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This is not how most LGBT activists (particularly T) act. They behave as a population that knows it will go extinct without the ability to hard indoctrinate children out of the view of parents.
What, in your mind, separates modern fears about the trans community indoctrinating children, and the old fears in the 1950's that gay men were hoping to turn your child gay?
I feel like human psychology is easily manipulated when it comes to children - see the Satanic Panic, Stranger Danger, and a dozen other hysterias that were wildly out of proportion to what was actually happening on the ground.
While a surprisingly high number of kids are putting "they/them" in their profiles, and saying they're non-binary, the number who are seeking surgery or other medical interventions is fairly low still. See, for example, this article which says that "[i]n the three years ending in 2021, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis." That's around 258 a year, in a country of 330 million people. Even if you accept the "irreversible damage" line of thought, and think that a good portion of those girls will go on to regret it, that is a really tiny number of cases to use as the basis for fearing for the fate of your own children, or those in your community.
It just seems like people are myopically focused on a fairly unlikely outcome, and using that to justify clamping down on the freedoms of a lot more people as a result.
Don't get me wrong - I do think the medical establishment has a responsibility to take the well-being of patients into account, and so the moment the evidence is strongly in favor of discontinuing a particular practice, we should stop. The history of lobotomies is all one needs to believe that doctors can sometimes be horribly wrong - so we have to humbly consider that with any intervention we're doing. All the same, even if you consider every mastectomy of a female-bodied adolescent to be a terrible tragedy, the tragedy is much more bounded than lobotomies were back in the day.
To me the main difference is the epistemics involved. One can experiment with homosexuality and pretty quickly evaluate if they like it. And if they later realize they don't like it or like heterosexuality better they can later change their behavior. Gender care however is in a much shakier epistemic place.
One can't actually know what it's like to be both male or female and compare the experiences. A full transitioned transwomen has no actual possible way to know if their experiencing anything like natal female qualia. Likewise a young male cannot possible differentiate between the mental state of "I am a woman trapped in a male body" and "I am a man in a male body that mistakenly thinks I might be a woman trapped in a male body". There is no conclusive test that anyone can preform from any vantage point.
The only meaningful heuristic we can use to guide these kids is "would you be happier if you grew up undergoing natural puberty or medically guided cross sex puberty". The kid, having experienced neither, is in no epistemic places to make this decision and adults rightfully should take this question very seriously. What they absolutely should not do is insist that it should be up to do the kid and confuse them with nonsense about gendered souls.
As to make my position falsifiable, if you could actually show real evidence that the answer to that question is "Yes, this particular kid would be happiest undergoing medically guided sex puberty" I would be willing to listen. But gaslighting me about how actually gender is some privileged epistemic marker that no one could possibly be confused about while you also support things like gender demi fluidity is not convincing. You are going to need to throw a whole lot of the movement under the bus before you can even pretend to start addressing this concern.
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Little, in that I believe both to be true.
Would you be willing to expand on your thoughts on the second one for me? I'm curious what you feel the evidence for your position is.
There is approximately zero credible evidence for the "born this way" explanation of homosexuality. It has little to no heritabilty, for example. In addition, most current celebrity (and known to me) homosexuals have a tale of a young experience that solidified their orientation. Most, absent that, would likely have drifted away from their sexual confusion into heterosexuality, as happened before the gay normalization campaigns, same as what happened for tomboys before the trans agenda began in earnest.
Doesn't your view have a basic chicken and egg problem?
If being gay requires sexual experiences with another man to solidify, then wouldn't there have to be some first gay man who has sex with a handful of boys? In which case, what man seduced the first gay man and made him gay?
Also, if I understand you correctly, you seem to believe people can be "sexually confused" as youths, and then if a "sexually confused" guy has sex with another guy it might solidify their sexuality and make them gay. But, doesn't that make what you're calling "sexual confusion" basically the same thing as "bisexuality" or "gay" with extra steps? Why do "sexually confused" guys want to have sex with men in the first place, prior to the experience that solidifies their orientation?
Do you also believe that people aren't straight if they don't learn it from society, and from experiences in their youth?
That seems simplistic. Even if it was 100% of cases, when my contention is something closer to 95-99%. But even if 100% there's no reason there shouldn't have been many cases of sadistic rape on conquered populations where the rapist gets no particular satisfaction from the fact the hole he's fucking belongs to a man. The point is its a hole, and its causing pain to the enemy.
My contention would be they have no idea. Their hormones have them fully confused about everything, and an older man, knowing these signs of vulnerability swoops in to take advantage. Its similar to the older guys who constantly dip into high schools to date goth girls (or whatever is the vogue thing now) and those girls disproportionately then end up having confused sexual futures. Its the old stripper pole trope.
I highly doubt such a thesis. Both sexes are capable of euphoric orgasm from PIV sex, which results in babies, the purpose of humanity is to do that. Such a thing strongly selects against the "indoctrinated into heterosexuality" thesis.
Personally, I like the gay germ hypothesis. (The hypothesis that being gay is caused by infection with a particular pathogen.)
I'm not sure I believe either the gay germ hypothesis or your "not born this way" hypothesis, but of the two, I feel like the former has fewer holes in it. It explains the lack of heritability equally well, but without the leaps of logic.
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Well, I do remember a comedy skit audio where the premise was that one caveman was curious about butt stuff...
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I think those fears in the 50s were prescient, and we should regret that we didn't heed them or take them more seriously. It's trans activists that have convinced me of this, and it's you who would need to convince me that it's really no big deal.
So I suppose nothing separates those two to me: both are necessary, appropriate, and in the best interests of society. As you sneer at the movement in the 50s, so am I sneered at today, but what this teaches me is that I shouldn't let the sneers of perverts and apologists push me from my stance.
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As you point out "pederast" was as much an insult in the past, as it is now. But back then so was "homosexual" and some of the latter were also the former or just them saw them as fellows-in-oppression.
Sure, but it's not that surprising is it?
If society tells you being a gay man is the most horrible, disgusting moral failing a person can have, and then you happen to be gay and you become conscious of the fact that it's not actually all that strange or uncommon, I think one is going to be more likely to also question the rest of society's opinions on sexual matters.
I still think it was probably the case that the vast majority of gay men were not trying to "turn children gay", though a lifetime of repression might lead to a desperate man to sexually abuse minors at the margins. That seems to be at least some of what is happening with priest scandals in the Catholic church (the other elements of course being the position of respect occupied by a priest, and the church's desire to sweep things under the rug, rather than expose them to the light of the sun.)
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