Monthly Archives: September 2014

Voluntary Puberty Delay for Transgender Pre-Teens Looks Promising

Debbie says:

Until I saw this rather brief article, I hadn’t heard about hormonal puberty suppression as an alternative for young transgender people. I am especially interested because I have a (very) young transgender person in my life, and it has been fascinating to watch how completely this child is committed to a gender identity different than their physical conformation. And, of course, I wonder how puberty (many years in the future) will affect them.

Dutch scientists closely monitored 55 young adults who had been previously diagnosed with “gender dysphoria,” which meant that they identified as transgender and were experiencing mental health consequences as a result, such as anxiety, emotional distress, and body image concerns. At an average age of about 14, they each used hormones to block puberty and prevent the development of sex characteristics. The study found that this gave them “the opportunity to develop into well-functioning young adults.”

Lead Author Dr. Annelou de Vries explained to CBS News that puberty suppression is a “fully reversible medical intervention” and the extra time allows the young people to work out their struggles related to gender dysphoria before taking permanent steps toward a transition. As a result, they “have the lifelong advantage of a body that matches their gender identities without the irreversible body changes of a low voice or beard growth or breasts, for example.”

As the champion of calling out junk science, I will start by noting that 55 test subjects is hardly conclusive, and the Netherlands is a small country, increasing the likelihood that the sample of young people was not very diverse. Further, although Dr. De Vries is calling this “fully reversible,” when I follow the links to more information, I learn that she is aware that she did not study side effects of puberty suppression. If this was something I or my own child was considering, I would want to do a lot more research on side effects and what “fully reversible” means. It would also appear that all 55 subjects elected gender reassignment, which is something else that would benefit from more attention. Nonetheless, instead of explaining something about human behavior based on a small sample, these researchers are exploring a possible intervention, and reporting positive early results.

One issue here is that the Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health recommend that gender-dysphoric or transgender teens do not take hormones before age 16, which pretty much ensures that they will experience puberty as a person of their biological gender rather than of their identified gender. De Vries’ study leads the way to earlier intervention, which makes it possible to delay puberty until after gender reassignment surgery, and never develop in a body that they experience as wrong. (Yes, transgender experiences, teenage and otherwise, are much more complicated than “growing up in the wrong body,” but then not every trans teen will need, or choose, this path even if it turns out to be as positive as these early indications imply.) Another positive feature is that many trans people who start hormones later in life experience a second puberty, and have both the fun and the no-fun-at-all experiences of puberty twice; some people might be delighted to only go through that once.

For now, I’m filing this study under “good to know,” “needs more information,” and “hopeful for good experiences for trans children and teens.” And that’s good enough for me.

 

Elder Sexuality Is Funny or Gross Because It’s Transgressive

Laurie and Debbie say:

aging sex

The extraordinary s.e. smith has a predictably excellent post on elder sexuality:

… what is so gross about older adults being sexually active? And what’s so funny about it? Because I don’t see anything particularly remarkable in it, and thus I’m either missing something — or my cohort is. The frankly juvenile attitude towards older adult sexuality doesn’t do us any credit, and if anything is gross in this conversation, it’s the disdain for sexually active elders. As long as everyone is consenting and enjoying themselves, who cares? Why are we so fixated on this?

Smith elaborates on this at some length, and as with everything on this ain’t livin’, you should read the whole thing.

However, Smith does not answer the title question, and we thought it was worth examining.

The media, and particularly the advertising industry, spend an inordinate amount of time and money convincing us that we can stay youthful-looking and youthful-feeling forever. If we take the right drugs, we can play with our grandchildren as athletically as we want, and everyone will think we are their parents, not their grandparents. If we use the right skin products, we can keep the wrinkles at bay. If we have the right medical procedures, no one will ever know that we are (*gasp* *choke*) over 50.

But that is all a lot of work. It’s also expensive, so you can’t have it all unless you have economic privilege. It’s time-consuming, so you can’t have it all unless you don’t have to work two jobs, or work 9 hours a day, or raise kids with insufficient support. People have to be afraid of getting–and looking–older or they won’t do the work or make the financial sacrifices. Along with the “stick” of fear of aging, there also has to be a reward–a carrot–for all the time and money and effort. And the reward is that you get to stay attractive. And “attractive” means “sexually attractive.”

So if you can’t pull together the time, money and effort to keep yourself youthful or–and they don’t ever even hint at this part–when it stops working, then the carrot of being sexually attractive gets yanked away, and you are thrown out of the sexuality sweepstakes. You just don’t get to be a person who has sex any more.

When anyone shows that, by having a good time in bed with a wrinkled, spotty body (or having a good time in bed while disabled, for that matter), they pop the balloon. They confuse the simplistic message. They break the illusion. And the Good Consumer might, just might, notice that she or he is spending time and money for not much. So elder sexuality must be mocked, or the advertising, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries could suffer.

Like everything else about appearance, this happens sooner and more dramatically for women than for men–a woman with mild signs of aging is as far out of the acceptable age range as a man who is unmistakably elderly; also, an older man having sex with a younger woman is way less funny or gross than an older woman having sex with a younger man. This is why the whole concept of predatory “cougars” was born.

Shining a light on sexuality among older adults is yet another way of making the invisible visible, showing (and telling) us what’s really true, rather than what the corporatized culture wants us to believe.