Can we please talk about "Gender" - I seem to find myself in a muddle thinking about it

I've also ended up coming to these threads because I have a teenage DD.

Two of her friends are now trans boys. Their explanations as to why they are trans have been very sexist, which has led DD to start stating sexist beliefs also; men do a, women do b kind of stuff.

I also feel like it is having an impact on her development, as she's trying to do the teenage job of finding her own identity, but it is being subsumed by all this narrow gender stuff. She was already very anxious, shy and passive, and I feel that she is being controlled and squashed by other people's needs because of this stuff.

This section and the fourthwavenow blog linked to on here are the only places I've seen talk about the impact on teenagers. I found the two gender critical pieces written by psychologists on there explain what I've found so worrying about this. I feel DD's psychological development is being constricted (which is how the psychologist put it) by this idea that gender identity is a thing we can all uncover in ourselves, when she should just be becoming an adult person instead. And if she doesn't come up with a gender identity it is as if she doesn't matter or doesn't really exist to her peers.

I know this is nothing compared to what Yeahwell is going through, but I really don't know what to do about it.

YeahWell I read this and thought of you.

www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/why-transgender-kids-should-wait-to-transition

Testosterone will leave a young woman with a permanently deeper voice and more body hair, and likely infertile. Puberty blockers followed by testosterone will cause certain infertility for life. This is a great way of erasing women who don't conform to 'feminine' gender stereotypes. We really need to wake up to what trans activists are doing.

YeahWellMaybe thanks so much for posting here. I have been watching the development of transgender ideology for the past few years and finally started writing about the issue on my blog - my first post is here: communicatingwithkids.com/is-my-child-transgender/ - because I couldn't find the issue covered on any other parenting advice site that wasn't just toeing the party line. It is incredibly difficult to write anything that challenges trans ideology because you will be labelled 'TERF' and 'transphobic' (I personally lost a few friends over my posts on the subject).

Transactivists are very powerful at shutting down debate in this way and unfortunately neo-liberal feminism has joined in. LGBTQ orgs have become trans-centred (eg. see Dawn Ennis at the Advocate) and the group who have been thrown under the bus are lesbians, who are now expected to be sexually attracted to *female penises or be accused of transphobia.

It used to be overwhelmingly men who identified as trans, but over the past year or so there has been a huge spike in young women who, like your daughter, are declaring themselves trans with no previous indication throughout childhood. They are looking at Tumblr forums and Youtube videos which are pushing the trans agenda onto young people much like anorexia sites - young girls are especially vulnerable to this propaganda because many adolescent girls feel disgusted/anxious about their bodies. These sites also encourage young people to view parents who don't buy into the whole trans agenda as bigoted TERFS. Your parents reject the Real You!

Please do check out 4thwavenow.com/about/ - started by a mother in the same position as you, packed with useful info, and a supportive community.

Yes, it's really frustrating when you notice, isn't it?

at sex fairy Flora. At least it would be funny if it wasn't becoming a kind of myth.

Magick for ur kind words.
lovely I took hope that the world will be less gendered at some point. When you become sensitive to it you realise it's everywhere
Clothes obviously but also food, toys, books, bicycles, cars, pencil cases, cereal and on and on. It is rammed down our necks all the fucking time. I know there has been threads on it before but the pink and blue kinder eggs? Really?
The world is as gendered as Victorian times. The whole embracing of transgenderism by eg completely square conservative republican voting men like Jenner is an indication of how deeply conservative a movement it is. Dark days for feminism when young non conforming girls cant see any role models for themselves. I'm guilty of being crap role model myself. If I lived on a desert island and dressed purely for my own pleasure I'd wear comfy cotton underwear, t shirts and jeans and wooly jumpers and trainers every damn day and would cut my hair nice and short and never wear makeup. But I'm not on a desert island and I know the punishment for women who don't conform and the rewards for women who are skinny sexy tight clothes etcetera so I feebly diet and style my hair and put on make up badly and wear high heels rarely and so on. I hate myself for it in some ways. . It's very confusing.

before the embryo had taken on a sex

I despair at this! Where does it come from? Do people think the sex fairy visits the womb to bestow a sex on a foetus?

The sex of the foetus is determined at conception depending on the chromosomes that are contributed by the sperm. There is never a time during which an embryo or foetus does not have a male or female sex (or, very rarely, intersex). The sex differentiation may not be apparent to observation during all the time but the chromosomal make up is there and will determine how the sex organs will develop. There is no time during which an embryo has not "taken on a sex".

YeahWell Maybe, my heart goes out to you. I can feel your pain on the page.

I cannot understand what is going on with young people and gender right now. I mean I understand the young people's POV but I don't understand how they are being treated as if they are speaking with such absolute unquestionable truth, when we don't do this with young people in any other context; nor do medics normally do this with patients who emotionally self-diagnose and prescribe their own treatment. I just don't get it. Again, my heart goes out to you.

I am so glad I didn't mutilate my body in ways I would have done if I had been allowed to when I was 15. I would be as changed as Michael Jackson if someone with infinite sympathy and the power to make it happen had sat down with me and said "so, what would you like to be different then?"

Now I am 43 and I am still short, chunky, freckly and ginger and I have two beautiful children and a strong healthy body that takes me everywhere I need to go and walks miles fast without complaining. I wish a strong healthy happy future to your dd, and children if she wants them, and I am praying for you both that she can find a way to express herself in the way she needs to do without hurting herself. Good luck to you both xxx

yep - at risk of being being a stereo typical woman, I walked into the kitchen, opened the cupboard (rebel - I know lots of people keep it in the fridge) and picked the first thing I saw. Didn't even like it at the time (I have been turned.. cheese and pickle sandwiches are now delicious to me - as is a Worcester sauce and cheese toastie)

Who wouldn't freak out. It's totally understandable. I can mentally imagine you feeling like things are barrelling towards some outcome and just standing there, arms splayed, saying hangon, wait a minute, lets think this through before we do anything permanent. It has to be the right decision to take your time and really consider your options.

Thank you chunky (branston??!)
and obsidian. I have lost heart, i do lose heart, I can hardly bear it. My ds is freaking out too. It's fucking awful. But many thanks for the kind words. Have felt better today than in ages

YeahWell - you really are dealing so well with trying to protect your child from making any damaging decisions too early. Please don't lose heart (I know you won't - your child is at risk!)

It can't just be about hormones in the womb - all those things you read about finger length, maths and spacial awareness etc. I come out well on the masculine side, but I've never had a wish to be a man.

I certainly spent most of my teenage years hating my body (I'm short and fat, and have come to terms with that now!), but it never occurred to me that switching to be a boy could be a thing.

Having said that, I did go for investigations (entirely pushed by me) when I was 12 because of my height, and it was suggested that I could have growth hormones. I looked into it all and decided that it just wasn't worth the risk for a couple more inches - my parents were entirely hands off about it, and left it up to me, I don't know what they would have done if I had decided to take the hormones and risk it.

YeahWellMaybe you sound like an amazing mum and I agree with everything you say

obsidian the hormone thing may be a reason for some people who want to GRS but it isn't generally the case, or it would be super easy to treat people who are struggling with dysphoria. My dd had all the blood tests done and is absolutely bang normal as far as hormones are concerned.
If you saw her you would see a tiny dainty little creature with big eyes soft perfect skin and delicate face and hands. She has breasts and menstruates. There is not one male thing about her although now she is trying to speak at a lower register. The psychiatrists did try to tell me she may have been exposed to male hormones in the womb ??? Which have left her brain marked as male ??? Which is why she feels male. Here's my prob with this:

1. What is he on about exposed to male hormones while in my womb? Don't we all have a mix of hormones? Isn't your sex determined chromosomally? Don't the chromosomes dictate which hormones will be synthesised. What's he on about? Some extra male hormones that went thru my blood stream while I was pregnant? From something I ate? What?

1. If the above mystery transfer of male hormones to her brain happened bullshit then that will have left her brain with a male marker of some description presumably? Where is this marker? What are the diagnostic criteria for discovering it? If her brain was placed beside the brain of a non gender dysphoria girl would he be able to see the difference? is it a chemical difference? What should be checked for when taking blood tests? All hormone levels are normal. Anyway he said there is no test but he still believes a test will be possible someday. I asked why and he said 'it's just a feeling I have' supposedly the top psychologist for adolescents in the country with special expertise in transgender teens learned while working with Tavistock clinic £500 for less than 1hr appt donkey a feeling? Not very scientific is it. No I don't think I'll leave my kid in your care for you to drug and give a mastectomy and sew on some other poor deluded persons donated penis on to her little body. No that doesn't seem like a good idea on the basis of your feelings.

1. What does it mean to say I feel like I am a boy? How does she know what a boy feels like? how does a boy feel different than a girl? Is it something that will be clarified by plastic surgery and solipsism ie I demand that everyone else live my version of my metaphysical reality even tho it is the opposite of any objective reality. If you don't bend to my thinking against your better judgement you are a hater and bigot and cruel and I will label you an ignorant transphobe.

It's like being in Alice in Wonderland ..but not in a good way.
Why aren't the medical community applying standard treatment to these kids ie hippocratic oath - first do no harm.
Dr Paul Mc Hugh maintains that there will be lawsuits aplenty in 30 yrs time with all these poor kids left high and dry on the sands of a retreating tidal fad. He is massively despised by trans community but he says he had the same crap when he queried repressed memory syndrome 30 yrs ago which involved similar solipsistic thinking eg in my mind it happened so even tho there is zero external corroborating evidence and actually there is often counter evidence my truth MUST be believed. It was a craze that thoroughly undermined genuine survivors of abuse.

I just can't let my child be washed along on this wave of wrong thinking negligent doctors and transgender adults with a political agenda.

Oh my god what a rant
Apologies
Going to sleep now. Good night all.

I'm very sure that part of our gender identity is down to our hormonal balances. I suspect that trans women possibly have lower testosterone in general and trans men lower oestrogen but as I posted before I have no idea whether that is something that I have completely made up or whether it has been researched.
Hormones play a large part in who we are and how we relate to the world. I don't think that david Reiner proves anything about gender, I just think he was a male person who had testosterone and a male body and was aware that he wasn't biologically female, whether that was a conscious or unconscious knowledge.

Sorry the numbers weren't clear on the 8 male, 3 ambiguous & 5 female.

There were 16 infants who were entered into the trial. 14 were reassigned but 2 parents chose not to reassign their babies but were still included in the trial.

There is a study by William Reiner (Prof of Psychiatry and Urology) into boys born with cloacal exstrophy. So they have normal testes but no penis or an exceptionally small penis.
It was regular medical practice to reassign the infants (neonates) as female and raise them female.

This study follows 16 of these patients.
bradyurology.blogspot.fr/2014/03/classic-manuscripts-in-urology-reiner.html?m=1

He followed 16 male children born with cloacal exstrophy. 14 underwent reassignment (as neonates).
At the last follow up 8 (of the 14 assigned female) identified as male, 3 were unclear on their sex and 5 were female.

These boys had normal testes and were subjected to normal levels of androgens in the womb.
They lost there testes when they were reassigned as neonates and were raised as girls.

I think there is evidence to suggest that gender identity (at least in males) is in part down to hormones in the womb.
Humans are complicated, very little is 100% innate with us but there's good evidence hormones influence how the brain develops as well as how the body develops.

bertie this will be my last post on David Reimer, you are right he is a sample size of one.
I maintain it is an important case as it was dressed up by Money to "prove" that

• you could raise a child born male as a female through surgery and socialisation.

Money told the world his case study was a success but (and this did affect medical practice) clearly it was a disaster.

I do agree with you that if this was the only example it wouldn't show much but it isn't.
also what on earth is a gender activist?

It doesn't prove anything at all, and the other facts are HUGELY relevant. Not shouting but cant use other emphasis on this tablet.

It's usually 0resented that he was raisedfemale, not knowing that he was male, as an adult he felt wrong and changed back to male, and later killed himself.

If there was only this too it, then okay, it's a relevant conclusion to say he was unhappy being female because something innate inside him was male. But this is NOT only the case. He was aware of his original transition to a great extent, having many unethical experiments performed by Money, his brother was also mentally ill which may also have been caused by the experiments, we don't know. But it's not as clear cut to say he was unhappy because he was raised as female and he was innately male. Because he always knew he was originally male, he was not fully transitioned, and in no way did he have the normal childhood of a typical female child.

If Reimer is truly the only example that gender activists have then the whole argument of proof is utterly ludicrous. Even if it was a clear cut example, which it clearly isn't, you can't generalise from a sample size of one.