They did not propose mutilating surgeries to people throughout history. Also trans people existing does not mean there can't be a mass hysteria of kids being told to transition on shoddy scientific evidence.
They did not propose surgeries because no way of doing so were available until relatively recently.
And your claim of a hysteria of kids being told to transition closely mirrors the claim of kids being pressured into satanic rituals and similar. It's similarly fear driven and bigoted.
Many gay people now say the trans thing is the new conversion therapy for gay people, as they try to convince a lot of them that they are actually another gender.
This is also what whistleblowers at the Tavistock clinic in the UK spoke of, and is part of the reason why the UK's and other countries' health authorities are putting a halt to the affirmation model for children who are questioning gender identity.
The lack of good surgery options does not mean they don't help. If anything the fact that regret rates for transition is well below the regret rates for other cosmetic surgery should be a strong indication that if you actually care about patient wellbeing, it's the other kinds of cosmetic surgery you ought to be focusing on.
Citations? If you look into the actual studies, the picture may not be so clear cut. For example a lot if results actually only taje older people into account (who transitioned when they were older).
What analogy do you see to the satanic cult thing? Children were told they had been abused, and many caregivers were being sentenced. Who is being told what in the trans hype? Children are falsely being told they are not trans? Then they falsely believe they are not trans and accuse their doctors? Or how does the analogy work?
Meanwhile, finding actual studies of regret of cosmetic surgery is much harder, because nobody cares or want to stop people from getting boob jobs unless they're trans. So we're stuck with poor quality surveys like this one [1] claiming 65% regret, this one done for a group with a profit motive [2] claiming 65% regret.
For reconstruction after breast cancer, it's not "so bad", with this actual study [3] finding "only" ca 20% moderate to strong regret for even reconstruction, and another ~28% expressing mild regret.
Even for non-cosmetic surgery, such as e.g. hip replacements etc., it's hard to find regret rates as low as for sex reassignment.
The first study is a survey of surgeons, which seems rather useless. What warrants the assumptions that they would learn about the long term outcomes of their surgeries?
The second claims to have looked into several studies, which might include ones like the first one. Would be nice to have an actually useful direct study, especially for young people.
As for cosmetic surgery, you brought that up. I don't think it is as worrying, as many of them are reversible, and they don't sterilize the recipients. Somebody regretting to get a nose job is hardly in the same category as someone regretting they cut off their penis.
So is the mass hysteria now the belief that there is a mass hysteria against trans people, or the belief that there is a mass hysteria of kids being pushed to transition?
And your claim of a hysteria of kids being told to transition closely mirrors the claim of kids being pressured into satanic rituals and similar. It's similarly fear driven and bigoted.