These drugs are already fairly routinely used though in cases of premature puberty; in rare cases where the physical changes of puberty, or the prospect of them, is causing very great or intolerable psychological distress, it doesn't seem wrong to me to postpone these changes temporarily while the causes of that distress are properly explored (which would rightly, as you point out, include exploring the possibility that the child is subject to pressure or transference from parents or other adults about the whole question). Postponing adolescence for a year or two is a long way from committing a child to the sex-change procedure itself. I find the use of similar medications to postpone puberty in severely disabled children more bothersome. But clearly the whole area is very difficult and must be agonising for the families involved.
I already dealt with the issue of severely disabled children, though I'm not sure I can find the post. If I can, I'll link you. meanwhile, I will underline the "even if you can, you shouldn't" argument. Quite frankly, every precedent in the UK - including the monster-mother of them all, abortion - gives one absolutely no confidence that supposedly extreme measures would be handled with any responsibility. My guess is that within a decade there will be one such clinic in every county; and that one decade after that, we will begin to hear a chorus of howls by people whose lives have been ruined by careless procedures in ways we cannot even imagine now. Ever heard of unintended consequences? And quite frankly, you seem to be taking the idea of altering the natural development of human bodies rather more coolly than it warrants.
All the same, and though I am confident I will not even begin to make you reconsider this, may I say that it's a pleasure to hear from you? You turn up so rarely, even on Facebook.
abut severely disabled childrenfpbApril 18 2011, 11:44:59 UTC
This: http://fpb.livejournal.com/253625.html - is the link I was looking for. It includes a link itelf, to the testimony of a person who has experienced that kind of procedure on her own skin.
I've mused often and warned frequently that the Law of Unintended Consequences is the only law that absolutely everyone obeys, whether they know or ever even understand it or not.
It's also always floored me at how more and more people over time view not only their psyches but their bodies as little more than handily modifiable consumer products.
It's floored me ever more than more and more people believe that younger and younger people are capable of making major life decisions without the benefit of life experience but with the advice and understanding of so-called experts.
This sort of thing does not bode well for civilization. But then again, civilizations do seem bent on their own destructions anyway. I reckon I ought not be too surprised at all the latest crazy.
Yes, well - a few years ago, in a far less potentially damaging matter, I found myself suggesting that those who made laws about children seemed never to have been children themselves - they certainly knew little enough about it - but to have been lab-grown and unleashed upon the workd at a kind of artificial fourteen years of age, their mental age ever after.
I wonder how many of the problems of the modern West can be traced down to this screwy attitude towards childhood? The mess of an education that leaves us with no connection to our past (I was rather lucky, having the right combination of exceptional teachers at the right moment; but that has made me rather an alien in my generation) and prolongs dependence and 'childhood' to ridiculous ages; the destruction of family or the idea of any obligations relating to the next generation...
The modern concept of adolescence is IMO itself suspect.
I have never, ever gotten the gender-as-optional thing.
I am leaning towards the idea that 'gender' as used by modern leftists is not even a coherent concept -- they seem to flicker back and forth between meaning 'sex' (though believing, somehow, that it is culturally constructed...) and 'gender roles', and it's rarely clear which they mean at any one moment. (Possibly not even to themselves.) At one time, when I was more liberal, I thought this incomprehension was my problem -- now I think it may simply be because there is in fact no 'there' there.
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All the same, and though I am confident I will not even begin to make you reconsider this, may I say that it's a pleasure to hear from you? You turn up so rarely, even on Facebook.
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It's also always floored me at how more and more people over time view not only their psyches but their bodies as little more than handily modifiable consumer products.
It's floored me ever more than more and more people believe that younger and younger people are capable of making major life decisions without the benefit of life experience but with the advice and understanding of so-called experts.
This sort of thing does not bode well for civilization. But then again, civilizations do seem bent on their own destructions anyway. I reckon I ought not be too surprised at all the latest crazy.
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I wonder how many of the problems of the modern West can be traced down to this screwy attitude towards childhood? The mess of an education that leaves us with no connection to our past (I was rather lucky, having the right combination of exceptional teachers at the right moment; but that has made me rather an alien in my generation) and prolongs dependence and 'childhood' to ridiculous ages; the destruction of family or the idea of any obligations relating to the next generation...
The modern concept of adolescence is IMO itself suspect.
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I have never, ever gotten the gender-as-optional thing.
I am leaning towards the idea that 'gender' as used by modern leftists is not even a coherent concept -- they seem to flicker back and forth between meaning 'sex' (though believing, somehow, that it is culturally constructed...) and 'gender roles', and it's rarely clear which they mean at any one moment. (Possibly not even to themselves.) At one time, when I was more liberal, I thought this incomprehension was my problem -- now I think it may simply be because there is in fact no 'there' there.
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