So much ink and so much angst over a backwater mental illness that affects a single digit decimal of 1% of all people.

This charade will only end when the lawyers start winning judgements against doctors who mutilated and sterilized these teenagers. Here in the US, that’s how we decide things. We don’t engage in political debate about policy, we just sue each other until the insurance companies tire of paying out judgements and force the industry they insure to change their practices. The trans craze has been a bonanza for the medical-industrial complex including pharma. And when it dies, it will be bonanza for the lawyers.

Then all our progressive virtue signalers (including the by-then-ex-President) will quietly delete their tweets and re-Tweet their “longstanding concern about teenagers being abused by unproven gender therapies.” Our press will pat themselves on the back for their reporting for a few weeks and then move on to the next shiny object. And the entire sordid tale will be memory holed, only to be regurgitated in our conscious minds when we encounter one of those unfortunately maimed asexual creatures (by then in their 30’s and 40’s) who we will briefly pity while trying to ignore.

And that’s the real tragedy. Most of us will move on from this lunacy. But those whose bodies have been altered permanently, who can never have children, whose real mental illnesses have gone untreated, who have torn asunder their family relationships… those people are the real victims.

Given that the data shows that puberty blockers and surgery actually increase suicidality among the trans the idea that doctors are weighing any of this up falls flat. They dont care. It isnt about do no harm. They want the cash.
If they wanted to lower the famous 41% suicide attempt rate among this lot they would start with fixing their gender dysphoria first through mental health provision. That would deprive the health system of the chance to make hundreds of thousands from the patient (victim) through the sale of drugs and surgeries. They cannot allow that. Until the monetary incentives end, this carnival of lobbying and astro turf activism will roll on, leaving behind thousands of eunuchs and flat chested girls in its wake.

I’m a psychiatrist. Several years ago, around the time of Time magazine’s “tipping point” the psychiatric definition of transsexual changed: where once we recognized “primary transsexualism” (the 1% incidence noted in another comment) and “secondary transsexualism” (typically, persons who were psychotic who came to think they were of a different gender—though there were persons with severe personality disorders, abuse, etc. in this group too), those distinctions were dropped. Now, there is only “gender dysphoria”. you don’t need a psychiatrist to diagnose that. If I were to explore whether that dysphoria might be related to psychosis, or drug use, or sexual abuse, i’m skating very, very close to “conversion therapy.”
in the hospital where I work, over 50% of adolescents admitted to our residential program declare themselves “transgender.” The rate is perhaps 15% in the adult programs. I have a few who are obviously psychotic, but I don’t dare to point this out as I walk hallways festooned with posters declaring “this is a trans friendly place.”
I’m 56 years old and will retire at the end of the year. None of this squares with the Oath I took. i’m morally wounded and am leaving before my soul rots and falls off like some unwanted member.

It’s astonishing to me that a doctor could be presented with a patient who has suicidal ideation and body dysmorphia to the extent that they believe only radical surgery and pharmacological intervention could alleviate their suffering, and not consider it most likely that this desire to alter one’s body to such an extent is a function of a mental injury rather than the cause.

What fascinates me is where this comes from exactly. New conditions of humanity shouldn’t just appear out of thin air. After millions of years of evolution, where was transsexuality as a condition for the first 99.9%. Homosexuality, and even pedophilia, are present throughout human history, famously in Ancient Greece and Rome. It has always existed, but rarely been acceptable. It has been observed in other species as well. We have no such history or scientific foundation for transsexuality that I am aware of, unless you count the said history of homosexuality, but we’re told transsexuality is not the same. To me the question is simple. Can a doctor do a brain scan and say whether the brain is male or female? If the answer is yes, why is that not the sole determining factor for a medical doctor? If the answer is no, how do we conclude transsexuality even exists beyond an individual’s say so? The causes of even well accepted mental illnesses are not well understood and the diagnoses are imprecise and prone to error. It’s one thing, however, to tell someone to take a pill, the effects of which can be studied and determined to the point where a doctor’s creed to ‘do no harm’ can be easily met, and another to perform surgery that will have permanent irreversible effects on the body. Gender reassignment surgery would, in any other period of human history, be condemned as butchery by any ethical medical professional, and that should give us pause. The current generation, however, has shown a particular tendency to dismiss, disdain, or completely rewrite history according to their own values, so why should this be any different.