Transgender kids article in today's Guardian

So do I.

Gender is a social construct a penis is not. And yes i think Trans feelings and anorexia come from similar complex places.

"If I could persuade him to accept his body as it is I would in a heartbeat, and I (initially) hoped it was a phase as all mothers do I am sure at the outset, but when you see the anguish they are going through and the certainty in their minds you can't help but see they are genuine. "

Is this not the same for parents of anorexics?

Not to me Ehric no. The phrase I quoted was jut one I had heard before and it was interesting it was used by the american psychotherapist on the programme.

Obviously the diagnosis and treatment of anorexia is very different as it is dysmorphic in origin.

The point is obvious surely?

Your point being Reddragon? Are you comparing anorexia to dysphoria?

Lots of people are consistant, insistent and persistant about things they are ' wrong' about - Anorexia springs to mind to really fit the above criteria.

Yes I am her still and reading with interest, trying to take in all the different view points while trying not to get angry!

Almond my son is now 18 but this all started when he was 16 so was then a child. At every step of the way I have offered my support and opinions when asked, and respected his wishes.

It was a battle to get any support initially & he deferred to me as a HCP used to table thumping with the NHS, particularly while he was so depressed and confused in the early stages & I just wanted to seek some specialist advice. Subsequently when attending any medical appointments if he needed moral support I would go with him, but always sitting to the side & so he could conduct the sessions only offering thoughts if asked.

He now goes to his gender clinic appointments alone or sometimes with either myself or his sister for company but we don't see his doctor with him unless its a family session. We are all having family and individual counselling to hep us through this minefield.

I accept that to many of you on here it seems like mutilation, to see your child (and he is still my child however old he gets!!) voluntarily go for a double mastectomy, but rather that than the alternative. Many FTM trans teens don't go for bottom surgery, for many years if at all. That side of the surgery is less advanced than MTF reconstruction field apparently.

If I could persuade him to accept his body as it is I would in a heartbeat, and I (initially) hoped it was a phase as all mothers do I am sure at the outset, but when you see the anguish they are going through and the certainty in their minds you can't help but see they are genuine.

One of the phrases I keep hearing from the medics and was used on the Theroux interviews was " the child must be Consistant, Insistent and Persistent" to convince their psychiatrists they truly are dysphoric, before they even START to diagnose the condition.

"I want to challenge these, not appropriate intervention when a genuine medical condition has been identified."

But what makes a genuine medical condition? That seems very blurred nowadays. What used to be called being unhappy due to bad circumstances, or grief, etc is now called depression and is often doctored with medication. It is indeed muddy waters.

Link fail!
ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TS.html#anchor107763

Have you got links to the research on that AFG? I would be interested to see it. As I said upthread, I'm broadly in sympathy with the rad fem take on this, while disturbed that this appears to also make me agree with some far right nut jobs . I'm a scientist so have been looking at the scientific evidence for the causes of TG. This is an interesting site, the author is a MtF TG, a computer scientist, who writes very well I think and is causing me to do a lot of deeper digging.

The waters have been seriously muddied, for me, by the actions of some trans activists alongside the strengthening of gender stereotyping leading to much stricter "gender norms". I want to challenge these, not appropriate intervention when a genuine medical condition has been identified.

I wasn't aware of those studies on transgender and abuse but harassment was the reason why I viewed puberty with dread. That is what I was getting at yesterday and I therefore found Abortion's post interesting. Cote was a bit blunt perhaps. But this is the topic in hand, it is not an easy one. Most on these boards are not.

Whilst I am sceptical that an 18 month only baby is apparently capable of determining he or she has not been correctly assigned the correct gender and am equally sceptical of the motives of the "die cis scum brigade, I do not doubt there are people who genuinely and sincerely are transgender. And having said that if Floundering is still reading this I find the 2 posts immediately above mine very insensitive.

Actually, I can't think of a single instance (aside from trans) where a real doctor will agree to cut off a body part because you ask it to be amputated

Elective mastectomy and elective hysterectomy. Removal of extra digits on hands and feet.

I always wonder, given the research on how many girls displaying "cross-gender" behaviors and dysphoria have been sexually abused (a disproportionate number!), what exactly the real story is in some of these cases.

When girls are distraught at their breasts, it's often about what the attention they get for them means, about the fact that they may not like the attention of men in general and now they are subjected to it constantly, or they may even be abused by a man who is talking lewdly about their development. This is what happened to my friend who wanted to be called a "boy" name and cut her hair short. Developing breasts is terrifying when people are using them to objectify and dehumanize you.

Of course, not all dysphoria is related to sexual abuse. But I've seen studies showing that up to half of ftm transgender identified people have been victims of sexual abuse. That's too alarming. And the prescription is stopping their puberty, if it's "caught" early enough?

The horrors that will be visited on the next generation of abused children will make the torture suffered by abuse victims from my own generation, like myself, seem like petty slights.

Floundering - I'm fairly sure that cutting off perfectly normal and functional body parts is mutilation to everybody, not just to me.

"but surely if it saves his life, then IF it gets to that point, a long way down the road, then its no different to any other plastic surgery"

Plastic surgery by definition is changing the appearance of a body part, not cutting it off. Actually, I can't think of a single instance (aside from trans) where a real doctor will agree to cut off a body part because you ask it to be amputated.

I do understand where you are coming from and I sincerely hope that I will never have to make such decisions for my DC, but genital mutilation is not like plastic surgery because (1) you can't reverse an amputated penis, (2) you can't create a fully functional penis, and (2) there is a very high rate of dissatisfaction with the results of these permanent operations, with significantly high rates of depression and suicide in post-op transsexuals. The study quoted in that link says 1/5 regret the sex change and suicide attempt rates run at 18% (almost all of the 1/5 who regret the sex change).

Of course I hope that transitioning turns out to be a source of happiness for your DS, but the statistics are quite worrying.

If your 'child' is over seventeen and transitioning, doesn't that make them an 'adult?'

Surely it is up to them to make their own decisions as an adult?

This was a thread about children.

Flora thank you, yes I agree, I am not making sweeping statements, while I am (obviously) speaking from a personal perspective, I have tried to stick to facts and discuss the trans issue as regards children. What I have a problem with is that there are many of you who are so hide bound with words and meanings you miss the bigger picture, you make sweeping statements about what parents are doing as if we are all pushing our children through some sort of abusive surgical mill.

The whole point of this thread OP (as I see it, the poor thing has been cared off!!) was to discuss the programme & its subject as it was portrayed specifically not descend into a discussion about the wider trans issue.

There are PEOPLE at the basis of these problems, some very young and troubled and while as a wider issue yes I agree with you Gibbering society pushing kids into pigeon holes has a lot to answer for, that is an issue for long term change by feminists and when you are faced with the issue right here and now with a child you have to deal with the here & now..

Also rape, abuse and harrasment are not unfamiiar to me, sadly, that does not mean I will let my issues with that make me unsympathetic to another subject under discussion, and to say that survivors of any of these awful things are therefore anti-trans people is insulting really, although I can see it would make it more difficult to get your head around- it wasn't easy for me.

Please don't worry about the gender pronoun thing it is a minefield- but most don't mind a genuine slip up(I've had to unlearn 17 years of them!) its the deliberate misgendering that is the insulting thing as I understand it!

For 'her', please read 'him'. Sorry, I do get confused with transgender vocabulary sometimes. And then carried away.

Floundering you are posting on a board filled with rape, abuse and harassment survivors. We can all be sympathetic to a girl approaching puberty and suddenly thinking omg I don't like the way this is going. It is not her that is the problem, it is the society which treats us like shit. Perhaps you could try telling her that, it might help her a little.

And then you will have to, as we all do, weigh up the pragmatic options very carefully. The pragmatic choice you eventually take will not make the society-level issues any less valid. The very best of luck to both you and your child.

I also agree that the crucial thing is to help a child in crisis deal with that, and gender reassignment might be the appropriate solution.

Where we differ, I think, is that some of us believe that crisis is being created by the way society views gendered behaviour as it relates to sex assigned at birth. We don't believe that a baby can be born in a male body with a female brain or vice versa because we don't think there is good scientific evidence for the whole 'female brain' notion. We would rather society accepted a range of behaviour as 'normal for that person' so that every child felt accepted.

The older I get the more subtle and insidious I see the "acceptable" gender divide to be. I'm 60 now, was involved in 70's and 80's feminism and think that the ACTUAL discrimination we faced then was the easy bit to tackle.

I agree with you Floundeing on this point. If a person is living in crisis they need make the decisions they can live with. It is important though to be careful about making sweeping statements that apply to everyone and not just the person in crisis.

Mutilation to you, and I have to say me too initially Cote, but surely if it saves his life, then IF it gets to that point, a long way down the road, then its no different to any other plastic surgery.

You can't compare dysmorphia to dysphoria it is a completely different diagnosis, and psychiatric approach.

From what I understand of your posts, "My child feels like a man" doesn't mean that he is claiming knowledge of how men feel (or even whether that is a different feeling/existence than that of women). What he is saying is "I think I am a man". Please correct me if I'm wrong.

If the alternative is suicide, of course I understand your going along with whatever your child wants to do to remake his body in the image that his brain says it should be. That still doesn't make it right, imho. Mutilating the body to fit the brain's distorted perception of what it should be is wrong, whether it is someone saying "I want my left leg to be amputated because it shouldn't be there" or "I want my penis & testicles cut off because it shouldn't be there".