What I'm about to say is going to result in a lot of people getting upset. I say, "Good." If you read what I'm about to say and think, "Hey, that asshole is talking about me!" I don't want you around.
This might mystify a few people; but, there's a good reason why good people press activists on the question of surgical alterations made on physically healthy children who claim to be of the opposite gender. It's a good idea to set the parameters of a discussion. There's nothing wrong with asking a person where he or she is gonna draw a line. There is something seriously wrong with people refusing to give answers about where they personally stand.
I do think that the most evil people in modern American politics are the activists and so-called allies of the trans community who refuse to give straight answers about bottom surgery on kids. Yes, they are worse than people who answer in the affirmative. Yes, they're worse than out and proud racists. I'm gonna explain why in detail.
It's no lie that activists are pushing for transitions to happen at younger and younger ages. It's no lie that activists are trying to remove an actual diagnosis of gender dysphoria as a factor. It's not an exaggeration to say that large swaths of activists believe the lie that hormone therapies can be flipped off like a switch if the kid decides that he or she doesn't want to transition. Hoards of trans activists have slandered Abigail Shrier as transphobic because of her book Irreversible Damage. Hell, I was attacked for even daring to read the book. Even the ACLU has released statements trying to make the book go away.
The thing is, if you are one of those activists who deny that irreversible damage can happen due to children taking hormones, there's a spectrum of how forgivable your stupidity is. A lot of people are lying about this to further their agenda. I can forgive you for believing a person with an MD with an agenda who lied to you. Still, if you're spending enough time on this issue to qualify as an activist, your perpetuation of the lie becomes less forgivable. How can you be an activist on this issue and not know that Blaire White was mislead by her doctors and was permanently (irreversibly) sterilized against her wishes, or that a fifteen-year-old trans boy in New Zealand was already going through menopause? The thing is, I know that a lot of the activists do know. The thing is, most of the activists only care about the well-being of trans people who toe a political line. Blaire White is trans; but, she's not useful to the activists politically; so, her suffering doesn't matter.
Still, so long as genital mutilation is still off the table, the activists still have a certain level of plausible deniability. Maybe those activists who insist that everything short of genital mutilation is completely reversible aren't evil or lying -- they could just be a perfect combination of stupid and irresponsible.
Still, when we are asking the question, "Where do you personally draw the line? When you've won all of the other battles and the last fight is about whether or not we should surgically alter the genitals of children, where will you stand?" you have no excuse to not answer that question. Children are already going under the knife for just about every other "gender affirming" surgery available. This isn't a slippery slope argument or some straw man, we're trying to establish where you stand.
If you're one of those people who refuses to give a straight answer concerning where you stand on bottom surgery for kids, you're evil. The possibility that you just bought into a lie that this is all reversible goes out the window if you start suggesting that bottom surgery on children should be a thing. You are worse than racists because racists generally have the balls to tell the truth. Racists may hold disgusting beliefs; but, at least they might not know that what they believe is evil and wrong.
If you're the kind of person who dances around the subject of mutilating children's genitals, I have every reason to believe that you're at least okay with it. What's more, the fact that you won't say it shows that you know that it's evil and that you support it and you're lying to get a policy that you know is evil enacted.
Basically, you're scum. You need to be told that you're scum.