Talking about transgender issues among adults is one thing, but what happens when a child is trans?
There have been plenty of stories in the media about children as young as three years old coming out as transgender, but most of the media is really bad at covering stories like these.
They tend to sensationalize things to make them seem more extreme than they actually are. Because of that, I think a lot of people have some deeply ingrained misconceptions about what it means for kids to come out as trans.
So, let’s run through some of these myths.
1. ‘Transgender Children Immediately Start Taking Hormones That Cause Irreversible Changes’
No. In fact, depending on how young they are when they come out, some trans kids might go years without any kind of medical intervention.
The current process recommended by the Endocrine Society is that a child doesn’t receive any kind of treatment until the Tanner 2 stage of puberty, which can happen any time between eight and fifteen years old, depending on the individual.
At that point, the child is prescribed a puberty blocker, the most common of which is gonadotropin-releasing hormone or GnRH. Puberty blockers have been studied for decades as a treatment for precocious puberty (basically, early puberty), and they’ve been proven to be safe and effective.
Puberty blockers simply delay the onset of puberty. The reason for this is that it gives the child more time to consider their gender identity and potentially to work with a therapist to figure everything out. Puberty blockers can be stopped at any time with no negative or irreversible effects if the child decides they don’t want to continue with the treatment. Puberty blockers do not cause sterilization, and if they’re stopped, puberty will start just like “normal.”
At the age of sixteen, the Endocrine Society recommends that children be given the option to start hormone replacement therapy. For people who were assigned male at birth, this is generally a testosterone blocker and estrogen. For people who were assigned female at birth, this is generally just testosterone.
For trans people, getting on hormones before puberty can be a huge relief. Puberty causes a lot of irreversible changes that can end up worsening their gender dysphoria in the future. One study of 55 trans people found that proper treatment in their adolescence alleviated their gender dysphoria in adulthood and resulted in a much higher overall well-being.
The worry that a lot of people have is that if a child starts to take hormones and then changes their mind, the hormones could have caused some irreversible changes to their body, like breast or facial hair development.
And yes, it’s important to make sure that teenagers are aware of these possibilities before they start treatment. But, either way, irreversible changes happen as a result of puberty anyway – so what this is really about is figuring out which changes will be best for the teenager in the long run.
The best way to do that is to make access to therapists with experience in trans issues more accessible, not to deny people of their right to choose what happens to their own body.
Because at the end of the day, this is an issue of choice, and I think that teenagers have the right to decide what happens to their bodies, especially when they are the ones who have to be stuck with the result for the rest of their lives.
After that step, some trans people might elect to have genital reconstruction surgery after they turn eighteen, but at that point, they’re legal adults and can make whatever decision they want.
Plus, some trans kids might not choose to take puberty blockers or hormones or have surgery, but their gender identity should still be respected. Multiple studies have shown that social acceptance of a child’s gender identity leads to them have much better mental health.
2. ‘Hormones Make All Trans People Infertile’
There’s actually been very little research done on this topic.
Most doctors will tell you that after starting hormones, there’s no guarantee that you’ll remain fertile, but some trans women and some trans men still go on to have biological children after being on hormones. It’s not known exactly how likely it is for hormones to make someone infertile or how long you have to take them before the changes are irreversible. Anyone who claims that all trans people are sterile is just lying.
However, with trans teenagers who go straight from puberty blockers to hormones, they never experience natal puberty and therefore will probably be infertile – though again, there’s never been any solid research on this.
Trans teens who want to preserve their fertility can choose to begin natal puberty, save their eggs or sperm, and then start hormones if they want. It’s really a choice that is up to them.
But honestly, I think we put far too much emphasis on a person’s ability to have biological children. Plenty of cis gay couples and cis lesbian couples are unable to have biological children, and they’re just fine. Adoption is always option, and some people don’t even want kids. For instance, a straight trans woman who ended up with a cis guy wouldn’t be able to have biological children with him anyway.
It’s important to talk about the effect hormones have on fertility and to make that information readily available to anyone considering starting hormones, but it’s not a reason to prevent somebody from transitioning.
This is not children sterilizing themselves, as some people would frame it – this is teenagers accepting the side effects of a treatment that will more than likely make them happier in the long run.
3. ‘It’s Just a Phase and They’ll Regret It When They’re Older’
Nope, it’s extremely unlikely that they will regret it. Though a few stories about someone “detransitioning” have made headlines, those cases are actually super rare.
Two studies done in 1992 and 1998 found that only 1-2% of people who transitioned later regretted it. I found four more studies on the topic: one of them found that no trans people in the study regretted their transition and the other three found rates of 1.2%, 2.2%, and 3.8% – all of which are very, very low.
This means that in the vast majority of cases, somewhere between 96% and 99% of trans people who publicly transition don’t regret it. That’s a really high success rate.
And all of these studies note that most of the people who regretted their transition didn’t actually feel that they weren’t transgender, they just no longer wanted to deal with society’s treatment of them. Most of them cited an inability to “pass,” lack of acceptance among friends or family, and an inability to get a job as reasons for regretting their transition.
What this tells us is that a very tiny percentage of trans people regret their transition, and most of these people only regret it because of hateful external forces, not because they misidentified their own gender.
4. ‘Being Transgender Is a Fad and These Kids Just Want to Fit In’
Look, no one’s choosing be transgender because they think it’s cool. We’re not like recruiting trans people and encouraging everybody to be trans. I don’t care if you’re cis or if your kid is cis. Everybody’s gender is their own business.
But if a kid is actively questioning their gender, I think the appropriate response is to listen and try to help them figure it out, not to shout them down and tell them how they feel.
That’s why therapists are generally recommended for all trans people, but especially for trans kids, because they can help the child work through their feelings about gender and figure out if they are trans or not. Sometimes cis kids will question their gender, and they’ll talk it over, and they’ll figure out they’re still cis – and that’s fine, too.
Though for most children who come out as trans that early, they’re not even questioning their gender, they’re very sure of it. For some trans people, it might take them years to figure out what their gender is, but for a lot of trans kids, they just know, and they’re adamant about it.
People know the risks of being transgender; they know it’s not easy. Trans people face discrimination everywhere, and nobody is choosing to be trans any more than a cis person chooses to be cis – they’re just figuring out their gender.
5. ‘Allowing a Child to Medically Transition Is Child Abuse’
Yeah, I’ve heard this argument. People say that allowing your child to take puberty blockers or hormones is child abuse because they can’t consent to it under the age of 18.
But I would argue that preventing them from transitioning when they are 100% sure that it is the right path for them is much closer to child abuse.
Like I said before, irreversible changes through hormones usually don’t even happen until 16 years old at the earliest, and that point, they’re definitely informed enough to make a decision about which puberty they want to go through.
At seventeen, we expect kids to choose a college and a career path and usually put themselves in tons of debt, but we can’t expect them to know what is right for their own bodies? That’s ridiculous.
Every child deserves the right to bodily autonomy.
Imagine if you denied your child access to puberty blockers and hormones, causing them to go through natal puberty, and then their gender dysphoria became more severe as a result, and by the time they could start hormones later in life, their mental health was already severely impacted by their dysphoria?
That’s what we really need to prevent.
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The point of all of this is just let children be trans. No one is forcing anything on them, and they’ll be happier and have better mental health if you just learn to accept them.
This video is a part of my Feminism with Riley series that I’m doing in collaboration with Everyday Feminism, a website dedicated to helping you stand up to and break down everyday oppression. There will be links to all of my sources in the description, as well as some articles for further reading on the subject if you’re curious.
Thanks so much for watching and I’ll see you next time.
