Also, like… so what if they are? Maybe it really is “just a phase” or whatever the fuck else someone wants to dismissively ascribe any behavior to.

Does that really mean the kid is any less deserving of the attention, connection, and understanding ear they are clearly crying out for? Is ignoring, shunning, or otherwise socially punishing them really the best way to address it?

Like you said, there are much easier ways to get attention. If someone is willing to claim to be trans just for the attention, then they are in serious need of a better support structure in their lives. Giving them shit for it isn’t going to help anything.

The other part of the lie is how hypocritically inconsistent the ideas are applied as well.

Government should stay out of our private relationships! Unless you’re both the same sex.

Government should let us live how we want! Unless you’re trans.

Government shouldn’t interfere with religious liberty! Unless you’re Muslim.

You apparently only get to exercise personal liberty if you fit their narrow view of how they think it should be done.

Unless you’re a profit-generating enterprise I guess, then you can do whatever the fuck you want as long as the shareholders are happy. And we better not let big scary government interfere with that.

I mean, yeah… That’s exactly what people are trying to tell you. Because saying, “This type of thing weakens people” and citing your own personal experience as evidence sure doesn’t sound like you’re open to “alternate approaches.”

Ah, classic.

“This is the way I was raised and I turned out alright, so it must be the only correct way to parent.”

Eh, I understand where you’re coming from, but the reality is that not everyone is going to be willing to tell a group of peers “no.” We want to teach our kids that it’s okay to do so, and we want to instill enough self-confidence in them to do it, but peer pressure is real and it’s powerful, especially to young people.

Offering an alternative way for them to get out of an uncomfortable situation doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me. We can work on building boundary-setting as a skill while also acknowledging that it takes time to build it.

For the physical part? A couple cents per phone sold.

But it’s also one less part for for the circuit board designers to accomodate in their ever-shrinking layouts, one less part to inventory, track, and warehouse, one less behavior to verify by Q&A, one less SW and/or HDL code module to maintain, etc etc etc. When you look at the entire design, verification, and manufacturing process, multiplied by millions of units, every part and behavior carries a cost.

There are plenty of valid reasons to crap on the major phone manufacturers, especially when they take away features and capabilities we like. But “it’s just one small part” usually isn’t one of them.