@JupesLoops
I agree with your message of supporting a child. I think no matter what it's always the parent's duty to be there and available for the child.
However where I disagree with you is what's the best course of action for a child.
If we both take it for granted that any loving parent will want what's best for a child, it then comes down to what is the best course of action? I think this is very much were some people strongly disagree.
One faction says support no matter what, including medical surgery to deal with gender dysphoria.
A different faction says that medical pathway has long term irreversable consequences for the child that an adult might understand better than a child battling mental challenges.
I believe both factions want what they think is best for the child out of genuinely good intentions, but what's best for a child is surely worthy of debate when one solution is surgically removing healthy and natural body parts,
I don't think this issue would be so divisive if not for the potential for irreversable lifelong harm to the child on the medical pathway.
As an example I have a friend who has a young sibling. The sibling has a few mental challenges going on that affect their interactions with other people including thier family in a significantly negative way. The sibling questioned if their problems were down to sexuality, tried out changing their sexuality from straight to homosexual. It didn't make them happy with themself, and they changed back to straight a while later. No harm done. No long term consequences. If their solution had been to go down a medical pathway of hormones and surgery they would have changed their body in an irreversable way, only to find out it wasn't the solution.
For some people I believe that medical sex reassignment might be the path of most happiness for that person, but I believe it's being touted as a one size fits all solution for a whole host of issues, and the underlying issues almost never get addressed. The medical pathway has become politicised, and is very trendy among the virtuous class. The effect on the children has become seemingly suborned to the needs of certain people to gain reputational standing by espousing this new gender religion.
Just one example. I assume you would agree with me if I said the needs of the child should come paramount before everything else? And yet the outcomes of the children going through the medical pathway at the Tavistock were not monitored. How can the best interests of the child be paramount if no one is checking to see if they are OK after the surgery? This smacks of a convery belt, upon which children were placed for surgery, and the process was assumed with no checks to be the best option. You're done, out the door, onto the next one.
If someone was to argue that people with gender dysphoria shouldn't get the care they need because they represent a tiny portion of the population then I hope we would both agree that this would be an incredibly cruel and heartless argument devoid of humanity. And yet when the subject of detransitioners comes up this very argument is used in an attempt to close any discussion of why do people detranstion? down.
The medical pathway is being vociferously championed as a one size fits all solution and i believe that in the majority of cases that it damages children. The irreversable nature of that damage over the rest of the life of the child is why I am so strongly in support of better science and research into the causes of gender dysphoria, mental co-morbidities, and most especially into the best fully holistic and long term course of treatment for young people with gender dysphoria. Such reasearch may prove me completly wrong, and if it does then there will be research and studies to show me why I was wrong. But in my mind only a person who doesn't have the best interests of these childern at heart could object to more research and study into what's the best course of action for these children. And yet there are soo many people opposed to this research. I think they are very afraid that their views and actions may be shown to have been severly damaging to these children, and then they would have to face the consequences of that including admitting to themselves just how wrong they were. What they did to the children.
In your post you say "our brains do often lie to us to protect ourselves"
I do wonder if somtimes a young child facing challenges and approaching puberty might convince themselves that changing sex would be the answer to all their problems. Perhaps a new body equals a new life to them?
I also think your "our brains do often lie to us to protect ourselves" might also apply to adults who have supported the medical pathway in such a close minded no debate manner who are absolutely petrified of being proved to have supported one of the most sociopollitcally driven experiments on children doing incredible irreversable damage in medical history.
I'll leave you with one last thought. Wherever gender dysphoria has been treated with the affirmative care model, it has been done so in an environment where it is treated like a religion where belief and faith count above all else, and it has always supported medical intervention unquestiongly. In environments based on medical science, study, observation, and follow ups, the medical pathway has been recinded, puberty blockers halted or paused, surgery stopped. It has come to a showdown between religion and science. Science welcomes debate and hands out Nobel prizes to the best, religion excommuincates and executes heretics.