![[CW: Transphobia] hot take: trans kids should have normal childhoods, actually](https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/eb280989-bc26-4156-aeb8-c1dc4c15465d.webp){kind=link}
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A 4 panel comic. In the first panel, a character stands on a cliff, addressing an audience, and says “trans kids should not get puberty blockers”. In the second panel, the audience, armed and labeled “cis people”, looks content. In the third panel, the character on the cliff says “they should get hrt so they can go through the right puberty at the same time as their cis peers”. In the fourth panel, the audience, still labeled “cis people”, looks angry at the character.
if you’re cis and seeing this: keep your concern trolling to yourself.
Isnt puberty reversible with hrt for adults? The whole point of hrt is to reverse one hormone to another, even after puberty already happened?
Edit: Okay, i now understand. The problem with puberty is not that it is irreversible, but that it is difficult and expensive to deal with reversing those changes. It is important for trans kids to get required treatment, to not deal with those problems as adults, as trans adults must do.
Edit 2: I did a mistake in wording about my question in changes reversible with hrt, while i should have asked about more difficult and expensive surgeries. Also i want to mention, is that i did end up enough androgynous after puberty, to get biased towards thinking that it is not a big issue, which is not the case, as many trans people can get more severe effects of puberty, which are more difficult to deal with, both emotionally and finacially.
There are physical changes the body undergoes during puberty. They cannot be undone. HRT will cause some changes, but they won’t undo what happened.
There is also the mental piece. Forcing someone to watch their body change to be farther and farther from what they know it should be. HRT later in life doesn’t undo the mental trauma.
I understand that it is mentally traumatic for kids to grow of undesired sex, but i dont understand what is the big deal with puberty if it is reversible. What physical changes do you mean which are not reversible with hrt for adults?
testosterone puberty permanently fucked up the shape of my face, shoulders, hips and waist, lowered my voice, grew a bunch of gross hair everywhere (which is slow, painful and expensive to remove), and made me lose a whole bunch of hair from my head, to name some of the most obvious things. none of those effects are reversible from taking estrogen.
and that’s not to mention the mental damage resulting from basically being an emotionally dead zombie for a decade until i started HRT.
Okay, i now understand. The problem with puberty is not that it is irreversible, but that it is difficult and expensive to deal with reversing those changes. It is important for trans kids to get required treatment, to not deal with those problems as adults, trans adults must do.
many aspects are irreversible, basically anything that happens to your skeleton cannot be undone. there is no surgery to remove my pelvic tilt or make my hands bigger, i just get to live with them for the rest of my life (this is as a result of estrogenic puberty)
edit: was busy earlier but thought it would be beneficial to elaborate on this
for all trans people, skeletal changes during natal puberty will often be irreversible; this includes general lengthening and thickening of bones for a natal-testosterone puberty, and a lack of lengthening and thickening of bones for a natal-estrogen puberty (late testosterone 2nd puberty can thicken bones, but not lengthen them, due to the fusion of the bone plates that make growth possible). this means that e.g. on average, trans girls will be taller than they would otherwise be, and trans boys will be shorter. idk if you’re aware, but height changing surgery is massively expensive and risky, so practically speaking, changing it is impossible
there’s nothing for hand size for either direction of puberty either. again, on average, trans girls will get bigger hands than they’d otherwise have, and trans boys will get smaller hands. as far as i’m aware, there are no surgeries for hands, which is probably good because they’re pretty densely complicated pieces of biological machines
i believe trans girls can develop the pelvic tilt after estrogen (?), but no widening of the pelvis itself will occur. similarly, there’s no way for trans boys to reverse their pelvic tilt nor narrow their pelvis
also, trans boys can get facial masculinization surgery, but there are limits to what it can do (e.g. brow ridge)
none of this touches on how “technically reversible with surgery or hormones” is an awful bar to hold for allowing a trans kid to go through natal puberty, but i’m hopeful that you’re in agreement with that and it doesn’t need to be spelled out
Did you miss the part where I said the changes cannot be undone? As in they are irreversible? You cannot go back in time regardless of what hormones you are on.
“…transformation of the brain, bones, muscle, blood, skin, hair, breasts, and sex organs…Puberty leads to sexual dimorphism through the development of the secondary sex characteristics, which further distinguish the sexes.”
I did not miss that part, but i incorrectly worded my question. What puberty changes are irreversible, with neither hrt, medication or excercises? From my understanding, almost every part of puberty can be reversed, so that i ask you to explain which changes are actually irreversible.
Nearly all of the changes are irreversible. HRT will change your body, but will not give you the body you would have had of you went through puberty with the proper hormones. Your skeletal structure, hair growth, breast development, vocal changes, genital development, and more cannot be undone.
Something being reversible quite obviously has nothing to do with it being traumatic for years regardless. How is that hard to understand?
I do understand, i lived through it.
many effects are quite hard to reverse
what second puberty can achieve:
i might have missed some things and of course everyones mileage may varie.
some aspects of first puberty can’t be reversed using hrt and they often are both used to invalidate trans people and can cause a lot of dysphoria. it’s why many trans people who get to medically transition are still quite unhappy.
As you said, those changes are hard to reverse, but they are reversible. And while bone structure does not change, and even after finfing out about it, i still dont understand in what way bone structure matters for trans people?
you are shifting the goal post now.
much of this reversing does not come from hrt as u initially claimed but from hard work and expensive as well as sometimes life threatening surgeries. it should absolutely be avoided if possible.
bones do not have to be a big deal if one is as lucky to get androgynous bones out of first puberty, or has a very excepting environment which does not care about these things and one does themselves not care much about them either. but in many cases trans people are as unlucky to end up with bones making them noticably larger/broader or shorter than the norm for their gender or with pronounced facial bones which despite fat redistribution and makeup cause them to be read as a gender that they are not. this can be extremely dysphoria inducing and make them more likely targets for harassment.
the way to change this (if there even is one) is through painful, dangerous, and very expensive surgeries. full facial feminization surgery for example will cost as much as 50k and is often not covered by insurance as well as often requiring people to travel to travel to foreign countries. this is not an option for many people. even if health insurance covered this, it would still be a giant pain and come with risks. there is no reason to not let people chose for themselves and avoid this situation in more cases.
Thanks for explanation. I did a real mistake in incorrectly wording my question about changes reversible with hrt, instead of asking what changes must be done with difficult and expensive surgeries. Also, i did end up enough androgynous after puberty to get biased towards not thinking that it might have much more severe effects for other transgender people.
uh… my forehead and nose and jaw are shaped all wrong, and look obviously masculine unless i’m wearing an uncomfortable amount of makeup? sure that’s “reversible” if i had 50 grand lying around to spend on surgeries (and months of time to recover from said surgeries), but i don’t and neither do most other people.
me explain simple
family guy peter griffin chin bad when want to look like girl
child bearing hips bad when want to look like boy