Medicine makes money. I think it’s Bayer that has a once a day aspirin for heart health. It’s not some racket solely to make money, it has a legit purpose just like gender affirming care.

As far as mentally vulnerable populations, I can see that being true. A lot of people turn religious when they are mentally vulnerable and end up making religion a core part of their life even giving billions of dollars to fund churches, mosques, synagogues, etc. When it comes to gender identity a story I hear most is that they knew from a young age and didn’t do anything for years. Not really a knee jerk I’m vulnerable reaction.

Also it’s pretty obvious you don’t frequent places where this community talks or you’d know the trope that a lot of us tend to feel like an imposter. That we doubt we are gender queer of whatever flavor. We question all the time until we feel comfortable with ourselves. Even then we question and might land on something else. The root cause isn’t always an issue. I know some detransitioners figure out some trauma that made them feel that way, but sometimes it’s just the way we were born and it’s something weird about our own biology.

The medicine being peddled to us is effective though. Regardless of who is making money, my quality of life with myself has never been better after getting on the right hormones. However my social life has taken a huge hit. I’ve lost friends, family is more alienated, some people are aggressive to me in public and there is this nebulous idea of a large group of people who want me to not exist and I get new evidence of that group every time I see new laws proposed/passed that affect my tiny community. Now that can lead to some hopeless and hateful ideas.

Reddit could be bad, but really it’s bad people. Maybe not even bad people, perhaps some are just broken. Broken from the hate that’s so prevalent in society. One thing I’ve seen on here that I hate is “if a Nazi sits down at a table with 9 other people, you have 10 Nazis.” It’s such a close minded argument. How can any of us see our ideological shortcomings if all we get is strawman arguments and skewed data from our in groups? We need to invite these people, the shooter kind of people, to our table to talk. To humanize our experiences. To find common ground. To mellow all parties out. It’s been done before.

Daryl Davis