Saying No to Self-Censorship, the Keira Bell Decision and the New Queer Love for Big Pharma, plus... What's that thing in the back of my fridge? No really.
The whole "let's have kids make decisions about their hormones before puberty" topic unnerves me. On the one hand, you do have trans people who really did know that young, and for whom puberty/adolescence was really torture. But now the party line seems to be that if a child or a teenager doesn't present as the gender norm, or expresses a desire to be the opposite gender, that must mean they're transgender and thus MUST medically transition, and not letting them do so will be psychologically damaging. As you noted, that actually narrows gender norms, leaving no room for masculine women and feminine men. Also, children and adolescents are constantly switching identities, trying them on and off until they find one that makes sense to them. Locking them into a trans identity, and worse making physiologic changes, is I think as bad as locking a queer person into a straight identity.
Are parents who make these irrevocable decisions on behave of their underage children doing this truly out of love for them and wanting them to feel whole and accepted, or is there an additional element of "if I don't do this, I'll be branded as an awful parent"? (Which frankly, a lot of parents go through for just about everything these days.) And if the person is old enough to make the decision themselves, I think some of them may not be thinking it through to the end. All that matters is that they become the gender they feel they need to be, and changing their body will automatically make everything better.
This also feeds into the anti-science bias that has permeated both the left and the right these days. Authority is pooh-poohed, and even taking into account the real excesses of Big Pharma, the attitude is that what really matters is what you feel, not what actually is.
By and large, I think people should be able to do what they want as long as they’re not hurting other people. But there’s so much anti-science in the air around gender issues, I think adults don’t necessarily have the info to make decisions that will come close to making them happy. And it's even harder for kids.
Part of the problem is the idea that it's the perfect body that will make you happy. An idea that’s been sold to women for ages and is a big fat fucking lie. Now and forever. And now it’s being repackaged and sold to non-binary and trans people with a twist of Judith Butler which is like sprinkling cinnamon on shit, so it’s supposed to be tasty now. Blech.
This is not to say I’m against surgery or drugs. I know some people that have medically transitioned and are very happy. And for that matter plenty of women who have had cosmetic surgery and are also happy. I just think that the info about consequences should come first. And I truly hate profit-based Big Pharma, though science is great. Science is wonderful. Let us raise our glasses to the pursuit of facts.
The whole "let's have kids make decisions about their hormones before puberty" topic unnerves me. On the one hand, you do have trans people who really did know that young, and for whom puberty/adolescence was really torture. But now the party line seems to be that if a child or a teenager doesn't present as the gender norm, or expresses a desire to be the opposite gender, that must mean they're transgender and thus MUST medically transition, and not letting them do so will be psychologically damaging. As you noted, that actually narrows gender norms, leaving no room for masculine women and feminine men. Also, children and adolescents are constantly switching identities, trying them on and off until they find one that makes sense to them. Locking them into a trans identity, and worse making physiologic changes, is I think as bad as locking a queer person into a straight identity.
Are parents who make these irrevocable decisions on behave of their underage children doing this truly out of love for them and wanting them to feel whole and accepted, or is there an additional element of "if I don't do this, I'll be branded as an awful parent"? (Which frankly, a lot of parents go through for just about everything these days.) And if the person is old enough to make the decision themselves, I think some of them may not be thinking it through to the end. All that matters is that they become the gender they feel they need to be, and changing their body will automatically make everything better.
This also feeds into the anti-science bias that has permeated both the left and the right these days. Authority is pooh-poohed, and even taking into account the real excesses of Big Pharma, the attitude is that what really matters is what you feel, not what actually is.
By and large, I think people should be able to do what they want as long as they’re not hurting other people. But there’s so much anti-science in the air around gender issues, I think adults don’t necessarily have the info to make decisions that will come close to making them happy. And it's even harder for kids.
Part of the problem is the idea that it's the perfect body that will make you happy. An idea that’s been sold to women for ages and is a big fat fucking lie. Now and forever. And now it’s being repackaged and sold to non-binary and trans people with a twist of Judith Butler which is like sprinkling cinnamon on shit, so it’s supposed to be tasty now. Blech.
This is not to say I’m against surgery or drugs. I know some people that have medically transitioned and are very happy. And for that matter plenty of women who have had cosmetic surgery and are also happy. I just think that the info about consequences should come first. And I truly hate profit-based Big Pharma, though science is great. Science is wonderful. Let us raise our glasses to the pursuit of facts.