This is how it works in many, many cases. For example, look up Susie Green, former CEO of trans charity Mermaids. She's talked about how, as a toddler, her son wanted to wear dresses, play with dolls, and so on.
She initially took this to be a revelation that her son was gay, and, according to her, her husband was very homophobically against this, so they confiscated his toys and told him they're for girls only. So he started telling them that he wants to be a girl, and later became insistent that he is a girl.
This led to him being put on puberty blockers, then cross-sex hormones at 13, and then Green taking him to Thailand at 16 (as such surgery at this age was and is illegal in the UK) to be castrated and have his penis and scrotum made into something that sort of looks like a vulva and vagina.
Which, all in all, is quite an extreme intervention for a boy who just wanted to play with dolls. I think this is child abuse - don't you?
My reading of this was that the author doesn't accept that this is child abuse, but is skeptical that some gender-affirming interventions in children are as safe and effective as are being claimed.
She initially took this to be a revelation that her son was gay, and, according to her, her husband was very homophobically against this, so they confiscated his toys and told him they're for girls only. So he started telling them that he wants to be a girl, and later became insistent that he is a girl.
This led to him being put on puberty blockers, then cross-sex hormones at 13, and then Green taking him to Thailand at 16 (as such surgery at this age was and is illegal in the UK) to be castrated and have his penis and scrotum made into something that sort of looks like a vulva and vagina.
Which, all in all, is quite an extreme intervention for a boy who just wanted to play with dolls. I think this is child abuse - don't you?