I'm going to ask you to read my reply to Tyr for more detail on that, but basically, desiring the amputation of e.g. your hand is completely irrational - it would leave you worse off without any gain that would make sense to anyone else. Desiring to belong to another gender than the one you were born with, or assigned at birth, is a rational enough desire. In the past, it was an impossible desire, or at least all one could really do was to transition socially without any hormone treatment or surgery, but nowadays medical science allows it, though still imperfectly and at a cost, so it makes sense for it to be on the table.


True, it has become a big culture war issue.



I discussed some of this above as well - you can call gender dysphoria a mental disorder in some ways, but with the key difference that it's a disorder which can be resolved very simply (simply, as opposed to easily), by giving the patients what they're asking for, and as discussed above the thing they're asking for is rational enough, unlike the BIID.

None of the issues that you refer to here and in the next paragraph are so big as to make one reconsider providing gender-affirming care at all. And the controversies surrounding them would be a lot less vehement if those issues were debated purely on their own merits, without gender-affirming care as a whole being put into question every time.

For instance, in the case of teenagers with gender dysphoria who disagree with their parents on the course to pursue, or who push doctors to go faster/further than the doctors are comfortable with, both the teenagers themselves and trans activists viewing their cases from the outside may seem a bit paranoid and always assume that anyone who seems unconvinced or wants to slow things down is a closet transphobe who doesn't think gender-affirming care should be allowed for anyone - because they've seen so many times that this was the case, and because many of the people talking the loudest on the topic do in fact have that position. But still they're also wrong in many cases, and that in turn also alienates people who aren't actually against gender-affirming care in general but do have understandable concerns about the extreme increase in the numbers of trans teenagers in recent years and about what that suggests about the role of social influence as opposed to innate desires.

Fair - but as I mentioned, if the basic premise of gender-affirming care were more widely accepted, both sides could calm down about the various related controversies.

In practice, despite the scare stories and despite what the teenagers in question might want, gender-affirming care isn't generally being rushed or provided easily to whoever shows up asking for it. But yeah, there's a big difference between parents who want to slow things down and prevent their children from rushing into a major life decision like that, or parents who oppose the whole thing on principle and are never going to approve, regardless of how long the choice is considered or what arguments their children or the doctors offer. In the second case, you won't be surprised that I'd be fine with them proceeding without parental consent that'll never come.