Gender dysphoria is a mental disorder listed in the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR). It is defined as “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months’ duration… [that] is associated with clinically significant distress in social, school… occupational, or other important areas of functioning.” 

Gender dysphoria isn’t normal. It isn’t a variation of the human experience. It is pathological. 

For more information read our blog post – What is Gender Dysphoria?

We have no idea precisely how many children and adolescents question their gender, visit pediatric gender clinics, or medically transition in Canada today. We’ve made freedom of information requests and asked the Canadian Institute of Health Information for data, but it seems that comprehensive data on this issue just doesn’t exist. 

The limited data that we do have from Canada and other peer countries suggests that gender dysphoria among minors has grown exponentially in the past twenty years, particularly among teenage girls. 

This rapid rise in gender dysphoria is likely due to a rise to prominence in culture, media, and education curriculum of the notion that all people have a “gender identity” (an ill-defined internal sense of “maleness” or “femaleness”) that is separate from their biological sex. The public face of the LGBTQ movement are shaping young minds to believe that their problems may be with their bodies and this is leading to pressure to physically change healthy bodies in an effort to alleviate mental distress. 

In short, we’re witnessing the effects of a social contagion. And children are the ones struggling. 

Medical transitioning is the us of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to alleviate gender dysphoria. In the last decade or so, it has become the dominant way to treat gender dysphoria in Canada and other Western countries. 

Yet, using puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries on children and adolescents in this way is quite new. The negative side effects are many and potentially severe. 

For a biological female who is taking testosterone, it may become medically necessary to have her uterus and ovaries removed, as the testosterone causes damage to these organs and results in significant pain. The result will be the inability to ever bear children. 

The risks from cross-sex hormones include infertility, blood clots, hypertension, heart disease, cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, weight gain, sleep apnea, central nervous system tumours, urinary problems, erectile dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, low bone mass, osteoporosis, and more. 

Many people who regret medically transitioning are asking why nobody asked the tough questions sooner. They are deeply hurt by the fact that someone allowed them to take a fast-track to powerful drugs and life-changing surgeries when they were in a state of mental distress. We must not ignore them. We care about children who may end up in the same position in the future, with irreversible harm done to their bodies. 

Regardless of gender, we are all equal as persons and citizens.  

The issue here is whether or in what circumstances major medical interventions to alter healthy young bodies are ethical and beneficial.  

We shouldn’t teach children to question or hate their bodies, but to accept their bodies and the bodies of others for what they are. People should be able to exist in space without doubting their worth or belonging based on their bodies. Teaching children that their body might not match their “true” identity only reinforces tired gender stereotypes and causes confusion at a time when kids should just be kids – playing, learning, growing, and interacting without pressure to be or do something beyond their years.  

There is nothing wrong with the bodies of young people with gender dysphoria. After all, gender dysphoria is listed a condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The proper response is counselling not medical transitioning. 

Several progressive and trans-affirming nations have recently reversed or significantly revised their approach to treating gender dysphoria in children. Here are a few examples. 

A majority of American states limit or entirely prohibit the use of puberty blockers, hormones, and “sex change” surgeries for minors, because minors lack the capacity to grasp the lifelong implications of such interventions, and because altering healthy young bodies in this way is not medically necessary or in the interest of the patient’s long-term health. 

Finland’s Health Authority recently mandated psychiatric treatment as the first step to remedy gender dysphoria. The idea is to first see if someone can become comfortable with and accepting of their own natural body. 

Sweden’s famous Karolinska Institute, which pioneered medical interventions for gender dysphoria, has stopped prescribing puberty blockers except as part of controlled clinical controlled trials – in other words, as part of research designed to compare outcomes for children who are put on the gender-affirming pathway and those who are not.  

In both Australia and New Zealand, the medical regulators for psychiatry have advised paediatric gender clinicians to prioritise support for broader mental health needs and move cautiously and slowly towards medicalization.  

The Cass Review in the United Kingdom, an independent review of the country’s approach to treating gender dysphoria, conducted several systemic reviews on the effectiveness of medical transitioning. It found that there is no high quality evidence to support medical transitioning and recommended that the administration of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical transitions be limit to adults only.