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Notes -
So I will admit that I am not someone who collects folders full of bookmarked links for ready deployment, nor am I a Graham Linehan or LibsOfTikTok, making a career out of outrage-harvesting nutpicking. But I have read a fair amount of this discourse from the both the pro and con sides over the last few years, and the impression I get is that there is definitely a motte and bailey going on in practice.
On paper, yes, diagnosis of gender dysphoria and recommendations for transition have a lot of guidelines and safeguards meant to ensure we're actually dealing with a dysphoric individual who genuinely identifies as another sex and whose best outcome is supporting them in transitioning. You're not supposed to just tell a boy who says "I'm a girl" that they are in fact a girl and put them on puberty blockers.
In practice, though, how many times have we heard from doctors (including here on TheMotte) that actually telling a kid (let alone an adult) who says "I'm a boy/girl" that maybe they're not, and that gender nonconforming thoughts do not make you trans, can result in accusations of transphobia, even formal complaints, and that it's becoming increasingly hard to push back against a kid who might just be going through a phase? That in fact, even suggesting things like "going through a phase" or "social contagion" is itself transphobic and failing to affirm someone's gender identity?
I'm willing to accept that maybe in the real world this is actually not happening as often as the anti-trans side says it is, and that maybe gender clinics do turn away a significant number of self-identified trans people, or at least tell them and their parents they need to spend more time thinking about this and considering other options before putting a child on puberty blockers or hormones. But I am also quite skeptical that none of these stories of kids being transed on demand are real. I think the direction of public discourse (failure to affirm is literally murdering trans children!) cannot help but put pressure on well-meaning doctors and clinicians and parents and teachers to basically take a child's words at face value, at least on this very particular subject.
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