URGENT: WPATH Opportunity for Public Comment
WPATH, or the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, has recently updated its new standards of care. Until midnight on December 16th, the public will have an opportunity to provide feedback on these updates. We encourage anyone who is interested in issues related to “gender identity” and “gender transitions” to provide a comment. Parents might be particularly interested in commenting on the recommendations that WPATH is making for children and adolescents.
You can access all of the Standards of Care chapters here. There is a different survey to fill out for each chapter. You can also read about some critiques of the Standards of Care here.
Highlights
Adolescent: Chapter and Survey
In the “Summary of Recommendations”, section G, WPATH suggests that a number of irreversible and destructive surgeries be made available to transgender-identified children. WPATH suggests that girls as young as 15 should be eligible for elective mastectomies, and that boys as young as 17 may be eligible for “vaginoplasty”.
WPATH begins by suggesting that prepubescent children may be “gender diverse”. In Statement 12, WPATH suggests that parents and doctors should take steps to obscure their child’s sex by “socially transitioning” the child. This, according to WPATH, involves name and pronoun change, as well as possibility of changes to documents like birth certificates.
WoLF believes it is incredibly important to tell boys and girls that they can engage with toys and activities that have been historically restricted to the opposite sex. But encouraging gender non-conformity does not include lying to children or their peers about their sex.
In the “Background” section, WPATH states that “the identity of eunuch is a gender identity of its own” and refers to a “4000 year old history of eunuchs in society.” WPATH links to eunuchworld.org as a source, which contains numerous fetishistic, pornographic stories, some involving minors.
In Statement 1, WPATH suggests that medical doctors “meet the needs” of “eunuch-identified” individuals by providing access to both chemical and biological castration methods.
WPATH reiterates its stance that a “non-binary identity” refers to a meaningful class of people. In Statements 2 and 3, WPATH rejects standard safeguarding for patients who believe themselves to be “non-binary”, and suggests that they be offered medical intervention (hormones and surgery) at will.
Reproductive Health: Chapter and Survey
In Statement 1, WPATH states that there are few studies detailing how testosterone affects females’ reproductive functions or the effects of long-term hormone treatments on people’s fertility. Yet, despite this admission, WPATH continues to imply that it is appropriate for clinicians to provide testosterone for women despite such limited research studies.
In Statement 2, WPATH acknowledges that “sterilization is a violation of human rights,” but numerous parts of the Standards of Care discuss various ways that healthcare providers and clinicians can and should participate in procedures that will sterilize males and females. Sterilization appears to be normalized throughout the Standards of Care.
Sexual Health: Chapter and Survey
Statement 4 acknowledges many of the ways that surgeries and hormone treatments can cause males and females to experience a decrease sexual function and sexual pleasure. WPATH states that satisfaction with any medical treatment is influenced by patients’ expectations, and acknowledges that patients who have unrealistic expectations about treatments will be dissatisfied with their outcomes. However, WPATH does not discuss or even acknowledge how unrealistic it is for human beings to believe that they can “transition” from one sex to the other sex.
Conclusion
This is not intended to be a comprehensive account of all of the issues in the WPATH guidelines. But we hope we can guide interested readers to some of the more egregious sections.