Good post. The radical left, and the media that pushes, or perhaps even creates, that narrative, have gone way too far in their approach. I'm glad that we are talking about transgenderism, because it is a thing and has been a thing since time immemorial, long before this current movement. Just like the push for equal rights and social acceptance of homosexuality, this needed to happen. But what is also needed is open and respectful discourse, and an acceptance that it is going to be difficult for many people who the whole concept had just never been part of their world. The correct way to handle it would have been to counter criticism with calm and respectful counterarguments (I mean of course if neo-Nazis are pulling guns, that's a different story, but this discussion really isn't about what the OP references, it's about the broader cultural discussion). Instead, the media, and also certain individuals among the trans rights activists, have decided to take the approach of "we're here, fuck you, if you don't accept everything we say, you're a piece of shit bigot". That kind of approach will never in a million years win anyone over to your side. It just creates resentment, and pushes many people who were never hateful, just confused and uncomfortable but could have been willing to engage in discourse, over to the side of "OMG trans people are trying to make it so it's legal to have sex with children", simply because those people have had hate and insults hurled at them.
Of course the radical right does similar stuff, look at the shit Fox News spews out about liberals. But two wrongs don't make a right.
Furthermore, this constant pushing of transgender ideology in the way it's being done (and this is just my opinion, and I do not mean to offend anyone) is having an effect on young people. I am not going to speculate on whether it's intentional or not, but from what I can see, it has become "cool" to be gender non-conforming. Teenagers and young adults have always, for all time, and will always be confused and seeking to develop their identity. I remember, it was a confusing and difficult time. All teenagers get depressed, hormones are a hell of a drug. But what I am seeing is that there are a lot of young people who are coming out as transgender, or pangender (both genders), or whatever, and it seems to me that it is the modern version of how all of us experimented with our identities when we were young, to try to fit in, to try something new, or as a way to try to figure out why we feel uncomfortable in our own self-image. I certainly did it. I became a "goth kid" for a while in high school. Then I became a "psychedelic guy", psychedelics were my identity. It wasn't until my early 30s that I started to feel comfortable in my own skin and to know who I was, and to no longer let pressures from outside forces question my sense of self.
To be clear, I have no problem with young people trying out the persona of being trans. But my worry is that the idea of hormones and transition surgery is being pushed everywhere. And there seem to be a LOT of young people suddenly becoming trans. It has never been common for people to truly feel they're the wrong gender, there always have been, and I am fully aware that many of them, in the past, were just never willing to make that transition, either due to self-hatred or fear of others. But it's clearly a fad now, and my worry is that taking hormones and getting surgery are steps that have lifelong consequences. I worry that young people, who are not developed enough in their identities, will jump on that train, and later on it will lead to a great deal of suffering, because you can't go back from that. Of course, for some, who aren't doing it because it's a fad, but because they feel they can finally come out, it will be great, and I am very happy for them that they're able to do that, and that is an example of good coming from this.
Overall I see both sides and am conflicted, but I think the way in which his has been rolled out is troubling.
That picture is absolutely sick, and I would be very surprised if anyone posting in here does not agree with that. Of course, some people in the world would call you a bigot for saying that, which is part of the point I was making above.
There's a relatively simple way to disentangle all of the conflicting factors you mention here, and that's to bring back proper medical, scientific evaluation of who is trans and who isn't. And in the absence of scientific conclusions, we should not be pushing through radical changes in healthcare and social policy. Right now, anybody can be whatever they say they are, and the forced-through human rights laws saw we have to obey that. I think that's wrong and shows a lack of discourse. There's an entire previous generation of trans people who had to receive a gender dysphoria diagnosis and be classified as "transsexuals" (a problematic term now, I'm aware) before they could engage in transition. A good friend of mine in Toronto who is old school trans had to get approval from a psychiatrist and another medical specialist to even get hormone therapy. Maybe that's a bit gatekeepy, I'm not totally sure, and I'm willing to compromise on that. But the point is, it's not all "gatekeeping", a lot of it is healthy boundaries.
We have many groups converging on one movement and they're not all the same. We have people with gender dysphoria demanding fair treatment. We have autogynephiles, who are basically men with a fetish, forcing their way into a movement as a means to hypersexualize women and invade their spaces while pretending to be "trans". Meanwhile they are basically just creepy men. We have people of all ages, but especially children, who are bandwagoning onto a social contagion because they have other personal issues that have nothing to do with being trans (i.e. seeking peer acceptance), yet they are possibly getting radical body modification that is permanently damaging.
I'm not seeing nearly enough discourse about:
1) If you don't have gender dysphoria, you're not trans in the medical sense.
2) Without a medical diagnosis, there's nothing to ground your claim in reality.
3) Not everyone with gender dysphoria can or should get gender reassigning therapy. A lot don't.
4) Gender reassignment does not cure gender dysphoria in most cases, it only sort of alleviates it. The problem is in the mind, not in the body.
5) Not everyone who gets gender reassignment gets the whole kitchen sink. Some are OK with just cross-dressing for a VERY long time and may not ever need to go further than that.
6) Gradual measures are safer and more measurable than radical, all-in measures (i.e. cross dressing, then maybe trying hormones, then maybe surgery down the road, etc... but not everything at once)
7) Children who claim to be trans should require a much higher level of scrutiny and protection before they are allowed to undertake body modification, even if we also want to support them. We should have to PROVE that children are trans if medical intervention is being sought, and the proofs should be rigorous.
8) Not everyone who claims they're trans is trans. How can somebody without gender dysphoria suddenly claim, at 30 years old, that they are trans because the TRA movement inspired them, yet up until that point it wasn't a pressing issue in their life? These people are a different category, yet undefined by any legit medical/scientific authority.
9) Not everyone who is gender nonconforming is trans. Children who cross dress should not be subjected to gender ideology. i.e. as a gay boy I liked putting on my girl friend's dresses and having tea parties, but I had no desire to become a girl.
10) Children engage in a lot of fantasy play and experimental identities. It doesn't mean they're having an identity crisis or need medical intervention.
11) Munchausen syndrome by proxy (MSBP) is rife among these virtue signaling, woke leftist parents.
12) There are definitely child predators piggy backing on the trans movement, whether the benign actors care to admit it or not.
13) There are people with other kinds of mental health issues in the movement who are clearly delusional and are not trans, yet are receiving support/attention from the movement on the basis that they are trans. People with personality disorders (BPD, narcissism, histronic personality disorder) and others.
14) The medical industry has a huge financial stake in transitioning people. All you need to do is look at the economic reports to see how profitable it is. That is also a major conflict of interest.
15) The movement toward "children can consent" because they're "born trans" is an extremely slippery slope and some observers are right to be concerned that this is a gateway to child grooming. I'm not saying "trans people" are doing the grooming, I'm saying that there are actors in the TRA movement doing the grooming.
I am not seeing enough being done to disentangle all of these factors and create proper definitions and categories which create healthy boundaries within the TRA movement. As far as I can tell, genuine trans people with gender dysphoria are rapidly becoming a minority within this movement, overshadowed by other actors with wildly different agendas, yet the assumption is that they are "all one". We are just supposed to believe that people are who they say they are, without critical thinking, without science or medicine, and without common sense. I work in medical and we're not even allowed to question or gently push back against children claiming they're trans anymore. We're not allowed to schedule investigations. It's "transphobic" and "discrimination" to even say hey, maybe this kid needs a psychiatric referral. "How dare you pathologize my child!" In the movement, we're supposed to lump them all together as "trans" when clearly the people we're seeing in the movement are not homogeneous. It's an
extremely heterogeneous movement.
And this has given these people incredible sociopolitical power... over real experts, over government, over educational institutions. It's scary. Think about what gays went through. The APA said that homosexuality was a mental illness until 1974. Until then, gays were still getting lobotomies or thrown in jail simply for
identifying as gay. But then the science changed, along with the civil rights movement. The TRA movement is not going through a comparable movement. It's all being crammed through and they are coming after children, while there is a complete lack of longitudinal data on the effects of that.
Trans people deserve respect and human rights. Real trans people. Not nonbinary or whatever bullshit. Progressivism has lost the plot in this regard. I live on the west coast and contemporary leftists are some of the most intellectually lazy, entitled people I have ever met in my life. No amount of logic and rationality can penetrate those pea brains. And they're the ones making health policy now about children. Mark my words, in less than a generation there is going to be huge fallout from this, when the science catches up.
