It seems to be describing a vidya type experience. Social transition is the game proper. Hormones, surgeries, these are DLC, you gotta keep paying for more content. Eventually there is no more DLC, game is over. Then what?
That's not a bad analogy.
(This may be a little incoherent, I'm out of coffee this morning.)
I think the current plague of young troons is
in part due to people not having that videogame-style list of life objectives previous generations had. You know, the idealized treadmill of
"go to school, get a good job, get promoted, find a girlfriend, get married, get a house, have a couple of kids, get a dog, get a truck when you're 45, have some grandkids, go into retirement" that many of their parents and all their grandparents are on. With the way the world is structured, these people don't really see that as an option. School is brokenly expensive, good jobs are hard to find, they're
definitely not finding any romantic partners, the housing market is awful in most places, etcetera.
If you look at transgender people who transitioned way back, you can very clearly see the distinction between people who were medically diagnosed, underwent therapy, and ended up transitioning as a last resort (those usually kept quiet, too), and those who did it because they were #itsnotafetish #notagp #totallyagirlnow before hashtags were even a thing.
Now, though? If you discount those who developed actual gender dysphoria from traumas and abuse (and those people deserve sympathy and above all good, non-enabling
therapy), you'll see a lot of people who... don't really have anything else to do. They don't really have any long-term objectives. Young people are now filling up that gap with "activism" and politics (the New Religions), gaming (there's a reason speedrunning has exploded recently), chasing popularity, and other hobbies/new careers. Even old men and women who troon out: they almost universally have already
peaked and are looking for something else to do with their lives.
The ones that are the most vulnerable to the transgender meme, though? They find those long-term objectives in the whole process of transitioning. It's long, it's difficult, it's grueling in places, but it has well-defined goalposts that they can freely move when they're too difficult (
"I think I totally pass even with my 5 o'clock shadow!"), it gives them plenty of attention/validation/asspats from other troons, and it makes them feel unique and like they're the underdog.
If transitioning was like so many artists like drawing it, just a matter of stepping into a booth or taking a pill and being the opposite sex five minutes later,
many of them wouldn't do it. It would be a short-term thing, it wouldn't feel satisfying, there wouldn't be any "bravery" and "courage". And even the ones who did take the chance would very quickly realize, as most full transitioners do (whether they admit it or not), that once the novelty and the AGP high wears off you're still just... you. Nothing really changed in their minds, and the dysphoria is still there.
