway your parents? Well, I don’t know how many of you have parents who have bothered to look more deeply into this, but the long-term effects of medical transition have not been studied  and there are some worrying indicators. (My blog is full of those indicators.)

And this is the part where (if you’re under 30 especially) you will probably stop listening: Trust me when I tell you that I was 100% certain about a lot of things between ages 15-25 that I have totally done a 180 on as an adult. For what it’s worth.

You guys forget that parents were adolescents once. Yeah, I know. I sound like your mom. It’s easy to hate us for not granting you what you want, when you want it. It’s much harder to realize most of us are asking you to slow down because we actually do love you.

I frankly do not appreciate your tone. It comes off as condescending, which doesn’t help the attitude of denial of trans people’s autonomy and agency which permeates this post.

You’re making a lot of assumptions about trans people and our identities, and about transition. Many of us (myself included) are outside the 15-25 age range that you seem to have conjured up yourself. Not all of us want what is called a “full transition,” and not all who do want it asap.

You assume that hormones and surgeries are interchangeable in their “invasiveness” and permanence. This is untrue. For instance, did you know that the effects of hormone blockers, which is as far as most physicians will go in terms of treating pubescent and pre-pubescent children, are completely reversible? 

You assume, also, that postponing a transgender person’s transition isn’t harmful. In fact it has lead to deaths. Ask Leelah Alcorn’s parents why she couldn’t just wait until she was older. Ask Blake Brockington’s family why he had to be trans, and not just “be gender non-conforming.”

What you call “invasive medical interventions,” the rest of the world calls “treatment.” How long do you want us to defer our treatment, to put off becoming who we are? Because there comes a point at which it is too late.