Gender affirming hysterectomies

on young girls?

I had an interesting question put to me yesterday. Someone asked, "Cat, would you make up a communication board for someone who wanted to perform gender affirming hysterectomies on young girls?" 

The question left me stunned. I doubt I know any doctor - and I know a few - who would even contemplate doing such a thing.  I have not actually asked any of them but I do not believe any of them would contemplate performing anything but essential surgery on a child. 

I find it not just difficult but impossible to understand why anyone would allow a young girl with no health issues to go through surgery that would deliberately prevent her from having children. If that same young girl wants to make a similar decision as an adult then it should surely only be made after extensive counselling?

The idea that a young girl who changes her ideas on an almost daily or weekly basis is capable of such a decision appalls me. Children change their ideas about clothes, the opposite sex, careers, food, friends, clothes and just about everything else - and they do it frequently. It is all part of growing up.  

The idea that they can make an informed decision about the most radical change possible, a change from which there is no going back, is surely ridiculous?  Do they really have the emotional maturity and life experience to make such a decision? And what of the adults who say they are there to support them in these decisions? Have they also been counselled?

I don't ever remember wanting to be a boy but Middle Cat went through that phase. She played football in a guernsey and secondhand boots. She climbed trees and rode her bike at break neck speed in races against the boys.  At one point the Senior Cat told her she had to return all the marbles she had won in a game of "immies" - because she had beaten all the boys in the school.  And Middle Cat constantly told us she wanted to be a boy.  

As I have said elsewhere in this blog she would now likely be "encouraged" to change sex instead of which she is a happily married mother of two. Middle Cat is not perhaps "feminine". She almost always wears trousers and knows more about internal combustion engines than many people - but she does not want to be a man. 

I have provided communication assistance for people in many different circumstances and with many different outlooks on life. I have not always liked them and I most certainly have not always agreed with their politics. What they have all had in common however is that what they were about to go and do was something that was positive. They were going to build hospitals, perform surgery, repair bridges and buildings, build a road, build a dam, plant the beginnings of a forest and much more. They were also going to teach others how to do these things.  I have always tried not to judge them on their politics but on their humanity.

I do know there are people who feel an overwhelming desire to go through the long and difficult "transgender" process. Even when they do the results are not always satisfying. Relationships are not the same. They can face a life time of doubt. So why would we even contemplate this for a child or an adolescent?

My response to the question was, "I would have to ask them to go away and think about what they were really doing." I know it would not be an answer as such for some people but the idea of what they might be prepared to do appalls me.