shakenvac
17d ago
What you are saying is true, but incomplete. If someone were certain to transition, it is unarguably true that it is better for them to begin pre-puberty and be in the puberty blockers -> transition pipeline. But the important word there is if.
That is because, if someone can be happy in the body they were born in, it is also unarguably true that they be so, rather than transition at any age. Your second trans friend is certainly in a better position than your first, but even so, she has had major, irreversible chemical intervention and surgery, which has left her infertile, and unable to participate in traditional family formation. She will be on medication for the rest of her life. and, of course, even as a trans woman who passes well, she will still be subject to social stigma in some form or another for being trans. Her marriage pool, for example, will be tiny.
So the real question is: what proportion of those who transition as children would have -if prevented- either transitioned later or lived a miserable life as their birth sex? That's a counterfactual, so we can't know for sure. But, if that number is lower than 90% (so 10% would have been satisfied to live as their birth sex) , then that's a false positive rate that is probably not justifiable. However, desistance studies indicate that number could be as low as 20%. I think it plausible that there are psychological interventions that could bring that number into the low single digit percentages.
How would you feel if there were a 4 in 5 chance that your trans friend could have lived happily as a normal man?
shakenvac
18d ago
This is a good take. I think the logical extension is that you shouldn't go looking for this kind of activity, but when it becomes known out you should come down on it fairly hard. The norm that this kind of thing is creepy and gross is valuable to me and if people are going to make deep fakes of others the very least they should do is treat it like a dirty secret.
shakenvac
28d ago
How many barricaded doors must the police retreat behind before they are justified in opening fire? I think pretty much every armed conservative would have lit up a left-wing Ashli Babbitt if they found themselves in an analogous situation.
Ashli Babbitt did not deserve to die, in the sense that the punishment did not fit the crime. But that is true of most people killed in police / self defense shootings.
I accept your nit, but barring any massive unforseen consequence (e.g. common early onset alzheimers) I don't think it changes the calculus much. If you told me I had to be a trans woman, I would choose to be a pre-pubescent transitioner ten times out of ten.
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