Your “multiple studies of kids showing that they revert naturally before the age of 18” were all conducted in the 70’s dude. Non acceptance from a community is very good at creating closeted individuals. We do what we do to try and be happy, if we are routinely physically and socially punished for being who we are we do revert to walking the path of least resistance to survive but it is a hard and miserable path. Here’s a study more updated that flips numbers on it’s head. Around 95 percent of trans kids who socially transition these days are consistent in their identities over the 5 years of the study.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9936352/#:~:text=We found that an average,to their binary transgender identity.
Also you’re treating this healthcare as experimental and new but it’s decently far along. Puberty blockers are the newest addition to the tool kit but they were approved for use after extensive research trials over 30 years ago and principles of their safety of use were based on observations from naturally stalled puberties and endocrinology data of hormonal insensitivity disorders…and we’ve been using them for trans kids pretty much right from the beginning so the first paitents are in their 40’s now. There is data that the puberty blocker process is imperfect but like any medical advancement there are nessisary fine tunings of treatment. It’s not a set it and forget it situation. We know the endocrinologist check ins and scans need to keep coming and the risk assessment for a paused puberty needs to be a carefully routinely updated thing with suspension of treatment being a viable option if things don’t go well…but removing the option from the medical feild entirely and refusing to keep working to develop its safety efficacy further and isn’t going to make overall treatment outcomes better for patients.
This lie that doctors are slapdash and haphazard in trans healthcare is nothing but fabrication. It requires a panel of a psychologist, social worker, pediatrician and endocrinologist the child and the child’s legal guardians to sign off on any medical interventions and they have to do their research first to meet a determined burden of proof that interventions are nessisary and they make it a pretty high bar… At 16 there’s very limited number of things available and any surgeries made available are also available to cis kids. If a 16 year old teen wants a breast reduction it doesn’t matter if their trans or not they just need parental approval. Hormonal transition requires a lot more sign off than that. If a parent doesn’t sign off then the kid can’t make their own medical choices until after 18. The system is designed to mitigate risks and yes a lot of the outcomes for trans paitents are markedly better when they can more effortlessly pass as their gender because you avoid a lot of social shunning and hate when your transness is invisible to the public.
Our society creates a catch 22 senario for trans people where segements of society demand that a person isn’t actually a viable member of their gender unless they can show medical documentation they’ve transitioned… And they treat non-binary trans masc and trans femme non medical coping strategies as being less legitimate. If you are trying to navigate a situation where you require coping strategies to deal with experiencing daily body horror and you deny people the use of mental only coping mechanisms they are not going to veiw mental only coping mechanisms a reasonable solve. Telling us that one option to deal with our problems is self harm and then making fun of or dismissing the other as “social contagion” and treating us as a different kind of problem is basically just telling us that you think permanent misery should be our only option.
If you REALLY want to lessen the pressures on trans people to medically transition your move is not to clamp down on medical options… It’s to make non-binary physical presentations and safe rewarding social transitions a more viable option by offering greater levels of social acceptance. The whole “Well I will never accept you as a ____. Because physically you are not” behavior does nothing but add fuel to a dysphoria and injure a trans person’s ability to exist comfortably in a social sphere. Cis people make an equal fuss about pronouns as they do surgeries. There’s zero empathy. Faced with that we are just going to try harder to physically hide from you so you can’t visually pick us out of a crowd using whatever means we have.
Social contagion and the likes of Abagail Shrier is a discredited myth. At best the very shallow end of non-binary transness might be represented but that is basically "I don’t like it when people make a big assumptions of me based around my sexual characteristics so please don’t " which is kind of just a reasonable response to sexism. The actual euphoria /dysphoria body and culture related stuff isn’t something you are going to catch… And framing medical transition in terms of self harm is gross. What people feel and ultimately choose to do with their bodies is something individually very cautiously considered. Treating the matter as though they are defacing a public owned good or resource is just projection. Your values regarding your sexual organs and physical characteristics are not universal. You do not have to live their lives, their choices are not your business so please stay in your lane.
Lastly, people tell trans kids they are loved because as people we are routinely framed by hostile cis people as a logistical problem. Telling kids they are a problem tends to drive them inside themselves and creates a sense of isolation. A lot of kids growing up, not just trans kids already generally think that people won’t miss them if they just disappear because they are a burden or a problem. The youngest trans kid I know right now is seven… And they have already had peers their age tell them to their face that they should kill themself. When I was growing up the “weird kid” I wanted to die but I knew my family wouldn’t recover from that so I didn’t. It isn’t that kids are doing this to be lavished with attention. I can tell you that the experience of myself and every trans person I know is that people making any kind of big deal about us based on our genders positive or negative just makes you feel like an outsider. People harping on about how “strong” you are for being visible generally just comes across as pulling more attention to things we just want people to treat as so normal it’s beneath commentary. That young trans person I know today struggles because they are closeted at school not wanting to stick out from the crowd because they fear the potential unwanted fuss and can only be themselves at home. I am partially closeted at work partially because it will negatively impact my hiring chances between gigs and partially because onboarding new people into understanding non-binary transness and using correct pronouns is exhausting. Having everyone take their trans hot takes to you or asking invasive questions about your life experiences while you have shit on the docket to do quite frankly sucks.
Your understanding of trans people isn’t based on first hand or even second hand knowledge of our experience or from empathy towards our situations. It’s in the framework of us being a “problem”.
A problem of your convenience an "I shouldn’t have to change my behaviour to make someone else’s life easier ".
A logistical problem a " we shouldn’t have to make concessions or changes as a society for the benefit of the few".
A mental problem “They are delusional or mentally ill and we shouldn’t listen to what they say they need.”
A medical problem "Well they shouldn’t have access to the system because they take up resources and their choices creep me out. What if they do something they regret? ".
A safety problem "You’re leaving the door open for creeps to take advantage. "
A visual problem "They are ugly and I should not have to see them. My kid shouldn’t have to see people like that. "
An authority problem "I as a parent ahould have control of my child’s behaviour at all times. "
All of this framework doesn’t hold ANY solutions for us. They just hold solutions for you so people just don’t have to interact, think of or see us…we just can be swept under the rug as unfortunates and failures which is no way to live.
Your “multiple studies of kids showing that they revert naturally before the age of 18” were all conducted in the 70’s dude. Non acceptance from a community is very good at creating closeted individuals. We do what we do to try and be happy, if we are routinely physically and socially punished for being who we are we do revert to walking the path of least resistance to survive but it is a hard and miserable path. Here’s a study more updated that flips numbers on it’s head. Around 95 percent of trans kids who socially transition these days are consistent in their identities over the 5 years of the study. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9936352/#:~:text=We found that an average,to their binary transgender identity.
Also you’re treating this healthcare as experimental and new but it’s decently far along. Puberty blockers are the newest addition to the tool kit but they were approved for use after extensive research trials over 30 years ago and principles of their safety of use were based on observations from naturally stalled puberties and endocrinology data of hormonal insensitivity disorders…and we’ve been using them for trans kids pretty much right from the beginning so the first paitents are in their 40’s now. There is data that the puberty blocker process is imperfect but like any medical advancement there are nessisary fine tunings of treatment. It’s not a set it and forget it situation. We know the endocrinologist check ins and scans need to keep coming and the risk assessment for a paused puberty needs to be a carefully routinely updated thing with suspension of treatment being a viable option if things don’t go well…but removing the option from the medical feild entirely and refusing to keep working to develop its safety efficacy further and isn’t going to make overall treatment outcomes better for patients.
This lie that doctors are slapdash and haphazard in trans healthcare is nothing but fabrication. It requires a panel of a psychologist, social worker, pediatrician and endocrinologist the child and the child’s legal guardians to sign off on any medical interventions and they have to do their research first to meet a determined burden of proof that interventions are nessisary and they make it a pretty high bar… At 16 there’s very limited number of things available and any surgeries made available are also available to cis kids. If a 16 year old teen wants a breast reduction it doesn’t matter if their trans or not they just need parental approval. Hormonal transition requires a lot more sign off than that. If a parent doesn’t sign off then the kid can’t make their own medical choices until after 18. The system is designed to mitigate risks and yes a lot of the outcomes for trans paitents are markedly better when they can more effortlessly pass as their gender because you avoid a lot of social shunning and hate when your transness is invisible to the public.
Our society creates a catch 22 senario for trans people where segements of society demand that a person isn’t actually a viable member of their gender unless they can show medical documentation they’ve transitioned… And they treat non-binary trans masc and trans femme non medical coping strategies as being less legitimate. If you are trying to navigate a situation where you require coping strategies to deal with experiencing daily body horror and you deny people the use of mental only coping mechanisms they are not going to veiw mental only coping mechanisms a reasonable solve. Telling us that one option to deal with our problems is self harm and then making fun of or dismissing the other as “social contagion” and treating us as a different kind of problem is basically just telling us that you think permanent misery should be our only option.
If you REALLY want to lessen the pressures on trans people to medically transition your move is not to clamp down on medical options… It’s to make non-binary physical presentations and safe rewarding social transitions a more viable option by offering greater levels of social acceptance. The whole “Well I will never accept you as a ____. Because physically you are not” behavior does nothing but add fuel to a dysphoria and injure a trans person’s ability to exist comfortably in a social sphere. Cis people make an equal fuss about pronouns as they do surgeries. There’s zero empathy. Faced with that we are just going to try harder to physically hide from you so you can’t visually pick us out of a crowd using whatever means we have.
Social contagion and the likes of Abagail Shrier is a discredited myth. At best the very shallow end of non-binary transness might be represented but that is basically "I don’t like it when people make a big assumptions of me based around my sexual characteristics so please don’t " which is kind of just a reasonable response to sexism. The actual euphoria /dysphoria body and culture related stuff isn’t something you are going to catch… And framing medical transition in terms of self harm is gross. What people feel and ultimately choose to do with their bodies is something individually very cautiously considered. Treating the matter as though they are defacing a public owned good or resource is just projection. Your values regarding your sexual organs and physical characteristics are not universal. You do not have to live their lives, their choices are not your business so please stay in your lane.
Lastly, people tell trans kids they are loved because as people we are routinely framed by hostile cis people as a logistical problem. Telling kids they are a problem tends to drive them inside themselves and creates a sense of isolation. A lot of kids growing up, not just trans kids already generally think that people won’t miss them if they just disappear because they are a burden or a problem. The youngest trans kid I know right now is seven… And they have already had peers their age tell them to their face that they should kill themself. When I was growing up the “weird kid” I wanted to die but I knew my family wouldn’t recover from that so I didn’t. It isn’t that kids are doing this to be lavished with attention. I can tell you that the experience of myself and every trans person I know is that people making any kind of big deal about us based on our genders positive or negative just makes you feel like an outsider. People harping on about how “strong” you are for being visible generally just comes across as pulling more attention to things we just want people to treat as so normal it’s beneath commentary. That young trans person I know today struggles because they are closeted at school not wanting to stick out from the crowd because they fear the potential unwanted fuss and can only be themselves at home. I am partially closeted at work partially because it will negatively impact my hiring chances between gigs and partially because onboarding new people into understanding non-binary transness and using correct pronouns is exhausting. Having everyone take their trans hot takes to you or asking invasive questions about your life experiences while you have shit on the docket to do quite frankly sucks.
Your understanding of trans people isn’t based on first hand or even second hand knowledge of our experience or from empathy towards our situations. It’s in the framework of us being a “problem”.
A problem of your convenience an "I shouldn’t have to change my behaviour to make someone else’s life easier ".
A logistical problem a " we shouldn’t have to make concessions or changes as a society for the benefit of the few".
A mental problem “They are delusional or mentally ill and we shouldn’t listen to what they say they need.”
A medical problem "Well they shouldn’t have access to the system because they take up resources and their choices creep me out. What if they do something they regret? ".
A safety problem "You’re leaving the door open for creeps to take advantage. "
A visual problem "They are ugly and I should not have to see them. My kid shouldn’t have to see people like that. "
An authority problem "I as a parent ahould have control of my child’s behaviour at all times. "
All of this framework doesn’t hold ANY solutions for us. They just hold solutions for you so people just don’t have to interact, think of or see us…we just can be swept under the rug as unfortunates and failures which is no way to live.