Given that nobody seems to be able to account for his decision, it seems like maybe he should be in prison.
If somebody assaults my testicles and renders me infertile, that is an extremely serious crime; this doctor may well have done the equivalent (along with completely destroying the boy mentally) with the stroke of a pen.
The good news (for this boy) is that 13 days of hormone therapy are unlikely to cause any permanent changes. Infertility/sterility is usually only expected after years of HRT - and even then, often returns if HRT is ceased.
Ouchi said the boy, now 17, was released in April and will require surgery to treat the physical issues he developed as a result of the estrogen treatment.
...
The boy’s father said the hormone therapy has had a long-term effect on his son, who now scares easily and has become antisocial.“He’s like a different person. He just wants to be in his room, and he don’t come out for nothing, all day in his room,” the father said. “He was never like that.”
> The boy’s father said the hormone therapy has had a long-term effect on his son, who now scares easily and has become antisocial. “He’s like a different person. He just wants to be in his room, and he don’t come out for nothing, all day in his room,” the father said. “He was never like that.”
How could one possibly discern this from the effects of going through juvie in general. I'd certainly feel betrayed by society, regardless of what meds I was given.
An adolescent boy grows breasts and then wants to stay in his room all day. It could well be all about body shame, trying to protect himself from social trauma. The rate of suicide among people who transition on purpose is so extremely high. What must it be among people who are transitioned by force.
Giving someone the wrong hormones is one way to induce gender dysphoria in non-trans people, so suicide rate there should be similar to that of trans people with unmanaged gender dysphoria.
Suicide rates among people who transition are generally correlated with minority stress [1,2], not transition itself: "The myth that transition leads to SITBs continues to be
used to deny transgender health care access and legislative rights, despite a lack of empirical support for this position and repeated research debunking it." (SITB= suicidal thoughts and behaviors) [3]
>“He’s like a different person. He just wants to be in his room, and he don’t come out for nothing, all day in his room,” the father said. “He was never like that.”
What I am about to say is in no way a defense of the doctor or his actions. What percentage of parents would say this exact same thing about their teenage children? It is perfectly normal behavior and I'm not sure there is anything to link it to the unnecessary hormones forced on the unfortunate kid.
> 13 days of hormone therapy are unlikely to cause sterility.
Yes, it's possible he won't end up sterilized by this. However:
The breast growth triggered in men by medical doses of estrogen is not reversible and requires surgery to correct. There will be social ramifications for life. There may be other (non-virility) physical ramifications for life.
2mg of E2 for only 13 days and he needs surgery? Sounds very much like something a lawyer would say. At most a few mm of development/widening of the areola with the start of development under. Not noticeable unless you are actually measuring them weekly. It is common enough that a someone will have to go off HRT after only a few weeks and anything underlying breast development will undo itself, but not the areola. But full blown gynecomastia that is irreversible? That takes a lot longer.
Perhaps he was already overweight, high fat percentage (which results in high e2 in males) and some gynecomastia already?
Further I would be willing to bet that he was swallowing all 2mg at once and not taking the pills sublingually or buccally split across the day.
It is up to the lawyers to decide and maybe he had better breast development than any trans woman I know, but everything in my experience tells me that noticeable gynecomastia takes longer than 13 days on e2.
I agree that there is likely a much more nuanced truth here than is conveyed by the news article, and I hope that we never gain access to the boy's medical records to clarify further.
My lay understanding is that the absolute levels of testosterone and estrogen are much less important for men than their relative levels.
I actually had blood drawn a couple of weeks ago to check for this very thing. I’m male, and while my testosterone levels are in the median range, my estrogen levels are very high relatively speaking. I’m operating under the assumption that it’s caused by recent weight gain - thanks, quarantine - so I’m working to lose that weight and will check it again.
Interestingly, there don’t seem to be many accepted options for reducing estrogen levels. My PCP suggested broccoli seed extract, but made it clear that it wasn’t a well-supported or accepted treatment. The most reliable treatment is a change of lifestyle.
You are correct in that such a low dose for a short period of time is unlikely to have major problems, but HRT is not a risk-free treatment. It increases risk of heart disease, stroke, blood clots and more.
In studies of post-menopausal cis women, that's correct, extended use is associated with those things. (Also, I think some of those were done with Premarin, which is no longer widely used?)
There has been unfortunately few studies done on transgender people or on young people. (I welcome any links to studies you have!)
Came here ready to be horrified at the gender paranoia living under the surface of HN, was actually surprised with how reasonable everyone was. Except this comment.
None of those symptoms (infertility, "complete mental destruction" or, heh, "assault on the testicles") are alleged here. He got an inappropriate drug, possibly punitively. And that's horrifying enough without painting figurative spectres of the unimaginable cruelty of... emasculation?
If a coach was doping teen athletes with test without their knowledge or coercing them in to it, hell even misleading them to do it, I'm pretty sure I would expect jail time, assault charges etc. And you would probably be in favour as well. But because attacking this feels like an attack on your political narrative you feel the need to spin it inside of it and downplay this.
And don't even try the "this is a medical professional" - the kid got gyno and this is not an approved procedure - it's exactly the same as the coach doping kids.
I think I'd support jail time for this abuse, FWIW (to be fair I've only read the one article). I'm reacting to the gendered reasoning among the poster above. It's bad because it's an unnecessary medical process used (apparently) as a punishment, not because it stole his manhood or whatever.
I'm fine if you're super upset. But if you're MORE upset because of the gendering interaction, that's wrong. The poster above clearly was.
It depends on the motivation, if it was ideologically motivated I would be outraged at the ideology that lead to it and people justifying it, just like I would be outraged at state of high school sports that lead to a coach doing this and people defending that.
But I sort of agree, there is no proof this is ideological (in fact it sounds just as likely that the doctor was experimenting), the other guy is spinning it his way as well - I think you can say that without the need to defend/downplay the action.
Ah, this strikes right at the core of the primary differences underlying American society today.
I don’t care at all what the doctor’s motivations were - I only care about their actions. In this case, those actions were taken without consent and had a significant negative impact on the patient. Whether they “meant well” or either of us agree with their motivation is completely irrelevant to me.
I understand that others see it differently, and that’s fine. My observation is that this disconnect is almost always always unstated and caused a ton of misunderstandings.
> (in fact it sounds just as likely that the doctor was experimenting)
I can think of another prison "doctor" who's known for "experimenting" on unwilling victims. Claiming to be doing experiments, yet without any hint of scientific rigor.
If the claims made in the article are true, this guy belongs in prison no matter his excuse. Whether or not an ideological motivation can be proven or ruled out is completely irrelevant.
I should have put "experimenting" in quotes - just saying there is no evidence this is based on gender ideology so insinuating it is also spinning this in to ideological terms.
> you're MORE upset because of the gendering interaction, that's wrong.
I strongly disagree.
This isn’t about gender as a social construct. This is about a licensed medical professional causing significant changes to a person’s body without their consent.
Completely irrespective of how an individual perceives their own gender, that perception is a core part of who they are. So yes - I am absolutely more upset about this because of the “gendering interaction”. I would be equally upset if this person saw themselves as asexual or androgynous and was administered sex hormones without their consent.
It's not "paranoia" if the subject of the gender-bending either a) was not aware or b) was being held in a state funded institution and otherwise had no intention of "transitioning" to the opposite gender...
You did not read the complete details of the case (or frankly, even read the comment you're replying to). The dose was large enough to give him gynecomastia, which the other inmates bullied him for, and for which he will require surgery. His father reports that his son's personality is completely different, he is now a total shut-in.
> He got an inappropriate drug
He was injected† with non-indicated (as in, there is no literature on this rogue prescription) contradictory sex hormones during adolescence and under duress; I don't know why you're downplaying this, I hope it's just because you don't know what this means.
> infertility
Infertility is a common outcome of sex hormone therapies.
> ...the unimaginable cruelty of... emasculation?
If suppressing gender dysphoric people is wrong, how can it be moral to medically intervene to deprive an adolescent of the normal functioning of his body, and an already solidified gender identity? Using non-indicated medical interventions to emasculate or defeminate somebody who is already secure is a form of extreme cruelty, from basically any moral frame, yes.
† Correction from helpful reply: not injected, taken as pills. I got the "injection" thing from this thread, had thought it was pills before.
Appears to be pills, not injection. So far they aren't reporting infertility, only gynecomastia. It's certainly possible to have the latter without the former.
Can you enlighten me as to what you think my agenda is? For myself, I'm pretty sure I posted that comment so people who might otherwise like to frequent HN doesn't get the idea that the median poster here is a transphobe. Obviously I might be wrong about that, but someone needs to put in the effort.
> He was injected with non-indicated contradictory sex hormones during adolescence and under duress; I don't know why you're downplaying this
I'm not downplaying this at all. It's you who are boosting your interpretation because of "assault on the testicles", "mental destruction", "sex hormone", and other things that tell me what you're really upset about is his masculinity and not his well being.
No, I don't think this is any worse than had he gotten an equivalently dangerous drug (say, fentanyl for sedation, which has also been alleged in juvenile detention facilities IIRC). And I'm point out the fact that you do is... unseemly.
This is worse precisely because of the reasons transphobia is bad. This poor boy has been forced - by a medical professional, no less - into a place on the gender plane that is different to the one that he identifies as. The psychological effects of that are horrifying, and the physiological effects are potentially permanent.
There's nothing wrong with being trans and going through HRT so long as you do it with full and knowing consent. You do that because you feel deeply dysphoric about the gap between the body you've been forced into and your true identity, but it's not without cost. To force both the cost and dysphoria onto someone is, again, truly abhorrent.
>This poor boy has been forced - by a medical professional, no less - into a place on the gender plane that is different to the one that he identifies as.
Where are you getting this intent from? I don't see anything in the article to suggest this was the doctor's goal.
It may well not have been the objective, but that was the rather unsurprising result. Depraved indifference; behaviour that can lead to criminal liability.
Are you actually suggesting him losing his masculinity by forced medication of an unnecessary drug is not in itself an issue? What's the problem with masculinity, exactly, and why is it so bad that drugs should be given to children to remove it?
> It's you who are boosting your interpretation because of "assault on the testicles", "mental destruction", "sex hormone", and other things that tell me
The "assault on testicles" thing was not even part of my description of the boy's condition, it was part of my hypothetical of a crime with potentially equivalent (or probably less severe) outcomes. And for your information, sex hormones are a basic and widely-accepted concept; just because some people are afraid to call them that in the English-language publications of some corrupt institutions in the last five to ten years doesn't mean they went away. Go ahead and tell any trans person on HRT that sex hormones aren't a thing; if they believe you, they'll be horrified, if they know how wrong you are, they may be too flabbergasted to even begin to tell you.
> ...what you're really upset about is his masculinity and not his well being.
I think that you ought to do some introspection as to why you consider those things not to be related. I suspect you are concerned about some people's security in their gender identity, but you seem to want desperately to paint it as a minor thing that they seem to have treated this boy's gender identity (and sexual function) as a disposable lab material; maybe you personally place no value on masculinity, but that's not for you to decide on this boy's behalf.
> ...an equivalently dangerous drug (say, fentanyl for sedation, which has also been alleged in juvenile detention facilities IIRC)
fentanyl is generally safe, the safest opioid AFAIK, and its effects wear off in seconds or minutes (which is why it is often administered through slow-release patches or lollipops).
If somebody assaults my testicles and renders me infertile, that is an extremely serious crime; this doctor may well have done the equivalent (along with completely destroying the boy mentally) with the stroke of a pen.