The right in the US - especially conservative Christians - are whipped up into a frenzy now over the thinking literally any acceptance or encouragement of trans kids is "grooming". And I think they've been able to accomplish this by taking the word "children" and completely warping it in order to create a narrative that is so incredibly divorced from reality.
So what's the reality regarding trans youth? I'm not an expert so comrades please correct me if I'm wrong but in the US it generally follows this shape:
-
Social transitioning for pre-pubescent youth (clothes, pronouns, etc). No medical interventions are done at this stage.
-
Puberty blockers at the onset of puberty (maybe right before? I'm not clear on this one).
-
Hormones can be taken after puberty blockers if the person eventually chooses. Puberty is different for everyone but I guess this would be around age 14 or 15? Specific ages I'm not sure about but we're not talking little kids here.
-
Then actual surgical interventions are pretty limited for under 18s. I think I've only really heard about top surgeries for trans men who are like 16 or 17. Of course cis teen women have long been able to get breast reduction surgeries and no one complains about that. But AFAIK that's about the extent of surgeries for under 18 folks - extremely limited, for good or ill.
So what has the right done? They've completely twisted this narrative into that doctors are performing bottom surgeries on like 5 year olds across the country. I once saw a meme that compared Boston Children's Hospital to the Island of Dr. Moreau. They are utterly convinced that every year there are thousands of little grade school age kids getting gender affirming surgeries. What they're actually doing is taking that very small number of surgeries done on older teens and putting it under the blanket of "children". The people who are leading this charge and might know better (like Matt Walsh) are purposefully pulling this little trick to try and get people enraged.
Not that hypocrisy ever mattered to the right, but I bet you these same people who talk about "children are being mutilated" will think it's super important to clarify "those aren't migrant children crossing the border! They're like 16, they're basically adults! The media calls them 'children' to gain sympathy!" Or encourage their 14 year olds to join ROTC and basically be the little Hitler Youth in order to pave the way to join the imperialist crusading US military at 18. Whatever.
And even when it's not about surgeries, the evangelicals especially talk about children being "tricked" into being trans. This is because theologically they have to believe that being trans isn't real. That being trans is not something inherent but is instead a trick of the devil.
And where are the libs to push back on all this? Of course they're silent. The left can push back as best we can but we simply don't have the numbers to try and show a significant push back (so far at least). The libs do have the numbers. They could be pointing out this little trick the transphobes are trying to pull with the word "children". They could point out the completely unscientific assumptions made by people who by and large think the universe is less than 10,000 years old and evolution is a lie. But no, they'd rather sit on their hands and pretend nothing's happening. Or that voting is the solution.
Goddamn liberals. We're on our own on this.
Except the preponderance of evidence is that it is inherent and probabilistically related to prenatal hormone levels during certain stages of neurological development. There was a meta study* a few years back that compiled a bunch of research on things like congenital adrenal hyperplasia (massively more likely to result in a male identity than the baseline rate of trans masc identities in the general population, although still a minority of all individuals with CAH), other hormone-related congenital conditions (some caused massive increases in the incidence of trans identities, although still a minority of the individuals in the studies), XY individuals with cloacal exstrophy who were AFAB due to missing genitals who were raised female (extremely high incidence of male identities, nearly half the subjects in the study), and prenatal exposure to diethylstilbestrol (which showed nearly a 30% rate of female identities in AMAB individuals with confirmed or suspected prenatal exposure to DES) which found the existing literature is enough to conclude that there is something that's inherent and fixed in the brain.
And if it wasn't, then a lot of the medical side of transitioning wouldn't work. HRT would cause dysphoria instead of alleviating it, GRS would result in a mismatch with the brain's map of the body instead of aligning the body with that map as it does. If there were not a fixed and inherent quality in the individual then coercion and cishet indoctrination would work instead of being the deadly torture that they are. The simple fact that transitioning works both socially and medically is extremely strong evidence for the existence of some form of innate gender identity.
Now, obviously, I think whatever that construct in the brain is has to be very plastic and adaptable because of how it slots people into boxes that can be very wildly different across cultures and it is my personal theory that it's a wide range of constructs intermingled with other things and serves to influence how socialization is taken in, how self-image is developed based on cultural aesthetics and norms, etc along with more directly medical things like the hormones that the brain expects or how the brain builds a map of the body. I would further say that I believe these constructs can be independent of one another so individuals can end up with a variable mix that doesn't neatly fit into the larger boxes, and that perhaps some aren't even fully fixed at all so that there can be a degree of ongoing variance that moves someone's identity around.
And the dumbest thing is that despite all this, I also believe in gender abolition from a liberationist standpoint, that as far as it is possible to do so there should be a comprehensive decoupling of gender from aesthetics and roles, with the understanding that people are still going to filter socialization in a gendered way to some extent, still form their self-image in line with their gender, still require specific hormone balances to feel ok, etc.
* Evidence Supporting the Biologic Nature of Gender Identity; Aruna Saraswat, MD; Jamie D. Weinand, BA, BS; Joshua D. Safer, MD; Endocr Pract. 2015;21(2):199-204.
deleted by creator
My point was to establish that gender is something that is real and innate, even beyond the strictest medical aspects of treating gender dysphoria. I believe that overall your stance is ideologically correct, but factually incomplete: gender is real in some fashion, even if we can say that people should be liberated from all the baggage that has gone along with it historically.
I'd caution against using this particular rhetorical framing because it comes with unfortunate implications. Like imagine talking like that about a broken arm, how the brain is saying "ow that hurts" and "that really shouldn't be bending that way" so you can correct the flesh or correct the brain, but it's better to set the bone because of course it is. It becomes comical, like there cannot be a question that the brain might be wrong about whether the arm should be bending that way or not so it's weird to think of it in terms of choosing what to "correct." It's the same with gender, like you can't "correct" the brain here because that's the person, that's the bit that matters.
Even as a rhetorical device to emphasize that making the body align with the brain is possible and safe in a way that literally rewriting someone's identity cannot be, it comes across as conceding that the brain is other than correct. I'm not going down to jump down your throat about it and I am taking pains to explain this as softly and neutrally as I can, but it is something that will strike a nerve for some people.
deleted by creator