Jan Bergstra and Laurens Buijs
Amsterdam Gender Theory Research Team
In a motion, FVD asked the government to categorically ban hormonal medical treatments aimed at transgendering minors:
MOTION BY MEMBER BAUDET
Proposed September 21, 2023
The Chamber,
heard the deliberations,
noting that more and more children are being made to doubt their gender and orientation and that more and more children are deciding to take puberty inhibitors and hormone blockers;
expresses concern about this trend, as it involves irreversible treatments that children – who, after all, are impressionable to fashion trends and lhbtqi+ propaganda – could regret throughout their lives;
calls on the government to come up with a proposal to ban these treatments for minors,
and proceeds to the order of business.
Baudet
FVD plays a leading role in opposing woke culture in the Netherlands and rightly points out the major problems in transgender care in the Netherlands. Still, this motion is not well defended, and not a solution to the problems at hand.
The content of the motion is problematic, because when severe gender dysphoria is formulated as a medical and/or psychiatric problem and the treating physicians in a given patient believe that treatment by means of puberty inhibitors and hormone blockers is necessary for the well-being of this patient, it is not up to the House of Representatives or the government to intervene or obstruct this.
There is no question that such treatments could never work, as is the case, for example, with the famous “conversion therapy” on homosexuality. For this reason, therefore, the treatments cannot be seen as fundamentally indefensible and therefore inadmissible either.
The matter is more complex than the FVD motion reflects. The real problem is not the treatment an sich, but that possibly too often and without compelling reasons the said treatment methods are resorted to.
Read more about the problems with wokeness and radical transgender ideology:
Denying the biological reality of male and female only encourages transphobia
Such treatments must be subject to a protocol, and that protocol, it appears in several countries, by the most recent understanding so far, often treats the said treatment methods too lightly. The motion could become acceptable when working on such a protocol in terms of design and preconditions.
It is true that the transgender issue in the Netherlands comes with all sorts of problems, many of which are still taboo to name in progressive circles. We see an informative formulation of those problems in a recent contribution by Gerrie Strik in EW. Strik is rector of the Free University of Applied Sciences, and she makes the nuanced point that an undesirable development is indeed occurring. In doing so, she rightly points out the importance of compassion for all young people who feel they were born in the wrong body.
It is admirable that FVD wants to break the taboo on problems in transgender healthcare. But the categorical approach advocated by this motion will fail and for that reason alone will reinforce rather than weaken the undesirable development. We assume the parliament will reject it by a majority, but hope that is not the end of the discussion about proper transgender care for our young people.
Leave a Reply