Thank you for this honest and open piece of writing. As someone who both has adult trans friends (all who transitioned as adults in their 40s/50s after much thought and research regarding risks and benefits) as well as a trans identified young adult natal daughter who announced the identity overnight in the middle of the pandemic at 15 and after some significant peer bullying, an incident of sexual assault and with diagnosed mental health comorbidities, I have been advocating for a more nuanced approach for years. Guardrails are essential for this younger cohort in particular. When the CDC itself is reporting that these kids and young adults are struggling with mental health issues at alarming rates, why would it make sense for this group to be able to simply march into a clinic and medicalize? How does it make any sense to concretize an identity as they are both hurting and struggling to figure out who they are?
My heart breaks for the many who have realized that it was a mistake for them (and I think the numbers who are *not* speaking out are likely significant). AND the care should be available for those for whom it will help. Both/and. We need nuance - not polarized screaming from two sides who are simply using the issue as a political weapon and don't actually know or care for anyone affected.
Again, I applaud you for writing this. Your particular voice is vital. Thank you.
I'm very opposed to gender ideology because of the harms I feel it perpetuates and the stereotypes it promotes. But if all of those who identified as trans were as considerate and reasoned as you, I believe the public would be much more accepting of trans-ideology even if they disagreed with its principles. It's not terribly difficult to sympathize with someone who makes no demands, and just wants to peacefully live their life in the way they're comfortable.
There's an important difference between the tenets of trans ideology and the lived experience of many people who have developed trans identities. For example, the ideology denies the binary nature of sex; thinking about transsexualism prior to the rise of transgender ideology depended on acknowleging the material reality of sex. I have known males who choose to live in ways congruent with the socially constructed female sex role who totally understand the need to protect women's spaces and are alarmed that we would sterilize kids in the name of trans. We can think our way out of this when voices like the author's become more common, we look at science, and we listen to women.
Thank you for being a voice for sanity. And I say that as being a terf - we’re reclaiming that term as a badge of honour, not a slur.
I’ve always believed in live-and-let-live and that other people’s choices were both not my business and should be respected.
But then I started seeing boys and men competing in girls’ and women’s sports, stealing prizes and places meant for females, and women being punished if they questioned this. And then I started learning that male perverts were claiming to be women so they could invade women’s toilets and changing rooms.
And then I discovered children are being poisoned (puberty blockers are the same drugs used to chemically castrate male sex offenders) and mutilated in the name of a lie: that humans can change sex. We just can’t. And nobody is born in the “wrong” body. I hope you weren’t one of these children, too young to be capable of giving informed consent.
I don’t want to be a nasty person or to hurt others. But the truth is trans ideology (not individual trans people) is very nasty, a pack of lies, and is hurting a lot of people by trampling on the rights of others.
And that would have been a terrible thing. However that idea has been weaponised to manipulate people (doctors, parents etc) to deliver WPATHs 'care' - surgery and hormones, no questions - to kids and vulnerable people, without care. And all the while there was no good research to support the suicide claims, and the acceptable quality research so far actually indicates that there is no link between denied transitions and suicide.
Fine, as long as you understand it isn't actually your "sex" that you were changing. This is may be much ado about semantics, with the "pronoun wars" being the iconic example. Very first world, English-speaking world, problems. Call it your aura or even your soul, but calling it 'sex' only works until people find it harder to remain polite than to not.
I could be misunderstanding - I and everyone else here have been going on the assumption you want to alter a body in order to conform to gender stereotypes (set by Shia Law or Hollywood movies, matters not) .. if you ACTUALLY mean you are part of an experiment to actually change XY chromosomes to XX chromosomes, then you have my full support and will look for you at the Nobel Science Prize Awards.
This is a good take on the trans issue. However when you write of the trans movement trampling on people while demanding “rights” I think it’s very important to put people who have nothing to do with the “trans community” foremost. I’m thinking of women who are being forced to compete against males in sports or girls who are forced to undress in front of boys or females being locked up with males accused of sex crimes. These are people who are being told to shut up, that they don’t have any say in anything happening, and they aren’t trans so they don’t know what they’re talking about.
No. I'm not. The big objection to trans women seems to be how we are "really" men because of going through male puberties. We didn't want to go through them, you don't want to treat people who went through them like women, so there's a win-win here. All you have to do is accept that kids do actually know their gender.
I def do not accept that "kids know their gender". Gender is a pseudo-scientific concept that nobody can seem to define in any coherent way. So we would be trusting children (who believe in all kinds of nonsense) to accurately parse out their place in this pseudo-scientific framework, and then have their natural development blocked and synthetic hormones from the opposite sex introduced into their bodies, all to affirm a feeling they have about themselves? The downstream effects of all of this are mostly unknown, but from what we do know, it looks bad, really bad just long term health wise. Naw. I'll take a hard pass on that absurdity.
So, functionally, you are going to put all trans kids through the wrong puberty to prevent any chance of a cis kid going through the wrong puberty.
Latest data we've got on gender persistence says that kids solidly know by 10 and only about 0.13% switch from cis to trans or vice versa. And this is from a study Jesse Singal, no great supporter of trans folk, highlighted in the Economist.
It’s not possible for someone to go through “the wrong puberty”. The only way one might even consider that children are going through “the wrong puberty” is by blocking their natal sex’s natural development and putting them on synthetic hormones of the opposite sex, thus creating a simulacrum of a puberty that every one of the trillions of cells in their bodies are not programmed for. That’s child abuse, plain and simple and it needs to be outlawed.
The desistence rates that you’re referring to have been manipulated by activists and have no credibility.
"put"? what the hell are you even talking about. we are not gods. I now suspect you are not a debator, nor a danger, merely a troll who would be more comfortable as a customer in the Monty Python Argument Clinic. (the alarm wears off once we realize you are neither serious .. but continue to play, if you wish).
No, you are not a man because you went through a male puberty. You are a man because you were made so in conception. And will die so. Ach... the craziness of it all...
You don't like being called men because your chosen behavior does not fall into the usual norm. Ok. But you'll never be women. Biology, is that a thing? :-)
Which is precisely why children must parents to protect them from would-be Josef Mengele's and groomers. We can debate how much right society has to intervene in your experimentation with your own born children (no simple answer) .. but extra-judicial death penalty if you mess with mine.
The problem is that most gender-non-conforming kids are *not* trans. And if you let *them* go through a natural puberty, the issues go away, too. The femmy boys generally come out as gay, and the butchy girls generally go through a tomboy phase and then stop.
What you're suggesting is that for the very, very small number of kids who actually *are* gender dysphoric to get the help they need, a large number of kids should be abused and scarred, sometimes permanently.
It's the Trolley Problem, but in real life. But it's not a binary choice. I think there *are* gender dysphoric kids. But I think the gatekeeping needs to be far more stringent even than the old Harry Benjamin standards were. It needs to be rare as hell.
There are GD kids who grow up and transition and do just fine. And yes, some of them wind up looking like linebackers, and that's horrible for them. But the numbers just don't work for me. The damage done to non-GD kids by eliminating gatekeeping is vast and unsupportable.
And I'm not saying absolutely no transitioning for kids. I'm saying it has to be a zebra, rather than a horse. Exceedingly rare.
And that's not what is happening. It is outlawed in most places, blocked by threats to institutions in the rest. The worry about damage to non trans kids is making sure that EVERY trans kid gets put through that.
To use your metaphor, the zebras are extinct. Y'all won. And now the kids get to suffer.
And that's terrible. But honestly, did you expect no blowback at all from the absolute free-for-all that went on in the name of self-expression? I didn't win. I lost doubly. First, when the crazies put so much pressure on mental health professionals (some of whom are crazies as well) that they started handing out hormones like candy, and now, when the pendulum has swung back hard enough to harm people. Ask yourself whether you have any responsibility at all for the blowback, Glau.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness here, both in substance and tone. After several years of immersing myself in this topic my views have hardened towards transition as a solution. I think all of the physicians involved are acting in violation of their oaths. We’ve created thousands and thousands of young people with iatrogenic endocrine disorders without any evidence that it improves functional outcomes. The medical pathway as a viable treatment option should be eliminated entirely.
Leaving suicide as the only way out. If that's what you want, cool, but it's also why trans people tend to feel like way more people want us all dead than are willing to admit it.
I’m so sorry but that doesn’t work on me anymore. Medical transition is not associated with improvement in suicide risk. Not for kids, not for adults. Surgeries are not psychiatric treatment. And threatening suicide unless you get what you want does not legitimize this as a medical treatment. Gender dysphoria is also not a coherent diagnosis of any kind. There are many reasons why someone might adopt a trans identity and none of them have anything to do with “brain sex” or “gender identity”.
It is though. In the same way that cigarettes cause cancer despite a lot of studies being published showing they don't. Would you like some of the evidence you deny exists?
I'm not threatening anything, given I expect most of the commentors here to regard the idea of me liking myself as a good thing. I'm just pointing out the consequences of forcing the choice of 'you can be trans and dead, or not trans and alive'.
Here's the thing with this line of reasoning though- I have been told by numerous young people, a couple who are trans that there's always, always been just as many trans people throughout history as there is now. How then is it possible, since because of societal pressure and discrimination, and the medical options simply not existing, how is it possible that the past is not simply littered with the corpses of trans suicides? If every person that wanted to be the opposite sex, at any point in history,.was not allowed to be? Obviously the vast majority DID not kill themselves. Perhaps they learned to accept themselves as they are (seems obvious that this is ideal for all people, but what do I know?) or perhaps they didn't and were depressed their entire lives because of it. Regardless, there's no chance they ALL offed themselves
One of the signs of a manipulator is blaming others for what you are doing yourself.
Have you considered that you are not doing any favors to your side, arguing the insanity you have been arguing? Now you are on a kick of "if only confused ten year old boys could be stopped from puberty, it would be a better world." No it wouldn't. You'd still be mental. And a lot more kids would be permanently damaged by Big Pharma.
There are no ‘trans people’ Glau. Not in any objective, testable or independently verifiable sense. Of course you’re free to believe whatever you want. That’s all trans amounts to: a (delusional) belief.
Cross-sex hormones and sexual surgeries aren't justifiable treatment for suicidality; in fact, they have long been used to punish same-sex attracted people, which seems still to be the case. There are other treatments for the issues that drive suicidality, and they should be provided. Cross-sex medicalization can't be contingent on suicide threats, any more than giving kids iphones or screen time. Treat the suicidality first.
I have followed trans issues for a long time, and this is the first piece of writing that makes sense, that I have seen. Thank you for that.
Good luck with reversing the trend into nowhere.
The rest of us are by now so fed up with the lies, the nonsense and the mutilations that we are now just saying, enough, get help, yer mental, and leave the confused kids alone. And the trans activists are not about to let go of their favorite tactics and their narcissism. A sad state of affairs.
I am all for tolerance for a variety of expession of the so called gender. But there are only two sexes, and no, men can't become women. And we women are hugely pissed off about men (that is, biological males) barging into our world like bulls into a china shop.
It is the denial of truth that makes trans unpalatable . People generally believe their eyes, and seeing a male pretending to be a female goes against reality. If that male pushes himself into women’s private spaces , it is not received well. Women have been denied their rights long enough , and this trend is a backward step for women…who can’t even be named anymore ! No matter how nice a particular trans person is, there is always the suspicion that he ( mostly he) is parading as something he is not.
It’s not really “assigned “… I hate that word regarding sex.
It’s a biological fact that when conception occurs the sex is determined based on the haploid sex cells joining together to form the diploid body cells. But the trans ideology doesn’t know biology and hopes that a lot of people are as ignorant ( deliberately) as they are. No matter what they preach, there are still two sexes and those are immutable. The trans people all have a mother and a father. Evolution matters. Gender ideology doesn’t.
No such thing as a trans girl . How about you creeps leave the boys alone and most will grow up into happy healthy effeminate gay men. Stop transing away the gays
And yet you are still in agreement with the above poster, that there is no such thing as a trans girl? Or that most trans kids are actually just gay and confused?
I believe the whistleblowers from the Tavistock clinic and their alarm bells. I believe the cass report rather than desperate reprobates and delusional souls such as yourself. Leave the kids alone and stop transing away the gays . Homophobia 2:1
And the Tavistock whistleblowers noted how long it took to get care, mainly, which has since been used to close the center and increase wait times further. Typical, really.
I don't have gender identity. I was conceived as a girl, and woman is what I am and always will be. As will you always be whatever your sex is. Trying to overturn Mother Nature seems like a road to a crazy place...
This is a well thought out piece. I' worked with several FTM more than 20 years ago (yikes, way more). Would never have known from appearance and behavior, and was not an issue of any kind. I was aware of MTF who blended in, and again not an issue. I knew someone in the 80's who got referrals from Stanford to work with men before surgery ,and essentially did charm classes on how to present yourself as female, how you walked, talked , dressed, sat. In my conversations with her , the men were concerned with the ability to pass, but didn't seem focused on whether they were now a "woman". But this was when trans meant transsexual and it meant having surgery. At some point things seriously changed and "trans gender" became the lead with self ID and suddenly there were "trans rights" with men demanding they could flash their female penises in women's spaces and you were a bigot if you objected. Children were now targeted and transition became a multi-billion medical industry.
I can't see us going back to where we were twenty years ago or more, and those who only want to quietly live their lives in peace with no drama will also lose out from this mess. I fear this is going to get even uglier. You too are victims in this.
We get back to trans women looking feminine by not forcing trans girls they make puberty. Either let people transition before puberty or don't punish people for looking too masculine, but doing both is a nasty catch-22.
This whole thread reads like a lunatic gathering. I don't mean it as an insult, just shaking my head. Who is punishing whom for looking too masculine? Men look masculine because they were conceived as men. And round and round we go...
There is no "trans community". It's a group of desperately emotionally and mentally vulnerable people with the unabashedly irrational idea that they can become something that they are not. We live in the least reasonable, most anxiety laden country on Earth and it shows in the anguish and narcissism of progressive ideas. I am truly sorry that you came to the conclusion that you could become something that you aren't. It is extremely sad and awful. Good luck to you.
I’m sorry, but this seems very biased against young trans people. I’m 24, and I realized I was trans when I was 22 years old, in part due to the mass media attention on trans people. I have partially transitioned and my mental health is much better than it was. For years I didn’t understand why I was internally struggling so much, and realizing my gender identity helped me mature and become a stronger person. It would not have been a good idea for me personally to transition when I was younger, but some kids really need it in order to survive. They are already suffering enough as it is, and this rhetoric is not helping. Not sure what you’re trying to accomplish here.
Nobody needs to be mutilated at 15 by drugs or surgeries "in order to survive." Stop the nonsense and the lies. And good luck to you, you are an adult and must make your way as you best understand.
I never did say being trans is not real, and you insisting I did does not make it so. I am just pointing out the lies. Why don't you? Then I wouldn't have to.
Apparently you can't read either. I said you can, not that you did. And I'm not going to lie about things that make kids less likely to kill themselves. Like supportive families and decent care.
You call mutilations decent care?! Guess what: I don't. I call them lifelong deformity that will come to haunt them soon enough, and if they have been surgically cut and altered, then the sepsis from that will eventually kill them before their time.
In my world, kids with gender disphoria are more likely to kill themselves if they wake up to the irreversible damage they allowed themselves to be drawn into, from which there is no escape. Gender disphoria usually passes, Mutilations are for life.
Children (most of whom would grow up to be gay) can no more "consent" to have their healthy breasts and genitalia removed or take puberty blockers than they can "consent" to have sex with an adult. Similarly, parents and doctors can no more approve such permanent mutilation simply because a minor child desires it than they can approve their participation in pedophilia.
Ultimately society will see the truth and ban the practice as we have banned female genital mutilation. Do people support that practice if the parents consent? I truly hope not. It is monstrous to believe otherwise and those who do will ultimately be held to account for their actions.
“There is a political party and professional apparatus that put male rapists and murderers in women's prisons, propagandized kindergartners that any of them could change sex, forced taxpayers and insurance customers to fund electrolysis and facial feminization surgeries, put any boy or man who claimed to be female into changing rooms with your daughters, forced you to declare the gender identity of your toddler at the doctor's office, deceived parents about the social transition of their children at school, banned psychological exploration of the mental health comorbidities that manifest as trans-ideation in the midst of an online social contagion generating 5000 percent increases in trans identification among youth, fined all-female nude spas run by immigrants for excluding men with penises who claimed to be women for violating the human rights of those men, imposed men on the athletic playing fields with your daughters, told thousands of parents to submit to the chemical castration of their children to avert imminent suicide risk for which no evidence has ever existed, subjected thousands of children to macabre sex changes procedures while lying about the existence of an evidence base where none ever existed while claiming on the basis of no evidence that the procedures were life-saving, investigated parents who refused to put their children on a pipeline to a lifetime of medicalized self-harm by pretending they had changed sex and sought to seize custody of them, and threatened to unperson you, attack your livelihood and leave you ostracized if you resisted it in any way with the aid of the monopolistic tech platforms that control the circulation of speech and money around the globe in a new surveillance and censorship regime that sought to dismantle biological reality in the name of narcissistic fantasies that it intended to entrench as the only truth while corrupting the truth-seeking apparatus of science itself -- and there is a majority of normal people in both parties who oppose this nonsense and want it stopped.”
6/20/2025
“Transgenderism must revert to being a form of private eccentricity. Recognition as one's preferred gender can be privately negotiated but with no coercion by any entity private or public. We all have an absolute right to affirm or not affirm, believe or not believe, that gender identity exists, that no one can infringe.
Sex segregated spaces and activities remain segregated by sex, not "gender identity."
Adults are free to inflict bodily self-harm on themselves in pursuit of an appearance they like but outside of any pretense of a medical protocol -- these are cosmetic procedures that come with no promises to relieve dysphoria or unlock an authentic self and the cost is borne solely by the person seeking them. Any such promises constitute consumer fraud. Children are of course unable to consent to such procedures.
The state has no role in affirming any aspect of cross-gender ideation, avoids proselytizing to children in schools or to anyone else in any interface it has with the public. The person who has inflicted bodily self-harm on his sex traits is no more a distinct class of person to whom special privileges or protections can be conferred than a person who has covered his face in tattoos. The person who believes with all his heart that he is a woman at heart and would die if others don't recognize him as such imposes no duty on any other person to share in that belief or to pretend to share in it. That person must develop resiliency about living in a pluralistic, liberal, democratic society where every person has a right to belief and a corollary right to unbelief that no one may legitimately infringe.
Any and all deviations from this resolution are morally illegitimate and practically untenable.
The attempt to turn a private eccentricity into a social cause that justified the remaking of society was a ghastly and destructive mistake. It was made inevitable by certain facets of the culture and certain aspects of our politics. We must learn the lesson that experience has now taught us.”
This might be the only thoughtful thing I have heard from someone identifying as trans.
My attitude was, this is America, any adult has the right. But then after 2020, it was everywhere, it was coercive (love it or FO bigot), and then when I realized a primary focus was going after children to get them in the "health care" pipeline for life, and how physically damaging that "treatment" is, my views have hardened and I have been in a mood to drive it from the public square entirely, and prosecute the elite offenders. You might blanch at this, but from the outside, it increasingly looks like Gay liberation, trans, the buying of surrogate babies, and the attempted normalization of pederasty, are all of a piece.
Im certain there's many who would benefit from regular opioid use. but because opioids ruin some people's lives, no one can have them. some really dont become addicted to cocaine. they can take it or leave it. but i cant buy cocaine at walmart either.
yes, its good when people call out some of the dishonest and destructive patterns and practices of the gender industry. the truth is when you come for women and children you are going to lose. and thats what gender policies do. the gender industry tried to hide this fact for decades. the misinformation that was enacted onto the public including vulnerable people who ID as opposite gender has always been more of a manipulation than anything. yes, ppl who ID as opposite gender deserve to know the truth. they were lied to. and they are only one of many victims.
Precisely this. The claim for years was that chronic pain and substance abuse patients are different populations and that you could treat the former without imperiling the latter. This was subsequently proved to be completely false. There is no reliable way to distinguish those whose lives are improved from those whose lives are devastated. And because of the ensuing carnage, opioids are not available as a treatment option for chronic pain. Same principle.
Would you say that the assumption that normally consuming alcohol people and alcohol abusing people are not different population groups? And that all of us consuming alcohol without problems are imperiling the latter?
If you know of a physician prescribing alcohol to patients I would encourage you to report that person to the appropriate medical board. You are free to be self destructive - but the medical apparatus is not allowed to assist you in doing so.
Basically, trans is against humanity. ..as it is against biology. No matter how well written, there really is no reason for anyone to deny their birth sex , unless they have a real psychological problem. Some people obviously do have that problem, but the real issue is that the trans community has pushed their views on the rest of society and has caused real harm to society…canceling people’s livelihood and worse. That is authoritarianism , and that is what makes people “ anti-trans”.
Thank you for this honest and open piece of writing. As someone who both has adult trans friends (all who transitioned as adults in their 40s/50s after much thought and research regarding risks and benefits) as well as a trans identified young adult natal daughter who announced the identity overnight in the middle of the pandemic at 15 and after some significant peer bullying, an incident of sexual assault and with diagnosed mental health comorbidities, I have been advocating for a more nuanced approach for years. Guardrails are essential for this younger cohort in particular. When the CDC itself is reporting that these kids and young adults are struggling with mental health issues at alarming rates, why would it make sense for this group to be able to simply march into a clinic and medicalize? How does it make any sense to concretize an identity as they are both hurting and struggling to figure out who they are?
My heart breaks for the many who have realized that it was a mistake for them (and I think the numbers who are *not* speaking out are likely significant). AND the care should be available for those for whom it will help. Both/and. We need nuance - not polarized screaming from two sides who are simply using the issue as a political weapon and don't actually know or care for anyone affected.
Again, I applaud you for writing this. Your particular voice is vital. Thank you.
We need the truth and INFORMED consent is what is needed.
Thank you for your thoughtful writing.
I'm very opposed to gender ideology because of the harms I feel it perpetuates and the stereotypes it promotes. But if all of those who identified as trans were as considerate and reasoned as you, I believe the public would be much more accepting of trans-ideology even if they disagreed with its principles. It's not terribly difficult to sympathize with someone who makes no demands, and just wants to peacefully live their life in the way they're comfortable.
There's an important difference between the tenets of trans ideology and the lived experience of many people who have developed trans identities. For example, the ideology denies the binary nature of sex; thinking about transsexualism prior to the rise of transgender ideology depended on acknowleging the material reality of sex. I have known males who choose to live in ways congruent with the socially constructed female sex role who totally understand the need to protect women's spaces and are alarmed that we would sterilize kids in the name of trans. We can think our way out of this when voices like the author's become more common, we look at science, and we listen to women.
Thank you for being a voice for sanity. And I say that as being a terf - we’re reclaiming that term as a badge of honour, not a slur.
I’ve always believed in live-and-let-live and that other people’s choices were both not my business and should be respected.
But then I started seeing boys and men competing in girls’ and women’s sports, stealing prizes and places meant for females, and women being punished if they questioned this. And then I started learning that male perverts were claiming to be women so they could invade women’s toilets and changing rooms.
And then I discovered children are being poisoned (puberty blockers are the same drugs used to chemically castrate male sex offenders) and mutilated in the name of a lie: that humans can change sex. We just can’t. And nobody is born in the “wrong” body. I hope you weren’t one of these children, too young to be capable of giving informed consent.
I don’t want to be a nasty person or to hurt others. But the truth is trans ideology (not individual trans people) is very nasty, a pack of lies, and is hurting a lot of people by trampling on the rights of others.
It's a good thing I don't believe no one can change sex. I would have killed myself years ago if I accepted your beliefs as true. :-/
And that would have been a terrible thing. However that idea has been weaponised to manipulate people (doctors, parents etc) to deliver WPATHs 'care' - surgery and hormones, no questions - to kids and vulnerable people, without care. And all the while there was no good research to support the suicide claims, and the acceptable quality research so far actually indicates that there is no link between denied transitions and suicide.
Fine, as long as you understand it isn't actually your "sex" that you were changing. This is may be much ado about semantics, with the "pronoun wars" being the iconic example. Very first world, English-speaking world, problems. Call it your aura or even your soul, but calling it 'sex' only works until people find it harder to remain polite than to not.
Not sure why more people don’t talk about secondary sex characteristics, cause that’s mainly what’s being changed with hormones
No, I am definitely changing my sex. Your dogma just insists it isn't possible.
I could be misunderstanding - I and everyone else here have been going on the assumption you want to alter a body in order to conform to gender stereotypes (set by Shia Law or Hollywood movies, matters not) .. if you ACTUALLY mean you are part of an experiment to actually change XY chromosomes to XX chromosomes, then you have my full support and will look for you at the Nobel Science Prize Awards.
This is a good take on the trans issue. However when you write of the trans movement trampling on people while demanding “rights” I think it’s very important to put people who have nothing to do with the “trans community” foremost. I’m thinking of women who are being forced to compete against males in sports or girls who are forced to undress in front of boys or females being locked up with males accused of sex crimes. These are people who are being told to shut up, that they don’t have any say in anything happening, and they aren’t trans so they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Let kids transition before puberty and those issues go away, and everyone is happier.
I hope you’re being ironic.
No. I'm not. The big objection to trans women seems to be how we are "really" men because of going through male puberties. We didn't want to go through them, you don't want to treat people who went through them like women, so there's a win-win here. All you have to do is accept that kids do actually know their gender.
I def do not accept that "kids know their gender". Gender is a pseudo-scientific concept that nobody can seem to define in any coherent way. So we would be trusting children (who believe in all kinds of nonsense) to accurately parse out their place in this pseudo-scientific framework, and then have their natural development blocked and synthetic hormones from the opposite sex introduced into their bodies, all to affirm a feeling they have about themselves? The downstream effects of all of this are mostly unknown, but from what we do know, it looks bad, really bad just long term health wise. Naw. I'll take a hard pass on that absurdity.
So, functionally, you are going to put all trans kids through the wrong puberty to prevent any chance of a cis kid going through the wrong puberty.
Latest data we've got on gender persistence says that kids solidly know by 10 and only about 0.13% switch from cis to trans or vice versa. And this is from a study Jesse Singal, no great supporter of trans folk, highlighted in the Economist.
It’s not possible for someone to go through “the wrong puberty”. The only way one might even consider that children are going through “the wrong puberty” is by blocking their natal sex’s natural development and putting them on synthetic hormones of the opposite sex, thus creating a simulacrum of a puberty that every one of the trillions of cells in their bodies are not programmed for. That’s child abuse, plain and simple and it needs to be outlawed.
The desistence rates that you’re referring to have been manipulated by activists and have no credibility.
I dispute the numbers. Functionally, you're willing to damage gender-non-conforming kids on the chance that they *might* be actually gender dysphoric.
"put"? what the hell are you even talking about. we are not gods. I now suspect you are not a debator, nor a danger, merely a troll who would be more comfortable as a customer in the Monty Python Argument Clinic. (the alarm wears off once we realize you are neither serious .. but continue to play, if you wish).
No, you are not a man because you went through a male puberty. You are a man because you were made so in conception. And will die so. Ach... the craziness of it all...
You don't like being called men because your chosen behavior does not fall into the usual norm. Ok. But you'll never be women. Biology, is that a thing? :-)
Biology is a thing. Fortunately, it is plastic and can be changed.
Which is precisely why children must parents to protect them from would-be Josef Mengele's and groomers. We can debate how much right society has to intervene in your experimentation with your own born children (no simple answer) .. but extra-judicial death penalty if you mess with mine.
Okay, now you are not a debator of ideas .. you are an actual danger .. stay far from our children, especially our gay kids and tom-boys.
Let kids grow up past puberty and those issues go away, and everyone is happier.
The problem is that most gender-non-conforming kids are *not* trans. And if you let *them* go through a natural puberty, the issues go away, too. The femmy boys generally come out as gay, and the butchy girls generally go through a tomboy phase and then stop.
What you're suggesting is that for the very, very small number of kids who actually *are* gender dysphoric to get the help they need, a large number of kids should be abused and scarred, sometimes permanently.
It's the Trolley Problem, but in real life. But it's not a binary choice. I think there *are* gender dysphoric kids. But I think the gatekeeping needs to be far more stringent even than the old Harry Benjamin standards were. It needs to be rare as hell.
Your argument is that all trans kids must be sacrificed so no cis kids go through what trans kids experience?
There are GD kids who grow up and transition and do just fine. And yes, some of them wind up looking like linebackers, and that's horrible for them. But the numbers just don't work for me. The damage done to non-GD kids by eliminating gatekeeping is vast and unsupportable.
And I'm not saying absolutely no transitioning for kids. I'm saying it has to be a zebra, rather than a horse. Exceedingly rare.
And that's not what is happening. It is outlawed in most places, blocked by threats to institutions in the rest. The worry about damage to non trans kids is making sure that EVERY trans kid gets put through that.
To use your metaphor, the zebras are extinct. Y'all won. And now the kids get to suffer.
And that's terrible. But honestly, did you expect no blowback at all from the absolute free-for-all that went on in the name of self-expression? I didn't win. I lost doubly. First, when the crazies put so much pressure on mental health professionals (some of whom are crazies as well) that they started handing out hormones like candy, and now, when the pendulum has swung back hard enough to harm people. Ask yourself whether you have any responsibility at all for the blowback, Glau.
Yikes! Someone clearly has not read #TheCassReport
Cass report was a political project, not actual science. It's conclusions are not trustworthy.
See: https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2025/223/7/cass-review-does-not-guide-care-trans-young-people
I appreciate the thoughtfulness here, both in substance and tone. After several years of immersing myself in this topic my views have hardened towards transition as a solution. I think all of the physicians involved are acting in violation of their oaths. We’ve created thousands and thousands of young people with iatrogenic endocrine disorders without any evidence that it improves functional outcomes. The medical pathway as a viable treatment option should be eliminated entirely.
Leaving suicide as the only way out. If that's what you want, cool, but it's also why trans people tend to feel like way more people want us all dead than are willing to admit it.
I’m so sorry but that doesn’t work on me anymore. Medical transition is not associated with improvement in suicide risk. Not for kids, not for adults. Surgeries are not psychiatric treatment. And threatening suicide unless you get what you want does not legitimize this as a medical treatment. Gender dysphoria is also not a coherent diagnosis of any kind. There are many reasons why someone might adopt a trans identity and none of them have anything to do with “brain sex” or “gender identity”.
It is though. In the same way that cigarettes cause cancer despite a lot of studies being published showing they don't. Would you like some of the evidence you deny exists?
I'm not threatening anything, given I expect most of the commentors here to regard the idea of me liking myself as a good thing. I'm just pointing out the consequences of forcing the choice of 'you can be trans and dead, or not trans and alive'.
Here's the thing with this line of reasoning though- I have been told by numerous young people, a couple who are trans that there's always, always been just as many trans people throughout history as there is now. How then is it possible, since because of societal pressure and discrimination, and the medical options simply not existing, how is it possible that the past is not simply littered with the corpses of trans suicides? If every person that wanted to be the opposite sex, at any point in history,.was not allowed to be? Obviously the vast majority DID not kill themselves. Perhaps they learned to accept themselves as they are (seems obvious that this is ideal for all people, but what do I know?) or perhaps they didn't and were depressed their entire lives because of it. Regardless, there's no chance they ALL offed themselves
You seem to assume that when someone in the olden days liked themselves, we know why.
Why do you assume this?
*killed, not liked
"Leaving suicide as the only way out...."
With friends like that, who needs enemies.
How about you stop guilt-tripping people?
Ironic how many techniques get stolen from the patriarchy. This one is "How about you stop being such a nag?"
One of the signs of a manipulator is blaming others for what you are doing yourself.
Have you considered that you are not doing any favors to your side, arguing the insanity you have been arguing? Now you are on a kick of "if only confused ten year old boys could be stopped from puberty, it would be a better world." No it wouldn't. You'd still be mental. And a lot more kids would be permanently damaged by Big Pharma.
There are no ‘trans people’ Glau. Not in any objective, testable or independently verifiable sense. Of course you’re free to believe whatever you want. That’s all trans amounts to: a (delusional) belief.
Trans junk-science doesn’t interest me.
There's no one in pain, Nick. Not in any objective, testable, or independently verifiable sense.
You have to ask someone if they are in pain to know if they are.
But no one denies pain exists. It's just the stuff that you didn't personally experience that you deny.
Pain has observable physiological indicators; trans does not.
Why aren't they used in diagnostics then?
Or rather, source please. I'll show you physiological evidence of being trans if you show me what you've got on pain.
Cross-sex hormones and sexual surgeries aren't justifiable treatment for suicidality; in fact, they have long been used to punish same-sex attracted people, which seems still to be the case. There are other treatments for the issues that drive suicidality, and they should be provided. Cross-sex medicalization can't be contingent on suicide threats, any more than giving kids iphones or screen time. Treat the suicidality first.
I have followed trans issues for a long time, and this is the first piece of writing that makes sense, that I have seen. Thank you for that.
Good luck with reversing the trend into nowhere.
The rest of us are by now so fed up with the lies, the nonsense and the mutilations that we are now just saying, enough, get help, yer mental, and leave the confused kids alone. And the trans activists are not about to let go of their favorite tactics and their narcissism. A sad state of affairs.
I am all for tolerance for a variety of expession of the so called gender. But there are only two sexes, and no, men can't become women. And we women are hugely pissed off about men (that is, biological males) barging into our world like bulls into a china shop.
It is the denial of truth that makes trans unpalatable . People generally believe their eyes, and seeing a male pretending to be a female goes against reality. If that male pushes himself into women’s private spaces , it is not received well. Women have been denied their rights long enough , and this trend is a backward step for women…who can’t even be named anymore ! No matter how nice a particular trans person is, there is always the suspicion that he ( mostly he) is parading as something he is not.
And people don't assign sex at birth. Nature assigns sex at conception. Another preposterous lie.
It’s not really “assigned “… I hate that word regarding sex.
It’s a biological fact that when conception occurs the sex is determined based on the haploid sex cells joining together to form the diploid body cells. But the trans ideology doesn’t know biology and hopes that a lot of people are as ignorant ( deliberately) as they are. No matter what they preach, there are still two sexes and those are immutable. The trans people all have a mother and a father. Evolution matters. Gender ideology doesn’t.
Don't force trans girls through make puberties and this issue goes away.
No such thing as a trans girl . How about you creeps leave the boys alone and most will grow up into happy healthy effeminate gay men. Stop transing away the gays
No, they won't. If you ever bothered to listen instead of telling, you'd know.
We can’t help but listen - it’s been shouted at us more times than not.
And yet you are still in agreement with the above poster, that there is no such thing as a trans girl? Or that most trans kids are actually just gay and confused?
I believe the whistleblowers from the Tavistock clinic and their alarm bells. I believe the cass report rather than desperate reprobates and delusional souls such as yourself. Leave the kids alone and stop transing away the gays . Homophobia 2:1
You might want to check back on the Cass report. There's been at least five actually peer-reviewed debunkings of it.
Refer here:
https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2025/223/7/cass-review-does-not-guide-care-trans-young-people
And the Tavistock whistleblowers noted how long it took to get care, mainly, which has since been used to close the center and increase wait times further. Typical, really.
As fake as trans girls and boys. As fake as your reality as a trans person
Your debunkings are fake. Like your gender identity hun. Nice try.
I don't have gender identity. I was conceived as a girl, and woman is what I am and always will be. As will you always be whatever your sex is. Trying to overturn Mother Nature seems like a road to a crazy place...
This is a well thought out piece. I' worked with several FTM more than 20 years ago (yikes, way more). Would never have known from appearance and behavior, and was not an issue of any kind. I was aware of MTF who blended in, and again not an issue. I knew someone in the 80's who got referrals from Stanford to work with men before surgery ,and essentially did charm classes on how to present yourself as female, how you walked, talked , dressed, sat. In my conversations with her , the men were concerned with the ability to pass, but didn't seem focused on whether they were now a "woman". But this was when trans meant transsexual and it meant having surgery. At some point things seriously changed and "trans gender" became the lead with self ID and suddenly there were "trans rights" with men demanding they could flash their female penises in women's spaces and you were a bigot if you objected. Children were now targeted and transition became a multi-billion medical industry.
I can't see us going back to where we were twenty years ago or more, and those who only want to quietly live their lives in peace with no drama will also lose out from this mess. I fear this is going to get even uglier. You too are victims in this.
We get back to trans women looking feminine by not forcing trans girls they make puberty. Either let people transition before puberty or don't punish people for looking too masculine, but doing both is a nasty catch-22.
This whole thread reads like a lunatic gathering. I don't mean it as an insult, just shaking my head. Who is punishing whom for looking too masculine? Men look masculine because they were conceived as men. And round and round we go...
You really cannot wrap your head around what being trans means, can you.
Just like you cannot wrap your head around what being a woman means.
There is no "trans community". It's a group of desperately emotionally and mentally vulnerable people with the unabashedly irrational idea that they can become something that they are not. We live in the least reasonable, most anxiety laden country on Earth and it shows in the anguish and narcissism of progressive ideas. I am truly sorry that you came to the conclusion that you could become something that you aren't. It is extremely sad and awful. Good luck to you.
I’m sorry, but this seems very biased against young trans people. I’m 24, and I realized I was trans when I was 22 years old, in part due to the mass media attention on trans people. I have partially transitioned and my mental health is much better than it was. For years I didn’t understand why I was internally struggling so much, and realizing my gender identity helped me mature and become a stronger person. It would not have been a good idea for me personally to transition when I was younger, but some kids really need it in order to survive. They are already suffering enough as it is, and this rhetoric is not helping. Not sure what you’re trying to accomplish here.
Nobody needs to be mutilated at 15 by drugs or surgeries "in order to survive." Stop the nonsense and the lies. And good luck to you, you are an adult and must make your way as you best understand.
You can say you don't believe being trans is real, but I suspect you can't see how that and what you just said are the same.
I never did say being trans is not real, and you insisting I did does not make it so. I am just pointing out the lies. Why don't you? Then I wouldn't have to.
Apparently you can't read either. I said you can, not that you did. And I'm not going to lie about things that make kids less likely to kill themselves. Like supportive families and decent care.
You call mutilations decent care?! Guess what: I don't. I call them lifelong deformity that will come to haunt them soon enough, and if they have been surgically cut and altered, then the sepsis from that will eventually kill them before their time.
In my world, kids with gender disphoria are more likely to kill themselves if they wake up to the irreversible damage they allowed themselves to be drawn into, from which there is no escape. Gender disphoria usually passes, Mutilations are for life.
But thanks for the condescension.
It seems to me that adolescents should be handled with great care, so many of us are off balance at that age(if not all)
Children (most of whom would grow up to be gay) can no more "consent" to have their healthy breasts and genitalia removed or take puberty blockers than they can "consent" to have sex with an adult. Similarly, parents and doctors can no more approve such permanent mutilation simply because a minor child desires it than they can approve their participation in pedophilia.
Ultimately society will see the truth and ban the practice as we have banned female genital mutilation. Do people support that practice if the parents consent? I truly hope not. It is monstrous to believe otherwise and those who do will ultimately be held to account for their actions.
These are a series of posts by Wesley Yang on X:
1/29/2025
“There are no "anti-trans extremists."
“There is a political party and professional apparatus that put male rapists and murderers in women's prisons, propagandized kindergartners that any of them could change sex, forced taxpayers and insurance customers to fund electrolysis and facial feminization surgeries, put any boy or man who claimed to be female into changing rooms with your daughters, forced you to declare the gender identity of your toddler at the doctor's office, deceived parents about the social transition of their children at school, banned psychological exploration of the mental health comorbidities that manifest as trans-ideation in the midst of an online social contagion generating 5000 percent increases in trans identification among youth, fined all-female nude spas run by immigrants for excluding men with penises who claimed to be women for violating the human rights of those men, imposed men on the athletic playing fields with your daughters, told thousands of parents to submit to the chemical castration of their children to avert imminent suicide risk for which no evidence has ever existed, subjected thousands of children to macabre sex changes procedures while lying about the existence of an evidence base where none ever existed while claiming on the basis of no evidence that the procedures were life-saving, investigated parents who refused to put their children on a pipeline to a lifetime of medicalized self-harm by pretending they had changed sex and sought to seize custody of them, and threatened to unperson you, attack your livelihood and leave you ostracized if you resisted it in any way with the aid of the monopolistic tech platforms that control the circulation of speech and money around the globe in a new surveillance and censorship regime that sought to dismantle biological reality in the name of narcissistic fantasies that it intended to entrench as the only truth while corrupting the truth-seeking apparatus of science itself -- and there is a majority of normal people in both parties who oppose this nonsense and want it stopped.”
6/20/2025
“Transgenderism must revert to being a form of private eccentricity. Recognition as one's preferred gender can be privately negotiated but with no coercion by any entity private or public. We all have an absolute right to affirm or not affirm, believe or not believe, that gender identity exists, that no one can infringe.
Sex segregated spaces and activities remain segregated by sex, not "gender identity."
Adults are free to inflict bodily self-harm on themselves in pursuit of an appearance they like but outside of any pretense of a medical protocol -- these are cosmetic procedures that come with no promises to relieve dysphoria or unlock an authentic self and the cost is borne solely by the person seeking them. Any such promises constitute consumer fraud. Children are of course unable to consent to such procedures.
The state has no role in affirming any aspect of cross-gender ideation, avoids proselytizing to children in schools or to anyone else in any interface it has with the public. The person who has inflicted bodily self-harm on his sex traits is no more a distinct class of person to whom special privileges or protections can be conferred than a person who has covered his face in tattoos. The person who believes with all his heart that he is a woman at heart and would die if others don't recognize him as such imposes no duty on any other person to share in that belief or to pretend to share in it. That person must develop resiliency about living in a pluralistic, liberal, democratic society where every person has a right to belief and a corollary right to unbelief that no one may legitimately infringe.
Any and all deviations from this resolution are morally illegitimate and practically untenable.
The attempt to turn a private eccentricity into a social cause that justified the remaking of society was a ghastly and destructive mistake. It was made inevitable by certain facets of the culture and certain aspects of our politics. We must learn the lesson that experience has now taught us.”
This might be the only thoughtful thing I have heard from someone identifying as trans.
My attitude was, this is America, any adult has the right. But then after 2020, it was everywhere, it was coercive (love it or FO bigot), and then when I realized a primary focus was going after children to get them in the "health care" pipeline for life, and how physically damaging that "treatment" is, my views have hardened and I have been in a mood to drive it from the public square entirely, and prosecute the elite offenders. You might blanch at this, but from the outside, it increasingly looks like Gay liberation, trans, the buying of surrogate babies, and the attempted normalization of pederasty, are all of a piece.
Thank you for this. Well articulated and kind
Im certain there's many who would benefit from regular opioid use. but because opioids ruin some people's lives, no one can have them. some really dont become addicted to cocaine. they can take it or leave it. but i cant buy cocaine at walmart either.
yes, its good when people call out some of the dishonest and destructive patterns and practices of the gender industry. the truth is when you come for women and children you are going to lose. and thats what gender policies do. the gender industry tried to hide this fact for decades. the misinformation that was enacted onto the public including vulnerable people who ID as opposite gender has always been more of a manipulation than anything. yes, ppl who ID as opposite gender deserve to know the truth. they were lied to. and they are only one of many victims.
Precisely this. The claim for years was that chronic pain and substance abuse patients are different populations and that you could treat the former without imperiling the latter. This was subsequently proved to be completely false. There is no reliable way to distinguish those whose lives are improved from those whose lives are devastated. And because of the ensuing carnage, opioids are not available as a treatment option for chronic pain. Same principle.
Sorry, what? It does not make sense.
Would you say that the assumption that normally consuming alcohol people and alcohol abusing people are not different population groups? And that all of us consuming alcohol without problems are imperiling the latter?
If you know of a physician prescribing alcohol to patients I would encourage you to report that person to the appropriate medical board. You are free to be self destructive - but the medical apparatus is not allowed to assist you in doing so.
If your logic does not hold in Prohibition of alcohol, it probably does not hold in prohibition of opiates. Have you considered that?
Ok then. I’ll change my mind “sex changes” when the government decides to to sell Percocet at the grocery store.
Ditto.
I recommend a course in argumentation. :-)
Basically, trans is against humanity. ..as it is against biology. No matter how well written, there really is no reason for anyone to deny their birth sex , unless they have a real psychological problem. Some people obviously do have that problem, but the real issue is that the trans community has pushed their views on the rest of society and has caused real harm to society…canceling people’s livelihood and worse. That is authoritarianism , and that is what makes people “ anti-trans”.