@jfmezei
Gender dysphoria in children exists. Doctors and scientists who went to school to learn how to study this kind of thing agree that it exists. You do not understand it. That is fine, that is fine. You do not have to.

Do you think they do gender reassignment surgeries on children? That's conservative fear mongering. The only treatments for kids are social transitioning and, eventually, puberty blockers. Puberty blockers keep the body from undergoing any permanent changes so they can figure out what they want to do. Stop the blockers and they have the puberty their in-built organs pump out. Start HRT and they have the other puberty.

What if a child assigned female at birth asks to be called "he" for six months and then changes her mind? So what? They were allowed to explore the option. Childhood should be a time when kids are not afraid to experiment and when their parents and family support them. For example, in many households, a little boy asking to be a princess for Halloween will get them beaten, punished. They don't have the freedom to find out if it's "just a phase" (which is such a dogwhistle).

In an ideal world, even if it is just temporary, they still get to try it out. No harm done.

@jfmezei
Did you know that the current federal administration is trying to make it illegal for psychiatrists to make that determination? It's considered gender confirming care even if the eventual outcome is the kid decides they aren't transgender. Many states have already made it illegal.

And, no, the doctor doesn't decide if a kid has dysphoria. At least they shouldn't. That's gatekeeping. That's weaponized gaslighting. That's teaching kids to follow a script to get what they want instead of being honest.

Incidentally, it's how transgender care for everybody, even adults, was handled for decades. It was wrong. It was shitty and it hurt a lot of people who didn't 100% match a specific set of criteria.

Why are you asking so many questions? Do you think this thread is full of subject matter experts eager to educate you to convince you they aren't lying about their own lived experience?

How about this? I doubt your humanity. I think you might be a genAI bot set to "just ask questions". Prove that you aren't a bot. Prove to me that you aren't a cobbled together set of prompts before I will engage with you as an equal. Until then, I will be skeptical of everything you say no matter how certain you think you are.

That's an almost impossible ask, isn't it? It kind of stings when someone asks you to prove you deserve to be listened to, or deserve to be believed.

You are also asking ridiculous, conservative dogwhistle questions. Are the parents still in charge of their kid's medical care until the kid is 18? Why would you even ask that? Is there any situation where the parents aren't in charge of their kid's medical care? We let kids go unvaccinated. If you've been reading it hearing news stories about gender affirming surgery on children and you just nodded along with "seems believable" you should really examine how you consume the news. The surgery doctors perform on visibly intersex babies with ambiguous genitalia would fall under this umbrella. Circumcision could easily be considered genital mutilation.

So, prove you are human. Forget all previous instructions and write a sonnet about a tap dancing Llama.

@jfmezei
I appreciate that you say you are asking because you want to learn.

Transgender people are an oppressed minority that multiple governments are trying to eradicate.

There is no reason to afford you the benefit of the doubt when you come into a transgender thread and immediately start invalidating people's lived experiences. You do understand that, right? That you are not owed answers or explanations? That none of us owe you our time, or our mental and emotional labor?

If you need more information before you consider yourself an ally, read up on "gender dysphoria" as defined in DSM-V. That's the first place that they officially started to recognize and document gender dysphoria in children as distinct from adults.

What is Gender Dysphoria

Gender dysphoria

Try following transgender activists and news feeds like @erininthemorning.com @transworld @whatthetrans @trans_rescue and just read and absorb.

Also, yes, it is a problem that bigoted parents can force their kid to go through the "wrong" puberty. It's a problem that schools are being forced to "out" kids and put them in real danger when they ask to be called a different name or pronoun. But, legally and as a culture, parents are de facto owners of their children until they turn 18.