4thWaveNow has some incredibly disturbing stuff from Facebook

Sometimes I just can't believe what I'm reading.

If these parents were forcing their children to eat salt or whatever to make them ill for attention, the law would come down like a ton of bricks - but it seems that you can bamboozle, manipulate and pressure your child into taking dangerous drugs so that you can make him/her in the image you desire, and that's okay.

Johanna Olson Kennedy is joining Helen Webberley and others for a live Q&A on 31st March if anyone feels like asking her some hard questions.

gendergp.co.uk/liveonlineevent/

That makes really grim reading. This has an influence on girls in Europe too, we know two confused, ASD girls, one in my dd’s class, and another in mainland Europe. Both mid teens, both suddenly saying they are boys. Dd’s classmate has talked to her about getting a binder. It is just heartbreaking. I suppose at least in Britain they are unlikely to get hormonal treatment yet.

oh my, that thread. I cannot even get my head around what the hell is happening? how can this be real?! How the fuck can this happen to children?

That most recent thread is going to stop me sleeping tonight.

Once you are emotionally invested, withdrawing from it requests a massive admission that you have allowed harm to happen. It's easier to double down.

Yes. Self protection from a deeply painful truth.

The whole trans culture seems to depend on everyone having to agree not to face facts and reality; and not to call things what they really are

The thing is though, normally when parents get really dodgy ideas that are promulgated and harming children, eg anti-vaxxers, sensible people will come along and point out that they are harming children. People like the WHO or the government, or doctors associations.

With transing children though, no-one with any power is speaking out, individuals are, but recognised organisations are not.

Why is this?

And the same is true of parents of trans children. If you have facilitated a mastectomy for your child, how can you possibly change your mind and become GC. How would you be able to live with yourself. The further parents go with transitioning their children the harder it is for them to decide that actually they were wrong...

I think you're most definitely right. Especially when you gone to the trouble of taking your child to a foreign country for surgery that was not available in your own. Maintaining, and even further promoting, the illusion of the 'transition' means not having to face the quite profound reality.

The whole trans culture seems to depend on everyone having to agree not to face facts and reality; and not to call things what they really are.

I think it's a big more complex than that. More about wanting their child to get the best rather than pure ambition, though that comes into it.

It doesn't get any more complex than that, for the reason it is often unconscious behaviour. That's complex enough. Some parents really are quite pushy when it comes to their children, and express their own ambitions and desires through them. Often for many women their children are the main avenue they have for acclaim or validation. Children in certain senses are their parents' creations.

I'm not sure if you saw the Michael Jackson expose, but the two mothers most definitely were living through and enjoying the access to the lifestyle that Jackson's interest in their sons permitted.

how can you possibly change your mind and become GC. How would you be able to live with yourself.

This.

Once you are emotionally invested, withdrawing from it requests a massive admission that you have allowed harm to happen. It's easier to double down.

the mothers had to much to lose from halting the whole scenario, and so they chose to over-rule their suspicions and fears

And the same is true of parents of trans children. If you have facilitated a mastectomy for your child, how can you possibly change your mind and become GC. How would you be able to live with yourself. The further parents go with transitioning their children the harder it is for them to decide that actually they were wrong...

The child is used to further the parents own ambition.

I think it's a big more complex than that. More about wanting their child to get the best rather than pure ambition, though that comes into it.

The denial that accompanies it is more dark. I think its a naivety or total lack of life experience tbh. It would explain a class divide.

I think it would be quite easy for that to happen, especially if the mothers were fans of his music. There's going to be a certain amount of denial going on, that your idol can't possibly be a bad person.

The gut instincts are usually right; but in these cases the mothers had to much to lose from halting the whole scenario, and so they chose to over-rule their suspicions and fears. I've seen this before, in the case of a friend who permitted a quite frankly, creepy guy to child mind her young disabled daughter. This creep lived next door with a woman and her child ( not his). But my friend's need for some space and assistance over-ruled any suspicions or concerns she might have had.

In fact she chose to think he was just some lovely guy, who couldn't do wrong....It was clear to me that this was not the case. He made my skin crawl. Why do people choose not to see what is in front of them?

In those two particular instances the mothers were flattered and groomed by Jackson too. In fact, the abuse would never have been able to happen if the mothers were not on board. The mothers chose not to see what was happening, for their own emotional reasons.

I think it would be quite easy for that to happen, especially if the mothers were fans of his music. There's going to be a certain amount of denial going on, that your idol can't possibly be a bad person.

Having a transgender child seems quite fashionable in the U.S - with some big name stars having trans children.

The U.s has long ben a heavily medicalised nation; with drugs and medicines advertised on TV, and with doctors being almost like purveyors of drugs for the big pharmaceuticals. I have an old friend who has long lived in the U.s. Two of her three children are on mood altering medications for supposed mental health conditions.

Read a book recently called " Crazy Like Us" about how mental health conditions are 'exported' from the U.S across the world, into countries and cultures which had never before particularly suffered from these conditions. On top of the drug pushing, there is a whole aid industry and charity sector that is used to enable and further establish the mental health condition 'of the day'.

In a way this is similar to the recent Michael Jackson child abuse revelations.....In those two particular instances the mothers were flattered and groomed by Jackson too. In fact, the abuse would never have been able to happen if the mothers were not on board. The mothers chose not to see what was happening, for their own emotional reasons. In both cases they were a bit like 'Stage Mums' or 'Hockey Moms'. The child is used to further the parents own ambition.

That's an interesting idea. You could be on to something there.

I think the desire to be a social media special person drives it too. Perfectly ordinary heterosexual people are suddenly queer and oppressed.

I wonder if the tightening of the gender boxes (and all the other identity-boxes) has to do with social media. Far more, and more continuous, reinforcement because of constant conforming-signalling and conformity-checking/policing from your social group, which counteracts any exposure to alternatives and outsider perspectives? Most of it subconscious?

What really strikes me about this whole issue is that nobody is allowed to or is interested in not conforming any more. In my generation fuck that reference make me feel old you could be a bit weird, explore not conforming, and teenage angst was about would I ever have a first kiss or have sex and am I actually attracted to same sex as well as or instead of the opposite. You were straight, gay or bi (or somewhere on a continuum,) and there wasn't really any rush to work out what box you wanted to be in, no rush to adopt a label, unless you wanted to. I thought people like Boy George were a bit weird but Kurt Cobain was cool and I was a bit of a tomboy and the guys in my college wore eyeliner and nobody but nobody blinked or cared.

These 83 recognised genders and the huge explosion of "trans identifying" small children as well as teens and adults just seems to me like a rush to get in a specific box as soon as possible. Where the fuck have any boundaries gone? "Mummy look [tucks penis] I'm a girl ha ha!" " ha ha no darling you're still a boy." "Can I wear a dress today?" "Well sure you can play dress up if you really want to but you're a boy and boys wear trousers. How about your favourite dinosaur dungarees today?"

Attracted to the same sex? You are trans, and denying it means you have ishoos. Not a clear stereotypical female or male? Must be trans. Attracted to the "right" gender but not stereotypically male or female? You're gay trans. Have normal questions about what sex and gender is because you're a child and every child does? Trans and needs medicating, a plastic penis and binder. Having standard teenage angst and are rebelling as you work out who you are? Here, have a label, and may we highly recommend Trans and different pronouns.

Since when has being male or female been such a very tight mold to fit in or reject? Why has being female but preferring comfortable trousers and t-shirts been erased? Male but have some effeminate characteristics, well damn well find your box and get in it, lord knows there are enough boxes now.

It feels like being a lesbian is being erased.

It feels very tight and restrictive - Get In Your Boxes, people.

I'm not Cis, because fuck somebody else giving me a box that I didn't ask for, want or need.

I'm a Woman. A messy, embodied, sacred, womanly woman. If I wear a dress it's with trousers or leggings, because that's what feels comfortable to me. I don't do heels. Often I wear a t shirt, joggers and hoodie, and I rarely do make up, apart from when I want to. I've only ever slept with men but I wouldn't put it past me to go for a woman if it was right to me at the time. I'm probably "gender non-conforming" but I'll raise a big huge FUCK YOU to anybody who tries to put me in a box because I've got no interest in having any label other than "Woman". I don't care what you dress like, who you fuck (as long as it's consensual) and if you do or don't conform to any stereotypes. This to me is perfectly normal and healthy, but it feels very much like all choice, fluidity and right to change your mind and explore, especially as a child or teenager, is being erased. It's not okay to not fit a box any more; all the "Woke" people are doing it. Whereas not long ago all the "Woke" people rejected labels. What. The. Fuck.

It's also worth bearing in mind that most mothers of trandsgender children are not giving interviews on tv or running a YouTube channel about their child's transition; those that do are unlikely to be "typical".

That’s a really interesting point, Red. I recognise that behaviour in a friend of mine whose autistic child identified as trans a few years ago. She’s very much the sole “emotional manager” in her family, for a variety of reasons. Hmm.

I know what controls my mother. The power of 'mother's guilt'. The suicide narrative has always been central to her support of the trans stuff.

But it goes way beyond that and that narrative plays into her psyche a lot deeper than out of fear.

And I think her desire to over compensate and 'do the right thing' is definitely there too. She's always been 'overly nice'. I also wonder about her poor relationship with her own mum and how much that affected her.

I don't know if this is different to parents of trans children, but I sort of feel echoes of my mum in those messages.

Those mothers genuinely want to do the right thing I believe. But there's also so much projection in there and insecurity I wonder about what's the deal with their own past. A desire to be loved and needed in a way that's absent?

I don't know. I don't think any of those mothers have intent to harm. If anything it's almost a case of 'loving too much', if that makes sense.

Totally agree dpwm.

A.C., Paris Lees and Sarah Brown all describe abusive homophobic fathers, mothers who chose to appease the fathers/did not protect their children, and appalling multiple trauma. They all also describe internalized self blame - they were abused because they were trans. Instead of being absolutely perfect children the way they were, and being abused because they had shitty parents.

A.C. was diagnosed as having Oppositional Defiant Disorder as a child. Just reading The Body Keeps the Score, part of which describes ODD as one of the meaningless psych diagnoses used to locate reasons for distress in traumatised children within the children themselves, rather than looking at the multiple external causes of their trauma, often including sexual abuse.

Expressing being trans in a child is a cultural social and psychological response to external factors. There are no 'trans kids.