Recent social media trends have included a return of hostility towards the transgender community, and many such posts eventually boil down to the question: How young is too young for transgender children to receive gender-affirming hormones or surgery, with or without parental consent?
As of late, the alt-right community has raised an issue over transgender children being able to medically transition over what they claim is “too young.” In the United States, without explicit parental consent individuals are allowed to transition at 18. However, with parental consent, they can begin puberty blockers as young as 14, and hormones, as well as some surgeries, at 16.
While that may sound like a young age, our views on when children can have agency over their own bodies are quite skewed. The sad truth is that modern society has had a misguided concept of transgenderism for decades, but it’s a way of thinking that goes back hundreds of years.
The cases that have been cited involving young transgender children have usually placed the ages in question at around 13 or 14, which might seem young. For children under 16, doctors are only legally allowed to prescribe puberty blockers which only temporarily pause natural puberty.
Outside of the use of puberty blockers, children begin sex-specific growth as young as 11 or 12. For a child who is transgender, experiencing pubertal changes incongruent with their gender identity can be intensely distressing.
These changes can be medical, such as body hair and genital growth, and many transgender individuals request to undergo surgery to help alleviate body dysphoria.
These changes can also be social. Establishing accurate names and pronouns is important to mental health.
While it is never too late to begin medically transitioning, transgender individuals assigned male at birth (AMAB) in particular undergo a number of changes – facial hair growth, bone or cartilage development in the throat and brow bone, and vocal shift – at a very early point in puberty. Addressing these changes can require significant medical care including surgical operations, and depending on the age at which hormones are accessible to the individual, some of them can never fully be addressed.
Transgender individuals assigned female at birth (AFAB) go through a different, but similarly difficult experience. Hormonally, some aspects such as facial hair and Adam’s apple growth, as well as voice deepening, are accessible to them with hormones even at an older age, but there are traits such as bone structure and physical stature that are determined by testosterone levels at a fairly young age, which is a common challenge for transgender AFAB individuals who start hormones at an older age.
No kind of transitioning, whether hormonal or social, is required at all to be transgender. But for many members of the community, some forms of surgical transitioning are a long-term goal. It is costly and rarely supported by insurance companies, but can often help alleviate body dysphoria and remove hormone-producing organs.
Being denied access to medical transitioning procedures can be psychologically traumatic to an individual, and it is the transgender community that is affected by disproportionate rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide risk. They are also at high risk of familial attack, abuse, religious attacks or cleansing rituals, conversion camps, or outright being ejected from the home.
The transgender community is one of the most commonly misrepresented groups in society, mainly because of being rejected so far from the mainstream. As a trans woman myself, I can very confidently say that gender dysphoria is a real thing, and if I had been able to access medical help sooner I would be a happier person now.
There will always be accidents and misunderstandings, but with medical professionals, hormones and surgeries are overwhelmingly an intentional and good thing. I think I speak for most of the transgender community when I say this: Please stop trying to control our bodies.
Photo by Emma Crouch
