The comments are now closed but that's after 3.6K comments. It's a mixed bag, but the overall slant is that "this is just one person's story" and "Transition is so different now! There are so many more protections in place!" But that's just easily disprovable nonsense that will come out over time. People can't look away from a gory trainwreck and when the lawsuits start, it's going to be a runaway train.

Yeah, I don't like the dark path this is leading down. Extremely disaffected people like that can self-harm, and they can also turn violent toward others. This gender validation machine(physical, mental, and social) that is built up now is so short sighted in light of that.

Anyone who stops to think will realize that the thrust of trans advocacy has been removing the supposedly awful "gatekeeping" of the past, and not just allow medical transition on demand, but require medical professionals to provide it. I don't see people saying that they support medical transition but that procedures must be in place to make sure that gay people are not transitioning out of homophobia, and I think that's telling of their mindset. They forgot that they're supposed to pretend that they care about gay people. I get the sense that the majority of them are the people who are personally heavily invested in gender identity ideology, at least for the time being. Not sure if WaPo heavily deletes comments like the NYT, but wouldn't be surprised.

Dedicated supporters who don't notice the profiteering undercurrents of contemporary trans activism are probably overly focused on the false analogy between trans rights and gay rights that have been exploited time and again throughout this saga. Because the comparison serves to make them feel like bloody heroes in their own dramatic narrative between Good and Evil.

Maybe it's because they never gave trans-ideology much deep thought. Affirming someone's preferred view of themselves(and enlisting professionals to do it too) and adapting the medical system to transition more individuals is relatively easy. Getting to the root of why people trans and solving that problem is much harder stretch. Because it can upend much of what society is comfortably built on.

I think a lot of these people are rather "religiously" inclined, too(though I'm sure they'd hate to think of themselves as anything other than purely secular). Whenever some new age ideology like this comes along with the fervent power of an organized religion that'll give their lives some purpose and meaning and they'll soak it right up(especially if they are particularly lacking in their own character development and personal accomplishments). Reactionary anti-religion without any deep thought is just as much a psychological straw house as religion without any deep thought. But I digress.