Transgender kids article in today's Guardian

almond cake just have a Google for the term and you'll get plenty of hits. And nope, it's not what is offered by the NHS, but it does exist (and appears to be quite dangerous)

Is there a type of therapy aimed at convincing trans people they are not trans?

Surely NHS therapy is about accepting gender identities in children and adults as they define at that moment and then helping that person find the best course of treatment?

Deciding surgery isn't right for them doesn't mean somebody isn't trans. Most trans people don't want surgery.

Flora the NHS does offer help for people to accept themselves as they are but it's clear from the NHS website on transgender issues that "accepting what you are" can mean accepting one is trans.

I apologise for the "Hello" style headline 9n this site but this was from a click through on an NHS site. None of those men look anything other than men.

www.gaystarnews.com/article/11-insanely-hot-men-you-will-not-believe-are-trans181114-0

Firstly, let me say that having looked through this post, I am truly saddened by some of the opinions that are held by people in this, an age where acceptance seems to be flourishing. I was shocked to see the comparison between trans and anorexia; having suffered greatly from the latter, i can assure you that it is indeed a mental illness that needs treating...which is not what i feel the need to be transgender is! Anorexia must be treated and may result in death if untreated, a need to be transgender should be nurtured. If your child has these feeling that they are in the wrong body, then they should be helped, and yes aided in their transformation by loving and caring parents. I believe that you should know your own children well enough to be able to see when they are truly serious about changing their sex. You should help them on their journey, yes you should make sure it is what they want 100%, but i disagree wholly that you should try and brush ut aside and possibly do even more psychological damage. A parent that is willing to listen, and really understand their child's needs, and to help them through difficult times is a good parent. Anyone that is unwilling to accept their child for who they are and embrace their differences is not a good parent...easy as that. In regards to gender stereotyping and boys and girls toys...the previously quoted parents speaking about their trans child were probably just using this as an example of one of the things they noticed while their child was growing up...i doubt this is what they solely based their decision on. I don't agree with gender stereotyping etc, but i think its a little naive to think that parents base their views of their children's gender preference on whether they play with cars or dolls. Anyway, rant over. Very interesting thread. X p.s floundering, i am sure you are doing the right thing for your son, keep strong and ignore negative comments...there are still many biased people in this world with archaic views.

I mean the type of therapy which is aimed to convince trans people that they aren't trans. Bit like a "gay cure" (which doesn't exist/work either) just aimed at trans.

What do you mean by conversion therapy in your post WW? Do you mean the normal type of therapy available on the NHS to help people accept themselves as they are or do you mean the religious, prayer based therapy?

Out of interest how does the suicide rate of people who are undergoing conversion therapy compare to those who undergo transition? If suicide is generally a high risk for trans people it's a bit meaningless to only look at the outcome of those who have undergone or attempted to undergo transition, if you don't compare it to the outcome of those who haven't.

re "insensitive" - With all respect to Floundering (and sincerely hoping you have not been hurt by my posts here), we are here to talk on this topic and I don't know how one can mention the high post-op transgender suicide rate in a nicer way than I have, saying I do understand where you are coming from... and I hope that transitioning turns out to be a source of happiness for your DS in the same post.

I do feel that 1/5 suicide attempt rate among post-op transsexuals is important to consider. Transitioning is clearly not the golden solution for happiness in trans people's lives with many de-transitioning and many others so unhappy as to attempt suicide. That needs to be acknowledged in these threads, imho.

Floundering, in answer to your question what you would do, I'm answering from the perspective of having teenagers.

If someone is suicidal, it is primarily a situation of helping them. I would get specialist help and therapy for them, and yes, I would support them to have surgery if they were an older teenager and they had been through a therapeutic process.

I would not be happy with puberty blockers because it is going through puberty that allows someone to have a better understanding of their identity and sexual orientation, and I think that understanding is necessary to make an irreversible decision. But then that is easier for me to say because both my teens have a fairly androgynous physical appearance so there would be fewer 'passing' consequences - height, bone structure etc if they did turn out to be trans as adults.

Having said that, many people make decisions that irreversibly change our lives (sometimes for the worse) as young people, and sometimes that is better than the psychological damage of controlling parents stopping them from making that decision.

I'd also make sure they had plenty of gender variant adults who were not trans to talk to (as they already do) so that they had a good range of experiences and role models to draw upon.

That is because I wouldn't want them to get drawn into this notion that most people have a gender identity and that most people have gender experiences that align with their sex, which I think young people are exposed to by both consumerism and trans blogs. I think that is important whether or not they are trans as an adult, because otherwise they might end up with an unrealistic expectation of what being an adult man or woman 'feels' like, against which they may measure themselves and be distressed by.

I also think part of bringing in role models is because I would try and not control the process my child was growing through. We don't know what causes these strong trans feelings, so I can only use as my guide other body and identity issues. Many body issues are partly caused by and exacerbated by feeling that others are controlling you and what you do with your body, and I would not want to add to that. Teenagers experience identity differently to adults. Even if a teen is just something like an emo, at that moment in time it really is intensely who they are, and challenging or dismissing teen identities can be very damaging. So whatever their identity, be it about gender or something else, I would seek to respect it, however long or short lived it was.

And I will cite the Ghengis Khan dna discovery re the evolutionary theories - and also that I do think that some personality traits ie agression, language, sociablity, passive/assertiveness - have some basis in genetics and that as in sexuality there are clumps at each end of the continum but that does not make it the norm or only way to be.Also that socialisation reinforces most of thease in negative damaging ways - long term everyone will just be able to be 'human'

Sorry that should ne how violent the language and imagery many of the binary gender trans use. Ironic ;)

And Floundering - as well as therapy I would be teaching and showing my child that gender isnt binary but a continum the way that sexuality is.And im not a rad fam as i personally do belive that as well as ohysical differances between the sexes there are phychological ones some evolutionary ( ie cooperative social chatty women maybe had more children and violent dominant men also had proportionaly more kids) and some biological /hormonal ones. But the continuum is pretty oblious even in very very binary gender cultures. I am actually always quite amused b. How 'violent the language the militant binarlanguage use. Very ironic and if it makes me a terf so be it :)

An olive branch icon might not go amiss on mumsnet... sorry for any upset I caused you Floundering . As I said there are a lot of difficult topics on here.

Just to add I have a friend who has an AIS female - XY chromosomes - she only found out when she was in her early 30s. She thinks her parents were told when she hit puberty and her cancerous gonads were removed - but the way it was phrased to her in her 30s was "as you know you're XY normal" and the notes indicated the patents had been told. Well if my uneducated WC parents had been told I was "XY normal" I doubt they would have had a clue - they would just had done latched onto the word normal.

My friend has female genitals, has been raised female, has never experienced menstruation, cannot have children, identifies as a lesbian. I am in no doubt that she is female, nor has she. I had assumed that was pretty much down to socialisation but I do wonder about the impact of hormones on the developing feotus.

Because I don't conform to gender stereotype, nor does one of my dds, and because I SEE the appalling stereotyping going on ATM, I personally tend towards rejecting any approach which does not take this seriously. Otoh there does seem to be some scientific evidence that for some individuals there is a biological basis (differences in some parts of the brain) for wanting to transition. I reject binaries, I reject biological binaries because biology is more complex, I reject gender binaries - I also reject theoretical binaries which say "if I'm correct then you must be wrong".

I am still appalled at some of what I saw on the film - I think the case of Cole / Crystal was really interesting as this seemed to illustrate the problem that I, as a feminist, have with early transition. I am relieved he had the space and freedom to decide to remain Cole. Is that only because of his father's intransigence though?

I need to do more reading, but I think there is a complex mix in the trans community of people whose transitioning might have been for quite different reasons.

Yes the interactions and reinforcement mechanisms will be varied, complex and probably highly individual.

Perhaps there is a pre disposition at birth for blue eyed people to take more risks than brown eyed people, but because it is not enforced and grown by any socialisation, it withers away.

Or perhaps it's there in the stats somewhere but because no one gathers eye colour on a speed camera or crime report, we have no idea about it.

" much of our brains are grown and formed outside the womb" Quoting myself just to remind you to take a good look at the difference in size between your baby's head and your own: that's the influence socialisation has on human brains. Simplistic, but it gets the point across!

Sorry if arguing about social bloody constructs doesn't seem the most supportive of answers to the here & now.

The problem then is that since this is a feminist discussion place you will find that the posters who come here do so to discuss social constructs.

As far as suicidal ideation in a teenager goes, I think it'd be counseling for me, too, rather than agreeing that their situation/body is responsible for how they feel and that's the thing that must be changed. I understand that where you are today, you see suicidial ideation because someone thinks they're in the wrong body as substantially different to a teen who is suicidal for any other reason, but I'm not sure it is.

Still, the short answer is yes - but you don't fully appreciate the depth and temporal length involved in that socialization. It isn't just 'being told we need to be compliant and good', it's being raised in that expectation since birth and having other behaviours disapproved of. It takes 15 - 18 years to raise a human and much of our brains are grown and formed outside the womb, not in it: plenty of time to softwire cultural norms in. Similarly men are more violent because they are raised in a culture that expects and even approves of men who express their emotions violently. How else do you account for different cultural gender norms? Even in the west Britain has a serious problem with violent behaviour. Even in Britain we didn't have such strong gender stereotyping 20, 30 years ago.

That said, catsrus' article was aninteresting reminder - I have come across what the chap called 'intersex' people before. Our science hardly knows everything yet, and I know about a tiny proportion of that. How and where biology intersects with sociology and even psychology is something that will continue to be investigated...

Another one who as a child preferred boy's toys and thought that boys had the best fun. If I had been given the option of changing into a boy at that stage, in my innocence I would have been delighted. I also hated puberty and breasts.

But since then I have been perfectly happy as a woman, a mother and a grandmother.

I really appreciate a lot of the points made here as I have never been happy about people doing such drastic things to perfectly healthy bodies. We really are heading back to the nineteen fifties now, with such stereotyped gender roles.

Floundering - no one is saying that their 'angst' and mental pain is not real or not incrediably traumatic for the parent but pain in its self does not validate it as a 'real' thing like being gay or mean thecrest of who are 'cis' are lucky to have the right brain in the right body .
And what would i do as a parent ? Treat it like the MH problem it is. Therapy, therapy and therapy.

Can I ask those of you who are sure all gender differences are just social constructs why there is such a huge disparity in the rates of violent crime committed by men and women? Or drunk driving and speeding offences?

I have seen comments on this forum frequently about women and girls being told they need to be compliant and good. Do you really think women don't engage in these activities just because of that? I don't.

Sorry ,I mean your son.

I don't know any transgender people (not that I'm aware of) As I said I'm a bit sceptical of the assumptions the parents of the younger children in the Theroux documentary made that not liking traditional "boys things" means their child was a girl , not a boy.

My experience of transgendered people is therefore limited to those who are publicly in the media. At the one extreme I see the type of transactivists who post on sites like Stavvers' blog and at the other gentle, creative people like Antony Hegarty, whom I admire a lot and whose experiences I cannot take other than at face value.

It does not seem Floundering's daughter was pigeonholed at an early age in the way some of the children in the Theroux documentary were.

Anorexia is based in body dysmorphia, gender dysphoria is a totally different diagnosis although I agree they are both similarly complex places.

Smirnoff I was not intimating that anorexics are not genuine, no one would want their child to remain anorexic.

May I ask then if I am so wrong, what would you do?? What would you do if your child came to you in complete mental turmoil and asked for help as they were feeling suicidal?

It's all very well having these theoretical arguments but these children (not just mine) come to their parents with a plea for help, some of them far too young to understand what they are experiencing or why they are in such turmoil.

Should we say it's Ok dear off you go & play you;ll grow out of it,its only society putting this pressure on you ???

Parents of trans kids go to hell and back ( as I'm sure parents of anorexics or any other MH illness do) questioning myself and my child's course of actions. I come on any thread about trans kids to see if there is any new advice or suggestions to ease the situation, and possible resolve the turmoil without resorting to the plans he has for his poor body.

Sorry if arguing about social bloody constructs doesn't seem the most supportive of answers to the here & now.