ah, perfect - thanks for helping me better understand 😊

And additionally I want to affirm what you're saying, it makes complete sense; and it's unfortunately still a dominant view at least among US adults that transitioning is inherently immoral:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/645704/slim-majority-adults-say-changing-gender-morally-wrong.aspx

(As a side note: I'm only using this Gallup poll because it's what I'm familiar with - if there are similar polls conducted in Australia, the EU, China, and other regions, I would be happy to learn more! It's not my desire or intent to be so US-centric.)

When I realized I was trans, my position was that transitioning was a selfish act and in a sense I considered it immoral in the ways that it was selfish (like forcing people to refer to you with pronouns that aren't natural or easy for them to use for you, or asking for them to accommodate your gender identity by referring to you by a new name).

In the end I changed my position rather dramatically, particularly once I realized: 1. being trans is not a choice, and 2. transitioning radically impacts your well-being and by transitioning you are far more likely to be a healthy and functioning member of society.

Now ironically I believe repressing and not transitioning are the more anti-social choices and cause not only harm to yourself, but to others who are impacted by you.

I was reading about Kenneth Zucker's patients who he claims to have helped to "overcome gender dysphoria" through conversion therapy:

Yet Zucker’s approach has its own disturbing elements. It’s easy to imagine that his methods—steering parents toward removing pink crayons from the box, extolling a patriarchy no one believes in—could instill in some children a sense of shame and a double life. A 2008 study of 25 girls who had been seen in Zucker’s clinic showed positive results; 22 were no longer gender-dysphoric, meaning they were comfortable living as girls. But that doesn’t mean they were happy. I spoke to the mother of one Zucker patient in her late 20s, who said her daughter was repulsed by the thought of a sex change but was still suffering—she’d become an alcoholic, and was cutting herself. “I’d be surprised if she outlived me,” her mother said.

The reality is that conversion therapy and repression leads to higher rates of suicides, drug abuse, self-harm, depression, anxiety, and other unwanted outcomes - which then translates to greater costs to our social and medical systems and lost opportunity for a person who would otherwise have integrated into society as a healthy and contributing adult.

My productivity at work significantly improved as a result of transition, and I would imagine it's that way for others ... To that end, I would think if conservatives were more grounded in the empirical evidence, they would see that transitioning helps trans people live in ways that conservatives themselves would approve of, and maybe the viewpoint would shift that transitioning is actually the morally superior option, and repression is actually the anti-social and immoral alternative.