I think that perhaps you've been Christianing wrong this whole time.

[Oscar_Kipling]

I mean that there's no such thing as "trans kids". There is no need to talk endlessly about the suicidality of "trans kids". There are certainly confused kids, and especially these days given the emphasis on gender, self-discovery, "you don't know unless you try", "some boys are, some girls are...", etc. At that stage in left, the best thing to do is either wait and see, or if a child is persistent enough, attend serious psychiatry/psychotherapy -- not the stuff of affirmation that goes on these days.

I'm not talking about keeping children ignorant or arbitrarily gatekeeping until age 18, or 25, or whenever. What I am saying is that if there is a "trans child", that child is ~5 out of every 1000. We absolutely do not have the numbers we see today, where the "trans umbrella" includes everyone and everything.

In my view 1 in 200 isn't exceedingly rare, especially if you consider that there are like 1 billion tik-tok users alone, once you account for the self selection and concentration aspects of social media, activism and general interneterty, I do not know how many fewer trans people you would expect to see when compared to how many you actually see. Even IRL I see trans people overrepresented in certain places, but usually there is a reason why that is the case and I would not attribute it to the population wildly outgrowing the borders of the groups where I would expect to see LGBTs. Anyway I guess I can agree that we don't need to be pushy and tell kids that they need to try to be trans to see if it works for them, but I certainly do not think that it is so rare or irrelevant to the world that we live in that we shouldn't talk to kids about what these things mean and provide help where that is warranted. I cannot, based on what you've said here, agree that there are no trans kids, or agree that we can treat it as practically so, or agree that the best thing to do when a child is confused is to throw my hands up and see how it plays out as a rule of thumb...like all of that sounds like an overcorrection to an overcorrection, then you're just oscillating more and more wildly until you crash ...maybe idk...just sayin that I can agree that alot of people are taking an approach that is far too casual, but that doesn't mean that we gotta be all Uatu is forbidden to interfere about it imo.

TV and CD are the same thing, and aren't TS, is what I'm getting at, and which is confused by the "community" for the same thing (just separated by degrees, or something).

It is true that I don't get around much anymore, but as recently as 4 or 5 years ago getting TV/CD and TG  mixed up was a faux pas in my circles. I guess if all of those designations are being mashed up under the same umbrella, and that umbrella Isn't a broader LGBT_____ umbrella, then yes it seems problematic to my apparently outdated thinking too.  Edit: well after doing a very slight amount of research it does not seem that TV/CD's being included under the trans umbrella is a consensus position within the "community". The best rationale that I have seen for it is that the trans umbrella should/can include anyone that is gender non-conforming, which is reasonably applicable to cd's and tv's. It seems that outside of the community they are lumped together too, perhaps the rationale/impetus is a little different, but this isn't something that can be blamed strictly on the community. It seems that folks struggling to find inclusive/descriptive language, and/or are using it to advance agendas ...regular language stuff I suppose.

It makes pretend that, say, a bilateral mastectomy is "top surgery". Cute language doesn't convey the seriousness of the surgery. "Bottom surgery" might involve things like phalloplasty, bilateral orchiectomy, penectomy, scrotectomy, etc.

Again, I'm out of the loop, but I have some trouble buying into the idea that people are getting their sex organs modified and or removed without ever asking the question "what are you gonna do exactly?" because the procedure is called "top nummies" or "Bottom snip snaps" when they would totally ask a bunch of insightful questions if they heard medical sounding words like "double Mastectomy" or "penectomy". Don't get me wrong some people have gotten BBL's and the like without knowing exactly what was about to happen or whether or not their "doctor" graduated from Johns Hopkins University or John Hodgeman's Universtity....but like, is that because BBL just rolls off the tongue too easily? I think these people that wind up in such dire straights have been failed by so many overlapping and interlocking people, systems and traditions that essentially our entire society has failed them, so blaming the naming convention is like attacking fentanyl for coming in such an elegant shade of eggshell. If the actual problem is that the language needs to be scary lest the kids not take it seriously, then why go medical at all, why not go with the language of some of the colorful folks that call it Ruinous genital mutilation surgery or twisted godless abomination surgery, or Satanic deception implantation? I'm not saying that you are nit picking, but i'm also not sold that this position doesn't share some alleles with the gatekeeping spirit of Zuul.

It begins with the acknowledgement that identity isn't self-identified. Identity is a description. A tree is identified as a tree, and should it tell us it was a rock, we would have the point out the unfortunate facts of reality. Those same unfortunate facts of reality apply to humans, too. "How I feel inside" is one thing, "therefore that makes me how I feel" is quite another.

If a tree told you it was a rock then I think you are both wrong. The word tree doesn't do much work to describe a tree. The facts of reality that would actually be useful in describing what a tree is would be much more verbose. I think you are right in that there is a lot of searching for useful descriptions and a lot of picking apart many of the traits and characteristics that are encapsulated within the default identities that our culture provides us with to choose from. You are probably right that feeling on the inside that the traits and characteristics that are accepted as comprising a man do not apply to me, does not mean that i'm not a man by a stringent scientific/medical definition, but arguments like yours feel like they are ignoring the fact that people frequently aren't speaking in a strictly medical sense. Perhaps there are many folks who are saying that inside they don't feel like they have a prostate or they don't feel like they have a wide oval and rounded superior pelvic aperture deep inside..but I have no expirience with that. If we are going to talk about proper conceptions of identity then we have to acknowledge the ways in which the current (or previous?) conceptions often failed to capture the spectrum of what it means to be a human man or human woman and how that comes into conflict with actual people's experiences. I do not think that there is anything wrong with having language that is just meant to capture prevalent biological traits, in fact I think it is absolutely crucial in order to speak about biology and do good science stuff. However where I agree with the pushback is in the rejection of many of the cultural stowaways that are latched onto these this precision language in colloquial usage. This unduly gives the authority of biological reality to cultural embellishments of what a man or woman is, and it seems to me that this unmerited authority is used discredit, disparage or coerce those that do not feel that they are described by this collection of  traits, duties, clothing options, range of emotional expression and so on. Just feels like again an overreaction to an overreaction, when what is at the heart of it is something that seems worth talking about.

It's an example of the problem. People - mostly enbys - thinking that they don't feel like a man or a woman, therefore they're something else. There's a serious psychiatric difficulty that needs to be addressed, but non-binary is nonsense if the claim is ontic.

Could you talk a bit more about the problem of disregarding the notions of feeling like a man or a woman, and what physiatric difficulty it illustrates when an emby does what emby's are want to do from time to time? This is another instance of "why is that bad?" additionally what is the healthy alternative that you are promoting? bonus, when were we more or less adhering to this healthier self image?

"Your daughter will kill herself unless you let her undergo top surgery and stop T."

The endless talk of suicidality, knowing that it can turn into a social contagion. There are healthy ways to talk about it, but putting it front and center as a catastrophising strategy is not that.

We have such different experiences, don't get me wrong I've seen stuff that is more or less in line with what you've described. The problem as I see it is the catastrophizing, so if by endless talk of suicidality you meant endless catastrophizing about suicidality then I wholeheartedly agree. However if you believe that talk of suicidality and catastrophizing are equivalent then I must object. Isn't the actual problem that people aren't speaking in an appropriate and helpful way about suicide and instead are using it to put the fear of God into folks? maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I feel like once we got into the details of your suggestions they were all pretty much about some broader underlying problem, like in this case catastrophizing, it is pervasive in our social issues, politics and discourse to the point where I fear that if we don't do something to find a way to retard it 2 out of 3 of our children will end up dead or in jail before the age of 18.

Because that's the nature of "gender dysphoria". There's no pleasant experience of it, and anyone who claims otherwise immediately betrays a lack of experience. "Oh look, I hold beliefs about myself that aren't warranted, I can't trust myself, my sense of self is incongruent, I'm experiencing intense ongoing distress -- teehee isn't it so fun!".

Do you think those people that lose a limb in say a roadside ied in Afghanistan and then go on to talk about how it was the best thing that happened to them because they have learned to suck the very marrow from the toasted waygu bones of life are not being genuine? What about people that are diagnosed some issue like ADHD late in life and can't stop gushing, perhaps the ADHD did suck, but learning what their problem was, that there was a name and even better a treatment was the best day of their lives and how treatment opened up possibilities for themselves that they never believed could happen for them? Is there room to talk about how there were some real high points once a person started to receive help? Is it possible for a person to really enjoy and appreciate their journey into new possibilities? Again I'm taking it for granted that you are more plugged in to current trends within the community, but in my experience the condition itself isn't being celebrated, but instead celebrating the triumph and adventure of becoming the person they hope to be, the establishment of a robust and lively mental health state, of learning self acceptance and love, of finding & developing loving, trusting relationships and overall figuring out how to live a life that feels hopeful and worth living. Is there a reason that there cannot be fun, joy, tittering & teehee's in that?