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Here's the problem - it's very much debatable whether this "horrible pain" is actually something requiring medical treatment. I know you think it does. We are all familiar with the rhetoric that gender dysphoria is so real and urgent and painful that not allowing the child to transition is likely to lead to suicide, and akin to refusing to let a child receive treatment for schizophrenia. So you frame it as, essentially, parents letting their children die because of their bigoted religious beliefs. But this is almost never the case. Parents almost always treat a child being "trans" as a psychological issue, a child in distress who needs help - but you will not accept that "help" could be anything other than affirming their entity and even allowing them to begin medically transitioning, when there is good reason to think help should actually be helping them work through their gender dysphoria (if it is really gender dysphoria), becoming comfortable in their bodies, and perhaps choose to transition when they are an adult if they still feel that's what they need. Can you at least acknowledge that this is a reasonable, loving, and non-abusive response, even if you think it's not the correct one?
Again with the "terrified." I'm sure there are children in abusive households who still face abuse, or being thrown out on the streets, if they are revealed to be gay or trans. This happens and those are extreme cases that may require state intervention, as with any other abuse. But almost all the cases I have seen are not of trans kids with parents who will reject and abandon them for being trans, but parents who simply don't agree with putting their kids on hormones, wearing binders, planning to get surgery, etc. Refusing to change the pronouns they use for their son or daughter might upset the child, but it's not abuse!
I don't agree with @WhiningCoil's framing of hordes of children being abducted by the state, but I would ask you in return, do you have any numbers regarding parents who are actually abusive and neglectful of their trans children, such that state intervention is required? Do you think schools should socially transition children secretly if the child says their parents won't go along?
You "get the sense" that most of the kids are quite happy with the decision, but this seems to be vibes and personal bias. I think the actual level of regret is very hard to evaluate. I'm sure you hate Jesse Singhal, but I have yet to see a trans activist who can actually dispute his numbers and his deep dives into studies on the subject.
That's... basically exactly what the actual standards of care say to do? You start with therapy and just discussing the issue to get a feel for where the kid really is. You don't just drop them on HRT instantly. There's puberty blockers, so that they can make an informed choice as an adult in either direction, rather than make any permanent changes. For the kids who have a really clear sense of who they are, AND whose parents support it, you might see HRT before 18, but again, the parent IS actually involved in that decision. Basically no one is getting surgery before 18. Getting surgery usually takes YEARS of waiting, even as an adult who knows exactly what they want.
What part of that process are you objecting to?
Would you be okay if I consistently misgendered people on this forum? You're an adult who can walk away from the conversation, so presumably this is a thousand times less bad than having it come from your own parents. I think most people here would get pretty reasonably upset with me if I leaned into trolling like that.
And if you won't tolerate it here, why in the world should we expect kids to tolerate it?
I mean, c'mon, you're objecting to an article of clothing? Teach the kid how to do it safely rather than forcing them to risk it with ace bandages and overly tight compressions.
What happened to "perhaps choose to transition when they are an adult if they still feel that's what they need"?
I read scientific studies, hang out in trans communities, keep my ear out for about news, and so forth. I mean, if nothing else, I'm involved in numerous trans communities, have numerous trans friends, and presumably have a much better vantage point into the community than you do. I'm the sort of person that shows up here, looking for people who disagree with me, so I'm clearly not cherry-picking my sources. Short of being a credentialed expert, I'm not sure how you get a better perspective than mine?
If people really regret it so much, it should not be nearly this difficult for me to find those people.
Is there some specific source here, or am I just supposed to spend a week deep-diving him? I'm happy to take a peek, but I will absolutely admit that I don't think he's a source worth investing a lot of time in, right now.
So here's the problem - I hear that this is how it works. This is how it is supposed to work. A child with gender dysphoria will receive multiple, comprehensive counseling sessions and only after a long and deliberate, informed process will the child and his/her parents elect to move forward with transition. That seems reasonable.
What I have actually seen, in multiple cases, is schools and counselors alike uncritically jumping on board the transition bandwagon with very little intake process or evaluation beyond the child's self-evaluation and expressed desires. Usually expressed as you do, that it's such an urgent and immediate need that you risk the child committing suicide if you don't immediately affirm and validate them and let them do what they want.
I would like to believe that the first case is the usual and standard procedure and these latter cases are exceptions, but that does not appear to be the case in the US. It did not appear to be the case in the UK and Sweden and several other countries until recently, when a plague of scandals forced lawmakers to reevaluate the agencies they had given responsibility for these decisions.
This is one of those claims where each side claims "Yes it's happening" or "No it's not," and I am not well-informed enough to say who's right, but there seems to at least be enough anecdotal evidence that it has happened that I am skeptical of your blanket denial that it ever happens.
No one here is a minor (at least to our knowledge) and no one here has parental authority. People are not allowed to be rude to you; they are allowed to say they don't believe someone born with a penis is a woman. You might perceive that to be rude, and a child might perceive that to be emotionally distressing.
So your answer is yes, parents who refuse to go along with a child's self-identification as the opposite sex should risk having the child taken away from them for abuse?
I mean, c'mon, you're pretending this is about objecting to an article of clothing? But yes, sure - parents are allowed to make decisions for their children, including controlling what they wear. By the time they are teenagers it's usually counterproductive to try tell them what they can and can't wear, but parents do still exercise this authority ("You may not wear that in public!") And binders specifically have a lot more significance than merely stylistic expression, and they do pose a risk. So yes, I think parents are entitled to expect that schools will not secretly encourage their children to wear binders without their knowledge or approval.
Honestly, I am allowing for the possibility that it might make medical sense to allow a minor to transition in some rare cases. My actual belief is that this is a terrible idea in pretty much all cases and I think it shouldn't happen, but with sufficient evidence I'd be willing to defer to medical authorities on this. I would not be willing to allow them to supersede parental approval on this, however.
Sure, and I'm sure they all think being trans is wonderful and they should all be validated. If you hung out in Christian communities I'm sure you'd be very aware of what Christians think and how wonderful Jesus is and how God truly manifests in people's lives. If that sounds a little bit snide, it's because I do actually think that trans ideology has much in common with religious belief (including a vibes-based conviction in things that make you feel good without any rational evidence).
There's a whole subreddit about detransitioners. Multiple detransitioners and regretters have YouTube channels. They may be a minority, but they certainly exist. And a common story from them is how they essentially got shunned by the trans community when they detransitioned because they are seen as having betrayed trans people, or are potentially giving ammo to their enemies. If you are a trans person who has doubts but know that if you detransition you will lose essentially your entire social network, and you are already a psychologically vulnerable person (as most trans people are), it's not hard to see how the actual numbers are probably greater than what might show up in the surveys that allege regret is something ridiculously low like <2%.
I am not arguing that most trans people regret their transition. I am arguing that enough do that children shouldn't be allowed to make permanent decisions about their bodies, and that parents shouldn't be judged unfit for refusing to agree with their decisions.
I mean, he's got a Twitter account, he's got a Substack, he's published dozens of articles over the years. No, I don't expect you to do a deep dive on him, but since you're clearly familiar with him, I'd like just once for someone to pick apart one of his studies (or his picking apart of studies) with more than just ad hominems and bad faith impugning of his motives. Because from my perspective, he goes into the numbers and the research methodology in detail, in every case finds serious, objective flaws in the studies, often finding that they literally say the opposite of what activists say they do, and the response is never "Here's why you're wrong and here's what you missed, you misunderstood these numbers, you made an error here," etc., but essentially "You are bad person for asking these questions and we don't need you to tell us about trans lived experiences." Jesse Singhal isn't a perfect person (he cares too much what people think of him, he's argumentative, and he probably is obsessed on certain topics), but I haven't found him to actually be in error on this topic. Not only that, he's clearly not anti-trans, and yet he gets the JK Rowling treatment for questioning the narrative.
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