I think this ‘meme’ the title of this post is a great example of what the problem really is. I do not have any issues with trans people. What I have a major problem with is that voicing an opinion, or have any form of meaningful debate, is met with immense aggression, trolling, cancelling, intimidation.
I am for example not completely convinced about trans women in female sports and am sympathetic to arguments from both sides. Even voicing that will cause me to be vilified by one side.
Another example is transition care for children. I believe that at a young age making an irreversible choice is dangerous and we should be careful. Not saying care should abolished, just saying that such a big life decision needs extreme care because it can cause irreparable harm later in life. Again a reasonable, well willing position that will cause this to be downvoted into oblivion.
So, trans people, I support you to exist, be happy, live a meaningful life. But unfortunately there’s a group of loud people who are honestly behaving like psychopaths who are making it hard to stay sympathetic. Wake up.
it’s not 2014 anymore. we aren’t canceling anyone. we’re getting canceled. JKR is doing victory laps. NHS has banned HRT for minors, as have 27 states. we’re kicked out of the military, and forbidden from security clearances. teachers in Florida can’t even use their own pronouns. Medicaid/Medicare/ACA funding for HRT for adults is stripped now. we can’t get passports with the correct gender marker. Sarah McBride has to use the men’s bathroom in Congress. Newsom calls us freaks. conservative media is calling us groomers and every time there’s a mass shooter they spread the rumor the shooter was trans. “gender ideology” is the new Satanic Panic. NYT keeps running op-eds on why Dems should throw us under the bus. Nancy Mace shouted “tr*nny” three times on the House floor and wasn’t censured for it.
you really think we’re the ones holding the cards?
The joke, if you paid attention, is that the trans agenda isn’t a thing. They’re just trying to survive. So yeah, not supporting someone’s right to exist is some psychopathic behavior.
The fact thay you think there’s a trans agenda outside of just trying to survive doesn’t make you a psychopath, but it does make you an idiot.
You’re vilified because you’re acting like a villain. People don’t want to debate your neckbeardedly presented well ahcktuallies while they’re fighting for the right to exist.
We don’t have this fight when it comes to other medical matters. Like if kids with cancer should get treatment even though chemo and surgery could have long-lasting repucussions. The alternative is they die. People who don’t get proper medical treatment die. Trans kids die of depression and suicide without treatment. Those are real things, there are real risks to not treating a medical condition. It’s not a matter up for public debate just because some dickwads are trying to distract everyone by making healthcare for a specific group of people political. It’s medical, we have facts and data that say trans people need healthcare to support their transition to live healthier longer lives. There are fucking doctors out there with years of practice who say yes, these kids need medical intervention. And here you are bitching that no one will debate you in a place where, again, people are fighting to exist. And you’re bringing up tired arguments because you gotta be that guy.
We have data on trans performance in sports and there is no clear advantage.
Besides, if you’re a world-class athlete, you already have a way different kind of body than most people. There are plenty of biological advantages that are celebrated in sports rather than weeded out. Want to start making sure everyone is the same height and weight for every sport, too? Same lung capacity? Reaction time? Born in the same country? Live at the same altitude? Same race? If you want to get advantages, there are clearer divisions along racial lines than trans status. No, I don’t advocate for segregation in sports because I’m not a goddamn monster of a person who can’t think for two seconds about why that’s idiotic.
Fuck off. Stop being a moron. Show some goddamn empathy.
How is anyone supposed to show empathy, let alone learn anything when even the slightest hint of wanting to have a conversation is met with this kind of reaction? I’m the villain? OK, but then you’re an extremist.
I made it clear in my comment what I support, and it was certainly not denying anyone’s right to exist. None of what I said supports the claim you made. What I pointed out is a major problem is exactly what you illustrate with your comment. It’s impossible to discuss anything when 2 sides are so entrenched and unwilling to debate. I get the urgency and gravity of what is happening right now, but for people like me, who consider themselves very sympathetic to the trans community, you’re making it very hard to help. It’s either support everything we say, or shut the f up. That’s never going to work.
And on the data you’re referring to around gender-affirming care, show me. Latest I heard, this is a very young field of study, and data, if any, is inconclusive. And yet here I am, supporting gender-affirming care, having to defend the position that please can we tread with care. Insanity!
As you (seem to) point out, trans people in sports is a different conversation. The science is clearer, but now we have a group of formerly (and frankly, still) marginalised people (women at birth, biologically) who fear unfair advantage. Much more political, philosophical even, a much harder debate. I empathise with both sides, how villainous of me.
So, showing empathy to you is hard. You reap what you sow.
Saying you’re supportive vs. actually doing the work to listen, understand, and be supportive, are much different things. Your empathy is performative if you don’t back up your words with actions, no matter how you dress up your opinions with empathetic-sounding statements.
Consider this: If you’re truly empathetic and open minded, why do you need to keep pointing it out?
The fact that you present an opinion piece from media owned by special interests to support your argument is enough to see why you believe what you do.
I have a group of friends, some of whom are trans, some of whom have medical degrees, and we have these discussions all the time. However, when someone talks about their right to exist being threatened, in a world where their right to exist is being threatened, is when you’ve decided to come in complaining about how poor you can’t engage in any polite discourse because people downvote you.
A number of people here have told you why this is the case, but you proceed to play the victim.
There are more than two sides, and no, the science on sports isn’t more clear than it is on gender affirming care. Even in the pub med links someone else posted, which they apparently hadn’t read in entirety, go into how controversies around trans identities is sports has become a solution in search of a problem. You should read those links.
I don’t know what about my post made you think I wanted or was willing to extend empathy to your point of view. Was it when I called you a moron or an idiot?
“We need to be cautious!” would be much more compelling if the standard medical approach to trans minors was not already immensely cautious.
The standard may be cautious, but a significant number of individual clinicians are not. But pointing out that a concerning number of care providers have looser-than-standard medical approaches gets the speaker attacked as a traitor to the cause.
When red-state bans are discussed, you will also hear liberals say that conservative fears about the medical-transition pathway are overwrought—because all children get extensive, personalized assessments before being prescribed blockers or hormones. This, too, is untrue. Although the official standards of care recommend thorough assessment over several months, many American clinics say they will prescribe blockers on a first visit.
I had to laugh at this ridiculous line from the opinion piece:
staff members had a dark joke that at the rate they were going, there would be “no gay people left.”
The whole idea that transition care is “getting rid” of gay people is ridiculous, I was into girls way before I transitioned. The other trans people I know are all extremely gay.
You are concerned about a child making a decision that they may regret… so you think the decision should be made for them?
What I have a major problem with is that voicing an opinion, or have any form of meaningful debate, is met with immense aggression, trolling, cancelling, intimidation
So, trans people, I support you to exist, be happy, live a meaningful life. But unfortunately there’s a group of loud people who are honestly behaving like psychopaths who are making it hard to stay sympathetic. Wake up.
“I get aggression and trolling”
“people being mean to me are psychopaths who make it hard for me to stay sympathetic to trans people”
The whole idea that transition care is “getting rid” of gay people is ridiculous
I think the ‘dark joke’ is one of those jokes that actually reveals how some people feel about this; what I got the opinion piece is that some folks in the gay community worry that wanting to transition can also mean being attracted to the same sex and being confused about it at a young age.
You are concerned about a child making a decision that they may regret… so you think the decision should be made for them?
Not exactly, a child is a person and should have agency. But at the same time, they’re a child and are less experienced in life. I don’t let my kid eat ice cream whenever they feel like it, and I wouldn’t let him make such a major decision before he knows very sure who he is. Because transitioning is a decision, but who you are is not. And I believe that when you’re so young, it’s really hard to know who you are.
I’m gonna try to reply to this in good faith as you seem to be wanting to engage in a good faith discussion, so let me tell you my experience.
I’m a trans girl.
Before I even have memories I was always (according to my mother) asking for skirts and dresses and playing with dolls and makeup. These moments were always taken as a joke or as me ‘being in a phase’ and were brushed off and ignored. My earliest memories have me confused why my sister gets to wear pretty dresses to church but I have to wear a boring suit. I remember ‘borrowing’ my sister’s nail polish, makeup, and dresses as early as age NINE. Did I have the understanding of what I was feeling? No. This was in the 90s, trans people werent as widely known in the US, especially the South. But if you’d given me the option to transition at age 9, I would’ve taken it in a heartbeat.
How do I know?
I’d slip out of my window EVERY NIGHT after everyone had gone to bed to wish on the first star I laid eyes on to be a girl. Sure, it wasn’t the first star to appear, but it was the first one I saw! That counted, right? I remember watching the episode of Sabrina the Teenaged Witch where she made a potion to turn herself into a boy to figure out what her boyfriend did in the auto shop. What did I do immediately after the episode ended? Went into the kitchen and tried to make my own potion with ‘sugar and spice and everything nice’. Glitter is nice! Oh and soda! Soda’s very nice.
I went to bed daydreaming of going to hogwarts and finding a potion that could make me right. I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed for a way to change my gender that when I finally heard about trans people at age 17, my reaction wasn’t ‘hmmm, this is interesting. I wonder if this is what I’m feeling’, instead it was ‘Oh, THAT’s what this is? There are other people like me?!?!?!’
Scientific studies have shown that a child’s concept of gender is already developed by age 4. Studies have also shown that a child’s understanding of who they are ALSO develops pretty early on. And, yes, in cases of children going on hormones, it is all done in conjunction with the child’s experiences, the doctor’s EXPERTISE in the matter, and the parents’ consent. They aren’t just walking into a doctor’s office and boosting little timmy up with E. Before any medicine has been taken there is EXTENSIVE screening through therapy and physician visits over the course of YEARS.
This isn’t a question that nobody has ever asked. It’s studied. It’s tested over the course of DECADES. And lastly, it’s (frankly) none of your business unless it’s YOUR kid, at which point you have complete control over whether your child goes through with any of it (up until age 18 at least).
I got the opinion piece is that some folks in the gay community worry that wanting to transition can also mean being attracted to the same sex and being confused about it at a young age.
My experience was that I was not attracted to men at all, but because I liked sailor moon and painting my nails people would just assume that I was. It just strikes me as a very paternalistic attitude to be worried about misguiding poor gay people who are simply “confused”.
Because transitioning is a decision, but who you are is not. And I believe that when you’re so young, it’s really hard to know who you are.
Being trans is very much a part of who you are. However while there has been a tremendous social pressure to repress over the years, trans people are not a recent development.
I’m a trans woman, I transitioned later in life, but I knew from a very young age that I was uncomfortable as a boy and I didn’t have the words to describe it until much later in life.
I grew up in the 90s’s/00’s and back then the gatekeeping and lack of information was pretty bad. Unless you were presenting with an acute mental health condition you really weren’t getting taken seriously. I was able to hold my shit long enough to go to a college and land a career because throwing myself into work (and drinking heavily) was my coping skill.
Meeting and working with another trans person after years of repressing that feeling was all it really took for me to put it together and transition myself after 10+ years of denial. That’s also what happens when trans people are erased from daily life.
I think it’s a good thing that kids actually get listened to when they say what they want. It’s not ‘ice cream for dinner’ but that orientation does speak volumes. None of these transition decisions get made flippantly, this is a process that takes years and plenty of oversight.
This, so much. There’re very real and important discussions in the medical field that (very candidly) go into these types of topics that become impossible to have (at least in the public discourse) due to these types of behaviours.
I think
this ‘meme’the title of this post is a great example of what the problem really is. I do not have any issues with trans people. What I have a major problem with is that voicing an opinion, or have any form of meaningful debate, is met with immense aggression, trolling, cancelling, intimidation.I am for example not completely convinced about trans women in female sports and am sympathetic to arguments from both sides. Even voicing that will cause me to be vilified by one side.
Another example is transition care for children. I believe that at a young age making an irreversible choice is dangerous and we should be careful. Not saying care should abolished, just saying that such a big life decision needs extreme care because it can cause irreparable harm later in life. Again a reasonable, well willing position that will cause this to be downvoted into oblivion.
So, trans people, I support you to exist, be happy, live a meaningful life. But unfortunately there’s a group of loud people who are honestly behaving like psychopaths who are making it hard to stay sympathetic. Wake up.
(Edit) Wanted to share this NY times post that puts thing much more eloquent than I ever could: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/gay-lesbian-trans-rights.html
it’s not 2014 anymore. we aren’t canceling anyone. we’re getting canceled. JKR is doing victory laps. NHS has banned HRT for minors, as have 27 states. we’re kicked out of the military, and forbidden from security clearances. teachers in Florida can’t even use their own pronouns. Medicaid/Medicare/ACA funding for HRT for adults is stripped now. we can’t get passports with the correct gender marker. Sarah McBride has to use the men’s bathroom in Congress. Newsom calls us freaks. conservative media is calling us groomers and every time there’s a mass shooter they spread the rumor the shooter was trans. “gender ideology” is the new Satanic Panic. NYT keeps running op-eds on why Dems should throw us under the bus. Nancy Mace shouted “tr*nny” three times on the House floor and wasn’t censured for it.
you really think we’re the ones holding the cards?
It’s not 2014 and yet this is a post about not supporting the trans agenda makes one a “fucking psychopath”.
The joke, if you paid attention, is that the trans agenda isn’t a thing. They’re just trying to survive. So yeah, not supporting someone’s right to exist is some psychopathic behavior.
The fact thay you think there’s a trans agenda outside of just trying to survive doesn’t make you a psychopath, but it does make you an idiot.
Wrong place wrong time.
You’re vilified because you’re acting like a villain. People don’t want to debate your neckbeardedly presented well ahcktuallies while they’re fighting for the right to exist.
We don’t have this fight when it comes to other medical matters. Like if kids with cancer should get treatment even though chemo and surgery could have long-lasting repucussions. The alternative is they die. People who don’t get proper medical treatment die. Trans kids die of depression and suicide without treatment. Those are real things, there are real risks to not treating a medical condition. It’s not a matter up for public debate just because some dickwads are trying to distract everyone by making healthcare for a specific group of people political. It’s medical, we have facts and data that say trans people need healthcare to support their transition to live healthier longer lives. There are fucking doctors out there with years of practice who say yes, these kids need medical intervention. And here you are bitching that no one will debate you in a place where, again, people are fighting to exist. And you’re bringing up tired arguments because you gotta be that guy.
We have data on trans performance in sports and there is no clear advantage.
Besides, if you’re a world-class athlete, you already have a way different kind of body than most people. There are plenty of biological advantages that are celebrated in sports rather than weeded out. Want to start making sure everyone is the same height and weight for every sport, too? Same lung capacity? Reaction time? Born in the same country? Live at the same altitude? Same race? If you want to get advantages, there are clearer divisions along racial lines than trans status. No, I don’t advocate for segregation in sports because I’m not a goddamn monster of a person who can’t think for two seconds about why that’s idiotic.
Fuck off. Stop being a moron. Show some goddamn empathy.
How is anyone supposed to show empathy, let alone learn anything when even the slightest hint of wanting to have a conversation is met with this kind of reaction? I’m the villain? OK, but then you’re an extremist.
I made it clear in my comment what I support, and it was certainly not denying anyone’s right to exist. None of what I said supports the claim you made. What I pointed out is a major problem is exactly what you illustrate with your comment. It’s impossible to discuss anything when 2 sides are so entrenched and unwilling to debate. I get the urgency and gravity of what is happening right now, but for people like me, who consider themselves very sympathetic to the trans community, you’re making it very hard to help. It’s either support everything we say, or shut the f up. That’s never going to work.
And on the data you’re referring to around gender-affirming care, show me. Latest I heard, this is a very young field of study, and data, if any, is inconclusive. And yet here I am, supporting gender-affirming care, having to defend the position that please can we tread with care. Insanity!
As you (seem to) point out, trans people in sports is a different conversation. The science is clearer, but now we have a group of formerly (and frankly, still) marginalised people (women at birth, biologically) who fear unfair advantage. Much more political, philosophical even, a much harder debate. I empathise with both sides, how villainous of me.
So, showing empathy to you is hard. You reap what you sow.
Saying you’re supportive vs. actually doing the work to listen, understand, and be supportive, are much different things. Your empathy is performative if you don’t back up your words with actions, no matter how you dress up your opinions with empathetic-sounding statements.
Consider this: If you’re truly empathetic and open minded, why do you need to keep pointing it out?
The fact that you present an opinion piece from media owned by special interests to support your argument is enough to see why you believe what you do.
I have a group of friends, some of whom are trans, some of whom have medical degrees, and we have these discussions all the time. However, when someone talks about their right to exist being threatened, in a world where their right to exist is being threatened, is when you’ve decided to come in complaining about how poor you can’t engage in any polite discourse because people downvote you.
A number of people here have told you why this is the case, but you proceed to play the victim.
There are more than two sides, and no, the science on sports isn’t more clear than it is on gender affirming care. Even in the pub med links someone else posted, which they apparently hadn’t read in entirety, go into how controversies around trans identities is sports has become a solution in search of a problem. You should read those links.
I don’t know what about my post made you think I wanted or was willing to extend empathy to your point of view. Was it when I called you a moron or an idiot?
… do you think transition care for minors is just handed out at the grocery store checkout or something?
“We need to be cautious!” would be much more compelling if the standard medical approach to trans minors was not already immensely cautious.
I dread to think of how quickly your sympathy would’ve been sapped for Black rights in the 1950s and 60s.
The standard may be cautious, but a significant number of individual clinicians are not. But pointing out that a concerning number of care providers have looser-than-standard medical approaches gets the speaker attacked as a traitor to the cause.
Bolding mine, quite from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/transgender-youth-skrmetti/683350/
Puberty blockers are an overwhelmingly safe way to buy time for a patient, fuck’s sake.
I had to laugh at this ridiculous line from the opinion piece:
The whole idea that transition care is “getting rid” of gay people is ridiculous, I was into girls way before I transitioned. The other trans people I know are all extremely gay.
You are concerned about a child making a decision that they may regret… so you think the decision should be made for them?
“I get aggression and trolling”
“people being mean to me are psychopaths who make it hard for me to stay sympathetic to trans people”
I think the ‘dark joke’ is one of those jokes that actually reveals how some people feel about this; what I got the opinion piece is that some folks in the gay community worry that wanting to transition can also mean being attracted to the same sex and being confused about it at a young age.
Not exactly, a child is a person and should have agency. But at the same time, they’re a child and are less experienced in life. I don’t let my kid eat ice cream whenever they feel like it, and I wouldn’t let him make such a major decision before he knows very sure who he is. Because transitioning is a decision, but who you are is not. And I believe that when you’re so young, it’s really hard to know who you are.
I’m gonna try to reply to this in good faith as you seem to be wanting to engage in a good faith discussion, so let me tell you my experience.
I’m a trans girl.
Before I even have memories I was always (according to my mother) asking for skirts and dresses and playing with dolls and makeup. These moments were always taken as a joke or as me ‘being in a phase’ and were brushed off and ignored. My earliest memories have me confused why my sister gets to wear pretty dresses to church but I have to wear a boring suit. I remember ‘borrowing’ my sister’s nail polish, makeup, and dresses as early as age NINE. Did I have the understanding of what I was feeling? No. This was in the 90s, trans people werent as widely known in the US, especially the South. But if you’d given me the option to transition at age 9, I would’ve taken it in a heartbeat.
How do I know?
I’d slip out of my window EVERY NIGHT after everyone had gone to bed to wish on the first star I laid eyes on to be a girl. Sure, it wasn’t the first star to appear, but it was the first one I saw! That counted, right? I remember watching the episode of Sabrina the Teenaged Witch where she made a potion to turn herself into a boy to figure out what her boyfriend did in the auto shop. What did I do immediately after the episode ended? Went into the kitchen and tried to make my own potion with ‘sugar and spice and everything nice’. Glitter is nice! Oh and soda! Soda’s very nice.
I went to bed daydreaming of going to hogwarts and finding a potion that could make me right. I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed for a way to change my gender that when I finally heard about trans people at age 17, my reaction wasn’t ‘hmmm, this is interesting. I wonder if this is what I’m feeling’, instead it was ‘Oh, THAT’s what this is? There are other people like me?!?!?!’
Scientific studies have shown that a child’s concept of gender is already developed by age 4. Studies have also shown that a child’s understanding of who they are ALSO develops pretty early on. And, yes, in cases of children going on hormones, it is all done in conjunction with the child’s experiences, the doctor’s EXPERTISE in the matter, and the parents’ consent. They aren’t just walking into a doctor’s office and boosting little timmy up with E. Before any medicine has been taken there is EXTENSIVE screening through therapy and physician visits over the course of YEARS.
This isn’t a question that nobody has ever asked. It’s studied. It’s tested over the course of DECADES. And lastly, it’s (frankly) none of your business unless it’s YOUR kid, at which point you have complete control over whether your child goes through with any of it (up until age 18 at least).
My experience was that I was not attracted to men at all, but because I liked sailor moon and painting my nails people would just assume that I was. It just strikes me as a very paternalistic attitude to be worried about misguiding poor gay people who are simply “confused”.
Being trans is very much a part of who you are. However while there has been a tremendous social pressure to repress over the years, trans people are not a recent development.
I’m a trans woman, I transitioned later in life, but I knew from a very young age that I was uncomfortable as a boy and I didn’t have the words to describe it until much later in life.
I grew up in the 90s’s/00’s and back then the gatekeeping and lack of information was pretty bad. Unless you were presenting with an acute mental health condition you really weren’t getting taken seriously. I was able to hold my shit long enough to go to a college and land a career because throwing myself into work (and drinking heavily) was my coping skill.
Meeting and working with another trans person after years of repressing that feeling was all it really took for me to put it together and transition myself after 10+ years of denial. That’s also what happens when trans people are erased from daily life.
I think it’s a good thing that kids actually get listened to when they say what they want. It’s not ‘ice cream for dinner’ but that orientation does speak volumes. None of these transition decisions get made flippantly, this is a process that takes years and plenty of oversight.
This, so much. There’re very real and important discussions in the medical field that (very candidly) go into these types of topics that become impossible to have (at least in the public discourse) due to these types of behaviours.