Maybe Bluesky has "won"

> There are also extremes on both sides that should be recognized and rejected as such.

"No right to continue existing" is obviously an extreme that doesn't need to be entertained. But the existence of that extreme is used to argue that anything short of full endorsement of everything labeled a right is that extreme of denial of the right to exist, which is patently false.

A less extreme formulation that regularly gets lumped in with "no right to continue to exist" is: Some people are born with various shades of physical differences that lead to different mental and emotional states. Those who are different from the majority deserve our love and support, but we should attempt to provide that support in a way that doesn't encourage people to self-diagnose with these very real diversities when they don't, in fact, have them. It's a tricky balance to maintain and one that we hope we can get right, but when it comes to sweeping cultural change it's better to move slowly and observe the outcomes carefully. In the meantime we should try as hard as possible to support those who we do identify as being truly divergent.

I'm willing to bet that a substantial number of people reading the position described above will be unable to distinguish it from "no right to continue to exist", and therein lies the problem.

Your attempt at nuanced discussion falls apart when the context is about whether people should be expected to stay somewhere by "blocking and moving on" comments suggesting they go cease existing.

What you're failing to recognize (to a point that at least appears bad faith) is that it is the extremes here.

This is exactly what I'm warning against. Refusing to see that it's not that simple is why Trump's anti-trans smear campaign works so well. The best thing we can do for trans rights is acknowledge that we recognize it as a complicated issue that needs to be worked through carefully, but internet rhetoric invariably breaks it down into extremes. Given two extremes as the only options, we shouldn't be surprised when people pick the one we wouldn't prefer.

My comments here will be labeled transphobic by a lot of people, to the point where if I weren't writing under a pseudonym I wouldn't write them at all. Never mind that I'm an ally—the fact that I'm the kind of ally that calls out a counterproductive theory of change for what it is makes me an enemy in the current environment, and that is why we're seeing a regression on the national level. Cassandras like me have been warning about this for years now, and it's high time we're heard rather than pushed out of the tent.

There are a lot of well-meaning well-intentioned people who do great harm. The adage "the path to hell is paved with good intentions" exists as an observation of this.

I've done more to advance LGBT acceptance by quietly listening to people in deep red states and then (after listening to them!) helping them to see the other perspective than 100 internet commenters raging about how everything comes down to extremes.

You can label me whatever you like, but I'm going to keep up my approach, because it's obvious that the mainstream left's approach is a total failure.

What diversities are you talking about here?

For things like autism and ADHD I see very few people suggesting that self-diagnosis is reliable.

For gender and sexuality, there isn't a test for that, what do you expect people to do? From there, being cis or trans, straight or gay is a direct consequence of gender+body or sexuality+body. Do you think there's a significant rate of false positives for trans/bi/gay? I haven't seen evidence of that being the case.

Do you have something else in mind?

I expect kids to be given a chance to go through puperty before being encouraged to make permanent changes to their bodies. Teemagers in general are still finding themselves and usually have opinions differrent from those they will have when grown up.

> Do you think there's a significant rate of false positives for trans/bi/gay? I haven't seen evidence of that being the case.

Perhaps that's because you have shielded yourself from it. This is exactly the problem with (social media) bubbles, both ones created urself with excessive blocklists and more systematic manipulation of what can be shared.

Nobody's doing permanent changes to kids that haven't gone through the age of puberty. Sometimes blockers are used to delay the effect of puberty itself, but those are the opposite of a permanent change.

And as far as my question goes, that just pushes the it down the line by a few years.

> Perhaps that's because you have shielded yourself from it. This is exactly the problem with (social media) bubbles

Well I've never seen someone try to put together even a couple detailed anecdotal examples either. And there are a lot of flat out lies that get spread and even get on the news so I'm not going to accept a vague claim of "it happens".