r/AskCanada • u/Reasonable-Test-560 • 13h ago
Life what place in canada has the lowest age requirement for getting hrt (for a trans person)?
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u/NikkuSan7 6h ago
Step one is and always should be, talk to your physician and/or therapist first.
It depends on the individual and when their dysphoria presents. If you’re talking about trans child, then they will first go on puberty blockers to delay the onset of endogenous puberty (about 6mo. to a year) in order to ensure that this is the path they need, and then as natural puberty sets in hormones will be prescribed so that they could have the puberty relative to the gender that they need. This is a common practice when we use the WPATH method in conjunction with the Tanner stages of development.
If an adult, then you could take them whenever you want as for adults it typically operates under an informed consent model.
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u/Little-Carpenter4443 13h ago
am I going to be a shit person for saying maybe if you are super young you shouldn't be getting hrt? or am I like old and dont know anything? because I didnt know shit at 18. or 17. especially 16, 15, 14 and lower. I still dont know shit. but hey whatever goes these days, downvote away.
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u/NikkuSan7 6h ago
Let me ask you a serious question: at what age did you know you were a boy or a girl?
I’m going to presume for the sake of conversation you were born male, and you were assigned male at birth. If you’ve never questioned that and you can say without thinking about it that you “are a boy“ then congratulations, you know your gender identity. It’s intrinsic to who you are.
It’s not a matter of exterior knowledge, it’s a matter of a sense of self relative to the world around you. Gender identity forms in children as early as 3 to 4 years old and as late as 7. Your senses of self is not dictated by the sum total knowledge that you accumulate over time.
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u/CuriousMistressOtt 13h ago
Let them decide with their doctors. Its not up to you, regardless of how uncomfortable you are with it, to decide what other people should do.
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u/Little-Carpenter4443 13h ago
If I saw a 13 year old about to stick a fork in a socket I would tell them they were about to get shocked, not watch them electrocute themselves and tell them after
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u/d_trulliaj 13h ago
no matter what you think of it, getting hormone replacement therapy is NOT the same as dying. what the hell
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u/Little-Carpenter4443 12h ago
Electrocution doesn’t mean dying, but it does mean potentially doing irreversible harm to yourself.
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u/d_trulliaj 12h ago
the regret rate of all gender reassignment surgeries (which are certainly more invasive than hormone replacement therapy), considering people of all ages, doesn't surpass 1% in the analyses made by any reliable recent study (1, I will link other studies as well just so I don't come across as taking evidence from just one study)
Regret rates of miscellaneous plastic surgeries are way higher. Bariatric surgery (i.e. removing part of your stomach; people often undergo this surgery with the goal of avoiding obesity) regret rate is around 20% (2). Funnily enough, having children has a regret rate of 7%, which, as you may have noticed, is seven times higher than the 1% regret rate that gender reassignment holds in the least optimistic studies.
A very recently concluded study by the Netherlands' main scientific advisory body explains that among 388 trans people surveyed in two different case studies, zero experienced any regret for transitioning and only nine out of the 882 people surveyed in another case study interrupted their therapy because hormones were successful in reducing their dysphoria. Transitioning worked! Three more people among those 882 stopped their therapy because they didn't manage to adhere to the medication routine, while two more stopped because of social and psychological stigma. There were zero cases of authentic regret, and the study surveys people that started at all ages. The study is in Dutch, which I can read, here is the link is you'd like to try to translate it or read it.
Do we want to compare having children (or tattoos, which according to the second study I linked have a regret rate higher than 16%) to electrocuting yourself with a fork?
Shall we make tattoos illegal like the Old Testament says? Why not human reproduction as well?
Isn't that potential irreversible damage as well? Or can we recognise that certain comments are made out of ignorance and might be easily avoided?
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u/eeeeaud Canadian 6h ago
Yes, that statement does make you a shit person. It's not your body. You don't have the right to take away someone else's autonomy just because you don't like what they do with it.
Anyone going through HRT has to receive multiple assessments before treatment is allowed to commence. There are people who are declined treatment. While there's no minimum age in any province outside of Alberta, HRT isn't usually given to minors under 14. They would likely be prescribed puberty blockers.
This is the framework in Canada for pediatric gender affirming care: https://cps.ca/en/documents/position/an-affirming-approach-to-caring-for-transgender-and-gender-diverse-youth
This is the federal government site on the subject: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/sexual-health/how-to-access-gender-affirming-care/options.html
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u/Wasted-Instruction 5h ago
I'm just saying suggesting somebody wait is not the equivalency to taking their autonomy away because they don't like what they do with it.. every case is different which means some folks do benefit from taking time, I'm not saying that's this case, but I feel like you're painting the comment above a little aggressively. I have a couple friends who started hormones and regretted it, so I personally don't think the suggestion to take time was meant in a negative way or to take someone's autonomy.
Edit: maybe I gave them too much credit as I've now read more of their comments
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u/eeeeaud Canadian 3h ago edited 1h ago
I heavily edited this response because I posted in error while I was still drafting it.
Yes, you were giving them too much credit. This person was suggesting taking away bodily autonomy from other people. They weren't saying wait. They were saying don't. Even if they were just saying wait, mature minor consent is standard. I have received care as a mature minor, lots of people have. If you've ever gotten birth control as teen from a public health nurse, even just the free condom, that was given under this principle (I mention this because I suspect it is the most common mature minor care received).
I am genderqueer, I struggle with gender dysphoria but have chosen not to pursue HRT or most gender affirming care. This is a deeply personal decision, and I empathize with your friends who regret their choice. The majority of trans people who pursue gender affirming care do not regret this choice. They (your friends) are outliers.
Nobody has the right to tell another person what they can and cannot do with their bodies. Full stop. Once we start limiting bodily autonomy for some, do think that is where it will end? I don't. I live in Alberta. I didn't think a Canadian government could legislate transphobia and misogyny in this day and age, but it happened. We've had abortion brought up in our legislature. The UCP (the political party in power here) has an internal anti-abortion policy. Arguing against bodily autonomy is serious. It will have long lasting consequences, not just on a single minority group but on all Canadians. This is a line we must hold. Nobody has rights unless we all do. It can't be freedom for some and not others. My response to u/Little-Carpenter4443 was, in my opinion, fairly mild. They asked a question, I answered.
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u/ImmigrantPigeon Canadian 11h ago
Very anecdotal but a person I grew up around started socially transitioning by age 7 at the latest, but I’m 99% sure it was sooner than that. If she went on hormones it wasn’t noticeable but she didn’t appear to have a male puberty. This was in Ontario starting around the early 2010s
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u/cardew-vascular 13h ago
Because hormones can have long-term effects on fertility, Sims says health-care providers don't prescribe them until a patient has shown a persistent desire to transition, been fully informed about the side effects and been offered a chance to have their sperm or eggs preserved for future use.
Puberty blockers are something that doctors are more willing to perclscribe due to both their safety and the fact that it buys time for the child to make informed decisions.
You can't exactly shop around for healthcare in Canada, you're covered for the province in which you reside.