Thread by @AlexandraErin

If there's someone whose gender identity is so fluid and disconnected from anything that someone can say "do you want to be trans with me?" and they say "Sure!" and go through with it... I say let 'em. It's their life. If the change doesn't make their life better, they can desist

I don't care if kids try out being trans when they're tweens or teens and then figure out they're not. That doesn't "explode the trans narrative". That's healthy. Give kids space to figure out who they are, don't force them to avoid the question until they're too old.

"Social contagion" is just a way of making it sound scary that kids can't figure out if they're trans when they don't know what trans is. My childhood was severely messed up because all I knew about transness was filtered through homophobic. transphobic, and misogynistic jokes.

I thought that thinking I was a girl meant I was a gay guy... and then I was confused because I liked girls. But also confused because I liked boys. I knew bisexuals exist, but pop culture had taught me that bi was kind of gay, gay was regular gay, and trans was super gay.

So when I see this hand-wringing about "kids are trying on identities like they're trendy coats!" I'm like... yes? Good? Let them try them on. See what fits. It'll happen anyway. I cycled through L, G, B, and T... in secret, in shame, trying to make sense of incomplete info.

"What if I let my kid try out another name and it turns out to be for no reason?"

......is there a downside here?

I hear "Kids don't know if they're going to be an astronaut or a ballerina but you believe them when they say they're a different gender?"

You believe them when they say they're not? If your position is "kids aren't done figuring out who they are"... you got to let them choose.

"Kids don't know who they are yet" but we have to lock them down into definitely being boys or girls for 18 or 25 years, or life, based on physical appearance at moment of birth?

That's supposed to make sense?

I don't care if somebody is trans because they thought it would be cool. I don't know what relation they have to their body or their gender. I don't know if that's just what they tell themself or if it's one step on a way towards a deeper understanding.

One reason I don't support "trans people MUST have dysphoria!" criteria is... it's like saying someone must have a certain level of pain. There's no way to objectively quantify a qualia. Loads of trans people have the experience of not realizing they were dysphoric.

I'm just going to throw out a fictional example. Rachel Bighead, in her initial appearances on Rocko's Modern Life, was profoundly depressed. She was visibly (and audibly) disconnected from everything. Her work, the people she loved.

But she didn't know what was wrong.

She wouldn't have described herself as dysphoric, she just knew that she didn't fit into her life.

When we next see her twenty years later, she's happy and self-fulfilled as a trans woman.

Dysphoria doesn't arrive in your brain with a label.

Even if you believe dysphoria is a necessary component of being trans, when you exclude non-dsyphoric people from trans spaces, you're always going to be excluding trans people who are still figuring things out.

In conclusion: yes, I want a future where kids try out different genders like they'd try on shirts, and if someone finds that their understanding of their gender changes throughout their life that's fine.

I'm very comfortable with my own gender.

But I wish I'd known it sooner.