markiemarcus

99% of the time I'm in a great place. That 1% though...the ground sinks. I've kinda made peace that though; when I know that it's finite and transient it's muuuuch easier to accept it.

I don't have a quick answer to your question, unfortunately. There are conditions to my support...

I am what the youngsters would call a "transmedicalist" or "truscum". Though I have serious objections to medicalising children because the symptoms of gender dysphoria are so transient; some studies put the number at around 80%. If you're starting them on puberty blockers, all research points to the overwhelming majority continuing with full HRT. The current tag is that puberty blockers are fully reversible, which may be mostly (but not entirely) true in the short term physical sense, but there's absolutely zero research into the long term and nothing with regards to the psychological effects either. My biggest worry, is that puberty blockers are actually extending the dysphoria (because they haven't gone through puberty) and by the time they're on full HRT they'd have no way of knowing if their dysphoria would have subsided on its own after puberty; because they're pumped full of hormones thereafter. There are also very good reasons to go through puberty in the general sense; it's an essential part of human development. But even if it weren't, in the case of MtF transitions the genitalia actually need to be certain size for the surgery to be successful. Trans radicals are working against themselves there.

I think gender dysphoria is a very real thing and quality of life for some individuals increases post transition. Some, not all. That's an area where we're failing; I think we're now over-diagnosing the fuck out of teens and I fully expect a lot of lawsuits over the coming decade. I'd be thrilled if I were wrong.

Unfortunately, the current situation is a generational thing to a large degree. When you speak with trans people over the age of about 30, you find a very different set of views coming to light. Support for self-ID is surprisingly tepid, they find the notion of trans women competing in female sports to be outrageous and most of the things we've come to associate with trans radicals suddenly are no longer issues. I listen to people like Nicole Gibson (a UK personality) talk and think "How could anybody have a problem with you? Why would I not support you? Of course I do." She's a sweetheart and I greatly respect the stance she has taken given how difficult it is in the current environment. Same deal with Rinoa Leonhart, a Youtuber. Both good people and I will have their backs, regardless of whether or not they're outnumbered by feral, abusive TQ "Fraggle Rock" nutcases on Reddit.

IMO, what we have at the moment with trans youth, is to a moderate extent driven by rad-left politics and exacerbated by the higher prevalence of ASD and social media. They'd be hostile even without trans issues. Many of them will grow out of it and wonder what the fuck they were thinking by wanting both self-ID and access to single sex spaces. You can have one or the other, but not both.

So I support them because I want them to lead fulfilled, happy lives and become decent citizens. But in order to do that, the political tact has to change. Drastically. Fundamentally, they need to embrace who they are; people with gender dysphoria. For all the talk of "acceptance", this is a key area where they're currently fucking it up, because they're young and they've spent most of their adolescence obsessing over it. They don't accept the medical reality and they don't accept the transition process for how serious it is; they want the world to lie and turn on a dime. Now, there are times when a "white lie" is appropriate, healthy and pretty accurate. I'll use the pronouns if you've made the effort and are working with your physician, but I know that there's a difference. Not in a bad way, just different. Back story with unique experiences. Different is good. I'm different. We're different. When you try to make a "white lie" sex-based policy however, with no tangible threshold other than "because I say so", trouble will follow and already has. Good policy is supposed to require considerable thought. People seem to forget that. Anybody pretending that this is easy and won't involve compromise is lying or delusional; the goal should be to shut out the radicals and make reasonable accommodations.

Where else have we gone wrong?

Well, there's a very good case to be made for LGB+T being ill-conceived from the outset; I get it...but I don't get it.

The bar and criteria for some degree of medical intervention is far too low; many of us gay, lesbian and bisexual people without gender dysphoria would actually qualify enough to be able to lie about the remainder. This actually happens. Peer pressure can be a toxic old fucker; you can see 80 fold increases of baseline "trans" amongst peer groups in schools. Statistically speaking, that's almost impossible.

Even in the event of LGBT becoming a thing, we still should have insisted on separate support spaces. To me that's clear as day, and now you know why.

Basic civics. I'm noticing increased numbers of "activists" that border on being outright feral. Their parents have a lot to answer for, as do their schools and universities.

And finally, in the overarching sense, we're leaning far too hard politically and medically into areas where we know shockingly little.