Not necessarily. Mental health issues are consistent. They can come and go. However, children when growing up as teenagers get different mental health complications - maybe from their surroundings or hormones or both. I have seen plenty of times that teenagers try and use transitioning as a way to cope. Maybe they are struggling with identity or sexuality when going through puberty. Maybe they are neurodivergent and feel like they don’t fit in. Maybe they are looking for an identity or a community. Maybe they just have an illusion that changing their gender could solve their problems.

There appears to be an escalator which we do NOT want to encourage. Whenever an adult or therapist enters the picture to ask them “are you sure you are a boy/girl inside, or is something else going on”, there’s a chance they may get shut down as “transphobic” which we don’t want happening. Then there’s a community which may further encourage it.

Some people I’ve grown up with that identified as trans ended up dropping the identity as an adult, later saying that the real reason was because she didn’t want to be a girl because she felt girls were weak and she wasn’t like that. Then again, there’s somebody else who still identifies as transgender. But their dysphoria appears to be waning a bit. I’ll still support them as my friend regardless.

When I was younger, I questioned my own gender identity. I had a discord friend group and I suggested that I might be non binary. This friend group was constantly making fun of and mocking “cis straight men” and I didn’t want to be one of those. As soon as I questioned it, someone -a transgender person- just kept telling me “you are non binary.” Thankfully there was a falling out, I separated from that friend group and I am now more comfortable being the gender I was assigned at birth.

I’m also concerned that people grow into adults with these identities and a sunk cost fallacy may come in to play also.

I don’t want anyone to think I’m saying all transgender people are like this - I’m sure it’s a minority. But that transgender person later ended up getting into loli. They were abused horrifically when they were younger. So I don’t know if the abuse had anything to do with it or not.

We don’t want an escalator going- but we don’t want to breed hatred. It’s a tricky situation and people keep trying to make it black and white on both sides.

Teenagers like identities and labels. I saw my friends back then behave with pronouns, gender identity and sexuality the same way that people were behaving with choosing religious denominations, vexillology and heraldry communities making flags and arms for themselves (the latter two are more healthy than the rest tbh). People also obsess over star signs and mbti types. We just seem to like labels.

We shouldn’t be giving people life altering medical treatment because of these thoughts. I think we should also try loving people and telling them that they’re valid just the way they are first, before trying to encourage their belief that they need to change.

I get what you are saying, but the modern transgender model is not the only way forward for someone who feels gender queer. I do not appreciate how it is now not just the de facto model, but the only recognized one. Not everyone who is gender queer finds representation in this model.