US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5159

On July 03 2023 15:00 BlackJack wrote:
Thanks for asking. I guess I’ll add my thoughts on a few “trans issues”

Gender-affirming care

Obviously no sane person would oppose gender affirming care for adults so this is going to be about minors. While I don’t think the medical establishment is infallible (can cite many examples) I think they are still the best ones to make decisions on gender affirming care than politicians. Ultimately you need 3 parties consent here for any intervention, child, parent, and doctor. I don’t think parental rights are limitless but I generally yield to them vs the opinions of politicians. Whether a child ends up with regret may be tragic, sometimes that’s just life

Of course that simply means the medical establishment should call the shots, it doesn’t say what shots I think should be called. For example the medical establishment in America recommends gender affirming care for minors and the medical establishment in Finland/Sweden recommend against it. I don’t think the medical establishment in Finland/Sweden is full of bigots and transphobes and I obviously share some of their concerns e.g the unexplained rise in prevalence of gender dysphoria in female adolescents and rigorous evidence that shows the benefits outweighs the risks. I’ve posted before in this thread about social contagion. I think most people here believe that trans people are “born that way.” I tend to believe most things are a combination of nature vs nurture and it’s only for controversial topics that people will adopt this “it’s entirely genetic” or “it’s entirely environmental” dogma that hasn’t been proven.

In general I think gender affirming care is not something that should be immediately adopted. I’m also not familiar enough to know if it is or not. I don’t think a boy goes to a therapist for the first time and says “I’m a girl and my name is Susan” and the doctor says “Hi Susan.” I would hope there would be some “interesting… well why do you feel that way” beforehand. But ultimately it may be the judgement of the doctor and the parent that it’s not a phase they will grow out of and gender affirming care may be necessary. So I would say generally I think there should be a line drawn between reversible and irreversible interventions. E.g. role playing and puberty blockers as reversible. There’s some evidence that puberty blockers transitioned into hormone therapy in teenagers causes infertility, and I don’t really think anyone should be having top/bottom surgery before 18.

Transgender women in supports

This is anecdotal but most transgender women I meet are not athletes. They are definitely not elite athletes. I also think there’s a gap between men and women in sports, and not a small one. Often high school level boys can compete with professional women at the top levels. I also think Rayzda is right that without protections over time most world records would belong to MTF athletes. I also think most reasonable people agree this is unfair. I think most people think there should be some protections in place. For example to be a transgendered woman there are no requirements other than proclaiming yourself to be a transgender woman. I think if a male athlete just proclaimed themselves to be a transgender woman and wanted to race the next day against women most people would opposed this.

In short, a blanket ban on all MTF athletes doesn’t make sense because for the vast majority of the less talented athletes it accomplishes nothing in protect women’s sports and only excludes transgender athletes needlessly. Obviously there’s a small percent of cases where there is an obvious advantage that allows them to dominate and become champions and they are the few that should be excluded.

Bathroom bans

Just political theater in my opinion. People don’t go into the wrong bathrooms not because it’s the law but because that’s what societal norms dictate. I’m not aware of this being a problem and if it becomes a problem then you can worry about legislating it.