Transing children

It would also be harmful for a transperson to pretend to be genetically/ biologically a sex they were not when dealing with certain medical situations or genetic abnormalities

Or to gain entry to women's only spaces?

Ophelia the point I was making is that you would not only have the legal rights as a mother, you would legally be the mother. I doubt all adoptive mothers constantly refer to themselves as 'adoptive mother' in all or even most contexts - just mother usually. That's not the same as 'pretending' to be a biological mother to the child within the privacy of the family.

harmful to pretend an adoptive parent is a genetic parent especially when tracing blood type or genetic abnormalities.

It would also be harmful for a transperson to pretend to be genetically/ biologically a sex they were not when dealing with certain medical situations or genetic abnormalities. Within the privacy of a medical context. Again you only strengthen the analogy.

OldCrone Can you explain exactly what you mean by 'gender' and 'gender identity' in this context?

I actually meant gender as in sex, in this context. The old fashioned meaning. But I recognise that today people usually mean gender as a role or class assigned to a particular sex by society.

Gender identity = the sex with which you identify or feel you are. I don't think the term has any usefulness outside a clinical context.

I watched this and agreed with most of it,

but there's also an interesting rebuttal here www.adolescenthealth.org/SAHM-News/SAHM-Responds-to-Dr-Michelle-Cretella.aspx

that refutes all the twin stuff. I know she's a believer in 'curing' homosexuality which kind of screws her credibility and I have no idea who the SAHM lot are (other than named after an MN acronym!)

Confusing. What are people's thoughts?

An adoptive mother is a parent. She may not have given birth to the child but she is the parent as parenting is the process of bringing up a child, not just giving birth. Adoptive mothers are clear to their children that they haven’t given birth to them, we all accept that to lie to a child about this is cruel, wrong, and can do untold damage when they inevitably find out the truth.

*An adoptive mother is an adoptive mother no one pretends they are the birth mother.

Christ it has been proven many times that it is very harmful to pretend an adoptive parent is a genetic parent especially when tracing blood type or genetic abnormalities.

Most adopted childen appreciate knowing they are adopted not pretending they aren't.
An adoptive mother is an adoptive it here and now one pretends they are the birth mother.

No one should pretend a GRC means you have changed sex. It means you have a GRC.

Yes, and the GRC changes their legal sex

It’s a poorly written law.

Do you believe humans can change sex?

Which is, IMO, an unhelpful legal fiction. They haven't actually changed sex, it's just that in most circumstances a GRC means that people should pretend they have.

Just like an adoptive mother hasn't actually, biologically given birth. But the adoptive process confers to them the designation mother. Would you call that legal fiction? Why is it ok then to say it about trans people?

There is just something so obviously disturbing hearing anyone calmly and rationally argue for mediating a child's healthy body

Really 0phelia? Even the calm and rational sounding psychologist on the other thread?

Yes, and the GRC changes their legal sex and they are issued with a new birth certificate signifying that sex

Which is, IMO, an unhelpful legal fiction. They haven't actually changed sex, it's just that in most circumstances a GRC means that people should pretend they have.

Unless of course said child is a teenager and starts self-medicating, or unless said child's mother acquires them cross sex hormones...

Ereshkigal Nope. The law recognises their difference from actual women in the existence of exemptions to the Equality Act, and to the GRA.

Yes, and the GRC changes their legal sex and they are issued with a new birth certificate signifying that sex.

That’s good to hear.

Drugs this powerful for children should still not be on the table. It’s a gross breach of medical ethics.

Ten years time, these kids will start suing.

Bowlofbabelfish If a child is suicidal you do NOT go straight to drug therapy

You are right. They don't go straight to drug therapy. They go through a period, often for years of assessing, watching and waiting, talking, listening, supporting. Helping the child and family manage their emotions, behaviours and relationships.

There are many, many layers of treatment and support a child can receive without drugs.

Yes and they do them all.

It’s against medical ethics. Children cannot fully consent to being given these drugs. They can assent but they cannot consent.
The drugs in question have serious, long term effects. Cognitive impairment, osteoporosis and metabolic damage to name just a few we know about. We are probably still to find others.
These drugs are not harmless. They are not reversible.

I see the ‘but what about suicide?’ Line trotted about above and this is massively disingenuous. The figures for suicide attempts are manipulated by organisations like mermaids.
If a child is suicidal you do NOT go straight to drug therapy using drugs which are powerful and harmful. There are many, many layers of treatment and support a child can receive without drugs. Any child in distress should be given intensive psychological support- NOT drugs that will do them untold harm.

I see so much poorly understood pseudoscience around this issue as well. I despair. Poor poor kids - there are going to be some very emotionally fraught lawsuits over this in ten years time, mark my words.

Agree Ophelia.

There is just something so obviously disturbing hearing anyone calmly and rationally argue for mediating a child's healthy body so that they remain pre-pubescent, sterile and aesthetically altered, just because they like dressing in clothes and doing things stereotypically associated with the opposite sex.

There's no such thing as trans children. Trans adults, fine whatever. Leave children alone.

Brief Nc due to discussing work:

As a primary teacher for over 15 years, mostly teaching in special schools, the only child I have met with any type of gender confusion was autistic.

They were influenced by tv, simply loved any kind of pink girly stuff. It began very early, wanting to have long hair. It was a love of long princessy hair. I think now everyone would have just said just let him grow it. It grew into wanting to be a girl then he picked up on the whole sex change thing via the media. Lots of rigid thinking; eg I remember having to challenging him about the male football stereotype by showing him pics of the ladies teams before he'd do football in PE.

Behaviour was very different when wearing wigs and dresses; time was built into the day to allow for it. He channelled extreme flouncy stereotypes when dressed up, acting out an act he'd seen in princessy cartoons, it could get quite over the top. But got terribly upset if he couldn't be involved in his passions.

Parents were brill and patient and he was seen by someone in London (probably Tavistock) and decided he was happy in his body, could enjoy anything girls could and later on decided he was gay and just very into fashion.

This was pre iPads and easy access to social media and I do wonder how it would have been different today.

I also remember as a child, a boy being teased for simply wanting to play in the home corner. I remember him crying and saying he wished he was a girl.

If you don't fit the stereotypes around you as a child and it is quite a logical conclusion to think you're in the wrong body. I do believe there is a different mechanism at work with true dysphoria but sadly so much gets so confused due to the strong sex and gender stereotypes society is flooded by.

Different people are vulnerable or immune to peer pressure and social stereotypes; the book, The Afluenza Virus, demonstrates how this plays out with regards to advertising, wanting to "have it all" and the impact on mental health including eating disorders, another type of dysphoria. There was Pacific island who got TV very late compared to the rest of the world; within a few years young women and girls started to get eating disorders whereas previously there had been none recorded. I do think there are similar mechanisms at work, everyone is different in their brain physiology and life experiences; the two together will have an impact on self image etc.

They do use identical twins - if they don't both have GID they know it's not innate, and that's what they found.

I'm interested in twin studies generally but I wonder how much they can tell I'd of they are not identical twins. Plus, if raised together, I wonder what factors they include?

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.

I agree with all of this. It very much appears that autistic girls are being funneled into transition, especially if they have any history of sexual abuse. Most of those girls would benefit from alternate treatment being offered. There's copious evidence of gay boys who were obviously gay from a young age being funneled into transition too. They don't even need treatment, just a less homophobic society.

We're going to look back on this in a generation and be appalled at how badly these children were failed by the system.

dinosaur yes, cultural appropriation is frowned upon but generally but I see some parallels with current trans issues.

From Wikipedia : According to critics of the practice, cultural appropriation differs from acculturation, assimilation, or cultural exchange in that this appropriation is a form of colonialism: cultural elements are copied from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture, and these elements are used outside of their original cultural context—sometimes even against the expressly stated wishes of members of the originating culture.[3][10][11][12][13][14]

Often, the original meaning of these cultural elements is lost or distorted, and such displays are often viewed as disrespectful, or even as a form of desecration, by members of the originating culture.[10][15][16][17] Cultural elements which may have deep meaning to the original culture may be reduced to "exotic" fashion or toys by those from the dominant culture .[10][11][18] Kjerstin Johnson has written that, when this is done, the imitator, "who does not experience that oppression is able to 'play', temporarily, an 'exotic' other, without experiencing any of the daily discriminations faced by other cultures." [18] The African-American academic, musician and journalist Greg Tate argues that appropriation and the "fetishizing" of cultures, in fact, alienates those whose culture is being appropriated.[19]

(my bold added)