I wouldn’t disagree with that at all, but that’s the “Juwanna Mann” scenario that won’t really happen. There’s plenty of science in gender and sexuality to back up that this isn’t just some delusion that a “man want to become a woman”. Again it’s almost a little silly to try to explain this on this forum, and I also won’t claim to understand all the science because I don’t have a PhD in gender or sexuality studies. But I’ve read information from people that do, and I know that it’s possible, however unlikely to be born with the wrong genitalia and sexual organs. It’s a rare thing that happens. There are many rare conditions that occur to human beings, why is this different?
So let me ask you this because it’s something I’ve thought about. What if you were born with a vagina and appeared to be a woman and went through puberty as a woman would? But you are you. A man. If that were me as a pre-teen/teen I think it would be absolutely torturous to see changes occurring in my body that don’t match up with who I am. Because I am who I am. It would be crucial for me to not go through puberty as a woman or my life would basically be ruined as I would appear to be someone I’m not. Think about how horrible that would feel. Put yourself in the shoes of someone going through that. Think outside of your own perspective. Think how uncomfortable you would be in the body of a woman, how confusing that would be for you. And having the world tell you that you’re not who you say you are. Could you handle that?
Again, this is a conversation this forum is definitely not ready for and I already know the response I will get. But just like I didn’t understand before, I do now because I chose to listen, read, and research. Some other may be willing to do that. But here it is. And I’m using Dwayne Wade and his male to female daughter as the example because it’s high profile. What Wade is doing for his daughter is right, and it is the only option. He’s not coddling her or “sharing in her delusion”. He’s not allowing her to be brainwashed. She’s a girl, for the reasons I explained above. It’s vital to let transgender teens to stop puberty of the incorrect gender and get on the right medication, so they can be who they are. I get that this is controversial, but it’s controversial because people won’t allow themselves to understand. When this doesn’t happen and people go through puberty as the wrong gender, they kill themselves at an astronomical rate. When transgender teens can go through puberty as the correct gender the suicide rate goes down to nearly the average of the rest of the human population. So ask yourself, do human lives actually matter to you, or only the lives of people who are just like you? No one has an agenda to turn men into women, or women into men. The agenda is to allow people to be who they are, because that’s the right thing to do.
And finally to circle back to the athletics argument of this issue, if a transgender person goes through puberty as their proper gender, they are going to biologically be in the correct gender class for their sport. So there won’t be an testosterone based athletic advantage. In most cases people wouldn’t even know that the athlete is a transgender athlete because they wouldn’t have the physical attributes of the other gender. And that’s where there needs to be a distinction. So if you don’t want “men competing in women’s sports” get behind the science and allow people to be who they are. The push back against this is leading to draconian laws like what we’re seeing in Arkansas and what they’re now pushing in Texas, where they won’t allow people under 18 to get their proper treatment. That’s dangerous and straight up inhumane. Again I say put yourself in the shoes of that person.