You know, I have no qualms about this topic coming back, but did it have to happen like that?

@haily_merry
Didn't read the whole thread because I find it quite disappointing that people here are being as judgemental and misinformed as they are.  I'm gay, and through that I've known a few trans people and have a few trans friends, some of whom work at Microsoft, and I just thought it might be worth trying to counteract some of this negativity.

Being gay isn't the same, but it got better for me once I was out, and for my trans friends it got better for them once they transitioned, so hang in there and ignore the "there are only two science-recognized genders" and the "but conversion therapy can help" and do it.  I won't lie, there's going to be people you won't talk to anymore, and there might be friends you'll lose and maybe even family members who won't want to talk to you, but there is a far side to being LGBT for most of us where being out of the closet and just doing it works out, and it doesn't mean being miserable forever.

201: nope.
From what I've seen, modern science now recognizes more than two genders. There have been studies, can't remember where as at the time, I didn't pay too much attention, but there have, indeed, been studies.

201: Kleinfelter's? Not sure how you spell it.
More accurately, the decoupling of gender and sex has made it hard to science gender at all. In terms of biological sex, science says there are two by default, but exceptions happen (not just birth abnormalities, but chromasomally as well). Then you have the many, many situations historically in which males were castrated, to the point that there are rather old terms like Eunuch and Castrato to refer to these. (there are rather old terms for transgender people, for that matter, old enough to have built up connotations that pushed them off the euphamism treadmill.)

And that doesn't even get into the endocrine shenanigans that can happen long after birth, or the neurological stuff before and after, and we still haven't gotten to the individual and their personal experience.

TLDR: the "i" in "lgbtqia++" stands for a scientific term.

Conversion therapy is one of those things that will bring out a torrent of rage in me, so I'll try to keep this brief. You know what those so-called practices all have in common? They don't convert a person so much as they strip away their humanity, and quite literally beat the person into submission. I can't for the life of me recall the name of the book I read a few years back which dealt with this. Fictional though it was, it was a really shocking story about teens who were sent to one of those pray the gay away camps, which do, in fact, exist. After a lot of pseudo psychology, manipulation, physical and even sexual abuse by the staff, one kid has enough and kills the director. There's a whole love story where two girls fall for each other even within the confines of that place, too, but I just can't remember what it was called. I probably blocked it out, but it was seriously fucked up. It's not much different than those so-called boot camps which were popular in the 90's where parents sent their troubled teens to "straighten them out." Little wonder that many "survivors" of such places never lived to see much beyond an even more tormented existence, seeing as how the suicide rate was so high. I fell down a rabbit hole in the mid-2000's when I was first discovering the internet when I read a lot of those kinds of stories. I hated every second of it, but I couldn't stop once I'd started.

Moderation:
Joshknnd1982, go ahead and consider this a warning.

Look. We've made it clear over and over and over again that some "opinions" are essentially personal attacks. I'd say post 201 definitely qualifies.
You took pains to explain how science only recognizes two genders, ignoring the fact that sex and gender are not the same thing. You hand-waved the fact that some animals change sex because they're not human, and...well, I guess humans aren't animals, or something? Then you tried the "just be who you are, because so-and-so programmed you this way" defense. That doesn't work either. Clearly, you are not transgender and don't seem to suffer from any form of dysphoria, so you don't get what it's like. Be happy that you're well off in this regard, but do not shove your viewpoint down someone else's throat when this person has clearly gotten a lot of needless flak already. Oh, right, and don't equate transitioning to conversion therapy. The two are not at all alike.
Top it all off, but you had to revive an old and virtually dead topic to say all of this? I'm not sure what you were hoping to achieve, and I'm not going to argue with you further.
Save yourself further shame, as you've already seemingly torched people's opinion of you. Just don't respond in here again. Don't try and defend yourself on this point. Go do something else, and maybe keep your transphobia away from the forum.

Conversion therapy was also shown slightly in Riverdale. It's something that I don't really want to get into fully, but lets just say for those who still aren't convinced, there's a reason, other than politics, that its banned in a bunch of states.

Just to add onto 209, there is a condition known as androgen insensitivity syndrome. People with this condition are genetically male, but fail to respond to male hormones to varying degrees. This results in a spectrum from mostly male with slight female characteristics, to completely female in the case of complete insensitivity, with people in the middle being considered intersex because they can't really be classified as male and female due to a combination of traits. There are other examples as well, but the point is even just biological sex isn't always as straight forward as some people make it out to be, no matter how badly some people want it to be purely binary. It's kind of like the religious people who say homosexuality isn't natural and then just ignore all the cases of it occurring in various animal species. So what really defines being male or female? Sure your underlying genome won't change, but can a 46XY person who is phenotypically entirely female really be considered male? If you really go into it, the outward things that people usually use to classify people can be changed, so for all practical purposes males can become females and females can become males.

@214
I have never seen someone change their mind on these issues because someone argued it with them.  The information is out there for anyone who wants to look for it,and even the most cursory searches will turn it up, but that means that the other party has to be approaching it from a point of learning and not a point of defending their position, at which point saying something isn't necessary.

The flip side is that having the argument means that anyone else watching this who isn't secure in themselves and is still coming to terms with the fact that half the world hates them now also has yet another place to see the hatred in one place.  This is also primarily a site of minors and people in more vulnerable positions, which means that the science/religion ping pong that doesn't ever change minds has a lot of ways to cause damage.  Damage which we will probably never find out about, since it's the sort of damage that'll just cause people to stay quiet for fear of starting another thread like this one.  It takes a while to develop the skin necessary to let things roll off.

So: to you, and to everyone else who might be tempted to play defense by directly addressing people with anti-LGBT viewpoints, please consider whether that's really helping.  Words of encouragement or a "I'm gay/trans/etc too" or what have you likely go a lot further than science/religion ping-pong.

I don't think I've ever found myself wanting to see a thread get closed before, but I think there might be an argument to be made for closing this one.  I don't see how it can go anywhere good.

I don't get the it is wrong to transition people. I literally can't see any good reasons why you would think that. Nope. Let people liv there lifes however they choose. Quit jutching people by there seksuality, collor and so on. Jutch people by there personality and the world would be a far better place. That is what I believe in anyway.

I honestly think closing the thread might be a good idea at this point. I'm not going to delete it because I'm hoping some of it could help someone in my position, but at this point I'm not sure if anything good can come of it being open. There's just not enough of us on here for us to really have a good discussion beyond what we've already seen here.
Something I'd like to say though. I do know someone who was born male, but didn't produce testosterone naturally so had to have it on medication. This person would later come out as MTF. Just something to think about. Sex and gender aren't as black and white as you might think.