Under recent historical conditions in the West, these kids were mostly “pre-gay” rather than trans. (The stereotype about lesbians being masculine and gay men being feminine is, like most stereotypes, basically true: sex-atypical childhood behavior between gay and straight adults has been meta-analyzed atCohen’s d ≈ 1.31 standard deviations for men and d ≈ 0.96 for women.) A solid majority of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria ended up growing out of it by puberty. In the culture of the current year, it seemed likely that a lot of those kids would instead get affirmed into a cross-sex identity at a young age, even though most of them would have otherwise (under a “watchful waiting” protocol) grown up to be ordinary gay men and lesbians.
What made this shift in norms crazy, in my view, was not just that transitioning younger children is a dubious treatment decision, but that it’s a dubious treatment decision that was being made on the basis of the obvious falsehood that “trans” was one thing: the cultural phenomenon of “trans kids” was being used to legitimize trans adults, even though a supermajority of trans adults were in the late-onset taxon and therefore had never resembled these HSTS-taxon kids. That is: pre-gay kids in our Society are being sterilized in order to affirm the narcissistic delusions[29] of guys like me.
I definitely want to think more about this, and my views are provisional.
But if this basic story is true, it sure changes my attitude towards childhood gender-transitions!
I definitely want to think more about this, and my views are provisional.
But if this basic story is true, it sure changes my attitude towards childhood gender-transitions!