Gender ideology is toxic and creates divisions

So it’s just her age. If she was an adult and changed her name via deed poll you would respect that?

I have not read the full thread but I wanted to react to the OP as a couple of points stood out to me:

I love and accept her but I refuse to get drawn into pronouns and calling her by a name she’s made up herself.
Why? It’s disrespectful to me, frankly.
I am sure you love her, and I am also sure it must be a very difficult position to be in, but you are kidding yourself that you accept her - or rather, you are not ready to accept that she might grow up to be someone you fundamentally don't understand and may find difficult to relate to. That has nothing to do with trans or not; it happens to many parents and many parents struggle to accept children who are very different from who they thought they would become.

My stance is, you do you with your friends. I am going to do me with you. That means I call her by her birth name - does that mean she cannot express herself with you then?

having navigated years of chest flatteners, drawings with breast scars and other horrors, when all I want for her is for her to be happy in herself. In her current body. If it's been years, it's not a mere rebellion. I can't pretend to truly understand gender dysphoria but I know enough about it to say it's not a temporary craze like wanting to get a tattoo. If she's been like this for years, it suggest that it very much isn't. When you say it's a 'rebellion' you make it all about you. You should try and continue to engage with her on this topic because the last thing you would want if for her to repress this until she's out of your house. Whatever happens to her and whatever her subsequent decisions as an adult, you will want to be able to support her. You may not be if you lose touch.

'Go full Trump'- I know this is not the point of the thread but I can't see this and not react. I have seen many posts and articles in which gender critical feminists sort of align with Trump as a necessary evil because at least the far right isn't into gender ideology like the Dems are/were. You can't do a deal with the devil because the devil always cheats. Project 2025 is a nefarious, nasty roll-back of all the rights women and minorities in general have fought for. The Trump regime is NOT into free speech. Not into freedom. Not into defending women. You cannot cancel democracy itself for the sake of cancelling one ideology that you perceive to be toxic.

When your opinion is one that I believe to collude in child abuse, no, I don’t have to respect either you or your opinion.

And I respect your right to think all of this.

Please afford me the same right to differ in my opinion to you.

I’m so sorry that poor daughter of the emotionally abusive writer was put through all of that. The daughter sounds absolutely admirable.

I agree, though I think behind a lot of the push towards children are those monstrous men. There a lot of money to be made from turning children into medical patients for life at the youngest possible age.

Not sure having an academic qualification on “this topic” is the selling point you think it is. We know that this poison has risen from academia, and that academia is the fetid hole where it flourishes, though possibly not for much longer after Sussex Uni’s colossal fine.

I always find Billboard Chris’s videos of his conversations with students and academics so instructive. Give them a rope and they hang themselves, time and time again. Floundering their way through attempting to define their terms and either still being there half an hour later with nothing, or flouncing off throwing insults.

I did an MA on this topic, so I'm fine with my level of knowledge and of my POV thanks.

We just differ in opinion. I don't plan to start going around telling people 'you are wrong' because I respect your right to think something different to me. Which is my problem really with some people in relation to this topic. A dictatorial and totalitarian POV is not conducive to a debate.

Oh, that’s better - thank you! Two many screenshots, it’s a long article.

Here's a share token so that you can read the article on the site for the next couple of days

https://www.thetimes.com/article/68bcdad6-77f4-11ed-b756-a5744446c41f?shareToken=827f4382b77203ad0a491f2112c0bb9a

The doctor is based in London. The surgery referral was based on a couple of zoom appointments. The journey from lesbian via non binary to ‘definitely trans’ snd straight onto testosterone was eye wateringly swift. She was a teenager who had experienced no previous issues.

I strongly dispute your claim that it wasn’t the norm. This girl wasn’t a special case and the surgeon and gender clinics gave her a standard service.

Keira Bell had a double mastectomy on the NHS and was put on puberty blockers and x sex hormones after a few appointments so there’s little reason to expect the NHS to be much different for other patients. Hopefully they’ve changed now but given the level of activism and rogue doctors (there’s one in Brighton openly defying instructions not to do this) I’m not confident.

Of the network of gender clinics set up recently, at least some are staffed and run by activists. These people are determined to wreak as much havoc on lives treat as many patients as possible - we need positive action to stop them not just ‘rule changes’.

Archive here: archive.is/iKaQe

I’m sure the woman I know who’s husband fucked off into the sunset with a new woman (who no doubt feels more like you do), leaving her and her traumatised teenager daughters (who dad had starting dressing like while he was busy finding himself - why not take a minute to imagine your dad at 50 dressing like you and your friends at 15) to pick up the pieces, feels better for reading that rigmarole.

Have a read of this account from Jan Morris’s daughter Suky. For those of us who’ve listened to trans widows, it’s all horribly familiar.

www.thetimes.com/uk/article/jan-morris-was-a-trans-pioneer-and-a-cruel-parent-9x82s5cg9

18 will be 19 later this year.

The happiness of the childs need is not what is best for what the child wants but what the child needs. A child doesnt not need to change gender. We must teach children to be comfortable in how they are designed. I told this transgender in early stages to not have the gender reassignment surgery. Its something that cannot be taken back and causes so many problems.

What monster doctor performed a double mastectomy on anyone in such a short period of time? That is truly shocking.

Thank fuck it isn't the norm and would never happen under the NHS.

I think you may have missed the point about Elvis.

It's incoherent to think autonomy stretches so far as to enable someone to identify truly as being the reincarnation of the King of Rock'n'roll ... or, by the same token, as the opposite sex.

You're wrong, in other words, to claim, as you did, that people (including, relevantly for this thread, children) can "... decide who [they] are ...".

In particular, then, we (including, relevantly for this thread, parents) do (or at least should) "... get to tell others [viz. our children, in particular] who they are".

Do you see? Think about it a bit more, if not.

There has been a lot of nonsense promulgated about the notion of identity and its connection with personal autonomy. People make mistakes all the time about who they are and what they're really like - about their personal identity in other words.

Children, in particular, are prone to such error about themselves. We recognise the error in cases such as anorexia; it behoves us as parents (and other concerned adults) to recognise similar error in the likes of (recently fashionable) dysmorphia of various kinds, whether socially conditioned or not.

Recognising this in no way belittles or undermines the care and concern of parents whose children suffer from such maladies. But it's very much not appropriate to encourage those who would accept such errors of self-identification and facilitate their continuance, particularly in children.

tldr: your mistake about self-identification (exemplified by the "guy down the chippie") is dangerous for vulnerable children.

I mean what most people mean - it could be changing their name or using a nickname, presenting differently to be more in line with what we associate with the opposite sex. Medical transition may be the right option for some although this is a huge deal and will make their life more difficult in many ways.

No, it doesn't mean literally changing sex and it shouldn't IMO be treated as such.

'Demanding' pronouns, no, but if requested then I'll do my best to remember. Most people do this tbh and the sky doesn't fall in. If you really don't want to, you might be seen as rude or unkind but it's not the dystopian scenario that MNers seem to think.

I'm sorry you've come across such extreme scenarios, everyone on MN seems to, but that's not really the norm in my experience.

I think actual body dysphoria/dysmorphia is not well understood on here and seen as equivalent to something like anorexia. It might be similar in some ways but it also seems to be associated with differing hormones, early identity development and other factors that make it a different category of issue IMO.

I think the GC movement has been a necessary counterpoint to the extremes of the trans movement in recent years, and I'm happy that we're now on surer footing when it comes to things like single sex spaces and caution/exploratory therapy. But I'm never going to agree with some of what I see (frequently) on here and the tedious stuff about whether you can define what a woman is and how it's not a feeling. The fact remains there are people who wish they'd been born the opposite sex, feel that from a young age, and try to find ways to live more comfortably with themselves as a result. We need parameters as a society in how we accommodate that, but constructing a great argument about why you think it's actually complete bollocks, is not going to achieve that and it's not going to somehow stamp out 'transness' as a phenomenon; it's been around in some form as far back as you can go.

What do you mean by ‘some degree of transition’ out of interest? If you mean ‘don’t feel comfortable with the stereotypes associated with their sex but don’t do anything to impinge on others like using opposite sex facilities, sports or demanding ‘pronouns’ then great - I think that’s super.

However among the ‘trans’ people I know there are families ripped apart and devastated wives and children - in one case the wife was driven out of her family home after many years. There is a self induced disability and depression. There’s a young lesbian girl who had an elective double mastectomy after a handful of months of discovering their trans ‘identity’ and there are countless lies and coercion. I don’t even know that many trans people either.

Disassociating with your body to the extent you want to modify it or lie about it to emulate the opposite sex or make the impossible claim you are neither male or female is not the sign of good mental health any more than anorexia is.