Certainly. I think my overarching point is we don't have the data, and the data we do have suggests a very mixed, confusing picture at present. As such, precaution is advised.
Certainly. My point here was that the truth was likely somewhere in between 0.005% and 1%. Barriers to entry are one factor (also lack of truly effective treatment holds many back, I'm sure). On the other hand, you have self-reported studies with unclear terminology being applied to get to 1%+ territory. I don't know that barriers alone are going to explain a ~500:1 discrepancy here.
Are the two conditions actually the same? Children work through sexual preference differences as they go through puberty. Lots of aspects of their personalities change over that ~10 year period. We have self-reporting studies showing a sharp divide between younger and older generations in how they identify. While much of that may be cultural differences, there may be underlying psychology as well. Do we know?
But the question seems to boil down to "how many children who are *really* transgender are we willing to let suffer potentially suicidal levels of anguish and depression in order to avoid an unknown but by current accounts relatively minimal health risk to 'confused' cis children with temporary use of puberty blockers", do I have that approximately right?
I am still waiting to see how much these therapies actually reduce suicide rates. It's been a point of contention here, and I've yet to see compelling evidence to show there's major long-term reductions. My point also is that this goes both ways, and expanding HRT/etc programs beyond their current scope (of 0.01% or so) may have equally suicidal outcomes for the likely much larger marginally trans community that ages and has to deal with detrans dysphoria later on.
I do not consider your hand-waving of detrans issues to be appropriate. Their anguish is no less severe than the "in the wrong body" issues suffered by trans people. Even with the current ~0.01% selectivity we have, we see a significant minority of detrans popping up.
Just because you personally are 100% trans does not mean everyone who self-identifies is as well. How many are full-trans, how many are just genderqueer or fluid, how many will shift from trans to another non-trans or quasi-trans identity as they age?
I'm also still waiting for actual hard science showing PBs are truly "just temporary" / "just a pill bro" in otherwise healthy adolescents, as well as HRTs longitudinally being just peachy. I have extreme skepticism that you can totally overhaul the endocrine system for life without issue, given how many issues people have from minor endocrine dysfunction (and it's got that whole cutting edge medicine thing going on too), but it takes decades to collect data on that, and we have such vanishingly small pre-current HRT test subjects to collect on.
