Medical environment
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In Switzerland most people with a "transgender ideation" are treated with a “gender affirmative” approach although other methods aren’t forbidden yet.
The “gender affirmative” approach does not question a person’s own "transgender ideation". It treats that identity as real by validating the person’s illusion. This often results in one or more of the following interventions:
1. Social transition — The person adopts a different name, pronouns, clothing, and/or presentation in daily life, school, or work.
2. Puberty blockers — GnRH agonists are administered to suppress the release of sex hormones, pausing the physical development of puberty (e.g., breast development, voice deepening, body hair, menstruation).
3. Cross-sex hormones — Estrogen or testosterone is administered to induce physical changes aligned with the desired sex, such as breast growth, fat redistribution, and skin softening (estrogen), or voice deepening, facial/body hair growth, and muscle mass increase (testosterone).
4. Surgeries — Procedures may include chest/breast surgery (mastectomy or augmentation), genital surgery (e.g., vaginoplasty, phalloplasty, metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, hysterectomy), and sometimes facial or vocal surgery.
From self identification to medical interventions
People who claim to have “gender incongruence", which is the term that replaces “gender dysphoria" nowadays, can get treatment in most hospitals in Switzerland to cosmetically transform their bodies to imitate the opposite sex. The diagnosis, which allows hormonal and surgical treatments, is simply made on the basis of the patient’s self-reported feelings. This reduces psychological therapy to a form of coaching, in which the “coach” is expected to promote “tolerance and progress” while focusing exclusively on the child’s or adolescent’s transgender ideation (unhappiness or discomfort with their sexed body and/or sex stereotypes). Other possible reasons for their temporary unease or self-questioning are not examined.
The international situation
In 2020, following a systematic review of evidence, Finland announced it would restrict “gender affirming care” for minors. In 2022, following a public uproar in the media and a systematic review of evidence, Sweden followed suit. Since then, various countries have banned or restricted “gender affirming care” for minors, including Norway, Denmark and some US states.
In the UK, the Hilary Cass Review promised an unbiased and independent report but didn’t deliver. Today, British children can still access puberty blockers if they join clinical trials.
Puberty blockers’ risks to brain and body
Puberty blockers, used off-label in adolescents, were prescribed to buy time for “gender exploration”, but most who start them proceed to cross-sex hormones instead. Evidence of benefit is non-existent, with no studies showing improvement in transgender ideation, and their assumed reversibility is in question. The risks are significant and poorly understood, including potential disruption to brain maturation, reduced psychological functioning, lower bone density, and genital atrophy that can cause permanent sexual dysfunction. While concern about suicide has driven some clinicians to prescribe blockers, evidence shows these youths' suicide risk is similar to other adolescents with comparable mental health challenges, and doesn't support the idea that “gender-affirming” treatment lowers that risk. Cross-sex hormones themselves carry serious long-term risks and remain under-researched.
Young patient's informed consent?
Informed Consent Basics
Informed consent requires a competent person to receive clear information about a treatment's risks, benefits, and alternatives, understand it, and voluntarily agree, without which an intervention can be legally considered battery or negligence.
Consent and Children
Children generally cannot give full legal consent for major medical decisions; instead, parents or guardians consent on their behalf, while the child may be asked for "assent" based on maturity, which is not legally equivalent. Capacity is assessed individually rather than by fixed age, considering the child's understanding and the seriousness of the intervention.
The Swiss Approach
In Switzerland, the relevant standard is capacity of judgment under Art. 16 of the Swiss Civil Code (ZGB). Rather than a fixed age threshold, a minor is considered capable of consenting independently if they can understand the nature, purpose, and consequences of a specific decision and act accordingly — this is assessed case-by-case and can vary by the type of treatment. A mature minor deemed capable of judgement may thus consent to lower-risk or routine treatments (e.g., contraception, minor procedures) without parental involvement, but irreversible or high-stakes interventions typically still require parental or court involvement given children's developing maturity and vulnerability to outside influence.
Social transition: an active intervention
What it is:
Social transition means changing how someone presents day-to-day to match how they see themselves, a new name, pronouns, clothes, or hairstyle, without any medical steps.
Why it's treated as a real intervention:
It changes how a person is treated by others and can affect their path forward, so it's seen as a significant step with psychological effects, not just a cosmetic choice. According to the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), it can reinforce a potentially temporary identity, interfere with the natural high rates of desistance of childhood transgender ideation, and increase the likelihood of later medicalization.
Detransitioners and desisters
Detransitioners are people who once identified as transgender, underwent social and/or medical transition, and later stopped that process and accepted their sex.
Desisters are those who socially transitioned, like changing names or pronouns, but never pursued medical steps and also stopped identifying as transgender.
Although Switzerland does not track transition reversals, at least four prominent cases of detransitioners have been made public: those of Lyo Kessler and Janick in the French-speaking part of the country, and of Chris Brönnimann, and Meli in the German-speaking part.
Mutilation at a very young age
We do not know how many young people are on puberty blockers or take masculinising/feminising hormones in Switzerland. The only official existing data concerns irreversible “gender” surgeries, such as elective mastectomies (the surgical amputation of one’s healthy breasts). These amputations are also being undertaken on minors: 10 girls under 15 years old underwent an elective double mastectomy between 2018 and 2021. In 2023, there were 32 girls under 18, and at least one younger than 15. Since 2016, the number of women under 25 years old undergoing mastectomies has been growing at an alarming rate. Young adults of both sexes are also undergoing irreversible experimental genital amputation/plastic reconstruction in ever growing numbers.
Femina Helvetica would like medical professionals to respect the precautionary principle “First, do no harm”. We are in favour of evidence-based medicine.
Femina Helvetica is against talking children into thinking that they are “born in the wrong body”. We are against the instrumentalisation and pathologisation of human beings, and the sterilisation, medical experimentation and mutilation of children and adolescents.
Links to supporting documentation of this issue.
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Number of legal sex change in Swiss civil registry in the years 2022-2024
https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/bevoelkerung/stand-entwicklung/geschlecht.assetdetail.35687820.html -
Hilary Cass Review, 2024
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20250310143642/https://cass.independent-review.uk/ -
RTS article on the strong increase of girls under 18 in psychiatric hospitalization, 2025
https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/2025/article/hausse-inquietante-des-rentes-ai-chez-les-jeunes-suisses-de-moins-de-25-ans-28857204.html -
Lyo Kessler on Substack of Femelliste, February 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SG3XE2kHA8 -
Chris/Nadia Brönimann on swissinfo.ch, December 2024
https://www.swissinfo.ch/ger/identitaten/detrans-nadia-brönimann-schweizer-trans-frau-will-keine-frau-mehr-sein/88468150 -
Swiss Statistical Office stating that most of surgeries concern girls and young women, 2019-202
https://www.bfs.admin.ch/news/fr/2023-0183 -
Griffin et al, 2020 Sex and Gender Identity, a Re-evaluation of the evidence
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-bulletin/article/sex-gender-and-gender-identity-a-reevaluation-of-the-evidence/76A3DC54F3BD91E8D631B93397698B1A -
Vandebusshe 2022, Detransition-Related Needs and Support: A Cross-Sectional Online Survey
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33929297/ -
Meli on SRF, Januar 2024
https://www.srf.ch/news/gesellschaft/transgender-trans-op-wie-aus-meli-andre-wurde-und-wieder-meli -
Janick Christen on Femelliste
https://youtu.be/wfZKXHZxMCE?feature=shared -
WPATH files
https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/wpath-files -
Swiss association AMQG-AUFG for parents of children with "gender" issues
https://www.amqg.ch