"More people regret Harry Potter tattoos than trans surgeries"

[SpicyMoth]

Does anyone have links to any stats or studies that back this claim up (or preferably refute it)?

I'm assuming not, but am currently in a debate with a "friend" who is adamant that this is the case (and has history of being insufferable about this topic), but is unsurprisingly not linking any actual evidence whatsoever.

So far I've pointed out that the amount of trans people vs the amount of people who have HP tattoos is too big of a number discrepancy to even really be a valid comparison.
Also that the vast majority of trans people do not in fact even get surgeries, and of those who do it then depends of whether they're mild (such as FFS) or drastic (such as vaginoplasty/phalloplasty), in which case the complication rates for those are MASSIVE, and the likelihood of someone going through with those surgeries then turning around and admitting they've made a mistake will be incredibly low regardless of whether they regret it or not.

I linked to studies which back my claims up, no response of yet from him... Can't help but wonder why...

Ik this is silly and petty but he has form for this and I'm absolutely sick of "sitting down and shutting up" about it.

Ask him what percentage of little girls being sexually assaulted in spaces that are meant to be single sex he WOULD take notice of & just why he’s ok with any amount of assaults because some men are bit sad.

Any mention by him of sexual assault committed by other demographics is pure whataboutery. Nobody is suggesting only trans women commit sexual assault. But if you let some males into female spaces, you let all males into female spaces. And an abundance of sex offenders identify as female - which in the US entitles them, even if they’re rapists, even if their crime is VAWG, to be locked up with women already overwhelmingly likely to be victims of male violence. Ask him why he thinks women in prison don’t have the right to be protected from male violence. Male prisoners who ID as trans can be protected within the male estate; male violence is not a female problem to solve nor are females some kind of service human. Why does he think women exist only to fulfil the needs of male humans? Because that’s what he’s saying. If a woman were incarcerated in a male prison she would need protecting, but she wouldn’t have an identity crisis. Women are neither an idea in a man’s head nor a resource to be exploited - we do not exist to “validate” males with an unstable sense of self. That requires input from a therapist.

10 yo girl attacked in Morrison’s toilets
Headlines from across US
Unisex Changing Rooms put women in danger
Women raped by trans cellmate in CA
“Man posing as TW” (how can they tell?!) raped Rikers inmate
Illinois: female prisoner raped by trans inmate

It's easier to have a Harry Potter tattoo removed than it is to have your cock sewn back on, I'd imagine.

Even if this strange claim is true, so what? We're not trying to argue that people should get Harry Potter tattoos 😁

They only regret the Harry Potter tattoos because they are outraged that Rowling believes in the reality of biological sex, so statistically that doesn't matter!

To be serious about it... in addition to the points already made by other people, I would make the point that the key issue shouldn't be regret rate but rather comparable outcomes.

Let's say you transition a couple of kids and neither of them regret it; good result?

Well not if one of them could have naturally recovered from gender dysphoria and been far happier. That situation then looks as questionable as it gets.

I really doubt it! 😆

This guy has just made up some stuff to virtue signal that he and anyone he would consider ‘correct’ think anything to do with JK is beyond the pale.

I make cosplay outfits and the number of people in the community who now love to go on and on about their boycotting of Harry Potter costumes after twenty years of going on about being proud Hufflepuffs or whatever…🥱

This is a ridiculous comparison so data not required.

More people get splinters than are killed by drunk drivers. And?

Source : counting posts on the r/HPTattooRegretJKRIsATerf subreddit

Apologies if someone has already said this, but AFAIK there are no statistics for transition regret. Almost all the detransition blogs and videos I've seen suggest that when someone detransitions they stop taking their hormone medication and melt into the background. No one follows them up or collects statistics.

Also who realistically is collecting Harry Potter tattoo regret stats? Tattoos are generally removed privately, not on the NHS. How are the stats collected? @SpicyMoth Your friend's talking absolute bollocks.

How could data even exist on this? You'd have to know a) how many people have Harry Potter tattoos - but who on earth is collecting this information? b) how many regret it - if you don't know the answer to a) then how can you know the answer to b?

Then you'd have to know how many people are having trans surgeries - you'd expect that data to be available, but I don't think it is collected, at leat not at a national level. You'd have to collate the info from all the different NHS trusts. Then you'd have to find out how many regret it, and we know that data isn't collected, because we have discussed the fact it isn't collected many times on here, and commented on how shocking it is that it isn't collected.

So that's four pieces of data, none of which exist, and this person is trying to claim that one set is bigger than another. Bollocks.

Send him this. I assume he thinks he's a right on left wing guy, when actually he's just a misogynistic twat.

https://thecritic.co.uk/lefty-mens-failures-have-radicalised-women

Well yes I can imagine a lot of people regret getting Harry Potter tattoos.

They probably got them when they were young (although above 18) and imagined and truly beleived this phase of wanting to signal your love for Harry Potter as part of your identity would last for ever. Because Harry Potter was so important to them yu see. Stupid parent objecting didn't get it wasn't just a phase.

So the moral is: young people are immature and don't yet fully understand the futire consequences of things.

Which is more reason to stop them altering their bodies in ways that impact thier fertility and health long term when they are young. Not a reason to allow them too.

Also obviouly more people get harry Potter tatoos than sex change surgery so there will be more (unless he's talking perectages?)

And: there are no stats he's making it up.

My brother got a crap tattoo (not HP) when he was 17 and has spent a lot of money and effort removing it in the several decades since!

I don’t understand why you’re even talking to this numpty.

OP, I've worked out over the years that earnest replies take up too much of your brainpower and have zero effect on eejits who say daft things.

I'd scoff and say 'That's silly, nobody knows how many HP tattoos there are, and there's only a tiny number of trans people anyway!' and hopefully that's an end to that pointless speculation

I got a tattoo when I was 21 that I fully thought was stupid by the time I was 25. It didn't particularly affect anything about me though. It wasn't in a particularly visible part of my body. I got married, had a kid, breastfed, got really fit and good at a couple of sports, etc. The stupid tattoo had absolutely no impact on anything I ever did day to day, on my ambitions or happiness. It didn't put me at added risk of breaking a bone when I something didn't go well in sports. It didn't impact my fertility or ability to feed my son the way I wanted to. It didn't really alter my looks, unless you looked at that one area of my body.

Every so often I looked up ways to get rid of the tattoo as it would occasionally nag at me as something stupid. And eventually concluded that I could get a pretty but generic cover-up tattoo. I feel neutral about the cover-up, because I'm very glad it's not what it was. But I'd be happier with no tattoo. But it absolutely, 100%, solidifies in my mind how important it is not to make changes to your body when you are young. A stupid picture that you wish wasn't indelibly on your body isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. And it's easy enough to get it changed to something else, though it will hurt and cost money that you'd wish you could use for something else. Fucking up your entire system, removing healthy body parts, damaging your bone health, your fertility and sex drive, those don't compare to a stupid drawing on your skin.

The correct answer to 'more people regret their Harry Potter tattoos' is sure, people regret doing stupid shit to their body. But a tattoo is a picture on your skin and just that. The only way is relevant is that it shows how common it is to regret altering your body. It's an argument in favour of stopping transitions. Because doing severe permanent damage to body will almost always be regretted and you can't just drop a few hundred quid to make it more palatable.

OP, I've worked out over the years that earnest replies take up too much of your brainpower and have zero effect on eejits who say daft things.

This.

It's like arguing with my 6yo daughter about whether crunch corner yoghurt with choco flakes counts as dessert or not (clearly it does, she disagrees).

Some arguments cannot bear fruit, and I don't want to have them!

Great post @alittleprivacy

The consequences of regret for these two things are in no way comparable.

Honestly neither do I sometimes, I think it's because I've recently discovered that in our social circle the majority of people actually disagree with his very militant hyper activist-y viewpoints and are just too afraid to stick their heads above the parapet.
I've ended up unintentionally becoming the spokesperson against his absolute tripe, though tbh although it's exhausting, it has done something, others are now speaking up too and the ones who would previously agree with the tripe-spouter have resorted to derailing and memes because they can't handle facts, studies and evidence being presented to them.

For those interested (and for those who may just find it funny), the "friend" in question ended up making a whole channel dedicated to "debate".

He derailed me stating that you can tell what sex a person is just by looking and asking for examples of what behaviours, expressions, patterns that align with each "gender" and how do they not essentially amount to regressive stereotypes by talking about penguins being "unable to discern what sex other penguins are".
He was unable to square that the article he was supposedly reading was talking about humans being unable to discern the sex of penguins as they're not obviously dimorphic, not about penguins themselves being unable to discern, and went on a massive tangent about how penguins have to simply guess (How he expects humans to have mind-read penguins I have no idea).

Which then derailed further into gay penguins, and penguins actively making the choice to be gay, and how he hopes penguins "choose" to be gay vs just "guessing" what sex of penguin they're mating with. (didn't know being gay was a choice but hey-ho!!)

After an entire night of not answering my question and instead making it about penguins and whether or not one can discern what sex a person is from just looking, he then the next night went onto the usual "assigned at birth" nonsense.
I pointed out sex is determined by the sperm in utero, brief mention of nub theory as it's just a theory, and asked him how exactly I know what sex my 31week pregnancy is if sex is "assigned at birth".

He brought up intersex, because of course he did, I countered with DSD's.
(Of course he replied so fast that it was obvious he ignored literally ALL of my linked sources)

When I pointed out sex is not assigned it's observed, he derailed once more and we ended up debating the definition of the word "assigned" (for hours before he finally conceded whilst also still disagreeing with me).

After asking about 6 or 7 times about my original question, he then decided to get into a debate about the definition of the word "stereotypes" instead of giving me examples, which went on for further hours and resulted in him conceding whilst disagreeing again.(He loves to do this)

All in all, it was headache inducing, however it did give others in the group courage to join in and speak their minds freely - though unsurprisingly he ignored all of them (men) and would only respond to me.
He seems to only ever want to argue/debate me specifically.
Think it's pretty clear at this point he genuinely holds some kind of resentment or misogyny towards women as he literally just will entirely ignore anyone else saying the same as me or agreeing with me and double down talking to me and me alone, as if to try and intimidate me and make me back down on my views which are backed up vs his which are not.

And ofc, he linked no sources throughout the entire "debate".

Given the NHS do not have reliable data on detransition and regret because the Cass Review was blocked by clinics from having this information, I'm curious as to how your friend has that data.

I also would like to see the methodology for collection data on Harry Potter Tattoo Regret.

Your friend is thick as mince. HTH.

My experience is this type is an attention seeking drama llama.

By engaging you validate.

Eye rolling is an effective response.

You're probably right @RedToothBrush, but even so - it's emboldened others in the group to speak up which I can't be mad at myself for honestly, even though the talk was long and frustrating - The "debate" has fizzled out (for now at least!)

Coming at this from a different angle... surely it would be a good thing if it is a true statistic.

Transition should involve proper discussion with doctors (meaning hormonal and surgical interventions). It should be carefully planned. Anyone not sure advised against.

But tattoos... People get them for bets and dares. They make impulse decisions when drunk. They are often small and non visible. They generally have no effect on your life.

Only came to say Well Done, you. By speaking up, others will listen (even if they don't participate). Sounds like you're doing a good job!