It is entirely clear that it can be the case, as proven by the existence of people "detransitioning".

It is also entirely clear that there have been parents (usually mothers) who wanted to have a trans child because it was cool.

There is a logical flaw in suggesting that something that occurs with a small percentage of a population such as “detransitioning” implies anything about every member of a population.

Child abuse exists, but doesn’t imply anything about every parent.

> There is a logical flaw in suggesting that something that occurs with a small percentage of a population such as “detransitioning” implies anything about every member of a population.

> Child abuse exists, but doesn’t imply anything about every parent.

This is funny because that's the exact argument that transphobic opponents say about trans people themselves and the argument as to why gender fluidity or gender outside of sex doesn't exist. "Just because an extremely small number of people believe they are a different gender than their biological sex doesn't mean that gender is different from biological sex" is almost exactly the argument that transphobes use.

I think you fundamentally fail to understand what I just said. Proper unbiased random sampling allows you to create sub populations that tend to reflect the characteristics of a larger group, biased populations don’t share that relationship.

“Because some animals hibernate, all animals hibernate” is just as flawed as saying “Because only a small percentage of hibernate, no animals hibernate.” Instead the relationship is “Because some animals exist that hibernate, there exist animals that hibernate.”

I do not suggest that detransitioning can indeed extrapolate to the whole group.

I am saying that it exists, therefore at least some people regret their transition, therefore they should not be allowed to make that decision at 12, or for their parents to do so.

That’s pretty flawed argument on the face of it, very few things win a cost benefit analysis if you disregard the benefit and thus require exactly zero cost.

The real question is whether detransitioning or other negative outcomes are greater than the number of suicides prevented by allowing early transitioning, and that’s a rather more complicated hurdle to jump.

So-called "detransitions" represent way less than 1% of the trans population. In particular, the proportion of people regretting their transitions is much smaller than that of mothers regretting having their kids. They receive massively inflated media attention because their stories are picked up and turned into propaganda in service of bigoted narratives.

So-called "trans" represent way less than 1% of the world population. ... They receive massively inflated media attention because their stories are picked up and turned into propaganda in service of [self-serving] narratives.

The vast majority of trans people wish their demographics received much less media attention... The issue is with right-wing bigots who feel it is their life missions to make their lives as miserable as possible, when they just want to be left alone.

>from what was assigned at birth

The passive voice language here is really bizarre. Who is doing the assigning?

>Separating conjoined twins for example.

This is not, in any way, comparable to a 12 year old taking medications that permanently sterilize them.

> The passive voice language here is really bizarre. Who is doing the assigning?

Typically the parents and doctors.

"You have a beautiful baby girl!" Is assigning a gender

No, this is an observation. What, do the parents and doctors flip a coin or throw darts before "assigning" a "gender"?

It is quite common for babies to come out of the womb with blonde hair, only for it to darken to brown later in life. The baby isn't blonde, it just looks blonde right now.

Same with gender. Doctors observe a flavor of genitals, make a reasonable assumption, and legally assign the gender which seems appropriate.

Not just that, start talking hundreds of millions of births and you get clerical error.

Which could then become rather complicated if there are laws saying the sex assigned at birth has significant lifelong legal consequences.

Clerical errors get corrected. Because they are errors.

Only in theory is it so easy to separate clerical errors from other issues.

So in practice clerical errors cause all kinds of long term havoc. Once declared dead it can be a monstrous effort to prove to various systems you are in fact alive.

My sweet summer child.

What? Hair color and gender are not the same thing. This is a bizarre argument.

Because it isn't an argument. It is an assertion

Sometimes people use something called analogies or similar examples to help explain a foreign concept. In this case, the poster was trying to explain that our traits are birth do not always reflect who we are as adults. Gender is one such trait. Hair color is another.

There’s this phenomenon in this thread where commenters are taking something that’s superficially similar and then making an extreme claim that, upon inspection, does not hold up at all or is completely irrelevant to the argument being made. That is what is happening here. “An adult’s hair color can be different than what it was at birth” is a true statement, but of course is not relevant at all to the claim that one’s gender is just as malleable as one’s hair color, which is what this so-called analogy attempts to do. Real analogies do not do this, and when people deploy the above formulae it’s easy to recognize as bad faith.

Except gender is as malleable as hair color. Sex isn't, but gender is. Gender is the social expectations for a human in the context of a specific culture.

If I live in Virginia until adulthood, then move to American Samoa, my gender expression is going to radically change. I'll start wearing skirts. If I then move to Qatar, my gender expression will change again. I might still think of myself as a man through those changes, but whats expected of me and how I view myself with those cultures will shift. "What does it mean to be a man?" Is very different, globally.

So even if I consider myself a man, that definition regularly changes for different contexts. Clothing, conversational style, physical affection (it's common for men to hold hands in parts of the Middle East, and considered uncomfortable in the states.)

Given gender expression and identity can change as you transit cultures, surely you can see that some people might belong to cultures whose definition of "what does it mean to be a man" might be "whatever the fuck you want". Punk and queer subcultures, for instance, have different gender expectations than say, the Vatican.

For some cultures, genitals have little to no bearing on one's social expectations. Fit into the role that feels right, who cares about what is in your DNA.

>Except gender is as malleable as hair color.

Incredible statement, and you contradict yourself later on in your response. If I go put on a skirt that does not change my gender. You are, perhaps intentionally, injecting commentary on differing cultural norms on gender expression in order to deflect from prior statements that are more definitive on the malleability of gender itself. There's that motte and bailey, again.

>For some cultures, genitals have little to no bearing on one's social expectations. Fit into the role that feels right, who cares about what is in your DNA

This is fantasy, but I'll play a long for a minute. If one's physical characteristics have little to no bearing on one's social expectations [for gender], then why is it necessary to implement significant physical alterations via medications and surgery to "fit" into a role that feels right?

> why is it necessary to implement significant physical alterations via medications and surgery to "fit" into a role that feels right?

Good question, there's three answers here:

1) It's not necessary. Many trans people do not want or do not get bottom surgery. It's an incredibly difficult surgery, and many folks also believe it's unnecessary to be trans.

2) The cultural group that the trans person belongs to will only accept them if they have the surgery, so the trans person must perform it to be recognized.

3) Some trans folks experience sexual dysphoria, seeing one's birth genitals causes anxiety, discomfort, and depression.

One cannot ask a baby what social role they would like to have. Typically, in approximately 97-99% of cases, that aligns with the genitalia. So no, no coin flip. It's typically done by looking at genitalia. You'll be right almost always.