Susie Green

[dorade]

First thing first, I fully support Posie Parker.

I decided to look at a bit of the backstory including watching Susie Green's TED talk.

Starting from the premise that mothers want the best for their children, I tried to consider how she travelled down the path that she did.

Clearly she didn't have a problem per se with her son playing with 'girl toys' (although the father was sending strong messages to the child that he did).

To my mind, the only way Susie Green can have taken the path that she took is that she must believe that someone can really truly be born in the wrong sex body. If you believe that with religious fervour then the actions that follow, particularly if medical professionals are validating you, don't seem as outrageous.

There then comes a point somewhere down the line when you have gone so far, where you can't allow even a chink of doubt to creep in because the whole house of cards and the horror of irreversible decisions would be too awful to contemplate.

For Jackie, I am sure much of the attention has been unpleasant but equally instead of being a run of the mill gay man he can be feted as a 'brave beauty queen'. His mother gets validated by Buckingham Palace and the Police amongst others.

Sorry, this is all a bit stream-of-consciousness, but what I'm trying to say is that at the root of it we must challenge the narrative that it is possible to be born in the wrong body. It's not.

We also need to retain humanity towards those who, aided and abetted by professionals and under dire warnings of suicide, have made awful decisions.

[Patodp]

Absolutely agree that the religion of trans needs to be challenge.

Children particularly, need to be free from gender stereotypes, they need to be encouraged in their interests and not be told "there's something wrong with them" if their interests are typically associated with the opposite sex.

[terfsRus]

I don't know enough about the issue and haven't watched the TED talk, but coming to it from an observer's perspective:
Having seen a few posts about Mermaids and looked at their website I do find them at least slightly sinister, what with the offer of sweeties, the child like mermaids logo and its connection to the Little Mermaid story. It seems like the worst type of emotional blackmail to use a threat of suicide to justify drugging and mutilating a teenager who is in no way capable of making a decision of such magnitude.
At the same time, what's done is done (even if I find the Beauty queen end game - that's what you think being a woman is, really? - a bit pathetic) and it does concern me what impact this debacle can have on her daughter/son.

[PerfPower]

The whole thing is just so sad, particularly for the children involved. I wonder how people will view this when looking back in ten or twenty years, it'll be too late for the poor kids whose health has been ruined. I hope the big pharma companies pushing this lose a lot more money (in compensation) than they have made through selling cross sex hormones.

[Gileswithachainsaw]

I saw the red talk and she's convincing.

However I got the impression that the dad was so disapproving the kid felt that he had to choose. Be a girl to play with this or be a boy and have daddy not approve.

The fakes suicide stats do smack as you say of desperately trying to convince herself and others that it was the right thing to do.

But there's a reason it's illegal.

I would feel sorry for her desperation but I don't because her desperation to prove she was right is brainwashing and bullying and causing physical harm to innocent children.

How could they possibly know what they are giving up.

Puberty is embarrassing and messy and awkward for everyone.no one asks for it. No one wants it. But it happens for a reason.

[Gileswithachainsaw]

So many have no choice left either in that Jackie and jazz Jennings are responsible for their parents jobs and income now. How do you get out of that.

LM and HP have got their jobs based on being trans. They'd never be getting away with everything if they werent.

Riley j Dennis and Danielle Muscato paris lees etc all have become well known and got their gigs from being trans.

They would have no where to go if they woke up one day and just stopped.

They have to keep it up.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

I watched the TED talk the other day. It seems very clear from that and from an interview she gave to the Yorkshire Post or YEP that her husband really struggled with not having a very boyish son. (That's what she says, anyway. Would be interesting to hear his side of the story.) She says she recognised from when her son was very young that he was more feminine and wondered if he might turn out to be gay. Her narrative now is that wouldn't have been a problem. Who knows what was really going on, but pretty clearly in her son's early years it was not a happy home because there was tension between the parents. They had two younger sons who I assume did live up to the dad's expectations, and that can't have helped. That poor kid must have been soaking up from his earliest years the idea that he was a disappointment and that there was something wrong with him. Easy enough to see that he surmised that if he really was a girl all would be well.

They went to couples counselling and were told that they had to present a united front. She says he decided that they must remove all the girly toys. She didn't like this but went along with it because of the united front thing. This is the point where I find it difficult to sympathise. I can't imagine being with a man with these antediluvian views for a start, and I can't imagine going along with this bullshit approach that made the child so unhappy. And from that point on, instead of getting the child and the family therapy to help them all cope with what he was actually like instead of what they thought he should be like, she seems to have made one wrong decision after another. I agree that there must have been a point of no return after which questioning what she had done was unthinkable.

I wonder what Jackie will think in a few years when the effects of ageing kick in. I wonder what Jackie's prospects are of finding a life partner, perhaps having children, just having a satisfying sex life. It's prurient to start thinking like this but on the other hand the physical consequences of SRS are so grim that many of those who went through it are left in pain and discomfort and have no real sexual function. This is not minor stuff.

[Peaceloving]

Agree the challenge is No one is born in the wrong body. Many might be disappointed with their own body for many reasons. However, life is not a wardrobe. I agree some people might decide they are better off as transexuals. I respect them and would like all the best for them, except they claiming women sex rights. BUT it's an adult decision, not something to terrified young kids with because they feel odd or don't fit the stereotype. Saw S Green on BBC declaring that she could see from when her child was 18months old that he would be gay.
Who was the other mother, a similar charity, maybe GIRES whose child desisted but she kept going on? Cannot remember.

[Flomper]

You know what I find astounding?

This is part of the published agenda of the Intersex Society of North America:

Surgeries done to make the genitals look “more normal” should not be performed until a child is mature enough to make an informed decision for herself or himself. Before the patient makes a decision, she or he should be introduced to patients who have and have not had the surgery. Once she or he is fully informed, she or he should be provided access to a patient-centered surgeon. full statement here: www.isna.org/faq/patient-centered

So this is their advice for how to treat children that have an actual, measurable issue with their perceived gender because of defined, known, genetic and endocrine abnormalities as a result of genetic changes from the normal pattern of human sex chromosomes. As opposed to a vague, undefined idea about "feeling like a woman", even though nobody can actually define that, and or an unwillingness to accept being gay and/or a sexual fetish. And yet, it is now deemed acceptable to irreversibly alter children, damage their health for years to come and make them infertile on the basis that they or their parents think they are trans, both of which seem to be opinion-based if not a psychological issue. Wheras, people whose children have an actual genetic, medical condition are firmly counselled to wait, take time and assess, in conjunction with medical professionals, before undergoing any kind of genital surgery. That is messed up.

[BeyondDeadlySiren]

I wonder why there is no public version of JG's dad's side. Has he been cut out since they divorced, or is he just a private person?

[hackmum]

I think what we learn from this is that people who do bad things don't think they're bad. In her own mind, she's probably an amazing, caring parent who did the best for her own child.

Like Gasp, I wonder whether Jackie will come to regret the decision to have surgery, and I wonder what Susie Green will think then - whether she will continue to justify herself or whether she will do some serious self-reflection. I'm not holding my breath.

[Elendon]

It's fine to like girlie things.

This was 20 years ago when pink and blue were not really a massive issue.

But what disturbs me most is that her son said 'God got it wrong'

My children at that age knew very little about God. Mind you they were born into a non religious house. I myself was baptised a Catholic and had no real idea of God at the age of five, other than trying my best to learn/memorise the Our Father and the Hail Mary. I had no idea what any of it meant.

There is a video clip about Susie Green laughing about the size of her child's penis and that it was not big enough to go through gender reassignment.

[MrsWooster]

I wonder what goes through her mind when she reads things like this and the tiny little voice of reason says 'you should've told dh to fuck right off at the start and said our BOY likes playing in a tutu. Suck it up'. When she thinks 'I took my beautiful boy and had him castrated..'. However immersed she is in her own truth, the little voice is r markably persistent...

[Elendon]

I can't imagine being with a man with these antediluvian views for a start, and I can't imagine going along with this bullshit approach that made the child so unhappy. And from that point on, instead of getting the child and the family therapy to help them all cope with what he was actually like instead of what they thought he should be like, she seems to have made one wrong decision after another. I agree that there must have been a point of no return after which questioning what she had done was unthinkable.

Absolutely my views on it.

[BeyondDeadlySiren]

God got it wrong.

I've noticed (anecdata of course - though I'd love to see actual figures!) a very large correlation between kids who trans and religious households.

[Backingvocals]

patodp I think perhaps you should ask MN to delete your post. This kind of speculation will lead Mermaids to take legal action as they have done against posieparker.

I share all your horror at the delusion being peddled here. But we should be very careful.

[AreYouTerfEnough]

I can’t understand how the father objected to his son playing with girls toys and had a problem with that, yet was okay with him changing gender. It’s a bit of a leap

[BeyondDeadlySiren]

There is of course along with the religion aspect, the asd and abuse aspects and the homosexuality/GNC aspects, the potential that some parents (none named in particular) have MBP.

[Flomper]

Two MTF trans people I know also came fron homes where the mother was very religious and the father was very homophobic. One of them admits that it was "easier" to trans than to come out as gay.

[terfsRus]

I don't see it being any different from FGM. You remove any chance that this person will ever experience an orgasm in their life. I would never speak to my parents again if they ever did that to me.

[BeyondDeadlySiren]

Yy terfs. There are plenty of women who feel FGM is the best thing for their child, that it is needed in certain environments.
They're still wrong, and the law still doesn't agree, no matter how much you could understand where their actions came from

[Flomper]

AreYouTerfEnough

I can’t understand how the father objected to his son playing with girls toys and had a problem with that, yet was okay with him changing gender. It’s a bit of a leap confused

Do you know that was my exact same thought when the person I know transitioned. But as he explained (at the time, was still known as he), his father found it easier to accept that his eldest son had a medical issue, a mistake had been made, he was "born into the wrong body" than that his son had just, naturally, been born gay. Hard for rational people to understand, but bear in mind this was an uneducated, overbearing man, with no knowledge of genetics, with very fixed views on anything "foreign" particularly homosexuals and immigrants.

I remember saying to him, why dont you live how you want and dont discuss it with him? But as he came out of adolescence he really wanted, understandably, to be out and gonest with his parents. He tried to tell them on a number of occasions that he was gay but couldnt. I was astounded a few years later when he annoynced he was going to abroad for GRS. Ironically, the father died a few months aftrr ge got back, after welcoming him baxk into the family because "a mistake had been fixed".

[LangCleg]

I'm an atheist. I do not believe human beings have souls - including gendered souls. I'm a feminist. I do not believe personality traits should be acceptable in people of only one of the two biological sexes.

Therefore, I do not believe in the genderist ideology and consider it to be a religion.

I do believe that some people suffer from catastrophic body dysmorphia and that adults may need medical and/or surgical treatments to relieve severe chronic distress. These people have had their distress relieved and that is a good thing. But they have not changed sex.

And that, basically, is where I stand.