A Gender Imbalance Emerges Among Trans Teens Seeking Treatment

As Reuters reported in October, a growing number of the children receiving care at the 100-plus gender clinics across the United States are opting for medical interventions – puberty-blocking drugs, hormones and, less often, surgery. And they are doing so even though strong scientific evidence of the long-term safety and efficacy of these treatments for children is scant.

That has led to a split among gender-care specialists: those who urge caution to ensure that only adolescents deemed well-suited to treatment after thorough evaluation receive it, and those who believe that delays in treatment unnecessarily prolong a child’s distress and put them at risk of self-harm.

The outsized proportion of adolescents seeking treatment to transition from female to male has sparked parallel concerns. Professionals in the gender-care community agree that treatment of all transgender children should be supportive and affirming. The question, for some, is whether peer groups and online media may be influencing some of these patients to pursue medical transition, with potentially irreversible side effects, at a time in their lives when their identities are often in flux.

Corey Basch, a professor of public health at William Paterson University in New Jersey who researches health communication and teens’ use of social media, said she fears that some adolescents are susceptible to making faulty self-diagnoses without adequate input from medical professionals. “Teens are so incredibly vulnerable to information overload and being pushed in one direction,” Basch said. “They could be lacking the analytical skills to question who is giving this advice and if their advice is valid.”

Adolescents assigned female at birth initiate transgender care 2.5 to 7.1 times more frequently than those assigned male at birth, according to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), a 4,000-member organization of medical, legal, academic and other professionals. Several clinics in the United States told Reuters that among their patients, the ratio was nearly 2-to-1, and similar phenomena have been documented in Europe, Canada and Australia.

“There’s been an explosion in the gender-expansive model,” said Dr Michelle Forcier, a professor of pediatrics at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School who has specialized in the care of transgender and gender-diverse patients. “Folks may feel freer and safer to express and take on a more diverse identity because the social conversation has been put out there.” For these patients, she said, “the moral and ethical thing to do is to give them a list of options that might help them achieve their gender goals.”

But other gender-care providers and some parents are skeptical. In interviews with Reuters, they expressed worry that some adolescents assigned female at birth may be dealing with significant mental health issues in addition to questions about their gender identity, or may be seeking to transition as a refuge in a culture of internalized misogyny, body hatred and early sexualization of girls.

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Article URL : https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-topsurgery/

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