Transing children

Wanderabout - exactly. This idea that medical and Psychiatrist professionals are too terrified to suggest otherwise is complete bollocks and being used (with little evidence) to support a political agenda suggesting a very small amount of people are changing entire medical/Psychiatric systems out of fear of being considered transphobic.

They're not. GI clinics are by and large not treated with a great deal of respect by their wider Psychiatric colleagues and are frequently complained about and 'diagnoses' challenged.

I've done so myself. As have my colleagues.

But being transgender is not considered to be a mental illness in and of itself - so, you can express your view that the person isn't transgender but expressing another aspect of a neurodevelopmental disorder like Autism or a mental (and possibly neurodevelopmental disorder) like a personality disorder with freedom. But it would be extremely rare that your opinion would overide the opinion of the individual themselves when their view that they are transgender is not considered to be a mental illness. In many ways that is how it should be, that the persons wants should not be ignored and overriden by a representative of the state (in the not too distant past this led to numerous human rights abuses).

That doesn't mean professionals are not openly talking about it, or publically expressing their views. They are.

The NMC, GMC and BPS all state that professionals are in breach of their professional responsibilities and ethics if they support actions or treatments which they don't feel are in the best interests of the people they are working with.

I have refused to refer people to GI clinics as I did not feel they were transgender. When asked to provide a professional opinion, I have given one.

Their GP or another service has referred them to a GI clinic and the person has been accepted for treatment.

At no point have I been criticised for not making that referral. Nor for my views.

In my local adult ASD service which has had to form a transgender group due to demand; being transgender is never dismissed as nonsense but it IS discussed in the context of why some people with ASD are more likely to perceive themselves as trans.

I completely agree with your post SarahCarer. The transgender kids I have come across through work all appear to be either gay or on the autistic spectrum or both. It's such a tragedy that they may very well end up taking damaging drugs and suffering unnecessary operations, when in the past they would probably have come to terms with themselves and found their own special beauty and worth in time.

Ratherbehome
I don't think the same number of adults are now realising they are transgender (proportionate to the ones who would have been missed out due to lack of awareness)?
This is where the greater awareness theory falls down. Currently far more girls than boys are being referred for gender identity issues. If this was just due to greater awareness, there would be a similar enormous number of adult women identifying as trans. Instead of that, we just hear reports of women who are glad that this ideology wasn't around in their youth.

Also, girls are very let down by ASD diagnostic processes and often don't get diagnosed until adulthood. Many psychologists are beginning to think that ASD is as common in girls as it is in boys (which would stand to sense if female and male brains are not really very different) and yet only 1 girl is diagnosed for every 2 boys. A lot of the time no one picks up on it at all while the girl is young and therefore they don't get the necessary support. "Coincidentally" a much larger proportion of girls are having their gender identities transitioned in their teens than boys.

I like the idea of a Bath Spar University.

Can we talk about ASD a bit more? As it is so relevant. For millennia people believed that male and female brains and personalities were fundamentally different and there was a massive power imbalance between men and women that was supported by this belief. In the twentieth century, for the first time, people began to apply scientific methods to look at gender. What they found was that gender is socially constructed i.e. the process of developing a gender identity has to do with social interaction; it is a combination of social 'stereotypes' and 'rules,' and individuals who are mostly adept at picking up on those social cues, who have a lot to lose by breaking them and therefore they conform to their assigned gender. Gender identity in most cases was found to be pretty fixed very early on in life, having been created through social interaction from babyhood. These theories become very well established. Around a similar time ASD is discovered, which is a genetic condition characterised by a triad of impairments, two of which relate to specific differences in the way the brain responds to social cues. Around a similar time, homosexuality is found by psychologists to be impervious to social conditioning. While all of this is still sinking in with society at large and much of the thinking of the preceding millennia is still very strongly held, psychologists turn their attention to gender identity disorders. They find that there is a very high coincidence of ASD and GID. There is also a very high coincidence of homosexuality and GID. They already know, scientifically, that gender is communicated to small children socially and they know that gay people have less to lose from withstanding gender pressures because they have less to gain from the traditional patriarchal structures that gender reinforces. And they conclude that................ we are, after all, born with male or female brains, sometimes in the wrong bodies. Gender is innate after all. @theskyisgrey can you see the problem here? They have reverted to the millennia-old way of thinking when there is an alternative, far more obvious conclusion. That GID is caused by autism and/or homosexuality. And that in both cases it is society that needs to change drastically to ensure those individuals can live their lives as they want and need to without discrimination and without altering their bodies.

Angharad07 Bath Spar University banned a research project looking into those who decided to 'detransition'

I think this is concerning because the help people actually need is being ignored, just to back a pseudo notion that transitioning is perfect for everyone with gender dysphoria. It really is a crime

Agree it's outrageously totalitarian and fascistic. Detransitioners have an important contribution to make to this. We need to understand more about it. We need to understand more about gender identity, sexuality and gnc behaviour. We definitely need more gnc role models.

It is interesting if you listen to some of the detransitioned women on youtube not all of them regret their transition/ detransition. Some of them, even with their broken masculinised voices, say that they had to go through transition to understand themselves as women. I don't think anyone could have persuaded some of them not to transition. They had to do what they did at the time. Perhaps some people are very much in the middle and it can be harder for them to undestand their identity so there will always be some who experiment, even more so with the genie out the bottle?

Anyway, I'm now going to have lunch. Not that I need to give you a minute by minute account of my activities but I don't want to be accused of running again

But the undiagnosed autistic children would be autistic adults. I don't think the same number of adults are now realising they are transgender (proportionate to the ones who would have been missed out due to lack of awareness)?

UpstartCrow Where were these kids 20 years ago? Or even 10?

A large amount of the increase could be explained by increased awareness.. please hear me out. Attempting evidence based reasoned argument:

Referrals for neruodevelopmental disorders have also hugely increased, both for children and adults. A large part of that has been explained by increased awareness and refining of diagnostic criteria. Evidence below. If this happens for other conditions - why would we not accept it happens for gender dys?

Autism spectrum disorder in adults: diagnosis, management, and health services development. 2016 Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat.
ASD was initially described as a rare disorder of childhood. However, the estimated prevalence rate of ASD has changed significantly over the past 40 years, perhaps in part because of increasing awareness of ASD and changes in diagnostic criteria and classification systems. In 1966, the prevalence of autism was estimated to be just four cases per 10,000 people. However, ASD is now recognized as a common, lifelong neurodevelopmental disorder that affects ~1% of both the child and adult population.

^JAMA Pediatr.2015;169(1):56-62. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2014.1893^

Conclusions and Relevance: Changes in reporting practices can account for most (60%) of the increase in the observed prevalence of ASDs in children born from 1980 through 1991 in Denmark. Hence, the study supports the argument that the apparent increase in ASDs in recent years is in large part attributable to changes in reporting practices. [note 10 year period here]

That's to 'MeetTheNewAccountSameAsTheOld', by the way.

I'm not sure if you struggle with reading comprehension or are just devoted to putting up strawmen. Either way it's not good.

I hated my body from a young age, it grew worse with puberty. I hated the response my body got from men and boys. I hated it so much. I've self harmed and suffered with eating disorders and still have issues with both. I am autistic and I never played with stereotypical girl's toys and didn't have stereotypical girl's interests. I didn't have stereotypical boy's interests either. I dressed for practicality and comfort and I enjoyed reading, puzzles, computers and playing alone (pretending to be characters I read about in books, Harriet the spy was one of my favourites, but I didn't limit myself to members of the female sex). I had an abusive father too so I was actually quite vulnerable.

I kept my first period a secret, didn't tell a single person. I screamed the first time my mum suggested I might need a bra. When I read about young children being transitioned I often can see myself in them. I spent a little time when I was younger thinking maybe I had a male brain, or a "left-dominant" brain (I think that was the one) because of things I had read, but now I know I just have my brain, in my body. I do think had the gender narrative been around the way it is now, with the access to tumblr and stuff, I think I would have fallen for this. Well I know I would have. I never really had a "tribe", I was always an outsider. I think this would have been my tribe. I was always secretive so I'd probably have made online friends and only spoke to them. I just know I would have fallen for this stuff. I did it with "pro-ana". I was a member of a forum and it was kind of competitive. You made friends but you sort of competed over who was sickest in a way, if that makes sense.

I just find the transing of children so wrong. I know there are grown adults who have transitioned and have known ever since childhood. I can imagine how painful it was for them. But childhood/adolescence can be painful for so many people, it isn't the right time to let them make life altering decisions. I agree with this doctor and I'm glad she has publicly spoken out.

TerfinUSA

"Are you saying butch lesbians aren't a thing? Or that 'pretty' gay men don't exist? Your point seems to be that because certain stereotypes may exist, we shouldn't ever find out if they are founded in reality and we should shun and suppress scientists who research them."

Your words. Not mine. You're the one who's made the claim that the existence of "pretty" gay men somehow justify a "study" objectifying and rating the physical attractiveness of 8 year old BOYS.

Wow. You're like, way overinvested in defending somebody who thought that objectifying and rating 8 year old boys was a-ok, instead of what the rest of us think which is, "ughh, sick-inducing".

Coupled with your attitude of thinking it's ok to objectify and judge women by the current patriarchally-derived, arbitrary, racist, and entirely male-enforced system of artificial judgements on the beauty of and therefore worth of women I'm done trying to talk to you.

#WYGLIGH

I don't care how low you want to go defending Zucker. I ain't following.

So - what does all this, effectively, mean for the safety of me and my daughter?

Means were all fkd Light. Risky business this life thing. We ain't none of us getting out alive.

differentnameforthis It doesn't really effect her. So she isn't allowed an opinion on it?

Didn't say she wasn't. Just pointing out it isn't her field of expertise. There have always been psychs that don't understand it. They're usually not the ones that have to deal with it and come up with solutions. Even with adults.

If there is a biological basis for gender dysphoria, would administering same sex hormones not be more effective and a less dangerous route?

Or is it really creepy to suggest that if a woman isn't feminine enough, she should have additional hormones and enhancing surgery? Or vice versa with men.

How then is administering cross sex hormones, with the attendant risks to health and fertility, seen as not creepy?

In contrast, a model of care that “affirms” a child's gender expression is thought to have a more optimal mental health outcome.

I don't know what they're trying to say here, unless they think that being transgender is a better mental health outcome than being gay

Presumably that if a child wants to present as 'the other' gender and has a deep conviction about it then we should support them. Because forcing them to desist can have a more adverse effect.

I think that some young people, who decades ago would have grown up 'just' gay, will now have the option to explore their overt gnc behaviour and in some cases that might lead to some sort of trans presentation lasting into adulthood. Where as previously it might have desisted due to societal pressures. Some will desist naturally anyway.

'Are you saying that butch lesbians are "uglier" than other women? '

Why are you placing ugly in inverted quotes? Some people are more attractive than others, studies have been performed on for instance dating sites to show which faces get the most clicks, and their proportions, and also in terms of body shapes, hip-waist ratios and so on. It's very obvious that some people are more attractive than others, and in scientific terms we CAN measure this by asking people.

There's a different question of what it MEANS to be attractive, in terms of social relationships, jobs, pay, and so on, but to deny that it exists and has a HUGE impact on our lives is bizarre. It's obvious for example that it be a NEGATIVE for a woman to be too attractive as she may be deemed distracting or whatever.

We KNOW what body/face features are associated with masculinity and which with femininity, that's why there's such a thing as facial feminization surgery, because human beings can INSTANTLY say that a face is female or male based on certain features that we aren't necessarily consciously aware of.

Whether homosexual human beings are PHYSICALLY less gender confirming is one question that scientists should be able to examine, but perhaps not particularly important as no-one is arguing for surgery & hormones for these people. However in the case of transgender people, the argument is that we should change the body through hormones and/or surgery, so it is clearly important to understand WHY these feelings arise, and where they originate from, from the individual and those around them.

"Researching them by . . . objectifying and rating 8 year old boys. Yeah, sure, 'cause everybody knows that 8 year old boys are sexually active and so rating how attractive there are is of vital importance /s. Count me out. Far as I'm concerned, that's one creepy-ass vibe coming from that study."

Why are you talking about sex in the context of 8 year old boys? That's creepy.

It's well-known that people discriminate based on attractiveness, even a very young age, and it's why certain kids get the parts in the school play, appear on the front of the school magazine, etc. - even at very young ages. This is not sexual, you might as well say that a study of the attractiveness of dogs is sexual, because some dogs are very clearly more attractive than others (hence Crufts, etc.)

As a researcher into child gender dysphoria Dr. Zucker is responsible to find answers and your attempt to smear him based on one study out of a lifetime's work is rather risible.

Perhaps better look at the first trans doctor, much beloved of TRAs, Dr John Money en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money, who setup the first transgender medicine clinic, and wrote approvingly of paedophiles having sex with 11 year olds, and sexually abused twin boys, both of whom went on to kill themselves as a result of his behaviour.

Because your smear on Dr. Zucker is a very weak attempt.

There's a more interesting bit in the Rosenthal paper with regard to children academic.oup.com/jcem/article/99/12/4379/2833862#52847975

Longitudinal studies have demonstrated that most gender-dysphoric prepubertal youth will no longer meet the mental health criteria for gender dysphoria once puberty has begun.

In fact, many such individuals will turn out to be homosexual (natal males, in particular) rather than transgender. Recent studies have attempted to identify factors that predict gender dysphoria “persisters” vs “desisters”. Persisters reported relatively greater degrees of gender dysphoria and were more likely to have experienced social transition (to their affirmed gender) during childhood.

So most children with gender dysphoria grow out of it by the onset of puberty and children are more likely to persist if they are affirmed in their transgender identities.

But they go on:
In contrast, a model of care that “affirms” a child's gender expression is thought to have a more optimal mental health outcome.

I don't know what they're trying to say here, unless they think that being transgender is a better mental health outcome than being gay.

Second paper on the Endocrine Society reference list:
Rosenthal SM. Approach to the Patient: Transgender Youth: Endocrine Considerations. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2014 Dec;99(12):4379-89.
academic.oup.com/jcem/article/99/12/4379/2833862#52847958

I've got as far as the definitions:

Although a person's “sex” refers to the physical attributes that characterize biological maleness or femaleness (eg, the genitalia), “gender identity” refers to a person's fundamental, inner sense of self as male or female (and is not always binary).

The phrase 'a person's fundamental, inner sense of self as male or female' is nonsense. In the absence of a DSD (and they state that the majority of people with gender dysphoria do not have a DSD), you are male or female.

It is not possible to 'feel male' if you are female, or vice versa.

You might feel unhappy about society's expectations of you as a girl/boy/man/woman.

You might feel unhappy about the way you are expected to present in public (clothes, hair, makeup).

You might feel unhappy about your body, e.g. about having a penis or having breasts.

This does not mean that you 'feel' that you are the opposite sex. People do not feel that they are male or female, they just are male or female. You cannot feel like something you are not, have no experience of being and can never be.

"Sorry I don't really follow your point. Are you saying butch lesbians aren't a thing? Or that 'pretty' gay men don't exist?"

Are you saying that butch lesbians are "uglier" than other women? Heard all of that homophobic shit in the sixties. And the seventies. And the eighties. "Look at that pretty boy. Fucking fag$$t." That was popular back then as well.

"Your point seems to be that because certain stereotypes may exist, we shouldn't ever find out if they are founded in reality and we should shun and suppress scientists who research them."

Researching them by . . . objectifying and rating 8 year old boys. Yeah, sure, 'cause everybody knows that 8 year old boys are sexually active and so rating how attractive there are is of vital importance /s. Count me out. Far as I'm concerned, that's one creepy-ass vibe coming from that study.

"On the one hand you and fellow TRAs want to say that trans people are mis-assigned at birth, have female brains in male bodies, etc. but on the other when a doctor does some research . . ."

I'm a TRA? Really? Bold claim. Zero evidence. Sounds like a certain psychologist. Are you Zucker? Show me your evidence that I'm a TRA. Or that I've said people have female brains in male bodies. Show me the evidence that objectifying and rating 8 year old boys like they're cold cuts in a deli doesn't have seriously creepy tones to it.

A PhD thesis wouldn't get away with it never mind the work of an experienced scientist.

In all my years as a biomedical scientist I have never seen references 1 and 2 requoted as refs 3 and 4 then 7 and 8...idiocy

I also looked it up old crone. Backing up a position statement with a review rather than peer reviewed research is ridiculous
I wonder who sponsored this maybe certain drug companies

“Brave adult psychiatrist not a paediatric psychiatrist. Not an expert in child mental health. Therefore never has to sit with a child and parents in front of her in a huge amount of pain and distress, pleading for help because of their/ child's gender dysphoria. She doesn't have to help them or come up with a solution. It doesn't really effect her.”

But they will be her patients when they grow up.