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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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