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It's unambiguously safer and easier to be trans in America now than at any time in history. I haven't been anywhere I felt unwelcome; I can drop into places lik

It's unambiguously safer and easier to be trans in America now than at any time in history. I haven't been anywhere I felt unwelcome; I can drop into places like Dallas or rural PA and interact with strangers just fine. The only ongoing drama I can see being credibly interpreted as a human rights issue is the stuff with very young children. I came out ten years ago, and I didn't get to learn about transness until that process started. If you came up in the nineties you'd see The Crying Game in your early teens and not know the difference between a trans woman and a "hermaphrodite" (intersex person) until your twenties. Nowadays, kids develop alternative lives on the internet much earlier than my cohort did, and they learn not just that trans people exist, but what it means to transition and what leads people to transition, before they get to middle school in many cases. The pushback on that, post-bathroom-hysteria, has largely been to try to reclaim some of parents' ability to know what's going on and to control their child's level of exposure to information—much like with sex and drugs in the teen years, it's import for younger children to explore their identities in a way that allows their parents to mentor them and help them interpret what they're feeling. I don't think this is a human rights issue—I think we've misplaced our wariness of abusive parenting and allowed it develop into a skepticism of nuclear-family parenting in general. Much of the nonsense is initiated by the right, yes—bathrooms and ID laws and whatever else—but what everyone's talking about _right now_ has to do with a change in our understanding of The Family, initiated by the left, that I expect will play out in increasingly interesting ways over the next 20-30 years.

Avshalom 5y ago
>it's import for younger children to explore their identities in a way that allows their parents to mentor them and help them interpret what they're feeling. thing is though: Texas, Florida, Idaho, couple others, have declared that child abuse.
- replygirl 5y ago
  as i understand it, those states have seen pushes to leave it up to parents to educate and nurture their kids in early development, carving out a space where the state cannot take over for parents, which was not a controversial thing to want for families until recently
  - a_shovel 5y ago
    The Florida Department of Health recently released new guidelines stating "Social gender transition should not be a treatment option for children or adolescents." [0] For those unaware, "social gender transition", in addition to changing their pronouns and name, would be things like a trans girl switching to wearing dresses or growing out her hair, or a trans boy cutting his hair or wearing boy's clothes, or engaging in gender-stereotyped interests like dolls, or any other sort of action the kid finds gender-affirming. It does not include any medical procedures. There is no conceivable benefit to the child of preventing this, and it could prevent them from doing many actions that in cisgender children would be seen as ordinary nonconformance to gender stereotypes. That it is included alongside a ban on puberty blockers and hormones and a ban on gender reassignment surgery, and an exception to that for intersex people (which intersex advocates oppose, because some doctors will perform unnecessary and risky surgeries on intersex babies to "correct" their genitals before they can consent), shows that all of these have the same goal: enforcing gender conformity. [0] https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1516773653391806464 https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1516773653391806464
    - replygirl 5y ago
      i think it's fair for the department of health to not allow adolescent therapists and psychiatrists to prescribe social transition—there are implications for a parent blocking access to something legally considered a medical treatment. from what i read it seems like parents still have some leeway to respond to their childrens' needs independently, at least on the social side. to be fair i don't think i've seen any policy regime, in effect or proposed, that feels quite right to me. in florida's case i would change the language to allow that sort of prescription subject to parental consent whether it's social or hormonal. on the blockers though, it's not the end of the world that i grow hair on my face and have a little more muscle mass than most women. dysphoria peaks when you first acknowledge it, then slowly subsides over a few years once you're Living Your Truth. i am more than my annoying body > and an exception to that for intersex people this has been an intersex rights issue for much longer than what's in the spotlight right now, and should be considered separately imo. one thing i learned from the intersex people in my life is they don't like intersex concerns being lumped in with trans concerns, even if many do grow up to be, or present as, trans. if we have to consider both at the same time, i would say "leave bodies as they were born until the person inhabiting them is old enough to know what's best for themself" > enforcing gender conformity. elsewhere in this thread i voiced my opinion that contemporary queer ideology has eroded the usefulness of identity markers. to build on that, i also think most liberals (i.e. people who believe "progress" is both real and virtuous) have a pretty narrow idea of how gender nonconformity can present itself

Avshalom 5y ago

>it's import for younger children to explore their identities in a way that allows their parents to mentor them and help them interpret what they're feeling. thing is though: Texas, Florida, Idaho, couple others, have declared that child abuse.

replygirl 5y ago
as i understand it, those states have seen pushes to leave it up to parents to educate and nurture their kids in early development, carving out a space where the state cannot take over for parents, which was not a controversial thing to want for families until recently
- a_shovel 5y ago
  The Florida Department of Health recently released new guidelines stating "Social gender transition should not be a treatment option for children or adolescents." [0] For those unaware, "social gender transition", in addition to changing their pronouns and name, would be things like a trans girl switching to wearing dresses or growing out her hair, or a trans boy cutting his hair or wearing boy's clothes, or engaging in gender-stereotyped interests like dolls, or any other sort of action the kid finds gender-affirming. It does not include any medical procedures. There is no conceivable benefit to the child of preventing this, and it could prevent them from doing many actions that in cisgender children would be seen as ordinary nonconformance to gender stereotypes. That it is included alongside a ban on puberty blockers and hormones and a ban on gender reassignment surgery, and an exception to that for intersex people (which intersex advocates oppose, because some doctors will perform unnecessary and risky surgeries on intersex babies to "correct" their genitals before they can consent), shows that all of these have the same goal: enforcing gender conformity. [0] https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1516773653391806464 https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1516773653391806464
  - replygirl 5y ago
    i think it's fair for the department of health to not allow adolescent therapists and psychiatrists to prescribe social transition—there are implications for a parent blocking access to something legally considered a medical treatment. from what i read it seems like parents still have some leeway to respond to their childrens' needs independently, at least on the social side. to be fair i don't think i've seen any policy regime, in effect or proposed, that feels quite right to me. in florida's case i would change the language to allow that sort of prescription subject to parental consent whether it's social or hormonal. on the blockers though, it's not the end of the world that i grow hair on my face and have a little more muscle mass than most women. dysphoria peaks when you first acknowledge it, then slowly subsides over a few years once you're Living Your Truth. i am more than my annoying body > and an exception to that for intersex people this has been an intersex rights issue for much longer than what's in the spotlight right now, and should be considered separately imo. one thing i learned from the intersex people in my life is they don't like intersex concerns being lumped in with trans concerns, even if many do grow up to be, or present as, trans. if we have to consider both at the same time, i would say "leave bodies as they were born until the person inhabiting them is old enough to know what's best for themself" > enforcing gender conformity. elsewhere in this thread i voiced my opinion that contemporary queer ideology has eroded the usefulness of identity markers. to build on that, i also think most liberals (i.e. people who believe "progress" is both real and virtuous) have a pretty narrow idea of how gender nonconformity can present itself