Worth noting that the 'crisis' of kids socially transitioning at school without notifying their parents was almost entirely seeded by a NYT article. Even in conservative states, this was nowhere on the legislative agenda a year ago and now it's everywhere.
Missouri HB.1739 contains provisions for the immediate dismissal and 4 year suspension from employment for any nurse, teacher or social worker who calls a student a name other than that which is on their school registration forms, or fails to report a non-cis identity.
legiscan.com/MO/bill/HB17...
Remember too that this entire panic is predicated on the idea that kids are getting irreversible hormones and surgeries before anyone confirms that they're 'really' trans.
If that were a real concern then schools should make social transition as easy as possible! This is all just bigotry.
That's the two-step: complain that socially transitioning people "aren't real transsexuals" while also complaining that they're just out there chopping people's dick off as soon as they walk into a clinic.
I still follow some of those people over at The Other Place and it becomes clear really quickly that it's all just, "I hate trans people because they're different" all the way down.
one of the two-steps on this issue, in fact. closely followed by "testosterone puberty gives advantages" + "no you're not allowed to transition before you go thru testosterone puberty"
Even delaying puberty is too much for these ghouls. They hide behind “we don’t know the long term effects” despite the fact that we now have data going on 30 years AND the short term effects of not doing are known and terrible.
one line I've seen, I think maybe specifically pushed by Jesse Singal, is that social transition isn't irreversible because kids who socially transition usually go on to medical transition
which is to say: these kids are trans! they'll stay trans unless you do conversion therapy to them!
lol I guess Singal was pushing this line specifically in response to you
his "I'm not a hack" T-shirt is raising lots of questions etc. etc.
nitter.net/jessesingal/...
Exactly, he wants easily reversible treatments to be treated as irreversible. The fact that most people who socially transition eventually pursue medical transition is evidence that they're doing it with a lot of forethought, not that it's being pushed on them!
Also, underlying this whole "debate" is the unspoken assumption that transitioning is a bad outcome to be avoided if possible, and therefore any action or policy that results in more people transitioning is inherently a problem and should be viewed with suspicion.
I would argue that transitioning is a desirable outcome that vastly improves one's quality of life if one is a trans person, which is true for the overwhelming majority of people who pursue transition.
That was also an attitude of transition care providers who wished a return to classic gatekeeping standards. What you said about viewing successful transition as a bad outcome was my observation of my expeirences with several Drs and therapists in the US throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
I think this has gone through such an absurd case of telephone that now the Policy Exchange report that’s the basis for changing UK guidance for schools says social transition is ‘an active medical intervention’, it’s madness bsky.app/profile/nate...
There are completely BONKERS claims strewn throughout the Policy Exchange report, like 'social transition is an active medical intervention' (?????), which somehow means there are unspecified 'risks' (a 'risk' of being trans!), and thus 'has no place within an educational setting'.
Deranged
This started in the UK before the US, albeit with help from the religious right. The entire Tavistock “scandal” was a creation of media and psychoanalyst clinicians who think bad mothers cause kids to be trans.
I also don’t think the data showing most people who socially transition will eventually pursue medical transition is going to hold for Gen Z. Clinicians I talk to say many families come in for HRT consults and the teens themselves decide it’s not part of how they want to affirm their gender.
And you know if most people who socially transitioned *didn’t* medically transition that would just prove social transition is an unnecessary fad and thus should be stopped.
Transphobic rhetoric lives on ‘heads I win, tails you lose’
Jesse Singal remains shockeded that when trans kids are allowed to exist, more of them exist and needs to compare age cohorts of LGB people and consider it's the same issue: when you're not going to be as tortured for it, you come out!
alternative Twitter front-end, displays tweets but doesn't allow logging in, usually works much faster than the current site, doesn't have all the weird ways of breaking for logged-out users (though sometimes it breaks a bit)--it's how I look at Twitter when i need to these days
A few years ago they started with misrepresenting a study to claim that a large percentage don't medically transition and when the obvious rebuttal happened they switched to arguing that the lack of "false positives" is a major problem.
But also: normalize going ahead with hormones to decide whether you're trans. It's easy to stop them if you're not. In fact, normalize adjusting any part of your biochemistry to see if it helps, without any medical gatekeeping. I'm completely serious.
Oh, you're preaching to the converted here (with the important proviso that every trans person is different, with individual desires and needs, and that some will prefer not to have the medical system involved in how they express their gender on the not-unreasonable grounds that it's not an illness)
E.g., both our kids are trans; both came out to us around the same age. Elder's first priority was to change their pronouns & name and get into counseling, & didn't take medical steps til years later; Younger wanted HRT immediately, blew off the shrink, & still uses birth name & pronouns w us
They all say it’s abuse to “force” being trans on a kid. If they really believed that not affirming someone’s gender identity was abuse, they’d recognize it’s also abuse not to affirm trans kids.
But no, it’s “any gender identity as long as you’re cis”
Which is total nonsense, as any parent of a trans kid could tell them -- if we didn't all become terrified to draw attention to ourselves by proposed laws that carry 20 year prison sentences and loss of custody. Once we had one foot out the door, ot became safe to yell facts at lawmakers, then move.
It’s also such a bizarre idea to worry about kids exploring identity at any stage in any way. In my middle school I knew a guy who went as Beavis for laughs for years; I still don’t remember his real name. And I knew a FEW people in high school who called themselves vampires. Everyone just shrugged.
I've likened it to how almost none of us ended up doing the thing we wanted to do as kids. At 12, I 100% wanted to play in the NHL. I fell asleep to SportsCenter every night to cultivate jockiness. 2 years later I hated sports and loved Final Fantasy VII and wanted to be a character designer.
I mostly agree, but I think there are some weird obsessions with gender that shouldn't even be put on kids. Like what if the reason kids feel they need to identify is because adults are putting weird gender role requirements on them in the first place. Like a boy can't play with dolls.
Our local (gov run) primary school burned down in the Fires. Many small children lost their home & their school. One of the groups coming in to help the kids adjust gave every student a doll to care for. One little boy, happily hugging his dolly, said "they usually forget the boys".
I think that letting the child feel things out for themselves is harmless.
And that the same parents who insist that boys can't play with dolls are not going to support their child deciding to be a girl for any length of time, at any age.
Very true.
At the base of it all, I think it's just extremely creepy some are trying to sexualize kids in the first place. It truly does NOT MATTER what gender an 8 yr old is. They are a child, not a man or woman.
I think a lot of the problem is precisely that people know kids/teens are like this. They imagine those two years you spent thinking you were going to be in the NHL you were instead taking drugs that would make you never go through puberty.
There is no drug that permanently stops you going through puberty. There are some that can pause it but it starts up when you stop the drug, and the side effects of the drugs are mild (especially in the context of the risk of restricting them)
There’s a pretty amazing Radiolab about the drugs and their effects, at least on a kid who started puberty extremely early.
Even with the drugs, it’s more like a slowing from what I gather. Anyway, the laws are bad, not sure for the over broad impact.
www.wnycstudios.org/story/boy-man/
I know and I'm supportive of teens having access to treatment, but I'm just speaking to the mentality.
Ultimately the urgency around treating the young is precisely about permanent changes (avoiding bad ones) you need a lot of specific knowledge to see that it's safe
