Transgenderism & Mutilation

Eric Scheie over at Classical Values points to the increasing use of drugs to interfere with the sexual development of children--and he's not happy about it:

I've always been a bit skeptical about the transgender phenomenon, because I've known male-to-females who have been bitterly disappointed with the results, and who confided in me that they wouldn't have had the surgery if they had the choice to do it all over again.

However, the transsexuals I knew were all adults when they decided. A new and emerging (and controversial) treatment is changing that, by interrupting and shortcircuiting the process of sexual maturation:

The preferred drug for the controversial process is Lupron Depot. Slogan for the pediatric version: "Pause the child within." It's potent, yet reversible, and incredibly expensive, and for transgender kids backed by increasingly supportive parents, it's ushering in a new era. Boys who've always known they were girls won't get beards or deep voices. Girls who feel like boys will never have to grow breasts or tinker with a tampon.

Long prescribed to temporarily stave off puberty in kids who start developing too young, the drug blocks the brain's release of the compound that triggers the chain of hormonal reactions, body mutations, and moody angst. Now an unknown number of doctors in the Bay Area, the country, and across the globe are following the lead of a fledgling treatment pioneered at a Dutch clinic that's sparked debate in medical and ethical circles alike. The Dutch clinicians are suspending kids in physical childhood to buy them time to decide if they wish to begin the sexual reassignment process. If so, after a few years of continued psychological monitoring, they can start hormones to induce an "opposite-sex puberty." If not, the teen can stop taking the periodic Lupron injections and appear to develop normally, as kids treated with the drug for early puberty have for years.

My concern is that there are always certain individuals who cannot handle being effeminate males or masculine females, who feel pressured by society to fit in, and who, without fully thinking it through, can commit themselves to "conform" to something external to their individual uniqueness.

While opponents of sex change surgery are generally stereotyped as religious, certain radical feminists oppose it too. And the high rate of dissatisfaction with the results confirms the anecdotal evidence with which I'm familiar.

Too many times, I think people feel pressured into accepting the premise that it is "wrong" for a man to be like a woman, or vice versa, and that they gravitate towards a surgical solution in order to be "normal." (And conforming.) Considering that this occurs in adults, how could anyone predict what might be happening with a child? Might this same "desire to be normal" be even more overwhelming in children?

I generally trust that parents make the best decisions for their kids (although that should only be a presumption, not a hard and fast rule)--but this, and the increasing desire of parents to have their minor children sex changed, crosses the line.