#also this is whether or not they're doing the yikes 'friends with benefits' stuff. that doesn't change anything about it

[aquilamage]

on one hand I don’t wanna be that boring bitch who keeps writing the nonhuman characters as humans but also what is the bug equivalent of “Mothiva will strip down (and/or have her hair/makeup not done) in front of Zasp without any thought, warning, or feeling to it?”

[canyounotexistelias]

Some research I did that I will not let go to waste about MTF transition hormones

(Tw for general transphobia and stuff that goes along with extreme republicanism)

alright. So, I currently have a friend who we will call Erwin. As I was talking about hormone therapy with Erwin, Erwin piped up, "oh, my dad recently told me something about cancer linked to hormone therapy."

naturally, this stopped me in my tracks. I only recently figured out i'm transgender, and have been looking into hormone therapy. But a relative of mine suffered cancer and I know first-hand how horrific it can be.

I asked for an article link.

I got two:

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/950964

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/major-swedish-hospital-bans-puberty-blocking-for-gender-dysphoria/

(an interesting note about both of these articles; I don't think they specify what type of hormone therapy they're talking about. Whether it was just hormone blockers, testosterone, or estrogen, they just say general hormone therapy. it was all just... lumped together, which I don't think would necessarily make sense? like these are all three different things with different functions, I don't think they'd all have the same potential side effects. I might be wrong, but still.

That was just suspicious to me at the start, but that isn't the biggest problem here.)

to start off easy, let's dissect the first article.

In the medscape article, it starts off talking about how a clinic in Sweden, Karolinska Hospital, has banned the use of "routine hormonal treatment of youth under 18." However, this only actually applies to youth under 16, and if you're in the age range of 16-18, you have to go through a board process.

yes, this is shitty for reasons I don't have the time or patience to get into, but it has no link to the cancer mentioned above.

I did a word search- cancer doesn't pop up a single time in the article. In fact, the reasoning behind the ban happened because of the, "...amid growing unease in some quarters regarding the speed at which hormonal treatment of children with gender dysphoria has become accepted as the norm in many countries, despite what critics say is a lack of evidence of any benefit, plus known harms, of treatment."

still incredibly awful. but nothing to do with cancer.

So, I checked the second article.

and hooo boy.

to start us off, the article literally starts with, "The actual science is beginning to overcome transgender ideology..."

yikes.

it goes on to talk about how the U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has decided that actually, hormone therapy isn't that beneficial apparently. (Not going to even address the general transphobia in the UK.) So, after hearing that, the hospital has decided to stop offering for children younger than 16, but still continue hormone therapy for those at that age who've started it.

The article cites this pdf: https://segm.org/sites/default/files/Karolinska%20_Policy_Statement_English.pdf. Apparently, this is the actual announcement published by the hospital. In it, the paper mentions that, "These treatments are potentially fraught with extensive and irreversible adverse consequences such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, infertility, increased cancer risk, and thrombosis."

This was the only time cancer was mentioned in either articles. And I still couldn't find mentions of cancer anywhere else on the web. (and also nothing else about osteoporosis as a side note.)

So I dug a little deeper, as you would say.

And, a couple things became apparent.

One: The National Review is a conservative EDITORIAL magazine with Ben fucking Shapiro as a writer.

don't believe me? see for yourself.

already not panning out well.

but wait, there's more. you see, the writer of this article is a man by the name of Wesley J. Smith, who kindly links his twitter account, which is then linked to his main twitter account.

(link, if you want it for some fucking reason: https://twitter.com/theWesleyJSmith)

His twitter says he's a member of something called Discovery.org, which, through some link clinking, leads to this "about us" page: https://www.discovery.org/about/

it mentions it was founded by two men, Bruce Chapman and and George Gilder, with two links for their names.

So, I clicked them.

And fun fact about these men: Both were incredibly close with Ronald Reagan, y'know, the one who basically caused the war on drugs and the AIDS crisis? and one was also the speechwriter for Richard Nixon, the one involved with the Watergate scandal?

This is important as it shows this man is incredibly republican with some deep republican ties, so he's already probably biased against the general trans population.

So not only is the website used for this article a republican editorial magazine, the writer himself is part of a republican think tank, presumably (I couldn't quite understand what they do there) where the founders were both associated with Ronald Reagan.

so, probably definitely completely biased.

But it gets worse then that! Because, you see, Mayo Clinic has this article, https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/masculinizing-hormone-therapy/about/pac-20385099. And Mayo Clinic, a non-profit organization, says, "Conclusions can’t be drawn about whether masculinizing hormone therapy increases the risk of ovarian and uterine cancer. Further research is needed."

and the article was edited in July FUCKING 21 of 2021.

SO.

(also small side note:, there was no mention of osteoporosis anywhere. Everything else in the potential health complications section of the national review checks out, so you should remember to seriously consider hormone therapy, but... it's not going to cause you cancer.

literally. you can't draw conclusions about that.)

TL;DR: two articles were given to me by a friend's transphobic parent in an attempt to prove a link between cancer and hormone therapy. What type of hormone therapy was never specified. One article simply never mentioned cancer, while the other was part of a right-wing editorial magazine, with the actual article written by a member of a republican think-tank. A republican think tank in which both founders were involved with Ronald Reagan and other republican things.

Know i'm not saying that because someone is republican they're untrustworthy, i'm saying because this writer was so heavily influenced and extremely republican in so many ways, that clearly meant they'd have a bias. Match that with where they were writing, and you have a clear problem.

I'm not even addressing the tweets on Mr. Smith's account that imply coronavirus was created by the Chinese government. That man's twitter is incredibly disheartening to look though.

anyways, tell me if I got anything wrong with this, and don't worry about cancer regarding your hormone therapy- worry about the fact that our rights are slowly slipping away from us!