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Circling back to this: I think what I find so infuriating about this framing is how the claimed purpose of gender-affirming care as life-saving healthcare is being more and more openly discarded, and yet the people who characterised it as such are refusing to acknowledge this, or in some cases (not necessarily yours) denying that they ever so characterised it to begin with.
Medical care is meant to exceed some floor of safety and efficacy, in accordance with primum non nocere. If the government pays for treatments for cancer, they should not also pay for treatments which cause cancer. If the government pays for antidepressants, they should not also pay for things which make people more depressed.
But by allotting everyone a set pot of money which can be used for gender-affirming care or reversing the effects of gender-affirming care so far as is practicable, the government would essentially be abdicating the responsibility of expressing an opinion on whether these treatments are effective medical treatments or not. "You can do this, and if you change your mind you can undo it later, and we'll foot the bill either way" sounds pretty far removed from evidence-based medicine as I understand it. The government might pay to remove someone's malignant tumour, but I can't imagine they'd ever pay to put a malignant tumour back inside; they might pay for treatment for PTSD, but they'd be unlikely to pay to retraumatise someone whose PTSD has been cured. If gender-affirming care is lifesaving treatment, it stands to reason that the government footing the bill for reversing a successful gender-affirming care procedure would be as unthinkable as their paying to reverse a successful course of chemotherapy. But framing it like this (in which you can spend money on the thing itself or the thing to undo the first thing) sounds tantamount to an admission that "gender-affirming care" never had anything to do with relieving trans people of their psychic distress (and thereby preventing them from committing suicide), and was only ever about a desire to modify the body for aesthetic reasons.
But I know you also think it's perfectly legitimate for doctors to lie to the parents of trans-identifying children and knowingly misrepresent the state of the evidence in this field provided the medics in question have a principled attitude to bodily autonomy, so I don't even know what to say to you. When I say "gender-affirming care isn't lifesaving treatment", you reply "yes, and?"; when I say "but lots of advocates for access to gender-affirming care consistently characterised it as life-saving treatment for years", you reply "yes, and?"; when I say "it's not reasonable to assume these advocates were honestly mistaken about the evidentiary basis for their claims that gender-affirming care is life-saving treatment, so the only reasonable conclusion is that they were consistently, knowingly lying, for years", you reply "yes, and?" I keep hoping that at some point you'll either deny my accusations, or own up to them and acknowledge that they were wrong: instead you just keep copping to them, but deny that anyone involved did anything wrong by so doing.
I would've thought it a no-brainer, the idea that a medic's personal philosophical attitude towards bodily autonomy should not override his duty of care to his patients or his responsibility to be informed about the medical state of the art – but apparently not. I would've thought "I support the right of individuals to pharmaceutically and surgically modify their bodies as they see fit because of a principled attitude towards bodily autonomy – but acknowledge that aesthetic modification of one's body may not be an effective treatment for grave psychic distress, and it is dishonest and unprofessional for medics or activists to assert that it is" would be a no-brainer – but apparently not. Trans activists just seem to have a wholly different conception of the standards of behaviour they expect medical practitioners to adhere to than I do.
If trans activists were upfront and said "some people want to surgically modify their bodies for aesthetic reasons, and they should be allowed to" – I mean, I appreciate it's a harder sell, but at least it's honest. "... and the taxpayer should pick up the bill" is a harder sell still, but it remains honest. But instead they adopted this approach wherein they decided to knowingly mislead the public in general (and confused, scared parents of deeply distressed children in particular) with false claims about the efficacy of gender-affirming care in preventing suicide, urged and coerced medics to parrot these false claims – and then they have the gall to wonder why people are suspicious of them and think they might have ulterior motives?
For years, Chase Strangio of the ACLU characterised gender-affirming care as lifesaving medical treatment. Before the Supreme Court, under oath, Strangio admitted that there's no persuasive evidence that gender-affirming care has any impact on the rates of suicide among gender dysphoric children. Do you see how it's only logical for me to assume that everything Strangio says going forward is a barefaced lie? Do you see how Strangio has completely undermined public trust, not just in themself, but in the ACLU and the broader trans activist coalition?
You're expecting a creature who knows naught but naked will to power to apologize for the way that it is? That denial is still an exercise of that, by the way- "yes, and?" is better phrased as "bitch, you ain't gonna do shit about it". They may have lost, but you (and reality) are still too weak to hold them to account.
I don't expect contrition from bugs when they appear in my pantry, and as a consequence my opinion that it is wrong of them to be there doesn't matter- only my ability to physically remove them does.
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