You can practice presenting differently in safe social situations, that's reversible. (e.g. crossdressing)
Trans fem people can remove their facial hair without doing other medical transition steps.
The effects of hormone replacement are so slow that you can safely "try them out" for a month or two and not have a huge permanent burden.
You talk to people and think about it real hard and sleep on it for years. It looks sudden from the outside because there's such a stigma over saying "Hey I'm thinking about trying on a new gender, do you think it would work?"
It's not too different from other body modification like tattoos or vasectomies. You can't fully know for sure, but there is a point where you decide that the risk is worth it, because the potential payoff seems worth it. Then it usually turns out it is. Most "de-transition" cases are people who couldn't afford the monetary cost or social cost of presenting as transgender. It's un-common to transition and then find out you're actually cis.
This makes sense except the part about the slow acting hormones. If they are slow acting then one wouldn’t know their effects until later. How much later? And is it guaranteed that they will be reversible at that point?
Modulo what is above, in summary: you are saying there can be informed decisions because the teenagers can:
- try out cross dressing
- try out the hormone therapy to some point before it has non-reversible long term consequences
If you suppose that understanding this well is not possible, that would imply you also do not understand it well, so perhaps you should leave other people alone to do what they will, unless some good reason is revealed not to.
