Ah I just saw your comment here, @ladyrebecca. I think that potential overuse puberty blockers are troubling. My understanding is that kids have to be in therapy for several years preceding the use of those blockers showing consistent symptoms of being transgender.
What you are saying about transgender ideology--I think I understand. I haven't experienced it in my community, although this is a very liberal town and there is lots of space for different life and gender experiences. I love the tradition in other cultures of waiting for children to announce their own gender rather than assign them one based on anatomy. But since we aren't set up for that around here, I think it would be difficult to achieve. I guess I'm saying I don't think genitals equal gender, but I also don't think we need to tell kids they are or aren't one gender or another. We should let them tell us which we generally fail at because our cultural gender system is rigid.
It's such a tough call. The medical opinion as published by John's Hopkins is that transgender is a disease of the mind. This is confusing to me because most cultures recognize other genders going back as far as we can see. It imposes a rigid system on those who do not experience gender in binary. In fact, I disagree that, even if it's classified as a disease, it is something that needs to be corrected (make a kid with a penis think they are male, etc). But I also don't believe being queer is a disease or choice in any other aspect of queerness.
I don't know what choice I would make for my child. What a difficult situation to be in. But I can't imagine any parent making a medication-based decision lightly, let alone one in which a person is stopping a physical transition. I would be so afraid!
I love this conversation. It is so important to have dialogue on these issues to tease out our own clarities.