It’s one thing to have differing views, but I’ve seen enough attempted reddit migrations to be relieved that the popular communities in the fediverse so far haven’t been about crazy racist stuff or other extreme right bullshit.
I am also glad that I’m getting away from reddit’s general political shitposting, which was more left leaning. You couldn’t have any proper discourse on there, and even I with my generally more left leaning views recognized that.
They already said quite clearly that they’re transphobic. The “I don’t think children should undergo gender or sex transition” is almost verbatim an anti-trans talking point.
Here’s some actual research on the subject of trans people, including trans youth, and suicide risk. With citations;
Bauer, et al., 2015: Transition vastly reduces risks of suicide attempts, and the farther along in transition someone is the lower that risk gets.
de Vries, et al, 2014: A clinical protocol of a multidisciplinary team with mental health professionals, physicians, and surgeons, including puberty suppression, followed by cross-sex hormones and gender reassignment surgery, provides trans youth the opportunity to develop into well-functioning young adults. All showed significant improvement in their psychological health, and they had notably lower rates of internalizing psychopathology than previously reported among trans children living as their natal sex. Well-being was similar to or better than same-age young adults from the general population.
Gorton, 2011 (Prepared for the San Francisco Department of Public Health): “In a cross-sectional study of 141 transgender patients, Kuiper and Cohen-Kittenis found that after medical intervention and treatments, suicide fell from 19 percent to zero percent in transgender men and from 24 percent to 6 percent in transgender women.)”
Murad, et al., 2010: “Significant decrease in suicidality post-treatment. The average reduction was from 30% pretreatment to 8% post treatment.”
De Cuypere, et al., 2006: Rate of suicide attempts dropped dramatically from 29.3% to 5.1% after receiving medical and surgical treatment among Dutch patients treated from 1986-2001.
UK study: "Suicidal ideation and actual attempts reduced after transition, with 63% thinking about or attempting suicide more before they transitioned and only 3% thinking about or attempting suicide more post-transition.
Heylens, 2014: Found that the psychological state of transgender people “resembled those of a general population after hormone therapy was initiated.”
Perez-Brumer, 2017: “These findings suggest that interventions that address depression and school-based victimization could decrease gender identity-based disparities in suicidal ideation.”
Here’s a study showing that children know what gender they prefer and don’t change their minds on it.
Here’s another meta study on trans youth who received gender-affirming care, and who saw a decrease in suicide risk.
Transitioning is One solution, and it is valid to be able to discuss other options. Your citations bring good discussion points, but shouldn’t be used to ban people.
My point is about censorship and the race to the bottom thst it can and often brings.
If the scientific community overwhelmingly and independently comes to the same conclusion over and over again, insisting on being able to discuss other solutions, especially not in the context of academic exploration (because it IS important for the scientific process to check opposing hypothesis and to peer review) but in the Context of telling a baseless opinion easily disputed, then no.
That’s like the people who insist on ‘discussing other explanazions’ for climate change.
And it is more than understandable that this insistence then is seen as the Opposite of good faith arguing and met with resistance. There is no point in giving a forum to harmful lies. That is not productive discourse
Except that’s a sidestep. The viewpoint you were defending was saying that this one specific option, that has substantial academic backing for positive outcomes for kids, should not happen or should be prohibited.
That’s not “discuss other options” - that’s discussing this option and arguing that society should take it away.
That you’re now trying to argue that it’s just discussion and it’s reasonable debate and - forgive my bluntness - being openly dishonest about what the original speech was that you’re defending with “free-speech” and anti-censorship talking points is like … the example case for how this thread started. The nazis and the transphobes and the hateful bigots can always, easily, spin their own takes as righteous and reasonable debate - if you let them lead the dialogue and frame their discourse through the most-appealing lenses possible. And they can make valid-sounding and appealing arguments for why you, too, should defend them and their right to speak.
But inevitably they are also going to use any and all space you clear for them to be hateful and bigoted and call for harm to other people - that is their goal. Everything else is just a setup play.