You say you are an excreationist. Presumably you accept the theory of evolution but did not for a period of time. Why?
Like the theory of evolution, you have to first start with understanding the scientific and biological facts on the topic. In this case the scientific facts regarding biology, sex and gender identity. Your introductory post gives me suspicion you are ignorant of these facts since you did not bother to bring them up and also misrepresent some of them. Please watch this video to gain that basic level of scientific understanding if you wish to have a productive conversation. It is a starting point we need to agree upon before we can go beyond that. It also provides a framework to avoid the meaningless semantic word games that idealogues in this space employ. If you disagree with any facts in this video, please point it out with proper citation.
This is a fantastic post.
I watched the biology part and it's pretty damn good. To wit, I think the differentiation of sex and gender into discrete linguistic buckets is pretty damn arbitrary, too... The guy touches on that, but I feel it needs to be pointed in that exact direction as well.
To add, here, I think the brain differentiation is far from dichotomous, and that there are probably a few different and distinct genomic and phenotypical expressions, not merely male and female.
Of online communities, of people who feel an absence of community in their normal social range, and reach out on the internet to find those like them, there is an extreme over-representation of such atypical people; those who are typical find it in typical communities and I think there's also a bit of a "wizard effect" going where the least typical to a society end up presenting new trends in their own right.
That said, there's a whole apparatus of psychological establishment to filter out trend-chasers with respect to gender.
I gave my own niece and nephew this advice: just be you. You don't need to take a drug unless you dislike the noise in your head. Don't just dislike it because you think you need to; look at it and make your own decision.
The fact is, there are brief moments where I like my hormones, but they don't make up for all the "everything else", but I just don't like mine.
What I don't tell them, because it might color their ideas, is that for me, It's an abusive relationship and that one little spark isn't worth the next slap, kick, or punch in its own way.
Anyone should be able to leave that relationship or wait till later when they are older and more emotionally mature and ready to decide again.
If I could have, I would have started on blockers and stayed on blockers.
The fact is, we have for time immemorial watched kids get hormones thrust upon them entirely against anyone's will. That has incontrovertibly happened. We know what the hormones do, and we inferred their general existence some time ago, particularly with those born with testicles, but also "those born eunuchs", as has been noted even as of about 2000 years ago, likely far earlier; we inferred an effect of the tissue on body and mind arrested by its absence, and caused by its present.
What is certain is that the gonads are NOT vital tissue for the purposes of personal enjoyment, however; recently a born eunuch trans-man with a penis whose body did not produce its own testosterone did a whole Reddit AMA where this was discussed. Later in life, they decided to go through puberty as a trans man. He could orgasm previously, but did not ejaculate until later. It was fantastic case study.
So, people know what happens.
I maintain that for the vanishing minority who wish it, having a choice of when and whether to accept that isn't any worse than what has been happening, a forcing of the issue by the tissue that isn't the the mind of the whole nervous system.
The brain gets to make the decisions. That's how this works. Some tissue decides it doesn't want to die? Brain says that's gotta go. Some sub-node starts spewing vile shit on something between a full roar and a moderate scream in response to some chemical NOPE! Gonna block that shit. No, I don't care, I was one of those basal ganglion clusters whose patterns formed such that I do the thing and turn off the tap there. I have other concerns and make my own decisions.
A tiny, vanishing percent want to do this thing anyway, and we DO allow this same thing to happen to MANY other children, or at least some, no matter what is it that they want for themselves. They can see the results. They have eyes, and sharp minds enough to learn and figure things out.
Honestly, I think it infantilizes what humans could be if treated like they were capable and could be expected to be while also having times where they are not. I have seen live video of a
toddler frying an egg with a real range top. I doubt everyone is that capable of learning, but the few that are, that look at all that, that figure it out, that have the self-awareness to understand what is happening, and who have the understanding to identify for those around them the path that fits them.
Of course, some paths we deny to all children. We deny to all children the path of intimate relationships with adults, because some social aspects require many years of learning and peer relationships to understand, and social leverage grows with age. It's not that a magic light flips on; they just have to learn relationships by having them with people just as
new to it as they are.
Of course I only bring that up because somewhere around 2-3 replies down the line, someone is going to be like "well, we don't let kids have sex, why should we let them decide this", even though we DO let them have puberty and the person about to say that in bad faith EXPECTS them to do so, possibly even if they were born without gonads.
The fact is, when people have the power to see a branching path available to them and are robbed of the power to decide their branch and live with their future, and especially this specific choice, people fucking hate it. They hate it SO much that sometimes they become incensed at the idea anyone would want it. They hate it so much that only a few percent ever actually disagree with it.
ABSTRACT: To better constrain estimates of the prevalence of detransition and gender-affirming surgical regret, a wide range of studies…
medium.com
Of course kids can consent to it if you are going to force their development to the extent of tying them down so they can't remove their gonads (or putting any other "softer" but just-as-real chain on them).
The reality is that regret is just a false narrative pushed by an old debunked study that used a definitional trick to over-populate desistance: anyone who expressed any possibility of being trans was included, even those who washed out of counseling.
Regret rates for hormone treatments, especially following blockers, are among the lowest regret rates for any medical treatment at all.
3% of trans people have regrets, 4% for minors.
There are roughly 300000 trans youth in America, and 4% is about 12000.
Of that 12000, most desist from blockers and suffer no ill effects, and go on to slightly delayed puberty.
The question is, would 2000 people represent a big enough party to deny the overwhelming happiness of the remaining 298000? Especially since it was their own decision...