Transgender kids article in today's Guardian

Flora - for example this thread can't remember anyone publicly warning about reporting her suicide or the reasons?

I find it a bit disturbing that to accept your child as you are you don't just accept them and help them accept themselves, you've got to block puberty (potentially rendering them sterile) and encourage them into a persona. What's wrong with acceptance being just dress how you want, wear your hair how you want, change your name to what you like, do activities you enjoy and give yourself a few years before making any modifications that need serious consideration? Like, if my daughter was distressed about the size of her breasts my aim would be to help her accept her body as it is rather than encouraging breast implants in a teenager. If she still wanted them as an adult that'd be her right but I wouldn't take a teen and support them in the unquestioned belief that their body is wrong by some artificial standard.

Also, it may well be that having sex with people based on their having the genitals you prefer makes you boring. But everyone is entitled to be boring if they want.

widow what suicides of women have you seen feminists publicising contrary to guidelines on contagion etc?

Stavvers and her ilk believe that the concept of sexual dimorphism (the fact that the human species has two distinct biological sexes) is essentialist and incorrect. She thinks that a penis can be a women's sexual organ just as much as a vagina can and vice versa.
They believe that gender is innate (essentialism) but that biological sex is not. Despite the fact that there is endless evidence that biological sex is determined by a set of signifiers and the total lack of evidence that gender is anything other than a social construct.

Whatever.

flora I found it surprising how keen they were to suppress any information of why Leela killed herself and have never seen the same demands to not report about suicides of women. And yes, I'm fully aware of responsible reporting guidelines, and contagion, but this was in other suicides (of non trans women) never highlighted as urgently if at all.

And widow maybe if these parents and others accepted their children as they are instead of encouraging their kids that liking sparkly dresses means they are girls, they would face a lifetime of medical intervention to fit themselves into made up categorizations of what is acceptable behaviour for a person with their body.

alex I don't subscribe to WSJ but I could read it. I'll post some quotes later.

widow what makes you think yhe concern expressed about the way TAs dealt with this teen's suicide was faux?

"I instinctively distrust anyone who professes a dislike for a certain type of genitals: it usually means they’re either cissexist, or completely lack imagination in bed, or both of those things."

If you don't want to have sex with a woman with a penis, you are cissexist. Or unimaginative. It's all about consent, is it? Unless exercising that right to consent means not consenting to sex with a certain set of genitals.

I hadn't heard of "Stavvers" until I recently saw a reference to her on here. She is also Zoe Stavri (I think- aplogies to Zoe Stavri if I've got it wrong ) who writes for The Independent.

empress - can't see anything about "needing to allow female penises to penetrate you lest you want to be called a bigot" in there. Just the observation that it's pretty rude to be intrusive to enquire about people's genitals. Can't really see what's wrong with that point of view?

Stavvers has never claimed anywhere that you must sleep with anyone you don't want to. Regardless of their genitals. She's very much in favour of consent.

A lesbian is no more obliged to sleep with a trans woman she doesn't fancy than she is to sleep with a cis woman she doesn't fancy. Or anyone else she doesn't fancy. Not terribly controversial, surely.

Not long ago a young transgirl in the US killed herself citing her parents' rejection of her trans status and their attempts to make her accept being a boy as reasons on her tumbler suicide note. Her parents had taken it down and prominent anti trans feminists spoke out against the publication of the note in faux concern for other trans teenagers.Her name was Leela, I think. I was quite baffled how keen people were to sweep her death under the carpet.

When I read here how people think it's wrong that people embrace their kids and help them growing up in the gender they feel they are I think they should also be aware that conversion therapy and denying their children's indentity is a driving factor for suicides.

It's just simply bizarre to call someone weird and creepy because they don't want to have sex with someone with a penis. Why is that sort of comment not bigoted?

Man, some of the comments on that blog are so very very odd (and unpleasant). This exchange in particular:

A: Lesbian here. Not interested in having sex with someone with a penis. Not even if its attached to a male body that’s been made to look female and no amount of blogging or tweets is going to change that. No idea why some people (on the internet, I doubt if said people would tell that to someone’s face) seem to have a problem with that. What you like in bed is your own business.

B: OK, genuine question: would you have sex with a man with a vulva?

A: I’m trying to imagine this scenario. I’m chatting with some guy to whom I’m not attracted at all (transmen usually pass 100%) and then he’ll tell me he has a vagina and wouldn’t I want to have sex with him because of that. I think I would assume he wasn’t in his right mind but be able to politely refuse with a straight face. Anyway, thanks for making me laugh

C: If you’re a woman who only likes vaginas and literally nothing else influences your sexual orientation, then you’re not a lesbian. You’re a very weird (and creepy) bisexual.

To me A's position is just normal for a lesbian isn't it? She fancies women, and finds male bodies a turn off. Not fancying a transman surely just means she isn't pansexual (why invent this term after all if there isn't something different about trans people). I do think lesbians get attacked incredibly unfairly in all of this. Must be really shit.

Is Stavvers for real??

She? He? Whoever it is really can't understand why you might have a preference for a sexual partner to have a particular sort of genitals? Do they think that gay people don't exist? That heterosexuality is just a figment of our collective imagination?? That post just beggars belief. Stavvers might be bisexual and enjoy sex with both men and women, but it is ridiculous to pretend that that is the case for everyone.

I don't go through the world looking at people and wondering what their genitals are like either. Disagreeing with trans ideology and worrying about other people's genitals are not the same thing. I think they are being deliberately obtuse.

That blog post is so boggling. It's Orwellian doublespeak to me. So if you prefer, as a person with a vagina (let's not go crazy and call them women!) to have sex with someone with a penis, you're sexist, or you've been badly-educated? Why is it The Thing to want to be everything (male and female) and have sex with everyone, and the Bad Thing to not want to? I can't understand how this even matters, except that it means some people don't get laid as much as they would want. But someone's else's sex life is not the whole world's problem. Some people like to have sex with cars. Am I bigoted because I do not fancy my Focus? What about if I went around calling myself a Vauxhall Viva. Would the car sexual be bigoted then because he didn't want to have sex with me? After all, I define myself as a car now.

This is a link to Stavvers' blog on why it's bigoted to have a preference on genitals. www.donotlink.com/framed?43198

I need a "like" button for nooka's post!

Oh I am totally sympathetic to those caught up in this, hating their bodies and their perceived role. My worries are not about them at all, except for the small number of women hating activists (and I'm not sure all of them even could be described as transgender except when that category is wide open - there seem to be some very strange people who have been attracted to the 'fight') my concern is the approach of the medical and therapeutic community, and especially with regard to children.

When I was an adolescent I didn't want to be a girl at all. I wanted to be a boy, with all the prospects and none of the fears (as I saw it). The changes associated with puberty frightened me, I didn't want breasts and I certainly didn't want periods (haven't much changed my mind there!). I wore boys style clothes when I could and was very happy to be mistaken for a boy, having been a tomboy when I was younger. But no one said anything about it, it seemed to be accepted one of those things some children go through, and as I grew up I got accustomed to my new body and discovered that plenty of other people fought against the stereotypes. My parents had a strong religious view of us as being special unique individuals created by god which I think probably also helped (and were both accepting of homosexuality which I suspect matters quite a lot too).

Now in theory many of the barriers I worried about have gone, but the stereotypes seem to be so much stronger now that I imagine some people may feel more locked into their persevered prescribed roles and much less able to give them the two fingers. We had a big pride thing at the university I work at and some of the publicity linked to the 'gingerbread person', which starts off it's quick talk about gender with an allusion to Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and the website has a whole bunch of people saying how great it is, with I think only one person saying what a load of hooey that whole concept is.

It's not 'feminine' to be caring nor 'butch' to be aggressive etc etc, these are just human characteristics that some of us have more than others, dependent on a huge range of factors of which gender is only one.

This is a tremendously difficult issue to pick apart. First of all the science isn't really conclusive one way or another. There had been research, which only really indicates more scientific inquiry might be fruitful.

Elements of the trans activist community have leapt on what little has been done and paraded it around as proven scientific fact. As has already been said up thread the brain is incredibly complex and our understanding of it is incomplete.

A little less rigid thinking, and a little more compassion is what is needed all round here.

StillLost That article is complete madness. Those 54 people who the article refers to were women getting pregnant and giving birth. Biologically female human beings, in case that wasn't clear enough, who for whatever reason thought of themselves as men.

But that just illustrates the point I have already made: a woman doesn't become a man and a man doesn't become a woman. They just become someone who thinks of themselves as belonging to the opposite sex. It doesn't make it true.

Yes I have avocado.

I didn't say that it was a whim. I said that these people need some form of therapy.

I also stated that a man cannot become a woman. He might want to, but it isn't going to happen. So surgery is not helping these people, it is making them false promises as treatment for their problems.

I know of a transgender child, it is a difficult and heartbreaking condition for families and the individual, and I would like to see a bit more acceptance and tolerance.

I found the programme a bit disturbing, particularly Cole's mother who came across as disappointed that Cole seemed to be settling on being Cole rather than Crystal. Possibly Cole's conservative father was correct in dealing with it as a phase which needed time to be worked through one way or the other rather than leaping right in.

So far as Camille I'm still not sure how an 18 month old baby can have expressed feelings of dysphoria.

alex, have you ever actually met a transgender person? You make it sound as though someone would want to put themselves through hormones and surgery on a whim.

Do we talk of a male womb? male ovaries? Male vulvas

Well I wouldn't but Australian health records have 54 men got pregnant and gave birth.

au.ibtimes.com/more-50-australian-men-got-pregnant-gave-birth-babies-2013-advocate-predicts-trend-last-1389830

You have to subscribe to read it, Flora, can you tell us one or two things that he says?