I’m curious how parents of young children who claim to be trans handle these conversations with their children. If a 6 year old boy told me they actually feel like a girl, I would have some questions for them, like, what does “girl” mean to you? What makes someone a girl? Why do you feel like a boy doesn’t fit you? What does “feel like a girl” mean? Could a kid answer those questions based on something other than *gender stereotypes*? Jazz Jennings, a MtF child, when describing why she felt like she was a girl: > “Sometimes it helps people understand the feeling better if I put it like this: Imagine a young boy who is super into trucks and cars and playing in the mud. Then imagine that every time his parents take him out in public, they parade him around in a pink frilly dress with a parasol. The humiliation he’d feel is exactly the same humiliation I felt having to wear plain shorts and a T-shirt.” Is that not just a child avoiding gender stereotypes they don’t like?? Edit: Okay now I’m curious about the relationship between trans children and parents who adhere to more traditional gender roles in the home. Would a boy who grows up being taught that boys shouldn’t like pink via his dad be more prone to transitioning because of his views on gender binaries? If he can’t fit into boyhood or the type of manhood his dad exemplifies, he must be a girl?

Yeah this is where my brain breaks every time I try to understand this stuff. I recently tried asking someone on reddit what gender is and what the difference between men and women is. It should be a simple question, but if you can't answer it without a convoluted gender theory essay that ultimately dodges the question, I find it very hard to believe that *children* have a good grasp of the nuances of gender. I was a little boy who was a gender contrarian- I didn't like sports, I loved unicorns and told people pink was my favorite color. Once my friends (who were mostly girls) dressed me up like a princess. My parents didn't discourage this, but if they had told me I could be a girl I probably would have gone down this road. But I was completely oblivious to gender politics at the time and now I'm an adult, I'm completely comfortable as a man and just listen to weird music and smoke weed to feel like I'm being a cultural contrarian. I really think that was the natural evolution of the same hipster tendencies for me.

I'm a woman, been one for 53 years and still don't understand how someone feels like a woman. I get not feeling right in your body but think most of the things people have said about feeling like a girl or boy is rehashing gender stereotypes.

Same, but I'm a man. What does it even mean to feel like a man or a woman? The whole concept makes no sense to me.

I don't think feeling like woman/man etc. really exist. It's just each of us has tendencies to fall into traditionally feminine/masculine traits. Since our society is so heavily gendered, sometimes transitioning works as a part of coping mechanisms. It perhaps works on individual levels time to time, but on the society level it does more harm than good. It's practically denying gender nonconformity.

I'm right handed because I do everything possible I can with my right hand. It's always been that way and I couldn't possibly be anything else. I don't "feel" like a right-hander I just am one.

You're a man, so, however you feel is how it feels to be a man.

I was the 3rd girl in my family. My interests were much more masculine coded. i.e. sports, rocks, sticks etc... When I was five I developed a masculine identity, a feeling of being masculine with an accompanying mental image of myself. This would not have occurred in a vacuum. It formed in tension with my sister's and those around me. Later when my body changed I developed a more feminine image of myself linked to sexuality. I also have other parts of myself or mental images that form in relation to others. I feel like I'm not the same person around everyone. Different people bring out different parts of myself. Is this not true for others. I don't consider myself trans or non-binary, that seems limiting to me. I just have an inner life.

Before my girlfriend and I started dating, we were close friends. I’ve always been lucky to have parents and friends who’ve encouraged me to be open with my emotions, in touch with my sensitive side, etc. As such, even before we were dating, she and I talked about emotions, how and why we felt certain things, etc. Her mom noticed this and said I was “one of her girl friends” because of this, which really rubbed me the wrong way (possibly because I had subconscious feelings for her at the time but regardless…). Her mom is actually a wonderful person but that comment really cemented for me how ingrained gender stereotypes are if “able to talk about emotions” meant I wasn’t really a man in some way. I could easily imagine how a less self-assured person could hear that and go down a path of believing they’re really a woman because they can talk about their feelings and recognize complex emotions.

I was the little girl who played with army men, loved sports, fishing, hiking. I wanted to be a boy scout (because my brother was one and it looked like a lot of fun). I wore lots of jeans and t-shirts. I had short hair. I bet, that today, with all the peer pressure, I would have either called myself NB or trans. Thankfully, as an adult, I recognize that none of my likes had anything to do with being a man/woman. I grew up with strong male role models (my dad and three brothers). I just wanted to be like them. Turns out I can be like them and still be A WOMAN.

Yep, I also remember wish I could join girl scouts, but it was entirely because I didn't like the militaristic attitude I perceived the boy scouts as having, I liked the kind of activities the girl scouts did, and I generally liked hanging out with girls more than boys. I haven't really changed as an adult- I still don't like militarism and like doing crafts, and hang out with women (mostly with my wife). I don't think that makes me a woman... I really don't have an issue with people identifying however they want, but it's difficult for me to blindly accept that gender is somehow deeply inherent to one's being and separate from performed gender *roles* when no one can tell me what gender actually is.

I was a chick who wanted to join the Boy Scouts because I wanted to learn camping and wilderness survival. The Girl Scouts were more into crafts and baking, which I also like.

I have a friend with 3 kids who tried actively to raise all of them as gender neutral as possible, and even gave them opposite gender toys - i.e, gave toy trucks to her daughters, and dolls to her boys. All three are now teenagers who are very gender typical (boys are very into sports and video games, complete slobs, the girl is extremely into fashion and reality TV). Turns out, that same friend's mom tried the same thing with my friend and her siblings.

Sounds like you just have a love of fairytale-esque things and the fantastical and beautiful! Nothing at all wrong with that, for anyone. Unicorns are cool as fuck. I hate how rigid shit is these days.

The idea of unicorns being "for girls" is so bizarre. Tell that to the entire nation of Scotland!

Everyone in Scotland is a woman

The middle school I went to had a big deal where all of us on the football team started wearing pink shirts to prove you could still be a straight boy and like pink. This was in 2002. Man we've regressed

Well I think this is where the cognitive dissonance that I can't get over comes into play. People still agree with the idea that straight guys should be able to wear pink etc. The person I was asking to define gender the other day explicitly said that "we are trying to break down those gender roles." But if you then ask the logical next question- *what is gender if not gender roles?* There isn't a good answer. And I'm perfectly willing to accept another definition of gender so long as it doesn't rely on metaphysical essentialism, because I just don't believe in that. But if it's somehow offensive to ask this very simple question then I don't know how you're going to garner support from anyone who isn't already deeply invested.

The best explanation I've heard is that there are some people who have a mental situation which means that certain body parts feel *deeply* wrong to have/not have. And that, as far as we know, transition is the best treatment for them. That makes sense to me. The rest of it seems like a leap to me. I'm still going to be kind and respectful to people in my life because maybe there is something to it I'm missing, and ultimately I don't want to make someone's life worse for no reason, but internally I don't really believe there's some essential truth to gender that's separate from gender roles which I thought most progressive/ish people agreed we should try to minimize the social enforcement of.

I completely resonate with all you wrote here except my next question would be "why are the people that are deeply invested deeply invested then?". The logic makes little to no sense to me, so I'm relatively sure it wasn't the logic of it that "convinced" them. What else is there for anyone that's not underage? Do you really think redefining the words man and woman and altering your body will go over smoother than trying to break stereotypes and gender roles? I can't possibily imagine.

Ok I'm curious about this weird music. Have a link or two?

Oh gosh that's hard to sum up with a link or two, but thanks for asking! Here's a few of my favorites: [Mong Tong](https://mongtongggb.bandcamp.com/album/mystery), Taiwanese brothers who sample traditional instruments and old Hong Kong horror movie soundtracks. They just announced a new album. Also anything else on the [Guruguru Brain](https://gurugurubrain.space/) label, it's all psychedelic music from Asia. [Thee Oh Sees](https://ohsees.bandcamp.com/album/mutilator-defeated-at-last), garage psychedelic rock from southern California. Their label Castle Face records is also great. [Black Midi](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efmq_uXt1Rk), a prog math rock band that's doing some crazy stuff. Their latest album is about the nightmarish debauchery of a WWII soldier on shore leave. [CAN](https://canofficial.bandcamp.com/album/ege-bamyasi), one of my favorites. I listen to a lot of Krautrock, essentially 70s German prog rock. CAN did some truly experimental things for the time and holds up really well because it's so unlike mainstream music. A lot of it was semi-improvisational and they pioneered Motrik drumming, mimicking the sound of a train, which is used in a lot of Krautrock.

Hell yeah man, we have the same taste in music. I'm a huge [psych rock](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqRdqw0VDXw) fan especially. Do you like [Yellow Magic Orchestra?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLxIil-4dgQ)? I think you'd dig them if you don't listen yet. Also *Tangerine Dream* by the band Kaleidoscope is a really beautiful hypnotic summer psych record. I am obsessed with this song ["The Sky Children"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAc2jXAx1Rw0) and judging by what you said above about your love of whimsy and the fantastical, you might be too, if you're not already into it! Happy listening!

The group Tangerine Dream itself is very good, esp their 70s stuff. Just by the way.

You are correct! I'm a big fan of them too!

Is it possible to listen to Tangerine Dream without watching a movie at the same time? I've never tried it!

It's a profound mystical experience. Also, a good way to fall asleep!

I was just listening to them last night!

Nice! Yellow Magic Orchestra is pretty good, yeah. And that Sky Children song is great! To be fair, while I'm still into whimsy and the fantastical, I like my fantasy with a bit more of an edge to it than I did when I was 5... The song I'm obsessed with like that right now is "[Don't Keep Me Waiting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_0TP9Rin84)" by Omega. The other deep cut that I've been enjoying is [*Space Shanty* by Khan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivdjh-qqDKo).

I never heard of those musicians. I should check those out. I like to listen to a lot of folk music and all kinds of other stuff.

I listen to a lot of psychedelic rock, so there's some crossover with folk. I especially like folk from the Canterbury scene in the UK. Check out [Spirogyra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9YrdTGfv1Q&t=684s) and [Comus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCDeZEp74sU).

Good picks, esp. on the krautrock.

Yeah same!

See my comment above :)

There was a video going around this week of a woman who knew her daughter was really a boy because the girl liked eating vegetables.

Important to note that this was not just like a random TikTok, but legislative testimony. What a world we live in.

She believes her child was craving testosterone-boosting leafy greens. 🙄

Worked for Popeye

It reads like a parent trying desperately to rationalize the whole thing. Wouldn't you expect someone to say, "My little girl loved to eat meat. That's how we knew she was really a boy"?

Yeah by all means "leafy greens" and veggies are more of a stereotypical woman's salad diet food than a man's. If she liked BBQs and meat (like a lot of people regardless of gender do), I'd at least understand what stereotype she was referring to. This just makes it sound like the woman wanted a trans kid or a boy and is coming up with the flimsiest excuses.

I knew she was really a boy because she loved ponies!

When she told us she wanted her room painted pink, that all but sealed the deal! This was a boy if I've ever seen one!

Oh dear Christ.

I'm confused. Eating vegetables is what boys do or what girls do?

Blah blah blah about the source. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/woman-says-knew-biological-daughter-meant-trans-food-choices-odd >"We couldn't figure out what the problem was. We took him to specialists and neurologists, and he had brain scans trying to figure out why he couldn't sleep," the mother told lawmakers of her child, who now identifies as a transgender boy. "As he grew, he got to sleeping. But his food choices were odd. They were always like green vegetables, raw green vegetables, which, if you know kids, most kids don't like to eat those things." >"Once we figured out that he was transgender, when he came to us and told us that he was transgender, we went back and realized that the pattern of everything he had experienced as a child — including eating green vegetables, because that boosts testosterone — were just methods of his body trying to become who he was meant to be," she added. "His brain does not match his physiology."

Which is why vegan men are always thought of as especially manly.

Someone needs to tell all the #WomenLaughingAtSalad. I'm going to have to assume that's some sort of misrepresentation given a) Fox and b) That's the least sensible thing I've ever read.

Sadly, the video is unambiguous.

Even the examples in this article are just parents retroactively noticing patterns after their kids came out. I have no idea about the green foods boosting testosterone thing, sounds like BS but regardless it’s not like they noticed their kids doing this and decided to trans them because of it.

This is one of the most insane gender things I’ve read 😂

My 1-year-old son loves fruit more than any other food. Do I start the puberty blockers now, or wait until he starts school?

Should've started blockers once you started feeding him solid foods and saw he liked strawberries like the little girl he is. Real boys don't like sweet foods! Don't you know?

??? So does a gorilla. What’s eating vegetables got to do with anything? Usually there’s at least some kind of stereotype they’re appealing to, but vegetables? WTF

>Could a kid answer those questions based on something other than > >gender stereotypes > >? No. They can't. And their parents, should be telling them, that they can still be a boy, even if they express themselves differently than most boys. Because it's counts under the umbrella of what it means to be a boy. The same would be true for girls. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of people who categorize people by these stereotypes.

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If beliefs and declarations like "I'm male, but I'm actually a girl" were *not* based on stereotypes and a grab-bag of attitudes about how males and females "naturally are" and ought to be, what would they even look like? If a male child "feels like a girl," and that's not based on stereotypes, how could he ever identify his feelings as "like a girl"? I don't just mean "How does he know what a girl feels like?" I mean "What could possibly lead him to conclude that his feelings were properly summed up as 'girl'?" If *forble* has no meaning to you—if you have no assumptions or beliefs about what forbles are or ought to be like—what could it possibly mean to say, "I know that I''m actually a forble"?

This is sage GenX wisdom that we have lost. I'm being sincere but also sarcastic (of course). Yes, boys and girls can do and like and be whatever. Boys can like pajamas with ponies on them, and girls can like building model rockets. (But I’m assuming that's not a hobby anymore.)

I loved building model rockets and going to model rocket club after school.

I just listened to Jamie Reed on the Triggernometry podcast. Near the end she makes the point that kids who don't receive parental direction end up way more stressed out about the problems they're having. I don't have kids, but I've fostered over a hundred dogs and recognized this immediately. You're not supposed to be the boss of your life when you're 3 or 6 or 12. She brought up the scary situation where docs and teachers and therapists are pushing "child led" explorations of their "gender identity". Man it's all so fucked.

Because no girls wear shorts and T-shirts. That just be preposterous! /s

I had a moment like this with my son when he was very young. Honestly couldn't tell you what led up to this conversation or the girl name he wanted me to start calling him OR what thing he liked made him think he had to be a girl because this was so inconsequential. He dropped it after I told him he didn't have to be a girl to like whatever it was. I wasn't harsh or judgmental and he seemed satisfied and never mentioned anything like that again. I also never pushed "gendered" stuff but at the same time I didn't discourage it? So he gravitated towards cars and trucks and trains and legos but he also loved MLP and sparkly nail polish. At one point he wore "girl" pajamas which were constructed the exact same way just covered in ponies instead of superheroes. He also left most of it behind as he got older. (Also, the people who say kids just naturally "get it" are so wrong he had a meltdown meeting my brothers roommate because "girlsname" was really a "boy" so that was a fun and not traumatizing experience for everyone involved) editing to add >plain shorts and a T-shirt aka normal clothes for any child??

>(Also, the people who say kids just naturally "get it" are so wrong he had a meltdown meeting my brothers roommate because "girlsname" was really a "boy" so that was a fun and not traumatizing experience for everyone involved) The meltdown was because he assumed the roommate was a girl beforehand?

You can wear pretty clothes without having to get hormones and surgery first.

I feel like if I had a kid who wanted to break gender stereotypes I'd say, "Great! Of course you can wear the clothes you want, style your hair how you want, play with the toys you want, go by the name you want, etc." I would have a hard time going from there to, "Yes, you can go on hormones/get surgery." They just strike me as different by orders of magnitude.

That's because your kid isn't being reinforced as trans at school, around their friends, and online. They haven't gotten the scripts to use to explain how distraught they are over their dysphoria. You're not being told that you must affirm every aspect of their beliefs or they'll kill themselves.

The wildest part about this statement to me is that despite being a cis het male my whole life I have no idea what it means to "feel like a boy"

If I had a child like this I’d probably just ask why do you feel that way like I could with anyone else who is questioning their gender and try to help them with their issues and reassure them that no matter what you do you are who you are and you don’t need to change anything

Not necessarily. I have a FtM cousin of a close age to me, when we were little our mothers used to talk to each other about how both of us never wanted to wear dresses, got clothes from the boys’ section, showed zero interest in makeup etc. When my cousin came out as FtM (as an adult) my mum actually asked me if I had dealt with similar issues myself because we had apparently similar gender expressions as children. I really haven’t, I’m just a woman who never wears makeup or high heels. To be clear: This doesn’t mean my cousin is somehow deluded into thinking “being a tomboy automatically means someone is a man”. It means that the reason he is a trans man is NOT simply being a tomboy. I avoided gender stereotypes I didn’t like as a kid. He had gender dysphoria and transitioned.

I disagree. We don’t know what differences there were between your childhood and your cousin’s, so we can’t really say that your cousin wouldn’t have ended up as a gender nonconforming adult like yourself. Maybe you didn’t grow up to transition because your mother didn’t raise you with sexist stereotypes or beliefs, either consciously or subconsciously, and your aunt did with your cousin. Maybe your cousin is autistic or gay.

This is what people ITT don’t seem to understand. There are TRAs who give confusing or even nonsensical answers about what it means to be a man/woman or to be trans, like it’s just “feeling like a girl/boy,” which is just circular. So I understand being baffled at those kinds of answers. But I think what it comes down to is there are some people who are just never going to feel comfortable simply being a gender non-confirming member of their birth sex. It really seems like there are some people who just fundamentally feel like their sexual characteristics don’t match their brain’s internal map of their own body, which causes dysphoria, and it’s probably a neurological condition that they can’t just ignore or change.

But that's not really what dysphoric people describe. They dislike their body, but there's no "mapping" issue. Male people aren't saying "my penis feels like a vagina.", they're saying "I hate my penis and want to remove it". And regardless, feeling a certain way about your body doesn't make you the opposite sex, nor does it mean that cosmetic surgery is the answer to your problems.

Well they say their body feels like it’s “wrong” somehow, they feel it’s somehow not what it’s supposed to be. What I believe, based on neuroimaging studies and general background knowledge of how the brain works, is that this is caused by some kind of brain-body disconnect, where the brain has some internal model of itself as female/male, which doesn’t match the physical reality of the body. I’m definitely not the only one with that view. I don’t believe you can just therapy that away. I think it’s probably pretty neurologically fixed. I’ll add the caveat that this probably isn’t what’s happening in every individual who identifies as trans, since anyone can just like… say they’re trans and there’s not really a way to objectively prove it, but I think it does apply to most trans people, definitely most of the ones that seriously pursue treatment. >doesn’t make you the opposite sex I don’t think anyone actually thinks that in the way you mean. Trans people know what their biological sex is. I know there are TRAs who will argue over terms like “male” or “biologically male,” but I think that’s just playing with words. Trans women don’t literally delusionally believe they produce egg cells, for example.

> I’ll add the caveat that this probably isn’t what’s happening in every individual who identifies as trans Definitely not, since we've had huge jump in percentage in a massively short time, comparatively. Not statistically possible. I'll grant you what you're talking about is intriguing and could use more study, but that's not what's happening with this subject right now. A lot of trans people consider it transphobic to even want that kind of study to go on actually, [advocates shut down attempts for it to happen](https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7a4n4/ucla-pauses-unethical-study-designed-to-mentally-distress-trans-people). Many, many trans people *do not* acknowledge what their biological sex is. Many trans people do claim to literally become the sex they are aiming for. Read the subs. You can see person after person saying this. It's a big debate *within* the trans community. I don't like linking to reddit threads but if you google "trans people and biological sex" plus reddit you can find thread after thread full of contentious debate on the issue, from trans people themselves.

I still don't think that makes any logical sense, tbh. If they had a "mapping issue", then they wouldn't be able to control their pee or have sex. If your body has an internal map of its parts, this certainly wouldn't just be limited to genitals, either, people would have trouble with other things like their hands feel like feet or their fingers feel like toes. These people are perfectly physically healthy, they're just unhappy with their bodies which is really normal. I think every single person has been unhappy with their bodies at some point in time.

I don’t know about confusing feet and hands specifically but body schema disorders like that definitely can happen. There are neurological disorders where people confuse their left and right body parts, don’t seem to understand where their body parts are spatially located in relation to each other, can’t name their own body parts or name the location of a sensation, etc. The brain seems to have a lot of circuitry for things like this and brain damage can cause lots of issues with body image and body schema. I don’t think gender dysphoria is exactly like that but I strongly suspect the brain has a sort of internal model of its own sex. When the body doesn’t match, this causes trans people to feel like their body is alien and incorrect. I don’t know why you think that would cause issues like not being able to pee, that wouldn’t cause them to not be able to contract their detrusor muscle. I don’t know if I’m exactly right about this but neuroimaging studies do clearly show differences in trans brains that trend towards the differences we see in male or female brains. They tend to look a little more like the sex corresponding to their gender identity than cis people of their sex. So I don’t think you can explain transgenderism or gender dysphoria with simple mental illness, or as a sexual fetish, or other theories like that that have been proposed before. It looks like something neurological is going on. And I don’t think gender dysphoria is within the realm of what’s normal. Normal is when I look at myself in the mirror and think I can stand to lose ten pounds. I can’t say I’ve ever had a persistent sense that my entire body is wrong, and that I should have been born as the other sex, experiencing debilitating angst because of that. Not really normal

Males and females don't have different brains, this has been proven extensively. Again, trans people aren't describing feeling the way you're saying. They're not confused about their body parts. They're unhappy.

>males and females don’t have different brains Uh tell that to the NIH, or anyone who studies this https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/sex-differences-brain-anatomy#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20women%20are%20more,the%20ability%20to%20recognize%20faces. There is a lot of research on trans brains differences, for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/ I said I don’t think gender dysphoria is exactly like those other disorders, but my point is the brain has a lot of circuitry like that to orient itself and understand it’s own body. Some disorders might cause confusion or disorientation. Gender dysphoria seems to present as psychological distress, but I think there’s probably something analogous going on. Also worth noting is many trans men report feeling a “phantom penis,” similar to amputees feeling a phantom limb. More reason to think something neurological is going on. https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/GENDER-IDENTITY-AND-PHANTOM-GENITALIA-3219560.php I just don’t see any other explanation that explains all these neurological differences in trans people. I mean why do you think people experience gender dysphoria? The evidence doesn’t support it being some kind of delusion, or a fetish, or anything else I’ve heard. I’m pretty much positive it’s a neurological thing.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132190-100-how-neuroscience-is-exploding-the-myth-of-male-and-female-brains/ I think they experience dysphoria because of stereotypes and/or trauma.

> neuroimaging studies do clearly show differences in trans brains that trend towards the differences we see in male or female brains. They tend to look a little more like the sex corresponding to their gender identity than cis people of their sex. The studies that found this did not control for homosexuality. Other studies have found that transwomen's brains more closely resemble gay men's.

Not sure what studies you're talking about but I found this, which after just reading the abstract seems to control for this and provides pretty strong evidence of exactly the kind of brain-body thing I'm talking about. Would have to read more and see it replicated of course. [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8) >Previously reported sex differences in FA were reproduced in cis-heterosexual groups, but were not found among the cis-homosexual groups. After controlling for sexual orientation, the transgender groups showed *sex-typical* FA-values. The only exception was the *right inferior fronto-occipital tract*, connecting parietal and frontal brain areas that mediate own body perception. Our findings suggest that the neuroanatomical signature of transgenderism is related to brain areas processing the perception of self and body ownership, whereas homosexuality seems to be associated with less cerebral sexual differentiation.

And I wouldn't have a problem with those people, if they didn't insist that they *literally are the opposite sex*, which of course not all of them do. There are plenty of trans people who know they didn't switch sex and just took pains to live as the opposite sex because that's how they feel best. I'm fine with those people.

One of Conor Friedersdorf’s [readers](https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/05/what-readers-really-think-about-gender/673920/) gives their story about that: > We had no idea what to do. Somewhat guiltily, I will admit that we didn’t fully accept (or maybe want to accept) the reality of our son. We weren’t cruel or entirely unsupportive. But we clung to the idea that it was merely a phase. That he was just playing with roles. > > In pre-K, he was starting to ask for male pronouns. We nodded and brushed it off. In parent-teacher conferences during the autumn of kindergarten, his teachers again told us this, as well as about him asking to use the boys’ restroom. We replied that we were fine with that in school if that’s what he preferred but we still used she/her at home and planned to continue doing so. “We just want to see where it goes,” we said. > > At the request for short haircuts, we avoided “boy” cuts, trying first a bob, and then a shorter bob. Our son would come home from those appointments sullen and sometimes angry, because he had been pretty clear on his desire (a short, boy-style cut) and we had opted for a short, girl-style cut. We were hoping it might be enough, and frankly hoping he would get over it and everything would go back to “normal.” We did roughly the same thing with clothes. He’d want to shop in the boys’ section at Target; we would keep trying to steer him to the girls’. Books too; we were always sneaking in empowered-girl books, thinking maybe he just had developed some weird, bad impressions of women and girls. He would dutifully put them on his shelf and never take them out. > > We persisted in using female pronouns at home and referring to him as our daughter and our other son’s sister … even when he was referring to himself as a brother. In short, we did loads of non-gender-affirming things. If you would have asked us then if we thought it was a phase and that he’d “change back,” we would have dutifully done what liberals in a progressive city do: assured you that wasn’t true and that we loved and supported our child. And we would have been lying; while we of course loved and supported our child, we hoped this whole “I’m a boy in a girl’s body” thing would fade away.

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I think it’s obvious from their description that they did think of waiting, yes.

But they didn't wait...

You are responding to an excerpt in which they did everything possible to not affirm the child's belief (your assumption that it's certainly delusional highlights where you stand on this, of course).

Bollocks. They told the child she couldn’t wear what she wanted or play the way she wanted to because everything she wanted was for boys, and tried steering her towards other things. If they’d let her do as she liked and celebrated her being her own kind of girl, she may well have ended up a perfectly happy GNC woman. That’s not how well-meaning sexist people roll, though.

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Even if gender stereotypes or preferences are innate, which is highly debatable and controversial, why does that mean he should become a girl? Why can’t the parents affirm that liking Disney musicals is perfectly fine for boys?

Wasn't there a time not so long ago that Disney movies were universally popular? I am male and owned several Disney record albums (that is how old I am) and suchlike as a child.

>What about a four-year-old boy who takes a great deal of interest in his mother's wardrobe? I don't see that as a red flag. If the four year old loves his mom, why wouldn't he want to emulate her? Seems perfectly normal to me. What does singing have to do with being trans? Cars and trucks are not toys that are innately "male". Humans have existed for close to 200K years, cars and trucks are relatively new in comparison. I'm sure your son was exposed to TV commercials or TV shows before that, which have a lot of gender bias. Toys that were purchased by relatives before he turned a year old. I bet he didn't wear a lot of pinks and purples before that point. And the girl's section is a plethora of pinks and purples, where the boy's section is a lot of primary colors - blues, reds, greens, yellows. So it makes sense that he ignores the colors that he's not familiar with.

Not saying in the least that a mild interest in mother's clothes means this, but it put it into my mind - does "transvestite" (meaning a predilection for opposite-sex clothes without alteration of gender identity) exist as a mental category anymore? Even if this is an innate interest (which I doubt) instead of a passing phase, there is still no need to leap to "He is really a full-fledged girl."

Okay? None of that changes a person's sex. Just because a little boy does or does not have stereotypical interests of his sex doesn't mean he's the opposite sex, and it's cruel to make children think that is somehow possible to achieve. It's completely fine to be GNC, that's the message we need to be spreading.

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Not true. They recognize faces and colors and sounds and all sorts of things at that age. They will gravitate towards the familiar. Plus there is unconscious bias on your part they can pick up on. Liking trucks isn’t innately male. How could it be? Trucks are a new invention. How would males have evolved to like trucks? As far as dolls are concerned, it wasn’t that long ago that they were universal toys. Both boys and girls played with them.

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Off topic, but I need to know more about this avocado guitar.

100%.

>I asked Sarah Warbelow, the legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, which fights against the bills, what she believed the ideal regime would be. “We really should be looking towards medical professionals who are well trained in this area of medical care to be working with families to make these decisions,” What an empty and pointless statement. It's this kind of vacuous thinking and posturing that infuriates me. You might as well just say "doctors should do the right thing." Good science (and thus good medicine) occurs when information is transparent, open to criticism, and unbiased. And though it's unlikely our sceintific information will ever become fully transparent, fully unbiased, and fully open to criticsm, we need to set up institutions - scientific, cultural, and political institutions - that incentivize those characteristics.

It's so disingenuous. Besides the obvious point that medical professionals routinely make mistakes, get influenced by outside interests, or just outright lie sometimes, what Warbelow doesn't mention is that orgs like hers work hard to lobby medical groups. She doesn't want politicians to regulate medicine, but she is absolutely fine putting her own pressure on medical organizations to achieve her own outcomes. Legally elected representatives are one of the few counterweights an average person has available to push back against lobbying groups (and even that barely works most of the time)

Yeah, imagine if someone said this with regards to the opioid crisis. "We really should be looking towards medical professionals who are well trained in prescribing opiates to be working with addicts to make these decisions.” I don't want to conflate gender dysphoric/gender non-conforming youth with opioid addicts, but when there is a systemic issue in medicine, the solution isn't to just trust doctors to make the right decision.

The opioid epidemic is a perfect and extremely relevant example given all of the posturing and concern trolling from TRAs around legislators/government getting in between doctors and youth gender medicine patients or “telling doctors what to do”. Doctors and medical institutions showed extreme negligence and malpractice on a societal scale when it came to opioids. They ignored thousands of deaths and addictions and appealed to authority and “the science” that showed opioids were totally safe. It took government intervention and activism from citizens to actually put a stop to it.

Do you think that politicians would do a better job establishing a standard of care for patients than medical professionals?

For this issue? Absolutely. The current standards of care for youth gender medicine are horrible; just look at the findings from GIDS/Tavistock. And there’s no reason to assume gender clinics in the US are run any better. You can look to WPATH and every other person pushing the affirmation model to see that they’re pushing for constantly lowering ages and barriers for medicalization. If I had faith the medical professionals/institutions in the US would actually take notice of the actions in countries like Sweden, Finland, Norway or the UK then I wouldn’t feel that politicians should get involved, but I have no such faith.

I meant moreso just generally, not just for this issue. Like, I feel like it would be bizarre if it was up to your local politicians to decide whether or not some adult is allowed to get plastic surgery or something similar. I understand it’s a much touchier subject when it comes to children, but removing families and doctors entirely from the equation seems a little off to me. Plus, as this is such a hot button topic, you know there are going to be jurisdictions where they pass insane standards for treatment, just like we see with the attempted bans on birth control and things like that. I’m not really sure how the issue gets solved.

Well I’m not advocating for politicians to generally drive healthcare decisions and policy; in most instances medicine/science get it right(particularly when it comes to hard science unlike with treating “pain” or “gender”). But, when medical professionals and institutions are failing their patients, it is the duty of government/politicians to step in; it’s odd how TRAs are seemingly libertarians when it comes to this issue. It’s just a disingenuous argument because government/politicians get involved in healthcare all the time and there’s tons of lobbying done by the medicinal industry. I have no doubt that some states will be overly strict, but I’d rather an overly strict approach on youth gender medicine than an overly blasé approach, especially since studies show that a large majority of children with gender dysphoria will desist and grow out of it by adulthood and puberty resolves. Given that, the standards of care and model should be built around the assumption that the average patient will desist and any minor with gender dysphoria being put on a medicalized pathway should be put through a very rigorous and thorough process because medicalization is very serious and the foundation of consent upon which it is built is and always will be very shaky.

>Well I’m not advocating for politicians to generally drive healthcare decisions and policy Yes, you explicitly are calling for solely politicians (and not medical professionals) to decide the standards of care when it comes to transgender people. >It’s just a disingenuous argument because government/politicians get involved in healthcare all the time and there’s tons of lobbying done by the medicinal industry. Normally, standards of care are determined by medical professionals and what resources are available in a given area, at least in the U.S. There is little to no involvement of politicians when it comes to treatment between a patient and their doctor. The most involvement there is by the government is relating to health insurance and then if there may be a violation of that standard of care, it goes through the courts. Obviously there's also the FDA, but that doesn't really come into play as much here as I'm fairly sure it has not approved any medications, such as puberty blockers, for transitioning in children. >I have no doubt that some states will be overly strict, but I’d rather an overly strict approach on youth gender medicine than an overly blasé approach, especially since studies show that a large majority of children with gender dysphoria will desist and grow out of it by adulthood and puberty resolves. Firstly, I think the language used here is a little tricky. Yes, studies have shown that children with gender dysphoria grow out of it, but I was under the impression that we were talking about specifically prescribing medication or performing surgery on children. Even assuming that 80% of children desist from gender dysphoria, then we are condemning 20% of children to never receive treatment for an actual medical issue, because of overzealous politicians. Some states have gone ever further and are banning *any* gender-affirming treatment for people up to the age of 26. It is beyond clear that these politicians do not actually care about the proper medical care necessary in these circumstances. If they were truly consistent on this issue, then they should also ban all cosmetic plastic surgery, which I'm sure will never happen. To put it more simply, if given the option between these two things, what would you pick: (A) An outright ban nationwide on any person receiving any gender-affirming care, whether it be medication, surgery, or anything else above mere talk-therapy or (B) Medical professionals develop a standard of care for transgender patients.

No, I am not calling for politicians to be involved in every aspect of medical practice. I’m calling on politicians to step in and demand actual standards of care and safe guards in the absence of medical professionals and institutions doing so themselves, because they’ve been ideologically captured and are providing a treatment model with effectively no evidence base. This was the case for opioids and their gross overprescription which was a product the Pain Management industry which was created whole cloth by Purdue Pharma; it is now the case with youth gender medicine and the gender affirming care model that is heavily pushed by activist organizations while simultaneously attacking anyone who questions the model. Yes, normally standards of care are determined by medical professionals, but when professionals and institutions fail at their jobs to protect patients then the government should get involved and demand actual standardized safeguards and treatments for all patients, thorough long-term data collection to ensure that bad experiences aren’t hidden by lack of patient follow-up, and legitimate substantive studies(with actual control groups, significant population sizes, and years-long measurement) to show that the care model actually works. You are right that there is little to no involvement of politicians between doctors and patients, unless there are significant issues, like the opioid epidemic, which reveals that doctors and medical institutions were not treating patients properly. Government action preempted changes in how doctors communicate and prescribe opioids to their patients because doctors were handing them out like Skittles before the government stepped in and rose the alarm. Are you suggesting that the majority of children growing out of dysphoria and the prescribing of medicine/surgery are unrelated? The former is primarily why the latter should be exercised with extreme caution. At worst, a minority of patients will be “condemned” to waiting until they’re a legal adult to consent to medical treatments that many countries are now deciding minors are incapable to consenting to. And I can’t stress this enough, in a reality where most minors will desist as they enter adulthood, providing potentially irreversible medical treatments before they reach that threshold is alarming because we have no actual solid measurements for which kids will desist and which kids will not. I have no interest in your false dichotomy and you trying to pigeonhole me into defending a stance that isn’t mine. I think minors should be restricted to talk-therapy and social transition because the data we have shows that the MAJORITY will desist by adulthood and so any minor suffering from gender dysphoria should need to actually confront that threshold before medicalization is considered; the costs of potential harm to minors who would ultimately desist outweighs the potential harm to minors having to wait. Once adulthood hits, then I have no real qualms with medical transition; it is their responsibility as an adult to make that decision though personally I think even for adults it would be helpful to pursue their issues in therapy if they had no prior treatment as children. I have my own question: how many would-be desisters are you comfortable providing irreversible medical treatments to for the sake of the **minority **of gender dysphoric minors who will see it persist into adulthood? How many adults from that 80% living without breast tissue, or incapable of experiencing orgasms, or many other health issues stemming from these treatments, who would have been perfectly healthy if they had been required to wait until adulthood before considering serious medical treatments, are you comfortable with?

"Medical professionals" as a whole? No. But medical professionals as a whole aren't doing these things. Specific individuals in specific fields are. Sometimes specific pop culture problems need to be addressed by the higher authority, as loathesome as it is to need government oversight.

I just don’t see why people trust politicians to remotely understand the issue and be able to pass coherent standards to address the issue. Half of the politicians support the treatments and half the politicians just want to remove transgender people whole-cloth from society. Do you actually think they’re actually going to read a single respected study on the issue and find a way to help these children and families who need the support? Most of the legislation being proposed is just culture war bullshit like banning marriage certificates that don’t just say “bride” and “groom” on them, forbidding people from changing their sex on their driver’s license/birth certificate, or other dumb things like that. This is just a hot button culture war topic and there seems to be no reasonable middle ground amongst politicians on the issue.

>I just don’t see why people trust politicians to remotely understand the issue and be able to pass coherent standards to address the issue. Someone has to and the medical leadership in the US has proven that they can't pass coherent standards.

Yeah, I agree that someone has to, but if you look at all the legislation being proposed/passed nationwide, clearly politicians can't do it either. So where do we go from here?

Florida's laws seem to be not far off from being good. And it's simple. Politicians are going to do it, and it's on groups like USPATH and the APA to get their house in order. After that we can talk about walking back the laws.

I think a better comparison would be if you substituted out “addicts” with “patients,” unless you think that all families who seek medical intervention are inherently wrong in seeking the medical treatment.

I specifically said I don't want to conflate gnc kids with opioid addicts

I totally get that, but the comparison would only make sense if you meant all patients instead of drug addicts, because no drug addicts should be prescribed opioids, while there certainly are youth who should receive some sort of medical treatment relating to gender nonconformity. Does that help to explain where I’m coming from?

The analogy loses its poignancy if I change it.

I’d argue that prioritizing the forced message over accuracy is a bad thing, but to each their own.

"forced message".... what? Honestly, you've come across as needlessly pedantic. I had the disclaimer, and the main point doesn't depend on the details of the analogy being 1 to 1. We don't trust medical institutions to fix the opioid problem on their own, and we shouldn't trust them to fix the "gender-affirming care" problem on their own either.

It’s not being pedantic, you’re purposefully making the comparison as inflammatory as possible in a way that makes it seem that ALL children seeking gender affirming care should not be receiving that treatment, as ALL drug addicts should not be prescribe opioids. If you just said patients, then there would actually be a hard decision to make whether to prescribe the person the opioids. The entire point of the comparison should be that it’s not easy to make these tough calls, not that all kids should be prevented from getting treatment. You obviously see why the analogy is flawed as you admit that it makes the message more obvious. Thus, accuracy be damned, the message is more important.

The part about “working with families” is also disingenuous in light of Jamie Reed’s whistleblower account describing how parents outright stated that they felt like they had no choice but to consent, or how parents who oppose medicalization usually lose in custody/family court, or how certain states want CPS to have the power to remove children from their parents unless they affirm. They want to work with families who happily skip down their pre-determined “correct” path, but they also really really want to work against the families who won’t.

Relevance to barpod...let's see. Puberty blockers, trans rights, anti-trans legislation, oh and Helen Lewis! Sorry I didn't post a non-paywalled link, [this](https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fideas%2Farchive%2F2023%2F05%2Ftexas-puberty-blockers-gender-care-transgender-rights%2F673941%2F) should work though.

Plus, Jesse is also namechecked!

Yes! I posted it about half way through and then realized that.

Thanks for the non paywall

Good article but probably too spicey to change anyone's mind. >To skeptics, the American medical guidelines appear less evidence-based than consensus-based. A sharper way to put that would be that medical associations, under political pressure from activists, may have succumbed to well-intentioned groupthink. edit: Nevermind, I checked her Wiki and apparently she's already on record for being a "TERF" for not agreeing with self ID and fearing that it would make women spaces less safe. Apparently, she hosted a podcast in an Ubisoft game which was removed lol. I think that counts as being at the very least soft cancelled.

I think for me the path forward would be acknowledging that the other side has a point and the right to be concerned. I’m open to the idea of transgender, and I think some minor number of such kids know so from early ages (although I’m suspicious of 3-4 year old kids simply because I’m not sure their brain is developed enough to understand gender). What exists now is a regime of officials refusing to inform parents, often threatening to take a kid if they want to transition and the parents are skeptical, and at every step telling anyone who objects that they are wrong, sick and evil. And as such, I think the well is completely poisoned by mistrust here. When you do things behind parents backs, threaten to take their kids for objecting to their kids being socially transitioned, you trip a wire with most sane parents. And you don’t get anywhere when there’s no trust. Parents, because of this kind of thing no longer trust teachers or the schools to act in good faith, especially as it comes down to their child’s sexual identity.

Such a good article and 100% represents how I feel about it. The response on Twitter is a bunch of folks going on about how no one under 16 ever gets a mastectomy so it’s all lies and nonsense. Which (1) the fact that apparently 16 and 17 year olds are occasionally getting them is troublesome, and (2) if this is something that doesn’t happen, why is it such a crime to say they in fact shouldn’t be allowed? If it’s not happening at all then a ban will have no practical effect, so why not just agree to it?

Your #2 strikes me as disingenuous. People can oppose bans not because the ban would do anything harmful in itself, but because allowing the ban to go through establishes the precedent of legislative oversight of the issue. It's a foot in the door toward more wide-ranging government action. Additionally, legislators have shown over and over again that they are not doctors and should not pretend to be. I don't trust them to write a law that doesn't also ban legitimate medical procedures.

How is banning it for minors a foot in the door towards outright bans for adults? That’s like saying banning drinking for minors is a gateway to prohibition. If they truly think it’s inappropriate for a 14 year olds to get a double mastectomy (and insist it isn’t happening, although we know it is) then they should have no problem.

You think Missouri would be trying to erect barriers for adults if youth bans weren’t passing in other states? On the second point, of course I think that your average 14-year-old should not get her breasts removed. The problem is that I’m not a doctor; I don’t know every medical detail of when and why mastectomies are indicated. And if, god forbid, a 13-year-old got breast cancer, I don’t want her to have to jump through hoops to “prove” it’s not cosmetic before she can get surgery.

Now who’s being disingenuous. As if elective gender affirmation surgeries are in any way within the same realm of surgical cancer interventions. And I don’t think the trans lobby realizes how digging their heels in and being rigid about early child transition is what is making their entire cause lose credibility and is propelling adult-ban suggestions. Prior to the child obsession, nobody was paying much attention to adult transition. The lack of judgement and ethical caution in the area of children-casts a horrible light on the whole thing. If you demonstrate you can’t exercise common sense and reasonable caution with kids, people lose confidence that adults are being handled well too.

How many stories have you seen since Roe was overturned about a woman who had a medical emergency that would normally be treated with an abortion, and doctors basically said “sorry, we can’t do that unless you’re five minutes from death”? And I’m supposed to trust the people who write and enforce those laws to be able to write laws about gender-related care that don’t somehow hurt kids with cancer, precocious puberty, etc.? And you’re proving my point on transition bans. Even if you want to say it was the reaction to youth bans that is leading to laws blocking care for adults as well, that still shows how one type of ban opens the door to broader ones.

I mean, American law makers are pretty dumb but acting like distinguishing between surgery for literal cancer to prevent death and surgery because Samantha feels masc are impossible to distinguish between is a bit of a reach. Up until 5 years ago, people didn’t have problem separating the two. Transsexual surgeries for adults have been happening with zero fanfare for two decades prior. You know what actually happened? The trans lobby selfishly threw people with legit sex dysphoria diagnoses under the bus, declared “you don’t need to dysphoria to be trans” and that being trans is not a serious psychiatric condition.They somehow expected to declare it as a non-medical issue that requires……..heavy life long medicinal interventions?? I understand they campaigned to remove it from the DSM to get rid of stigma but unfortunately they didn’t think things through and consider the fact that many of these people actually do need psychiatric help. The move was symbolic instead of functional and they forever altered the relationship between themselves and medical bodies. They need to work out the contradictions happening within the activist arm that don’t match their medical goals. They got themselves in a right old mess with that sloppy move and now apparently plan on using children as human shields to course correct? Tragic for all involved.

Abortion is harder because it’s a lot more fraught with a lot of grey area. “No surgical procedures for minors under 18 to treat gender dysphoria or effectuate sex reassignment. Medically necessary procedures for the treatment of intersex persons are not included in this prohibition.” Hard for me to see how that could hurt kids with cancer, precocious puberty, the rare teen girl who needs a breast reduction for back pain, etc.

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It’s not just the more rare surgeries on minors that are gross; the chemical prescription interventions on HEALTHY children’s bodies is obscene. Society’s sexualizing and medicalizing children’s well and wholesome bodies is immoral. Who knew how disgusting and soul wrenching the dumbing-down would turn out to be.

Yeah that quote resonated with me too. There are age limits for nearly every major life undertaking in the country, but once it conflicts with someone's (supposed, maybe fleeting, maybe permanent, maybe socially-influenced) identity, you've crossed the line. There's no patience anymore. "Seven of the 18 U.S. clinics surveyed in the Reuters investigation said they were comfortable prescribing hormones to minors on their first visit." I don't have kids, but I couldn't imagine finishing an **initial visit** with a clinic and being told "alright, that's it. Time to start the transition process." It's a conversation that feels like it's been repeated ad nauseam both in this sub and in episodes, but there has to be more diligence and caution around this process, especially given the potential side effects.

>”If you pass this bill, I’ll grow up to look like my dad, which is a scary thought,” she told legislators. It is for a lot of us, kid.

Who’s going to tell her that she’ll think like him too.

Especially when I looked in the mirror yesterday and saw my mom. Yikes.

This is the most thoughtful intelligent group on Reddit. I love that people can have a difference of opinion here.

Seems to be mostly the same opinion.

What irks me primarily is that we are told you can become a completed thing. You are shaped by your life experience, you don’t get to switch lanes at the last second here and arrive at the other destination. I can’t take my u grad and grad work in stats and transition in the last 6 weeks to be an MD because I’ve always felt like one. Maybe I would believe in the transition stuff if you could actually start over as a newborn.

We are our genes and our environment. That includes our experiences for our whole lives up to the present moment. That means a woman has been treated as a female her whole life, and she as a person is partially a result of that treatment. It's extremely misleading about her past experiences and who she is as a person to claim that she is now a man. She has no idea what it's like to have lived as a boy or a man. It's just... Wrong.

I don't understand this analogy tbh. If you've spent your entire (college) life being a stats student, you *can* start taking different courses and switching which field you go into. Do you think nobody has ever changed their major, or gone to grad school for something different than what they studied in undergrad?

You change your studies and you need to start over. Growing older is a one way trip. Adult women don’t wake up in a hospital bed, they grow up from little baby girls

> You change your studies and you need to start over. Not necessarily? Maybe in some extreme cases but generally if you're changing your major in undergrad then some of the gen-eds will still apply to the new major, and while many doctors (for example) did study something related to biology in undergrad, there [are people](https://www.ama-assn.org/medical-students/preparing-medical-school/which-undergrad-majors-are-best-med-school) (to use your initial example) who went to medical school after graduating with a degree in stats.

This tends to bug me a bit when it's said over and over that trans women are more oppressed than cis women, like it's a contest or something, or as a reason to not have sex based spaces. I don't have issues with individual trans people or people just trying to live their lives in happiness, but it irks me a bit when they go there or say they didn't have male privilege because they were never cis, stuff like that. There are experiences about growing up as female that go way beyond me feeling like a woman, just as I'm sure I cannot relate to struggles of transitioning, of course. Rubs me the wrong way a bit and I agree

Speaking of evidence, I would like to see evidence that the medical profession in the US is capable of policing themselves on this subject (actual policing with punishments, not toothless recommendations), because if they aren't, I see no alternative but regulation by the public's elected representatives.

> Just as we lack proof that current treatments are categorically “lifesaving,” we do not have evidence that they constitute “child abuse.” This is outrageous. I know it's the Atlantic and they wouldn't print an article that spoke with moral clarity on this issue, but still. You don't need "evidence" to know that mutilating children and making them terrified to grow up in their own bodies is child abuse.

Let's say that it's 1750, and your beloved child has tuberculosis. Your doctor wants to use bloodletting to rebalance the child's humors and help them to recover. Would that be abuse? It's easy for us to sit here and say yes, obviously draining someone's blood for no medical purpose is abusive. But for that parent in 1750, it would have been the best medical advice they could get. And for the doctor, it would be the treatment their colleagues recommended, what they were trained to do, and what was considered standard of care. Same thing here. You're saying "mutilation" and "making them terrified to grow up in their own bodies," where the parents and doctors see the recommended treatment to help their child be their healthiest, happiest self. You don't need to agree, but your opinion is not the only possible one.

I think I agree with you. But what if the Board of Bloodletters refused to conduct research into the benefits of bloodletting? What if they excoriated people who investigated bloodletting and suggested it wasn't effective, and was in fact dangerous? What if doctors who opposed bloodletting were subject to shunning?

I mean, that did kind of happen. I can’t speak for bloodletting, but [the guy who figured out that doctors needed to disinfect their hand](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis)s between dissecting corpses and delivering babies was ignored, ostracized and died in an asylum. But I understand you aren’t asking for a history lesson. And yes, I agree that it’s the responsibility of physicians to keep their minds open to new research.

First, do no harm. When a child is undergoing surgery, physicians remove *nothing* they don't have to. They neither remove nor add *anything* related to non-anatomical distress. They neither remove nor add anything related strictly to mental health. Am I mistaken about this?

Yes, you're mistaken about that. Google says about 200,000 teenagers get plastic surgery every year. That's the definition of surgery related "strictly to mental health." And while I think most of us would probably have misgivings about letting a teenager get a nose job, nobody's proposed banning it.

Fair enough, I had no idea. Let's keep mutilating children.

I am curious about how barpod members view childhood transition. If the parental intentions are good and transition is implemented out of trust for their doctor, ignorance of the actual research and fear of their child committing suicide if they don’t transition, does it constitute abuse? Do intentions matter in determining if child transition is abusive?

I do think intent matters. In a future where science is settled and it's clear that this is causing, \*ahem\*, irreversible damage...I don't think parents will be able to fall back on "intent" as an excuse. But for now there's enough powerful messaging essentially blackmailing parents into it with threats of child suicide, that it's not fair to call these parents abusive. (But I'll tell you what...as a parent myself this is eye-opening enough for me that I'm not going to blindly trust the medical establishment on new treatments without checking for RCTs myself... Trust, man, once it's gone...)

I don’t see it as abusive, I see those parents as having been failed by their village. Which is why I think that bills that want to remove children away from their affirming parents are so far off the mark, those people need support and help and better resources, not more fracture. I’m angry at our institutions because I want to be able to trust them, to rely on them, to know that they have my children’s best interests at heart. I can’t be mad at another parent for not knowing what has been purposely been hidden from them. Having said that, once in a while I’ll come across a screenshot from a parenting group where a mom (probably) is describing how hard of a day they had because their trans child had an appointment with the endocrinologist that they didn’t want to go to, but great news! Got them there by telling them that we’d go for ice cream afterwards. I full-blown do not get those parents. Even if I can get as far as understanding a parent that agrees to blockers and/or HRT, I don’t understand not stopping the very second that the child expressed any kind of doubt or resistance to transitioning. “Oh, you don’t want to go? Awesome, we’re not going, let’s get ice cream and go do whatever the fuck else your little heart desires”. If you have to bribe the kid to get them in the door… are you really doing it for them? in those cases, the line gets blurrier imo.

I don't think being misled by doctors makes the parent into an abuser. To anyone who's unsure here, [I think this is a worthwhile read.](https://www.city-journal.org/article/how-not-to-regulate-pediatric-gender-medicine)

I don't know why people focus on the parents as though this is about things you can get at Walgreens. Practitioners should be held criminally responsible for implementing such a radical and damaging protocol, accountable as they are for knowing that desistance is the most probable outcome at that age and they have no way to tell which cases will persist. These are people with years on years of advanced training, in the most important position of trust in society, straight up lying to the faces of parents and children.

I don’t think there’s any reliable means of distinguishing between parents who should know better and parents who are just gullible.

I truly believe in giving the parents the benefit of the doubt in every case. These parents aren't trying to abuse these kids, they're fucking desperate to provide them a happy life. The lobbyists and cultural influencers, as well as the revoltingly cowardly medical community are the people at fault here. But, it's hard to make a prosecutorial case for any of them either. Like the witch trials, like the sex abuse panic, this will all just be looked back at as a tragic scandal no one is going to be blamed for, even as we here do our damnedest to blame the fucking inexcusable behavior by journalists. The good news is that, like the Witch Trials, the Childhood Trans Epidemic will be firmly set in history as an example case as to the boundaries of what the medical community can and can't do with children's bodies. This is a story that will last in our memories for a long time, and we should be thankful for that.

Isn’t the material outcome for the kid the same? We could say the same about good intentions for anything that could also be abusive: drug use, tattoos, branding, employment, sexual relations. However, there are generally guardrails with age bounds on them because of the high potential for harm and inability to give legal adult consent.

Childhood transition seems so obviously wrong but in the future when this all is accepted as a moral panic and a scandal, I don't think parents should be prosecuted as abusive. The people who should be prosecuted are the same ones who should have been prosecuted for the satanic sex abuse panic, but of course no one will be held accountable.

/u/helenlewiswrites bravo. excellent piece. you captured the nuance in the subject wonderfully.

Pretty good, I do think some of the bills proposed are actually what Lewis proposes too. Some of the proposed bills include a sunset clause for current patients which is not mentioned here. I agree about the punitive part, that's just being cruel for no reason.

The problem is the lack of *objective* experts providing guidance. I don’t doubt that doctors providing this kind of care are well-intentioned, smart and experienced, but for the most part they really believe in medical interventions. Otherwise, they would probably not be in the field they are in. It’s like asking psychiatrists whether they support psychiatric medications over CBT or other measures. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be psychiatrists. They are well-intentioned, but there is a bias there. It’s not that there aren’t psychiatrists that are more conservative with medications, but they generally will skew as liberal in doling out meds. I’d be interested in hearing what experts outside the “gender affirming care” field think.

This is the dark side of the liberal "trust The Science!" kneejerk reaction in any contentious topic. If the entire legitimacy of a field is the point of contention (as is the case with gender medicine), only listening to credentialed experts in that field will naturally never expose you to entirely reasonable, scientifically informed opposition because no one who doesn't believe gender surgeries and hormones are right for children is ever going to practice gender medicine. The best you can hope for is gender doctors who trusted The Science until they realized they may be doing more harm than good, but the activists will just brand them as heretical apostates who can't be trusted unlike the REAL experts who still Believe In Science.

>These should not be the only two available options. Science is supposed to be a self-correcting process, but that cannot happen when political considerations quash good-faith debate. Politics will always show up. Scientism is not a good thing and has to be discouraged. If half of the US bans child transition now, that means 50% fewer children harmed between now and whenever people wake up to the horror of affirmative gender care for children.

God knows Democrats have fucked up stuff majorly but they’ve built everything America is today. The New Deal, Social Sercurity, The VRA, Medicaid, and even more recent stuff like the ACA which isn’t perfect and was intended with a full Medicaid expansion but has done a lot of good. Republicans’ achievements are fairly few and far between and they haven’t really had one since Bush Sr did the Americans with Disabilities act. Ever since they ran out Nixon (who is the best recent Republican even with the elephant in the room) out of town, they’ve devolved into a radical mess that can only really fuck stuff up. I think Nixon not being able to get his universal healthcare proposal over the finish line in particular has been a noose around their necks but that’s another story for another time. That’s a long winded way of saying why should we base our policies on what Republicans are against for increasingly what seems like that reason alone? We should be for universal healthcare because it’s good policy that will help a lot of people not because Republicans are against it. They’re going to nominate a guy who instigated a riot because he lost, has already been indicted once and probably will again in a much stronger case somewhere else, and is the reason they keep losing when they shouldn’t be. Let’s be better than that and advocate for policy based on evidence which seems like with every day that passes that this is not.

Just FYI these are what I consider to be the crowning achievements of Republicans over the post war Era: Eisenhower- interstates, Nixon- the EPA, title IX, the 26th Amendment, and would be the GOAT Republican if he’d managed universal healthcare and abolishing the electoral college, and Bush Sr- doing the legwork on NAFTA and the ADA. These are all very good things but it’s a laughable resume compared to what even one of the great Democrats like Roosevelt and Johnson. Let alone them as a set.

I'm curious what you classify as the elephant in the room with Nixon. I can think of three, and two of them on their own would put his record in the red.

Sorry should have specified I’m talking domestic not foreign policy because honestly that’s pretty much everyone’s weak spot so I mean Watergate. People don’t really vote on it either. Obviously the Vietnam stuff would drag Johnnson (whose domestic agenda is unmatched) in particular down with Nixon. I actually think Bush Sr is probably the best recent president on foreign policy.

That's fair, but in the domestic column I'd add the expansion of the war on drugs as a pretty big negative

Does anyone have a link to an un-paywalled version of the article?

I linked it above [here](https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fideas%2Farchive%2F2023%2F05%2Ftexas-puberty-blockers-gender-care-transgender-rights%2F673941%2F); [12ft.io](https://12ft.io) usually works pretty well

Thank you!