I don't mind the long-form nature, per se, but I do think as the thread and responses get longer and longer, it will quickly become unwieldy. If, after this response, you're still interested in having the discussion, I would recommend moving to DMs for better readability but otherwise w/e.
So I couldn't not and will not about what your personal thoughts or experiences in the past were, though I do expect that if your transition was only social they likely differed greatly from those who pursued medical transition.
In any case, more-or-less point by point, though they're getting big enough I'll have to split them more, likely:
— I don't ascribe to the transmedicalist view, because I don't think "having gender dysphoria" and "having a gender identity incongruous with your gender assigned at birth" are synonymous. They can, and do, overlap widely, but I also accept having gender EU-phoria as a transgender experience, and that does not necessarily come with an distressing discomfort with a birth gender. If, semantically, you want to consider "feeling gender euphoria for a different gender" as being under the "umbrella" of gender dysphoria as a medical condition then I think that's fine, though I think the framing is poor (a clumsy analogy would be like describing fulfillment in a gay relationship as being "part of" the distress of not fitting into heteronormative society. Not in those terms phrases, but a form of that existed when being gay was pathologized – the language around gay experiences was inherently negative even if you were trying to describe positive aspects).
— On that note, being "without dysphoria" may seek gender affirming care because they experience EU-phoria as a gender other than their assigned birth gender and the care aligns their bodies more with that conception of themselves.
— Again, I cannot comment on your own personal experiences, but I can affirm that *broadly* therapeutic methods do not alleviate gender dysphoria in patients. That's not the same as "literally zero people stopped feeling dysphoric after therapy", just that on a demographic level it has far poorer results than gender affirming care. That SAID, counseling (in the case of minors, which is this context) is part of the treatment. Minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria do already go through counseling before they get medical intervention, and need regular counseling throughout their treatment. This is precisely FOR the individuals for whom medical treatment may not be best, especially in cases where there may be co-morbidities.
—This is exactly why the standard treatment is to use puberty blockers to delay otherwise permanent changes until certainty is more attainable. You are correct, and I did misspeak; typical beginning of hormones can be as early as 16 (though that is also not universal, and does depend somewhat on country/region). In some extreme cases, where deemed necessary by a doctor due to overwhelming distress displayed by the patient, treatment can begin earlier. Again, this is not standard, and is vetted specifically by the doctors in question.
— Feeling awkward and uncomfortable in you body during puberty is, indeed, very normal. "Persistently feeling discomfort at the sex traits of your birth gender and a strong preference for the other's" is not. "I feel gross" and "I want to be the other gender" are very different feelings. The reason that blockers are the standard treatment is that there is NO option in this scenario that has ZERO risk. An unassisted puberty for a kid who IS trans is as permanent of a change to their body as a cross-sex one for a kid that is "really" cis. Delaying those changes is the compromise to buy time and be more certain about the decisions at hand.
Bottom line for that one is that there ARE kids who know they ARE trans before, during, and after puberty and who could tell you at every stage that they do not want the changes that an unassisted puberty would put them through. A mindset that those people should be forced to experience them anyway because it's normal to be uncomfortable during puberty is frankly, unconscionable, like genuinely just cruel for no reason. I don't think you think that, to be clear, but I think it's important to set the baseline of "there are kids who are actually trans, and it's obvious they should get treatment".
—Not super in depth, but it's a common enough point: we don't treat anorexia the way we treat gender dysphoria because they're different conditions. If you affirm trans patients, their quality of life improves. If you affirm an anorexic patient, their body shuts down and they die.
— The idea that there is a significant increase in people regretting transition is a popular talking point, but not one that has manifested. There are, of course, detransitioners and desisters; by no means am I arguing there aren't. It's the idea that there is a wave of people doing so, or that the number is proportionally on the rise that is shakey. We should, of course, listen to detransitionsmers about their own experiences, but regret rate for transition related care is remarkably low, and not a reason to outright restrict or gatekeep the people getting successful care.
— Potential puberty blockers long-term effects (which, to be clear, would present to some degree regardless of the reason for administering), have not been reliably found in longterm follow-ups, HOWEVER, "whether or not puberty blockers are 100% reversible", or "what effects may linger long-term" are not really the questions that need to be asked in this case. The question is whether the benefits of treatment outweigh the risk of that treatment. ALL treatment carries some amount of risk, and all treatments need to be weighed against their benefits with that in mind. And the answer in this case is that overwhelmingly yes, quality of life long-term tends to improve.
As an obvious example: open heart surgery has a lot of risks, but so does "not having the surgery", the benefits of receiving the treatment justify getting it, even if thay risk is still present. And like I said before, these situations don't have a no-risk scenario, so we weigh the risks to the potential benefit. That's not malpractice, that's just how medicine works.
— I don't believe I have *ever* seen someone earnestly say that their transitioned changed "every" aspect of their sex. Like, respectfully, I'll need to see the receipts for that one because I simply do not know how to address it beyond assuming that it is an example of these talk-past-each-other situations. For instance, I don't think I've ever seen someone say that HRT produced new organs for them (though uterine transplants for trans patients seems to be in consideration from the team that performs them for cis women, which is neat).
— On that note, I have likewise never seen anyone argue that HRT has allowed them to menstruate. What I have seen a lot of if is one of those definition mis-matches that I mentioned; namely that people are not using "period" and "menstruation" interchangeably. If you want to argue in a linguistic/definitional sense that "period" should only be used when it includes bleeding, that's your prerogative, and I wouldn't even necessarily disagree with you. What I can say is that most of the cis women in my life use it to refer to many symptoms that ocurr together, even if there's no bleeding (I actually know a few who do not bleed for long-term medical reasons). That's the context that trans women are speaking in. They're describing the symptoms that they experience (though it is not universal among them) due to the hormone cycles that their body goes through. You are absolutely correct that there is no uterus for a liking to be shed from, but things like mood, appetite, swelling, bloating, soreness, headaches, and the like aren't cause by the uterus shedding a lining, they're caused by the ways that the body responds to fluctuating hormones (which trans women, particularly when taking injectable estrogen) do experience. Again, if you want to say there's no blood so they shouldn't say it's a period, that's fine; I'll argue semantics another time, the point is that what they mean and what you hear are not the same.
And as the closer: I don't think that you are right wing; I fully expect that we would agree on many topics outside of this one, but I do think that the attitude towards this topic, at least in the way that you've expressed it in this post is similar to the way the "gay agenda" folks argued against gay rights (hell, if I wanted to be mean, or if I thought you were genuinely bad-faith I could point out that anti-gay folks regularly claim that therapy "cured" them as a way to discredit or ignore people's experiences, though I don't *actually* get the impression your tone is the same as theirs is). If anything, the worst I would reasonable compare to would be homophobic leftists 15-20 years ago, who were in favour of racial justice, social programs, feminism and such, but argued that being gay was unnatural or deviant. That didn't make them "not leftists" but they WERE using right-wing arguments about it.
Again, totally up to continue (though likely not before tomorrow), and would recommend moving to a different method, cause I guarantee we're both just going to have more and more to say each time and that'll get to be too much QUICK.
