https://nitter.click/benryanwriter/status/2100287684971307388

Jesse Thorn, host of @NPR’s Bullseye makes non-evidence-based claims about gender-transition surgeries for adolescents.

There is no evidence that such surgeries prevent suicide. There is so little research about them, for starters. And Finnish research into the connection between cross-sex hormone treatment and suicide in youths did not find such a link.

As for medical necessity, this is a term that WPATH spliced into its trans care guidelines for adolescents knowing they did not have the research to back it up. What they wanted was to ensure that insurers covered such medical interventions.

As for “rare,” during the several years leading up to these practices being widely banned, about 1,000 biological girls had a gender transition mastectomy annually. That is according to an analysis by @LeorSapir. Some people think that is a high number. Others think it constitutes rarity.

One question that supporters of these practices have always been unable to answer is this: If the need for these mastectomies is so intrinsically dire, why were there not waves of suicides among teenagers wanting their breasts removed prior to the 2010s?