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The implementation of the liberal affirmative model accompanying a medical model put this to bed. You can't have a medical condition and a socially affirmative model assisted by wide celebration of concepts of identity placed in proximity to the general population, including children. You can't do so and claim you are adhering to rigorous medical research which has a default answer of "We don't know" to many basic questions about the condition, causes, and populations effected. Not when advocates and experts in medicine insist dysphoria is not a prerequisite for transgenderism.
If the Dutch Protocols led to 20 years more rigorous study with small experimental cohorts that invited critical dissent and testing, trans people not only would be better off but we might have a more advanced understanding of the condition. Of course if you tolerate slow, plodding research that demands dissent to progress in experimental areas -- to question and define the nature of gender, sex, identity and dysphoria -- you will have condemned some small number of trans people to suffering. They would have suffered for a purpose, namely a greater understanding and a lower profile that provided more tolerance via obscurity. Maybe we could do brain scans by now to screen or something.
The ideal outcome was for trans research to go on as a medical venture without ideological or social interest. An interesting article in The Atlantic would have popped up every few years. By now trans people would know know about the trans-Mecca neighborhood in Seattle in the event they were born in Utah.
Some people are attention-seekers; therefore, everything believe is wrong?
If your belief is that there isn't enough gatekeeping – which I agree with – then argue that, and not that all trans people are wrong and need to be stopped, etc.
Yet no one (other than me?) is arguing that. It's either the unquestioningly pro-trans side, with all the valid criticisms you listed, or the absolutely anti-trans side, claiming trans people are perverts, rapists, misogynists, etc.
I'm not arguing that. I made a statement about what has happened and proposed a counter-factual I consider plausible with hindsight. Unfortunately for real trans people, if this is a meaningful category, there are no do overs in Discourse. The critics you hand wave away or condemn -- the TERFs and conservatives with all their vicious nasty political, legal, and cultural warfare -- you have them to to thank for pushing against the medical profession led around by so-called bodies of experts like WPATH. If you consider your position the popular one historically and currently, then all I can say is don't outsource your advocacy in the future.
I believe society can make more fascists, murderers, or homosexuals if a society chooses to do so. We know this, because different societies have had different rates of fascists, murderers, and homosexuals across time and place. There are limits to what a society can impose with propaganda, culture, circumstance, or leverage with individual genetic predisposition. But those limits include fascists who don't believe in fascism and homosexuals who like brunch but don't enjoy gay sex very much. Many raised murderers will be bad at murdering and some might not even enjoy it. Does a real murderer include murderers who feel shame and regret, or murderers who fail at murdering despite their best efforts?
What does belief have to do with this medical condition? I have a general idea of what it has to do with something like schizophrenia. We speak around a confused pit of philosophical, psychological, sociological, and medical concepts. Stick your hand in, pull out what you want. It's beyond me I'm afraid. I do strongly believe that the ideal treatment for someone with gender dysphoria is an antidote that cures them. Seems to me medical transition and social acceptance lands short of general miracle cure status, so yes it's probably best we don't experiment on children until results improve or alternatives are found. Are alternatives being researched?
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