Are there identifiable causes for being trans?

That the entire trans lobby blithely ignores

Tras- influenced policies for , girl guides, schools, police, nspcc, employers, gymnastics, and a while host of other organisations. Run by, staffed by, founded by presumably educated adults.

Also Tras- no one can influence anyone to become trans.

I find what Fionne has shared disturbing.

And worrying.

I mean the girls all had eating disorders and this was the "norm".

Certainly behaviours propagate in groups that are close / similar.

This is well known isn't it.

Loads of girls at my school had eating disorders.

I remember vaguely trying to self harm (no need for anyone to worry/feel sad or anything - it wasn't a very good effort and I only did it a handful of times) after a friend told me she did it.

Teens are v impressionable including harmful behaviours.

That's why there are such strict rules about reporting self harm and suicide etc.

That the entire trans lobby blithely ignores.

Yeah rowan. Great post

The people claiming small children "know" they're trans chill my heart. I saw another one claiming 'Jacky Green knew they were a girl from the age of 4' on Twitter yesterday and really wished I could sit down with such people and say 'Tell me about what 4-year-olds think, believe and know, please - and how adults can steer little minds to believe all sorts of stuff'.

Recently on Woman's Hour:

The teenage brain: Seven things parents should know about adolescent behaviour
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London and the author of Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain.

1. The teenage brain undergoes a huge transition

“Something to bear in mind when you have teenage children, when you work with teenage children, is that they are going through a period of really important transition.

“They are changing a lot, and the thing to remember is that those changes are there for adaptive, evolutionary reasons.

“They need to go through this period of transition in order to become fully independent adults.”

1. Teenage behaviour is often influenced by friends

“If you think about the risks we worry about teenagers taking, like smoking or binge-drinking or experimenting with drugs, those are risks that teenagers don’t take when they are on their own normally, but they do when they are with their friends.

“Social influence is at its highest during the teenage years.” (continues)
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/29h0HQPw8L8xJmyNh1Ss7Qb/the-teenage-brain-seven-things-parents-should-know-about-adolescent-behaviour

All of this program was relevent.
Childrens & teenager's brains are developing.
None of this is new knowledge, its as if there is a bubble around transgenderism preventing well established understanding about trauma, abuse, child development, family dynamics etc being considered.
All children are influenced & impacted by external factors known to be significant.
All children may have known internal factors including ASD etc

When I was about 15 a huge chunk of girls in my year suddenly started "coming out" as bisexual. If you weren't bi, you weren't cool. I got caught up in it and convinced myself I was bi for about a year, until I realised that liking the tattoo song "all the things she said" and actually fancying women weren't the same thing. Basically teenagers are the probably the most irrational, inexperienced, arrogant, and easily led people on the planet. A significant proportion of teenage Tumblr users seem to think they're "otherkin" which can mean anything from an animal, to a mythical creature, a fictional character, an actual living different person, or even a piece of fucking fruit. Teenagers have an almost unlimited potential for being both completely ridiculous and yet deadly serious, and that's why we don't let them vote. Now, admittedly I have no idea if those girls from my year still feel that way. All the ones I have on fb are married to men now although that doesn't mean they aren't bi. But I distinctly remember it happening in a flurry which mimics the flurry of trans/NB people "coming out" atm.

Partial print

Excuse typos

Surely if there was a biological reason then a brain scan or blood test or something would prove it?

Affirmation wouldn't he needed. Nor would self ID.

How can they on one hand claim its biological then on the other claim to need access to children to educate them to convince them all boys can be girls and vice versa

Forensics can place you at a crime scene from sundays old teeny drop of blood or partial spring off a false nail.

But with a full work up and a patient right there they cant find anything.

And it's not a mental illness.

"Presumably if there is a biological reason for GNC behaviour,"

Is there?

Many many people are GNC to a great or lesser extent. I'd go as far as saying it was the norm.

Most people are put down for GNC behaviour even if in a jokey way e.g. my DH likes sewing, his mates take the piss, in fact everyone takes the piss. I was not very feminine in clothes choice etc when I was young but looked very feminine, people were always on at me why don't you do X to your hair, wear some makeup, wear some clothes that aren't baggy you've got a lovely figure etc etc

Of course this is nothing compared to the shit that butch lesbians / effeminate gay men get which turns to violence >> but it all comes from the same place.

Society is heavily gendered and it is enforced to a greater or lesser extent, all the time to everyone.

Most people aren't so far away from the social norm that they get the more severe responses.

Actually - the drip drip has a massive effect and it comes out in rise of mental health issues in girls etc. So gradual but devastating nonetheless.

I don't see "internal gender ID" as meaning anything but gender stereotype + personality.

But then according to genderists I'm "agender" so what do I know.

Only I'm not am I, as a middle aged woman with 2 kids, I'm not in the group that is allowed to self declare in that way. I would be labelled as c*s whether I liked it or not. No way would I be allowed in the brave and stunning club.

There seem to be a significant number of abusive/bullying/ homophobic fathers (male authority figures) present in the narratives of males who later identify as transwomen.
This seems especially true for those who were gay/gender non conforming children and likely were shamed/excluded for not conforming to a narrow idea of masculinity.
Many narratives include environments which would have been especially difficult for non-conforming children eg religious conservative/all boys school/military etc
The internalised homophobia seems apparent in many older male transpeople incl some who identify as TS rationals.

There's a really good response to the Times' articles by Ben (GNC Centric) and she describes the high levels of early abuse/trauma described by many who identify as transgender.
Worth watching, so too her interview with Benjamin Boyce about abuse within the trans community:

As well as all the highly likely causes suggested by PPs, I fear another one - Munchausen’s by proxy.
In the past, this was a parent making a child deliberately ill or faking illness in a child, as a form of attention seeking personality disorder. Cases include force feeding salt to derange the child’s blood chemistry and dehydrate it, adding blood to the child’s stool or urine samples, and clandestinely suffocating it to induce fits or brain damage.
There is now a shiny new method for these parents to exploit for applause and attention - pushing their child down the trans pathway, while basking in the “ brave and stunning” aura.

Yet more irony isnt it.

We need to "educate kids" so they dont grow up to be bigots. So we can influence them.to accept things.

But then kids cant be influenced because they "just know"

The people claiming small children "know" they're trans chill my heart. I saw another one claiming 'Jacky Green knew they were a girl from the age of 4' on Twitter yesterday and really wished I could sit down with such people and say 'Tell me about what 4-year-olds think, believe and know, please - and how adults can steer little minds to believe all sorts of stuff'.

When we were teens the tribes were music based.

This to me looks much the same with teens forming groups around identities. And styling is a big part of that - hair clothes presentation.

It looks like a modern tribe thing to me which would be fine if it didn't come with the whole medicalisation thing and the whole lets let men into any and all female spaces thing. And the selling it to kids thing and telling them untruths about scientific facts and to ignore their boundaries etc thing.

I’ve never read a trans history that didn’t include some mention of bullying, usually from a close family member.

It’s always couched in terms of “I always knew I was trans, and even the awful bullying from my (select relative here) couldn’t stop me”. But I’ve often wondered about cause and effect. Presumably if there is a biological reason for GNC behaviour, then it seems perfectly possible that GNC + bullying results in gender confusion.

I do also think it’s social contagion both on line and at schools

Suddenly you become special got lots of mates. On trend. people treat you differently. And better

You are now the kooky admired person and you have a tribe now

Patriarchy

is the short answer

Which is the cause of

Gender role
Enforcement of gender role
Homophobia
Hierarchy with women at the botoom
Women as sex objects
Fetishiation of women
Women as non men in fact non people

etc etc is the root of all this

Article on BBC the other day it was in plain sight:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-47799055

"He says: "I now identify as a heterosexual male. I feel so much more comfortable compared with before when I was called a lesbian by people.""

""I remember being told to 'hold back your manly mannerism' and when performing 'not perform too much like a man'"."

"Nate says he has identified as male since the age of four, telling his friends in the playground that he was a boy.

"I always told people I was a boy without genitals. I was six or seven when I was labelled a lesbian in the playground. But I did not know what that was."

Growing up, he would be abused on the street as he was known as a lesbian in school, despite not viewing himself as such.

Nate says he would often get into fights as he also battled with his appearance."

Nate does also say

"He remembers his first appointment with a doctor who told him it was, "OK to be a happy lesbian". He eventually changed doctors and was referred for psychological assessment."

Clearly Nate has dysphoria but there are a lot of things in what Nate says that indicate life as a het man was going to be / looked way easier than life as a masculine woman in a heavily gendered world (grime / most (all?) music genres in general are v gendered) and with encountering serious lesbophobia from a very young age. And who can blame Nate? It's true.

Not saying Nate shouldn't have transitioned and I hope Nate is v happy now, obv but it does raise a lot of interesting points around motivation.

I think a lot of trans is triggered not by a need to change sex, but to escape the confines and gender roles associated with the birth sex. Add parental disapproval, peer contagion, teenage angst and the prospect of love bombing from your cool new “glitter family”, then you have a perfect storm. Until the party’s over and you find yourself still unhappy but surgically mutilated and chemically sterilised to boot.

Yup, welcome to the "scientific" pick and mix of queer theory

Goes hand in hand with " we want better health care but dont you dare acknowledge biology"

I really think Tumblr has a lot to answer for here. I only know one FtM trans-person IRL (surprise surprise - under 20, lesbian, part of a very religious community that forced them into strict gender roles, history of self harm, eating disorders, and homophobic bullying) and they've been doing YouTube videos about their transition (scheduled for a mastectomy in a few months) - in one video they actually said "No matter what I did I was never girl enough - I'm so grateful I found Tumblr or I'd never have known I was really trans".

And this is why there will be no social media that I don't have access to in my home ever.

Yup, welcome to the "scientific" pick and mix of queer theory

I would also add teenage girls struggling with changing bodies, hormones, emotions and feeling they lack control. Who may turn to eating disorders/self harm/self destructive behaviours as coping mechanisms who find they have a new avenue they can go down that is “the thing that is wrong with me”, can opt you out of the male gaze/misogyny AND give you special status. Whilst being a teen girl can, for quite a lot of girls, be quite a difficult experience for a while.

Except of course with help and support most girls are able to work through the difficulties and come out as fully functioning adults at the end of it. And normally not trans.

One flaw with your first diagram grab

Who is carrying the baby? Biology exists only when producing these trans babies?

Basically this