Urgent: banning gender identity conversion

Eg. A neurotypical 3 year old can usually tell whether another child their age is male or female based upon their clothes and haircut despite the fact those norms have never been explained to them. Many autistic children however cannot.

"Gender is not what they start to get an awareness of (at 3) - it’s their sex."

I beg to differ. Children as young as 3 do frequently exhibit simple stereotyping eg associating football or construction vehicles with men and princess dresses with women. It depends a lot on what they have been exposed to. Gender stereotyping (which many children do internalise) often begins very very young. And gender identity is stereotypes internalised.

Agree completely with crone

Do you think that conversion therapy for sexuality and gender identity breaks the human rights legislation that protects vulnerable people?

Agree with everything that Bowl said in response to this, but I've one further comment about 'conversion therapy for gender identity'.

There are (at least) two groups of people who might seek therapy regarding gender issues. One is people who are unsure whether they are gay or transgender. Affirmation of one of these is 'conversion therapy' regarding the other, as Bowl explained.

The other group of people are those with sex dysphoria. 'Conversion therapy' for them would consist of enabling them to live fulfilled lives without undergoing or surgical treatment or requiring medication for life with all the negative effects these treatments might bring.

I can't think of any other condition where psychotherapy to enable someone to live comfortably with the body they have would be seen as a more negative outcome than "affirming" that that person needed to have major surgery to remove or mutilate healthy organs and spend their life reliant on medication.

Do you think that conversion therapy for sexuality and gender identity breaks the human rights legislation that protects vulnerable people?

I believe adding gender will set up a conflict because to give a young person who may be a lesbian conversion therapy to tell her she is in fact a straight boy is denial of her future sexuality.

How will you be able to ensure that NO CHILD will be given affirmative therapy on gender / sex which will conflict with conversion therapy for sexuality?

Has anyone even thought about this, or are they just ploughing ahead regardless?

Do you not see the potential for risk?

Child who is gender non conforming
Child told they are the opposite sex
Child pushed down blockers/cross sex hormones/surgery route.

What if that child would just turn out to be gay?

What consideration is being being given to how telling children they are the opposite sex (biologically impossible) is in fact conversion therapy for children who may turn out to be gay?

Why can’t kids be told ‘there’s nothing wrong with YOU. It’s society and their crap gender stereotypes. YOU are perfect as you are.’

Materialist As law abiding citizen of the UK I condemn any illegal action or act by anybody who commits a crime.

That covers everyone with responsibility for their actions under UK law. If you read the information on the link to hate crime you would have seen that anyone can be a victim of hate crime, but that the court only has an uplift on sentencing for those who fit the listed characteristics as these are the groups most a risk of victimisation.

Pratchet What do you mean by trans identities in your Q?

Everybody has a right in law to peaceful demonstration, to protest peacefully, To hold meetings that are peaceful as long as they do not incite hate against any group, community, race, ethnicity, religious belief or non belief, age, sex, sexuality, gender reassignment.

Laws protecting Trans people
www.pfc.org.uk/Equality.html
www.pfc.org.uk/GRA2004.html

Human Rights Act
Article 14 No discrimination
All of the rights and freedoms contained in the Human Rights Act must be protected and applied without discrimination.

Article 14 requires there be no discrimination in the application of human rights on any ground, and this includes (but is not exhaustive of) grounds such as:

sex
race
colour
language
religion
disability
gender
political or other opinion
national or social origin
association with a national minority
property
birth
or any other status (including, for example, sexual orientation or marital status)

Article 11: Your right to freedom of assembly and association
Everyone has the right to associate with others and gather together for a common purpose.

Article 11 is fundamental to keeping us free. It lets us protest peacefully, join trade unions and hold the powerful to account.
Freedom of assembly
Article 11 is closely linked to freedom of expression as it applies to protests, marches and demonstrations, counter-demonstrations, press conferences, public and private meetings and more – but it does not protect intentionally violent protest.

www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/human-rights

Do you think that conversion therapy for sexuality and gender identity breaks the human rights legislation that protects vulnerable people?

HilaryMGSDC

As you know it, do you think you fit better into the societal role of “woman,” or “man,” or do neither ring particularly true for you?

News flash, Hilary. It's 2018, not 1820. How do the societal roles of "woman" and "man" differ in current society in the UK?

Children at age three start to see differences in sex. This is around the age where kids notice that mama and papa have different bodies - and that they are more like one of them.
It’s also the age we start to name those parts correctly and talk about boundaries - the NSPCC ‘pants’ campaign for example is excellent. And boundaries are very important
Gender is not what they start to get an awareness of - it’s their sex.

I do wonder how much clearer this whole issue would be if there were separate words in English for the sex of a person and the act of having sex. A lot of the initial push to use gender seems to have been accepted because people are squeamish about the word sex.

I dislike holding individuals to account for the crimes of others And ime we ought to be particularly wary of doing so when a protected characteristic is involved. I know I will get slated for this.

"do you think you fit better into the societal role of “woman,” or “man,” or do neither ring particularly true for you? That is, are you somewhere in-between the two? Or do you consider your gender to fall outside of the spectrum completely? The answer is your gender identity." I find the question offensive. The societal role assigned to "woman" is intrinsically linked to oppression and objectification. I wonder when we forgot that assigning societal roles to people based upon their belonging to a particular "category" oppressive?

There is no difference in hormone levels at the age of 3 between boys and girls. There is no observable difference between brains. Psychologists are able to listen to how children talk about gender and they are able to see the way people categorise children from a very young age. They observe the impact of categorisation on children. We know how gender identity develops. It develops socially. The defining factors for what identity develops will include: the social roles and level and type of sex based normative influence a child is exposed to, the way a child responds to social cues, plus a myriad of individual experiences that makes up that child's internal and external story.

Human brains. Human brains!

Materialist
Hate crimes are any crimes that are targeted at a person because of hostility or prejudice towards that person’s:

disability
race or ethnicity
religion or belief
sexual orientation
transgender identity
This can be committed against a person or property.

A victim does not have to be a member of the group at which the hostility is targeted. In fact, anyone could be a victim of a hate crime.

Hate Crime

OldCrone Gender Identity I still don't understand.

Gender identity is all about how you, in your head, think about yourself. It’s about how you internally interpret the chemistry that composes you (e.g., hormone levels). As you know it, do you think you fit better into the societal role of “woman,” or “man,” or do neither ring particularly true for you? That is, are you somewhere in-between the two? Or do you consider your gender to fall outside of the spectrum completely? The answer is your gender identity.

It has been accepted that we form our gender identities around the age of three, and after that age it is incredibly difficult to change them. Formation of identity is affected by hormones and environment just as much as it is by biological sex. Oftentimes, problems arise when someone is assigned a gender based on their sex at birth that doesn’t align with how they come to identify.

Prawnofthepatriarchy
If you are in possession of a penis or a prostate then women's single sex spaces are not for you

You are not making sense when looking at the reality of what is the current law. You are making political statements based on your own fear and belief, form which you seem to wish to deny to others legitimate access to spaces.

What possible harm can a prostrate on it own do ?

Penis! You do not seem to understand what happens when you take male hormone blockers and female hormones oestrogen. If you did a little research you would realise your fears are based on a myth.

Transwomen have been using single sex spaces for as long as I can remember, and most of them probably self identified as women. I have never seen a UK report of trans women attacking other people in women's single sex spaces, but I have read reports of trans women being attacked and harassed in women's single sex spaces. It is for this reason that many trans women fear using and public single sex spaces.

Trans non-binary people are acting by challenging the binary model of gender, prevalent in western culture, by forming gender identities outside the binary and asking for legal recognition.

If you're non-binary what's there to transition to or from? We're all non-binary. And:

I have no medical qualifications, as for scientific qualifications I have many professional qualifications that could cross over between scientific, engineering and health and wellbeing.

Meaningless piffle. Weasel words. Sorry, Hilary, but you're a fraud.

You presumably joined Mumsnet to lecture women, blind us silly mummies with science and leave us better informed on the trans agenda. I should warn you that education will not help your cause, because the better informed I've become on the topic the stronger my opposition - not to individuals, but to transactivist ideology.

You express yourself in strikingly imprecise terms, which always arouses suspicion from a self-declared expert. Then, when a number of posters ask you questions you should find easy to answer, you either don't respond at all or disingenuously.

You're not the first transadvocate to underestimate the women of Mumsnet. But coming here and bullshitting is so not a good look.

Hilary do you have any experience of working with people with MH problems outside of LGBTQ?

Not the the LGB is particulalry relevant, but I do wonder that if your only exerience of complex MH problems is from within the spehere of trans issues, whether you have a strong bias and a limited perspective. People who have much broader MH experience often have different and more complex views than you seem to hold, and can identify cross-overs with other issues and disorders.

Without meaning to be very rude, you do do come acorss rather like you are just regurgitating an advertising pamphlet or powerpoint presentation. I don't find it all reassuring.

And you didn't that I can see, answer the Q re root cause and what if gender issues stem from child abuse.

@HilaryMGSDC As a gender critical feminist it is my view that gender identity is an internalized version of society's gendered expectations. Neuro-typical children often respond very instinctively to social cues as their language and communication develops (as toddlers) and their understanding of themselves reflects the categories imposed by the world around them. I can well see how a toddler could switch the category they internalize from very early on for a whole variety of reasons and begin to internalize the category normally imposed on the opposite sex. Many GC feminists never felt they fitted into society's category for female; they never developed a sense of gender identity and that is part of why they can see sexism where others can't. Others, like me, did internalize gender to a large extent but have found a delightful emancipation from it through learned feminism. Gender non conformity does a great deal to smash the gender binary. Identifying oneself as "non binary" and asking for a change in legal status to defferentiate yourself from others does nothing for anyone but oneself.

If you are in possession of a penis or a prostate then women's single sex spaces are not for you.

What reason would apply to women only spaces?

Spell it out for me.

Would they be happy if the men’s went unisex and the women’s remained single sex? If not, may I ask why?

Because if there is a reason for women only spaces then that reason applies equally to trans women so your proposal is illogical.