It all came to a head for me when I saw someone pitch a hypothetical that said "If there was a button that you could press that could get rid of all your gender dysphoria and made you happy as a "cisgendered" person, would you press it?"
Before the trend hit, when it was just a few freaks on reddit and something awful, and geographically constrained to the Bay area, more than a few truscums said things to the effect of they wish they had such a button. Or things like 'I would happily go around aborting trans babies to spare them this.'
Now most rational people would probably go "yeah why would I want to feel like the only way to be happy is by mutilating my own genitals". Instead, every tranny ever got extremely mad at the question. Not because they said they wouldn't press the magic button, but they were mad at the hypothetical in the first place. Instead of proposing reasons why they wouldn't press the hypothetical magical button that could cure them of depression and the desire for medical intervention to live a perfect life, they started to get mad because such a button was a preposterous proposition. They got mad at a fake magic button rather than defending why they'd choose to not press the Cis button. They would rather choose to be mad over something that didn't exist, rather than argue a case where there's a world where they could have been mentally stable. Imagine a world where cancer patients got mad that someone would dare come up with a "Cure Cancer" button and started poking holes in it rather than saying "fuck yes smash that button".
It's clearly not about dysphoria. They do admit what it is about, but not directly, except for the recent FtMs who are still teenage girls or young females and as such are used to sharing feelings and asking for help.
The same things the FtMs complain about when they desist or just regret out loud as heckin valid pooners are the same things that drove MtFs to troon out.
FtMs were broadsided with males not inherently being privileged and on easy street, but rather judged and if found lacking, are called creepy, ignored, silenced, shit on, and so forth. They are blamed for their loneliness and all of their problems (rightly and wrongly) and even told they're mansplaining to boot.
Men who do speak up about this without putting on womanface, that is, "incels" or "MRAs", who are judged as being creepy for being weak low status males who dare to ask for help and say they're hurt, you know, the start of the incel to troon pipeline, say the exact same things.
By suggesting they 'fix their dysphoria' they have to revert to a state where they're second class at best, forced to fend for themselves, forced to give up the hyperreality of internet friends and support and backpats and attention and care and drama where they're the queen bees, regardless of if their stinger is tucked or cut off. Of course they're going to be furious! Who would want to go from a troon back to an incel? Especially now that they're hormonally fucked up and trained their voice to sound like Kermit.
The vast majority of arguments from internet troons now defend the idea that they choose to be trans without directly saying they're choosing to be trans. The bar for identifying as trans gets pushed lower and lower. You no longer have to feel any dysphoria, any euphoria, any whateverphoria, you can even straight up say you're cisgender and have no desire to transition, but the very next day do it to transparently advance your career (Ollie Thorn, Jim Sterling etc). And I think the bigger voices are scared of setting a line in the sand because if they say anything negative about anything even tangentially related to the trans community, they'll be excommunicated from the community because to them the argument is black and white rather than a complicated array of medical issues.
I think this is also present, but I'm not sure which was more common in the past, and what is more common now. Plenty of blatant cases of doing it for clout or preferential treatment in the criminal justice system can be found all over the forum, of course, but if I'd go deep cover on Internet Safaris and butter up a troon or enby enough that they'd spill the beans, I consistently found out that it's really escaping being treated like shit and pining for the perceived (correctly, it seems!) support and love that the other half gets.
This is probably selection bias: someone who is Very Online has different motivations than a gymbro going gymbrosephina, or a twat facing sex charges trooning out in pretrial, etc.
If trans people wanted to be taken seriously, it would be being pushed as a method to treat a medical condition. I'd actually be willing to accept trans people if the vast majority of them just said "yes, there is something wrong me. The only way I can feel normal is by trooning out. I realise I'm a biological male wanting to be identified differently but unfortunately, that's what's wrong with me and until science comes up with a way to get it out of my brain this is the most effective method of treating me." But it's never about that. It's literally "I'm going to change literally every definition of every word until I, a person who chose to become female yesterday, am treated exactly like a natal woman, and you deserve to die if you say I'm different". They don't seem to realise "YWNBAW" is a warning, not an insult, and are absolutely livid when actual science refutes things (like trans women in sports being superior to cis women because they were born dudes). They can't concede that, like others with disabilities, they can't do everything. So they want to change everything by force. It's like a guy with a wheelchair wanting to enter the 100m with his super charged electric motor scooter.
Indeed, they're escaping their former selves, and realize the longer they stay on the path of trooning, the worse it would be if it ever stopped.
Actual science refuting their shit isn't ever going to be a rational thing.
It's going to be white hot rage and blinding terror at the thought of being even worse than they were before, all while being forced to remember 'the good years' of having attention and support.
The arguments you see from troons wanting kids to transition come from people who believe the qualifying factors for being trans is a verbal statement, rather than any actual feelings, emotions or anything actually wrong with you, and are happy to fuck up kids lives because it's score one for Team Troon.
Perhaps. It validates their own stance and helps them justify the lie to themselves. Or, maybe they really think they're sparing the kids their own pre-transition pain? Even here I'd give the benefit of the doubt given how miserable and lonely they were and how much they fear returning to it. On the other hand, wishing a hyperreality of "internet womanhood" through the lens of a lonely male is fucking sad. So too is a bunch of teenage girls riding the same wave and thinking they're going to be totally privileged confident heckin valid dudes who grill or whatever the fuck.
They won't stop this madness themselves, and, indeed, I believe that whatever will stop it is going to throw them into a state even worse than the one they left. I leave it to the reader to imagine how awful the result of this will be. I will say that regardless of if we can have a soft landing, the only moral thing to do is end this as soon as possible.
Adds to the fact they are absolutely willing to accept anybody that identifies as a slither of trans because it's always been like a sports game where the most people wins. Which makes it funny when you watch how literally every part of their self ID culture falls apart when an event happens like that fat non-binary shooter coming along and faking being non-binary. Then all of a sudden, because they looked bad, they switched.
Indeed, they have to keep the act up, because otherwise they're just incels in e-girl face desperately chasing having any kind of social standing at all.
The instinct to fit in, not be lonely, to have some kind of cohort and friendship, support, and so on, really is a powerful one. To think that so many people have been thrown into this lie is honestly horrifying, but it leads back to them being a symptom (and more recently a cause, yes) of a greater problem.
Liberalism, atomization, victim-or-victimizer ethics, waving pompoms and tooting the horns of the "oppressed", blind eyes to how stupid it all is? Families and communities and friendships destroyed as people are made into consumers who, at most, have contacts and associates in their careers? People without friendship, community, or meaning become stupid and desperate.
Society is failing most people, this is true, but if young people never get a chance except to do this to themselves, it's really clearly failing them pretty badly. For better or worse, the predictable response to this also has a source of meaning for young men and morals for society to follow built right in! Unfortunately, authoritarianism tends to have an even higher body count, even more restrictions on what people can and cannot do, actually is oppressive, and inevitably leads to its own destruction, so the cycle never ends.
Fuck it all.
