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[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm not the best person to decide but even you with your years of experience, you're not trans (sorry if I'm mistaken), we have very different perspectives.

But I never said I was the best person to decide, either.

BTW, many of the doctors and psychiatrists who are best at treating a particular condition do not have that condition themselves. In fact, I'd say this is the case for most. For example, David Redwine MD is an ob-gyn who is incredibly compassionate towards women with chronic pelvic pain, and since the 1980s he's been a world leader in trying to come up with more effective treatments for endometriosis and other forms of female pelvic pain. But as a man, Redwine does not and cannot suffer from the conditions he treats, and he cares so deeply about.

IMCO, it's a fallacy, and a grave mistake, to think that the only people who possibly can have understanding, compassion, intelligence, insight, wisdom about a particular medical or psychiatric issue, social problem, life difficulty or set of life difficulties are those who have firsthand experience with it. Just because someone isn't trans doesn't necessarily mean s/he knows nothing about it and has nothing of value to contribute. Conversely, just because a person is trans doesn't automatically mean they know everything about everyone who suffers from sex and gender distress and should be taken as the ultimate authority "all things trans," including the best way to help children and tweens struggling with sex and gender distress - particularly those of the opposite sex.

I don't think humans will ever reach a stage when we "can swap out organs like bracelets." Having been around a lot of people with major, life-limiting illness and disabilities all my life, I am concerned about how casual so many young people today are about getting medical interventions that can impair health, diminish or destroy function, and shorten lifespans.

But my concern doesn't mean I want to control what you do with your own body. All I am asking for is that you consider for a moment the possibility that maybe you personally don't know what's best for all the kids in the world with sex and gender distress. I hope you will take some time to see that maybe, just maybe your personal experience as an "AMAB" adult transitioner does not automatically make you best placed to decide and dictate what "should" happen to tween and teen girls and young women who have developed sex and gender distress for reasons very different to you - and whose developing female bodies will be much more negatively impacted by taking exogenous testosterone than your body has been by taking exogenous estrogen.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don't think humans will ever reach a stage when we "can swap out organs like bracelets."

I do! Medical technology is incredible and always improving.

But my concern doesn't mean I want to control what you do with your own body

Neither should it mean you control other people's bodies either. That's what I've been saying all along, that people with gender dysphoria should make our own decisions regarding what to do about it.

Also I actually have a lot of ftm friends and part of why we get along so well is because we can really relate to each other due to transness. We stick together because the vast majority of cis people do not understand.

And with some GCs openly calling now to "reduce the number of trans people", all I ask is that you consider why those people you seem so concerned about taking T should not just be able to make their own decisions.