Controversial Therapy for Pre-Teen Transgender Patient Raises Questions
Fox news dug this one up, young boy on hormone blockers with lesbian moms, this could start a huge stink.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/10/17/controversial-therapy-f...
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Comments
Dunno if you noticed...
Mr. Albow got his "digs" in on this one, too...
It is NOT an easy question for loving parents - or for the individuals. As I look back on my history, there ARE times I think it would have been nice to make the decision myself - early on. BUT, had I transitioned as a teen - or even in my early 20s as originally planned - I'd not have my wife or two wonderful kids. When I think about it, I'd never trade them for only having had the one correct puberty. But, that's in hind-site, and I'm dealing with the consequences now. Had I had the choice 40 years ago? I'm convinced I'd have taken a different path. That doesn't lessen the path I've taken OR that other path. Neither is inherently better.
Thanks for sharing the article. It SOUNDS like the parents are doing all they can for their child and that the fact they are lesbians isn't related. That said, some will KNOW they're related and that the child is being coerced. *sighs*
Anne
Good points Anne
I have often pondered what it would have been like to transition when I was younger, the reality is "younger" was a long long time ago and the world would not have supported such a thing as it almost does today. Lets just say in the right places under the right circumstances it is tolerated in today's world. Anything different back then was queer and that's all there was to it. It was considered to be flesh crawling disgusting deviant behavior of seriously sick and depraved people. There was no understanding of it involved. If anything real men took it upon themselves to discipline and punish these sickos.
We have come a long way already.
i thouugh article was impartial
I think that the fact that he is being raised by two female parents is a factor, especially if one is butch and the other is a lipstick lesbian because that would further blur the line of gender in a child's eyes. If one is unwilling to look at all factors, than a wrong decision may be made that could ruin a human beings life. So, in the case of a child with GID I actually agree that the parents and close family members should be evaluated as well just to rule out coercion. Let's not be naive, to think that an 11 year old child has the capacity to make such a life altering decision is reckless at best. Think about the struggles you have about your decisions as adults. An 11 year old does not know and cannot appreciate the ramifications of such a decision.
Though I do understand when there may be times when this is appropriate, I think it must be done on a case by case study and strict guidelines should be in place to determine the correct course of action.
K.T. Leone
My fiction feels more real than reality
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
Did we read the same article?
I'm sorry, but I am having a difficult time understanding how you feel this article was unbiased.
First of all, they find one of the quacks at Johns-Hopkins to support the attack. Yes, while cloaked as a news article, it is really an attack. If you are not familiar with John Money or David Reimer, I would suggest some research is in order.
So the first place the Fox reporter runs to is Johns-Hopkins, knowing that the name is prestigious and that the institution is filled with 'experts' with an established record of arrogance and hostility toward the TG community.
And the Johns-Hopkins expert likens the treatment to 'liposuction for an anorexic'? Seems to me to be ever so slightly inflammatory. Not to mention absurd.
Next, she goes to the Fox in-house 'expert'. Like what would you expect him to say?
And, if you find the truth behind the highly charged innuendo, the family are working with a team of experts and professionals to make sure their child receives the best treatment solution possible. And the fact that the parents are lesbian is irrelevant. To make that an issue seems to imply that there is a hidden agenda somewhere.
And our struggles are not with our identities, but with revealing our true identities to our loving family, our dear friends and the wonderfully accepting public at large.
When I realized that I was trans, the treatment of the day was electro-shock therapy. Thank God we've been able to move forward. Too bad the folks at Fox look at progress differently.
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil [Strawberry] Blonde Proofreaders
To be or not to be... ask Schrodinger's cat.
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil [Strawberry] Blonde Proofreaders
To be or not to be... ask Schrodinger's cat.
Forced gender
I think what these two women are doing is extremely dangerous and apt to do a great deal of damage in the treatment of GID. Had I not been forced to be Mr. Macho Man, I perhaps would not have had GID.
In a world where mild, quiet men are not pushed about, I could have perhaps been happy. The years give me better perspective, and now, I could see myself as a Nurse, or perhaps a Therapist. However, we have to play the cards we have.
And being judgemental, biased and a little mean, I wonder if these two women are man haters and just want to take it out on the little boy. Anyhow, that is what some of their critics will say, I am afraid.
Much peace
Gwendolyn
I thought pretty much the
I thought pretty much the same, when I read the article. Lesbians raising a boy and it turns out he has GID... Well, I guess it has to happen sometimes, but it's still a bit suspect.
Maybe she's lucky, or he's being screwed. Hard to tell. It'll cause a shitstorm anyway.
My hopes for the kid,
Beyogi
It's a tough call
I appreciate your feelings, Gwen. There is no doubt that there is evil in the world and your personal experience certainly underscores it.
My objections to the article and certain comments are that they are based on prejudice and pandering to the fearful and ignorant.
I object to those who say or imply that I don't know my own mind. I object to blanket assumptions about certain groups of people.
I am a lesbian, so is my wife. We don't hate men, we just don't have any use for them sexually. They can be cute, fun to watch, and are really handy when you need heavy things shifted.
I am also a parent and I agonized over whether I was doing the best I could for my children. Helping them safely find their own way in an increasingly hostile world can be a nightmare.
I agonized with my daughter when she was in high school and close friends were lost in a horrific mass murder. And again when the police tried to link her to the crime. And again when she suffered misdiagnosed PTSD while in college.
As much as I tried to help my children mature into responsible adults prepared to face the world as it is, I was helpless against such a great evil.
Yes, there is great evil and those who suffer as a result. I am sorry that you had to endure that. I have seen in your other posts here the pain, doubt and confusion that you've been left with. I pray to our higher power that you find peace.
It was pretty evident to me that the Fox article was not intended to be a cautionary tale, it really wasn't even news. The language, their choices of experts, the lack of equal presentation of both sides, all tell me that Fox is on a witch hunt. When you consider that their actual product, what they sell to make their money, is FUD, Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, it's hardly a wonder that they produce such biased material.
I can't speak for others, but I'm not buying.
And at some point, we need to stand up for truth. If I remember the quote correctly, all that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good men (and women) to do nothing.
Gentle hugs,
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil [Strawberry] Blonde Proofreaders
To be or not to be... ask Schrodinger's cat.
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil [Strawberry] Blonde Proofreaders
To be or not to be... ask Schrodinger's cat.
According to information
According to information previously published on this family, there are two other boys in the family, that are completely normal. The child has consistently claimed to be female since she was 3, and threatened to cut her penis off at age 7 (If I remember correctly).
The mothers did not jump to supporting a TG diagnosis. It was only after years of dealing with this, and working with professionals that the decision to halt puberty for now has been made.
As a parent that has had to make hard choices regarding giving my child medicines, I can tell you that, for my children, my wife and I will make those choices, and I will do so in the most informed way that I can. And that I will work with professionals I trust to come to those decisions. I can tell you that I have heard more then enough from parents that are sure that our son's challenges could be solved without the medications. They have no idea of how hard we worked to avoid them, and what a positive difference they have made in his life.
Kristy
Controversial Therapy for Pre-Teen Transgender Patient
To me, what matters is whether or not the child is happy as Tommy or Tammy.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
My 2 Cents
I have a female couple as neighbors with a 5 YO boy who is perfectly adjusted lttle boy (Fire Trucks & Fast Cars) all mama laughingly says is not to trust girls because they lie to get what they want that said with a hahaha . THIS LITTLE GIRL IN THE WRONG BODY KNOWS WHAT SHE WANTS AND MAMA IS SUPPORTING HER what is so wrong stay out of the personal affairs of raising a child -- That is my 2 cents -- HUGS RICHIE2
That picture they use
...in the article, the child at much younger than 11, sporting Elton John sunglasses and being all superstar flashing a peace sign; It's clear it was just innocent fooling around, But to anyone who doesn't consider that there are no doubt hundreds of photos in their scrapbook of the kid being completely normal, it reinforces the stereotype of "those kooks out in California" and makes it appear they were seriously grooming her to be some kind of weirdo from early on.
Now that transgender is on their radar and an easy way to get the rubes riled up I fear this is just the start; and someone pressing for some kind of anti-transgender amendment to the constitution (with the expertise of these FOX experts to make it "scientific") which would end all recognition of transsexuals as anything other than the gender on their birth certificate, and probably something in there to ban crossdressing as well. I'd love to be wrong about this but I know how these fascist m*therf*ckers think; their ignorance, arrogance and their passion for conformity and minding everyone else's business; their cynical use of alarmism to push the public's fear buttons.
~hugs, Veronica
What borders on pure insanity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
My take
Not hormones, hormone blockers.
Not a news service, but Fox News.
FOX = "Fixate on our
FOX = "Fixate on our examples", because "WE" can live everyone's lives better than they. I just hope and pray that the doctors involved will actually follow their Oath, "Do No Harm".
I've known several gay and
I've known several gay and lesbian couples raising kids, both their sex and the other, and yes, they had an agenda: that the child be happy. They knew the odds were really low that their child would be gay or lesbian, and were quite content raising hetero children. They strove to raise them compassionate and understanding, with lots of love. Their children were wanted children, no accidents here, they chose to adopt, or, in some cases, raise the children from their previous marriages from before they came out.
Fine, compassionate people. If one of their children had been GID, they would have researched things and tried to do the best they could for their child.
Thinking that, just because the parents are gay or lesbian, there must needs be more intense scrutiny, is showing a rather nasty form of prejudice. None of the lesbians I've known have been radical male hating feminists, and I strongly suspect that those who fall into that category would never adopt male children to begin with.
Yours,
JohnBobMead
Yours,
John Robert Mead
I disagree with Fox news
Almost continually, but I agree with commenters that Fox n**s is not a news organization, but a right wing propaganda organization. There was a recent Rolling Stone article about Fox n**s founder and director, an ex republican political operative.
The author who writes that..."11-year-olds are not old enough to make life-altering decisions about changing their gender..." does NOT understand the treatment. Hormones that will masculinize the child's body are kept at a low level; no hormones that will feminize the child are being given. Anytime e decides to grow into a man, the blocker can be removed and he will have a normal male puberty. I didn't start my puberty until after I was 16; before then, I'm pretty sure I was hypogonadal. I didn't really need to shave (mainly my neck) until I was 19, then once a week would have been enough. Even though all this happened, I still grew into a 6' tall man, strong enough to be in the varsity (1st) boat of the MIT light weight rowing team (unfortunately).
I don't think these Dr.s saying they don't know what the side effect might be or warning of all sorts of harm, have investigated such treatments. I don't know what such an investigation might find, but treatment with blockers started in Europe (Holland and/or Belgium, I think) something like 15 years ago; there should be lots of data. There must be thousands of adults who had the treatment then decided to have girls bodies or boys bodies.
I guess that no news must mean good news. If there were bad outcomes, anti-trans people, groups, etc. would have publicized them. In fact, such info would probably be put into this story of Fox's, if any were known. Also, if there were bad outcomes, no US doctors would give this treatment out of fear of being sued!
Unfortunately, Gwen, I think you've been taken in by this article. What is happening to this child is appproximately nothing. It's the same as having low T pre-puberty, when levels of T vary a lot from one boy to another (from my observation).
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
Ready for work, 1992.
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
it's called slant
Everything is written with slant, whether liberal or conservative.
Me, myself, I am a conservative and I agree with a lot of right wing policy. My point being that 11 is way too young to make life altering decisions and anyone who says otherwise is diluted. I don't know the long time affects of hormone blockers at a young age and don't know if that is the way to go at 11. But, I doubt we have the entire picture, and we never will.
K.T. Leone
My fiction feels more real than reality
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
To clarify
I am taken aback by your comments. Please let me restate to make sure I understand.
First, you say that there is no such thing as unbiased writing or reporting.
Then, you made a categorical statement that claims that any who disagree with you are mentally incompetent.
You associate yourself with a group that discourages discourse and prefers to ignore or belittle other points of view.
You seem to have ignored established facts of the case to uphold your opinions.
You state that you don't know X and you don't know Y, and on that basis have decided that both must be wrong.
I hope I have misunderstood.
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil [Strawberry] Blonde Proofreaders
To be or not to be... ask Schrodinger's cat.
Janet
Mistress of the Guild of Evil [Strawberry] Blonde Proofreaders
To be or not to be... ask Schrodinger's cat.
yes you misunderstood
I said the report was impartial, not unbiased. I really didn't think the article slid one way or the other.
Let's see, they quote what proponents of hormone blockers are saying and they say what opponents are saying. Then they go on with their slant which is one I happen to agree with and evidently you don't. Doing anything at an age when the brain is still developing is a dangerous proposition and that includes playing with hormones when there is no medical reason to do so.
I also didn't say that people were mentally incompetent, I said they were diluted (and yes it's the word I meant to use, meaning that you have taken the facts and watered them down with your own perceptions of what you think is right, so please don't send me an PM to correct me)
I also state that we do not have all the facts and we don't. I agree that the other story on the same topic is more detailed, but I still insist that we do not have all the facts. So by saying such, I am admitted that I do not have enough facts to have an opinion so I do not know what opinion you think I am trying to uphold. We do not know what is being discussed in therapy, we don't know how prevalent the desire is, we don't know if there is coercion, we are given a snapshot and here-say and told to form a reasonable opinion and I say that we cannot. I also do not dismiss that there is environmental issues and that the fact that he has two lesbian mothers MAY (not does) have an influence on his desires.
My base opinion is this, however: In most cases, I do not think it wise to give children hormone treatment without a medical reason (I also am against them being prescribed anti-depressants, Ritalin, anti-psychotics and any thing else that alters brain chemistry, so it is an across the board policy that i adhere to)
By the way, I do not come to these conclusions on mere happenstance. My degree in Childhood growth and learning helps. Many children at an early age (3-6) have gender confusion because they are simply unaware that genetics determine gender so it is not out of the realm for a three year old boy to say "when i grow up I want to be a mommy" or for a 5 year old girl to say "I will marry my best friend and she will be my wife" does this make the 3 year old trans or the 5 year old lesbian, of course it doesn't. It is very easy for a child (and adults) to confuse gender roles with gender identity and I think to act or to reinforce said belief is careless. One of the books i studied out of actually went through these scenarios and it stated, very clearly, that with any of these statements you have to take many considerations into account. One of those being MA (mental age) previous diagnosed disorders (in this case the child had developmental problems early on, I think they said apraxia which to my recollection is a brain-development disorder, home environment, social groups, physical development ( when i was 12 i had breast, i think that may have played apart in me associating with my gender identity or at least reinforced it) and a slew of other lesser criteria that I can't name off hand.
So here is my stand. Am I against an 11 year old being Trans. No. Am I against him living and actin in the gender role of his choice - if everything else is above board then no. Am I against him being given hormone blockers - yes, but my reasons are basically medical in nature. Am I convinced in this instance that we have all the facts to make a knowledgeable diagnosis- not on your life. There is a reason why you can't have SRS until your 18 and I think that even some of those cases it is much to early for a person to decide. Do I believe in a hard and fast rule, a one size fits all; no i don't. I think that there might be cases where SRS or hormone treatment on a child is valid, but i think those are few and far between.
In the end, I am sorry you disagree with my view point, but let's not twist things. I have my opinions and never once stated that they are right and the other is wrong... they are called opinions for a reason. Just because I like chocolate, don't make you wrong for liking vanilla.
K.T. Leone
I found the secret to being creative... and it's chicken mcnuggets.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
Holy Crap!
Really?
Oh well, I'm totally with Janet. Here goes another interesting thread into the blog-nanny shredder.
Sincerly, Diluted
Hormone Blockers
The whole point of hormone blockers is to give the child time to grow, mature, and decide for him/herself. If you don't give the hormone blockers, allowing the child to go through male puberty, then you have done her a real disservice.
Dolce...mi sorella
per favore?
Dio vi benedica tutti
Con grande amore e di affetto
Andrea Lena
Love, Andrea Lena
Fascinating to see the
Fascinating to see the completely different spin on this story, which is exactly the same family that we CNN had an article on recently.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/27/health/transgender-kids/index....
Keep in mind that this family has 3 children, 2 are perfectly normal male boys.
Also Hormone Blockers are safe for children, since they are normally prescribed to children that start puberty early. There is nothing unusual about hormone blockers being used in 11 year olds, what is unusual is that it is being used for the purpose it is. While it is relatively new, it has been being used now for some time in this way.
Here is another pretty good article on this subject:
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/08/12/when-boys-would-rather-no...
John Hopkins is notorious out there for being anti Transgender, and Fox News is about as conservative as they get.
If you read the CNN article on this family, it is a much more positive spin and shows that they have been working with therapists for some time before coming to this conclusion.
Wow, talk about cherry picking
Wow, talk about cherry picking, Fox left out all the right information to press their agenda didn't they, FUD is right.
Thanks Kristine!
I thought...
I thought this sounded familiar. Jeesh, I consider myself a little on the conservative side of the fence, but goodness, some of the agenda's they're pushing these days.
Abigail Drew.
Abigail Drew.
I Am Utterly Appalled..
...to see anyone here agreeing in any way with anything Newscorp (parent organization of Fox "News") has to say, and especially to say about treatment of GID patients.
This story has been around at least three weeks in other media. I don't know what suddenly makes it "news" for Rupe Murdoch's goons, other than they obviously have an axe to grind, and were able to find some discreditable hacks to quote. Personally, I refuse to put my neck on the chopping block, and none of you should, either.
Puberty blockers are an ethical, medically-approved treatment for GID youth approaching puberty. It's a stalling tactic to allow the child to grow and develop intellectually, physically, and emotionally without undergoing an inappropriate puberty for their gender before they're old enough to be properly evaluated. It is not child abuse. It is not experimentation. And it has nothing to do with the child's same-sex parents. There are many more children being treated by the same clinic for the same thing who have heterosexual parents. But no, that doesn't give the Fox Axe-Grinders enough to whet their readers' appetite for outrage, so they focus on the lesbians.
Inform yourselves! Inform your acquaintances. Don't let Murdoch/Newscorp/Fox fan the flames of bigotry with your acquiescence.
___________________
If a picture is worth 1000 words, this is at least part of my story.
no long time studies
There has been no long term studies to support that. The fact is they are giving hormone blockers as a band-aid, but they really have no clue as to what the long term effect is going to be. There have been no studies and outside of "fixing" the immediate issue they don't know what other issues this treatment will provide. We will see in about ten years when more data is available. Oh and the child will not develop physically, that's the point of taking them.
K.T. Leone
My fiction feels more real than reality
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
Not develop physically...
Uh, right. They'll still grow and "develop" physically, just along androgynous lines, having the same hormonal levels as they do before they would normally start one or the other puberty.
There have already been plenty of studies done, there's plenty of material out there on the process and many of the most commonly used drugs to pull it off. Risks are extremely low, especially considering what it plays with.
Abigail Drew.
Abigail Drew.
Hormone Blockers for other conditions
Puberty hormone blocking therapy has been used to treat other conditions for many years, both here and in Europe. Fifteen years ago, a friend of mine's son was given such blockers to allow him more time to grow before puberty started the process of stopping the growth of the long bones of arms and legs. Long term result, the boy, now in his late twenties is over six feet tall.
That's the only case I'm personally aware of, but the drugs have been in use for decades and it is certainly possible to study cases that involve long term results.
The opposite hormones are also used sometimes when puberty seems to be going to be so late as to threaten long-term consequences for the child, hormones can be given that signal to the body to begin puberty.
It's a complicated field. Hormone blockers for pre-pubescent suffers of GID have been in use in other countries, and possibly here, too, for some time. Again, it is possible to look at case histories for long term effects. Such case histories cannot exist of course unless the drugs are given. So, saying that the drugs cannot be given until long term case histories exist is saying that the drugs cannot be given, period.
You can't do double blind tests with this sort of thing over a period of decades, it is simply impossible. Case studies have to be built by medical and psychiatric personnel using their best judgement with the consent of parents and the child. It is the only possible way to do it.
On another point, the idea that an eleven year old is too young to make life altering decisions is actually so absurd as to be laughable. Children make life-altering decisions all the time. All the time. I can't say that often enough, ALL. THE. TIME. Everyone does, it's called living. Anybody standing around inside churches to keep children from going down to the alter to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior? Of course not. Anyone standing around with lawyers to keep kids from signing up for Campfire or 4H or Little League or Pop Warner? Of course not.
Another attack on the idea that eleven year olds have no right to decide their own destiny is this: who else? Their parents? Well, then, problem solved in this case. Their doctors? Well then, problem solved in this case. Some jackass on the evening news? I don't think so.
Hugs to all,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Little Katie:
I'm calling nonsense on your "no long-term studies" assertion. There are thousands of years of experience with delayed puberty. Average age of menarche, i.e. when young women start menstruating, was something like 17 in the 1800's. It's only in the last couple decades or so that puberty starts before the teen years.
If anything, the "experiment" has been loading up our environment with hormonal analogues of sex hormones. Male fertility has been falling steadily, a symptom of synthetic estrogenic chemicals infiltrating household articles and the food supply. Our diets, rich in refined carbohydrates and sugars, messes with our insulin and other hormonal levels.
Puberty blockers have no long-term effects. If you look up how it works, you'd understand. It's not a sex hormone. It doesn't interfere with how sex hormones are made. It doesn't affect glandular tissue. In the complex mechanism that causes puberty to start, there are feedback loops within feedback loops. The puberty blocker is two loops back from where the sex hormones get made. It fools the body into not making the hormone that tells the pituitary to send hormones to tell the gonads to make hormones, by imitating the hormone that would do that without actually being that hormone.
I agree with Pippa and Erin,
ALISON
'this treatment has been around for years and there is much ongoing research all over the world.To say an
eleven year old child cannot make decisions like this is ludicrous,ask any retired paramedics like myself or ex police officers about the children who suicide out of frustration.All the anti androgens will do is control his puberty
until such time as he makes up his own mind and no estrogen is involved so can we all behave like responsible adults and
get on with what BCTS is all about. ALISON
ALISON
i will weigh in on hormone blockers
i am 47 this year, at 11 i knew who i was... i was frightened into making a poor choice then, by a psychologist... he basically said if i wanted to be a girl, no one would love me... then with my parents in the room, asked me if i wanted to be a boy or a girl... i lied out of fear....puberty hit me... i look like a biker and trucker rolled into one... big hairy and not who i am... blockers, if offered might have given me the luxury of a proper choice... inside i'm beautiful...but Male hormones destroyed my body.
my 0.02 cents
diana
Lots more comments...
Renee has said, in more detail, what I said above: hormone blockers, not hormones; not a news service, but Fox news. So many others here have weighed in with the detail that I left out, but I will add a bit more: the Murdochs are not into free speech, but into making money for themselves and their friends. Murdoch Junior has complained that UK media laws are unfair to his business because unlike US law they require a news service to at least TRY to be impartial. Fox News, Sky News, they are the Western equivalent of the old PRAVDA. in the USSR.
Now, dialling up my studies on news analysis, and still wincing from a recent argument on the issue with my mother, bias in news reporting is not just in the way a story is reported, but in which stories are selected for coverage. Note the differences between CNN and Fox coverage here, particularly the time gap. Then look at the outright bias, where the evil dykes are perverting their only child....except they actually have three.
Personally, just like Diana/Moongoddess, androgen blockers et al would have been a godsend for me. Knowing at 11? Sod that, I knew once I stopped wetting my nappies!
Puberty Blockers
At the risk of being pedantic, I want to bring your attention to the difference between "hormone blockers" and puberty blockers. Hormone blockers, like anti-androgens, are used to suppress the action of sex hormones.
That is not how puberty blockers work. A puberty blocker doesn't block the action of any of the normal sex hormones present in a pre-pubescent child. It doesn't have drug-like effects, either. It's also not specific for any of the sex hormones. That is, it works to block puberty in both boys and girls.
I think I've explained this before, and I hope those who've seen it before won't think I'm a broken record. Here's how the gonadal/sex hormones work:
There are other hormones in the body, made by the pituitary gland, that are used to signal the gonads when to make their hormones, and how much. They're known as gonadotropic hormones, or gonadotropins. If you've been tested for hormone levels, you might know them as their abbreviations FSH and LH. In long form, that's Follicular Stimulating Hormone and Luteinizing Hormone. They're part of a feedback loop that lets the body regulate the amount of sex hormones circulating at any given time. Those gonadotropins don't care whether you have testes or ovaries, they work exactly the same on them.
Now, in a prepubescent child, those pituitary hormones are at very low levels. When the body is ready to begin puberty, an area of the brain called the hypothalamus produces a special hormone to signal the pituitary to turn up the volume on the gonadotropic hormones. That hormone is called, interestingly enough, Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone. Catchy, huh? The abbreviation for that one is GnRH. Now, it too is part of a feedback loop, so the body doesn't make too much GnRH. Here's how puberty blockers work: An analogue of GnRH, which looks a lot to that part of the body that makes GnRH, like GnRH, is given to the child to stop the body from making its own GnRH. That analogue, however, doesn't itself carry the actual thing that the pituitary recognizes as the signal to make gonadotropins, so puberty simply waits, having never received the message, and the hypothalamus thinking it's sending the message. So, nothing bad happens, the child continues to grow and develop normally, except for secondary sex characteristics. And, as soon as you take your thumb off the hose, the water starts flowing the same as ever, so the original puberty is always available. Also remember: 150 years ago, puberty was much later than it is today, by 4 to 6 years, so that flexibility is already built-in to our nature.
Once again, in over-simplified semi-graphic form:
Hypothalamus(GnRH)==>Pituitary(LH and FSH)==>Gonads(Sex Hormones), except with feed-back loops everywhere to regulate levels.
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Seriously, I'm almost mostly normal myself.
Blockers
I was using poetic licence, so as to balance the News-Fox news slant. :-)
Flippin heck!
I'm steering clear of this one after all the discussion and debate.
I was gender confused and angry as a child 6 to 12, - gender confused and frightened as an adolescent 12 to 15 - gender confused and depressed as a teenager 15 to 19, - gender confused and yet socially focused as a 'twenty-something'.
As maturity engulfed me I went through a whole host of mental conditions changing almost annually but my gender uncertainty stayed with me. I addressed it by burying myself in other life issues like career, family and so on.
Now, in retirement, I'm STILL gender undetermined (or indeterminent,) and will remain so until the day I take my own life when I'm no longer able to live the life I wish, that is an active and enjoyable one.
When I read this story I could not make up my mind about it but only the biological issues directly affecting the childs' gender determination exercised my mind.
All the other sexually-political crap that Fox dragged up was just verbiage to pad out a story.
Truth is never enough for Fox news!
I'm still undecided about using hormone blockers to temporarily arrest the child's development until she or he is old enough to decided. The only contribution I have to make is that what ever gender issues we transgendered people might have, they mostly seem to have started when we were still children and for most of us they have stayed with us until we could resolve them ourselves as best we could given our individual circumstances.
The extent or success of our own personal solutions will invariably colour our own takes on this story. So I can't take sides (for want of a better word,) on this story.
Why should we be epected to take sides anyway, surely the only issue is the childs' happiness.
Bev
Growing Old Disgracefully