What do you reckon is the reason for the increase in gay kids in the west after the decriminalization of homosexuality in most western countries? Hint: it's the decriminalization and social acceptance allowing gay people to come out of the closet rather than having to pretend they're straight for fear of consequences.
The kids aren't being transed. I know there are several mostly British authors having extremely loud voices spreading FUD about "rapid onset gender dysphoria" but that's not even a thing. It's based on a paper that used answers from parents about trans kids. Follow-up research has demonstrated that to the kids it was anything but rapid. You might as well invent a phenomenon of "rapid onset body size" to explain why grandparents will insist "how can you already be so big, it feels like you were a tiny baby only such a short while ago".
You're overthinking this, but to ease your mind: people aren't undergoing HRT and surgery because all the cool kids are doing it. They might experiment with neopronouns and gender identity labels for a bit but there's literally no demonstrable harm in that.
Also if you think identity politics is a new thing: US politicians literally put God on the dollar bills to appeal to Christian conservatives (prior to that the national motto was always "E pluribus unum", not "In God we trust"). We just don't tend to think of things as identity politics when we take the identity for granted.
EDIT: That you see more trans people is a good thing actually. Visibility is the result of social acceptance. And social acceptance is the biggest contributor to reducing suicidality and improving quality of life. Trans people haven't been killing themselves because they're trans, they've been killing themselves because everyone kept telling them they're not. You can't trans a kid any more than you can make them gay.
It's the proper way to treat depression caused by social rejection, which is as I understand it the bulk of the motivation for suicide among trans people.
Your argument would be valid if I didn't qualify the context. I wasn't talking about depression and at no point did I indicate that I was.
Also the proper way to treat depression is to identify the underlying cause, which can be simply rooted in brain chemistry but can also be environmental.
If you're suicidal because your family and social circles reject you for who you are and society in general treats you unfavorably and you are constantly harassed or fetishized by strangers, the problem isn't your brain chemistry.
The question isn't whether or not to treat gender dysphoria as a mental disorder (though in part, of course that is a question too, though one that seems to have been settled) but whether social rejection and harassment are harmful or helpful for trans people. And I'm saying evidence shows it's incredibly harmful and drastically increases suicidality and decreases quality of life (because otherwise social acceptance wouldn't measurably have the opposite effect).
If your concern is health (and mental health) outcomes, not making sure people stick to the gender and presentation they grew up with, the best course of action for trans people seems to be to accept them for who they say they are and make them feel welcome and valid.
There are of course other arguments against accepting trans people but those can be disproven separately and there's no reason to shift the goal posts if we're just talking about suicidality and quality of life.
PS: Of course trans people can also be depressed independently of their transness and in that case they will need to be treated for depression as well. But the specific suicidality rate that is talked about with regard to trans people seems to be evidently linked to their social acceptance, which tracks with other groups. Alan Turing was literally driven to suicide because he was sentenced to chemical castration for not being able to deny being gay.
The kids aren't being transed. I know there are several mostly British authors having extremely loud voices spreading FUD about "rapid onset gender dysphoria" but that's not even a thing. It's based on a paper that used answers from parents about trans kids. Follow-up research has demonstrated that to the kids it was anything but rapid. You might as well invent a phenomenon of "rapid onset body size" to explain why grandparents will insist "how can you already be so big, it feels like you were a tiny baby only such a short while ago".
You're overthinking this, but to ease your mind: people aren't undergoing HRT and surgery because all the cool kids are doing it. They might experiment with neopronouns and gender identity labels for a bit but there's literally no demonstrable harm in that.
Also if you think identity politics is a new thing: US politicians literally put God on the dollar bills to appeal to Christian conservatives (prior to that the national motto was always "E pluribus unum", not "In God we trust"). We just don't tend to think of things as identity politics when we take the identity for granted.
EDIT: That you see more trans people is a good thing actually. Visibility is the result of social acceptance. And social acceptance is the biggest contributor to reducing suicidality and improving quality of life. Trans people haven't been killing themselves because they're trans, they've been killing themselves because everyone kept telling them they're not. You can't trans a kid any more than you can make them gay.