I was just talking about regular trans people with my post
And that's where most decent people come from on the subject. It's certainly where I came from. An attitude of "if it doesn't hurt anyone, why shouldn't they be allowed to live how they like". And that is still how the majority here think and should do. The difference is the realisation that there's something else going on here that exploits that preconception. I apologise for the amount of blow-back that you've received in this thread. I think your reaction is most people's reaction. But if you had read the thread you'd have seen very little of it is to do with that. There's even a term for it: "Peak Trans". The moment someone goes from "trans people should be allowed to live as they wish" to "wait - this TRA knocked a sixty year old woman to the ground and began kicking her because she said he was a man? And the court reduced his fine because in the court she called her attacker 'him'?" or "this 8 year old girl has been told by adults that she has a 'boy brain' because she likes cars?" or "lesbians have been banned from a pride march because they said that they're only attracted to actual women?" There's a lot going on here. Again, I'm sorry for the blow-back you've gotten. I think many are frustrated with how the TRA movement uses a camouflage of "we just want to live our lives" to cover what is, I use these terms with full awareness, child abuse, conversion therapy and misogyny. Like, actual misogyny - not the "this female cleaner doesn't get paid the same as this male computer programmer" misogyny.
I totally agree that carrying out medical procedures when someone is too young to tell if they are really trans is probably not a good idea. People keep saying the thread is about that but there are tons of posts that aren't.
I don't think there are tonnes of posts. I recall a couple from someone. And I shut them down hard. The post you actually quoted by Orionaut said he shouldn't be under legal obligation to "pander to his insanity." That's not inaccurate when you have someone like Morgane Oger suing you because you said he was a man. Orionaut also said he should be able to refuse them access to your kids. That's again reasonable if you look at what groups like Mermaids are actually targeting at children (covered previously).
The thread has on the whole been gratifyingly on topic.
I don't think it's known what causes gender dysphoria but I think that one theory is it that it's caused by being affected by too much of the opposite hormones while in the womb, that sounds plausible to me.
It correlates very strongly with autism. As does anorexia - another body dysmorphia disorder. There's no evidence it's due to any imbalance of "opposite hormones" in the womb. It also disproportionately affects young girls, like anorexia. And like anorexia whilst it doesn't necessarily entirely go away, it does typically go into remittance in adult life reflecting people becoming more comfortable with their bodies. Around 80% of trans identified children stop defining as trans later on. This rate drops to near 0% for those who are put on clinical pathways and medical intervention, however.
GD is also not the majority of TRAs. Most GD people are quite reserved and just want to be left to live their life how they want. The majority of TRAs in my experience are AG. I.e. auto-gynephile. Unlike Gender Dysphoria this typically manifests in later life and the AGs I've known (three personally, the rest of my opinion is informed by the online Trans movement), are very manipulative and aggressive. The difference between AGs and GDs is stark.
Its likely that there isn't just one cause for people identifying as being other than their biological sex or presenting in a non typical gender fashion.
It's not surprising that there doesn't appear to be much recent research into the actual causes of the above given the political fallout that would follow if the findings pointed to the 'wrong' conclusions.
A number of academics have suffered serious career consequences for looking into topics that the trans lobby don't like. In particular de-transitioning. This thread has quite a few examples.
And the apparent massive over representation of m2f identifying people who also identify as being 'lesbian' (even whilst retaining male genetalia in many cases) hence we have the scenario where cis lesbian women are told they are being transphobic for stating they will not have sexual relations with m2f identyfying people.
An example of the above is the rather infamous YouTube poster Riley Dennis.
All of your post is spot on, but this part in particular gets overlooked.
Again, there's little objection to what you've said, Strife, other than where you've characterised the thread as having a lot of bigotry in it. Which naturally we do object to. I seriously request that you go back to near the start and read some of it properly to see where we are coming from.