Deprogramming your ROGD teen: Part 2 – A mother shares her advice

Soon after Sinead announced that she was trans she started pestering me for a binder and she had a list of medical steps she was planning to take starting with puberty blockers, testosterone, double mastectomy, and she even planned on metoidioplasty.

 

I googled the side effects of binders. Constant pain, breathing difficulties and skin irritation were all listed, all unacceptable to me. I later learned that rib deformities and fractures, breast tissue damage, skin stretching, nipple displacement and possible organ damage are all equally likely. I know that this is true because one of her old friends has respiratory problems and a permanently deformed rib cage from wearing a binder. I have seen pictures of severely deformed breasts after years of wearing a binder.

The solution to these issues is to get “top surgery” as quickly as possible.

Puberty blockers were familiar to me as I had a friend who took them as part of IVF treatment. I was under no illusion that they could be reversible or a “pause button”. They are powerful, dangerous drugs and I would never dream of giving them to a developing child for a non-medical, unnecessary reason. Here is a short summary of the history of puberty blocker use in children who claim to be trans.

 

Although I did not know it at the time 98% of children who were put on puberty blockers at the Tavistock clinic in the UK went on to take cross-sex hormones. Rather than a pause button, puberty blockers but are more akin to a springboard into the deep end of full-medical transition. If they are taken as recommended when puberty starts and followed by cross-sex hormones the child will be infertile and their sex organs will never mature and grow.

 

In terms of general health, growing bones need sex hormones in order to become strong so brittle bones are a real risk. Brain development is stunted. Another side effect is depression, ironic considering the reason given for prescribing puberty blockers in the first place is to often to prevent suicide.

 

I knew about testosterone under the old-fashioned label of steroids which medical professionals are quick to condemn when it comes to athletes. However, now it seemed to be ok to give it to teenage girls off-label with no medical studies as to its safety or effectiveness. After an average of three months, a girl’s voice will be permanently coarsened and body hair will have started growing. There will be cosmetic changes like fat redistribution and muscle gain, but the real damage is taking place internally. After around four years the changes to the uterus make cancer likely and a hysterectomy is recommended. If this is accompanied by an oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries) then no more oestrogen will be produced. The girl will be dependent for life on external hormones and will be immediately menopausal. There are many more side effects including changes to the heart and taken together, these changes considerably shorten expected lifespan.

Finally, the surgeries.

If they pull through, they can look forward to a life of pain and incontinence. Urinary tract infections will become a part of life and regular doses of antibiotics will wreak even more havoc on bodies already ravaged by hormones . It is no surprise that suicide rates for post operative transexuals has been measured in Sweden as 19 times higher than the general population.

Source: Deprogramming your ROGD teen: Part 2 – by Graham Linehan

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