Big Surprise… Not

All of a sudden people are starting to notice that beside trans girls there are trans boys. They have been around for a long time, they were Tom Boys, some went on to become heterosexual women, some went on to be lesbian women, and some transitioned to be trans men.

Why Are Trans Youth Clinics Seeing an Uptick in Trans Boys?
Slate
By Evan Urquhart
September 13, 2017

Clinics that treat gender nonconforming youth have noticed two clear trends over the past 20 years or so. First, the number of total youth seeking treatment has steadily increased: What began as a tiny trickle of patients from the 1970s through the ’90s saw an uptick in the early 2000s and has become a steady stream of cases today. Second, during the post-2000 period, the gender balance of youth seeking treatment seems to have changed. According to anecdotal reports from clinicians and a handful of small studies of transgender youth, trans youth clinics in North America and Europe have seen a shift from a majority of transfeminine patients (assigned male at birth) to a majority of transmasculine patients (assigned female) now. In contrast, studies of adult trans patients thus far have either documented a majority of trans women or roughly equal numbers of trans women and trans men.

Why has the ratio of transfeminine to transmasculine youth seeking treatment changed, and what does this shift mean? Unsurprisingly, the opponents of transgender rights have a theory: Blogs from this contingent weave a story that transness is a social mania that seeps into the minds of young “girls” and, Svengali-like, causes them to believe that they are trans. Of course, devotees of science and research-based medicine don’t have the same freedom to take an interesting phenomenon and spin a conspiracy around it. Still, it’s worth asking what we actually know about the changes in who is seeking treatment for gender dysphoria, and what experts in transgender medical care think that a shift might signal.

Well I think that part of the uptick in the number of trans masculine children is that the doctors are not dismissing them as Tom Boys and are now taken them seriously.

At onetime therapist didn’t think that there were any trans men if you look at the early history thought that trans women were 1 in 30,000, now by some accounts it down around 1 in 200 and for trans men it used to be 1 in 300,000. I believe that the number of trans men is probably at the same rate as the number of trans women. Dr. Johanna Olsen-Kennedy from the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles thinks it is even greater,

There have been soft papers, observational papers, describing more people presenting for care at a younger age. At our clinic, the balance was about 50/50 when I started [7-8 years ago], and it’s shifted to be maybe 65-to-70 percent transmasculine today. We also see a different trajectory for our transfeminine and transmasculine patients, such that more of the younger kids under 12 are transfeminine/trans girls, and then we see transmasculine patients coming in for care at or slightly after pubertal development. This is unfortunate because what happens is, because of the age, it’s often dismissed as just an adolescent phase.

The article goes on to say,

“When you look at the earlier studies [of the make-up of adult trans populations], what you see is that they’re collecting data on genital surgery,” Olsen-Kennedy explained. “But the reality is that it’s easier to surgically create a vagina than it is a penis—there’s just no way of knowing how many trans men there always were that studies missed.”

Studies are finding more and more trans people are not having Gender Confirming Surgery (GCS) they are finding that just by living their lives in their true gender their gender dysphoria is under control.

Medical Xpress said this about trans healthcare, their article “Experts issue recommendations for gender-affirmation treatment for transgender individuals” about the Endocrine Society new guidelines said,

Over the last few decades, there has been a rapid expansion in the understanding of gender identity along with the implications for the care of transgender individuals. The new guideline establishes a framework for the appropriate treatment of these individuals and standardizes terminology to be used by healthcare professionals.

Many transgender individuals are prescribed hormone therapy to reduce the distress caused by having a gender identity that is different from the sex assigned at birth. Endocrinologist—specialists who untangle complex symptoms to diagnose, treat, research or cure hormone-related conditions—play a key role in treating transgender individuals, but a broader healthcare team is needed to provide mental health services and other treatments, such as gender-affirmation surgery [I prefer using Confirming instead of Affirming (GAS)].
[…[
Other recommendations from the guideline include:

• Hormone treatment is not recommended for pre-pubertal gender-dysphoric /gender-incongruent persons;

• For the care of youths during puberty and older adolescents, an expert multi-disciplinary team comprised of medical professionals and mental health professionals should manage treatment;

• For adult gender-dysphoric/gender-incongruent persons, the treating clinicians (collectively) should have expertise in transgender-specific diagnostic criteria, mental health, primary care, hormone treatment, and surgery, as needed by the patient;

• All individuals seeking gender-affirming medical treatment should receive information and counsel on options for fertility preservation prior to initiating puberty suppression in adolescents and prior to treating with hormonal therapy in both adolescents and adults;

• Removal of gonads may be considered when high doses of sex steroids are required to suppress the body's secretion of hormones, and/or to reduce steroid levels in advanced age; and

• During sex steroid treatment, clinicians should monitor, in both transgender males (female to male) and/or transgender females (male to female), prolactin, metabolic disorders, and bone loss, as well as cancer risks in individuals who have not undergone surgical treatment.