How is it different? They’re all safe, minimally invasive, reversible procedures who’s long term effects are well understood. If anything, puberty blockers are less safe than the examples I’ve given here. But even if that weren’t true, it’s not the point. The issue here is consent. We have consent laws for very good reason and the idea that treating adults and children different is discriminatory would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous.

As I said, consent laws are imperfect. You’re right, I don’t know what it’s like to feel that my body doesn’t match my internal experience. I completely support the rights of trans people to choose how they live their lives. The only question is when are people mature enough to make these choices? At what age should a child be able to decide on medical interventions? 16 is the age we’ve decided on for all kinds of major life decisions. Of course there are mature 14 year olds and immature 18 year olds for which these laws don’t work perfectly. It isn’t reasonable to throw out the entire concept of age consent because of this fact.