Los Angeles Times Pumps Up 'Difficulties' of 'Transgender Children' While Reporting That Clinical Treatment Is Based on 'Instinct and Observation' Rather Than Science

I'm sure it's a difficult thing dealing with the social ostracism of being "transgendered."

When I read the stories I feel sympathy for people, especially children. But I recall some reports over the last few years of parents of transgender children pushing their kids towards the opposite sex of their birth. For example, having young boys dress like girls all the time, which does nothing but cause gender identity confusion. See the recent story out of Britain, via the Daily Mail, "The boy of five living as a girl... helped by his parents, counsellors from the NHS and a school that give him a 'gender-neutral' loo," and also the commentary from Carl Sarler, "Pity poor Zach, a five-year-old victim of the politically correct gender identity industry."

So now here comes this report at LAT, "Transgender kids get help navigating a difficult path," with the moving introduction:

Amber, a soft-spoken, feminine 12-year-old who loves Hello Kitty and fashion design, lives with a secret. It is a secret most sixth-graders can't fathom, one she hides behind pink skirts and makeup. It is a secret that led to all her baby pictures being tucked away as though her childhood had never happened.

Amber was born a boy.

When she was 10, she stopped going by her given name, Aaron, and began dressing as a girl. Last year, she started taking medication to keep her from going through puberty.

"I can be who I am," Amber said. "I can be a girl."

An increasing number of children like Amber are realizing they are transgender and seeking care at clinics around the nation. Because of their age, the complex and emotional journey is as much their parents' as their own. Families are forced to make tough decisions about therapy and medication, and about what to tell friends and relatives. They are trying to give their children a normal upbringing with summer camps and sleepovers while protecting them from harm and embarrassment.

"How do you move through society with a gender-variant child?" said Nancy Quay, a psychotherapist at the University of Michigan gender services program. "What do you tell your neighbors? How do you keep your child safe?"

Okay, keep reading at the link.

Here's the part that just kills me:

Just a few clinics around the nation serve transgender children. It wasn't until about five years ago that doctors began treating them with puberty-blocking drugs to give them time to explore their gender identity before taking hormones whose effects would be irreversible.

The medication is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for children who start puberty prematurely but not for transgender adolescents. Two professional organizations that study hormonal and gender issues recommend the drugs' use in certain transgender cases, but doctors remain divided on whether to prescribe the controversial and expensive medication.

Supporters say the drugs can prevent the devastation a transgender girl feels when she grows facial hair or her voice drops and when a transgender boy develops breasts or begins menstruating. They can reduce depression and anxiety and eliminate the need for some future surgeries, said Jo Olson, Amber's doctor and the medical director of the transgender clinic at Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

"Puberty in the right body is hard enough," Olson said. "Puberty in the wrong body is really hard."

Other doctors, however, express caution based on a lack of research. Walter Meyer, an endocrinologist and psychiatrist in Texas who works with transgender patients, said that puberty blockers are helpful for some adolescents but that knowing which ones is sometimes difficult. Not all children who identify with the opposite gender end up as transgender adults, he said, and giving medication to those may be going too far.

The drugs are administered through a surgical implant in the arm or monthly injections. They suppress the production of sex hormones, making it easier to pass as the opposite gender, Olson said. If the youngsters stop taking the drugs, they will go through puberty.

Olson acknowledged that doctors are making clinical decisions based on instincts and observations rather than research. "That's what makes this incredibly difficult," she said. Olson said she prescribes blockers only to adolescents who are in counseling and have been persistent about their gender identity.

Amber's father said he thinks of the puberty suppressors as a stopgap to "make sure everybody is 100% on board with the way it's going."

But Amber insists she never wants to be male. "Why would I have started if I am going to change my mind?"

There's absolutely no science involved in such treatment. It's all touch-feely and emotionally driven.

So, back over to Sarler commentary at London's Daily Mail:

These days, ‘gender identity’ has become one of the fashionable syndromes of our time and, in the hands of the politically correct, one of the latest social tyrannies, to which we must all pay heed. ‘Trapped in the wrong body’ has been said so often that it has slipped into public consciousness in such a way that it is now beyond the pale to question it.

Ain't that the truth.