I cannot believe that Mumsnet - a parenting site!! - agrees with the following:

Prawnofthepatriarchy

Wow that’s horrific! I do think in some cases (not all) it can be a manifestation of munchausen by proxy. Can I say that if I’m not aiming it at a particular individual?

Old timers may remember the mother of a trans child who used to post here years ago. She'd left a well known group for such parents because she strongly disagreed with their ethos. She described other parents using the group's meetings to discuss ways of obtaining cross sex hormones illicitly. When she left the group she was pursued with suggestions that if she didn't facilitate medical transition her DC would commit suicide and it would be all her fault. It was nasty stuff.

No5 on ops list is called grooming. It’s a known safeguarding concern.

It is also known that abusers target and groom adults to get at kids ie single mothers/adults who work with children.

Jimmy Savile successfully groomed almost the entire country aided and abetted by the media and politicians, to get access to children and vulnerable adults.

Is it also ok to say that to disregard safeguarding rules and encourage children to take advice from randomers on the internet - knowing that those random people are suggesting buying and taking illegal drugs - and then, knowing what the children are doing, facilitating the cover-up and helping them to hide their actions from their parents is child abuse?

Because if it was in any other field than trans rights professionals (doctors, teachers, counsellors, support groups) doing this would be considered at best neglectful, at worst pure abusive.

Am I allowed to say that?

When people wake up and realise what they've done to themselves and their kids, it's going to be a whole lot of personal hell. What will it be like in 20 years. My goodness.

Are we allowed to say that the current legal and medical status re trans children is child abuse? As long as (obviously) we don't mention specific children?

Because it is. Giving children untested drugs would not be allowed in any other medical field. ffs, even life-saving drugs can't be given to anyone, adult or child, until proper, full medical testing is done. There are very strict guidelines around this. People die while waiting for those test in many medical fields, for the simple reason that we, as a society, must avoid the mistakes of the past such as thalidomide and others.

I can't understand how (a) safeguarding is so disregarded here and (b) we aren't allowed to question it.

I totally agree with you, OP. Mumsnet is on the wrong side of history with these guidelines and deletions. They go against child protection completely.

Which thread juzz

As someone more eloquent than me put it: parenting 101 - don't sterilise the kids.

irreversible fuck it

It's not legitimate treatment. It's reversible, damaging and sold on a lie.

There's a whole lot of sophistry going on here. There is no equivalence between saying "we do not allow you to state here that this thing is child abuse" and saying "we think this thing is totally fine"

I agree with Pratchet < #klaxon! > that the OP is defamatory.

The line mnhq seem to have drawn is that it's not ok to say that it's child abuse to parent a child in a way that permits them to present as trans, and access legal and legitimate medical treatment for them.

The legal and medical status re trans children is outside the control of mnhq. Can you really not understand that you put the platform at risk by using it to accuse parents pursuing legally and medically approved treatment for their children of being child abusers.

Given how massively important it is to be able to clearly delineate and recognise child abuse in order to safeguard children, I'm surprised so many posters are willing to use the term in this context.

And before anyone has a pop at me, I'm am not saying that there are never cases where a trans child is subject to child abuse.

But nowhere in the list of things considered child abuse or safeguarding warning indications does it say "child is permitted to present as the opposite sex and to seek appropriate medical treatment in the U.K."

BitterAndOnlySlightlyTwisted

"I don't think MN supports any of those positions, and I don't think it's fair to infer that they do because your post was erased."

If there's one thing that pisses me off more than anything else in the world it's when the people who make the rules say "those are the rules, we just have to follow them."

MNHQ made the rules. MNHQ enforce the rules. They are not being dragged along helplessly by this, THEY are the ones actively choosing to do it and doing it over, and over, and over.

If just hypothetically speaking a comment saying that it's wrong to mutilate a child's genitals is deleted for violating community guidelines, then the community guidelines are that mutilating a child's genitals is OK. And who made those community guidelines? Was it 'the community' (i.e. us)? Or was it certain specific people with their own beliefs that they ought to be held accountable to?

We each have a responsibility to act with integrity and within our own values. If MN is deleted comments for the above statements, well, that is their values.

Also it may have been a rogue decision considering we are all still reading.

I actually think the OP is highly defamatory to Mumsnet.

I agree with you Pratchet but I also can see what OP is getting at: if MN erase a comment they are in a way saying it's unspeakable. It's a kind of bystander syndrome, you don't commit the crime but you are complicit in allowing it to happen because MN is allowing publication of the view which promotes this child abuse.

I think most parents are indeed doing their best and it's not just the suicide fear at play: our whole society has been infiltrated by trans ideology and most people tend to go with the flow. We have pillars of the community such as the Police, MPs, Girl Guides, Local councils, universities and schools promoting trans children's rights, often at the expense of women and girls. It's only natural for parents to believe they are doing the right thing.

State-sanctioned child abuse is what it is, just like the Benefit Cap and 2-child limit of the DWP.

A direct question for Snappity.

Do you think the examples in the op are abuse? Or do you think it's ok to allow/encourage children to take untested drugs and/or go for unnecessary (from a physical point of view) surgery, to tell them lies and to encourage them to keep secrets from their parents and take advice from strangers on the internet?

I genuinely don't see any credible case for medical intervention in minors - and I have read all the transactivist-produced cases for it. And I particularly don't see any justification for the use of puberty blockers - and again, I have read all the arguments put forward for why it is desirable. I'm happy to put my view forward and I am not seeking to censor the view of the other side (not least because I would prefer to rebut it than see it not discussed).

It's an emotive issue.

I am concerned that a website for mothers will allow the emotive case for to be put but the case against can only be outlined without any emotion and with vocabulary highly censored.

@MNHQ - think again, please.

Just on the topic of such surgeries, how isn't it genital mutilation? Genuine question, not being goady, it's so alarming to me that anyone would advocate for this.

That is hugely disrespectful to parents who genuinely are attempting to do their best for their children.

How can they know what is best for their child, when so much of the narrative is dominated by "if you don't let them trans you will end up with a dead child"? I would reckon that the vast majority of parents want to do the best for their child, but knowing what that is can be very hard

They think they're doing their best

Thats a very good point about the parents pratchet

I think that's exactly what's happening

Yes, I bet you a lot of parents who've gone along with it all have done so through fear because they've been threatened that if they don't their child will attempt suicide.

That is hugely disrespectful to parents who genuinely are attempting to do their best for their children.

Oh yes I think the parents are groomed and abused as well. They think they're doing their best.