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highlyeccentricIf your take on puberty blockers / hormones, access to, goes "there are all these people absurdly trying to protect children from puberty blockers / hormones is as ridiculous as protecting them from, say, antidepressants" I am going to assume you don't know any neurodivergent or mentally ill children, and write off your ability to assess what children need and why they do or do not get it.
I mean, you're not technically WRONG, these are very closely related phenomena! But if you make that analogy flippantly, as people keep doing, you're actually trying to imply that you wish trans kids had access to the same help mentally ill or neurodivergent kids do... which, hmm maybe in some places there are authorities happy to provide appropriate pysch meds but not hormones? But let's not pretend that "lifetime of medication" isn't an effective weapon for gender-crits precisely because many people and especially many people caring for children regard that phrase as a curse to be avoided at all costs.
That analogy is basically the trans discourse version of "why isn't my depression as easy to medicate as physical disabilities", which routinely ignores the degree to which both medication and mechanical aids are denied out of a fear that it will get worse, result in the person actually using the aid in question in the long term, or otherwise just violate the unspoken principle that trying to get by without medication is better than with, unless possibly your medication is an alternative to a structural or mechanical accommodation that would inconvenience others. You better prove you tried to do without both, though.
And doubly so for children, because we fantasise both the child body and the child mind as "natural", "pure" and to be simultaneously encouraged to toughen up, and left without "interference".
Someone in my family was given half-doses of a blood thinner, in their early teens, that was prescribed to assist in treatment of their auto-immune disease. Their parent halved the dose because they "were so thin" - kept them on child doses despite them being over 12, and considerably taller than many adults. It's not even as if PHYSCICAL ailments are exempt from this fear of medicating children.
Reluctance to give psych meds and reluctance to provide mechanical aids can both be called ableism. Reluctance to give puberty blockers and hormones cannot, but I don't think that means they're unrelated. I think ableism and transphobia, and a bunch of other problems as well (scepticism of giving women the pill for period pain, say; vaccine reluctance, which predates the ableist causes-autism scare although now entwined with it) all have deep roots in fear of BOTH bodies which are abnormal, AND of actions to intervene and modify the body. You get what you're given, and what you're given can be measured in a spectrum of perfection. Working to perfect the body, by exercise or diet, is good; adapting for the *comfort* of the body is not, and chemical interventions are cheating somehow. Deeply ingrained (Western - possibly elsewhere but I am not expert) assumptions, these.
I mean, you're not technically WRONG, these are very closely related phenomena! But if you make that analogy flippantly, as people keep doing, you're actually trying to imply that you wish trans kids had access to the same help mentally ill or neurodivergent kids do... which, hmm maybe in some places there are authorities happy to provide appropriate pysch meds but not hormones? But let's not pretend that "lifetime of medication" isn't an effective weapon for gender-crits precisely because many people and especially many people caring for children regard that phrase as a curse to be avoided at all costs.
That analogy is basically the trans discourse version of "why isn't my depression as easy to medicate as physical disabilities", which routinely ignores the degree to which both medication and mechanical aids are denied out of a fear that it will get worse, result in the person actually using the aid in question in the long term, or otherwise just violate the unspoken principle that trying to get by without medication is better than with, unless possibly your medication is an alternative to a structural or mechanical accommodation that would inconvenience others. You better prove you tried to do without both, though.
And doubly so for children, because we fantasise both the child body and the child mind as "natural", "pure" and to be simultaneously encouraged to toughen up, and left without "interference".
Someone in my family was given half-doses of a blood thinner, in their early teens, that was prescribed to assist in treatment of their auto-immune disease. Their parent halved the dose because they "were so thin" - kept them on child doses despite them being over 12, and considerably taller than many adults. It's not even as if PHYSCICAL ailments are exempt from this fear of medicating children.
Reluctance to give psych meds and reluctance to provide mechanical aids can both be called ableism. Reluctance to give puberty blockers and hormones cannot, but I don't think that means they're unrelated. I think ableism and transphobia, and a bunch of other problems as well (scepticism of giving women the pill for period pain, say; vaccine reluctance, which predates the ableist causes-autism scare although now entwined with it) all have deep roots in fear of BOTH bodies which are abnormal, AND of actions to intervene and modify the body. You get what you're given, and what you're given can be measured in a spectrum of perfection. Working to perfect the body, by exercise or diet, is good; adapting for the *comfort* of the body is not, and chemical interventions are cheating somehow. Deeply ingrained (Western - possibly elsewhere but I am not expert) assumptions, these.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-02 09:45 pm (UTC)The argument is essentially the same for gender dysphoria, mental illness, and physical illness: life or quality of life. I'm lucky in that I've never had to deal with the former, but with both of the latter, I found myself butting up against ableism and what is normal/natural, and physical purity, and the especially this:
Among the more useful things my shrink told me was his take on the idea of medication as a crutch. He was like, "if you broke your leg, you'd want a crutch, right?"
no subject
Date: 2021-08-13 01:31 pm (UTC)(I am willing to argue, while visibly trans and disabled, that at least for the purposes of bathroom access "being trans" is within the scope of the social model disabling, and therefore FUCK yes you get to use the accessible, ungendered bathroom if there are no better options for you -- but extending that to questions of access-to-medication gets murky and I would need to think about it more before deciding whether that's a mast I want to pin my colours to, although obviously I am perfectly happy at least gesturing in that direction; see this comment...)