My Gifted Life

I could be Plato cursing drunken revelers or a modern parent wondering where their child is ninety minutes past your agreed on curfew time. The constant is that despite the surface accoutrements like a wine bottle or a cellphone, the behaviors being complained about haven’t really changed. Roudy teenagers all.

As is usual I’m going to look at something which concerns me in the trans community and not just random rowdy youths that get plenty of media attention.

A question has been coming up that has me worried. There really seems to an expansion of trans kids. I’m not talking about ones with absolutely justified findings of gender dysphoria. We know what those kids need and its support and caring. These are the kids in danger of self-harm and suicide. These are the kids that should get immediate care and referrals to competent mental health professionals.

The other group seems motivated by the “cool” factor of cross dressing, the attention they garner, and really seem to me to be blissfully unaware of the downsides to a trans life. They look at their overwhelmingly progressive neighbors who shower them with comments about them being so brave.

But I read a posing on quora, one of several, that paints an entirely ridiculous picture that nearly all parents are accepting which is unfortunately not true. They’re told to turn their backs on their parents and seek advice from their wise truthy young friends who don’t bother looking at what actually happens to runaways.

I always tell kids that they have to have a safety backup plan, A friend, teacher, or some organization that will take them in if their parents reject them – which happens with alarming frequency.

In addition, the WPATH – an organization that sets clinical guidelines for care for transgender folks, has very much loosened the barriers that kept kids from making permanent body changes until after they were old enough to have good judgement and a permanent feeling of being settled in their gender, I really fear a decade of this will not do any good thing.

I do understand why they want to allow for more agency.. The transperson has bodily changes going on like body hair, and breast development, as well as inappropriate levels of growth, e.g. really tall transgirls.

What to do about all this? This is a horrible place for government to get involved. The politicians are far more interesting in pushing their version of morality down people’s throats then actually doing careful, well-reasoned legislation that actually gives credence to medical expert’s opinions on these matters. God alone knows what is in the minds of some of our leaders.