Transgender affirming care banned in Oklahoma

perChance said:
A) Primum non nocere
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I think that makes sense, however one interpretation of it could be that we should not interfere in what others do without knowing for sure what is best. Or what the real societal benefits are of our intervention.
perChance said:
B) What about those who are allowed to make changes and subsequently commit suicide?
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Good question, and I am sure some do. The article @CallMeKate posted shows that. The real question is how does surgery like this impact the net suicide rate? I don't know the answer, so for me it's default to A above.
perChance said:
And what about those in male bodies who believe they are female, (or vice versa, and I'm not talking gay/lesbian here), and want relationships with straight males, (can you envision the possible problems when the post-op individual undertakes such an endeavor)?
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Sure, but not sure what we can or should do about it. Lovers and spouses keep lots of secrets don't think we ought to be in the business of sorting that out. I think a person who has had this kind of surgery should tell potential partners, for sure. Just not my business to enforce that.
perChance said:
Overall it's a sad situation, and certainly one I believe will only (longer term, once realism sets in) be exacerbated by unnecessary surgical operations, plus a lifetime of drugs taken to counteract the body's 'natural inclinations'.
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I don't know, the only person I know who did this was the young boy -> girl I talked about in post #14. She was very happy she had it done, and only regretted that it wasn't sooner. She's a few years into it now. I know its just a sample size of one, but it changed my mind about it all.
perChance said:
What we should be asking ourselves, regarding what has virtually become an 'instant epidemic', is who is planting the seeds in the minds of the young, and why?
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The "epidemic" is just the result of medical availability. Not an option a young person had when I was one...

Some of these same issues could be raised with a lot of elective surgeries, like most cosmetic surgery. People die during liposuction...
 

Personally, I don't believe that anyone under 18 should be able to have surgery to change their gender or be prescribed medications to prevent puberty. On the other hand, it's dangerous for politicians to have the ability to decide those things. Isn't that what the FDA is for?
 
Alligatorob said:
I did not even know such a thing existed. Doesn't sound like a very good idea to me...

What are the effects and are they reversable?
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Puberty comes early for some children. Hubby's cousins began to menstruate at 8 years old. With puberty comes structural change to the bones -broad shoulders/narrow hips for boys, the opposite for girls. The facial bones and the larynx develop differently too. By delaying puberty the child has more time to reconsider their desire to make any changes that cannot be reversed. Parents too are given more time.

I haven't heard about this for a long time but parents of girls who aspired to be ballerinas would sometimes have them treated with puberty inducing medication if it looked like they would grow too tall for the chorus line. I don't remember any great hoo hah about this.

In my opinion, having watched the TV series 'Botched' something should be done about cosmetic surgery but on the other hand the desire to have huge breasts and bubble butts is really a matter for the client and the practicioner.

When children are so distressed about their gender identity that it is affecting their mental health, the law should not ban medical treatment that will assist them. Let's see less judgment and more compassion underpinning legislation.
 
I never wanted to be a girl. Never even gave it a thought. In fact, if anyone (kids) called me a sissy, I was ready to fight.
 
I think it is the parent's decision, and the child's decision-all must agree. And it should have the approval of two child psychologists. Some think this is very frivolous nonsense about gender identity. This starts at 3 or 4, when the kids emphatically tell the parents. they are the wrong sex. This is a real problem. These people go through emotional hell. It's not what is between your legs that gives you gender identity, it's what's between your ears. And when they don't match, it screws you up. To the kids, they simply have the wrong parts It's not BS. If you have this problem, you know it and it overwhelms you. The reason for not waiting for the child to reach 18 is the secondary sex characteristics have already occurred, making transition harder.
 
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Alligatorob said:
At some level you are right of course, DNA can't be changed. And there was a time I would have said something much like this.

I now think its mostly semantics. For reasons I don't understand there are people who are happier living as a gender that's inconsistent with their DNA. I may not understand it, but I also don't believe I should interfere with what makes them happy. And if calling and treating someone a gender that's not consistent with their DNA I'm ok with it. No skin off my nose.

I am sure there are things I do and am that others don't like or approve of, and I appreciate their courtesy in respecting my idiosyncrasies.
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Well, that’s not quite true Gene-editing in humans and plants is being done on an experimental basis. By doing doing gene-editing, scientists can target harmful mutations and correct or remove targeted genes to prevent or exclude some diseases.

It’s kind of like doing engineering on COVID-19 cells. These are things we used to read about in comic books with “mad scientists.”
 
Alligatorob said:
I think most of us, men anyway, were that way. This is not about a majority of the population.
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Why does it matter how many we are talking about? Whether it’s 100 or 100,000,000, it makes no difference. If you can change just one sex, you change 1,000,000.
 
Moon Rat said:
Well, that’s not quite true Gene-editing in humans and plants is being done on an experimental basis. By doing doing gene-editing, scientists can target harmful mutations and correct or remove targeted genes to prevent or exclude some diseases.

It’s kind of like doing engineering on COVID-19 cells. These are things we used to read about in comic books with “mad scientists.”
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Maybe some day, but sex change DNA would involve changing out a whole chromosome, not something I think we are close to knowing how to do. But you may be right, that day could come... hope I'm not around to see it, and argue about it on the Forum...
Moon Rat said:
Why does it matter how many we are talking about? Whether it’s 100 or 100,000,000
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The difference is that if 100,000,000 men in the US wanted sex changes the only debate would be how to pay for it. Assuming a similar number of women were interested it would be a clear majority. What we are talking about is protecting, or not, the rights and health of a small minority. One that the majority doesn't understand...

If that 100,000,000 day comes I want to be long gone...
 
playing with nature like this seems to us wanting to play at being God for a while - well some think he made a pretty stuff up of things too so wots different here?
 
we can't get running the world right - still fighting and killing etc ; we can't keep the planet clean and free from poisons everywhere ; we can't stop the diminishing amount of species in the animal kingdom ; and now a lot of us have stopped wanted big families ??? I could go on but you get the drift - can humans be trusted with anything as life shattering as messing about with our genes??
 
Sunny said:
Transgender affirming care banned in Oklahoma

How do you feel about this? I really have conflicting opinions about it, and can't decide how I feel. (Not that I'm personally involved, I just dislike not knowing how I feel about something.)
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I think that it's not only odd, but greatly hypocritical that certain factions claim to embrace "personal freedoms" but yet seek to control the bodies of others. Whatever, I have no dog in this race, may society battle against itself to the very last person standing. shrug.gif
 
davey said:
playing with nature like this seems to us wanting to play at being God for a while - well some think he made a pretty stuff up of things too so wots different here?
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I asked Bard to translate that text. This is what it gave me back...

The speaker is expressing their concern about the way that humans are interacting with nature. They believe that humans are playing God by trying to control and manipulate nature, and that this is ultimately harmful. They point out that some people believe that God made a mess of things too, so why should humans think that they can do any better?
 
This thread has brought up a memory for me. A long time ago a member of our state upper house, a reverend gentleman, was vigorously opposed to heart transplants for some reason (will of God or some such). His opposition dissolved at the point where he needed one.

Only when we have walked a mile in someone else's moccasins are we fully able to appreciate their lot.
 
Nathan said:
I think that it's not only odd, but greatly hypocritical that certain factions claim to embrace "personal freedoms" but yet seek to control the bodies of others.
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Since the purpose of the bill being disparaged was for the protection of minors, I guess Jeffrey Epstein should never have been charged - 'personal freedoms' and all that for the young girls?
 
hollydolly said:
Sorry, I don't agree. It's open to abuse. Say you always wanted a son/daughter.. and you never got one. Today if you're determined, you can just raise your small child in the gender you wish, convince them they are the opposite gender, and before you know it the child is totally under the illusion they were born in the wrong body.. It's then only up to the parents to sign on the dotted line. Nope I'm afraid that's totally open to abuse., IMO
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That's true. At my granddaughter's preschool a mother brought her baby boy every day dressed as a girl and now at age 8 she is accepted as a girl. That gender was chosen and forced on that child. It will be interesting to see how that turns out.
Hopefully well.
 
The problem is, this is not just a matter of wanting to live one's life as whichever gender, or no gender at all; of course, that boils down to personal freedom. I think this is much more profound than that, and tinkers with our definition of reality.

In other words, there is a difference between:
1. Hating the biological gender you were born into, wishing you were the other gender or no gender, or whatever, dressing and acting like the other gender, changing your name, your appearance (I don't mean medical or surgical changes), maybe your pronouns, although that seems to cause more problems than anything else, and
2. Saying you are NOT the gender you were born as, you are the other gender, "trapped" in the wrong body. And using medical science to wipe out all indications of your birth gender. Claiming that your gender is determined by what's between your ears, not elsewhere, even though every cell in your body is labeled as one gender or the other.

What if a person feels like he/she is really not the member of the race they were born as? Can that be changed? Let's forget about Michael Jackson for a moment, and suppose that there was one pill that could accomplish this, permanently and with no side effects? Would this be a valid change of race? I'd say probably yes. (Whether anybody "should" do such a thing is another question.)

What if someone is convinced that they are really a horse, or a dog? Must the rest of their world go along with this idea, just because that is what the person feels like? Where does mental illness fit in?
 
People are born with birth defects every day, we don't force them to go through life with those problems if they can be fixed. It's not "playing God," to use the medical knowledge God has given us to fix things.

Think of all the children born without legs and arms because their mothers took the thalidomide pills their doctors had prescribed for them. God didn't make a mistake but some humans did. That shows how delicate a growing fetus is that one tiny pill could do so much damage. Isn't it possible, in our world full of chemicals, that a woman who is pregnant with a boy might ingest something that caused his *******s to fail to develop? His male brain would be unaffected just as the brains of the thalidomide babies were unaffected.

I do think parents have to be very careful not to do anything irreversible until everyone is very sure about the decision.
 

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