"The gender equality of feminism causes gender confusion. Gender confusion causes gender dysphoria, which causes the weak minded to want to change their sex."
This has not been established to be the case, so I can't go along with this. Based on the fact we have different gender stereotypes in different cultures, it seems gender is more cultural than innate, making it wholly arbitrary. Gender confusion, then, would only exist because the arbitrary concept of gender exists, and if we decide to throw out that gender concept then we would get rid of the gender confusion. You are also assuming sex changes are 100% the cause of gender confusion, as opposed to a sex-related body dysmorphic disorder, which has to do with a dysfunction in the brain instead of a cultural influence.

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All this aside, I don't really think the government should have a say in what a person wants to do with their body. If someone wants to have a sex change, that's up to them and I don't really give much of a shit because I don't see any reason to. If it's the case of a child, however, it would need to be established that the child has a medical necessity in terms of physical or mental health. We would need more research to really determine the underlying cause of gender dysmorphia (especially if it really is just an arbitrary cultural thing), but until then we DO know that transgender people have a higher suicide rate, so if I happened to be a parent I'd probably lean more towards a sex change for my child because at least they'd still be alive (if we're playing the odds), or come to some kind of compromise (such as HRT but no surgery).

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But should the GOVERNMENT have a say in it? I'm going to step back a bit and say that the government should only step in if you can demonstrate that the parent is harming their child (mentally or physically) by allowing/prohibiting a sex change.

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I think you'll find that a lot of veterans are actually in favor of pacifism. One of the complexities of modern warfare is the civilian component: it's not just a country looking out for its best interests (such as oil), but a growing issue of civilians being targeted by larger and larger terrorist groups. This is where it starts to get iffy. Once we interfere, we also have an obligation to the civilians of that nation to fix what we broke.

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For example, I'm completely against the latest war in Iraq. The reasons we went in were pretty ridiculous, although all the ultimatums given to Saddam by Bush received UN support until it came time to act on those ultimatums. Do I want the US out of Iraq? Yes, but with a stipulation: it is repaired and set up for success (which is why I went in as a combat engineer). Of course, all that is sticky and difficult, but people don't want to think about that...it's always "You're for the war or against the war", this false dichotomy that ignores all the nuances of human nature and the complexity of the problem.

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I am in favor of something that I call "active pacifism" (I don't know if there's a word for it, so this is what I call it): keeping the peace, including responding to violence. That is to say, if someone starts a fight, I am in favor of responding to that violence with greater violence to stop the attacker. I am in favor of addressing potential attackers and making sure they know the consequences. That does include the US, as they are famous invaders these days. I personally think the international community should unite against the US (or any country) when it attempts to invade others. I am against taking colonies (though in favor of nations voting to be made into a colony).

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I probably haven't answered this question to anyone's satisfaction lol

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Feminism was first introduced as a way to grant women equal rights to men, such as owning property or being allowed a full education of their choosing. These days, however, there are a lot of very different types of feminism.

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At its core, even with the original meaning, I think that feminism unnecessarily segregated issues into "women's issues". This isn't the fault of feminism specifically, as we actually see this all the time. Humans like to chop things into smaller bits instead of tackling the larger problem; sometimes that helps, but sometimes that just slows progress.

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For example, one thing feminism accomplished was to make it illegal to discriminate based on sex when hiring. That sounds pretty great, right? Well, the problem is that, at least in the US, several other laws had to be made to protect other types of employees, such as those with disabilities, gay people, and so on. What I feel should have been focused on was worker rights, not female worker rights.

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As I said to a self-identified feminist arguing with me about helping female rape victims: "Do you care about rape victims, or do you care about rape victims that are female?" That's my stance on all this: we should address issues, not issues as they pertain to one particular group (in the context of your question, women). We the "little people" need to be united against our government and captains of industry in order to ensure fairness for all. When we nitpick about who gets what rights in which context, it just lets them win and perpetuates unfair stereotypes that absolutely have a negative effect on individuals.

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