It's no coincidence that we see a massive simultaneous roll-out of the "transgender issue."
Scholastic has launched a variety of books dealing with "gender-non-conforming children" within a week of Bruce Jenner announcing he will be starring in a new TV reality series where he transitions to a woman. Jenner did not 'realize' he was a woman, he was simply given a casting proposition like the tool of an actor that he is. The show was already planned long in advance of any decision by Jenner to undergo surgery. They just needed someone willing to cast the role.
Enter Jenner, Stage Left.
Books take months to well over a year to bring from concept to editing to the first print edition, inventory run-ups, and distribution.
This is all a contrived issue that was engineered for us to talk about and argue over.
That is the bottom line to that. There is suddenly a bunch of to-do over it because there was a bunch of to-do engineered to become part of lunchroom conversation across the nation.
As for my take on it?
"Gender Non-Conformity" is a mental disorder. No ands ifs or buts about it. I don't believe people should be forcibly subjected to treatment programs or that they should be ostracized from society per se, but there is a neurological pathology at play.
This is why homosexuals and 'gender-non-conforming' individuals are prone to suicide. It has very little to do with how they are treated in society and virtually everything to do with the fact that these people have deep psychological and neurological issues that, frequently, stem from abusive situations as a child. The number of cases where there is a legitimate genetic issue at play are in the extreme minority.
If a grown man wants to have surgery to look like a woman and he wants to dress like a woman - that's his prerogative. He does not, however, get to claim to be a woman for legal documents and other such things. We have to set some standards, and the legal definition of *** can be established by our genetics. What that person 'feels' about the issue is irrelevant. If we put his DNA in for analysis, he's a male and the princess can file his complaint with nature.
As the OP states - if I can't make myself into a black boy from the hood on the operating table, then you certainly can't become a woman through surgery, either.
While I have no problems with someone 'swapping race,' either - the reason that all hell will break loose is because the special interest groups will literally break down. The race-based narrative will implode as various racial supremacist groups (such as CAIR, Black Lives Matter, the Black Panthers, etc) will end up turning violent towards those suspected of being 'transracial.'
Since I don't care about what race someone is, it doesn't really bother me if one day the guy who used to be an Asian is suddenly a short Russian. I may not think it's a good idea to do that to one's self, but I don't really have to change how I interact with that person at all, because the only thing that changed was their face - and people do that all the time with makeup or just by choosing to shave after growing a beard.
For people who have nothing to their arguments but "my race is a victim" - it's a huge issue as only the pure among their race can truly be the victims. There is already a rift growing between 'mixed' races and 'pure' races that are obsessed with the issue.
The biggest issue I have is how the subject matter is being directed at children.
*** and one's ideas of it are something that -develops- within children, usually starting at puberty and continuing into young adulthood. Surveys have shown that more than half of the individuals who identify as being homosexual during their teenage years end up in stable heterosexual relationships 20 years later.
During early years of development - physical intimacy is a natural concept to explore and is often somewhat intimidating and frightening. Teenagers going through puberty are likely to choose people they trust to enter into intimate exploration of the body. This is nothing new and has been going on for thousands of years. The insistence by certain elements of society that sexuality is this fixated thing determined at birth is simply not supported by any scientific research or field observation.
What is damaging is when parents spend their time trying to figure out "if my kid is gay" or "is in the closet" - or whatever. Rather than allowing their child to go through the natural stages of sexual development, they intrude and try to fill their kid full of the idea that they "are" or "might be" something. This turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy where the parents who seem to be all giddy over the idea of having a homosexual child end up with a child who seeks their favor through becoming homosexual.
Likewise, the subject applies to transgender - actually, even worse, considering parents are often counseled to agree with their child at every turn regardless of the context.
For example - when I was a child, I wanted to imitate my mother. She was an adult figure I spent a lot of time with. When she painted her nails - it was only through the simple desire to imitate that I also wanted to do the same. My mother gave me a clear primer polish that I'd paint on myself and just about everything else like a kid did.
My parents didn't suspect I was "a girl in a boy's body." They just understood that I was imitating my parents. Wanting to paint my nails was no different in my eyes than wanting to build model train sets with my father. It was a means of connecting with and understanding my parents.
Likewise, when I ran around the house in my mom's high-heels, it was simply to be goofy and garner attention. It was not some expression of some 'hidden girl' or the like. I was always a goof ball and my antics in my mom's high heals were no more a clue to being a girl in a boy's body than my flashing of my cousins was an indication that I wanted to become a stripper.
The problem with this child-focused trans-agenda is that it tries to plant into parents the suspicion that their child is one of these 'special' cases. Every parent thinks their kid is special. This is why autism diagnosis skyrocketed in response to media coverage of it as well as things like ADD and ADHD.
Rather than turning people into hypochondriacs on themselves, they become hypochondriacs for their children and diagnose them with everything from ADD to Gender-non-conformity before they've been weened.
People shouldn't be allowed to talk about what gender or sexuality they are until they are 25.
Then they can start having an opinion. Until then, everyone just needs to shut up and not worry about trying to figure out 'who is gay' or 'who is a transgendered homo-homogenized robot-cyborg from Malachor VII.' Let people figure out what the hell is going on with their bodies, have some time to learn about the opposite *** that they may not have had a whole lot of contact with, and gain a little bit of independence.
THEN we can start trying to figure out who is in what closet with miss scarlet with the lead pipe like the voyeuristic pervs we are.