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QuestionIf hormone therapy erases any advantage mtf trans athletes have over women, what is the need for puberty blockers?
This always seemed like a massive contradiction to me.
Another contradiction is, why are girls encouraged to go on puberty blockers, ostensibly to help them pass better as men? If they are puberty blocked, they don't grow as tall.
I think this is complicated depending on when blockers are initiatied and what long term plans are.
Puberty blockers are given to kids undergoing precoscious puberty thinking it will prevent their long term height being stunted. They delay the big puberty growth spurt, not all around growth, as kids grow throughout childhood even before that spurt. They might stop you from getting A LOT taller right now but long term growth will actually be increased. Boys who go on blockers, if they don't then switch to girl hormones at a time a girl would normally go through puberty, might actually end up even taller than they would have otherwise. This is my speculation... not sure if anything backs this up but my initial interest in puberty blockers actually came out of my having an early puberty myself, knowing how it affected me, and then seeing the same happening to one of my daughters.
There is a treatment used to reduce final height as an adult which is high doses of estrogen... it speeds puberty up and was used in the 70s (I think) when it was thought being tall was such a social handicap for a girl, this would be helpful... it's come to light more recently as part of "the ashley treatment" by which severely handicapped children are kept small to make long term care giving easier. I have not (yet) read of this happening with trans identified boys. I knew girls growing up who were really tall and were teased for it but I don't personally know anyone who was offered this treatment.
The weirder part about girls and blockers is girls tend to not freak out about their bodies until they are in the thick of puberty... at which point is is too late. Girls have their big growth spurt a year or so before their first period, and after that first period typically do not grow much more. Most girls can expect 2-3 inches of growth after the 1st period. There are exceptions, of course, but IME by the time a girl is freaking out... she is pretty close to her final adult height. I really don't think I grew much more after my first period, I don't have any medical records from that time but I remember having skirts and pants that still years after my first period, for what what's worth. My own daughters all grew about 2 inches post 1st period. All of us had a huge growth spurt a year or so prior.
The girls I know who are transing and using medication are doing things to stop periods but it's too late to stop puberty... breast development and menarche have already occurred. It still takes a couple years post-period for growth plates to close and growth to stop completely, and if blockers were used at this point you would probably still be delaying that... but for females, I think you still won't get another big oomph in growth because I think estrogen plays a huge role in that and blocking your own hormones then using testosterone just won't give you that. Seems you still won't end up with male levels of height. Unless your family has tall woman genes, at best you might end up tall average or slightly taller than you would have otherwise?
If you blocked a girl very early in puberty and then went on to adult male hormones it does seem like it would potentially prevent her having that major growth spurt that girls have, therefore ending up even shorter than she would have as a woman - but this is not really what we are seeing in girls. We are seeing girls freaking out at being girls after puberty is well under way... although with pushing gender woo younger and younger I expect we may begin seeing girls jumping on the medical train sooner. I think you would HAVE to give estrogen to get a jump in height and how do you give estrogen to a female without initiating all around female puberty without first removing breast buds and uterus which takes us back to the irreversible nature of "gender affirming" treatment. Holy shit this nightmare just gets worse and worse.
Boys tend to grow longer and more throughout the teenage years, maybe because they don't have as high a presence of estrogen to shut things down? My personal interest in this area has always been with girls so I don't know all the intricacies of how and why boys keep growing longer, I just know they do. Puberty is sooooooo different between male and female bodies, the thought that we can just turn it off and then turn one sex into the other by swapping the hormones is ludicrous. It ignores things that are already going on, and innate differences in men and women that you can't just wish away. Even if boys do grow until their late teens or early 20s, it doesn't take that long for all the boys in a class to generally be taller than the girls. If you look at kids in the 5th-6th grade age range you see a lot of tall girls and short boys, but by early high school, things typically switch back.
Crazy how many things there are to consider here once you start tinkering with things... it really does seem like working on kids accepting the body they have would be the easiest route. But that's "transphobic" right? UGH.
I think Jazz Jennings is an example of what happens to an 11-year-old boy when he put on puberty blockers and then cross sex hormones. He had, at 17, a micro penis like an 11-year-old. His height is 5’1” (his brothers are quite a bit taller). Girls who are put on blockers at the Tanner 2 stage of puberty (like Jazz), which is 8 to 11 years old and then cross sex hormones also remain very short. That’s a problem, because 4’11” “ boys” will have a difficult time finding a partner. Stunted growth in all children is one of the hallmark side effects of blockers.
Remember when people were like hey don’t give coffee to kids it’ll stunt their growth? And now this
He had, at 17, a micro penis like an 11-year-old.
I don’t understand why this doesn’t carry more weight. This seems like it would be psychosexual torture, regardless of if the boy wanted SRS or to keep his penis intact.
I suspect if he had abandoned the blockers and they allowed his body to go into puberty, his body would have developed appropriately, unless he had his testicles removed... I can't remember if they did that? I have seen a lot made about how if you plan to have surgery later, though, that some degree of puberty will give the surgeons more to work with and yield better results. Instead his surgeon had to get all creative and use other body parts to create his fauxgina, which is how I learned about some cases where they use parts of the colon which can mean weird smells and risk of colon cancer. I wouldn't say nothing was made of it, but I'd wager a lot of people would still prefer to have zero male puberty effects to undo vs. having an easier time of surgery... especially given how many don't even opt to have surgery.
Other surgeons that Jazz consulted told him and his parents frankly that his penis and balls were too small for genital reconfiguration/fauxgina surgery to work. They said they would only consider operating on Jazz if he undertook steps to make his penis and balls grow so they'd have enough penile and scrotal tissue to work with. They recommended that Jazz go off the blockers and use topical testosterone on his penis and scrotum for a number of months until Jazz achieved enough growth. Jazz and his parents wouldn't even consider this.
One surgeon also recommended getting the the scrotal skin to gradually expand over the course of months by injecting Jazz's ball sac with increasing amounts of saline solution at regular intervals. Jazz and Jazz's parents nixed that idea too.
Yeah that sounds sort of like basically doing the estrogen treatment to limit adult height, but under a different rationale. I didn't realize he was that short but they did go full hormones on him, not just the blockers to delay, right?
The girl thing... any way you slice it, it seems like it would be hard for a girl to achieve male levels of height if they weren't already in her genetic prize package. Whether the blockers stunt things or not. Height often ends up being the give-away for women, or at least the thing that makes you look twice... I was reading a story recently about a white house staffer, a TIM, who married "her" boyfriend after a cancer diagnosis... the "boyfriend" looked totally passing, pictured alone. But in pics with the TIM leaning over "him" in "his" wheelchair... it was laughable. It looked like a very large woman marrying a little boy. It was disturbing.
And I can't for the life of me recall this person's name... it was a name I learned from the recent Dylan Mulvaney thing.... a name that came up with Biden.
It's not clear if Jazz would have ended up that short under any circumstances. There are other males who have taken the same drug regimen as Jazz in childhood and adolescence who have ended up much taller than Jazz. Indeed, the evidence is that when TIMs take the same drug regimen as Jazz in childhood and adolescence, it has little to no affect on their height. Because male height is the result of genetics, not sex hormones.
A paper published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism in September 2022 - "Transgender Girls Grow Tall: Adult Height Is Unaffected by GnRH Analogue and Estradiol Treatment" - found that males put on "puberty blockers" at Tanner Stage 2 followed by high dose estrogen end up growing to the same or nearly the same adult male height they would have reached if they had not taken those drugs.
This study also provides insight into the regulation of growth and the role of sex hormones vs sex chromosomes. The finding that transgender girls, who have XY chromosomes and are treated with estradiol, reach an adult height close to the population mean for males suggests a minor role for sex hormones. This is in line with findings from studies in individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS) or XY complete gonadal dysgenesis in whom adult height was closer to male target height or average height in the male population (40, 41). This supports the idea that genetic factors, rather than sex hormones, are important in the regulation of growth.
However, the fact that in the transgender girls treatment with estradiol was initiated after a prolonged period of PS should not be overlooked. As mentioned before, estradiol has an important role in closure of the growth plates. In transgender girls, this occurs at a later age than during physiological female puberty, after height has continued to increase slowly but consistently during PS. The importance of the timing of estrogen exposure is apparent from a study in women with CAIS by Han et al (43), who described a correlation between shorter adult height and younger age of gonadectomy and introduction of estradiol treatment. This suggests that earlier initiation of estradiol in transgender girls might result in shorter adult height.
So maybe Jazz ended up so short because he started estrogen very soon after he was put on GnRHa drugs aka "puberty blockers." He stared blockers at 11 and estrogen 5 months later. Then again, maybe Jazz would have grown up to be very short for a guy if his development hadn't been messed with.
With the results of this study, it is possible to counsel transgender girls about the effect of PS [puberty suppression] and GAHT [gender affirming hormone treatment] on growth. Growth and bone maturation decelerate during PS [alone] and then accelerate again after the start of GAHT. [actually, they mean after the addition of GAHT on top of the puberty blocker drugs].
Overall, regular treatment [puberty suppression + estrogen] seems to have little effect on adult height.
I did not have a growth spurt until around/after my first period at age 11- it was all contained. In one year I grew from under 5’ to 5’8” and hit my period and “developed”. I have wicked stretch marks from it all happening so quickly - from base to nipple on my breasts in lines about 1 inch apart all the way around and all over my hips. I am taller than average though - I know many women shorter than average were actually “tall” in elementary school and then did not have a spurt after 10.
I’m not sure if I’m abnormal or if there are just varying ways women hit puberty. It might be worth asking taller women about when they hit because I was definitely on a short/average height through elementary and then NOT in sixth/seventh when I hit puberty for realsies.
I got my growth spurt around age 11 when, suddenly hips! I have stretch marks all around my hips and abdomen there. A couple small ones on my breasts. In high school and early twenties I was so ashamed of them. I'm only 5 feet tall.
It was very hard being a teen with bright red tiger stripes that eventually faded to very white lines (I’m pale but they were paler still). I definitely understand your pain!
Yeah I was a tall child, then became one of the shorter ones around the time everyone was getting periods, got my period - not sure how tall I was by then but definitely significantly shorter than I became - and left school at 18 as one of the taller kids again.
That is so interesting, and true in my case. I was one of the tallest kids, boy or girl, all through elementary school, but I am now a very average five and a half feet tall. I had my growth spurt the summer between fourth and fifth grade, and got my period right at the end of fifth grade, and was about five foot two at that point. Do you know anything about foot growth and puberty? I've been wearing the same size shoes since I was eleven, and always found that slightly humorous.
Fellow 5’8” woman here—I had steady growth throughout my life until age 18. I don’t remember a particular spurt but I know I was still 5’4” at age 13-14 and I got my first period at 12.
Another similar—if random— example is Kaia Gerber (Cindy Crawford’s daughter). Her first modeling comp cards (and she appeared that way in photos at the time) list her at 5’4” at age 13 but she reached her full height of 5’9” or so by 17/18.
I think I’m jealous!
Haha why? We’re the same height! Although I do wish I was 5’10”. I’ve always loved really tall women.
6 months to a year prior to first period is considered when the big growth spurt in girls is "normal." There can be a lot of variation but you sound in the realm of normal to me.
I was a tall kid who ended up a short/average adult... although I still have something of a tall complex lol. I am often shocked to discover female friends of mine are taller than me.
I was offered the treatment. At that time I didnt know the effects it would have and my relationship with furniture in the future, I hadn't know I was just a bit too short than the rest of the chairs in my life, or that my knees will dislocate from the weight of my own legs when I sit or that my hips slip for the same reason, I was too naive to accept. I thought there was nothing wrong with me. Anyway they give you puberty blockers and that's the important part also growth hormone shots. They gave me twice the option bc my growth plates didn't fuse till I was mid thirties. I had an ankle problem and the radiologist was like yeah look there the plates are almost fused. Like yeah I hope so I'm 35.
Do they know why your growth plates didn’t fuse until that late? And how common is it?
No, I don't know. I don't know how common is that. I was expected to grow a bit taller according to other body proportions tables and unfused plates. Should have accepted the 2nd time. I could do with touching the floor when I sit.
Boys who go on blockers, if they don't then switch to girl hormones at a time a girl would normally go through puberty, might actually end up even taller than they would have otherwise.
Yes, the castrati are proof of this. They were known for being unusually long and lanky. (For those who may be blissfully unaware, the castrati were young male singers castrated before puberty to permanently retain their youthful vocal range.)
Boys tend to grow longer and more throughout the teenage years, maybe because they don't have as high a presence of estrogen to shut things down?
Makes sense. This is probably not exactly the case, but for the sake of simplicity we could assume a certain amount of estrogen is required to close the growth plates over a period of time, so the time it takes for growth to stop will be a function of the rate at which estrogen is produced in the body.
For girls, I imagine that rate will be relative high. In boys, it would be a function of the rate at which they produce testosterone, and the rate at which they convert testosterone to estrogen. So it could take several times longer for boys to stop growing than girls after reaching puberty.
That’s my theory, anyway.
My plates fused in my thirties. But I reached most of my height by 14 or so
It prevents the trauma of going through a "wrong-sex" puberty, the biggest concern being the voice change. Voice training after the fact only does so much.
Facial masculinisation also seems to be a considerable concern.
Other concerns are so these male youngsters don't develop telltale physical features such as Adam's apples, male-pattern chest and body hair, male facial hair/beards, male body odor, and male-pattern receding hairline and baldness. Some guys start losing the hair on their heads very young.
Male body hair patterns are different to female body hair patterns. Even women who are extremely hirsute do not usually have hair-covered chests, backs, upper arms and shoulders, butts the way many men do. Or visibly hairy knuckles either.
It is
You are trying to apply logic to a cult tho
It's to help a boy pass. They say the parents of boys who 'identify' as girls are horrified when they meet adult TIMs in trans rights organizations, and the parents see how ghastly these men look. So it gives motivation to the parents to get their boy on blockers.
If its all about passing, than there's no reason to put girls on blockers. A female can start testosterone at 50 and still be reasonably passing as a man (an ugly man with a weird muppet voice. But still passible). And finishing puberty assures that she'll have a sex drive and reach adult height (which i assume is important if they want to make their man LARP more convincing)
One reason they still give blockers to girls is so they won’t grow breasts and have to have surgery to get rid of them later on and cause they find having a period to be distressing since they are “boys” who shouldn’t have to deal with periods.
Wow, that makes a lot of sense, but it's horrifying.
I think their argument would also be, my kid is an athlete second, a person in society first, and they're going to struggle like hell if they look like these non-passing men trying to present as women, and my kid already has mental health problems, add the scare mongering suicide stats to that, and the parent will put "passing" way up there as a priority for their kid's mental health and ability to blend into the world.
Only if governments and institutions stop propping up these vile fetishists. I don’t see Mr Fetish Prosthetics Teacher struggling, or Serial Killer Eyes Mulvaney, or any of them. On the contrary, they get their way and anyone who resists them is socially and legally punished.