The main argument against letting children (and minors in general) socially transition and use puberty blockers in the US is so dumb when you know anything about what modern models currently give as the age range someone begins to understand gender as a concept and how it applies to them.
Because in my class on childhood development, it put the age at around 2-5 years old.
And standard language development has kids able to understand and verbalize "I don't feel like a girl/boy" between 3-5.
Like even a quick Google search gives you this! And yet there are arguments that teenagers are too young to understand that they are trans, when by the time most children are at the point in language development to be able to express that they don't fit their socially imposed gender, they are also old enough to understand the social construct of gender. Kids aren't stupid. That 10 year old has been able to understand gender for around half their life, they are old enough to know if they don't feel comfortable with their socially imposed gender role.
I hate how younger kids are seen as being incapable of understanding things. It's reductive. Do they have the same amount of experience with the world and understanding as someone who's 30? No. But they can still learn, otherwise our growth would be just like in the Sims where you magically go from a short elementary school kid to a high schooler, or like Pokémon. It's gradual. It builds on past experiences. It just has to be connected to what they already know!
And now this went on a tangent of me realizing so many people think kids are stupid because they don't realize that we only learn new things by connecting them to what we already know, and that younger kids just have less of the "already know" layers because they, surprise surprise, are in the first part of their life. If a kid can make that connection between what they want to know and what they already know, they can learn, because they aren't stupid.
Arguments against allowing TGD (trans & gender diverse) and varsex children socially transition and use HRT always fall flat on their face.
First of all, a child socially transitioning does absolutely nothing to anyone. Even if they change their labels later, it doesn't mean that period of their life was "wrong" (gender can be fluid!), nor does it mean that time of their life was a "waste" (the experience will provide meaningful exploration and understanding of their identity!)
Secondly, while you are right about most kids understanding gender at a very young age, I am going to counter that even if a child *doesn't* have the ability to fully grasp gender (due to certain neurodivergences), that shouldn't bar them off from exploring their identity. A child doesn't need to be able to explain to you WHY they want something - they should just be allowed to want it.
Thirdly, when it comes to physical transitions, people say "they're too young to know." But why is that statement only applied to children who know they want an alternative puberty? Shouldn't children who want their original puberty also be "too young to know"? There's no difference between the two, except that one puberty comes from within the body, and the other puberty comes from external sources.
It's a double standard. A kid who wants their current or expected puberty (so long as it falls into "perinormative" expectations) is "right" and doesn't need to be questioned or offered alternatives, but a kid who wants HRT (or wants to experience their "non-normative" intersex puberty) is "wrong" and should "consider just going through the 'proper' puberty now and taking HRT later."
Let kids choose their puberty. Let them choose if they want to be androgenized, estrogenized, androestrogenized, or (if they personally don't know yet) be on hormone blockers until they're ready.
-Wendy (any pronouns, including neos)
