back at it with another ridiculous question. As I have been developing my personal ideology, I’ve found that I reject much of the socially progressive ideas in corpo media and twitter (conservatives call it identity politics). Stuff like abolishing the nuclear family (or pride flag on drones joke) that doesn’t look to change any economic or material reality I find I don’t agree with.

First and second wave feminism I support as they changed the material realities for women, but the push for things like gender reassignment surgery under 16 years (i wanted to be in the cia when I was this age, people change personalities quickly during their teenage years) among other socially progressive ideas (bedtime abolition and the like) seem to be far removed from any type of class struggle and even hurt the working class.

Expressing this on Twitter got me called a nazbol (of course) but am I? Does being socially conservative but economically progressive make me a redfash? I understand intersectionality and that you can be trans and poor but focusing so heavily on non class issues seems detrimental for workers, even if they get some progressive tidbits.

plz feel free to own me if I’m spitting straight crap wrote this on my phone b4 work

edit: the thoughtful genzedong comments/commenters make this community the only place I’d be willing to ask a question like this, thanks for that, and the info you share so that myself and others can be better communists 💪🇨🇳👍

  • @afellowkid
    link
    21
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    I really have never met anyone advocating for sex reassignment surgery for teenagers. Maybe someone advocates for this, but I have never heard of someone advocating that. Also, (just for general information for anyone reading this) there are a variety of different surgery options for trans people, not really one universal surgery. Some trans people will get no surgery, some might get only 1, some might get a few, depending on what they need.

    To be clear, usually the medical steps that a teenager might take could be puberty blockers, which is a hormone-blocking medicine (NOT surgery) that will just hold off the kid’s natural puberty from happening, so they can have more time to think about what they want to do (for example by testing out their gender presentation before taking more medical steps).

    Puberty blocking medicine has been in use already for about 40 years, for children who start their puberty too early. Now it can also be used for children who, upon beginning puberty, start experiencing or continue to experience gender dysphoria. The medicine is not used on children who have not begun puberty.

    Once usage stops, puberty will resume. “It’s more like a pause. If we stop the medicine, puberty can restart,” says Dr. Cartaya. She adds that once it begins again, the body will go through puberty that’s associated with the sex assigned at birth. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-are-puberty-blockers/

    Children can go off these blockers and resume their natural puberty when they want to, or, when they are a bit older (I believe in the U.S., it’s after 16) they may start hormone therapy that gives them the opposite sex’s hormones.

    If a teen is taking cross-sex hormones, then they will go through the puberty of that sex for the most part. They can also stop doing that if they want to, and let their body’s natural puberty take over. Hormone treatment has some permanent effects but it also has many reversible effects. It is generally taken on a daily or weekly basis, and changes are incremental. This leaves a lot of time for a person to determine whether they are comfortable with the changes they are having. If they stop, there will be some changes that remain, but also many that will go away.

    I can imagine that some older teenagers might want to receive some of the surgeries that exist, but I imagine for most of those surgeries, they wouldn’t be allowed to do it, not only because of their young age but also because it may not be viable. For example for some surgeries you actually need to have been on hormones for a long amount of time, or you need to have grown certain body parts to a certain degree. I won’t get into it because it would be beside the point. I think most people will not be having surgery until after they are legal adults, although I imagine some teens would want to pursue this and might succeed.

    As a final note, when it comes to doctors doing irreversible, mutilating, non-consensual surgeries on children, this is actually the reality that happens currently to many intersex children, who are often mutilated soon after birth, often without even their parents knowledge, or their parents are pressured into it by the doctor and often keep it secret from their children. Many intersex children grow up with strange unexplained scars, symptoms, and signs of their intersex condition and are lied to about their bodies. Sometimes at puberty they begin to experience the “wrong” puberty, or a “atypical” puberty. Sometimes they don’t find out about their condition until well into adulthood, and of course many may live their whole life never knowing. Some intersex people are also trans/some trans people are also intersex and there are some areas where these two communities can have overlapping issues. However, intersex issues are often overshadowed by the current discourse around trans issues, and people can sometimes incorrectly or opportunistically mix the two community’s different problems up. The mutilation of intersex children’s natural genitalia and the lying and secret-keeping done to them is a deeply traumatizing phenomenon for the intersex community and I encourage people to learn more about it if you are concerned about the issue of irreversible genital surgery on children, which plagues the intersex community, who often find that the surgeries done to their natural bodies were not only un-consensual but also were entirely medically unnecessary. (More about this here and here)