Transgender Organization Suggests Hormones and Surgeries Should Start Even Earlier for Gender-Confused Teens
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) says it will lower the recommended age for so-called “gender transition treatments,” suggesting opposite-sex hormones start at age 14, instead of age 16, as previously recommended.
The organization is also lowering its suggested age for surgeries by one year, saying some “transgender” surgeries can begin as early as age 15.
WPATH gave an advance copy of the new guidelines to The Associated Press, which first reported the news. The final guidelines are set to be published later this year.
WPATH is not a medical organization; it is a transgender activist group. But its last guidance, Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender and Nonconforming People, was produced in 2012, and are viewed as authoritative by other transgender activists and allies in the health professions.
These age limits are recommendations – not legal restrictions. In many states, minors can – and do – access these treatments without parental knowledge or consent. Planned Parenthood, for example, lists hundreds of clinics that dispense opposite sex hormones, including to minors.
Of course, no one can “transition” into the opposite sex with drugs, hormones and surgeries. This is ideology, not science or medicine.
Such interventions only approximate the appearance of the opposite sex. A person’s innate, biological maleness or femaleness isn’t affected by these treatments.
The guidelines come just as entire countries are backing away from these irreversible, body-altering procedures that have the potential to do great injury.
While WPATH says giving children puberty suppressing hormones is “fully reversible,” the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) recently changed its online statement about these drugs.
The new NHS guidance warned:
- Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria.
- Although the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) advises this is a physically reversible treatment if stopped, it is not known what the psychological effects may be.
- It’s also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children’s bones. Side effects may also include hot flushes, fatigue and mood alterations.
In addition to the United Kingdom, other countries like Sweden, Finland and France are also moving away from these damaging and harmful interventions for children.
Dr. Michele Cretella, a pediatrician and former executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, previously told The Daily Citizen such drugs were experimental and were not initially developed for children with sexual identity confusion.
She explained that most gender-confused children who are allowed to go through puberty will naturally come to accept their bodily sex. But the growing use of puberty blockers and opposite sex hormones transforms children and adolescents “into lifelong patients forever dependent upon toxic medications that lead to permanent changes including sterility and a host of other serious health risks.”
She said, “Puberty is not a disease. Puberty is a critical and natural developmental phase that can be life-saving for gender incongruent youth.”
Cretella argues that children who begin taking puberty blockers, even if they come to embrace their biological sex and stop taking the drugs, “can never get back the time of normal biopsychosocial development that was stolen from them.”
The new guidelines also come at a time when there are growing reports of former transgender-identified individuals who “transitioned” but are now “detransitioning,” their bodies often irreparably damaged by drugs, hormones and surgeries. (Caution: We’ve linked to their stories, but they often contain foul language and make for rough reading.)
On a Reddit thread for detransitioners, one teen woman wrote that she had been on testosterone for a year-and-a-half, beginning at age 14. Now back to living as a woman, she wrote:
I’m 16 and my body is ruined. I destroyed every piece of me that made me a female, or at least, the parts that made me look and feel like one. … [My breasts] are gone from top surgery, I’m very hairy, my face was already SUPER masculine looking pre-t [before testosterone] so I “passed” as a dude even before I transitioned. Just don’t really see the point in living if it’s gonna be like this. I can’t believe that everyone in my life failed me so hard.
She continued:
How are we letting insecure 14 year old girls make the decision to mutilate and ruin their bodies. I’m angry. I’m angry at this sick agenda. I’m angry at the sick people who think you have any other choice but to accept what you were given at birth. I’m angry that these sick people are pushing their sick agendas on sick, insecure, damaged, naive, gullible, children. Children don’t know what they want. Neither do the rest of these “trans” people. I’m sorry but you can’t change who you are. All it will do is send you into madness.
Another girl wrote:
When I was little I grew up singing with my mom to Fiona Apple. I was rather good at singing before T. Singing along with Fiona Apple now makes me feel like an imposter, it doesn’t fit. It doesn’t match. It hurts so bad, It hurts to know I will never have that pitch again, especially since I started T at 13. I was only on it for a little over a few years but it has destroyed everything for me, my health, my social abilities, my perception of myself etc.
A year ago, 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl reported on individuals who had started medical procedures to “transition” and live as the opposite sex, but then returned to embrace their physical, biological reality.
A young man named Garrett said he was on female hormones for only three months before having his testicles removed. He told about having breast implants:
I had never really been suicidal before until I had my breast augmentation. And about a week afterwards I wanted to, like, actually kill myself. Like, I had a plan and I was gonna do it but I just kept thinking about, like, my family to stop myself. It kind of felt like how am I ever going to feel normal again, like other guys now?
Garrett said he had only two visits with any sort of mental health professional before being guided toward opposite-sex hormones and surgeries.
There are thousands of stories like these on social media, with young people reporting that their bodies have been permanently harmed by drugs, hormones and surgeries.
Despite this, WPATH’s new guidelines suggest that transgender activists in the medical profession start doing this damage even earlier.
Related articles and resources:
Focus on the Family offers a free, one-time counseling consultation with a licensed or pastoral counselor. To request a counseling consultation, call 1-855-771-HELP (4357) or fill out our Counseling Consultation Request Form.
‘60 Minutes’ Spotlights Those Who’ve Left Transgenderism
‘Detransition Awareness Day’ Highlights Those Embracing Their True Identity
‘Detransition Awareness Day’ – Testimonies From Those Who Left Transgenderism
Focus on the Family: Transgender Resources
Photo from Shutterstock.
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