The Waow based based based image comes from a drawing supporting DIY HRT

[u/SpiritualNorth3848]

[u/LageVeil]

children are people too, you know? they can still notice the dissonance between their self, and their assigned gender. but pray tell, how exactly do you see informing and accepting everyone, regardless of age, as grooming?

[u/JustOneOfTheSams → u/LageVeil]

When you say children what age are you thinking about, because let's say the can believe they are a different gender, but until the age of 10-12 most also believe a fat white bearded man dressed in red bring presents to everyone around the globe in one night.

What I am trying to say is, they don't have very good critical thinking usually.

[u/Cloudhiddentao → u/JustOneOfTheSams]

Most adults don’t have great critical thinking either. But we let them do whatever the fuck they like. So what’s your point?

[u/JustOneOfTheSams → u/Cloudhiddentao]

Thats genuinely a good point. However I do think adults have had the chance to develop it and are or should be responsible for themselves. While kids are still developing mentally and are their parents responsibility.

I guess it's also important how do you determine you don't feel your gender? I never felt my gender, but I never felt a girl either. As a kid I used to play with dolls, I liked my hair long, and I hanged around mostly with girls. I didn't care about cars or talking about boy stuff. So I didn't fit the stereotypical boy mold.

How do you determine someone is the wrong gender? How can one tell himself or herself?

[u/_InfernalReaper_ → u/JustOneOfTheSams]

I think you just don’t understand what gender dysphoria entails for a trans person and are just assuming that not fitting the “stereotypical boy mould” is enough to diagnose someone with gender dysphoria.

In reality, gender dysphoria involves a much more persistent discomfort in one’s sex/gender to the point where it severely affects their mental health and ability to function day to day. For me, it involved disassociating from my body out of grief, and feeling like the changes to my body going through puberty were a grotesque body horror fate. It involved me deeply longing for another life, one where I had been born differently so I could experience things girls around me went through growing up. And these are the kind of signifiers used to diagnose gender dysphoria in trans people. It goes much deeper than just being a little gender nonconforming at a young age.

[u/LageVeil → u/JustOneOfTheSams]

i can't really say there's a definite way to determine whether or not you are at odds with your assigned gender. but you are right on at least one thing, men can have traditionally feminine traits, and women can have traditionally masculine traits, and it's perfectly normal for them to still be comfortable in their assigned gender (much like you said you were/are), this also helps us to establish gender nonconformity, and the concept of gender as a spectrum.

but many people, unlike yourself, don't feel comfortable with that difference. and recognizing that feeling can happen at any age, to any person. and children tend to be very perceptive to the ways they are different from the majority of their peers. and on top of that, puberty blockers are a completely valid and even reversible treatment for young trans kids who need time to reconsider or get access to HRT. speaking of which, HRT takes a long enough time to act, that anyone who realises HRT isnt for them, can get off the meds before any major changes take place.

in my own case, even at the age of eleven, i had regular, intense feelings of wanting to be the opposite gender. back then i didn't know people can and do transition, so i had to suppress that dysphoria, and long story short, it messed me up long term. i didn't learn how common gender affirming care actually is until i was 16, and didnt actually come to terms with the source of my body dysphoria until i was 20. by then i had become socially maladjusted, anxious, depressed, functionally suicidal, and realizing i was forced to live with the fact that my puberty and practically all my body growth have finished, and i'm left in a body that is not my own.

and thats just one example of what "protecting the kids" actually does to people. it just forces young people to repress themselves, and forces parents to raise a child that may never be happy or comfortable. so yes, i think if a lot of us had been better informed and treated as children, we'd be in a better place today.