I’m 100% in favor of giving people with gender dysphoria empathy. A friend’s child is trans. The first step there is to make sure your child doesn’t kill themselves; get the help that they need.
I think where the waters got truly muddied had nothing to do with the arguments being brought up here, to be honest. Most people I know, Catholics, presented with honest medical science evidence want to find ways to help trans people, and dont’ want discrimination done against them.
The whole mixture of gender/sex/dysphoria as a human rights issue and not a medical one is the problem. The causes of dysphoria seem to be multifactorial. We have strong evidence that some types of dysphoria are caused by biology. However, we also have strong evidence that some are experiencing a passing stage; or that the dysphoria is not it’s own condition but rather a symptom of something deeper. We have people that are pushing to have dysphoria eliminated as a mental illness; but in some cases it may well be!
There has been a conflation between ‘assessment, discernment of difficult issues, and treatment’ and ‘phobia and discrimination’. And that is WRONG.
If you try to study the causes and come up with an unpopular conclusion, like Ray Blanchard, the doctor 100% in support of surgery for adults but not children, you can get labled as ‘phobic’. This is made worse by the general political climate where equality is poorly understood.
If you want to support a trans person, but might not want biological boy competing with your daughter in wrestling, volleyball, track or whatever because you want her to have a fair chance you aren’t a phobic monster. Looking at someone who has gender dysphoria but completely ignoring their biological sex in areas where their biological sex matters is both foolish and not doing a good service to people suffering from gender dysphoria or those around them.
In short, we have a social/medical situation in which there has been a large increase in people, particularly children, are coming out as trans. The causes aren’t immediately clear and we don’t have a great diagnostic model in place. However, there is now a political component where actively questioning the causes or questioning drastic changes made to accomodate this increase, is considered discriminatory and bigoted. THAT is where I think most of the issues come from.
So, for something like AIS where we have a clear diagnosis, things are easier; and most would be willing to try to find ways to accomodate them when possible. But for the boy who has no physical diagnosis but who just now ‘identifies’ as a girl and wants to join a girls powerlifting competition… that is a MUCH harder thing to discern. And the waters got muddied by those who say ‘Well! She’s a 6’1 255lbs girl now! Deal with it you bigot!’
