I am Jazz. ***Trans content. Please do not open if you just want to post insults or whinge about another trans thread***

Just watched a couple of clips of Jazz.

Honestly - he doesn't pass that well. His mannerisms are those of a young gay guy.

Jen adds: "It's hard being a teenager anyway,(let alone) to have to wait until you're 16 for your body to develop. It's upsetting to think all her peers are going to be talking about periods and developing breasts and wearingbras and things and she will be waiting - a really tough thing for her to go through

Many actual girls don't develop until they are 16. Should they be given artificial hormones to hasten the process so they don't feel bad?

And when I was in primary school some peers already had breasts. I sure as hell didn't envy them! And when I was 12, girls asking each other whether they had started their periods yet didn't upset me, I was just happy it hadn't happened to me, yet!
But of course, I am actually female and knew it would happen sooner or later, anyway.

Re big pharma. I remember a couple of years ago a fabulous poster called (I think) @WerkzallHours who noted the involvement of big pharma. Now that a lot of women eschew HRT (I managed menopause without any such medication partly because of the risks) and increasing numbers of women who are also stoping using hormonal contraception.

So where next? Aha, all those boys and girls who want to be other than they are **

** that is, perfectly normal human beings !!

Just watched a clip about Jazz. It makes me think of a boy in my dd class (yr 6); he loves pink, loves long hair, plays with Barbies and has a huge barbie dolls house in his bedroom. Gets bought makeup and princess dresses for his birthday. Preferred 'pink' things since he was small. BUT is a boy, knows he is a boy, likes being a boy and has no interest in being a girl - just likes 'girly' things. When did ridiculous social stereotypes start to dictate gender? If Jazz had liked jeans and blue tops, turned their nose up at anything pink, refused to wear dresses, loved climbing trees, riding bikes, going to Cubs, playing with water pistols and engineering kits would their parents still have taken her gender preference at 3 seriously? Because that is how my dd and a lot of her (female) friends play and have done for years.

Do you think the driver is the trans thing or to just have a reality star who brings in an income
She seems similar to other parents of children stars and those awful pageant parents
I wonder how the ignored children in the family feel

Picking I completely agree with your last post

Have his parents, in particular his mother made him frightened of any masculine signs either in his personality or his body? There seems to be this rush to get hormones and now surgery.

I watch the programme and do feel that the mother is the one driving it for some reason. I get the impression that the father is weak but I also think he wouldn't push it so hard if it weren't for the mother.

From a different angle...

It perplexes me how we now have a dynamic where it is seen as acceptable to pharmaceutically alter hormone levels in youngsters.

I keep thinking of the time I took clomid for fertility reasons. It blocks the estrogen receptors in the brain, and, no joke, it sent me potty. I got concerned about the effect on my mental state that I phoned the clinic, only to be told that it can have that effect on some women. The nurse jokingly said it was known to turn some women "into axe murderers."

So I think about that and wonder just what kind of damage puberty blockers and cross hormones might do in some cases. I know some transmen have taken testosterone and it puts them in early menopause with associated conditions that cannot be fixed. But that is just biochemical physical side effects, what about psychological?

Yet no one in a legal, ethical medical context seems to be talking about this at all.

It seems to me that Jazz has been hormonally castrated. The child has been turned into a kind of eunuch. How is this remotely acceptable? How are we even here? There's no way this kind of treatment of a child would be condoned in any other context.

What really concerns me is that I can sense a kind of voyeuristic "freakshow" cultural dynamic behind the show that I think has been fed by the last twenty years of reality TV constantly wanting to shock for ratings, and Jazz has been pulled into this phenomenon by vested interests for commercial reasons.

It's upsetting to think all her peers are going to be talking about periods and developing breasts and wearing bras

And kittens and unicorns and flowers and cakes and chocolate. Jesus.

When I was a teenager, we talked mainly about music, Smash Hits, clothes, boys, and going down town on Saturdays. All things that some of our male and female friends could talk about.

Cui bono?

Oh look, it was the American pharma giant Merck who just happened upon this interesting phenomenon where erstwhile-believed-to-be-girls become boys during puberty

The lack of data and thus research is one of the biggest, non-emotional reasons why it's imperative that transmen and women are recorded as such on their medical records. We need to know the impact of hormonal therapy and surgical intervention, both negative and positive. We cannot collect this information if we change records retrospectively.

Oh, I've re-read it Furry - it was clear. I just missed the Not!

Yes, that's what I meant Yet. Sorry- my post wasn't very clear.

Thinking more about this and specifically about my sister. I think she may have felt she was in the "wrong" body as a child - she was quite fat and wore glasses and had sticky out teeth. She had been bullied by a teacher for being fat. Terrible days.

Then at 16 or so, she grew about 4 or 5 inches all in the legs and beck, and became conventionally beautiful in a "feminine " (again, conventional) way.

This was in the 70s and in a society where conventional beauty was how women were valued. Till is really - in my late 50s I'm only now coming to see the damage done by valuing women for looks above all else.

Anyway, in today's trans epidemic, she may well have presented as being in the "wrong" body until she was about 15 or 16. I dread to think what would happen to her nowadays.

Reading this I was suddenly struck by the fear that what's happening in real and online spaces restricting women's discussion of women's issues might drip into schools. I can easily imagine a group of girls being 'encouraged' not to exclude a trans girl through discussion of biological issues which don't affect them

Or just as easily they could be asked not to discuss these issues because it upsets the trans people... !!

Jen adds: "It's hard being a teenager anyway,(let alone) to have to wait until you're 16 for your body to develop. It's upsetting to think all her peers are going to be talking about periods and developing breasts and wearingbras and things and she will be waiting - a really tough thing for her to go through

Reading this I was suddenly struck by the fear that what's happening in real and online spaces restricting women's discussion of women's issues might drip into schools. I can easily imagine a group of girls being 'encouraged' not to exclude a trans girl through discussion of biological issues which don't affect them.

Oh yes of course! Indeed, my sister is still a bit of a George. As are most women nowadays. Most women do things, and have an outlook on life, and expectations which are George rather than Anne!

She's the most beautiful accomplished woman now with children and a very happy life

Some of us are still Georges, but that does not make us any less of a woman.

HollyBuckets

Exactly. It's so pervasive.

Run like a girl, cry like a girl, throw like a girl. If you're doing something considered unmasculine, you must be a girl.

Jen adds: "It's hard being a teenager anyway,(let alone) to have to wait until you're 16 for your body to develop. It's upsetting to think all her peers are going to be talking about periods and developing breasts and wearingbras and things and she will be waiting - a really tough thing for her to go through

Oh fuck that. Yeah - peers are going to be talking about disabling cramps, blood on clothes and what the fuck do we do on swimming day. Bras, maybe, although I always hated the things, but there's the whole embarrassment of having boys see them through clothes, ping the back strap, being an actual girl and not having breasts (and being teased) or being an actual girl and having (big) breasts and being teased or realising that this might lead to a life of reduced ability to play some sports or to some pain.

I'm fucked off with womanhood and girlhood being reduced to a romanticised fetish and fantasy.

Yes, Datun I think your post hits nail on head.

What I keep asking is, Why don't men just "expand the bandwidth" of what it means to be a man, male, and masculine?

But of course, the problem there is that under patriarchy, to be male/masculine is partially defined by being not-female/feminine. I think that's part of the explanation for homophobia: if a man is attracted to men, then he must be, in some way, feminine. Therefore to be shunned.

And so on ...

I don't think there's a woman alive who wouldn't understand how a girl could get very resentful of the restrictions placed upon her growing up, that don't apply to boys.

E.g. from personal experience:

Guide camp - going in the woods, identifying leaves, making washing up bowl stands out of twigs.

Scout camp - swimming races in the lake, building aerial runways from trees, competitive games.

At the time it was irritating, now I see it as just sexist. I assume things have changed somewhat, but I'm using it as an illustration.

Where I think it goes further for women who vehemently want to be regarded as male, is when there's trauma attached to it. Often it's about the power dynamic, where she is trying to escape what she regards (correctly) as a vulnerable position due to her being female.

Women who want to be regarded as male do it to escape.

Men who want to be regarded as women, do it to achieve - what they see as a womanly role. This never involves writing Christmas cards, doing the housework, taking the children to school, and looking after elderly parents, though.

It's their idea of women seen through their male eyes. Hence the hypersexual appearance of a lot of transwomen if they're AGP or otherwise, the 'demure modesty' look. Again, a female stereotype that many men find attractive.

A transwoman on here last year said he feels he can only be 'vibrant', presenting as a woman. It seems they are looking to expand the way they can feel, whereas women who do it are looking to reduce the way they do feel.

Who here read Enid Blyton's Famous Five as a child? I did and I wanted to be George, the tomboy. Imagine what would happen to George now. No more a tomboy, but a trans boy, pumped full of hormones and promised magical surgery to make her a man.

My sister was a George - she really wanted to be mistaken for a boy, dressed like a boy, and so on. There were all sorts of family dynamics going on which prompted this.

She's the most beautiful accomplished woman now with children and a very happy life.

I dread to think what would happen to her now. Really dread to think what is happening to current Georges.

Discussion had got to the point where women were making comments to the effect that you don't need a penis to drive a lorry, operate a power drill etc, and then some poster started commenting that we were being cis-sexist and transphobic because not all men have a penis and not everyone with a penis is man.

And that's where me and my sympathy part company.

Which is why these threads do often get very angry.

Sympathy for trans people cannot be something one has at all costs.

Inclusion, sympathy, help and support has furthered a political agenda that will, and does, force women back into the very position that they have been trying to change for years.

It's so quick and it's so effective. Who would have thought that 10 years ago calling a man a man would have you deleted from online media, shouted at, no platformed and called a bigot.

Yet it does. Often by really quite reasonable, decent people. Because language matters. It always has. It can, and evidently has, changed the way people behave, the way they think. It's incredibly powerful.

You can no longer start a sentence with the 'women'. 'Women are unrepresented in the media, women are unrepresented in the government, women need abortion rights, women's sport, women's pay, women's degree statistics, medical statistics, crime statistics.'

Women can drive HGVs, just as well as men..

Because the word woman is not limited to women any longer. So at the moment, you have people calling you cissexist and transphobic for suggesting it is.

But if recent years have taught us anything, you will soon no longer be called cissexist and transphobic because everyone will stop making the distinction, for fear of reprisals. And will be consoling themselves with the thought that they are being progressive and inclusive.

That's when you get to pregnant people, chest feeding, front hole. Nothing to denote that it is only the biological class of women that does these things.

Even if you think we have to make a distinction somehow, we will be back to being bleeders, breeders and feeders.

Society treats women differently to men. The only distinction necessary is that you are a woman, a biological woman. Women know full well, there is nothing stopping them being completely equal to men. We can drive the HGVs, we can make political decisions, we can run companies, countries, etc.

If words are taken away from us to classify women, on a biological basis, not only can we not talk about it, legally it doesn't mean anything.

Women will be doing all those things much more. Running countries, companies, breaking Olympic records, except they will be women with a penis.

Meanwhile the bleeders, breeders and feeders will be women with a vagina.

A woman doesn't need a vagina to qualify for a woman's scholarship, business loan, diversity statistics, FGM statistics, to campaign for access to abortion, because...

...not all men have a penis and not everyone with a penis is man.

Jen adds: "It's hard being a teenager anyway,(let alone) to have to wait until you're 16 for your body to develop. It's upsetting to think all her peers are going to be talking about periods and developing breasts and wearingbras and things and she will be waiting - a really tough thing for her to go through."

On phone so can't bold sorry.

A quote from a mother of a MTT and it just struck me as selfish and completely delusional.

No mention in the article (BBC) that the girls (now known as peers) have to suck up a penis in their spaces but even worse they'll want to talk about their naturally developing bodies.

The child in question is 9!! I despair I really do.

Hi there, thanks for this thread. I started looking into this issue about 2 or 3 years ago, and have taken a break from it because it was becoming overwhelming for me, and I seemed to be in a state of perpetual rage about it, which isn't very healthy.

But ... this issue is huge, complex and accelerating at alarming speed towards a really, massively fucked up future in which women and children are going to lose out big time.

My introduction to the trans narrative was on another forum when women were having a humorous discussion about the way in which men patronise women - started by a woman who regularly drives HGVs and was fed up with men who insisted on standing behind her vehicle and "helpfully" waving their arms around as she was trying to park the bloody thing. Discussion had got to the point where women were making comments to the effect that you don't need a penis to drive a lorry, operate a power drill etc, and then some poster started commenting that we were being cis-sexist and transphobic because not all men have a penis and not everyone with a penis is man. I'd never come across such bizarre thinking before, and so I started googling. Found Gendertrender, 4th Wave Now, Purple Sage and other bloggers who were talking about it. A real eye opener!

For those who're wondering on this thread about why Jazz wasn't told that there wouldn't be enough penile material to create a "neo vagina", I believe it's because no one thought far enough ahead to anticipate this problem. Jazz, and other children in this situation are being experimented on - medically and socially. It is child abuse, no doubt about it, and I also foresee a great many law suits in the future from these children - if they make it that far. The medications they are on from the age of about 9 or earlier are not kind to their bodies, and their mental health, already quite fragile I would think, will take a massive knock when they are faced with the reality that what they were promised is just not possible. No one can change sex.

Who here read Enid Blyton's Famous Five as a child? I did and I wanted to be George, the tomboy. Imagine what would happen to George now. No more a tomboy, but a trans boy, pumped full of hormones and promised magical surgery to make her a man.