Why are conservatives obsessed with gender transition surgery for minors when it's an insignificant issue?

@Jackaloftheazuresand When people are starving, non-intervention is unacceptable. Not treating medical conditions when you have the power to do so is evil.

My point is that an insignificant number of minors are affected by gender surgery. It's a non-issue. Conservatives conflate it with trans people in general, most of whom don't do anything beyond using a different name and dressing differently. The real panic is over kids telling their friends that they want to be called a different name. We see through them to the real agenda. Conservatives lost on the same-sex marriage issue and are turning to oppression of trans kids as a substitute.

@LeopoldBloom Feeding them peanuts is also unacceptable. Something without a director can't be evil but I digress because we aren't deciding what is evil but rather what is more evil. There's a reason we have the saying first do no harm. I'm not convinced that all this is necessary but for sake of argument I'm going along with it that some number of kids need to transition or they die but without the number we harm in the process being zero I can't allow it. And I know we can't get that number to zero so leaving it to universal circumstance means we have not harmed anyone but anyone implementing the practice would have. Becoming the villain in just a single innocent person's story because you saved a greater number from destiny will always be worse than walking away

@Jackaloftheazuresand So are you saying no gender surgery until the person turns 18? Or no gender care whatsoever, delaying any surgery until the person is 20 or 21 at the earliest?

My main point isn't to argue the merits of gender care since I'm not a doctor. My point was that in the name of "saving the children," conservatives are giving an inordinate amount of attention to something that affects an insignificant number of minors, while ignoring things that affect millions of them. So I can only assume that their real agenda has nothing to do with their stated goal.

Speaking of "do no harm," millions of infant boys are routinely circumcised for no valid medical reason whatsoever. When the hysterical opponents of gender care start making noise about this, I'll take them seriously because at least their stated goal of preventing the genital mutilation of minors will at least be consistent. Their total silence on circumcision speaks volumes.

@LeopoldBloom Keep in mind to answer this I'll be swapping to how I personally feel instead of entertaining the argument now. I don't believe these surgeries work anymore than the cosmetic surgery advocates think that their duck lips improve their happiness. Legislatively I don't care what an adult elects to do to themselves as I have no right to their existence and I have my own quarrel with what people think an adult is as well which would be older than any of those.

You were clear in communicating that. So the stated goal of protecting children. Of course not, nobody is an altruist but they do want to protect a group of children. Namely their own. Conservatives deal with these ills in other ways and there's a lot of mechanisms working on each that can't really be addressed. I won't tell you we particularly care about anxiety because it's kind of a nonissue for us considered to just be something everyone deals with and become stronger for. The second problem, maybe you just don't run in enough right leaning circles but we notoriously admonish fat activists because their ideas endanger people. Number 3 overlaps here so I don't see that as being ignored. Poverty we think can't be fixed beyond the individual and if you just give away support it doesn't change what caused it so that's a lost cause. Substance abuse, are we not the ones most known for being prudish buzzkills who want to get rid of alcohol and weed. I think you get the idea by now that we have different prescriptions for these things that might not be so apparent because they aren't what you would do.

Does it? Who is behind this objective to circumcise children. Doctors that are encountered once on the day a son is born. It's just not on a lot of people's minds. But you know what is on the rise, trans visibility all across society. Is it any wonder that the difference in frequency would make them talk more about one than the other. That's the big secret here.

@Jackaloftheazuresand You're right, a lot of this is just standard Republican dogma. Trans people are more visible and many traditional people find this somewhere between disconcerting and terrifying. Conservatives tend toward black and white thinking, and to them, there's nothing more black and white than male and female. So people challenging that on top of same-sex marriage basically being accepted is, to them, a sign that the country is going in the wrong direction. They're thinking that if we allow trans people to be accepted, next it will be bestiality and pedophilia.

You're also correct that most people think very little of circumcision. Those that do think of it will inflict it on their kid because they think it promotes "cleanliness" or they're worried that junior will be made fun of when he's in gym class.
Doctors can convince reluctant parents with a diagnosis of "phimosis," which can't even be diagnosed until the kid reaches puberty and starts having erections. When I was born in the early 60s, circumcision was close to universal. Since then, it's waning in popularity, and today is down to around two-thirds of boys and falling. The internet has a lot to do with this. But if you're against the genital mutilation of minors, you should oppose circumcision. Even if you think circumcision reduces the incidence of STDs (it doesn't, by the way), since children shouldn't be having sex, there's no reason not to wait until the kid is 18 and can decide for himself if he wants to amputate part of his body.

Regardless, focusing inordinately on gender care for minors while letting other threats to them slide is nothing more than culture war. It reminds me of the "Satanic Panic" in the 1980s when the increase of women in the workforce led to an increase in children going to day care, so suddenly everyone was terrified that day cares were hotbeds of satanic ritual abuse. Ironically, at the same time, hints of the overwhelming incidence of sexual abuse in the Catholic church were starting to come out. So that was just another hypocritical culture war issue.

@LeopoldBloom When I say visibility I don't mean it in the sense of authenticity because for myself and others there's a doubt surrounding the status of the trans identity. You'll find that we for the most part aren't opposed to trans people in public life when they appear genuine in how they pursue it. It's not simply acceptance as you put it but blind acceptance which we have a problem with. One of our major concerns have been trans messaging for validation so in trans spaces you'll see very few people allow vetting. Please visit some of the trans reddits. There's two times where it could be said they interrogate which would be with therapists/psychologists and when they need to distance themselves from a predator. We already know the first has inevitable failures and the second isn't helpful after the crime has been committed. Do you know what a transmedicalist is? More people who claim to be trans are anti-transmedicalist than those who are transmedicalist. Why do you think that is and how might such a community of people be inclusive to something like pedophilia? For me that's obvious.

I think that downward trend should tell you that they are against it and that because of that trend they feel the victory is secured. I've seen you bring this up elsewhere and I've seen that some of these people end up defending it but this method of evaluation is flawed because it sets them up to defend it. They fall back on preconceived notions rather than their own conclusions because of what I was trying to make you realize, it's not a part of their everyday experience and then here comes an antagonist saying "speak up now." I think you'd find that when these same people are confronted with this in a sterile way you'll hear what they really think instead of what you typically get which is a reaction to the situation.

When you consider the things that are in contrast between your comparisons you can see the picture may not quite be how you frame it.

So are we hear to say you're against participating in culture war? If you are I'd say you might want to abstain from the entire conversation because the only people it's not just a culture war for are the patients. I'm not so I'm going to keep fighting it.

@Jackaloftheazuresand I've never said I'm against participating in the culture war. I'm on one side resisting the people on the other side, who from where I sit, look like a bunch of frightened bigots and religious nutcases who shouldn't be allowed to set public policy.

Trans inclusion plays out in different ways depending on the context. Trans girls competing in girls' sports is a non-issue, being milked solely for its ability to produce outrage. Kids in high school dressing like the opposite sex and asking their friends to call them by a different name is harmless and interfering with this will only cause more harm. Adolescence is a time for children to try out different identities and ways of presenting themselves to the world. Being trans should draw no more attention than if a kid starts dressing like their favorite rapper. Of course, genuine cases of gender dysphoria should be treated by doctors without fear of prosecution. As my statistics show, this is incredibly rare and not worthy of the attention it receives.

Trans women in women-only spaces is different. My wife has participated in various woman-only retreats, and I'm sure she wouldn't have appreciated it if a man who hadn't had gender reassignment surgery was there. The problem is when someone like JK Rowling decides to devote their life to this issue and use their platform as a way to oppress people. The complete silence on circumcision exposes these bigots for who they are.

@LeopoldBloom That's why I asked.

So why are you talking to me instead of just calling me a child molesting bigot?

@Jackaloftheazuresand Why would I call you that? You don't sound like a bigot. You sound like someone who has misgivings but isn't calling for all trans people to be executed and everyone who supports them to be sent to the gulag.

It's generally the anti-trans people who call allies like me a "groomer" even though they don't know what that means.

@LeopoldBloom I've failed your test and the sentiments of others here that malign the motives of conservatives as just being out to increase the abuse of children which I haven't seen you express disagreement with. I fit all the criteria offered by the original post as well so it's hard not to take it that you would feel the same about me

@Jackaloftheazuresand Blanket denial of gender care is abusive to children, same as denial of cancer care or any other medical care. I'm not hearing any conservatives saying that the process to qualify for gender transition surgery should take longer or have other qualifications. Instead, they're saying it should never happen for any reason whatsoever, and doctors who provide it should go to prison. This coupled with laws requiring teachers to inform parents if their child uses a different pronoun makes it look like conservatives aren't interested in children's welfare so much as they simply want to erase trans people. They lost on the same-sex marriage issue, so they're focused on oppressing trans people as a substitute since there aren't as many of them, so they're an easier target. And they're justifying it in the time-tested manner of "but won't someone think of the children?"

@LeopoldBloom I feel the same way as them on these policies though. I'll tell you what I think is going on here. I don't believe you actually see us that way or at least you don't want to. Your subconscious is telling you there has to be something more, something reasonable, which is why you made the post

@Jackaloftheazuresand Any permanent surgical alteration should only be done if there is no alternative. What you're missing is that opposition to genital reassignment surgery has nothing to do with its medical value. It's purely a culture war issue from its opponents. It's not like they care about anything else that only affects 300 people.