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According to NPR, 43% of Americans support criminalizing gender-affirming care and 54% oppose it, whereas two years ago, 28% supported it and 65% opposed it. What caused the surge in opposition? Did people just not know what gender-affirming care was two years ago? Did they assume that psychological evaluations of trans kids were more thorough than they actually were?
Indeed, this is extremely implausible a priori, and so people repeating this must have crimestop in their mind preventing them from doing any thinking on the subject at all.
The image I have in my mind is this: we have someone who is taking “puberty blocker” from age 10 to age forty 50. He never went through puberty as a teenager (or at least, I am led to believe this is the outcome of taking these drugs). Because of this, he now looks and behaves as… well, definitely not a middle aged male. Am I really expected to believe that once he stops taking these drugs, he goes through normal puberty at 50, and his body ends up the same as if he never took these drugs, and went through puberty around 15? This is simply ludicrous on its face.
Or, even better, consider a woman in post menopausal age, who finally gets off puberty blockers. Will she now finally begin menstruating, and be able to bear normal children? Highly unlikely.
I would expect the typical retort to this from pro sex modification side to be “but you are not supposed to take this drugs for so long”, which is a tacit admission that the effects of these drugs are only reversible for so long, until they aren’t. This much makes sense, but then repeating the mantra that they are reversible without saying loudly that this is true only if you stop taking them until they are no longer reversible (which might very well only be a couple of doses!) is criminally deceptive.
"Extremely implausible a priori, crimestop" is going way too far, it's basically "boo outgroup". Evolved mechanisms can be surprisingly flexible in some ways while being totally inflexible in others. How 'plausible, a priori' are XY females? The 10 vs 50 comparison is just dumb, nobody who claims blockers are reversible would claim they're reversible after 50, they're claiming blockers are reversible within the bounds of normal use, delaying puberty for a few years. And more directly - a few years of puberty delay is (probably) within the natural variation of puberty among human populations. I think 'puberty blockers are reversible' ends up being true for >75% of people who take them?
They would not work as a cure for precarious puberty if they were reversible.
It'd be nicer to get these nested comment threads on my more interesting posts, instead it's when i nitpick claim about gender or trans stuff
anyway, not sure what you mean. 'reversible', as far as I know, basically means 'when you stop blockers, you'll go through puberty normally, and grow up normally, with no negative health effects'. Precocious puberty itself causes health issues, so blockers, so they'd say, moves puberty from 'too early' to 'normal', while gender related blockers move puberty from 'normal' to 'later, but still fine'.
Maybe they're not that interesting :>
Under that definition they are not reversible, and if that's how they worked, your precarious puberty would catch up to you the same way normal puberty would to trans / gender questioning kids.
And if you want to "what are you talking about? Puberty doesn't catch up to you once you stop taking blockers", that's exactly my point.
Certainly more interesting. Anyway, 'reversible' is just a stand-in here for direct claims of harm. It's likely imo that puberty blockers have some risk of stunting growth / reduce height, risk of osteoporisis, etc. But those are risks, with specific probabilities and intensities. I think that - if people were 'really trans' and really trans people transitioning was important to them, the risks of puberty blockers in trutrans would be worth it, although existing practices might not identify the trutrans kids. But 'trutrans' doesn't exist (i'd argue) so...
From the way I saw it used, "reversible" is a stand-in for reversible. As in: parents are freaked out about giving their kids HRT because they know estrogen will make boobs grow, and testosterone will cause voice and body shape changes, so you offer them blockers, and claim they're reversible so they believe there's nothing being done here that can't be undone, complete with a cutesy analogy to a pause button in your music player
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