Personal experience means little to nothing. We’re talking reality here. And it’s NOT very very real to them. No one knows about the deception at the heart of the trans cult better than the cult members themselves.
I understand the temptation to label something you don't believe in as a cult, and you can for sure observe some of the traits you'd expect in cults in some of the trans discourse online. Overall though it's too reductive; transsexualism has not been dreamed up by a cult leader, it's something recorded and observed for thousands of years.
The recent explosion in the discourse warrants more thoughtful and careful interrogation, and less casual dismissal.
There is historical evidence of cross-dressing, and of people (mostly men) being prescribed different societal roles that were apparently based on being effeminate. As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that such people were treated as if they were actually the opposite sex, as gender activists these days propose.
OP however was less nuanced and more reductive.
Except it is. There's no research that show significant rates of desistence in the relevant population, which is children who want to transition. Rates of persistence are high in this population. Rates of regret are low, and are far lower than many other common forms of surgery.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S188898912...
We have decades of research on this. Rates of desistence are low. Rates of regret are low, and are lower than most other forms of medical care.
Edit: Even the submitted article admits that on one side you have medical opinion and science saying PBs are safe and reversible, but that you have Republican politicians saying they're harmful. It doesn't present any evidence that PBs are harmful. I notice that you haven't either.
And anti-trans campaigners can't, because their position is incoherent. PBs are apparently so dangerous we can't give them to children, but children who've had them are still so powerful we can't allow them to compete in sports because they'd win everything.
I got the impression that it is only a handful of individuals who are doing this, for example that guy who recently had a large cloud services provider shut down a website that exposed his unsavoury activities in this space.
Did you used to identify as trans?
I occasionally chat with a person I know IRL about the potential destructiveness of a politicised approach to trans issues, and they're in education too. Used to self-harm, actually, and noticed that a lot of (mostly FTM) trans kids fit into the same demographic that they did as a kid.
I'm on the spectrum and had some pretty serious mental health issues myself as a teenager, so I see a different side to the same coin (mainly emotionally dysregulated MTFs).
On the flip side, Gender Dysphoria is 100% real and transitioning is an incredibly helpful medical option for those who happened to be born this way.
It's an incredibly hairy issue, and I don't think simply dismissing it as a "cult" is the right way to deal with it.