The key you, (and many people in this thread, I can only reply to one person) are missing is the difference between consent and informed consent.
Children can consent to literally anything, and withdraw their consent at any time. In almost every case, you should respect the wishes of the child. Most of that consent or withdraw is harmless and helps the child establish boundaries and even learn about themselves.
A child is able to consent to participating in ballet classes, however, depending on the maturity of the child, they may not be able to grasp that they are doing irreparable damage to their feet; they might not know chronic illness, they usually don’t have a concept of just how long a human life is. So even if they are told directly, the “informed” part of informed consent needs a deeper understanding of actions and consequences than many children have.
With our current medical understanding (and it will probably be this way for a long long time) the line between being able to give informed consent and uninformed consent is blurred and is straight up different for different scenarios someone is in. We chose 18 in our society by basically picking a number out of a hat. It’s different in different societies and we know for a fact that it’s different person to person.
Consent when it comes to trans or questioning kids has been co-opted by the right so when you question how much someone should be allowed to go on HRT or get gender affirming surgery when they’re young, the knee-jerk assumption is that they’re completely anti-trans. If you look into the trans community there’s still a lot of healthy debate about what lines to draw. We have a lot of research on the effects of something like hormone blockers and it’s generally agreed that they are an effective treatment to young kids questioning their gender that only delays whatever puberty they choose until they can give their full informed consent (ideally after many hours of therapy). When people can give that informed consent is still up in the air.
The key you, (and many people in this thread, I can only reply to one person) are missing is the difference between consent and informed consent.
Children can consent to literally anything, and withdraw their consent at any time. In almost every case, you should respect the wishes of the child. Most of that consent or withdraw is harmless and helps the child establish boundaries and even learn about themselves.
A child is able to consent to participating in ballet classes, however, depending on the maturity of the child, they may not be able to grasp that they are doing irreparable damage to their feet; they might not know chronic illness, they usually don’t have a concept of just how long a human life is. So even if they are told directly, the “informed” part of informed consent needs a deeper understanding of actions and consequences than many children have.
With our current medical understanding (and it will probably be this way for a long long time) the line between being able to give informed consent and uninformed consent is blurred and is straight up different for different scenarios someone is in. We chose 18 in our society by basically picking a number out of a hat. It’s different in different societies and we know for a fact that it’s different person to person.
Consent when it comes to trans or questioning kids has been co-opted by the right so when you question how much someone should be allowed to go on HRT or get gender affirming surgery when they’re young, the knee-jerk assumption is that they’re completely anti-trans. If you look into the trans community there’s still a lot of healthy debate about what lines to draw. We have a lot of research on the effects of something like hormone blockers and it’s generally agreed that they are an effective treatment to young kids questioning their gender that only delays whatever puberty they choose until they can give their full informed consent (ideally after many hours of therapy). When people can give that informed consent is still up in the air.