Posted on 12/29/2015 4:31:53 PM PST by Faith Presses On
Excerpts from the program transcript (and I've added a few notes for explanation):
[Family in a doctor's office]
00:14:09 The medications are very expensive, and so they can be $15,000 to $25,000 a year for some of these things, which is cost prohibitive for most people.
00:14:19 So we have worked on an option that we have, we can offer here now actually, which is called Vantas.
00:14:24 And its FDA approval is for men with prostate cancer, but this has been used successfully by pediatric endocrinologists taking care of kids like Daniel, and it seems to work just as well, and it is a lot less expensive.
00:14:40 And so, you know, Vantas is not... it's not approved for children, but none of these medications are actually approved for use in this situation.
00:14:49 >> For all?
00:14:49 >> For any of these.
00:14:51 >> For any of them, okay.
00:14:52 >> We have a lot of experience in pediatric endocrinology using pubertal blockers, and from all the evidence we have, they are generally a very safe medication.
00:15:03 But the concerns with this population are just different because we're using them at a little different age and for a different purpose.
00:15:11 So whether it is having any negative effect on their adult bone density or their neurologic development I think is...
00:15:18 we don't know.
00:15:20 I much prefer to take care of conditions that have been well-researched and well-studied for 50 years, and that is not the case here.
00:15:31 We just really need good research that we don't have yet.
00:15:39 >> They're not easy decisions to make, and they shouldn't be made quickly, and I think the take-home message today is that nothing is going to happen quickly, okay?
00:15:50 Nothing.
00:15:51 >> This generation of kids are really...
00:15:54 They're the pioneers.
00:15:55 They are gonna be the ones to teach us.
[Interview with a boy living as a girl]
00:16:13 >> My name is Ariel.
00:16:15 I am 13 years old, and I identify as a girl.
00:16:20 I haven't really experienced puberty at all.
00:16:23 I mean, the hormone blockers are like my life saver.
00:16:27 But me turning into a man is just probably the most horrifying thing ever, I could ever think of in the farthest reaches of my mind, is me not going on the hormone blockers anymore and me developing into a man.
00:16:45 That would just be horrible.
(snip)
00:28:09 >> NARRATOR: Although puberty blockers had allowed Ariel to pass, three months into the new school year, while changing in the girls' locker room, she was outed.
00:28:19 >> At first, I sort of felt bad for her, because it must have been so hard, obviously.
00:28:23 And it was just sort of like tension between us.
00:28:27 Like, I didn't know how far I should go, like, if I should bring it up, or if I should just treat her normally, or just like nothing happened.
(snip)
00:30:10 >> It's almost like there's a fine line between trying to include her and trying not to include her so much that it made her feel excluded from everything.
00:30:20 I keep accidentally making her feel bad, and it's just...
00:30:24 it must be so hard for her.
00:30:26 I can't even imagine it.
00:30:37 >> I remember a couple years back, everyone was talking about, like, having babies, and it really makes me upset.
00:30:45 I mean, I don't want to tell them to stop talking about it,o but you know, it's like...
00:30:51 it kind of hurts my feelings, and they're always talking about that.
00:31:01 It's like...
00:31:04 It's so hard to explain.
00:31:06 It's like, "But I'm a girl," so it's...
00:31:09 But it's like, "Could I have the pain of labor?
00:31:13 Could I have to deal with that?" And it's kind of hard to have that happen, like, those conversations.
00:31:22 (crying) And I feel like a lot of people, it's hard for them to understand, but I don't want to, like, burden them with that.
00:31:36 I kind of just either walk away or I just kind of deal with it.
00:31:42 I try to sometimes get into the conversation, but you know, it's hard.
00:31:48 >> Do you ever feel like you're, like... you can get so close to being a girl, but you just can't get to that exact point?
00:31:59 Is that what upsets you?
00:32:00 >> Yeah, that's exactly how I feel.
00:32:02 The thing with having a baby, it's like I can never be fully there.
00:32:06 That's just, like, a natural thing that happens.
00:32:09 I buy a bra, but it's not to hold in my boobs.
00:32:11 It's for an illusion.
00:32:13 It felt sort of like an act.
00:32:18 So I kind of feel lost sometimes.
(snip)
[Another family meeting with a doctor. The Christian father, who opposes gender changes, questions the safety of the drugs used.]
0:40:07 >> There are plenty of drugs that get approved by the FDA, and everybody goes on their merry way and thinks things are great, and then two years later, people are dropping dead from one thing or another.
00:40:16 >> And this is really important, so I'm actually going to pull up a stool so I can sit and face you.
00:40:21 So testosterone as a medication has been around obviously for a long time.
00:40:25 The way we would consider using it here, sort of for, in a cross-sex sort of way, there aren't, like, a tremendous amount of studies that have been done to document, like, all the potential side effects and the risks and benefits.
00:40:41 But I think in general, it's fairly well tolerated.
00:41:07 So some of it's going to be things that he'll want, but some of the things you want to look out for are things like acne, mood changes, and then all the risk factors that go along with a typical male predisposition.
00:41:22 So things like heart disease, stroke, you know, those kind of things.
00:41:28 Males are more likely to have heart disease than females.
00:41:32 We're asking families to take some leaps of faith based upon the child that they have in front of them, and really what we don't know with regard to some of the long-term consequences of these medications.
00:41:45 If you look at our consent forms, they're fraught with, like, vague language and, like, "May, could..." We know very little about things that are really important to families, like fertility, like cancer potential or oncologic potential of these agents, cardiac risk.
00:42:04 I mean, things that, like, families want to know when they're making decisions about their children.
(snip)
[Interview with an older teen.]
1:11:19 >> NARRATOR: Isaac also fully transitioned, with blockers, hormones and top surgery.
01:11:26 Now 19 and a sophomore in college, his perspective has been gradually shifting.
01:11:33 >> I mean, in a way, I very much fit the very typical trans narrative.
01:11:36 I decided to transition, I legally changed my name, you know, I started taking testosterone, I got top surgery.
01:11:45 But I started realizing at around 16, 17 what a huge, hug decision I had made to embrace this masculine part of myself so deeply.
01:12:02 Going through an artificial puberty, you know, I didn't really experience this sort of formative time.
01:12:12 And I kind of mourn that in a way because, you know, as much as we all know puberty is that sort of, you know, gross, slimy molding of everybody into a person, and the way that I went through that was, you know, meticulously tested and controlled and dosed, and it's been good, but I wonder what that experience... or what role that experience has in a person's conception of his or her gender.
01:12:55 And I can never know that for me.
01:13:02 You know, none of this is to say that I made any sort of wrong decision or regret transitioning, because it was really painful to be presenting as male and not be on testosterone and not have top surgery.
01:13:20 And my mind was real cleared of that sort of pain after that in a way that allowed me to come to this openness, I guess, about my gender.
01:13:33 But I think, you know, it's become really clear in recent years that any sort of big problems that I thought I would fix by transitioning weren't really fixed.
01:13:51 I really don't like to use the term "regret," although it's kind of hard to speak about how I feel about my gender without there being some element of regret, or at least of fear, I think, a little bit of what the implications of the choices that I made are.
01:14:12 I'm putting a chemical into my body once a week.a I'm like... and there are very, very, very clear effects of that.
01:14:22 And I'm assuming that there are also unclear effects to that.
01:14:30 I mean, it is super easy as a kid to hear, you know, these things are irreversible and be like, "Okay.
01:14:37 I don't care.
01:14:38 You know, just I want it." Because time doesn't, you know, you don't think of time in the same way when you've only experienced a tiny little sliver of it.
01:14:48 But I think in the past few years, at least for me, I would at some point like to take a break, at least, from testosterone, because I don't like to imagine that, you know, the entirety of the time that I spend on this earth will be spent sort of separate from what my body actually is.
01:15:16 Like, I don't really know what it means to be a man in this body, or a man in the body that I was born in, because I've only really been a man in the constructed body.
01:15:31 Which I enjoy, and it's comfortable, but also it's just not really my body.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/growing-up-trans/
It gives a lot of unintentional insight into the confusion of these children and how society has made them guinea pigs.
I think I’ll pass and watch Texas Tech whup up on LSU.
Having six toes is as rare as being a tranny. Yet, there are no documentaries about growing up with six toes. And I find myself with the same amount of interest in both. That is to say, who the hell cares?
I’m thinking of how in the late middle ages into the 19th century, little boys with beautiful soprano voices were castrated to prevent their voices from changing. By the middle to late 19th century, this practice was condemned as immoral, and finally outlawed. It was felt that it was exploiting a child and that a child could not give full informed consent to do such a thing. It appears that we are regressing, and worse, this does not benefit the child at all. At least the castrated boys were guaranteed a livelihood and a place in society. What are we doing to these children? I am bewildered by this acceleration of evil, how can anyone accept these things?
Yes, castratos.
I see no cause for you to react so rudely. You weren’t forced to click this link.
As a Christian, I care about others, and I know others do too.
I also care about coming under pressure to go along with people’s self-declared identities in these cases.
And as this story shows, teenagers of one sex are already changing in the opposite sex’s locker room at school.
If a Christian concern for others doesn’t motivate you, then, self-interest should.
This is sickening, evil, and child abuse. Is this what my country wants to stand for?
We don’t give anorexics stomach stapling surgery.
We don’t give people with other types of body dysphoria like wanting to remove limbs that surgery, though there are “trans-abled” articles coming out to legitimize it.
We don’t give schizophrenics and delusionals plastic surgery to look like the person they think they are.
Yet in the name of proving there’s no difference between men and women, we let men have massive surgery and injections with tons of hormones to become women.
Or we let them say they are a girl, dress as a girl and walk in the women’s restroom and have liberals proudly announce the mentally ill mind trumps biological sex.
And a man who thinks he is a woman is arguing he has a female brain, so change the body. The more rational solution is fixing the malfunctioning brain.
Your naivete is touching, but this is all part of the LGBT war on masculinity. Blurring out sexuality is just another step.
I’m thinking of how in the late middle ages into the 19th century, little boys with beautiful soprano voices were castrated to prevent their voices from changing. By the middle to late 19th century, this practice was condemned as immoral, and finally outlawed. It was felt that it was exploiting a child and that a child could not give full informed consent to do such a thing. It appears that we are regressing, and worse, this does not benefit the child at all. At least the castrated boys were guaranteed a livelihood and a place in society. What are we doing to these children? I am bewildered by this acceleration of evil, how can anyone accept these things?
Personally, I think it would be creepy growing up in Transylvania. I’d always be looking out my window to see if I could see bats flying around castles.
There is no naivete on my part. Did you read either the article or even my comment before attacking me?
I said this program gives a lot of UNINTENTIONAL insight into the confusion of these children, and how they’re being used as guinea pigs. Does that sound like I’m agreeing with PBS/Frontline’s pro-transgender view?
Right now, I have quite a lot of back pain from aggravating an old back injury. I can only type with one hand. I’m actually just sitting up for a minute so I can type this to you. But no, I didn’t type as much as I would have liked about this, and the different excerpts I pulled out of the show, but I felt I explained enough, and trusted that if the truth wasn’t immediately clear, at least no one would jump to conclusions because just a little inspection of what I posted would clear things up.
Growing Up Trans: The Life and Times of Barry Soetoro
It is child abuse, with society and the medical community aiding and abetting it. The doctors press parents to do it but admit they have no idea about even the physical consequences long-term.
I appreciate your posting these excerpts from the interviews, and found the comments of the youngsters in the situation interesting, like “Ariel” knowing he will actually never be able to bear children, and not even experience a lot of what the young women in the locker room are talking about.
When there was the controversy about the boy who wanted to use the girls’ locker room, I remember thinking that clearly he does not actually feel like a girl, because if he did, he would understand why they do not want a boy in their locker room! He does not have the feminine desire for personal privacy.
Basically, what transgender people seem to feel is a yearning to be what they **think** the opposite sex is...
I believe I heard of doctors doing the leg removal surgery IIRC. Here’s a similar case case:
Model spends $120,000 on 15 surgeries and has SIX RIBS removed in her quest for a 14-inch waist - because she wants to look like a cartoon character
Pixee Fox, 25, wants to resemble an animated figure like Jessica Rabbit
She’s had nose jobs, breast augmentations and a bum lift to reach her goal
Rib removal is part of bid to shrink her waist to record-breaking 14 inches
The former electrician from Sweden now lives in North Carolina
$120K on 15 surgeries, couldn’t have happened in this country.
“Basically, what transgender people seem to feel is a yearning to be what they **think** the opposite sex is...”
Agreed. And it’s almost like a “grass is greener over there” sort of desire, fixation and obsession.
She’s from Sweden but now lives in North Carolina. And the story says this:
“She underwent the extreme five-hour keyhole surgery in Indianapolis last month after Dr Barry Eppley finally agreed to perform the procedure.”
I believe that’s the rib surgery. I first heard that on Inside Edition where the doctor defended doing that surgery.
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