Is it safe to transition?

Maybe?  I hear about the risks of transition in people who are trying to argue against someone's decision to retake their life.  You especially hear this from parents.  So, is it healthy?

There's debate about the potential health risks of physical transition.  SRS is certainly a very invasive surgery for men or women, and they can both hit some major complications.  HRT is untested over the long run, we just don't have a good sample to base statistics on.  Do hormones cause breast cancer in Trans Women?  They might.  There have certainly been some potential concerns in with the tablet form of Estrogen therapy in the past.  There is some evidence for increased blood pressure, there is almost always a change in weight and fat.  These things added together could really add up to a dangerous combination.  This treatment may be shaving years off of a trans person's life. 

So, is transition healthy?  I have a pretty simple answer - who cares?  We need to do everything we can to make these treatments work for the individuals involved in the long term, but does it really matter?  I argue it doesn't, for a few reasons.

1 - The Suicide Rate

Suicide attempts among trans people who are unable to transition and want to are incredibly high.  Way too high.  The suicide rate is directly comparable to that of veterans with PTSD.  That means they're on par with someone who has seen the horrors of war, the very worst parts of human nature.  That's the level of despair these people face in their every day lives.  Transition relieves this rate by quite a bit.  Shaving a few years off the end of life is nothing compared to the early deaths taken by this condition.  This may be the most effective suicide prevention tool in use, who could consider that unhealthy?

2 - Quality of Life

This isn't a dramatically different point than the last one.  When the suicide rate for this condition is dramatically worse than blindness or paralysis we have to make a comparison.  If a blind person could undergo a treatment that would give them sight by shorten their life by a few years I'm guessing a lot of them would do it without a second thought.  When you're facing of life of extreme physical impairment or a life of very little impairment with a few less years very few people would choose to suffer through those extra months. 

3 - Do We Have This Standard Elsewhere?

No.  This one is easy.  We apply this standard to trans people, in the past people applied it to gay people.  But they don't apply it anywhere else.

How many fathers encourage their children to play football from a very young age?  Professional football is associated with so many long term injuries, early deaths, and yes, suicides that it's hard to justify this behavior.  (Almost) No one cries when their son says they want to play high school football.  No one worries about their future.  Their future is anything but certain.

We celebrate our men and women in uniform(~5,000 deaths in the war on terror, 8,000 per year to suicide), we venerate our police (~100 deaths in 2013) and firefighters (~100 deaths in 2013).  We do not criticize people when they choose to go skydiving (24 US deaths in 2014) or horseback riding (100+ injuries every year).  We take risky actions all the time.  Some for the good of the many, some for the thrill of a moment.  People smoke, people overeat, people go on crash diets and speed on the highway.  We're loose and fast with mortality every day. 

So when you have a clear case of something that will improve someone's life significantly, how can you ask if it's healthy?  Is your cheese and bacon crusted steak and 200oz soda healthy?  Is your drinking habit healthy?  Do you get enough sleep?  Probably not. 

So don't worry about trans people.  We're not taking risks that anyone else wouldn't.