Natural lifestyles vs. transitioning kids - how are the two reconciled?

The families I know transitioning their (small) children are very much like this. They share memes about your child being the wisest person you can learn from and blogs about unschooling and letting the child lead. One family struggle with having vaccines as they don't feel ill, everything centred around their feelings and natural instincts. They consider every instinct equally valid, a two year old nervous about going to nursery is treated as the equivalent of an adult with agoraphobia or anxiety.

I don't think it's cognitive dissonance as much for them as the prioritising of "innate knowledge," over "acquired knowledge," and the idea that everyone can have their own opinion on factual matters, so there isn't an objective truth. They would just "feel" that certain medicine in unnecessary, they just feel like a boy/ girl, I don't doubt they would "feel" the drugs necessary later on. The thing I find strange is that neither family is very tolerant of religion.

I’m a little confused by the incongruity between putting a child on a lifetime course of medication as a route which allows them to express their true identity and thus happiness, whilst simultaneously natural remedies and self-acceptance are celebrated.

Reminds me of how some people who bang on about their coffee being ethically sourced think nothing about taking cocaine. It’s not like coke is farmed by workers’ cooperatives.

Hi, cockblocker. You say that your friend is only asking questions about the gender clinic. I'm sure she will be relieved if it turns out her child isn't trans, precisely because it is so much simpler for someone to be gay rather than trans.

this has all reminded me of when DCs were small (so early 90s) and I and many of my friends were very particular about what we ate- to varying degrees, from no sugar in any form ever to no processed food to organic only to organic-if-affordable. At the time I got round to thinking this was a reaction to the scariness of being a parent, especially in the cold war era. Many of us thought that a nuclear war was a serious possibility, and one we couldn't really control. PLus all the day to day hazards in our kids lives that were also beyond our control. The one thing we COULD control was what we put in their mouths (or so we thought, haha) and I think that was a kind of compensation for us.
So.....I wonder if manufacturing a new identity for yourself is a variation on that, a way to control something when the rest of the world can't be controlled? Capitalism is still implicated of course because it is selling the identity

Jaffa excellent posts and points. Blimey it is really great around here at 3am Pacific time!

Love your point about wealthy white blokes needing to figure out a way to stay on top of the mountain top where they can give the rest of us a good kicking. Who would’ve thought they realized that once in a dress they were the most oppressed ever! Just call everyone else cis and/or a transphobe and you’re golden!

And you get to keep your penis and be a Lesbian!

Thanks cockblocker! (I’ve always wanted to say that 😂)

Well I wonder, the fact that working-class people generally have a high level of BS detection and they haven’t been awash in so much of the propaganda could protect them. I hope so.

I don’t know if you saw that recent thread when some TRAs got quite hysterical over the fact that some women were handing out leaflets for Dr. Nic Williams organization with info on self-ID to young working class men. They had an attitude that as they were young they would be thugs and an immediate threat. Pretty offensive. Both my parents were from working class families and my aunts and uncles are scary in their ability to think critically and love a long profound debate as much as the next person. I am not really in a position to chat to them at the mo but I would really like to get their thoughts.

Also the societies in the USA and the UK are quite different in terms of class structure and how people identify. They don’t really use class terms but masses of class signifiers over here.

My current project is working my way through the 3 hour video posted on Feminist Chat of the philosopher (sorry can’t remember her name, I think it’s Clare something Jones) I am really trying to understand where the hell all these bizarre ideas came from and how they spread. So far the French and Americans have a lot to answer for, from what I understand in my current reading. I had never heard of Judith Butler until a week ago for example.

Thanks for your good wishes, I am in great form! This condition has blessed me in that I have spent MONTHS reading Feminist Chat and all the alleys it has sent me down edumacating myself 😀.

Jaffa Good comment about individualism and society.

It’s all ‘wokeness’ isn’t it.

And whilst I’m here (I’ve had my weetabix this morning), I think the more unequal a society, the more likely you are to encounter these movements, as people search for a reason as to why they aren’t the winners in an unequal society.

And to finish off the point I was poorly trying to make - the vegan natural types aren’t into veganism and naturalism because they genuinely think that those ideals are the best way to live their life. Primarily (even though there are other benefits) the main point is to give them an identity, a group membership by which they can feel superior to others.

It’s everywhere - audiophiles who sneer at people using the standard headphones and not gold-plated oxygen free stuff; the organic only crowd, the couldn’t possibly send my child to state school brigade, and everyone who doesn’t agree with me is either stupid or big nasty meanies. It’s just that only a few of these bandwagons (transactivism and the anti vas brigade spring to mind) actually cause harm or widespread disruption.

Of course most major religions are mega money making/power orientated organisations too! Look at the wealth and influence of the Catholic Church.

Manipulating belief is the way to great power and great wealth.

I think it is tied to ultimate end point of Western thought being centred around the individual, and a drive to be the most unique and special individual, who is so different from everyone else that they couldn’t possibly understand. Hence the co-opting of identity politics by middle class white males, who don’t like being told that they are doing life on Easy Mode and that many of the attributes they thought they had by virtue of innate intelligence and hard work, are actually due to a society which grants them immense and unchecked privilege.

I would bet the farm on Japanese and (South) Korean communities having a much, much lower incidence of transactivism, as the cultural drive there is one of group harmony and benefits to the group, rather than being special as an individual. This is despite those communities being more attached to traditional sex roles.

Tl;dr - if your culture prizes the individual above all else, don’t be surprised when people go increasingly bonkers trying to out-individualise everyone else.

Didn’t quite realise how massive my post had got till I posted it! I just had my last chemo and the prednisone I took at home is keeping me wide awake on the West Coast next to snoring DH!

A clarification for my post above: I was using the phrase cognitive dissonance in its original meaning: "the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values." I am old enough to have learned that meaning at uni! I do know it has come more recently to be used to mean just having conflicting beliefs, rather than discomfort experienced over this.

Borntobequiet has put her finger on it, I think: just look at religion. Millions of people accept equally contradictory beliefs when it comes to religion, without any problem or suffering from cognitive dissonance. So I don't think it's necessary to involve capitalism in an explanation.

The whole "purity" thing is clearly related to religion: it's something religions tend to be preoccupied with. "Becoming your true self" could arguably be seen as related to purity as well: metaphors like 'stripping away the layers of corruption to reveal the pure soul beneath' come to mind here. Or the Christian belief in "mortifying the flesh" to become more pure and spiritual.

Also, I suppose the medically ill-informed could argue that hormones are "natural"???? Because bodies produce them?

I think you all make some fantastic points, very interesting and thought provoking. Perhaps the emphasis coming from various different angles: healthy eating, New Age spirituality, popular psychology, and then social media all encourage an idea that there is a “real”self, an “ideal self” lurking, waiting to be discovered or revealed and almost any method is acceptable in the quest to discover that self. That self for some young people has taken on the concept of a “Gender Identity”.

(After rereading I realise I am close to just expanding upon what Blanketbox has already said, pointing the finger at capitalism.)

I think that explains the cognitive dissonance, especially in the young. All these vastly different ideas and ideologies are all presented by YouTube as equal in merit and Instagram in a never ending stream of the quest for perfection and meaning - but quickly. So the gentler tropes of “do no harm”, caring for the environment and compassion line up with radical body modification, if necessary, to reveal the “real” you. Depression and anxiety is apparently rising in the generations under 35 and so that may also explain their willingness to take drugs for pleasure as well as to medicate.

What interests me is the kids that are resistant to mental health issues and decide not to change themselves radically. I have three teenagers. So far I only know of a few teens with mental health struggles and no trans kids or kids that are following any radical ideologies or struggling with drug or alcohol problems, So they are not all buying what the world is selling, that is very interesting to me. Especially as I am hoping to raise healthy young adults who are critical thinkers. Seeing as they are on their phones so much, I would think the brainwashing would be much more successful, personally.

Perhaps the often mentioned fact that a majority of kids that decide to transition already have a history of anxiety and/or depression, autism, ADHD, eating disorders, being bullied, trauma, being a victim of sexual assault and a host of various issues which perhaps create a vulnerable young person, that previously we would support through their adolescence with talk therapy and ADs. Now, however, we as a society are willing to be complicit in a serious situation which if it includes drugs and surgery is supporting self-harm in my opinion, especially as in the past most of these kids would have eventually identified as homosexual.

I think you can see the appeal of changing gender and your identity pretty radically, as a creative escape route that has a huge cheering section on-line. The final part is that at least with the study coming out of Brown University in the USA one finding was that a majority of these kids were identified as Gifted and Talented by their schools and were above average in academics. This points to me to CLASS. As we know, kids in the middle and upper classes are more likely to be identified as G & T and it is the upper classes that will be more likely to have the time, money and resources to faff around with all the fads, be it dietary, technological, fashion etc.

The study also found students of color who had been adopted by white familes were over represented. Kids of color raised in their biological families were under represented, I think they most likely have some protective factors, only just because anecdotally (I am in the States) of my kids friends who are from those communities, Gender ideology just doesn’t seem to have made the same in-roads. They are GC, although also respectful of those who are questioning.

In the same way Eating Disorders were shown to be socially contagious amongst friendship groups (especially the wealthy white girls). It would be very interesting to study (if you were ever allowed to) if transition is a middle/upper class movement, at least in the USA. I am not suggesting that working-class kids are not deciding to transition, just that, for various reasons the numbers are tilted toward a wealthier contingent with kids and parents who have more time and money on their hands to explore gender in this way. Maybe the pro-trans parents have also been through college and believe they are on the “right side of history”. Another clue is the incredibly lucid and analytical comments from parents on 4th Wave Now and Transgnder Trend who are gender critical. These are families (on all sides) who are practiced at using their brains a lot!

The irony is astounding isnt it? Comitting themselves or their children to a lifetime supply of hormones and other medications straight out of the door of the pharmaceutical companies they would normally shun.

When I was younger, almost all of my strictest health food co-op shopping vegan pals had absolutely no problems stuffing themselves full of various ecstasy pills. They would be pretty much the only things they would not require a full ingredients list for. I think the thinking is, they want what they want and will try to get it in as natural and environmentally friendly way as possible, but if it's not possible to go the green route, they're still going to want to get where they're going.