The use of the word minor in this headline is misleading as it implies that young kids are getting surgeries, this is not the case the only minors getting surgery are like 17 year olds at the youngest, there is no 12 or 13 year old getting gender affirming surgeries. Since only the oldest of minors are getting surgery I don’t really see it as an issue as there is not really a big mental and decision making difference between someone who is 17 and someone who is 18. Im not advocating for 13 year olds to get surgery and I am also not advocating for no regulation on surgery, those regulations greatly protect the ones on the operating table from malpractice and other injuries, and overall.

On the topic of not knowing if you made the right decision in the surgery; being trans is something that you know as living in your body as it is can cause serious mental anguish and even physical anguish. To really deny corrective surgery to that pain is just cruel. Imagine if you had pain coming from your wisdom teeth and you told your doctor that you needed to have them removed because they were causing you pain, but instead of giving you an appointment to an oral surgeon (like they do today). Your doctor instead questioned if your pain was even real or if you were faking it. Imagine then them telling you that if you really WANT a surgery you need to make sure you are mentally well enough to deal with the “consequences” of not having your wisdom teeth (the same teeth that cause you great pain) anymore and they made you get the signatures of 3 different (and very expensive) psychologists that say that you are mentally well enough to get your wisdom teeth removed because they are causing you great pain. That hypothetical situation may seem completely absurd but it is what many of us trans folks have to go through not only to get surgery but even just HRT. Its completely ridiculous, especially so because cis people can get as much cosmetic surgery as they want and as long as they have the money and nobody will give them shit for it, but as soon as a trans person wants a cosmetic surgery we have to jump through tonnes of hoops.

One final point is that if trans surgery for minors is banned today we have to think about what will be next. These restrictive legislations for trans minors are almost never the end of the restrictions for trans people after they get rid of surgery for minors then they will aim to get rid of surgery for adults as well. And then this goes on until our existence is effectively made illegal. Because that the end goal, to be able to lock us up somewhere for just existing. With that in mind it becomes crucial to resist and oppose any reduction in the autonomy of any type of trans person because a threat to one is a threat to all

Also thank you for asking questions in good faith, frankly most cis people don’t give us the time of day. And if you want to know more about trans people just PM me and I will get back to you.

When they mean minor in this case, they are referring to children 16 and older who have parental approval, and the approval of at least one psychiatrist and psychologist who have determined that a surgery is medically required to treat body dysphoria and that there is no other option.

There is nowhere on the planet that 10 year olds are getting surgeries, but the phrase “trans minors” is used by reactionaries to obfuscate the issue and make people believe that the phrase is referring to small children.

Further, receiving approval for a gender affirming surgery as a minor is horrifically difficult. The process takes several years as the child must have a substantiated and documented history of body dysphoria by medical professionals. A process that is costly, time consuming, and emotionally and mentally draining. If a person is not committed they will simply not be able to follow through; as it would be like putting your legs in an industrial just for fun. No sane person is doing that just because they feel like it.

Trans affirming surgeries have an astonishingly negligible regret and reversal rate. Hip replacement surgeries have a regret rate magnitudes higher for example. This is because of how arduous and thorough the screening process is.

Like, minors are notoriously not great at making decisions or being reasonable, I wouldn’t trust myself doing something this big, that’s for sure.

But a minor isn’t making this decision alone. At the very least, there are all of the medical professionals who have a checklist of things to work through before recommending and clearing any particular procedures. Also, its going to be pretty difficult for most minors to get any kind of gender affirming medical care without a parent being involved. So before there’s any arbitrary limits to care based on age there’s going to be a small army of people who are already directly involved with the decision making process alongside the patient.

Removing the arbitrary age limits allows for patients who are developing faster than the average that the age limits where based on and their doctors to move forward with treatment based on the individual instead of being forced to wait until the correct age has been reached for the doctors/ect to begin treatment.