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Can you provide a source for the claim that schools are forcing uninterested, non-consenting children into transition? Or are you just searching for the maximally inflammatory way to say "some kids don't trust their parents not to disown them"?
Really? "Fail to support" transition, or "try to block their kid from accessing the relevant medical treatments"?
Neither of those is an example of "mutilation"
Without doubt, the former. There's a high profile case of a sex-trafficked teenager that the authorities refused to release to her grandparents, because they used her birth name, which resulted in her being sex-trafficked again.
This is without going into the question of whether there are any relevant medical treatments to begin with, or if it's just glorified cosmetic surgery/intervention.
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I certainly never claimed that, so I won't be championing it. You may not take my statements, make an exaggerated looney version of them and then foist that wild view onto me.
Whether these are valid medical treatments for minors or horrific butchery that we will look back on like elective lobotomies for strange children is the matter under dispute.
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To be fair, the parent poster only talked about a "path towards mutilation". I assume that the "mutilation" in question is gender reassignment surgery, which typically involves cutting off external sexual characteristics. Is it not fair to say that this is a typical or at least commonly desired endpoint of transitioning, so actions that make it more likely that someone will reach this endpoint in the future could be fairly described as putting them on a "path towards mutilation"?
I figure the assumption of the anti-trans side is that children can't meaningfully consent, nor be held accountable for their interest or lack thereof in the context of a managed social environment like school that may encourage or discourage said interest. Either way, the poster you are responding to didn't claim anything about interest or consent, did they? They are only talking about secrecy, presumably from the parents.
Mind you, it also seems strange to first claim that the driving concern is parents disowning the kid, but then to also defend a forced disowning if they refuse to let the kid access transition-affirming medical interventions. In a scenario where the parents find out anyway and are not willing to "own"/support a transitioning kid, your preference is evidently for the kid to be separated from the parents anyway. If you are willing to use deception to make the parents make a sacrifice (of money? time? support?) that they would not make willingly, why can't you instead support a policy that at least respects them as adult citizens and simply says that they will lose visitation/influence rights if they interfere with the transition but will still be compelled to provide financial support for the kid?
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I was thinking, gun to my head, I'd rather my daughter was molested by a catholic priest (unlikely as that is, being a girl and all) than fall in with your ilk. But that got me thinking... what if the Catholic Church leaned into LGBTQ+ shit 30 years earlier than they did?
What if, instead of covering up the priest abuse scandals, they leaned into it. Claimed they were just protecting young gay boys. In fact they had a moral duty to keep these young boys sexual behavior a secret from their parents. They might not accept them after all. Furthermore, the Catholic Church should probably just take custody of them from those bigoted parents.
It's preposterous and totally insane. But that's what you sound like.
It's preposterous and totally insane sounding because you analogized a situation where a child is raped without consent to one where the child willingly undergoes a medical procedure (regardless of whether you think it's warranted or not). That is a preposterous and insane analogy to make so it's no wonder that's what your conclusion is.
Frankly I find it more preposterious and insane that you don't see removing parental authority as the salient category.
What's your position on castrati? Willing undertaking of medical procedure or abduction of minors for sinister purposes?
Can you elaborate on what you want me to respond to? Are you referring to singers who in the past were castrated for their singing voices? I don't think that was a morally good practice.
I obviously would agree that 'abduction of minors for sinister purposes' is bad, you literally put sinister in the description. I suspect we disagree on what sinister purposes refers to, so you need to describe something more specific if you want to prompt my thoughts to see our differences of opinion.
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Your right, i forgot to include the priest telling some wild yarn about how the kids actually want it. Despite everything we know about kids not being able to consent to that. Good call. Now its perfect.
Do you actually not understand the difference or did you just want to get a cheap dig in?
Do you see all medical interventions in under-18's as 'grooming'? No? Just the one you already have a prior about not liking?
If I'm wrong please tell me how. There's a huge host of reasons why they are different, but I'm only going to bother explaining them if you're not going to respond with another sarcastic one liner that is indistinguishable from an inflamed partisan spouting nonsense about 'the transgenders grooming my kids to want to be raped'.
You are correct, I perceive no difference between children "consenting" to sex or "consenting" to sterilization.
I will repeat: do you think children can consent to surgery for appendicitis? treatment via antidepressants? Antibiotics?
I actually don't! I think without a parent involved in the decisions, malicious actors could convince a child to get any surgery or take any drugs. And sometimes even then!
So no, I do not believe a child can consent to any of those things, which is why parents make those decisions for them.
Right, but these 'malicious actors' could be anyone, even the parents themselves. I don't think parents should have a special right to make these decisions for their children if their interests are not aligned with their child's. I can't remember the exact details, but there was a news story a year or two ago about a couple whose child died because they refused to get a basic medical treatment for religious reasons.
In such a case, do you think the parents have the moral right to refuse treatment for the child? (I believe in the case I'm thinking of the child was a newborn, so the question of consent was obvious).
If you answer negatively to the above (as I do) then we switch from having a discussion about what is absolutely allowed or not allowed to one in which we must judge the pros and cons of taking away agency from parents depending on what the issue is.
I largely agree with you that children can be convinced of anything depending on the right context, but here is my main contention with your points: The key difference between a groomer targeting a child and a doctor performing a surgery is their interests; the latter is doing so based on what they believe to be in the best interests of the child based on medical/scientific literature, the former is doing so for personal reasons.
Malicious actors can convince children of things, but that does not mean any expert telling any child about a solution to their medical issues is grooming them. You might want a parent to sign off on antibiotics, but I hardly believe that if a doctor came up to a severely sick child and recommended they start antibiotics, you would label them as a groomer.
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Do you think parents who love their children and will not disown them, but refuse to go along with either social or medical transitioning, should lose their parental rights? Do you think they should not be allowed to veto the school facilitating transition, without their knowledge or approval?
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