Bloody hell BBC

Thanks Bernard

And thank fuckity-fuck for our wonderful NHS and all who work in her!

for you and your daughter Betty

I am so sorry to hear about what your daughter has been through

• conflating

Ooh Sarah you do seem to be having a huge problem conglating gender and sex. Our concerns are exactly that. Change your gender all you want.

I will say it again, just in case you missed it. You cannot change your sex.

My daughter (7) has PTSD (she survived a near fatal illness and has trauma related to her time in paediatric ICU). She regularly sees a psychologist who specialises in working with seriously ill children and attends a quarterly group with other children her age (mostly cancer survivors). She also sees a therapy-through-play specialist to help her prepare for upcoming tests/treatments/interventions.
No one has ever once mentioned any kind of prescribed medications in relation to her PTSD.

and you really can't see an issue with a post-pubertal male, who could be 6ft and 12 stone, playing sports against girls? You have to be trolling. No-one is that daft.

Sarah I don't know about any of that but two wrongs don't make a right! And, as others have said, there is nothing wrong with Autumn's body.

Incidentally, when one of my children was having some fairly serious mental health issues he expressed those in part as what would now be seen as gender ID issues.

Be very, very careful not to lose all sense of probability when the magic word 'trans' is uttered. In his case, once he was happier, and yes, less inclined to self-harm and suicide threats, he was also happier in his own body.

Some of those 'unsupportive' parents may be recognising the gender issues as part of a pattern of mental ill-health, rather than causing it by their lack of acknowledgement.

Those with families like those here have had severe mental health issues and really struggled to deal with it and instead turned to self harm, eating disorders and even suicide.

I think you misunderstood what I was getting at. 'Families like those here' or 'supportive families' are going to make bugger-all difference to the medical outcomes of sterility or of cancer risk. They may or may not make a difference to current and future mental health, yes.

I'd argue, though, that thinking about a child's future health and relationships is part of being a truly supportive family.

How is that any different than pumping a child dealing with abuse or a teenager / young adult dealing with PTSD full of chemicals so that they can cope or feel better?

I assume you mean prescribing anti depressants?

there is nothing wrong with Autumn's body - it's perfect. no need to prescribe any drugs to Autumn to change their body

changing a healthy body is very different to prescribing drugs to help someone with mental health issues

Very few antidepressants are licensed for use in children, Sarah. Ones with the potent side effect of long-term sterility would be rightly condemned.

(I sound like I'm attacking you. I'm sorry. I've been through almost the identical thought process you are expressing here, and come down hard on the side of thinking that the obvious harms are so huge that they should rarely be permitted.)

giving cross sex hormones and puberty blockers, untested and with a swathe of side effects, to children and young people struggling with body issues (as most of us do at some point) is appalling.

How is that any different than pumping a child dealing with abuse or a teenager / young adult dealing with PTSD full of chemicals so that they can cope or feel better?

typing in a hurry - I mean (as I think you know) that giving cross sex hormones and puberty blockers, untested and with a swathe of side effects, to children and young people struggling with body issues (as most of us do at some point) is appalling.

Has your daughter had single-sex school loos removed to be replaced by 'gender neutral'? How does she feel about it if so?

Not yet and I can't imagine they would in a Catholic school. Personally I see nothing wrong with gender neutral toilets as long as there are cubicles. Considering how long females queue for loos compared to men maybe having gender neutral toilets with more cubicles would alleviate some of the issues.

Has your niece tried playing hockey against a supposedly female but actually mixed-sex team?

Again I can't see the problem.

Have several female children you've know since they were tiny suddenly declared themselves male, mid-teens? Are they breast-binding, with risks to their health? Are they taking testosterone when they hit 18, with increased cancer risks and sterility on the cards? How are their families coping, including their siblings?

I don't know anyone from tiny, only from teenage years so it's different. However I can see that those with supportive families have dealt a lot better with it all than those with families like those presented on the feminist boards. Those with families like those here have had severe mental health issues and really struggled to deal with it and instead turned to self harm, eating disorders and even suicide.

Autumn is 9 and has been 'identifying as a girl' for two years. Are you saying you'd have this conversation with a 7-year-old?

My 7 year old DSD knows where babies come from. There are age appropriate ways of saying things.

shutting down conversation with your child who's experiencing gender dysphoria and saying no darling you can't transition is only going to make them feel a lot worse.

Are you sure? Has there been genuine controlled comparison of long term outcomes, not for the tiny proportion of 'old-style' dysphoric people but for the much greater numbers who now come under the trans heading?

Parents have to say No to children all the time, on both trivial and huge matters. No, you can't have a second ice cream/ dog/ baby sister/ dad back here to live with us/ granny back from Heaven. It's tough, but it's better to be truthful to children.

Yes but shutting down conversation with your child who's experiencing gender dysphoria and saying no darling you can't transition is only going to make them feel a lot worse.

I don't think anyone here has suggested that the right course of action is to 'shut down conversation'.

And don't parents have to say 'no darling, you can't...' quite frequently?

The point is that Autumn is being led down a path that could see them losing a very important part of their life. The fact that it might end up being replaced with Autumn being perceived as a woman and being a caregiver in that role to a child is missing the point.

People should be permitted to make those kinds of trades. But only if they properly understand what's involved and so can give informed consent. Anyone facilitating such choices in the absence of informed consent is carrying out abuse.

Dealing with issues in the mind by dosing the body and surgically removing healthy body parts is so bloody unethical I can't imagine how anyone can think it a good idea.

Not all transgender people have gender reassignment surgery, especially in the case of FTM. Your first part strikes me as odd re dosing the body. Extrapolating that does that mean you think mentally ill patients should be given antidepressants or other mental health medication because that would mean dealing with issues in the mind by dosing the body

Then that misrepresenation is on the parents and they should be explaining these things, that yes Autumn you can become a mother but only via these means - either by using somebody else's genes or by freezing your sperm before transitioning.

Autumn is 9 and has been 'identifying as a girl' for two years. Are you saying you'd have this conversation with a 7-year-old?

why people are so against it when it has no impact on their lives

Hasn't affected a child of yours yet, then, I take it?

Has your daughter had single-sex school loos removed to be replaced by 'gender neutral'? How does she feel about it if so?

Has your niece tried playing hockey against a supposedly female but actually mixed-sex team?

Have several female children you've know since they were tiny suddenly declared themselves male, mid-teens? Are they breast-binding, with risks to their health? Are they taking testosterone when they hit 18, with increased cancer risks and sterility on the cards? How are their families coping, including their siblings?

I don't quite know how anyone is being UNaffected by this if they have teenagers. Transition in any medical sense has to be a last resort for the truly dysphoric only. It's not neutral, and it's not like coming out as gay.

and none of that means they have changed their sex, Sarah. It is all superficial stuff.

Dealing with issues in the mind by dosing the body and surgically removing healthy body parts is so bloody unethical I can't imagine how anyone can think it a good idea.

Sarah, you were the one that bought up legal fictions (adoption, changing one’s ‘gender’) and then lesbian parenting. I just joined those threads together.

There are lots of posts on the problems with surrogacy on this board already. It’s exploitative and it’s shit for women. There are now women in developing countries raising the disabled children of westerners, who declined to take custody. Babies aren’t something to buy and womens’ bodies aren’t something to rent.

www.stopsurrogacynow.com/gay-rights-and-surrogacy-wrongs-say-no-to-wombs-for-rent/#sthash.2bIRGczj.MKnqlRWq.dpbs

breeders.cbc-network.org

s/he won't assume that's by adoption, surrogacy or stepparenthood. S/He'll think it means 'grow a baby in my tummy', and that some awfully clever medical thingy will make it happen.

Then that misrepresenation is on the parents and they should be explaining these things, that yes Autumn you can become a mother but only via these means - either by using somebody else's genes or by freezing your sperm before transitioning.

How about 'a greater chance of long-term happiness for children'?

Yes but shutting down conversation with your child who's experiencing gender dysphoria and saying no darling you can't transition is only going to make them feel a lot worse. A friend of mine transitioned many years ago FTM, is now happily married to a lovely lady and is so much happier now then when he was experiencing all the pain and turmoil of being trapped in the wrong body. And to look at him you wouldn't even know he's transitioned unless he told you.

And the idea that if you don't conform to the gender stereotypes most commonly associated with your sex (dresses, makeup, two fucking towels) then there is possibly something wrong with you that needs correcting is an abhorrent idea that I do not want my children learning.

What is wrong with telling children that they are perfect the way they are? That they don't need to change their physical bodies irreversibly, that there is nothing wrong with them and that they can live the way they are living, doing the things they like, in the perfectly healthy body that they have.

Why is that such a 'bigoted' concept?

Gender and sex are two different things. I think a person can change gender.

At last something we can agree on, Sarah. How do you think gender relates to sex?

Here are my definitions. Sex is biological, male or female, and dependent on chromosomes (normally xx or xy). Intersex conditions are variations of these, but are defined as female intersex conditions or male intersex conditions. Thus everyone is either male or female. Since chromosomes cannot be changed, people can't change sex.

Gender is a set of stereotypes and attributes which are culturally defined and change over time and between cultures. Certain attributes are defined as feminine and masculine according to customs and culture.

An example of a gendered stereotype is 'girls like pink'. If a boy likes pink, that doesn't make him a girl. However, if a boy wants to think of himself as feminine, and enjoy stereotypically feminine things, he should be allowed to do that . But having a feminine gender identity doesn't make him a girl.