To think we’ve got it wrong about gender identity in children

Every single paragraph of this excellent post. The way adults have used children in all this has been shocking.

But finally society is waking up to what's happened. The Cass review has helped by exposing the lack of evidence & data and demonstrating how so many - including shamefully the NHS - have been experimenting on children with all this. With gay and lesbian youngsters being most affected.

But we're all starting to challenge, speak up and most importantly, safeguard children from making these catastrophic decisions.

Gender ideology is nonsense and so regressive. You don't fit in to a stereotypical box of girl so you must be a boy and vice versa. How backwards thinking is that. It is absolutely crazy that kids are being fed this and pushed into a life of questioning their perfectly normal bodies and feelings growing up and made to feel other for not fitting in to some prescribed stereotype. Potentially medicated, binding their breasts and having surgery!

My DD10 has brothers, she is quite rounded in all her interests,l e.g. football, aversion to overly girly stuff but likes dolls, arts and crafts etc. In other words a perfectly normal child with normal child interests. She's potentially neurodiverse so I'd say at an increased risk of feeling 'different' and it concerns me very much that she will be exposed to this. I reinforce all the time that she is a girl, will always be a girl but can wear what she wants, like what she wants etc, as it should be for everyone.

I do find it crazy as my younger sister reckons about 1/3 of her 6th Form are either trans or non-binary.

I asked her what makes someone a woman or a man and she reeled off a load of stereotypes. I pointed that out and then she screamed I'm a Terf and ran up to her room slamming her door.

I did try to approach the subject again, explaining I'm curious about it as when I was in 6th Form (15years ago now) we were all very much trying to stop women and men being classified in stereotypical ways and stating that the only thing that made someone a woman or a man was their sex and there should be no stereotyping of personalities and characters etc. I explained how we are encouraging women's sports and getting women into STEM jobs but now that's unravelling and I asked her why that could be.

She replied stating she's been taught in school that it's not unravelling but instead we are now understanding how men and women and non-binary people are not defined by their sex but their brains and that men's brains are different to women's brains and that's why majority of care jobs are done by women and men typically go for leadership roles.

I then attempted to explain the patriarchy to her and general history of feminism for her to only scream at me again that I'm not listening and I'm just a TERF.

She sent me a text later that day saying I need to educated myself and not to bring that subject up again if I want to stay on talking terms with her.

Rather concerned about what they're "teaching" in schools.

Of course it's wrong. Very, very few people have genuine dismorphia. The rest are held hostage to outdated stereotypes and think this will solve it but we should be pushing that girls can love football and don't have to wear sparkles and we should be pushing the boys can like frozen and wear dresses. This is the simpler route. They shouldn't have to change everything about themselves because society is so rigid about gender. Ironically tye people who are all 'you can have a gazillion genders' are the worse at confining people to boxes. You might be in the attracted to girls but like boy things box but you're still in a box. There is nothing wrong about being a goth who likes wearing trousers. That doesn't make you a man.

Completely agree OP. This is a really good resource for schools which could be useful as a parent too.
genspect.org/resources/guidance/guidance-for-schools/

On a purely semantic front, “GC” = gender critical, meaning “I don’t believe in the construct of gender as a separate concept to biological sex”.

”TERF” = trans exclusionary radical feminist, meaning “I don’t include men who call themselves women in my feminism”.

Both two sides of the same coin IMO.

I'm glad you started this thread @Itsmyshadow . I've been making similar points in comments on other threads about my DD for years, but it gets lost in the nonsense.

I have been doing the same with my DD for many years. She is 13 now and it is the trickiest time so far. She has been 'mis gendered' a few times since primary school.

DD is autistic and lesbian, the pressure for her to transition from the school environment is quite overwhelming at times.

I'm scared for her future. She is a girl, she just wears trousers! It is absurd that you can put your daughter is physical danger simply by choosing that they wear trousers for their school uniform.

You can't change sex, you should be able to play around with gender stereotypes, all of us with children now had that freedom. It is gone now.

May I ask what you think the difference is between GC and TERF

Not even the postman?

Gp/camhs/mental health services benefit greatly. Because most young people who identify as trans are neurodivergent and/or have a history of childhood abuse, it’s far easier to go along with the transgender beliefs they have and give physical/medical care for that than treat the very typical MH crisis many autistic and/or abused children go through when they’re going through puberty.

What does ‘genuinely transgender’ mean though? Is there even such a thing as gender - it’s wholly a belief system so then genuine types would simply be anyone who believes they are.

We simply need to ask who benefits.

It's not the kids for sure. What's beneficial about damaging a healthy body witg drugs and/or surgeries . Or having to change who and what you are just to be accepted doing the things you like.

Drug companies benefit. Suddenly a new use has been found fir medications that previously had very limited need due to small number of afflicted children/people for a short period of time.

Private surgeons for sure benefit. Thousands of pounds fir these surgeries. Not to mention the corrections/fixes/repairs needed afterwards when it goes wrong.

Suddenly there's a need for multiple groups where teachers would have taught stuff themselves now its all all outsourced to these organisations that have popped up to train businesses, school staff etc

Suddenly there's a new market for adult entertainment. No more do they have to wait for that booking in a night club somewhere. They can visit schools, preschools, nurseries now etc

Suddenly you dont even need to be able to write at a high professional level. You can write a load of nonsense about a boy in a dress and someone will publish and make you.money out of it.

Suddenly toys and clothes cant be handed down so much any more. Not to worry, when you buy one child a lego set theres also a nice pretty legs friends set you can buy too or overpriced flimsy dolls. So much for just buying some lego your 2 kids can just sit and play with together.

And not to mention the all you can eat buffet of confused children that is being served up by their own parents and trusted adults in the kids lives , to online predators akd predators who cab access them all so much more easily now they have been told their boundaries are offensive and/or tricked into no longer using the safe spaces they were befire because their identity requires them to flout safeguarding protocols and put themselves in danger for validation.

There is nothing beneficial abkut this to children at all.

Yes I am ‘fully GC’ and this is my position, as is all the GC people I know. Being GC meaning you hate trans people has been hijacked by zealot TRA’s.

In that case I'm GC then. I just meant I see my friends as women and they would never intrude on women's spaces so I guess what I really mean is not fully TERF (I understood the words to be interchangeable - thanks for letting me know they're not!)

And i scrapped the use of the word ‘tomboy’ from my vocab many years ago precisely because it was so limiting for girls. Girls can roll in mud, play cops and robbers and climb trees. They don’t need to be quasi-boys to do this.

Where did you get that figure? Pretty sure it's dramatically less than that.

Only about 4% of the global population are genuinely transgender. Why is it necessary to drive this agenda mainstream when it genuinely isn't is beyond me...

Good post OP and your daughter sounds like many of the females in my family. My late mum was a tomboy, loved playing with the boys and climbing trees (her words), dressed in male clothing and cut her hair short. She didn't know about gender identities back then and grew up just being who she was. Me and my girls are similar but unlike my mum, my youngest daughter was tempted by the trans ideology as a way to escape adolescence. But her wish to escape adolescence was part of her neurodivergence as she struggles to cope with change and adolescence was one awful change for her. She's through the other side now and happy in her autistic self. I think key to her self-acceptance was finding other girls with similar interests because at school there weren't many and it can feel a lonely place if you're different.

@Itsmyshadow - understood. I confess I had a knee jerk reaction to the apparent suggestion that girls couldn’t like these things. Sorry about that! It really depresses me that we’re in 2024 and there seem to such limiting ideas of what girls might want to do. Girls can be interested in whatever they like.

Why does having trans friends mean you can't be "fully GC"? What do you understand that to mean?

Most people who are "fully GC" have no problem in accepting people who are trans. We just think that it's impossible to change sex and that single sex spaces need to stay single sex for the safety and dignity of women.

I agree OP.

Just to add, my husband occasionally wears nail varnish and eye makeup and will sometimes wear a skirt at festivals. He is not a woman and has never claimed to be.

My neighbour is also not a woman despite how much he claims to be one, dress like one and talk about his 'child bearing hips' and constantly talk to me anout 'us girls' 🤢. Oh and expect sex from any woman he learns is bi/gay.

I do have a couple of friends who genuinely are trans and have been since they were teens so I can't be fully GC but they're just quietly living life as women with their partners, not bothering anyone and would absolutely pass as women if you didn't know.

To present as a woman you have to define what one is. Is it wearing make up and dresses? What about women who don’t wear those? Are they not women? The only way to be a woman is to be an adult human female.

Your friends are men who dress in a way that is a sexist stereotype associated with women. They aren’t women. It’s great though that they don’t want to make women uncomfortable by going into spaces that aren’t for them, good on them. Very refreshing. And I’m sorry, but everyone can tell.

How do you explain detransitioners? They thought they were trans because of the attention on the subject often through school and social media.