If any state stopped at this, then your argument would have at least some consistency.
I would strongly disagree with it, but at least it would not be a completely dishonest position.
1 Like
I don’t personally know anyone who got surgery younger than 22, and I have come to know quite a lot of trans people. I do not know why someone would get surgery before turning 18, but imagine that most who do so must experience incredibly painful gender dysphoria. Without having personally met someone who went through that, I don’t feel that I know enough to know whether or not it makes sense to ban something that is very rare.
2 Likes
People from the right push this hateful agenda under the guise of “caring for children” is just their newest bullshit misrepresentation of facts. It is the new “partial birth abortions.”
2 Likes
Something I was thinking about earlier today that is relevant here:
If a doctor had a patient who suffered from severe anxiety and depression, perhaps even suicidal thoughts, and there was a medicine that would cure those symptoms with no side effects, they would use it.
If you suffer from gender dysphoria, then HRT is such a drug. I have tried several medications for anxiety and depression with no success. Being on a very low, starter dose of estrogen, however, is amazing. I’ve had several people comment on how happy I seem in the past couple of days, even though a bunch of stuff in my life is not going smoothly (just finished the biggest cluster fuck ever of a move, and that’s the easy part). HRT has a large number of side effects, but they are almost all actually desirable to people with gender dysphoria.
We have known since the 1920s that HRT dramatically helps people with gender dysphoria. And in the 1960s - 1990s, the medical profession tried pretty much every other treatment under the sun: They tried talk therapy, electro-shock therapy, backwards hormone therapy (i.e., giving trans women testosterone so they would feel more manly and not want to transition). There were doctors who would talk at medical conferences about how they tried to gate keep hormone therapy by only treating trans women that they personally found sexually attractive. None of those approaches worked.
Now we are in a place where teens, with parental and doctor consent, can access HRT. The medical profession is following up on how they are doing and trying to see if this is the right course for them. And they have found that it helps tremendously, see e.g., https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206297
7 Likes
I think you’re wrong to assume intentions here for the vast majority of people.
Oh, so you are saying the “vast majority of people” pushing this enhanced anti-trans agenda have no intention to protect kids despite all their grandstanding and are really just vehemently full of hate towards trans people?
I can agree with you on that.
I don’t think those people give one fuck about kids based on their other political moves of defunding health care, education, safety nets and inaction towards school shootings.
1 Like
From a no-name candidate for the 2024 GOP primary:
I don’t know. I think I’m just less radical some people. And being so is off-putting on cultural issues.
As stated above, it’s more off-putting to see people who are radical in the opposite direction, but it’s off-putting none-the-less.
And I don’t know, I think it’s less performative-ness, and more that people become fascinated by various political topics. I think that tends to be more true of privileged ‘white knights’ because they (we) have nothing better to do.
Do you have the full text of this article? The summary doesn’t say much here.
This makes sense.
That is a real non-answer to what should be a pretty simple direct question, at least based on your prior stated opposition of “wokeness.”
But, it is additional information that seems to point to you not even truly understand your opposition and it is more of a knee-jerk reaction to keep the status quo for no other reason than youbare comfortable with it. People fear change and push back on it of it threatens their comfort.
Yes, ultimately, I’m probably moderate for emotional reasons. Same reason you are radical.
Logic and knowledge are sort of a first step to our politics, but there has to be some secondary thing going on as well.
1 Like
I’ve started collecting them. Here is both the linked article and another one, both from good journals.
HRT_teens_NEJM_study.pdf (1.7 MB)
mental_health_teens.pdf (918.8 KB)
2 Likes
Thanks! That’s awesome.
1 Like
In general I don’t agree with this statement. Since children aren’t sufficiently able to understand and make choices, more government oversight/restrictions than on adults is prudent. Ask yourself, would you feel the same about child marriage, or coonversion therapy, or labor in dangerous jobs?
1 Like
- No opinion. Not forced marriage, right?
- Again, that’s more often forced.
- Safety issue is very different from the above, and, again, usually forced and not a child volunteering to do dangerous jobs.
You act as if gender reassignment surgery is being forced on a child. That I would be against. Waiting until adulthood is probably best. Where in this line of logic does “trans folks reading books to children” fall? Cuz, that’s being outlawed as well.
2 Likes
I think that is a pretty impossible distinction to make. My only experience with it is a single anecdote that I will attempt to summarize.
A friend of a friend came home from school a few days after her 17th birthday. Had some Trigonometry homework to finish and she was going to meet her boyfriend at the arcade later. Normal teenager stuff.
Her parents, a 27 year old man she vaguely remembered meeting once, and two older adults were in the living room and she was called in to join them. This 27 yo man was so-and-so, her father informed her, and a week from Saturday she and so-and-so were going to be married. The older adults were so-and-so’s parents.
But, but… her boyfriend is supposed to take her to the junior prom she protested.
There will be no junior prom with the boyfriend. She needs to stop seeing him. She’s now the fiancée of so-and-so.
So anyway, she broke up with her boyfriend and married the older man 10 days later. Was it forced? I mean she technically agreed to it. But her only other option was to leave home and try to make it as a foster kid or couch-surfing with friends… which are not great options for a 17 year-old girl.
And this wasn’t some remote country either… this was in the United States.
1 Like
Yikes! Did you find out what happened in the ensuing years?
I believe they are still married… been over 25 years now. I admittedly haven’t had an update in a while.
The parents were eager to marry her off because so-and-so was a doctor, which was a big deal. And supposedly he was a reasonably nice guy… setting aside the creepy factor of a 27 year old man & 17 year old girl anyway. Which apparently wasn’t considered creepy in their culture.
It was the high school friend of one of my college friends. I did meet the young bride once when I visited my college friend in her hometown.
It’s probably traditioooooon.
2 Likes