One of the go-to claims of the child-mutilation cult, sorry, “transgender lobby” is that if they don’t get to hack into kids’ genitals or put them on chemical castration drugs, they’ll be popping themselves off faster than you can say “groomer”. We hear it, time and again: child-mutilation is “life-saving”. If you don’t let boys in dresses into the girls’ change rooms, it will “kill kids”.
But is there any good evidence for this?
Despite the unwaveringly confident manner in which these claims are often asserted, there is no good evidence that failing to “affirm” minors in their “gender identity” will increase the likelihood of them committing suicide.
But… but… so many activists keep telling us it’s true. It’s not like they’d lie, surely?
Not only is the empirical basis for the affirm-or-suicide mantra shoddy at best, but its dissemination is also profoundly irresponsible. Such extreme rhetoric limits our ability to better understand and respond to mental health problems in vulnerable youth, and may itself contribute to the real and documented phenomenon of “suicide contagion.”
At the root of the lie is the common gambit of using vague terminology, and then conflating the mildest and commonest cases with the rare extremes. For instance, “self harm” covers everything from pinching oneself to cutting. The latter is extremely rare, but is held up as common.
“Suicidality” is just as rubbery.
There is a difference between thinking about suicide, attempting it, and actually doing it. And even within the first two categories, shades of grey prevail. A “suicidal attempt,” for instance, can mean climbing to a roof of a building without actually stepping onto the ledge, but it can also mean surviving a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head […] Human beings may go through periods of depression in which they contemplate suicide, even seriously, but this does not mean that they are at permanent risk for suicide.
That doesn’t stop fear-mongering activists from distorting the facts to peddle their dangerous ideologies.
Gender activists commonly argue that roughly four in ten transgender-identified youth (TIY) attempt suicide when not socially and medically “affirmed.” Does the research bear this out? The simple answer is: no.
Notably, the activists ignore the high likelihood that suicidality and gender dysphoria are both co-morbidities of deeper psychological problems.
Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria [ROGD] teens are known to have very high rates of anxiety, depression, history of sexual trauma, anorexia, and eating disorders, all of which typically precede their gender-related distress. And as we’ve learned from detransitioners, many continue to experience these problems long after they have gone under the knife. According to a review of the U.K.’s Gender Identity Development Service, roughly one out of three girls seeking gender transition has autism—a significant finding, considering that “being in the wrong body” might provide these teenagers with a convenient explanation for their social isolation. Regardless, each of these mental health conditions is a known predictor of suicidal behavior.
But there is still the enormous bridge between “suicidality” and actually committing suicide.
Thus, while it is true that suicidal behavior is much more likely among TIY, rates of actual suicide are extremely low within the population and there is no basis for believing that “affirming” them with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries will reduce those rates even further. Importantly, when researchers compared TIY with non-TIY with similar mental health profiles, the disparities in suicidal behavior reduced considerably, suggesting that it is not the lack of gender affirmation that seems to be driving suicidal behavior.
There would be one way to get a clearer handle on any supposed positive link between “affirmation” and suicide: a randomised control trial (RCT), the gold standard of medical research.
None have ever been done.
Nor are the risks of puberty blockers fully known. What is suspected is alarming: cognitive impairment, bone malformation, and “iatrogenesis” — which is when the very treatment causes harm.
Meaning that the use of puberty blockers to “treat” gender dysphoria virtually guarantees the persistence of the condition and continuation of the patient to more extreme and risky types of intervention.
Why have there been no RCTs?
Authorizing RCTs for puberty blockers would require that activists allow their basic assumptions to be put to the test, but the intrusion of identity politics into medicine makes that unlikely […]
transgender interest groups, which are now for the most part ideologically captured gay rights interest groups, face strong incentives to exaggerate threats and present themselves as standing in between transgender youth and impending doom.
Reality’s Last Stand