I think this ‘meme’ the title of this post is a great example of what the problem really is. I do not have any issues with trans people. What I have a major problem with is that voicing an opinion, or have any form of meaningful debate, is met with immense aggression, trolling, cancelling, intimidation.
I am for example not completely convinced about trans women in female sports and am sympathetic to arguments from both sides. Even voicing that will cause me to be vilified by one side.
Another example is transition care for children. I believe that at a young age making an irreversible choice is dangerous and we should be careful. Not saying care should abolished, just saying that such a big life decision needs extreme care because it can cause irreparable harm later in life. Again a reasonable, well willing position that will cause this to be downvoted into oblivion.
So, trans people, I support you to exist, be happy, live a meaningful life. But unfortunately there’s a group of loud people who are honestly behaving like psychopaths who are making it hard to stay sympathetic. Wake up.
In regards to the whole trans women in sports thing: Sport doesn’t fucking matter. Let them play their little games if they want. Discouraging young people from healthy exercise just because some bigots care too much about who wins a meaningless contest is ridiculous.
I understand what you’re saying, and agree that discouraging young people to exercise is preposterous. But sports and competition do matter to a lot of people (especially in the US I think, which comes across way more competitive than Europe), and it’s not meaningless to them (neither to trans athletes I might add).
So I would say that your comment will be considered quite disrespectful. Would you say that this large group of people are more, or less inclined to agree with you if they’re being called a bigot?
I have no objection to people enjoying sports. Lord knows I enjoy a lot of inconsequential nonsense myself. The bigots I refer to are the people that are using trans people in sports as some sort of civilisation ending issue when it’s really not all that serious. They’re just using it to push a bigoted agenda that really has less to do with sport as it does their own irrational fears.
I should not have had to suffer through the first, wrong, puberty. I’m left with permanent scars, both physical and psychological, as a result. I’m not coming back to debate people who think thousands of trans kids should suffer the same way I did because one or two cis kids could be hurt. I damn near didn’t survive and a lot of trans kids don’t. Just dropping these links, I will not debate.
Hey, thanks for your comment and link. I respect that it must be incredibly hard having to suffer so much because of personal experience, and to then be expected to debate about it. I totally get that.
As the article says, there is a lot of misinformation around this, a lot of ignorance, and I do believe that an open debate about this (or anything in general really) is truly important. Way i see it, you’ve got bad actors on one side (opposing trans in this case) who will use anything to further their agenda. And they have an advantage: they can oversimplify a complex process. It’s really easy to shout “They want all your children to be trans!”, and quite a bit harder to explain the reality. That’s what the trans community is up against. It will take a lot of patience and time, decades, to educate the masses unfortunately, and any excesses, like online vitriol, trolling, will be used against you. I’m sorry to say this, but you’re an easy target.
Again, not expecting anyone to debate who doesn’t want to. But I hope that the people who do enter the public debate can be as composed as the author of the article you shared. I believe that’s the only road to acceptance.
I wish you all the best, and hope you can find peace. From the little information I have I can tell, you are beautiful.
“We need to be cautious!” would be much more compelling if the standard medical approach to trans minors was not already immensely cautious.
The standard may be cautious, but a significant number of individual clinicians are not. But pointing out that a concerning number of care providers have looser-than-standard medical approaches gets the speaker attacked as a traitor to the cause.
When red-state bans are discussed, you will also hear liberals say that conservative fears about the medical-transition pathway are overwrought—because all children get extensive, personalized assessments before being prescribed blockers or hormones. This, too, is untrue. Although the official standards of care recommend thorough assessment over several months, many American clinics say they will prescribe blockers on a first visit.
People act like natal puberty is the neutral choice here - it’s not. The first wrong puberty made me actively suicidal and that’s not unusual. If a kid has gotten so far as to get to a doctor about this, it’s pretty clear that something is up (cis people generally don’t question their gender in the first place) and by waiting on puberty blockers you’re allowing further suffering and irreversible harm to a trans kid. Puberty blockers are a very low risk way of hitting pause and if the kid decides to go through with natal puberty they can just stop taking puberty blockers with no harm other than a delayed puberty.
This, so much. There’re very real and important discussions in the medical field that (very candidly) go into these types of topics that become impossible to have (at least in the public discourse) due to these types of behaviours.
I had to laugh at this ridiculous line from the opinion piece:
staff members had a dark joke that at the rate they were going, there would be “no gay people left.”
The whole idea that transition care is “getting rid” of gay people is ridiculous, I was into girls way before I transitioned. The other trans people I know are all extremely gay.
You are concerned about a child making a decision that they may regret… so you think the decision should be made for them?
What I have a major problem with is that voicing an opinion, or have any form of meaningful debate, is met with immense aggression, trolling, cancelling, intimidation
So, trans people, I support you to exist, be happy, live a meaningful life. But unfortunately there’s a group of loud people who are honestly behaving like psychopaths who are making it hard to stay sympathetic. Wake up.
“I get aggression and trolling”
“people being mean to me are psychopaths who make it hard for me to stay sympathetic to trans people”
The whole idea that transition care is “getting rid” of gay people is ridiculous
I think the ‘dark joke’ is one of those jokes that actually reveals how some people feel about this; what I got the opinion piece is that some folks in the gay community worry that wanting to transition can also mean being attracted to the same sex and being confused about it at a young age.
You are concerned about a child making a decision that they may regret… so you think the decision should be made for them?
Not exactly, a child is a person and should have agency. But at the same time, they’re a child and are less experienced in life. I don’t let my kid eat ice cream whenever they feel like it, and I wouldn’t let him make such a major decision before he knows very sure who he is. Because transitioning is a decision, but who you are is not. And I believe that when you’re so young, it’s really hard to know who you are.
I got the opinion piece is that some folks in the gay community worry that wanting to transition can also mean being attracted to the same sex and being confused about it at a young age.
My experience was that I was not attracted to men at all, but because I liked sailor moon and painting my nails people would just assume that I was. It just strikes me as a very paternalistic attitude to be worried about misguiding poor gay people who are simply “confused”.
Because transitioning is a decision, but who you are is not. And I believe that when you’re so young, it’s really hard to know who you are.
Being trans is very much a part of who you are. However while there has been a tremendous social pressure to repress over the years, trans people are not a recent development.
I’m a trans woman, I transitioned later in life, but I knew from a very young age that I was uncomfortable as a boy and I didn’t have the words to describe it until much later in life.
I grew up in the 90s’s/00’s and back then the gatekeeping and lack of information was pretty bad. Unless you were presenting with an acute mental health condition you really weren’t getting taken seriously. I was able to hold my shit long enough to go to a college and land a career because throwing myself into work (and drinking heavily) was my coping skill.
Meeting and working with another trans person after years of repressing that feeling was all it really took for me to put it together and transition myself after 10+ years of denial. That’s also what happens when trans people are erased from daily life.
I think it’s a good thing that kids actually get listened to when they say what they want. It’s not ‘ice cream for dinner’ but that orientation does speak volumes. None of these transition decisions get made flippantly, this is a process that takes years and plenty of oversight.
I’m gonna try to reply to this in good faith as you seem to be wanting to engage in a good faith discussion, so let me tell you my experience.
I’m a trans girl.
Before I even have memories I was always (according to my mother) asking for skirts and dresses and playing with dolls and makeup. These moments were always taken as a joke or as me ‘being in a phase’ and were brushed off and ignored. My earliest memories have me confused why my sister gets to wear pretty dresses to church but I have to wear a boring suit. I remember ‘borrowing’ my sister’s nail polish, makeup, and dresses as early as age NINE. Did I have the understanding of what I was feeling? No. This was in the 90s, trans people werent as widely known in the US, especially the South. But if you’d given me the option to transition at age 9, I would’ve taken it in a heartbeat.
How do I know?
I’d slip out of my window EVERY NIGHT after everyone had gone to bed to wish on the first star I laid eyes on to be a girl. Sure, it wasn’t the first star to appear, but it was the first one I saw! That counted, right? I remember watching the episode of Sabrina the Teenaged Witch where she made a potion to turn herself into a boy to figure out what her boyfriend did in the auto shop. What did I do immediately after the episode ended? Went into the kitchen and tried to make my own potion with ‘sugar and spice and everything nice’. Glitter is nice! Oh and soda! Soda’s very nice.
I went to bed daydreaming of going to hogwarts and finding a potion that could make me right. I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed for a way to change my gender that when I finally heard about trans people at age 17, my reaction wasn’t ‘hmmm, this is interesting. I wonder if this is what I’m feeling’, instead it was ‘Oh, THAT’s what this is? There are other people like me?!?!?!’
Scientific studies have shown that a child’s concept of gender is already developed by age 4. Studies have also shown that a child’s understanding of who they are ALSO develops pretty early on. And, yes, in cases of children going on hormones, it is all done in conjunction with the child’s experiences, the doctor’s EXPERTISE in the matter, and the parents’ consent. They aren’t just walking into a doctor’s office and boosting little timmy up with E. Before any medicine has been taken there is EXTENSIVE screening through therapy and physician visits over the course of YEARS.
This isn’t a question that nobody has ever asked. It’s studied. It’s tested over the course of DECADES. And lastly, it’s (frankly) none of your business unless it’s YOUR kid, at which point you have complete control over whether your child goes through with any of it (up until age 18 at least).
You’re vilified because you’re acting like a villain. People don’t want to debate your neckbeardedly presented well ahcktuallies while they’re fighting for the right to exist.
We don’t have this fight when it comes to other medical matters. Like if kids with cancer should get treatment even though chemo and surgery could have long-lasting repucussions. The alternative is they die. People who don’t get proper medical treatment die. Trans kids die of depression and suicide without treatment. Those are real things, there are real risks to not treating a medical condition. It’s not a matter up for public debate just because some dickwads are trying to distract everyone by making healthcare for a specific group of people political. It’s medical, we have facts and data that say trans people need healthcare to support their transition to live healthier longer lives. There are fucking doctors out there with years of practice who say yes, these kids need medical intervention. And here you are bitching that no one will debate you in a place where, again, people are fighting to exist. And you’re bringing up tired arguments because you gotta be that guy.
We have data on trans performance in sports and there is no clear advantage.
Besides, if you’re a world-class athlete, you already have a way different kind of body than most people. There are plenty of biological advantages that are celebrated in sports rather than weeded out. Want to start making sure everyone is the same height and weight for every sport, too? Same lung capacity? Reaction time? Born in the same country? Live at the same altitude? Same race? If you want to get advantages, there are clearer divisions along racial lines than trans status. No, I don’t advocate for segregation in sports because I’m not a goddamn monster of a person who can’t think for two seconds about why that’s idiotic.
Fuck off. Stop being a moron. Show some goddamn empathy.
How is anyone supposed to show empathy, let alone learn anything when even the slightest hint of wanting to have a conversation is met with this kind of reaction? I’m the villain? OK, but then you’re an extremist.
I made it clear in my comment what I support, and it was certainly not denying anyone’s right to exist. None of what I said supports the claim you made. What I pointed out is a major problem is exactly what you illustrate with your comment. It’s impossible to discuss anything when 2 sides are so entrenched and unwilling to debate. I get the urgency and gravity of what is happening right now, but for people like me, who consider themselves very sympathetic to the trans community, you’re making it very hard to help. It’s either support everything we say, or shut the f up. That’s never going to work.
And on the data you’re referring to around gender-affirming care, show me. Latest I heard, this is a very young field of study, and data, if any, is inconclusive. And yet here I am, supporting gender-affirming care, having to defend the position that please can we tread with care. Insanity!
As you (seem to) point out, trans people in sports is a different conversation. The science is clearer, but now we have a group of formerly (and frankly, still) marginalised people (women at birth, biologically) who fear unfair advantage. Much more political, philosophical even, a much harder debate. I empathise with both sides, how villainous of me.
So, showing empathy to you is hard. You reap what you sow.
Saying you’re supportive vs. actually doing the work to listen, understand, and be supportive, are much different things. Your empathy is performative if you don’t back up your words with actions, no matter how you dress up your opinions with empathetic-sounding statements.
Consider this: If you’re truly empathetic and open minded, why do you need to keep pointing it out?
The fact that you present an opinion piece from media owned by special interests to support your argument is enough to see why you believe what you do.
I have a group of friends, some of whom are trans, some of whom have medical degrees, and we have these discussions all the time. However, when someone talks about their right to exist being threatened, in a world where their right to exist is being threatened, is when you’ve decided to come in complaining about how poor you can’t engage in any polite discourse because people downvote you.
A number of people here have told you why this is the case, but you proceed to play the victim.
There are more than two sides, and no, the science on sports isn’t more clear than it is on gender affirming care. Even in the pub med links someone else posted, which they apparently hadn’t read in entirety, it go into how controversies around trans identities is sports has become a solution in search of a problem. You should read those links.
I don’t know what about my post made you think I wanted or was willing to extend empathy to your point of view. Was it when I called you a moron or an idiot?
Hey, thanks for this thoughtful response. This is basically what I’m seeing happening; I don’t think it’s a black and white, clear cut situation. On the one hand there’s trans people, who feel discriminated against on this matter, on the other hand there’s women who have similar sentiments on the same. And here I am agreeing with them both. An impossible position. Agreeing with one side is denying the other. I don’t see a solution to this and that really sucks.
I didn’t actually comment to ask questions to be honest, but to comment on the polarisation that is happening, and that folks who are sympathetic perhaps become less sympathetic when immediately being put away as Satan. That’s burning bridges which you can’t afford as a minority.
But, I’m happy I did comment because there’s also some really good insights here and thoughtful responses. I don’t know any trans people IRL, so it’s valuable to me.
it’s not 2014 anymore. we aren’t canceling anyone. we’re getting canceled. JKR is doing victory laps. NHS has banned HRT for minors, as have 27 states. we’re kicked out of the military, and forbidden from security clearances. teachers in Florida can’t even use their own pronouns. Medicaid/Medicare/ACA funding for HRT for adults is stripped now. we can’t get passports with the correct gender marker. Sarah McBride has to use the men’s bathroom in Congress. Newsom calls us freaks. conservative media is calling us groomers and every time there’s a mass shooter they spread the rumor the shooter was trans. “gender ideology” is the new Satanic Panic. NYT keeps running op-eds on why Dems should throw us under the bus. Nancy Mace shouted “tr*nny” three times on the House floor and wasn’t censured for it.
you really think we’re the ones holding the cards?
The joke, if you paid attention, is that the trans agenda isn’t a thing. They’re just trying to survive. So yeah, not supporting someone’s right to exist is some psychopathic behavior.
The fact thay you think there’s a trans agenda outside of just trying to survive doesn’t make you a psychopath, but it does make you an idiot.
Now that doctors and parents en masse know trans people are a thing, if a child shows signs of gender dysphoria in early childhood, therapy is in order.
If the therapist determines the child is probably trans, and the (male) child insists they don’t want to grow up as a man, or vice versa, or whatever, and the parents feel like it’s not going to change and they’re more concerned with the child’s happiness than with some religious conviction or conservative values they may be clinging to…
The child should be given puberty blockers, which studies have shown do NOT cause irreversible damage.
As the child becomes a teenager and the situation stays the same… eventually it becomes obvious that some form of puberty needs to happen, and a choice has to be made. Usually this happens around 14 - 16 I believe.
It’s a tough decision, with many people involved, and the end result will be permanent irreversible changes to the teenager’s (soon to be adult’s) body.
If you force the child to go through a puberty they don’t want, you fuck them up… forever.
You destroy their life in a lot of ways. You condemn them to a life of harassment and rejection and isolation. Your own child.
This isn’t just mad doctors running around with meat cleavers going to town.
It’s a process that spans the child’s entire childhood, with thousands of opportunities to pump the breaks and change course, that if avoided in the name of something other than the child’s happiness and the doctors recommendations… will lead to tremendous misery and resentment.
I was born in the late 80s. My parents didn’t know what trans was. They took me to a conversion therapist when I was 5. Their solution for me was to “convince me to be normal”.
I grew up hating myself and feeling like a freak, because the feelings never went away, and I no longer felt safe talking about them… with anyone… so I was alone, hurting, in silence, watching my body change forever in ways I hated, trying to rationalize it all, imagining that one day I’d like the changes somehow.
That day never came.
I have been through a lot in my life. If my parents had known about transsexualism and gender transition, and supported me fully, my life would have been so much better.
I now have a whole host of mental issues that will haunt me until the day I die.
I want to love life. I want to see the good in people. It’s so hard when you’ve been through what someone like me has.
I am the direct result of your nervousness about treating children for gender dysphoria.
Thank you for your openness and sharing your personal story. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like, and I’m sorry that you had to experience that.
Also thank you for taking the time to explain. I 100% agree with what you say. You describe a very careful procedure, it being such a delicate matter. This is what I would want for my son if he was in this position. He’s 4 and has said he’s a girl many times lately. That’s incredibly young and probably a phase. I recall myself wanting to be a girl for a bit, at the same age, and my mom gave me a dress to wear (great mum, and a wonderful memory, I was lucky). It didn’t stick for me. But if it does for him, my primary concern is their wellbeing, and that they grow up in an accepting environment (and society). I wish you could’ve had that.
If I may ask you a question, I honestly don’t know this. Puberty is a natural process that everyone goes through under normal circumstances. But children who transition and take puberty blockers don’t, I assume (or do they but after transitioning?). If they don’t, that’s an experience they will never have, is there any issue with that?
Thanks again for your thoughtful response. It’s really helpful to understand.
PS I wanted to clarify that my worry on this issue is primarily with doing away with a careful process, as I’ve heard sometimes being voiced. I’m not saying it should be made more difficult, but it is a delicate process, with young children, and I feel what you described is a proper way of handling it. I think many folks (the majority really) who consider themselves a bit more neutral on the matter think this way, and being called transphobe for even the slightest deviation from the opinion of some folks does the trans community more harm than good.
So there’s something called Hormone Replacement Therapy.
It’s where doctors refer you to endocrinologists who measure the hormone levels in ng/DL or nanograms per deciliter in your blood.
The endocrinologists then recommend a dosage of estradiol and progesterone, or testosterone if the child is transitioning from “female to male”, in order to bring their hormone levels into a healthy range for someone their age of the opposite sex.
The body is surprisingly flexible especially during development when your bones and ligaments are still forming and your epiphyseal plates are still porous and malleable. When they go from blockers to HRT, their body will make puberty of the opposite sex happen, and they will look completely natural as a member of that sex, with the exception of their gonads/genitals.
These are almost always the trans people “you can’t tell” with. It’s easy to blend in when you never went through “the wrong puberty” so to speak.
That happens after the blockers, and is basically the final decision before permanent changes happen, usually at 14 - 16 years of age after having the child on puberty blockers and regularly therapy sessions.
No medicine will be prescribed until puberty begins, and no surgeries will be prescribed until adulthood in most cases. There are some rare exceptions in some states, but it’s still at the parents discretion.
If the child and you decide transition isn’t the right choice, the child can simply go off the puberty blockers, and regular puberty happens in line with their assigned sex at birth, with a minimal change in development.
If your child is showing signs I absolutely recommend talking to multiple doctors and therapists about all of this, and if it seems right you may end up wanting to schedule some pediatric therapy for them to really investigate and potentially diagnose… or simply to learn that it really is just a phase, which is also worth knowing for sure from professionals, that way you don’t have to second guess yourself as much.
Professionals make mistakes which is why I recommend seeking multiple opinions just to be sure.
If you make the child feel safe and give them options, they will show you their true unfiltered nature, whatever that may be.
Some little girls are tomboys early in life but grow up and remain female and live as women, because it’s not about what toys they like or how they interact with others… it’s about whether or not they have clinical gender dysphoria and feel sad or scared at the idea of growing up and living as their birth sex.
Doctors are your friend. They became doctors to help people. Let them try!
Thank you for your response. As you can probably tell, I wasn’t aware of the details of the procedure, and how much the timelines matter. I never felt the need to find out before because in general I trust healthcare professionals (and do support this type of care), but understanding more about it is certainly helpful and educational. Of course I can Google things, but then we miss the opportunity to learn from one another, right?
About your advice of talking to our doctor about when my son says he’s a girl. This is really interesting to me. I had not considered it before at all, didn’t even cross my mind, and I can immediately say I won’t take him now. There’s multiple reasons for that that are of a personal nature that I won’t share here, but I can tell why I’m immediately dismissive of the idea. These are personal beliefs.
He’s still very young and he’s just figuring out that there’s the concept of gender, and that we in general use these labels for one type and other. It’s not something that is currently of any concern to me, not at home, nor the community we live in. All we care about is that he’s happy, healthy, and that he becomes a good person at this stage. I believe that giving this any weight now, will make it into a thing. I don’t want to influence this, he’s just a tiny kid. Of course that would all change if it persists. If the school starts giving signals that something is afoot for example. But I imagine that that will still take quite some time. Again a personal belief here (and perhaps more controversial here): to me it feels like doing this now, in the situation we’re in, feels like a gross overreaction (albeit orders of magnitude less extreme than immediately think about something like conversion therapy!). I think it’s just completely normal behaviour, why consult a doctor? He’s in a safe environment and can figure thing out for himself for now.
If my kid finds himself in this position, I will do everything in my power to make this as smooth as possible. He will not be traumatised by this if he wants this.
I do thank you for the suggestion, I hadn’t thought about it myself and understand it comes from a good place.
I’m not a doctor, but I’ve read multiple peer reviewed articles about the safety and efficacy of gender affirming care for children, have worked with children on puberty blockers (who were healthy and wonderful and were thriving under the treatment they were receiving), and am trans myself (so I’ve pirated and read multiple textbooks on trans care to advocate for myself at the doctors office.)
You are probably the kind of dumb fuck who think that 13 year olds are getting testosterone and dicks lopped off. Your opinion is worth the same as the toilet paper I just flushed.
I think if you want to be fair you make a distinction about policies you support based on your pov and how you treat the people you come across in your life. That could also make a difference to someone. Preferably by letting them know you’re ok with them existing without getting into a discussion about which policies you support and which you don’t.
For example, I could feel migrants take away our jobs and tell everyone I assume might be a migrant about my political views. That would make me a lot less of a pleasant human being than if I were to treat someone I assume is a migrant like the people I assume are not. Because to those people I also don’t start a conversation about how I feel about that.
I’m not accusing you of anything, but want to tell you that it is possible to come across people choose not to voice your opinion. Not just to prevent receiving that aggression, trolling, cancelling, intimidation you mention; but also because it might help someone feel relaxed when they’re around you.
I was only reacting to the title of the post, and I stupidly said ‘this meme’, that was a mistake. The content of the meme on it’s own I fully support. Apologies, thanks for pointing that out!
I think
this ‘meme’the title of this post is a great example of what the problem really is. I do not have any issues with trans people. What I have a major problem with is that voicing an opinion, or have any form of meaningful debate, is met with immense aggression, trolling, cancelling, intimidation.I am for example not completely convinced about trans women in female sports and am sympathetic to arguments from both sides. Even voicing that will cause me to be vilified by one side.
Another example is transition care for children. I believe that at a young age making an irreversible choice is dangerous and we should be careful. Not saying care should abolished, just saying that such a big life decision needs extreme care because it can cause irreparable harm later in life. Again a reasonable, well willing position that will cause this to be downvoted into oblivion.
So, trans people, I support you to exist, be happy, live a meaningful life. But unfortunately there’s a group of loud people who are honestly behaving like psychopaths who are making it hard to stay sympathetic. Wake up.
(Edit) Wanted to share this NY times post that puts thing much more eloquent than I ever could: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/gay-lesbian-trans-rights.html
In regards to the whole trans women in sports thing: Sport doesn’t fucking matter. Let them play their little games if they want. Discouraging young people from healthy exercise just because some bigots care too much about who wins a meaningless contest is ridiculous.
I understand what you’re saying, and agree that discouraging young people to exercise is preposterous. But sports and competition do matter to a lot of people (especially in the US I think, which comes across way more competitive than Europe), and it’s not meaningless to them (neither to trans athletes I might add).
So I would say that your comment will be considered quite disrespectful. Would you say that this large group of people are more, or less inclined to agree with you if they’re being called a bigot?
I have no objection to people enjoying sports. Lord knows I enjoy a lot of inconsequential nonsense myself. The bigots I refer to are the people that are using trans people in sports as some sort of civilisation ending issue when it’s really not all that serious. They’re just using it to push a bigoted agenda that really has less to do with sport as it does their own irrational fears.
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/the-moderate-case-against-trans-youth
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/the-moderate-case-against-transgender
I should not have had to suffer through the first, wrong, puberty. I’m left with permanent scars, both physical and psychological, as a result. I’m not coming back to debate people who think thousands of trans kids should suffer the same way I did because one or two cis kids could be hurt. I damn near didn’t survive and a lot of trans kids don’t. Just dropping these links, I will not debate.
Hey, thanks for your comment and link. I respect that it must be incredibly hard having to suffer so much because of personal experience, and to then be expected to debate about it. I totally get that.
As the article says, there is a lot of misinformation around this, a lot of ignorance, and I do believe that an open debate about this (or anything in general really) is truly important. Way i see it, you’ve got bad actors on one side (opposing trans in this case) who will use anything to further their agenda. And they have an advantage: they can oversimplify a complex process. It’s really easy to shout “They want all your children to be trans!”, and quite a bit harder to explain the reality. That’s what the trans community is up against. It will take a lot of patience and time, decades, to educate the masses unfortunately, and any excesses, like online vitriol, trolling, will be used against you. I’m sorry to say this, but you’re an easy target.
Again, not expecting anyone to debate who doesn’t want to. But I hope that the people who do enter the public debate can be as composed as the author of the article you shared. I believe that’s the only road to acceptance.
I wish you all the best, and hope you can find peace. From the little information I have I can tell, you are beautiful.
… do you think transition care for minors is just handed out at the grocery store checkout or something?
“We need to be cautious!” would be much more compelling if the standard medical approach to trans minors was not already immensely cautious.
I dread to think of how quickly your sympathy would’ve been sapped for Black rights in the 1950s and 60s.
The standard may be cautious, but a significant number of individual clinicians are not. But pointing out that a concerning number of care providers have looser-than-standard medical approaches gets the speaker attacked as a traitor to the cause.
Bolding mine, quite from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/transgender-youth-skrmetti/683350/
People act like natal puberty is the neutral choice here - it’s not. The first wrong puberty made me actively suicidal and that’s not unusual. If a kid has gotten so far as to get to a doctor about this, it’s pretty clear that something is up (cis people generally don’t question their gender in the first place) and by waiting on puberty blockers you’re allowing further suffering and irreversible harm to a trans kid. Puberty blockers are a very low risk way of hitting pause and if the kid decides to go through with natal puberty they can just stop taking puberty blockers with no harm other than a delayed puberty.
Puberty blockers are an overwhelmingly safe way to buy time for a patient, fuck’s sake.
This, so much. There’re very real and important discussions in the medical field that (very candidly) go into these types of topics that become impossible to have (at least in the public discourse) due to these types of behaviours.
I had to laugh at this ridiculous line from the opinion piece:
The whole idea that transition care is “getting rid” of gay people is ridiculous, I was into girls way before I transitioned. The other trans people I know are all extremely gay.
You are concerned about a child making a decision that they may regret… so you think the decision should be made for them?
“I get aggression and trolling”
“people being mean to me are psychopaths who make it hard for me to stay sympathetic to trans people”
I think the ‘dark joke’ is one of those jokes that actually reveals how some people feel about this; what I got the opinion piece is that some folks in the gay community worry that wanting to transition can also mean being attracted to the same sex and being confused about it at a young age.
Not exactly, a child is a person and should have agency. But at the same time, they’re a child and are less experienced in life. I don’t let my kid eat ice cream whenever they feel like it, and I wouldn’t let him make such a major decision before he knows very sure who he is. Because transitioning is a decision, but who you are is not. And I believe that when you’re so young, it’s really hard to know who you are.
My experience was that I was not attracted to men at all, but because I liked sailor moon and painting my nails people would just assume that I was. It just strikes me as a very paternalistic attitude to be worried about misguiding poor gay people who are simply “confused”.
Being trans is very much a part of who you are. However while there has been a tremendous social pressure to repress over the years, trans people are not a recent development.
I’m a trans woman, I transitioned later in life, but I knew from a very young age that I was uncomfortable as a boy and I didn’t have the words to describe it until much later in life.
I grew up in the 90s’s/00’s and back then the gatekeeping and lack of information was pretty bad. Unless you were presenting with an acute mental health condition you really weren’t getting taken seriously. I was able to hold my shit long enough to go to a college and land a career because throwing myself into work (and drinking heavily) was my coping skill.
Meeting and working with another trans person after years of repressing that feeling was all it really took for me to put it together and transition myself after 10+ years of denial. That’s also what happens when trans people are erased from daily life.
I think it’s a good thing that kids actually get listened to when they say what they want. It’s not ‘ice cream for dinner’ but that orientation does speak volumes. None of these transition decisions get made flippantly, this is a process that takes years and plenty of oversight.
I’m gonna try to reply to this in good faith as you seem to be wanting to engage in a good faith discussion, so let me tell you my experience.
I’m a trans girl.
Before I even have memories I was always (according to my mother) asking for skirts and dresses and playing with dolls and makeup. These moments were always taken as a joke or as me ‘being in a phase’ and were brushed off and ignored. My earliest memories have me confused why my sister gets to wear pretty dresses to church but I have to wear a boring suit. I remember ‘borrowing’ my sister’s nail polish, makeup, and dresses as early as age NINE. Did I have the understanding of what I was feeling? No. This was in the 90s, trans people werent as widely known in the US, especially the South. But if you’d given me the option to transition at age 9, I would’ve taken it in a heartbeat.
How do I know?
I’d slip out of my window EVERY NIGHT after everyone had gone to bed to wish on the first star I laid eyes on to be a girl. Sure, it wasn’t the first star to appear, but it was the first one I saw! That counted, right? I remember watching the episode of Sabrina the Teenaged Witch where she made a potion to turn herself into a boy to figure out what her boyfriend did in the auto shop. What did I do immediately after the episode ended? Went into the kitchen and tried to make my own potion with ‘sugar and spice and everything nice’. Glitter is nice! Oh and soda! Soda’s very nice.
I went to bed daydreaming of going to hogwarts and finding a potion that could make me right. I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed for a way to change my gender that when I finally heard about trans people at age 17, my reaction wasn’t ‘hmmm, this is interesting. I wonder if this is what I’m feeling’, instead it was ‘Oh, THAT’s what this is? There are other people like me?!?!?!’
Scientific studies have shown that a child’s concept of gender is already developed by age 4. Studies have also shown that a child’s understanding of who they are ALSO develops pretty early on. And, yes, in cases of children going on hormones, it is all done in conjunction with the child’s experiences, the doctor’s EXPERTISE in the matter, and the parents’ consent. They aren’t just walking into a doctor’s office and boosting little timmy up with E. Before any medicine has been taken there is EXTENSIVE screening through therapy and physician visits over the course of YEARS.
This isn’t a question that nobody has ever asked. It’s studied. It’s tested over the course of DECADES. And lastly, it’s (frankly) none of your business unless it’s YOUR kid, at which point you have complete control over whether your child goes through with any of it (up until age 18 at least).
Wrong place wrong time.
You’re vilified because you’re acting like a villain. People don’t want to debate your neckbeardedly presented well ahcktuallies while they’re fighting for the right to exist.
We don’t have this fight when it comes to other medical matters. Like if kids with cancer should get treatment even though chemo and surgery could have long-lasting repucussions. The alternative is they die. People who don’t get proper medical treatment die. Trans kids die of depression and suicide without treatment. Those are real things, there are real risks to not treating a medical condition. It’s not a matter up for public debate just because some dickwads are trying to distract everyone by making healthcare for a specific group of people political. It’s medical, we have facts and data that say trans people need healthcare to support their transition to live healthier longer lives. There are fucking doctors out there with years of practice who say yes, these kids need medical intervention. And here you are bitching that no one will debate you in a place where, again, people are fighting to exist. And you’re bringing up tired arguments because you gotta be that guy.
We have data on trans performance in sports and there is no clear advantage.
Besides, if you’re a world-class athlete, you already have a way different kind of body than most people. There are plenty of biological advantages that are celebrated in sports rather than weeded out. Want to start making sure everyone is the same height and weight for every sport, too? Same lung capacity? Reaction time? Born in the same country? Live at the same altitude? Same race? If you want to get advantages, there are clearer divisions along racial lines than trans status. No, I don’t advocate for segregation in sports because I’m not a goddamn monster of a person who can’t think for two seconds about why that’s idiotic.
Fuck off. Stop being a moron. Show some goddamn empathy.
How is anyone supposed to show empathy, let alone learn anything when even the slightest hint of wanting to have a conversation is met with this kind of reaction? I’m the villain? OK, but then you’re an extremist.
I made it clear in my comment what I support, and it was certainly not denying anyone’s right to exist. None of what I said supports the claim you made. What I pointed out is a major problem is exactly what you illustrate with your comment. It’s impossible to discuss anything when 2 sides are so entrenched and unwilling to debate. I get the urgency and gravity of what is happening right now, but for people like me, who consider themselves very sympathetic to the trans community, you’re making it very hard to help. It’s either support everything we say, or shut the f up. That’s never going to work.
And on the data you’re referring to around gender-affirming care, show me. Latest I heard, this is a very young field of study, and data, if any, is inconclusive. And yet here I am, supporting gender-affirming care, having to defend the position that please can we tread with care. Insanity!
As you (seem to) point out, trans people in sports is a different conversation. The science is clearer, but now we have a group of formerly (and frankly, still) marginalised people (women at birth, biologically) who fear unfair advantage. Much more political, philosophical even, a much harder debate. I empathise with both sides, how villainous of me.
So, showing empathy to you is hard. You reap what you sow.
Saying you’re supportive vs. actually doing the work to listen, understand, and be supportive, are much different things. Your empathy is performative if you don’t back up your words with actions, no matter how you dress up your opinions with empathetic-sounding statements.
Consider this: If you’re truly empathetic and open minded, why do you need to keep pointing it out?
The fact that you present an opinion piece from media owned by special interests to support your argument is enough to see why you believe what you do.
I have a group of friends, some of whom are trans, some of whom have medical degrees, and we have these discussions all the time. However, when someone talks about their right to exist being threatened, in a world where their right to exist is being threatened, is when you’ve decided to come in complaining about how poor you can’t engage in any polite discourse because people downvote you.
A number of people here have told you why this is the case, but you proceed to play the victim.
There are more than two sides, and no, the science on sports isn’t more clear than it is on gender affirming care. Even in the pub med links someone else posted, which they apparently hadn’t read in entirety, it go into how controversies around trans identities is sports has become a solution in search of a problem. You should read those links.
I don’t know what about my post made you think I wanted or was willing to extend empathy to your point of view. Was it when I called you a moron or an idiot?
Hi. I’m not sure what data she’s referring to that shows trans women have no athletic advantage in sports.
I’m trans and I disagree completely.
I believe the issue at hand is, and always has been, male puberty.
I don’t want people who went through male puberty physically competing against people who haven’t.
Male puberty gives an advantage that is not really possible to “undo” completely.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9331831/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10641525/
Also, you are not bad for asking questions, or sharing your assumptions. I welcome them.
You mean well. That’s what matters.
Thank you.
Hey, thanks for this thoughtful response. This is basically what I’m seeing happening; I don’t think it’s a black and white, clear cut situation. On the one hand there’s trans people, who feel discriminated against on this matter, on the other hand there’s women who have similar sentiments on the same. And here I am agreeing with them both. An impossible position. Agreeing with one side is denying the other. I don’t see a solution to this and that really sucks.
I didn’t actually comment to ask questions to be honest, but to comment on the polarisation that is happening, and that folks who are sympathetic perhaps become less sympathetic when immediately being put away as Satan. That’s burning bridges which you can’t afford as a minority.
But, I’m happy I did comment because there’s also some really good insights here and thoughtful responses. I don’t know any trans people IRL, so it’s valuable to me.
Thank you
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it’s not 2014 anymore. we aren’t canceling anyone. we’re getting canceled. JKR is doing victory laps. NHS has banned HRT for minors, as have 27 states. we’re kicked out of the military, and forbidden from security clearances. teachers in Florida can’t even use their own pronouns. Medicaid/Medicare/ACA funding for HRT for adults is stripped now. we can’t get passports with the correct gender marker. Sarah McBride has to use the men’s bathroom in Congress. Newsom calls us freaks. conservative media is calling us groomers and every time there’s a mass shooter they spread the rumor the shooter was trans. “gender ideology” is the new Satanic Panic. NYT keeps running op-eds on why Dems should throw us under the bus. Nancy Mace shouted “tr*nny” three times on the House floor and wasn’t censured for it.
you really think we’re the ones holding the cards?
It’s not 2014 and yet this is a post about not supporting the trans agenda makes one a “fucking psychopath”.
The joke, if you paid attention, is that the trans agenda isn’t a thing. They’re just trying to survive. So yeah, not supporting someone’s right to exist is some psychopathic behavior.
The fact thay you think there’s a trans agenda outside of just trying to survive doesn’t make you a psychopath, but it does make you an idiot.
What else do you call someone who wants to deny medical care for children and force them to go through irreversible changes?
With irreversible changes do you mean puberty?
Correct. Snowies did a good job explaining why.
Unfortunately puberty causes irreversible changes yes.
Now that doctors and parents en masse know trans people are a thing, if a child shows signs of gender dysphoria in early childhood, therapy is in order.
If the therapist determines the child is probably trans, and the (male) child insists they don’t want to grow up as a man, or vice versa, or whatever, and the parents feel like it’s not going to change and they’re more concerned with the child’s happiness than with some religious conviction or conservative values they may be clinging to…
The child should be given puberty blockers, which studies have shown do NOT cause irreversible damage.
As the child becomes a teenager and the situation stays the same… eventually it becomes obvious that some form of puberty needs to happen, and a choice has to be made. Usually this happens around 14 - 16 I believe.
It’s a tough decision, with many people involved, and the end result will be permanent irreversible changes to the teenager’s (soon to be adult’s) body.
If you force the child to go through a puberty they don’t want, you fuck them up… forever.
You destroy their life in a lot of ways. You condemn them to a life of harassment and rejection and isolation. Your own child.
This isn’t just mad doctors running around with meat cleavers going to town.
It’s a process that spans the child’s entire childhood, with thousands of opportunities to pump the breaks and change course, that if avoided in the name of something other than the child’s happiness and the doctors recommendations… will lead to tremendous misery and resentment.
I was born in the late 80s. My parents didn’t know what trans was. They took me to a conversion therapist when I was 5. Their solution for me was to “convince me to be normal”.
I grew up hating myself and feeling like a freak, because the feelings never went away, and I no longer felt safe talking about them… with anyone… so I was alone, hurting, in silence, watching my body change forever in ways I hated, trying to rationalize it all, imagining that one day I’d like the changes somehow.
That day never came.
I have been through a lot in my life. If my parents had known about transsexualism and gender transition, and supported me fully, my life would have been so much better.
I now have a whole host of mental issues that will haunt me until the day I die.
I want to love life. I want to see the good in people. It’s so hard when you’ve been through what someone like me has.
I am the direct result of your nervousness about treating children for gender dysphoria.
I am the alternative to supporting them.
Please don’t believe I am better off.
I’m not.
I am in psychological pain that never ends.
Thank you for your openness and sharing your personal story. I can’t even imagine what that must have been like, and I’m sorry that you had to experience that.
Also thank you for taking the time to explain. I 100% agree with what you say. You describe a very careful procedure, it being such a delicate matter. This is what I would want for my son if he was in this position. He’s 4 and has said he’s a girl many times lately. That’s incredibly young and probably a phase. I recall myself wanting to be a girl for a bit, at the same age, and my mom gave me a dress to wear (great mum, and a wonderful memory, I was lucky). It didn’t stick for me. But if it does for him, my primary concern is their wellbeing, and that they grow up in an accepting environment (and society). I wish you could’ve had that.
If I may ask you a question, I honestly don’t know this. Puberty is a natural process that everyone goes through under normal circumstances. But children who transition and take puberty blockers don’t, I assume (or do they but after transitioning?). If they don’t, that’s an experience they will never have, is there any issue with that?
Thanks again for your thoughtful response. It’s really helpful to understand.
PS I wanted to clarify that my worry on this issue is primarily with doing away with a careful process, as I’ve heard sometimes being voiced. I’m not saying it should be made more difficult, but it is a delicate process, with young children, and I feel what you described is a proper way of handling it. I think many folks (the majority really) who consider themselves a bit more neutral on the matter think this way, and being called transphobe for even the slightest deviation from the opinion of some folks does the trans community more harm than good.
So there’s something called Hormone Replacement Therapy.
It’s where doctors refer you to endocrinologists who measure the hormone levels in ng/DL or nanograms per deciliter in your blood.
The endocrinologists then recommend a dosage of estradiol and progesterone, or testosterone if the child is transitioning from “female to male”, in order to bring their hormone levels into a healthy range for someone their age of the opposite sex.
The body is surprisingly flexible especially during development when your bones and ligaments are still forming and your epiphyseal plates are still porous and malleable. When they go from blockers to HRT, their body will make puberty of the opposite sex happen, and they will look completely natural as a member of that sex, with the exception of their gonads/genitals.
These are almost always the trans people “you can’t tell” with. It’s easy to blend in when you never went through “the wrong puberty” so to speak.
That happens after the blockers, and is basically the final decision before permanent changes happen, usually at 14 - 16 years of age after having the child on puberty blockers and regularly therapy sessions.
No medicine will be prescribed until puberty begins, and no surgeries will be prescribed until adulthood in most cases. There are some rare exceptions in some states, but it’s still at the parents discretion.
If the child and you decide transition isn’t the right choice, the child can simply go off the puberty blockers, and regular puberty happens in line with their assigned sex at birth, with a minimal change in development.
If your child is showing signs I absolutely recommend talking to multiple doctors and therapists about all of this, and if it seems right you may end up wanting to schedule some pediatric therapy for them to really investigate and potentially diagnose… or simply to learn that it really is just a phase, which is also worth knowing for sure from professionals, that way you don’t have to second guess yourself as much.
Professionals make mistakes which is why I recommend seeking multiple opinions just to be sure.
If you make the child feel safe and give them options, they will show you their true unfiltered nature, whatever that may be.
Some little girls are tomboys early in life but grow up and remain female and live as women, because it’s not about what toys they like or how they interact with others… it’s about whether or not they have clinical gender dysphoria and feel sad or scared at the idea of growing up and living as their birth sex.
Doctors are your friend. They became doctors to help people. Let them try!
Thank you for your response. As you can probably tell, I wasn’t aware of the details of the procedure, and how much the timelines matter. I never felt the need to find out before because in general I trust healthcare professionals (and do support this type of care), but understanding more about it is certainly helpful and educational. Of course I can Google things, but then we miss the opportunity to learn from one another, right?
About your advice of talking to our doctor about when my son says he’s a girl. This is really interesting to me. I had not considered it before at all, didn’t even cross my mind, and I can immediately say I won’t take him now. There’s multiple reasons for that that are of a personal nature that I won’t share here, but I can tell why I’m immediately dismissive of the idea. These are personal beliefs.
He’s still very young and he’s just figuring out that there’s the concept of gender, and that we in general use these labels for one type and other. It’s not something that is currently of any concern to me, not at home, nor the community we live in. All we care about is that he’s happy, healthy, and that he becomes a good person at this stage. I believe that giving this any weight now, will make it into a thing. I don’t want to influence this, he’s just a tiny kid. Of course that would all change if it persists. If the school starts giving signals that something is afoot for example. But I imagine that that will still take quite some time. Again a personal belief here (and perhaps more controversial here): to me it feels like doing this now, in the situation we’re in, feels like a gross overreaction (albeit orders of magnitude less extreme than immediately think about something like conversion therapy!). I think it’s just completely normal behaviour, why consult a doctor? He’s in a safe environment and can figure thing out for himself for now.
If my kid finds himself in this position, I will do everything in my power to make this as smooth as possible. He will not be traumatised by this if he wants this.
I do thank you for the suggestion, I hadn’t thought about it myself and understand it comes from a good place.
Banning HRT for minors was the right decision.
Are you a doctor? No? Sorry, your opinion is a irrelevant.
Since you seem to be chronically online I’m quite sure it’s YOU who is not a doctor. Which means YOUR opinion is quite irrelevant.
I’m not a doctor, but I’ve read multiple peer reviewed articles about the safety and efficacy of gender affirming care for children, have worked with children on puberty blockers (who were healthy and wonderful and were thriving under the treatment they were receiving), and am trans myself (so I’ve pirated and read multiple textbooks on trans care to advocate for myself at the doctors office.)
You are probably the kind of dumb fuck who think that 13 year olds are getting testosterone and dicks lopped off. Your opinion is worth the same as the toilet paper I just flushed.
average .ml L
Bash the red fash.
I rest my case.
Fuck your case.
No nuance for transphobia.
He literally said he supports us and that he wants to learn…
How in the world do you see anything he said as transphobic?
You sound extremely unreasonable right now…
You should probably not use words that you don’t know the meaning of.
I think if you want to be fair you make a distinction about policies you support based on your pov and how you treat the people you come across in your life. That could also make a difference to someone. Preferably by letting them know you’re ok with them existing without getting into a discussion about which policies you support and which you don’t.
For example, I could feel migrants take away our jobs and tell everyone I assume might be a migrant about my political views. That would make me a lot less of a pleasant human being than if I were to treat someone I assume is a migrant like the people I assume are not. Because to those people I also don’t start a conversation about how I feel about that.
I’m not accusing you of anything, but want to tell you that it is possible to come across people choose not to voice your opinion. Not just to prevent receiving that aggression, trolling, cancelling, intimidation you mention; but also because it might help someone feel relaxed when they’re around you.
I was only reacting to the title of the post, and I stupidly said ‘this meme’, that was a mistake. The content of the meme on it’s own I fully support. Apologies, thanks for pointing that out!