FRANCE: A health scandal ahead?

Translation into English by a Genspect parent of an article written by members of La Petite Sirene and published in the French newspaper Marianne. For the original French article in full, please visit Marianne. We republish in English a few excerpts of the article.

Encouraging children to change sex: a health scandal ahead?

“Télérama published a report entitled “Les enfants transgenres mieux écoutés? In this text, which unilaterally supports the idea that the transitioning of minors is a progress, the name of our Observatory is quoted. Associated with that of Abigail Shrier, we would have succumbed to “a moral panic in the face of the explosion of requests for consultation in specialized centers”. We would like to answer the journalist Marc Belpois: what if you were wrong? What if we were not ideologues, but were alerting him to a coming health scandal?”

“Our childhood part continues to dream this in-between, and it is marvelous, rich and fertile as long as it remains a fantasy; because as soon as we pretend that all this is possible, it is necessary to modify the dream, for lack of being able to realize it fully. Certainly, one can change hormonally and surgically one’s sexual appearance and legally one’s belonging to one of the two sexes. Can we modify biology, genetics? Ah, no. So, let’s say that we can’t change our sex, but our gender, and basically we will pretend that “it’s the same”, as in our childhood imagination. Can we go back in time and alternate all our life between two sexes? Not either, well, but it is already a first step.”

“We are absolutely not anti-trans, or anti-LGBT, we have no affiliation to any lobby, to any particular political family. If you knew the diversity of the people who make up our observatory or who support us, you would surely be surprised, so much your opinion on our approach seems irremediably engraved in the certainty that we are old reactionaries.

However, it is impossible for us to issue the slightest prevention, the slightest call for caution or distance, without being accused of conservatism or transphobia, and receiving refusals to bring another point of view in most of the media that we consider to be the most open, the most intellectual and close to humanist values.

It’s to the point that it makes you wonder what makes you so sure of yourselves. Is there an ethics committee at Télérama, made up of doctors, psychologists, lawyers and parents who have met to discuss the veracity of your assertions? To verify the studies that have been done on the question of transidentity among teenagers? On the explosion of requests in the last ten years? On the influence of social networks? On the quality of the study (only one, yes, and not recent) that claims that affirmative care decreases the risk of suicide? And – we dare not add – have you read all the ones that have since challenged it?”

“We have been alarmed – as everyone should be! – by a new phenomenon that is sweeping through Western societies, with irreversible consequences, and which affects a population that has been little concerned by the issue until now. We base ourselves on recent or long-known scientific data, on our knowledge of identity disorders linked to childhood and adolescence, on the social contagion linked to the very human propensity to copy what we think is enviable in the neighbor (a frequent symptom in a collective way and even more so in teenagers: thus, social networks are the worst vectors for this category of subjects).”

“It is not easy not to be in the zeitgeist, it would be much more comfortable to shout about the miracle and the beauty of human encounter, as some dare to do without blushing. Our concern is supported by scientific studies, relayed throughout the world by numerous associations and recognized researchers, and certain points are indisputable:

– For the last 10 years, the increase in consultations for gender dysphoria is 2000 to 4000% ;

– Adult males used to be in the majority, now it is 80% young women, most often minors, who wish to change their sex;

– Many of the effects of hormonal and surgical treatments are irreversible: coupled with puberty blockers, they systematically lead to sterility;

– There are strong concerns about the impact of these treatments on neurological development, the associated psycho-affective effects and overall health in the long term as these treatments must be taken for life;

– The reduction of the risk of suicide and the improvement of the quality of life, supposedly brought by these treatments, are not proven;

– Therapies that take their time (wait and see) allow a very large majority (75% to 90%) of children and adolescents to reconcile with their biological sex when they leave adolescence (a nice discovery, to believe that adolescence is a period of psychological risk, who would have thought it?

– The so-called affirmative therapies, which promote an immediate social transition (change of first name), are followed by a treatment with puberty blockers, then crossed hormones in the vast majority of cases (nearly 90%).”

“We could satisfy ourselves with the certainty of having alerted before the health scandal which will not fail to occur, when all the others were ecstatic, fascinated by these portraits of young androgynous people. If we persist in warning the public of these aberrations in spite of the attacks made against us, it is because we are daily contacted by catastrophized parents, that we meet young people who can only repeat the messages learned by heart on social networks, without accessing the singularity of their psychic life, that we discover young adults frightened by what they have done to their body…

Today we simply wish that young people do not prepare themselves to mutilate their body when they are still in their teenage years.”