I don't actually have an opinion on the subject in general (it's not a question where I vote). I just disagreed with what you wrote. Let me quote it again and explain:
> 2. Protecting kids. I don't think kids can consent to medical gender transition. It amounts to state sanctioned child abuse. I have kids. Once you're 18 go ahead do what you want.
You say here that medical gender transition should be forbidden before 18, don't you? It includes 6, but it also includes 17. When I said I disagreed with you, you said "how can you imagine doing that to a 6 years old kid?". You came up with that number all on your own. I was answering to your comment that implied "anything below 18".
Correct, they're misreading what I'm saying. But the 6 year old thing isn't a hypothetical. There are plenty of documented cases of 6 year olds being transitioned by abusive parents and doctors. There needs to be a line somewhere. Right now, in many jurisdictions, there is no line.
I did misread the part about sex, tattoos and beer. Doesn't change the fact that you said (and I quote, third time):
> 2. Protecting kids. I don't think kids can consent to medical gender transition. It amounts to state sanctioned child abuse. I have kids. Once you're 18 go ahead do what you want.
Which implies "they can do it once they are 18, not before". When I disagreed with that, you gave an example of 6 year olds, which is very different from 18, isn't it?
> There needs to be a line somewhere.
Now maybe you are misreading me. I don't say that there is no regulation needed. I am just saying that I disagree with the "they abuse kids younger than 18 and Trump will save them" rhetoric.
I'll try one last time. You say "I don't think kids can consent to medical gender transition until they are 18" (I won't quote it a fourth time). I say that I disagree (because I could totally imagine a 16 year old be able to consent).
I said 18 because that's the age I think it should be. You could make an argument it could be older, or it could be (barely) younger, 16 is the absolute youngest I would entertain. But my. whole point all this time is that there is no line in many jurisdictions.
> But my. whole point all this time is that there is no line in many jurisdictions.
No. Your point was that Trump will protect kids and non-Trump-until-now does not, which is implied by the fact that you wrote it in a list of reasons that made you vote for Trump. Because apparently, in your head, if there is not an age written in a law, it means that everybody tries to abuse kids and nobody tries to do what's best for them in good faith.
At this point I am not sure if you can understand the concept I am going to introduce, but let me try: do you realise that people can't be abused even after they turn 18 (or 16, or 15, or 21, or many other numbers)? The root problem is to understand when doing this medical intervention is helping vs when it is "abusive" (or maybe we could say "not helping" and not pretend that people who agree with their kid doing this and their doctors and whoever is involved are necessarily criminals). Age is not everything. It's actually a pretty shitty metric, but I guess you have to go with what you can comprehend.
I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding his use of English. You seem to be interpreting the structure of his sentences in a way that he wasn't intending at all.
Happy to learn, English is not my language. Would you mind explaining to me what this means?
> I don't think kids can consent to medical gender transition. It amounts to state sanctioned child abuse. I have kids. Once you're 18 go ahead do what you want.
He was establishing the age of 18 years old as a reference point for the lower bound for when people are able to make adult decisions. His mention of the age of 6 after this, which your primary contention with him seemed to be about, was separate from this and was him trying to make an example of what he sees as how the medical system can be abused when there are not strict age related regulations. I think that it's clear that you disagree with him on the 18 year age restriction, but wanted to clarify that the 6 years number that he used in his example didn't have any significance in its specificity, but was just some number between 0-17.
Would you say that when I went back to the initial quote (the 18 year age restriction) twice, it was not clear that I wanted to talk about the 18 year age restriction?
I really don't care about the 6. My point about the 6 was that when I disagreed with 18, they went down to 6 (presumably because that's easier to defend). But that is just diverting my point. My point was about the 18, and I kept coming back to the 18. They kept coming back to 6, that's right, but as a way to redirect the discussion (I started it, it's my right to say where I was going, not theirs).
As a bystander, I appreciate your openness and willingness. However, I'm not sure if the misunderstanding here is a language issue or the issue about kids.
It seems like you view medical sex transitions as similar importance to cancer treatment? I think that is the disagreement the other person has.
I think it was decently clear that they were disagreeing about the age restriction of 18, but my comments were referencing how the two of them had been simply arguing over the semantics of the mention of 18 years of age then 6 years of age after that. There seemed to be a language disconnect getting in the way of their disagreement, even though it was clear they disagreed on the 18 years of age point.
I was mostly trying to point out that 18 years old is pretty old for something that sounds... existential. If a "kid" has tried committing suicide twice before their 16th birthday, I would feel bad telling them "but you see, you can't really tell us how you feel before you're 18".
> What if the kid is telling you they'll suicide at the age of 8? The problem with your logic is that there is no line.
Who says there is no line? All I said was that I disagreed with your line being 18 of age. I do understand your concern, really. I am just saying that maybe, just maybe, it is more complicated than what you think from your position where you are apparently not confronted to it. You call it "protecting kids", but what you want is to enforce whatever makes you feel good from your detached position (which in this case is "wait until 18"). What if a 16 years old told you that you are abusive by preventing them from doing it? Would you say "shut up, you're not 18 you don't know if I'm abusing you or not"? I'm sure you believe that "it's better than nothing, if we don't know let's put the line at 18". But that's all it is: a belief. And what I believe is that it is actually hard to know what's best.
> Transitioning a kid doesn't solve the suicide problem. Many of them go on to commit suicide at even higher rates than other groups of people.
Again, what you say here has a logic problem. Do you have actual numbers that say "it's overall better for those kids when we don't transition them than when we do"? What you say here is "well it does not prevent all problems, so it sucks", but you ignore that your solution (waiting until 18) would not solve all problems either.
That's my whole point: you don't know (I don't know either), and it is a hard problem. You are just projecting your uninformed ideas to justify why you voted for Trump. I don't care what Trump or the democrats claim: what I would want for those kids is actual studies to try to understand what's best for them (and it probably exists). And really, everybody wants to protect kids. Because you disagree with what others do does not mean at all that they try to hurt kids.
I don't think it should be 16 rather than 18. I think it's just more complicated than one of us (or Trump) naively setting an age.
And I think that you putting it as "I want to protect the kids, Trump wants to protect the kids, the democrats don't want to protect the kids" is dishonest.
But it feels like it's all too complicated for you to apprehend. Let me end this with: "you're right, 6 < 18, you're smart".
> Why do you not simply state your position on it?
I keep doing it, but you don't understand it.
My position is that it is complex. It depends entirely on the situation. I don't care about putting a number in a law, I care about helping those kids. Sometimes it means allowing them to transition, sometimes not. Not based on the age, but based on the individual and their context. There is no easy way to decide, and mistakes will happen no matter what.
Saying "it should be forbidden before 18, but I could negotiate 16" is absolutely naive, not to say completely stupid. To me, on the one hand it shows that you are sensitive to this problem (which is a good thing). But on the other hand it shows that you completely fail to reason constructively about it.
> So the answer is yes, you think kids should be able to transition at any age, if the "context" is correct.
At this point I genuinely wonder if you do it on purpose or if you genuinely don't understand.
It may be (or it may not be, I don't know) that transitioning at 6 is always a bad idea: the age is part of the context. "Part of" meaning that the context is made of other things.
> It's state sanctioned child abuse. It should be stopped.
I understand that you believe it, you keep repeating it. The fact is that if you can't understand the nuance between "It should not be forbidden before 18" and "It should be allowed for everyone below 18", then surely you don't have a clue about the context that would make it okay to transition someone.
People who genuinely believe they are the smartest because they can formulate their strong and uninformed opinions is admittedly a big problem these days.
> It may be (or it may not be, I don't know) that transitioning at 6 is always a bad idea
The answer is yes, it is always a bad idea. Your fake nuance is just a veil for complete lack of respect for children. There is absolutely no reason you should transition a 6 year old kid. There is no context that exists for that kind of irreversible damage at such a young age.
They can't even consent to it, just like they can't consent to a whole host of other things.
Actually I started reading more about it, and it is most definitely not always a bad idea. You just don't seem to know how to read (or think, for that matter) properly.
> There is no context that exists for that kind of irreversible damage at such a young age.
At 6, it's not irreversible. Even according that the article you linked yourself, surgery almost never happens before 18, the exceptions being sometimes 17 or 16 (not 6).
Some things are done a 6 (or earlier), called "social transitioning" first, and this is not irreversible at all.
I don't actually have an opinion on the subject in general (it's not a question where I vote). I just disagreed with what you wrote. Let me quote it again and explain:
> 2. Protecting kids. I don't think kids can consent to medical gender transition. It amounts to state sanctioned child abuse. I have kids. Once you're 18 go ahead do what you want.
You say here that medical gender transition should be forbidden before 18, don't you? It includes 6, but it also includes 17. When I said I disagreed with you, you said "how can you imagine doing that to a 6 years old kid?". You came up with that number all on your own. I was answering to your comment that implied "anything below 18".