OPS PRESS RELEASE

The Observatoire la Petite Sirène (OPS) - a Study, Resource, and Information Centre - that relies on the strength of its expertise, such as on its international network of professionals, wishes to alert medical doctors, psychologists, psychoanalysts, teachers, and all childcare professionals to the persistent confusion of definitions surrounding minors declaring themselves wishing to change their sex. 

These teenagers, often seeking for identity answers, can be overwhelmed by a great disarray when facing the inherent transformations of the ongoing pubertal process. The distress is even worsened due to psychological or psychiatric issues that require specialized support from teenage professionals such as child psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts. 

The vast majority of these young individuals identify themselves to the “trans” signifier as a “creatively maladaptive” way to express their pubertal distress, but they are not “trans.” Instead, they are grappling with what we identify as “Pubertal Sexuation Anxiety” (ASP). 

There is an urgent need to separate the concepts of transidentity on the one hand, the desire to change sex/gender on the other hand, and pubertal discomfort. “Transidentity” is often a “ready-made suit” found by these adolescents on social networks or within peer groups to bring them an identification solution, allowing them to escape the transformations of their pubertal bodies they are overwhelmed with. It is equally urgent to stop referring to these young people in distress through the words ‘trans minors’ or ‘trans adolescents.’ 

Although the inner feelings and own experiences of these young people are of great importance, they should not be considered as an automatic justification to justify that an adolescent experiencing body-related distress or gender-related distress is necessarily “transgender.” First of all, the OPS urges to recommend that the psychological needs of these young people should be properly addressed. 

The OPS secondly recommends that the parents should also be helped to deal with the untimely requests from their teenagers. 

Finally, the OPS calls on professionals to refrain from using the signifier “trans” to “label” these transgender people experiencing pubertal distress and encourages them to become aware of our proposed clinical framework, available at the following link: https://observatoirepetitesirene.us21.list-manage.com/track/click?u=669f1e8e257379b9ad18818cb&id=7a234d567e&e=250e7cdea0

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