@PurgatoryOfPotholes
People who would tell transmen living with PMPS that they're
"a bit of an idiot really",
Herrena?
No, we don't really need more people like that, thanks.
Maybe it was a bit harsh. One wouldn't say it to someone's face... but TBH, it's true. Part of being a grown-up is being able to look out for oneself—what one eats and drinks, where one spend's one money and what one spends it on, who one's friends are, how to behave towards others... you know the kind of thing. And researching the background to any pill one takes or treatment or intervention one has is part of that—taking care of oneself. Being responsible.
It's not, if it goes wrong, it's necessarily your fault. But it's you who gets hurt, if it goes wrong. I have a few chronic health conditions. I have read about them, the treatments [no cures, sadly], the pills, the regimes, etc. Especially the meds, of course. Is it worth the side-effects? What if the side-effects might not show themselves for 10 years? How would future me feel about present me taking that stuff? It's complicated, it involves distancing yourself from your present needs and desires, and thinking about long-term effects on someone who will still be you.
This is one of the hardest things grown-ups do. They often louse it up. But one thing is clear: Adolescents are absolutely bloody hopeless at it. They live in an intense whorl of now-ness, of emotions that chop and change every hour or minute, of hormones and strange desires and aversions, as their bodies do weird things they cannot control. They can barely manage to focus on the end-of-term exams, let alone what they will feel like when they are 30. People over 20, as far as they're concerned, are all old, pathetic, bizarre relics of a forgotten world, and everything they say should be ignored. Only people of their own age know anything about anything.
Now, do you really think that such people, who want drastic surgery and life-long hormones and want them now, should simply get "affirmative care"? No repeated psychological assessments to discover other problems such as ADHD, autism, etc.; no prolonged discussions, involving parents, of the differences between sex and gender, of how society forces people to look and behave a certain way, of homosexuality; no monitoring over a period of years? Because that's what Mumsnetters believe. We're not a bunch of sadists. We really do care about kids. That's why we oppose allowing them to transition. Because they can always do it later, but whatever the propaganda says, they can't undo it.
Lots of us have trans friends and relatives. We're not bigots. We're not idiots, either. We look at research and try to evaluate it. We read books. We discuss what we find. And these are the conclusions we've come to so far: The presumption should be against transition for someone under 18. There will be exceptions. But transitioning should be made hard to do precisely because it is so bloody important.