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Notes -
Been reading an article about the child "transgender" story and something really caught my attention. The quote first:
So there I realized even though I am very far from woke, the propaganda has warped my understanding of the issue too. I was thinking what happens in such cases is some child suddenly starts very strongly feeling that they are the opposite gender, and then the system gets involved and "affirms" them in their delusion. But what is happening here is nothing of the sort. It's more like childish fascination with the unknown and unexplored and cool, which gets turned into much bigger thing that it should be by both the parents who are completely unable to provide the child the necessary structure ("just be what you are", wtf is that, that's not a kind of help the confused child lost in a confusing world needs) and the system which actively problematizes and medicalizes any case it can get the hold on.
The result is predictable - the system deploys the tactical nuke of "if you won't transition now, you child will surely kill himself and it'll be your fault", the parents fold like wet paper, child gets put on puberty blockers, develops severe mental problems, has to take five medications at the same time, becomes suicidal, the system reacts "see, we told you! if we didn't rescue them in time, them'd be dead already!" and refuses to budge. The parents finally see what a huge fuckup they did and start running around, screaming and writing articles.
The article worth a full read, but this was the part that struck me the most. It was how easy it was to get from a childish curiosity about "you can do that weird thing? really? let me try it on!" to being pulled into the machine and turned into a case and somebody whose life would forever be dependent on the medical system (and, of course, forever "oppressed"). I thought it's more like "X has a severe problem and it's hard to solve it and looks like the system doesn't always do the right thing the right way" but it's more of "X has been playing and waded too far into the woods, and the ideological ogres captured him and made his life into a problem with which he'll now have to live forever". Which is quite infuriating to me in its pure evilness.
At the end of the day, it seems like some of this is the old left’s anti-authority views- parents saying ‘no, that’s retarded, I can’t quite explain why but in five years you’ll be glad I didn’t let you go through with this’ isn’t a valid objection even when it is obviously correct.
I used to listen to a parenting podcast several years ago, and one of the hosts had a daughter -- age 10-11, maybe? -- who decided she was a boy. A good portion of the show became about this subject. The mother, a good California liberal with a fringe Hollywood career, was very honest about the heartbreak of reconciling with her sense of loss when one of her girls "became a boy" and chose a new name for herself, when the name the mother had chosen for her daughter had been a meaningful choice to the mother.... But the mother accepted this new identity, etc....
Sometime after the initial turbulence of this transition, in one episode the two hosts were talking about their kids' eating habits, and the mom with the transgender child was indignant that her kids often has the temerity to reject her planned meals and wanted either alternate meals or junk food for dinner. The gall of transgender son to think that they can dictate to their mother something as important as what they will eat for dinner! Where would a kid ever get such an idea?
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It's possible to explain, but an average parent probably would need a specialist support. Only there are no specialists that can support them now - there's woke transing disassembly line on one side, and I guess there's some conservative Christian support options which one probably wouldn't even consider if you aren't already a conservative Christian, and of which I know next to nothing, and so probably the average parent. And in modern Western world, where most people don't have the ingrained reflex of "the system is not your friend, it will hurt you and all you love" - this becomes an easy trap to fall into.
The conservative Christian support options exist, but they’ll start with ‘male and female he created them’ and then call in the TERF’s if they need secular arguments.
It’s probably worth noting that trans kids are specifically a liberal elite phenomenon, and conservative Christian authorities don’t particularly need to put together a set of secular arguments about it because that’s not how conservative Christian youth behave when they experiment with leaving. And honestly, the liberal elite parents are much less likely than average to call a pastor when they’re dealing with a situation- as any catholic priest could tell you, it’s not exactly uncommon for pastors to receive help requests from people who are not religious beyond going to whatever church is closest on Christmas and Easter.
That's my point - for a mildly liberal normie, who still doesn't want their kids life to be sacrificed on the altar of Trans, there's no support system. There are a lot of people like that, in fact majority of the people I know would likely qualify.
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