The portion of our society that is "dysphoric" is already small.
You keep repeating this misconception that people who are trans today, who seek hormonal transition don't really understand what they want.
No, actually, that's not true. I think that children probably don't really understand what they want, and probably don't comprehend what they're sacrificing. I don't even think that transition should be completely forbidden to children. I do, however, think that children who only begin exhibiting any dysphoria at the onset of puberty should not begin transitioning until they're older. If a child has persistently expressed dysphoria since well before the onset of puberty, I don't really have an objection to an earlier transition. But the reality is that almost all children experience some degree of dysphoria during puberty - especially female children. This isn't something you would have experience of... but the beginning of puberty for a female is like being painted with a huge target that makes you prey, and males of all sorts very quickly turn into predators. Puberty changes the rules for females in a really dramatic way, a way that is probably invisible to you. What we can wear changes dramatically. We're suddenly faced with having to choose our clothing with an eye to the sexuality of everyone else, rather than for our own comfort. Something as simple as a tank top suddenly risks being viewed as an advertisement for sexual advances. We can't sit the same as we used to, because some male might see our crotches and become aroused. Our entire reality shifts, and instead of being people, we become an object that males look on with sexual desire - regardless of whether we want that attention or not.
Dysphoria among pubescent girls is *incredibly* common. But it alleviates as we get older, and as our peers get older, and as we come to terms with our own sexuality.
Growing a beard and lopping of breasts isn't the solution to the dysphoria that all girls - especially homosexual girls - face at puberty. Your inability to sympathize with this, as well as with the long-term consequences of infertility and surgery, seems to indicate both privilege on your part and a deep lack of care for females.
The fact is, many people change absolutely nothing about themselves in their transition beyond their hormones. It is not about genitals in the first place, or even gender roles. Rather, it is about disapproving of the hormonally driven personality traits and their discordance with a person's desired core self.
Lots of
adult males change nothing about themselves beyond their hormones. Lots of
teenage females are having double mastectomies.
You probably dislike me. In fact I KNOW you dislike me.
Actually, I only dislike you on this one topic. On other topics, we seem to agree on a fair number of things. I don't harbor any ill will toward you at all. I do, however, think that your views on this topic are very personalized (which is understandable), and that you are either unable or unwilling to think of the consequences and impacts that your policies have on other people - even on other transgender people. What would have worked best for you when you were younger isn't necessarily what would have been most effective for someone else.
You have never even MET the "me" whose brain is not swimming in testosterone. Imagine one day if you started feeling like you wanted to say the kinds of things I say, be rude in the way I am rude, get aggressive in the way I am aggressive.
Imagine that you had to deal with this constant background desire to fight, and fuck, the entire world, and that you really wish you didn't feel that way.
I imagine that if you started feeling that way, you might want to just shut that off and instead feel like you expect to feel, though I have less than the merest inking what that other way may be.
Welcome to being human.
First off... no shit. How do you think young females feel when we suddenly start growing tits and males - much older adult males at that - start looking at us as if we were a rabbit and they a wolf? How do you think young females feel at menarche, when we start literally bleeding out of our privates? Cramps are no fun, periods are no fun, the risk of pregnancy is no fun. How do you think athletic young girls feel when their hips shift and their entire gait changes as a result? When their boobs get in the way of everyday activities? This isn't something limited to transgender people. What you're describing is the horror that is puberty, and all children of all sexes feel that to some degree or other.
Secondly... Grow the fuck up and learn some self control. Seriously. If you're constantly feeling like you want to fight or fuck something, then you probably need to see a counselor, because that's not what most males seem to experience. Most men seem capable of controlling their baser impulses and have the cognitive function to belay the effects of testosterone. Don't blame your lack of maturity and capability on testosterone, buddy.
Now imagine that on top of all of that, your body starts irreversibly becoming something you HATE. You not only fail to grow hips, but get an ugly knob on your throat, the voice you love melts away, your shoulders get square... Everything you have ever wished you could ever be falls away from you irretrievably, and not even because you can't actually have achieved what you did want but rather because someone else who is not you stands against you becoming that thing that you really want to be.
THIS more than anything else is why people transition: they do not like the person their own body is pressuring them to be.
Oh noes! Genetics aren't under your complete control! How awful!
Yes, that's overly snarky. But you keep relying on this rhetoric of "choosing" your puberty and "choosing" your sex. You don't get to choose. Nobody gets to choose. It's what happens. It happens to all humans, all mammals, all animals... hell, it even happens to plants (thought I doubt they care about it). You don't get to choose your genetic background. I sure as fuck didn't "choose" to be epileptic, and I also can't fucking "identify" out of it.
Now, with that bit of venting done... Yes, some people genuinely have extreme dysphoria. And for those people, an appropriate diagnosis, counseling, and a meaningful medical transition should be available and shouldn't present an unreasonable barrier. I have sympathy for anyone who faces such distress about their sexed body. It sounds like it sucks beyond measure.
At any rate, yes, the old school assholes who grew up believing half of society's bullshit and still addicted to the teat of sex essentialism. They have made their compromises, and accepted their beliefs.
Now as to the rest of it, you keep wanting to insist on some vast social communication of what is in people's pants. You seem to keep wanting to take it for granted, let people shout it from the roof tops, you seem to expect everyone to make it public and let it be public knowledge.
The issue comes here in that the difference is that TRANS people generally understand that physical genital configuration is a private matter, for private times with private people. You seem to wish very badly to violate that privacy.
It is a vanishingly small percentage of people who transition in any capacity, teen or not. And as Metaphor has already helpfully pointed out, even being completely non-reproductive and non-adoptive still affords plenty of chances of passing on who you are and what you believe to the next generation.
You keep arguing that the < 0.5% of the population that seeks to have the puberty that 50% of the population already experiences (but which their own body needs assistance to engage), ought not have the right to do what half of the population already does.
I find that ridiculous.
"Sex essentialism" is reality. Sex is reality, Jarhyn. It's not something made up, it is very real.
I don't insist on communication about what is in people's pants. But as a female, sex really does have a great impact on my life - it affects me physically, and it affects me socially in ways I have no control over and to which I did not consent. I didn't "choose" my puberty. And even if you had had access to cross sex hormones as a child - you would still not get to choose your puberty. You cannot experience the puberty of a female. The best you can do is avoid developing some secondary male characteristics, and grow some boobs. But that is NOT female puberty. It just isn't. Don't delude yourself into imagining that having access to testosterone blockers and estrogen at the onset of puberty could have transformed you into a female.
I'm sorry that this causes you distress. You truly do have my sympathy.
