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I would prefer that we live in an Ancap Utopia actually, with no arbitrary age gating at all.
In principle, I see nothing wrong with anybody of any age changing their sex, it's just that medical science today is unable to cash the cheques that trans activitists write in that regard. No amount of modern surgery or hormones will make you more than a pale facsimile of of the opposite sex, but I don't expect that to last indefinitely, and I dislike age gating anyway.
Well, there's the rub. If you talk to the pioneers of gender medicine they were pretty explicit that this is just for people feeling massive amounts of distress, that no matter what you do, it will only be a facsimile, that it has serious health consequences, but overall it might be worth it if the distress is so great.
The whole point of age gating is that with kids, all this goes out the window. They don't understand the facsimile thing, and you try explaining the side effects to them, they shrug them off as it all blurs into these quickly-spoken disclaimers at the end of medicine ads.
Yes, I also wish that we were honest about this not ending with transgenderism, so people screaming at me for opposing it can know what they're signing up for. Right now anyone pointing out the transhumanism connection gets treated as a conspiracy theorist.
You're dealing with exceptionally stupid kids if they can't look at existing examples of MTF or even FTM trans people and thinking "oh shit I don't want to turn out like that". They do so despite the evidence to the contrary, because of social indoctrination, but in that regard they're not qualitatively different from adults who transition, who usually end up even more fucked at least in terms of ability to pass if not further health issues.
I wish. Despite surface similarities, the modal transgender activist has little in common with transhumanists, especially in terms of ontology and goals. You might as well lump us in with body builders because we want to improve on the body we were born with, or say Communists and Ancaps are the same because they both seek the dissolution of a capitalist state. I don't even see them as allies of convenience, they're already fucking inconvenient to say the least..
If they even manage to advance enough to consider that question, the quick 'n easy answer is "oh no sweetie, that's just the toupee fallacy -- actually there's lots 'n lots of trans people out there that you don't even notice because they pass so well. OBTW that means you need to do this as early as possible!"
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That's not what they're seeing, though. They're being given the rainbows and unicorns farting sparkles version of it. And drag queens coming in to school to read to them since they're blinkin' two years old, being told by Teacher that this is lovely and wonderful and you! must! approve! Oh, and they're having books like this read to them:
If you got a solid ten years of conditioning like that, and you were any way feeling like you weren't popular enough, smart enough, sociable enough, and what the hell is this puberty changing my body like a Japanese body-horror movie, of course you're going to fall for "if I'm trans, that's the reason why I don't feel comfortable in my own skin and that's the solution to making everything better".
The "my kid was trans and knew it age two" set of parents, in my view, are mostly the ones who are doing the Stage Mother bit (such as Rose Hovick who put her infant daughter on stage to earn a living):
Yeah, you've convinced me your 10 year old kid walking the runways knew they were trans when they were 2 (not):
Then completely coincidentally, at 7 'she' was put out to work:
The parents who aren't Stage Mothers and living by proxy through their kids are being steered into it by the 'experts' telling them that if their toddler pulls the hairclips out of their hair, that means they're trans, and if they don't support them to transition, then they'll end up with a dead child because of the trans suicide rate.
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No, because their information environment is largely controlled by adults who will be feeding them the opposite. Sure, nowadays, it's likely they can break out to some degree, but what would you call a child who believed stuff from randos on the Internet over their teachers?
Depends on what kind of randos. I might potentially call him a promising young man. If the kid is spending his time online absorbing "aliens built the pyramids"-type stuff then maybe a teacher would be better. But if the kid is reading a variety of sources, even if he's just reading Wikipedia, then I'd say that has a high chance of being better for his education than the average teacher.
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No, you're dealing with completely average kids, but it just so happens that in many ways kids are exceptionally stupid, hence age gating (which also includes things like driving, drinking, ability to sign contracts, etc., etc., etc.)
Looking up existing examples of MTFs or FTMs is easy, but the thought has to occur to you to search for it, and it does not occur even to an average adult (and this is a common behavior on all issues, not just this one). All the kids see is TikToks glamorizing the whole thing, parents don't know what the fuck is even going on, and even if they figure it out, and they'll show it to the kids, they'll be promptly ignored because "you just don't get it mooom", and medical professionals are either ideologically captured, or see the whole situation through green-colored glasses with $$$ signs on them, so they'll also undermine the parents who manage to figure things out.
But if it's a social contagion and/or discomfort with puberty and/or with atypical sexuality, they'll get over it, and will not want to transition as adults. Before ideological capture, something like 80% dysphoric kids were desisters.
Also, if you end up changing your mind, your prior ability to pass fucks you up too, to say nothing of the body parts you hacked off. As for health issues, you're the doctor, but the idea that being exposed to puberty blockers and hormone treatment earlier rather later, results in better health outcomes, strikes me as a bit counter-intuitive.
Where would you say you part ways with them?
They have an ontology where "gender" exists as an ethereal entity entirely divorced from one's physical form, for one. Or that you can simply claim to be the opposite gender without passing as it, and then have everyone treat you as such. While I endorse the hypothetical of people switching sexes, that's only when they succeed, points for effort are minimal.
You will note that in most of those examples, parents are allowed to either grant them liberty to do so, or sign them on their behalf. I believe that the argument upstream was all about kids, parents and trusted authorities all colluding to make teen transitions feasible.
Meh. That seems orthogonal to transhumanism, not in contradiction to it.
Letting your kids drink or drive will get you in trouble in most countries, so society is perfectly happy to limit that liberty
But I'm callous enough to let progressive parents fuck up their kids, if that's what they want to do. My issue is with normie parents who sign off on it under duress. "Would you rather have a happy daughter, or a dead son", this is shit "gender experts" actually tell parents. Even doctors bow out of responsibility for the decision. So I'm saying the scenario as outlined is not representative of what's going on.
If a ban is too much for you, I gave another suggestion to simply add liability.
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