Is the trans kids trend over? Aibu to wonder what happened to the kids caught up in it in the 2010s?

I'm in Scotland. It varied by LA and by school, often dependent on activist teachers. But regardless, the media was full of it, see the links to BBC for a small glimpse of the content.

Social media and the internet is another thing altogether. Tumblr, Reddit, Youtube, TikTok, etc, are awash with these narratives.

Just like I would manage any informed consent about any medical procedure. Explain the risks to the patient and their relatives, weight the risks vs benefits of every possible option choice. If I have concerns about parents making decision which is not in the patient's best interests, bump it up the chain to the people who are trained to explore this further.
I am personally not informed about how the process is currently managed so unable to offer a more detailed opinion.

I'm sure just about everywhere has men who cross dress. And there are 'gender incongruent' children in every school, generally now only one or two, compared to more at the peak.

Children cannot consent. That's not my opinion, that's the reason the NHS has asked children in the puberty blocker trial for 'assent'.

https://www.hra.nhs.uk/about-us/news-updates/pathways-trial-minutes-and-decision-correspondence/

I don't find any of the mainstream media was "full of it" unless you are looking for it specifically. It is definitely your algorithms.

My daughter made 3 new friends at a young carers respite trip last week. They are all trans (aged 13-16)
My nephew became ftm trans aged 10 in 2013. He's had years of testosterone and blockers and a double mastectomy. He lives as a man but still has female "bits" probably due to the surgery being expensive and probably awful. You can't really tell he was female

Anecdotes are all very well, but evidence and stats are more useful.

10?????

Good Lord

There is a person who works in our local cafe who seems to be between boy & girl, not through choice, I think. I sometimes call them that boy in the cafe. DS calls them a girl. They are very tall & it’s just how they are, we dont know their sex. They dress like any guy or girl, in jeans & a t-shirt.

I think the whole trans movement is difficult for a person like that (a genuine case? If that’s such a thing). And as pointed out here, so difficult for the kids (and parents) caught up in trend, definitely a product of the Internet era (yes, kids have always rebelled but this is something quite different).

And if you haven't met anyone trans in real life, according to The Script they must have been able to deceive you successfully. (It's called "passing" by the TRAs.) Because they are simultaneously very rare so you needn't worry about them, and everywhere so you must prioritise them at all times.

Whether you meet literally dozens, like me, or none, will depend on what your interests are, what your job is, and where you go in your spare time. As far as I can make out trans people tend to gravitate to certain environments where they think they are safer (doesn't everyone, really?), because they spend their lives in fear of people who are not trans, though why they should do so is never really clear. Though altogether too many I have known are them as would start a quarrel in an empty room, so it may be that they are afraid of retaliation from people they have attacked for a real or imagined slight against them or of someone accidentally calling them by a name or a sex they have rejected.

And then people avoid having conversations with them because they are such hard work, and they rightly say they are being ostracised, and then that they are being victimised.

It's exhausting for the people around them.

Exactly right! My first child (female) was obsessed with boys tops and pyjamas. I bought them and she was happy! After a few years she no longer wanted to wear boys clothes. I never said she must be a boy! She was sick of the pink and wanted to wear things with superheroes on! Don’t even know why they didn’t make them universal as her friends loved her hulk and spider-man T-shirts! She is 17 now and very girly!

Is there another medical procedure that is harmful to 100% of people who have it; definitely of no benefit to 80%; no proven benefit to the remaining 20%; no way to tell those 2 groups apart; and performed exclusively on pre-teens?

Actually, typing that I thought of just one that almost fits. Circumcision. Banned for girls. Increasingly controversial for boys despite considerably smaller harms than PBs.

I might dispute "harmful to 100%" about circumcision, though only in the mildest possible way. There is a very rare birth defect in boys that means their urethra is blocked by their foreskin and they are unable to urinate. This will kill them unless it is detected and corrected, and that correction will involve circumcision. I knew a woman whose son (her first child) died because the place she was living at the time lacked a doctor able to detect and correct in time for the poor little boy; it was discovered post mortem.

The emphasis is on "very rare": I have only come across that single instance in Real Life, though I expect it is known about in medical circles. I hope it is, for the sake of the very occasional babies.

I came across my 'first trans person' in the last 80s when i started work. It is knowing these 'trans people' that made me 100% aware of them ever since.

I have been reading the thread (most of it) and have some thoughts:

The role of Stonewall hasn't been properly included. It started pushing trans rights in 2014 and within a few years, nearly all our institutions and businesses had been told that they had to make everything trans inclusive. This led to the rise in EDI departments and a rush to be as "inclusive" as possible. And so the infrastructure was set up to welcome all these trans people.

And so they came. And the people who pushed for it are not letting it go easily- see Unison for example. They need that stream of trans people coming through.

Same goes for the people who believed so strongly in trans rights, like my nephew and his friends. They aren't trans but they are SO pro trans rights. They want gender neutral toilets, trans women in women's sport that sort of thing. The numbers may be declining but the policies are still in place, they ignore the Supreme Court judgement, they operate in an environment where pro trans policies are to be imposed on everyone as a kind of cultural statement rather than as something which is needed. They need to bolster up the few trans peers they know - keep them on board with it all. But it doesn't affect them personally.

The large numbers of kids in care issue I think is partly due to the fact that social services has heavily pushed the trans line. My daughters are adopted with additional needs and attended various groups run by social services and they were fed a strong pro trans message from about 2016 onwards. In covid, a lotbof it went on line and I could see what they were getting and I was astonished by how hard it was being pushed. Word searches with a trans theme, trans flag everywhere....

Same for the disability clubs, also run by social services.

This is a separate group from the white, middle class kids btw, though there is some overlap - my younger daughter went to a specialist asd school and in her day there was no one she knew who was trans (there was a girl who identified as a cat mind you) - I know someone who works there now and many of the children say they are trans. This is a pretty middle class group.

Same with the adoption community - i know several trans kids there. These are all care experienced children though now living mostly in middle class families. Not everyone who is care experienced is currently part of the group Julie Bindell describes.

I think a lot of boys/men who claim to be trans are just experimenting. They don't necessarily try that hard to pass as a woman. Maybe they grow boobs, wear lipstick and a dress but they keep their beards and wear doc Martins. It's a long way from the old transvestite look where being taken for a woman was the aim.

Finally, the walking sticks. My town has a small venue which attracts a lot of big acts - if it's someone with a younger fan base, the crowds gather early in the day sovthey can all hang out together. And certain acts attract a certain crowd. Fineas, Young blue....you are going to see the disability aids in big numbers. Renee Rapp, Louis Tomlinson, not so much. I think it is more like the old goths and emos. Maybe they will come back?

Yes, hence the 'almost fits'. It is medically necessary in a small number of cases. For those people - easily identified unlike with PBs - there is a proven, substantial benefit set against a minor harm.

The first trans person I knew was Known To The Press and whenever she was in the news (which happened occasionally because she was a UFO expert) they ALWAYS mentioned, after 1996 when she "came out", that she had transitioned. Always. As if it were the only thing about her that mattered, which it absolutely was not: for example she was the only person I know of who had correctly identified as being of terrestrial rather than extra-terrestrial origin every single one of the "sightings" that the American secret services later revealed to have been US air force experimental stuff.

And I say "she" because that was how I thought of her, and still do; she was not in the least masculine to my spidey-senses, and if the News of the Screws and the rest of them hadn't been so keen on hammering home her transition at every possible opportunity it would not have occurred to me she had started out as a man.

Unlike all but about two I have known since, and certainly unlike all those I have encountered since about 1995.

This person is not 'between a boy and a girl' and I hope you're not encouraging your child to believe that. This person is either male or female, there is no such thing as being 'inbetween' that.

You dont really need to know their sex, they're serviing you coffee thats all. It matters not if they're wearing clothese which you think are male or female, they're just clothes

I dont remember all this segregation when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, girls had short pixie cuts and boys had long hair. We all wore things like dungerees, brown jumpers and flares.

“Ive tried googling this but everyone seems to have moved on from it I think there may be a forgotten generation who’s lives have been ruined”

In a word, yes. The prediction that being trans was the new eating disorder, the mental health crisis de jour, of that generation, seems to have been proven. I know some (neurodivergent) people in their late twenties & thirties who are still contemplating their gender identity, and denying biological reality, but from what I can see from parents with teens now, (and hopefully some teachers will come along and let us know), the trans kids phase is pretty much over.

And yes, those who have taken significant hormones, or had surgery, before this kind of ‘treatment’ was stopped, have been irreversibly altered. It’s utterly infuriating and so sad.

Well, it can also be beneficial in a few cases to do with personal hygiene or rather the lack of it, followed by infection. A subject I prefer not to think about, on the whole.

No.

They may well present in an androgynous way (can we please go back to that being an utterly unremarkable thing to do, rather than a special identity?), but they are either male or female. Nobody is in between.

I know this. I grew up in the 70s wearing brown. Gender identity wasn’t a thing then.

I’m saying that this person is of course either male or female, but to look at has both masculine & feminine traits. They have breasts & a female-sounding voice, but also facial hair & a masculine frame.

We don’t need to know their sex, they’re just doing their job. We get on great with them! They don’t have to wear pink or blue, but dress like any young person their age.

I’m just pointing out that some folks present this way without being signed up as “trans”. DS hasn’t questioned it. I haven’t mentioned it. Some people are simply androgynous, that’s my point. They (and we) are not making it a special identity.

It depended on the school and on the HT, in my experience (as a teacher).

We all have 'masculine and feminine traits' because they're simiply human behaviours which have been categorised as masculine and feminine.

Fair enough.