We are allowing children and young adults the ability to change their physical appearance and gender earlier and earlier and because it is such a divisive issue we can't have an open discussion about it.
We will have to wait for a couple of decades to see what the fallout will be when these youngsters have had time to reflect. Only then will we know whether this approach is right or wrong or somewhere in the middle.
The result, I fear, will be more suicide—and there's already plenty of that going on.
I shall avoid tying this to any specific debate, but the extreme body modification advocates are clearly involved.
Most people—including myself at times—choose the beliefs that chime with their gut instincts, forgetting, of course, that these gut instincts (like their very bodies) were honed hundreds of thousands of years ago and tailored to survival in a life very different to that we now experience.
Both the for and against mobs desperately
want to be right, because they feel deeply that the conclusions we as a society reach will bolster/wound their sense of self-identity.
It's relatively easy to disagree about, say, art, science or history, but it's much more challenging when the point of debate is whether one of the debaters is mentally ill, dangerous to youth, or an acceptable member of society. In fact, when art, science or history brush up against such notions of self-identity, these subjects become very much more contentious, and the scientific method, boundaries of historiography, and sense of aesthetics often get left behind somewhat: there's a hierarchy of importance, and modern society has rather egotistically thrust personal identity to the apex.
Personally, I'm trying to bear all this in mind more often, but my man-ape brain is constantly lobbying to seductively simplify complex issues, maximise free time, and generally keep life safe and predictable.