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Mike Hind's avatar

It's wild that the leftish massively overestimate cop-on-black killing and conservatives do exactly the same on transgender medical procedures. Why, it's almost as if our brains are completely addled by unexamined moral intuitions.

Also, is Desantis a genuine idiot or a cynical operator?

Anyway, your piece lands just as my interest in the culture war flatlines, so it's hard agree all the way, from me.

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ur friend annika's avatar

By turning transgender healthcare and rights into the top political issue at the forefront of the culture wars -- a pretty terrible place for productive discussions and debate -- I worry that we're putting the actual transgender population more at risk. I definitely see the data that the internet and increased exposure has increased the amount of trans men. There are also obviously stories of people detransitioning. In a systematic review of 27 studies in 2021 published by AP News, they found that 1% of the transgender people who underwent surgery had regrets, and some of those regrets were only temporary.

I wish people would remember that behind the increases in rates of transgenderism, there are also many people whose mental health issues benefit from coming out, from going to therapy, and finally from getting gender-affirming care (hormones, surgery).

I am still unclear whether the rates of poor mental health after transitioning are even worse than before transitioning, too, because for the people I know who are trans, their mental health was horrendous for a large portion of their life before they came out, and then it improved, but it was still probably below average. Transitioning is confusing, and not as straightforward as getting a sterilizing surgery as lots of the debates I've seen make it out to be. Much more common is transitioning by changing the name one goes by, changing your pronouns, and changes in self-expression... is any of that harmful? I don't think so. I don't find it inconvenient to change the pronouns I'm using. Honestly, it's been kind of eye-opening in my experience to the presumptions we hold about gender in the first place.

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