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solarbird(This entry wouldn't crosspost, and neither would (3), for unknown reasons. So I'm doing it by hand.)
Every post was a thick stack of propaganda, so I would have to pick and choose one or two parts to try to isolate and break down. That’s why even these truncated replies are so short, compared to what one might argue they needed to be.
Reply two below the fold…
Even in this, there’s a fair bit to unwrap.
I kind of want to start with “There’s something else going on here and I think I know what that is,” so take an “Okay, I’m listening, what is it?” and queue it up. I have some thoughts on what you might mean, but – as with remembering all of those things from the 90s, and thank you for what you said about that, I appreciate it – I try not to make to many assumptions.
But before we get into that too much, I need to get into your reply to C., about “children choosing irreversible surgery and drugs with unknown long term effects.” Bottom surgery isn’t even part of the protocol for under-18s. Not for trans people. That’s put in these bills for propaganda purposes, to trigger the rage and help ramp up a murderous level of new Lavender Scare.
I’m not saying it can’t happen or never happens, because I am not omniscient and I’m sure someone will come up with an example or two. I’m not even saying it shouldn’t happen, because sometimes, maybe it should. I don’t know; I’m not a medical doctor.
But it’s not part of the protocol and in a lot of cases is explicitly against the protocol, because it can in fact lead to physical outcomes which are worse. It is in fact medically contra-indicated in most cases, for, again, medical reasons.
Upper surgery is also pretty rare. In some cases, breast removal is indicated, and as someone who likes her tits, that makes me go yikes. But with proper hormonal treatment, it’s not even necessary. For a little while, we had trans dudes growing up with their born chests, because they were getting to grow up with gender-appropriate hormones the whole time. And they just looked like, you know… normal dudes.
But really, if they were passing bans only on surgery, we wouldn’t be having this conversation because they wouldn’t be changing much, if anything. I’d have some quibbles for the same reasons I argue against bans on abortion for under-18s, though less so, because in this case it’s lesser harm.
By contrast, I note, cisgender teens get gender-affirming surgery under 18 nontrivially often. More famously for decades places like California, but not just. And intersex people are me are subjected to such surgeries at very high rates, often without consent – ASK ME HOW I KNOW – and all that that is kept explicitly legal in all of these bills.
As are the puberty blockers, hormone therapies, and cofactors.
All of it’s kept legal for cisgendered kids. Explicit carve-outs. Expressly legal, all the time. If the kid is cisgendered, or IS and doctors and/or parents have made a decision, regardless of what the kid wants.
In some of these versions of these bills, it’s actually more clearly supported by law if the child doesn’t want it.
Literally none of this is about what they say it is. None of it. Just as with all the “concerns” they had “for the poor homosexual struggling with their same-sex addiction,” it’s propaganda – and it’s the same kinds of propaganda, just retargeted.
I mean, think about this:
If they actually cared about health effects of puberty blockers and other hormonal interventions, they’d just ban them completely. They wouldn’t make these massive carve-outs allowing it for cisgender children, and allowing it to be applied – even coercively – to IS children.
They don’t care about the lives of trans kids. They hate all us filthy queers. Bad things happening to us is good. I’ve transcribed enough fundamentalist propaganda arguing for sanctioned violence against queer kids to know.
But they care at least a bit about cisgendered children. (Particularly if they’re white.) And maybe about IS kids that can be “salvaged” to pass as cis.
Think about this. Really.
If they were actually afraid these treatments did harm, if they actually believed they had these unsupported-by-evidence long-term negative impacts, if they actually feared these supposed (and again, unsupported by data) “irreversible harms” from puberty blockers and other hormonal treatments…
…they’d ban their use on the kids they care about. Not just on the ones they hate. And yet, they do not. They explicitly permit it, in every single one of these laws. Every single one.
What does that tell you about what they really think of these treatments?
If these are all actually bad, if they’re all actually horrible…
…why do they keep it for their own?
