Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Affirming 4 kidz.

How do otherwise reasonable adults convince themselves that maiming teenagers is a good idea?

With many individuals, I’d be tempted to ascribe it to a tendency to outsource moral judgement, in this case deferring to some authority who has deemed trans “rights” to be a “progressive” cause. Once somebody higher up the food chain has blessed it, they don’t have think about it any more themselves; they can climb aboard the bandwagon with a clear conscience and an empty head. Once the bandwagon starts rolling faster and farther, passing ethical and prudential boundaries one might have baulked at, it becomes harder to get off without seriously lacerating your ego, and/or social relations. Before too long, you find yourself defending the absurd and horrific.

That’s for the passengers. As far as those driving the bandwagon, the ones setting the course and privy to the secrets they know they need to hide from everyone else, I have no explanation to offer, apart from wilfull ignorance. It can’t be lack of information: they have internalized the rules of self-censorship and rewording too well to be able to feign not knowing. Nobody writes a story about abortion that doesn’t use the the word “woman” by accident.

It’s a political fad encouraged by political enthusiasts and enforced by political bullies…and promoted by political idiots like NPR.

Calling them “kids” is 1. part of the toe-curling folksiness and forced intimacy that NPR is so devoted to, and 2. careful avoidance of admitting that the “trans kids” are children.

That faux folksiness also helps hide the politicization and the horror of what they are defending and promoting. They’ve chosen a side and they’re trying to put the best polish on it that they can. They have to know exactly what they’re doing in order to do that as well as they do. In the meantime they’re running interference for fetishists touting the mutilation and sterilization of children, and helping them camouflage themselves by agreeing to portray it as calling it “social justice.”