According to scientific studies, children who question their gender identity end up identifying as the gender assigned at birth between 60% and 90% of the time by the age of 18. The studies are listed in that right-wing hive of scum and villainy called wikipedia.

Under the hippocratic oath, “First: Do no harm”, one must then ask the question of whether “Do nothing” is an option.

If someone catches a cold, we don’t immediately start a lung transplant. To do so would be highly unethical when most colds resolve themselves within a couple weeks. If we were to do such a thing, then we’d be making people permanent medical cases. Most people would agree that trying to resolve a common cold with a lung transplant would be unethical, even if some minority of cases of the common cold do escalate and require further intervention.

If over half of people with gender dysphoria in their childhood or teenage years (or perhaps 9 out of 10) are cured by leaving them alone, then any medical intervention needs to be significantly better than that.

Some people counter by saying that over 90% of people who start treatment for gender dysmorphia before 18 continue the treatment afterwards. This is not the same thing. If you raise children to think they need to do a thing, they’ll keep doing it, but that doesn’t mean they needed to do it. Generations of radical muslims practice female genital mutilation, that doesn’t mean that the practice is good just because mothers who grow up having had it done to them allow it to happen. Many children brought up in abusive cults keep abusing after they get old.

If someone is cured, then they won’t end up as any sort of suicide statistic because they aren’t trans. By this argument, pushing kids down a path we know leads to a massive suicide rate because it politically agrees with us is quite immoral.

For a minority of people who question their gender identity, they grow up and continue on to be trans as adults. I feel for them. It’s not an easy life. Part of the argument for hormone blockers is that it becomes easier to pass later. However, blocking puberty has long-lasting effects on people regardless, and so we potentially end up in a situation where we’re permanently harming 9 people to make one person’s life a little easier.

One of the justifications for really harsh and not very nice memes like the post is that right now we’re doing something else immoral: In trying to promote acceptance of trans people, we’re going several steps in the other direction and glamorizing what is a tragic disorder. We go to kids and say “Hey, are you a boy or a girl? By the way, if you choose something other than the obvious answer, you’re cool and amazing and everyone supports you and you’re so special”. We know from examples such as the satanic panic in the 80s and early 90s that you can push kids to say things that aren’t true (One child claimed they killed and ate a friend of his who was very much alive), so we need to be very careful in supporting a tiny group not to accidentally cause harm to people who otherwise would have been unrelated.

I don’t condone being shitty to trans people, but I do understand it, especially in a world that appears to be actively causing harm to innocent people. It’s a natural reaction to seeing something that some people might interpret as being pure evil.

People pushing for bad medical work in the name of the greater good has a long history. Perfrontal lobotamies were considered the new hotness for a long time. Eugenics was famously pushed by leftists such as the man who helped create universal healthcare in Canada. Thing is, just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s moral. Even the genocide of the jews in Nazi Germany was officially a public health measure.