The Ombudsman for Children tells nonsense about gender reassignment. How does gender actually change?

It is a statement by Mikołaj Pawlak, the current Ombudsman for Children's Rights, which was broadcast on TVN24. It read as follows:

- Editor, and will you guarantee that we will let sex educators into 20,000 schools and they will introduce such content as, for example, in Poznań, where they pick up a disturbed, neglected child somewhere, and whom these educators give some pharmacological agents to change its gender? ? Unbeknownst to his parents and doctors?

Pawlak in his speech referred to the article entitled Change your gender, kid, who appeared in one of the August issues of Tygodnik Solidarność. This text describes a journalistic investigation, according to which, in online chat rooms for transactivists, minors - e.g. a 14-year-old girl - are informed, inter alia, about illegal methods of obtaining hormonal drugs that affect sexual characteristics . The article also shows that pedophilic content is offered in the same online chat rooms.

On the basis of this information, Pawlak today submitted a notification to the prosecutor 's office about the possibility of committing a crime of illegal sale of pharmacological agents supporting gender modification to minors.

What do sex educators have to do with it?

It's hard to say. Pawlak's statement caused outrage in many circles. The President of Poznań, Jacek Jaśkowiak, demands that the RPD correct his statement, and the opposition demands the immediate dismissal of the spokesman. As for the text itself, which Pawlak referred to, the investigation carried out by the editorial office of concrete24.pl shows that in fact no hard evidence was presented in the publication regarding the illegal trade in hormones on the Internet. In an article published in Tygodnik Solidarność, there is a record of conversations that show that you can buy hormones online without a prescription. The author of the text, however, did not complete his provocation, which makes it impossible to assess whether you can actually buy hormonal agents without a prescription on the Discord server he came to.

Even if this is true and the case will be resolved by the prosecutor's office, the Polish Ombudsman for Children has no evidence that a mythical LGBT lobby is behind this illegal practice. And certainly not sexual educators. Yes, in Poznań institutions there were classes organized by educators from the Stonewall Group, but they were not about effective ways to change gender, but they were ... anti-discrimination workshops. It always seemed to me that the RPD should support such initiatives.

Bad for the spokesperson with knowledge. What is the actual sex change process?

After reaching the age of majority (or after reaching the age of 17, after obtaining parental consent), some transsexual people may decide to undergo a biological sex change process, which, apart from long-term hormone therapy, also includes surgical operations (or operations) aimed at changing the genital organs into appropriate ones. for the gender that the transgender person identifies with.

It is a very complicated, long and costly process. After passing psychological tests, appropriate hormones are administered to transsexuals. People who are assigned a female sex at birth are given androgens - i.e. male hormones that cause the appearance of facial hair and an increase in muscle volume. People born as men, in turn, take female hormones, i.e. estrogens and progesterone, which trigger the appearance of female characteristics, including voice alteration, the appearance of the bust and the accumulation of fat on the hips. Many transgender people choose to end therapy at this stage.

The next step is surgery, the total cost of which is estimated at approx. PLN 50,000. PLN. Surgical F / M sex correction is more difficult, including on the formation of a functional penis (based on the clitoris), mastectomy (removal of the breast). Some people undergoing F / M gender correction also choose to have their uterus and ovaries removed. Subsequent operations, performed more or less after a one-year break, concern the further formation of the penis, thanks to which the operated person may retain the possibility of experiencing sexual satisfaction. The organ created in this way, however, is often problematic - urination is difficult, and other complications are very common. There is also no one proven procedure when it comes to F / M gender correction surgery.

A slightly easier procedure is sex correction the other way , i.e. M / F. In this case, the operated person's testicles are removed, and the vagina is created from the erupted skin of the penis and the clitoris is preserved while maintaining the natural innervation of the penis. As in the case of the F / M transition, the M / F gender correction also does not have any unified standard, which of course means that the choice of the method of correction largely depends on the surgeon himself. During the M / F transition, procedures such as implantation of breast implants, surgery of the vocal cords, removal of Adam's Apple or even laser hair removal are also performed.

Going back to the RPD's claim, the alleged purchase of a pill over the internet will not make the child, somehow magically, change sex. If I were the spokesman, I would be much more interested in the topic of disseminating pedophile content and would report to the prosecutor's office in this regard. Let us add that transsexual people very often are not able to adapt to life in their wrong body , which results, inter alia, in a much higher rate of suicide and suicide attempts among transsexual people compared to the statistics for the general population.

The Ombudsman for Children tells nonsense about gender reassignment. How does gender actually change?