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First-known puberty blocker patient says 'insulting' youth gender movement makes mockery of true dysphoria
The first known patient to take puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria sharply rebuked the modern youth gender identity movement as "insulting" in a podcast interview with the New York Times published last week.
The Times spoke with "FG," a patient in adolescent transgender medicine from the Netherlands, who was the first known person given puberty blockers at 13years-old in the 1980s to stop female development.
"FG" explained dealing with anger issues as a child and feeling uncomfortable living as a girl. The fear of going through puberty led the teen to express suicidal thoughts in a letter and eventually seek out medical treatment to stop normal development, as well as cross-sex hormones and gender reassignment surgery later on.
Now, living as a man decades later with no regrets, "FG" believes puberty blockers "saved my life."
Despite being a proponent of these medical interventions, "FG" was not supportive of the modern gender diversity movement.
"So many of the young people now want to visibly challenge the binary," New York Times reporter Azeen Ghorayshi told "FG," asking, "What do you make of that? And what do you make of what that means for getting the medical treatment that you pioneered?"
"I find that it's gone — it's gone a bit extreme to the other side," "FG" replied. "So it makes a laughingstock of what it's really about. Or at least, it seems to be a fashion statement nowadays."
"FG" equated the current gender climate to other youth rebellion movements of the past where young people forged their identities "to stand out," saying gender seemed to be another forum for that today.
"And for the group that is pure, like proper transsexuals, this flirting with pronouns and gender identity — it's insulting," "FG" continued.
"FG", who works in the medical field and asked to stay anonymous out of a desperate desire to fit in as a man, said it seemed like young people now treat their gender identity as a fad.
"Because like I said, we spend all our time trying to just fit in or be able to live the life that we feel we should have had. And it's not a great help when you've got people shouting from the barricades and trying to give you a different position, a third sex or whatever, and then talk about things that we don't want you to talk about, so that they can identify you," "FG" added.
"I don't take a lot of these people that seriously, because it does seem to be a bit of a fashion statement."
Shortly after taking office for his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order cutting off federal funding for institutions who engage in "chemical and surgical" sex-change procedures for minors.
"Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child's sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions," the order, titled "Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation," states. "This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation's history, and it must end."
A number of hospitals nationwide challenged the order earlier this year, with some vowing to continue providing these medical interventions for minors.
