A new paper estimates the number of gender surgeries performed over the period 2016-2020. Here's the breakdown by age:
The total number of gender surgeries in the 12-18 age group was 3,678, nearly all of them breast/chest surgeries. The annual number of surgeries started at 200 in 2016 and rose steadily through 2019 before dropping a bit in the COVID year of 2020:
At a guess, upwards of half of these surgeries were performed at age 18, which means minors received 1,839 surgeries, or 367 per year. In the most recent year studied (2020) the number was probably around 500.
Is 367 per year a lot or a little? I guess that's up to you to decide.
And this has the GOP in a tizzy. Surgeries on 500 people a year, Elective surgeries.
Priorities?
.
Elective by a minor? Do minors also elect to have sex?
With people their own age? Yes, you dumb bigot.
The doctors and their parents are not their same age. You dumb bigot.
Lol, poor Atticus stepped into that one.
"DO MINORS HAVE SEX? I THINK NOT!!"
LOL, faceplant.
Why can't you just admit you stepped on that rake, you dumb, ignirnt, bigot?
In many states, they "elect" to get married. So, yes.
My guess is that the GOP is in a tizzy because it gets votes.
But it also isn't the only irreversible treatment being given for GD. About 5000 children a year started cross-sex or puberty blockers in 2021, and the numbers are still rising. And that's an undercount, since it only counts treatments covered by insurance for a gender dysphoria diagnosis. That's not a small number of children who have signed up for a lifetime of hormone treatments.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-care/
Now tell me how many teenagers got breast enhancement surgery.
Foaming at the mouth is always #1.
The advanced rule in science,
https://imgur.com/GyncLyf
LOL. You've inadvertently given the game away...
Its not "Advanced Science" its "Advanced Gender Studies" that thinks gender != sex and confuses secondary sexual characteristics with sex.
Sex is not a continuum. There are eggs and there are sperm. That's it. Everything else about gender and identity is socially defined and thus up for debate.
As you get older your capacity for fluid intelligence, spontaneity and flexibility, decreases, leaving crystalized intelligence, or certainty of prior knowledge.
It's like losing muscle, for some people it's worse than others.
He went straight from Sesame Street to Hollywood Squares, did not pass Go, did not collect $200.
GrumpyPDXDad knows it in his gut.
"Sex is not a continuum. There are eggs and there are sperm. That's it."
???
Ok, well then: which one are you, an egg or a sperm?
If you assume 1% (Pew poll suggested US = 1.6% of total US population) of the entire US population to be transgender, then in 5 years less than 1.5% of the US transgender population has had any form of surgery to accommodate their gender.
That's not a lot at all.
Is this because GRS or gender-affirming surgery is difficult to access, whether because insurance won't cover it, or a dearth of qualified practices? Or is this because most transgender people are satisfied without GRS or gender-affirming surgery?
I wonder how many of those genital surgeries in the 12-18 age group were on intersex kids?
A very good question.
Given the methodology, I'm also wondering how many of the chest surgeries were actually standard breast enhancement/reduction surgeries rather than gender reassignment. My guess is that the number is small, but not zero. This isn't something the designers attempted to discern.
(Instances were included based upon whether the individual has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria or self-reported gender reassignment, rather than an assessment of the surgery itself.)
They did look at patients who had gender dysphoria and related diagnosis codes. So standard enlargement or reduction surgeries are probably not picked up much in this study. Might be a few.
how about it’s none of anybody’s business?
👍👍👍👍👍
I had a friend who wanted to be a ballerina and so had a breast reduction in her teens. Would that count?
I’d imagine there are at least a couple hundred of those per year
Yes, cosmetic surgeries are performed on minors.
The number of breast enlargements or reductions on cis-identified women, including minors, would dwarf this. Heck there may be more breast reduction surgeries in cis-men.
The disparate response to breast surgeries on cis-gender Americans is key to understanding why some people are so loud and bothered by breast surgeries on transgender Americans.
I would really like it if Kevin could get data on overall cosmetic surgery - particularly chest surgery, but maybe also penile implants, so we can compare, and have a little context.
Drum seems to start with data and work backward to questions, not the other way around, which is to start with a question, collect data, then try to interpret what the data says about a question at hand. Not the usual way to do things.
Up for debate which approach makes you more likely to just try to confirm your priors
Either way I think it’s a fun read, since I’m definitely not tapped into the pipeline of random data and studies that Kevin is tuned into. And isn’t having fun most of the point of reading?
Just for those who are curious, here are numbers from a NY Times article about breast augmentation and reduction among teens for cosmetic reasons (although I'm betting a lot of those reductions are related to back pain).
"Experts said that adolescent top surgeries were less frequent than cosmetic breast procedures performed on teenagers who were not transgender. Around 3,200 girls age 18 to 19 received cosmetic breast implants in 2020, according to surveys of members of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, and another 4,700 teenagers age 13 to 19 had breast reductions. (Surveys from other groups have shown that girls under 18 also receive implants, though the ASPS does not recommend breast augmentation for minors.)" https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/health/top-surgery-transgender-teenagers.html
Does it include breast reduction surgery for practical or cosmetic reasons that are not part of gender reassignment. The only breast surgery that I was aware of when I was a teen fell in that category, too large breast that got in the way of sports and that triggered a curvature of the spine (mostly through bad posture to minimize the size)
A twelve year old is a child while an 18 y.o. is legally an adult. Why lump the two together? S/b 12 - 15, 16 & 17 while 18 goes into the 19 - 30 group.
You can't drink alcohol until age 21. Even one mutilation is too many.
But you can die in a war.
It is not your place to decide.
Comforming genitalia mutilation surgery should not be allowed on minors since they don’t have the legal ability to consent.
So ... No more home-schooling or private religious schooling? After all, they don't have the legal ability to consent, amitire?
Yeah, like they are the same thing. One of the problems of TG right advocates is just their over the top rhetoric every time the topic comes up which inevitably alienate those who would be natural allies. On the topic at hand, I don’t think a fifteen year old teenager has the required wisdom to permanently alter their genitalia. That’s my opinion. Sue me.
Under 18 population (not 12 to 18, which is less) currently is 73.1 million. If there are 500 trans surgeries per year, that's less than 7 per million, or 0.00007%. Why so much hot air and absoute hate for transgender people? Last I checked, about 45% of tansgender individuals under 20 attempted suicide.
These numbers are bizarre! From the coverage, I would have assumed that TGs were approaching 50% of the population.