Adults Can Do What They Want?

“Adults can do whatever they want with their own bodies.”

“Adults should be free to make whatever decisions feel best for them.”

“Kids aren’t ready for this, but adults are. I support adults doing what they want.”

Are we really this callous? How is it that a commentator can go on about the side effects of cross-sex hormones, experimental surgeries, high complication rates, irreversible side effects, sterility and oh by the way the fact that there’s no data that ANY of this is helping “trans kids” and then end with, “…but adults should do what they want.”

Are the drugs safer when you hit 18? Does a phalloplasty have a higher success rate when you’re in your twenties? Is a vaginoplasty any less experimental on a young man after he’s old enough for the draft? Are the doctors providing this “care” suddenly providing informed consent to their adult patients?

This is cruel. The people who read this website know of people who transitioned (and then detransitioned) as adults. Some of them after age 25, the supposedly magic age after which all the decisions we make are based on sound reasoning. For god’s sake, Scott Newgent of “What is a Woman?” fame sought transition in her 40s. How many of the parents, siblings, extended family members or friends of trans-identified young people are reading this while living in dread of what will happen when their kid turns 18?

If someone is certain that their left arm below the elbow is not meant to be on their body, so certain that they’ve wrapped up their hand and are living without using it, doing whatever they can to hide that left forearm and hand – living as a one-handed person for two years, even – we do not allow doctors to amputate their healthy arm. We know that doing so would harm them, that it would be barbaric, and that they need psychiatric help, not arm-removal surgery.

Transitioning is experimental. What little we know of the side effects is frightening. Stop sacrificing adults with gender issues on the altar of keeping your message “nice” enough for normies to save the kids. I am devastated for anyone who feels that they are in the wrong body. I am heartbroken for the women who removed their breasts AS ADULTS only to detransition, have a baby and then find themselves lost in grief that they cannot nurse their children. I mourn the ADULT man who, over a decade ago, was rushed into sex reassignment surgery at 19 and is now planning to use the MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) program in Canada because he does not want to grow old in his medically-damaged body.

Demand that these experimental procedures be treated as experimental. Demand studies, demand rigorous experiments with control groups! Demand that side effects be studied thoroughly. Demand informed consent. Demand an end to the affirmation model for EVERYONE, no matter their age!

We got into this mess by making freedom, specifically an incredibly broad conception about what personal freedom should encompass, the value that trumps all others. But freedom, while important, is not the only value that matters. And living a life dedicated primarily to personal freedom does not appear to create much long-term or sustainable joy. If we continue to allow ideas about personal freedom (defined as, “Adults should be free to do whatever they want”) dictate the kind of care that adults struggling with gender receive, we will be responsible for standing idly by as thousands of vulnerable adults throw themselves upon the rocks of gender ideology hoping for all that it promises—and what readers of this blog know that it will not, and cannot achieve.