That was in regards to using puberty blockers on children, I believe. The study stated that many children that believe themselves to be trans ended up simply being gay, and that this lack of certainty (as well as the fact that we don't think of children as rational consenting entities for most things) makes the issue of using puberty blockers controversial.

I could be wrong, but I am almost positive that this is what was being argued.

That matches with what I remember, and I don't understand why that's a controversial thought here. Changing gender is a big deal, it can wait a few years so you're sure.

A big issue is that the longer you wait, there longer your body has permanent effects from puberty. Someone who is ultimately right in their convictions about themselves then has to wait longer through something irreversible.

I think the purported advantage of puberty blockers is that they help “waiting a few years so you’re sure” while taking the path that’s the lesser of evils.

If you're trans and going through puberty, "a few years" can literally ruin your life.

But how do any of us know we are making the right call here? This is one of those wickedly complex problems where there is no right answer. It just sucks for everybody involved, nearly every decision you make can have a horrific outcome and the effects are permanent.

You can't be that surprised that in a situation like this, most people would tend to be very conservative (not republican conservative, but careful, do no harm, don't rock the boat kind of conservative).

No, puberty blockers don't cause any permanent body changes: that's the whole point. They delay the decision. You can still go through a male or female puberty once you're older.

Most people are "conservative" on this issue because they have no idea what they're talking about, just like every almost every other issue related to trans people.

I don't want to wade in, but puberty blockers do have long-term effects, so they're not just a cureall.

Or you can transition once you've reached an age where your body is not in a constant state of flux. When I was young, I intensely wanted to be female. As I got older, it turned out to be a result of curiosity. If I was young today, I'd be far more likely to be going through some hormone regimen because of a childish curiosity.

That "constant state of flux" is what makes your body into a prison that you have to inhabit the rest of your life. Every single trans person I've met desperately wishes that they had transitioned earlier. I transitioned relatively early, and I'm still intensely jealous of trans teens who are getting proper treatment today. My older friends who've transitioned in their late 20s-40s regard their lives as being hopelessly ruined. And some of them repressed their trans feeling for a while, only to have them come back later with vengeance. But you never hear about those people in these arguments.

My mom said something similar about "curiosity" to try and convince me that I couldn't be trans. As it turns out, what she meant was "when I was your age, I wanted to cut my hair short." Likewise, pretty much every story I've heard like this turns out to be either obvious lies meant to discredit trans people, or something that would have been easily sorted out by a psychologist. Eg. I've heard of gay people wishing they were another gender so that they wouldn't get bullied for their orientation. No decent professional would mistake that for genuine dysphoria.

But even supposing that your psychologist was incompetent, you still would have socially transitioned in some capacity before you ever started hormones. This almost certainly would have let you know if transitioning was really right for you. And even if it didn't, and you went all the way to starting estrogen, you could always stop if you didn't like what it was doing. Estrogen works very slowly. I've been on it for three years, and I know cis men whose boobs are bigger than mine. If I changed my mind, I could easily start living as a man again.

It's absolutely unfair to impose life-ruining misery on trans teens because of the off-chance that it might do a fraction of the same harm to a cis person.

That’s not what it was. The guy was venting about how irritating he finds trans people.

Uh thats exactly what it was about... For 20 minutes Mr flamboyant Adam tried to spout bullshit about how it should be perfectly acceptable to give children, who don't even know themselves or bodies, incredibly powerful psychoactive drugs that drastically alter their behavior

Except he's actually had trans people like Eddie Izzard on and they got on just fine, so this is obviously wrong. He takes issue with trans females competing in female sports.

And it's not like he's alone in this- the authoritative bodies charged with protecting the sports are starting to think the same thing.

That's also a valid view, even if it's insensitive. You can be annoyed by whomever you like.

Right. My comment was just that I found it to be low quality content. It was like something you might overhear from a table of not-so-bright senior citizens at a Denny’s.

And you're welcome to that opinion, just as he's welcome to his. That's kind of the point here. Opinions are valid, even if they're stupid.

I was responding to a comment that introduced the transphobic comments, simply to attest that I had heard the episode and that the skinny guy who is on that episode with Rogan was venting/ranting in a way that I found very dumb.

Rogan himself was holding back from joining in, and I think some of the commenters here mistook my comment as critiquing Rogan for being transphobic, which I did not observe. It was the skinny guy (whose name I don't know).

(I don't want to wade in here really, but I have to take exception to your statement: Stupid opinions are not valid.)

Stupidity and validity being decided by whom? If you believe someone's opinion is stupid, you may not consider it valid, but that changes nothing about the actual opinion. Remember, Newton had a series of "stupid, invalid" opinions about physics and astronomy, and now look at us.

(rpmisms and hnbroseph both make excellent points! I want to add that "Stupid opinions are not valid." is, of course, just my own stupid opinion, eh? Combine that statement with "Opinions are valid, even if they're stupid." and you have a logical self-referential paradox, eh?)

perhaps it's a category error to apply the notion of 'validity' to opinions.

The purpose of puberty blockers is to delay body changes until the teenager (not "child") is ready to decide. They don't cause permanent changes like actual hormone therapy, and trans teenagers can always go through a "natural" puberty later if they change their mind. On the contrary, denying a trans teenager puberty blockers causes permanent changes to the body that are likely to cause massive distress and take many years of therapy, training, and surgeries to correct. Many trans people regard having gone through puberty as literally having ruined their lives.