It will come as no surprise to readers of the BFD that gender affirmation is BS, as this systemic review of the evidence shows.
First a summary:
The question, “Do the benefits of youth gender transitions outweigh the risks of harm?” remains unanswered because of a paucity of follow-up data. The conclusions of the systematic reviews of evidence for adolescents are consistent with long-term adult studies, which failed to show credible improvements in mental health and suggested a pattern of treatment-associated harms. Three recent papers examined the studies that underpin the practice of youth gender transition and found the research to be deeply flawed.
With regard to psychological benefits:
[…] Despite claims of the lifesaving nature of gender transition for adults, none of the many studies convincingly demonstrated enduring psychological benefits. The longest-term studies, with the strongest methodologies, reported markedly increased morbidity and mortality and a persistently high risk of post-transition suicide among transitioned adults.
As for mental health improvements:
A well-known 30-year Swedish follow-up study compared medically transitioned individuals to cisgender age-matched peers on key measures of morbidity and mortality. The study found sharply elevated rates of suicide among transitioned adults (19 times higher than controls overall, and 40 times higher for female-to-male individuals) and significantly elevated all-cause morbidity and mortality, with survival curves between transitioned adults and their cisgender matched controls markedly diverging at the 10-year mark and beyond.
A more recent long-term Swedish study also failed to find that either hormones or surgery improved long-term mental health outcomes of gender dysphoric adults. Originally, the surgical outcomes showed some promise; however, the methodology was found to be deeply flawed and upon reanalysis of the surgery data, it emerged that not only did those who refrained from surgery fare no worse, but they also had half as many serious suicidal attempts. This difference did not reach the threshold of statistical significance, but the apparent doubling in serious suicide attempts among surgically transitioned individuals, as compared to gender-dysphoric controls who did not have surgery, is clinically meaningful and problematic.
As for claims of low rates of regret:
Proponents of gender-transitioning youth insist the benefits of the practice are self-evident even if systematic reviews of evidence cannot detect them. To support their view, they quote exceedingly low regret rates of less than one to two per cent. This implies that 98 to 99 per cent of transitioned individuals are happily situated throughout their lives. This conclusion is inaccurate, for three reasons.
First, follow-up studies exploring regret and quality of life suffer from very high rates (20 to 60 per cent) of loss to follow-up, which means the most adversely affected, including dissatisfied, sick or deceased patients, may be lost to follow-up at a disproportionately high rate. Second, these rates were obtained from individuals transitioning under much different circumstances than the ones found today. They were mature adults who passed rigorous psychological screenings, which today are viewed as “discriminatory gatekeeping”.
Third, and perhaps most important, is the question of how these studies defined regret. Each study’s methodology differed, but generally speaking, regret has been traditionally defined very narrowly as a request for legal document change or a return to the same clinic that facilitated the original transition to start medical detransition. Even when these criteria were met, not every study would consider someone who wanted to reverse their transition as a regretter. For example, Keira Bell, arguably the most famous young adult regretter, whose case led the UK to reevaluate their approach to gender dysphoric youth, would not have been counted as a regretter in frequently-cited “low regret” studies. This is because the studies required regretters to have had their gonads removed, while the only surgery Keira received was a double mastectomy.
The review’s conclusion:
The evidence base for gender-affirming interventions is sparce [sic] and of very low quality. While the evidence of benefits is highly uncertain, the harms to sexual and reproductive functions are certain, and many uncertainties about the long-term health effects exist. As a result, it is hard to ethically justify continuing to use hormones and surgeries as first-line “treatment” for gender dysphoric youth.
Of course the mainstream media will continue to push the narrative that so-called gender-affirming surgery ‘saves lives’. Given the appalling rate of suicide and other adverse outcomes among youth who have undergone such surgery, it’s no stretch to say the MSM have blood on their hands.
