Please do not repeat this right-wing talking point. It is a moral panic, and it causes real harm to kids who need genuine mental health support who are instead being dismissed as being part of a trend.
"all the kids" are not suddenly becoming trans - the incident rates in society are still extremely small.
All rises in incidents of transgenderism are easily explained by a more tolerant society accepting it. The same appeared when we stopped pathologizing left-handedness - all the kids didn't suddenly become left-handed, but the ones that were felt comfortable no longer hiding it.
And by and large, with some exceptions that get consistently magnified by those with an agenda, it is not something you can just do on a whim, and generally requires a lot of counselling and a lot of effort to pursue hormonal or surgical changes.
There are incidents of detransitioning and those that regret it. Those rates are lower than those that regret knee replacements.
> All rises in incidents of transgenderism are easily explained by a more tolerant society accepting it.
This doesn't explain the disproportionate rise in teenage girls seeking treatment at gender clinics though.
Here's a fascinating essay by a detransitioner on how she began thinking of herself first as 'non-binary' and later as male, and ended up being prescribed testosterone medication for this: https://lacroicsz.substack.com/p/by-any-other-name. She goes into quite some detail about how being exposed to gender identity ideology on Tumblr over a period of years was what influenced her to transition.
Other detransitioners have described similar online influences. It seems likely that this is at least one of the factors causing such an increase, and may well explain why the rise in referrals to gender clinics are so skewed toward female teenagers, who are the primary demographic of sites like Tumblr, and who are particularly vulnerable to social contagions.
> All rises in incidents of transgenderism are easily explained by a more tolerant society accepting it. The same appeared when we stopped.
Explained (aka semi-solid empirical experiments - where are those?) or imagined (aka ideological beliefs, much like the right)?
> And by and large, with some exceptions that get consistently magnified by those with an agenda, it is not something you can just do on a whim, and generally requires a lot of counselling and a lot of effort to pursue hormonal or surgical changes.
And yet every other week I see a talkshow on public TV discussing this. Prominently hosting a person that thinks the rules in place are faaaar to rigid, while most sane people would agree they are fine and problems lie in other areas. For example, while I agree that in many cases physiological "modifications" might be the most economic solution putting this solely to the purview of the individual might a) incur follow-up costs on society (here, these things are not self-paid) and b) raises the question why we don't amputate the legs of those who think they have one too many. The latter thing is something, which I would really like explained once by someone.
I assume you're American, because as someone European-born and Canadian-raised, I have no qualms about there being costs in my society to help the well being of others. That's what my taxes are for. I'm happy to have them pay for emergency care of others, for cancer treatments, for birth control, for anti-depressants, and for gender confirmation hormones or procedures.
Your comparison to a leg amputation suggests someone who's a self-made burden on society - which is dubious because I'm not sure if prosthetics and crutches are that expensive - but mostly because the comparison doesn't make sense. How is someone who is transgender a burden on society at all once they complete transition? The medicine?
Please do not learn about transgender people's life experiences from Public TV. You've got the most powerful tools in front of you - talk to people on the internet. Find them on twitter and read their life experiences. Better yet, look around your workplace. The STEM industry is FILLED with trans folks. Meet them, learn from them.
>All rises in incidents of transgenderism are easily explained by a more tolerant society accepting it. The same appeared when we stopped pathologizing left-handedness - all the kids didn't suddenly become left-handed, but the ones that were felt comfortable no longer hiding it.
I think you are repeating talking points from John Oliver. If trans identifying people were evenly distributed among the population then it would appear a natural phenomenon. Unfortunately in some cases this is not true. Groups of young girls are coming out as trans together. Trans youth are clustered by social circle, not randomly distributed. Being trans is a legitimate identity but it is false to say that every single person who announces that they are trans is in fact trans.
>Please do not repeat this right-wing talking point. It is a moral panic, and it causes real harm to kids who need genuine mental health support who are instead being dismissed as being part of a trend.
This was from 2015, the actual numbers are now over 25% today. Hence why the first article from days ago is so concerned with the huge increase.
>"all the kids" are not suddenly becoming trans - the incident rates in society are still extremely small.
Perhaps nothing is wrong. LGBT rates pre world war 2 was a fraction of a percent. Perhaps society has always been >25% but socially people couldnt admit to it?
>Happy to answer any other questions if needed.
What's the association between LGBT and "Commie"? There is one.
> Please do not repeat this right-wing talking point.
Please do not make this a partisan issue. Some of us have been following the sexually regressive trend of calling our children's bodies defective and broken because they don't match the viewers' sexual stereotypes for quite a while now, and there was pretty widespread consensus across political and religious ideologies that our kids didn't need surgery to be okay.
> It is a moral panic, and it causes real harm to kids who need genuine mental health support who are instead being dismissed as being part of a trend.
That's circular. They need help because they're caught in a trend which ignores the actual issues in their lives (bullying, divorce, academics, etc) and provides a one-size-fits-all solution of body modification.
> All rises in incidents of transgenderism are easily explained by a more tolerant society accepting it. The same appeared when we stopped pathologizing left-handedness - all the kids didn't suddenly become left-handed, but the ones that were felt comfortable no longer hiding it.
This sounds compelling but is not accurate. Left-handedness is a testable "condition" whereas transgender is some adults' interpretation of how people and their genitals should look based on how they act, especially with regard to things the observer thinks of as sexualized, such as who plays with dolls. Society was getting more tolerant, back in the 00s you'd never have a teacher scold a child for using wrong-sex toys because we'd largely gotten rid of the concept. Now it's back and we're telling children their actions and desires are wrong, BUT we've got a surgical solution!
Fifteen years ago a boy could have worn a dress to elementary and wouldn't have socially risked anything worse than if they wore the wrong brand. Now they risk their teachers "helping" them make huge life decisions they can't even comprehend, and telling them to keep the discussions secret from their parents. That's a lot less accepting than it used to be.
> with some exceptions that get consistently magnified by those with an agenda, it is not something you can just do on a whim, and generally requires a lot of counselling and a lot of effort to pursue hormonal or surgical changes.
This isn't true, the fast track (affirmative care) is the only one allowed in most schools and clinics and by WPATH guidelines. Very rarely do teachers, counsellors, therapists, or health care providers pause to help children with preexisting issues before literally telling them that they're born incorrectly and offering solutions - even if those solutions (drugs and surgery) aren't always immediate.
> There are incidents of detransitioning and those that regret it. Those rates are lower than those that regret knee replacements.
This is not correct. There are no proper studies that follow medical transitioners long enough to usefully make that claim. The studies that exist have egregious failures such as not accounting for dropouts or controlling for comorbidities. And knee surgery is widely known to be almost ineffective for many people, making it an exceptionally misleading comparison.
I appreciated this thoughtful response (rebuttal) to OP. I agree with your concept of "back in the 00s you'd never have a teacher scold a child for using wrong-sex clothes/toys because we'd largely gotten rid of the concept". This dovetails into one of the paradox's of the trans-adjacent ideology that I haven't been able to square in my own head, which is that transitioning genders is predicated on strong gender norms existing in a society. In other words, it seems less accepting to be a male and exhibit feminine traits (and by the way, we are in fact acknowledging traditional societal ideas of gender roles now, rather than moving beyond them).
Even weirder is how those who don't acknowledge traditional societal ideas of gender roles are being directed to adopt an identity of their own: "non-binary" or "genderfluid". So the strong gender norms have now become a thoroughly self-reinforcing cycle: even if you disagree with them, you're just treated and reassigned in accordance with these same norms.
There is a lot of debate and disagreement between those that are Transgender and those that are NonBinary.
NB people will absolutely agree that rigorous gender norms are harmful, and Trans people are likely embracing and perpetuating an unnecessary binary. Meanwhile, Trans people will claim that the binary is real to them.
Both are likely valid to some degree. There are multiple axis to this conversation.
Someday people will learn about the difference between "bimodal" and "binary", and the critical importance of liminal spaces in real-world "binary" phenomena of all kinds.
To your point, though, there is an explanation there too.
The word is complex and full of many intersecting axis of considerations. For example - it can be logically consistent to be both pro renewable energy investment of all kinds, but also be wary of nuclear power, and the long-term consequences to our world if we expand investment into it. It's not a simple solution. Turning off nuclear power plants to burn coal or gas is clearly terrible. Not investing in solar/wind/etc because nuclear plants seem better in teh short term is also not great.
Likewise, the reality is that our society DOES contain strong gender norms. You might think we don't because women make up >50% of colleges, are in the professional world, and might believe other concepts like the wage gap are exaggerated. And those can be all true. But our world is definitely still deeply GENDERED.
There are people who believe it shouldn't be, and are working to buck those trends (and those people, generally, receive equally as much backlash as those transgender).
There are people who are working on "dismantling the patriarchy" and associated systems of capitalist economic systems, and other things that may or may not be reasonable, may or may not be possible, and may or may not make things worse.
But the point is that some of those people are transgender. And some are not. It's an independent axis. Transgender people - by and large - like most people - aren't looking to tear down the binary gender norms in our society - they're just seeking to exist in society as the other gender.
Now, if you claim that a society should be more tolerant of being male and exhibiting feminine traits (and vice versa), I would agree with you. If you claimed that IF our society became that, there would likely be fewer transgender people, I would also theorize that is true.
And if you believe that is a virtuous thing to pursue, let's both do so. But it's not a process that we can achieve overnight, and requires the support and progress of many others. Things have been progressing, but very slowly.
Meanwhile, we have people who are suffering today, and who we have statistical evidence that there is a solution for what ails them. Why deny them this?
> our world is definitely still deeply GENDERED. There are people who believe it shouldn't be, and are working to buck those trends (and those people, generally, receive equally as much backlash as those transgender).
Some things are pointlessly gendered, like pink/blue, or puffy sleeves, but others absolutely have a purpose, like single-sex spaces.
> Transgender people - by and large - like most people - aren't looking to tear down the binary gender norms in our society - they're just seeking to exist in society as the other gender.
The problem is that trying to tear down GENDER norms by living as the other SEX. You're interfering with other people's spaces to culture-jam the patriarchy and they need those spaces for safety, but you're also conflating the stereotypes of a sex with the sex itself.
> we have people who are suffering today, and who we have statistical evidence that there is a solution for what ails them.
Most or all of that evidence is as flawed as the detransitioners study. Everyone is afraid to do any actual research in this area. That said there's ample evidence in every other area of mental health that says you should not affirm falsehood.
> Why deny them this?
They're denied nothing up until their gender presentation interferes with someone else's sex-based rights. Dress how you will, live how you will.
What about intersex individuals? What about gay or lesbian individuals? What about masculine-presenting individuals?
All have always challenged the clean separation of single-sex spaces, and are mostly unnecessary.
To put an example, I agree that there should be rape counselling that are exclusive for women. Women should feel comfortable in that space without men present. But those women also need to understand that even if trans people didn't exist, they need to share that space with 1) non-femme presenting women, 2) non-straight women, 3) intersex individuals.
Adding transgender women to the list does not meaningfully destroy the validity of these spaces or ruin them for CIS women. They were never as black-and-white-biology-based as the hateful anti-trans bigots claim they are today.
Are there men attempting to infiltrate these spaces? Sure. They are bad faith actors, and they are exceptions.
Anecdotally, cis, hetero, butch women now report more harassment in bathrooms since the rise of anti-trans hate than they faced before.
> clean separation of single-sex spaces, and are mostly unnecessary
Sexual assaults are vastly more often committed by males than females, and vastly more often on females and children. Until you replace single-sex spaces with something equally easy and effective you can't claim they aren't needed.
> single-sex spaces are problematic AF
Sexual attacks are problematic AF, single-sex spaces are the best way (cost vs effectiveness) we've come up with to prevent them.
What other single, easily inspectable, and enforceable rule would you replace it with? If you have only one bit of data to predict someone's sexual criminality you'd want to know their sex. If you have only one bit of data to predict someone's likelihood of being sexually attacked you'd want to know their sex. We know this from thousands of years of human history and from simply thinking about the male biological imperative versus the female.
> They were never as black-and-white-biology-based
There's no biology more black and white than male vs female, birth giver vs impregnator.
> What about intersex individuals?
Despite all the chromosome combinations and mobile genes there are only two gametes, sperm and egg. All intersex people are male or female. DSDs are disorders of sexual development, not whole new sexes.
> What about gay or lesbian individuals? What about masculine-presenting individuals?
They use the washroom that matches their sex.
> Anecdotally, [...] butch women now report more harassment in bathrooms
Yeah, since males started trying to use female spaces people have been on guard. Not only is their suffering not yours to use for emotional weight but you are part of the group which caused this.
> Women should feel comfortable in [rape counseling] without men present.
Magnanimous, to give them that. How about prisons?
> But those women also need to understand that even if trans people didn't exist, they need to share that space [...] lesbians
Do you feel that straight women weren't sharing with lesbians and that lesbians needed you, a male, to point this out?
> Adding transgender women to the list does not meaningfully destroy the validity of these spaces
As soon as a single male enters a female space it stops being a single-sex space.
> or ruin them for CIS women.
It destroys the value for all females.
> Are there men attempting to infiltrate these spaces? Sure. They are bad faith actors,
Bad faith rapists, go figure.
Is there a test that want us to perform to tell one of them from a justified male?
> and they are exceptions.
They're likely vastly more common than males who think they have gender dysphoria.
> as the hateful anti-trans bigots claim they are today.
How does a woman earn the right to declare herself different and politically distinct from you, and deserving of physical separation, without you calling her hateful?
We can't have a reasonable discussion if you insist on calling all trans women men.
There might be a chance if you acknowledge the basic facts which is that the vast majority of trans women are as even MORE at risk of sexual assault than cis women. And that the "rapists" who are attempting to infiltrate female spaces are an extreme minority, and are a danger to all women - cis and trans.
There may be a version of an argument we could have about the difficulties have with banishing those people without banishing genuine trans women. But if you can't understand how trans women are victims in this too, and brandish them all as men, we're finished.
There is no point discussing your desire to reduce men and women to sperm and eggs either.
I said male. And that's the issue. If trans women were female there wouldn't be a discussion, but they're male and want to be treated as female. This requires women to trust males who say they're women.
Why won't you just acknowledge that this is a huge request and that it'll require you to explain yourself, ask not tell, etc.
> reduce men and women to sperm and eggs either.
You were trying to work intersex people into a defense of bathroom colonization by saying we can't tell who's who and thus categories don't matter. That's incorrect and rude. Intersex people aren't a third sex and don't deserve to be used as a prop in a trans-rights debate anyways.
> And that the "rapists" who are attempting to infiltrate female spaces are an extreme minority,
The number of men testing the boundaries of women's boundaries and spaces is huge and would only go up if they suspected they had a chance.
> and are a danger to all women - cis and trans.
Maybe from passing violence during an intrusion, but trans women are not the target of these rapists. Also, trans women have the benefits of male biology which makes them a much tougher target if they were threatened.
> without banishing genuine trans women
I asked what kind of test you'd have us perform on the males, to see which ones are genuine trans women and which weren't.
How do you propose people do this without compromising their safety, like when a large male wants to enter a female rape shelter at night?
> if you can't understand how trans women are victims in this too
Let's just stipulate to that for now.
How does that imply that women's spaces are what they need to be safe, especially given the problems I've mentioned for the women who are already there? Why not Jewish spaces? Why not new third spaces? Why not arm yourselves and use the original spaces? There are a lot of possibilities here before we agree to take someone else's human rights and give them away.
> and [banish] them all as men, we're finished.
As males. If you don't acknowledge that most trans women have functional penises then you are intentionally not engaging with the problem.
> There is no point discussing your desire to
You're asking for too much to be uninterested in people's concerns.
This is a gishgallop of modern pedophilia-associating talking points from the first sentence onward. ("sexually regressive trend of calling our children's bodies defective and broken because they don't match the viewers' sexual stereotypes" WHAT??)
There's just so much that is horrifically wrong and sounds like a FOX News watcher's sweaty fantasy of what they think transgenderism is.
It absolutely is a partisan issue, only insofar as the "classic liberals" on HackerNews who are promoting this transphobia haven't understood yet that they are not as centrist as they'd like to believe.
I don't know where an of these facts come from, but let's just knock out some bulletpoints:
* Transgenderism is testable, evaluatable, and has little to do with gender stereotypes like a boy playing with dolls
* A boy can absolutely wear a dress to elementary school without a teacher starting talk of transition.
* But you're also dreaming if you think at any point - 30 years ago, 15 years ago, or now - a boy can wear a dress to school and not get bullied by a meaningful percentage of his male peers.
* All transgender counselling starts with pre-existing condition consideration. As a trans friend of mine said "The first thing my transition counsellor asked me to do was quit my job. We needed to make sure I wasn't just depressed because I hated my job so much"
* Is my claim about low rates of transition regret incorrect, or is it that my comparison is exceptionally misleading because it IS correct? Which is it?
>There's just so much that is horrifically wrong and sounds like a FOX News watcher's sweaty fantasy of what they think transgenderism is.
I'm the original poster you had originally replied to. I rarely see any Fox news content. I bet you see more fox news content than I do. Trying to associate a viewpoint with some news agency in the USA seems quite odd to me.
>It absolutely is a partisan issue, only insofar as the "classic liberals" on HackerNews who are promoting this transphobia haven't understood yet that they are not as centrist as they'd like to believe.
Or there is legitimate cause for concern and there's no transphobia at all. This isn't a partisan problem.
>* Transgenderism is testable, evaluatable, and has little to do with gender stereotypes like a boy playing with dolls
So you would agree we don't approve any surgeries or medication until there is a testable evaluatable test results confirming diagnosis with 0% detransition risk?
>* A boy can absolutely wear a dress to elementary school without a teacher starting talk of transition.
Videos on tiktok show quite the opposite. Dress wearing not even necessary.
>* But you're also dreaming if you think at any point - 30 years ago, 15 years ago, or now - a boy can wear a dress to school and not get bullied by a meaningful percentage of his male peers.
Was explicitly not allowed in my high school.
>* All transgender counselling starts with pre-existing condition consideration. As a trans friend of mine said "The first thing my transition counsellor asked me to do was quit my job. We needed to make sure I wasn't just depressed because I hated my job so much"
This story is older than perhaps about 7 years or so. wpath rules changed, the counsellors dont work this way anymore. It's considered a crime in Canada for a counsellor to do this.
There is nothing inherently partisan about disagreeing with the ideology of gender identity and its effects on law and policy.
In particular, opposition to this in the UK has been spearheaded by left-wing, grassroots feminist groups. This was in reaction to the right-wing Conservative government's proposals to allow people to change their legal sex by self-declaration, rather than the current system of requiring a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and approval from a panel of people with legal and medical qualifications.
As a culture war topic on twitter, maybe. But as a parenting issue, no.
> this transphobia
Facts aren't phobia.
> Transgenderism is testable, evaluatable, and has little to do with gender stereotypes like a boy playing with dolls
Which test? Is it medical and objective or based on self-reported feelings? Would you accept the answer if your government wanted to test and label you with it? Should Iran use it?
The trans community can't even decide if trans is a medical or mental condition or lifestyle choice. There certainly isn't a test for it or we'd have answers to those questions. If you insist there's a test that means you think trans is a condition which would make you a transmedicalist, or 'truscum' as they're called.
> A boy can absolutely wear a dress to elementary school without a teacher starting talk of transition.
No, counsellors and teachers speak of recognizing "cross-sex behaviors" in students. You can hear them in their own words in their tiktok videos.
Recently a friend's daughter has been "socially transitioned" at school. The teachers noticed she wasn't being feminine enough (our and her words, as we discuss it) and suggested she may be happier as a male so they gave her a new name and access to clothes while at school and most critically, told her not to tell her parents. Thankfully she had been told this is a red flag and did not comply.
> All transgender counselling starts with pre-existing condition consideration. As a trans friend of mine said "The first thing my transition counsellor asked me to do was quit my job. We needed to make sure I wasn't just depressed because I hated my job so much"
Ouch, that's bad counseling. Asking patients to make major upheavals just sets them up for failure. The proper aim is to give them tools to achieve their goals without disruption and a therapist should only recommend immediate large changes if a patient is in imminent risk.
Also, I know more personally that proper counseling is not always applied. My friend's daughter had legitimate reasons to be depressed but says that the counsellor they had her see did not examine any of them or ask about abuse and only discussed gender.
> Is my claim about low rates of transition regret incorrect, or is it that my comparison is exceptionally misleading? Which is it?
It's both. The studies you refer to do not actually show that the numbers are low because they fail to properly follow the transitioners, AND your comparison to knee surgery was misleading because you've cherrypicked one of the most regretted surgeries.
Please do not repeat this right-wing talking point. It is a moral panic, and it causes real harm to kids who need genuine mental health support who are instead being dismissed as being part of a trend.
"all the kids" are not suddenly becoming trans - the incident rates in society are still extremely small.
All rises in incidents of transgenderism are easily explained by a more tolerant society accepting it. The same appeared when we stopped pathologizing left-handedness - all the kids didn't suddenly become left-handed, but the ones that were felt comfortable no longer hiding it.
And by and large, with some exceptions that get consistently magnified by those with an agenda, it is not something you can just do on a whim, and generally requires a lot of counselling and a lot of effort to pursue hormonal or surgical changes.
There are incidents of detransitioning and those that regret it. Those rates are lower than those that regret knee replacements.
Happy to answer any other questions if needed.