My daughter was assaulted tonight - why I'm against self ID

Oh come on. I made it very clear that I think you experience and voice needs to be heard. I'm disagreeing that this thread and the tone you are using is conducive to convincing anybody. I think you have really good points and as a socially and emotionally intelligent person with a high degree of empathy and will to inform myself, I'm finding it very hard not to throw my hands up and say F you I'm disengaging and discounting all your points. If I in my position am really struggling to stay engaged and open minded in dialogue with you, I'm almost certain there are several other readers who have already switched off and left the room having made up their opinion that we are all nasty TERFs who can't even play nice among ourselves. That to me seems like an own goal.

I think there are plenty of times in this battle that we need to speak out strongly against things. I have no wish to silence your voice, but as somebody who cares about ultimately how effectively women's rights are upheld I'm pissed off with your choice of actions on this thread as I think it's harmful not helpful towards our shared ultimate goals.

You are aiming to avoid the experience I had, by doing the exact same thing...

That's my point.

The point is that you can't conflate sex with gender and pick and choose over it. Gender ideology is inherently sexist.

You can't say that you are supportive of your daughters AND say that gender identity is a thing that you are supportive of because it is inherently sexist.

You have a son who is displaying sexism which you are supporting in the form of gender identity. You refer to it in your child as being trans which legitimises that sexism. Being a feminine boy isn't in the vocabulary.

It's all about toxic masculinity and how you support that. Its just the other side of the same coin.

It's all about the entitlement of boys to define what 'woman' and removing that power of girls to define themselves.

In that single nutshell you place your son above your daughters.

Either your daughters will realise this the hard way or be victims of that sexism.

Sorry to hear about your child's situation, it's awful to be assaulted in such a way, sadly, I understand it all too well.

On the toilets issue and seeing men go into them, the other day I was reminded of something.

So about 10 years or more ago me and my mum were in Morrisons toilets. There was a really big and slow moving queue, we were waiting for over 15 minutes.

One door had been locked, and we assumed it was out of order. All of a sudden the door opens and a man quickly walks past. He was older, around 55 or so. And he ran away.

We were all in shock and felt quite shaky. After chatting with the other ladies in the queue we decided to report it. The woman on customer services couldn't believe it, she was shocked and was going to go through the CCTV and see what could be done. Everybody felt vulnerable.

Cut to now, and we was discussing if we could even report this, and if we did would it be considered a hate crime?
We'd probably be told he had every reason to use our loos as he sees himself as a woman!

It's a really difficult position to be in because of the cognitive dissonance which has been explained already.

Acceptance without exception has been adopted without any logical reasoning or thought. The transgender person is suffering and their pain is real but telling them that the pain will go away and they will feel better if everyone colludes with their delusion is never going to work is it. In reality, no-one truly believes that humans can change sex or that being female is purely a feeling.

So OP has chosen to have child A live a lie to make child B feel better. The fact that this might make child A feel unhappy is less important at this stage but there is a real risk that it could be damaging them.

There are plenty of grown women on this site who feel hurt, angry and defenceless at the erasure of women's identity, rights, safety and presence so it must be even harder for a child or young adult to just accept having to budge over and bow down.

Very difficult situation OP, I think I would find a way to get some therapy sessions for your transgender child to help them unpick the underlying causes of their pain. In fact both of your children or indeed your whole family. Perhaps you are already.

Translation. Be Nice and Shut Up.

@JudgeFlounceRedRugBlah
I really appreciate you posting this thread. I could engage with the tone, and I think it's REALLY helpful and important to hear from people who have a trans identifying child, it strengthens the point that we're not transphobic, we're just not willing to throw women's rights under a bus.

@redtoothbrush
I think your point of view is really important to be heard too. You clearly have personal experience from another very important perspective that should be heard. I do wish though, that you hadn't chosen to be confrontational to the OP in the way that you did, and derail this particular thread. I know you feel very strongly. I get that. It just doesn't seem to have been a very productive way of doing it. It's turned a thread that was one tone into another tone, one which I nearly have up on and stopped reading half way through, so I imagine there are others who did give up and stop reading. OP was considering sharing her experience and seemed open minded to discussion - as a result of your posting style she has decided not to, which I think it's the right call, but what a shame. Your posts seem to have shut down healthy open minded conversation, with people who would have been amenable to persuasion.

Very few things in life are truly black and white. Trying to do the best thing for your children when one is a girl and another is insisting they are trans is a really unenviable difficult position to be in. I defy anybody to walk it perfectly.

Cognitive dissonance.

Just that.

You really don't see it do you?

shrug

If you don't want to hear it, I can't make you listen.

You have managed to turn a thread about the real world negatives of self ID into a thread about you, your own personal soap box.

And I will remind you that children can only self identify and this only possible because adults enable it through the use of their language.

You've already set the course by use of language. That's the problem.

Crikey.

Thanks for finding that.
I am the parent of a lesbian (or maybe bi) daughter with dysmenorrhea, severe acne and possible Aspergers. Looks like it might be worth raising some medical questions.

That is an interesting question @DodoPatrol - top of the search results for "lesbianism autism":

Uncovering steroidopathy in women with autism: a latent class analysis

Alexa PohlEmail author, Sarah Cassidy, Bonnie Auyeung and Simon Baron-Cohen
Molecular Autism20145:27
doi.org/10.1186/2040-2392-5-27

ABSTRACT

Background

Prenatal exposure to increased androgens has been implicated in both polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and autism spectrum conditions (ASC), suggesting that PCOS may be increased among women with ASC. One study suggested elevated steroidopathic symptoms (‘steroidopathy’) in women with ASC. As the symptoms are not independent, we conducted a latent class analysis (LCA). The objectives of the current study are: (1) to test if these findings replicate in a larger sample; and (2) to use LCA to uncover affected clusters of women with ASC.

Methods

We tested two groups of women, screened using the Autism Spectrum Quotient - Group 1: n = 415 women with ASC (mean age 36.39 ± 11.98 years); and Group 2: n = 415 controls (mean age 39.96 ± 11.92 years). All participants completed the Testosterone-related Medical Questionnaire online. A multiple-group LCA was used to identify differences in latent class structure between women with ASC and controls.

Results

There were significant differences in frequency of steroid-related conditions and symptoms between women with ASC and controls. A two-class semi-constrained model best fit the data. Based on response patterns, we identified the classes as ‘Typical’ and ‘Steroidopathic’. The prevalence of the ‘Steroidopathic’ class was significantly increased within the ASC group (ΔG2 = 15, df =1, P = 0.0001). In particular, we confirmed higher frequencies of epilepsy, amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, severe acne, gender dysphoria, and transsexualism, and differences in sexual preference in women with ASC.

Conclusions

Women with ASC are at increased risk for symptoms and conditions linked to steroids. LCA revealed this steroidopathy despite the apparent underdiagnosis of PCOS.

Full study here:
molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2040-2392-5-27

I’m wondering- and shoot me if I’m wrong- whether there is also a higher incidence of autism among lesbian girls than average?

So often we hear the same story of a girl who recognised that she is same-sex attracted and then that she is diagnosed with autism quite late into adolescence.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, just noticed a pattern in these stories.

I know it's just an anecdote but I'm hearing more and more of this typical pathway to transing. In fact I know of two people who have pretty much followed this exact route.

Friend's female child always been shy but mostly ok in primary school. Moves up to year 7 and starts to feel out of place. Gets worse during puberty. Very confused, not sure who they are or where they fit in. Starts to withdraw and self esteem drops. Grades high and school attendance good.

In year 9 tells parents she thinks she is a lesbian. Parents do not react well. This announcement is largely ignored. Child starts to self harm.

In year 10 again tells parents she is a lesbian but parents still in denial. Continues self harming, starts gcses. Grades still good, attendance still good. Declares to friends she is non binary. Cuts hair. Changes name. School on board. Parents not. Harms self so badly that parents agree to refer for therapy.

Year 11 exam pressure very hard. Continues to self harm. Tells parents she is transgender. Therapist tells parents this is the cause of all the problems. Parents accept this and agree to refer to GIDS. Child and parent signposted to mermaids by therapist. Child changes name by deedpoll. Starts binding breasts. Told can have surgery after 8 & hormone treatment at 17 and a half.

Year 12 A levels. Stress levels very high, missing lots of classes, grades falling. Still self harming, suicidal thoughts, admitted to hospital.

Finally parents ask for an assessment for autism and child is diagnosed as having ASD.

So here we have a child with high functioning autism who suffered so much because (a) she was not accepted as a lesbian (b) she was not assessed for underlying causes for her behaviour and (c) was set on a path to transition almost straight away.

She was let down by her family, her school and the medical profession. There needs to be a much bigger study in the links between females with high functioning autism and the rapid rise in ftm transitioning in adolescents..

What it doesn't need is a fucking flag.

Lesbian and girls not obeying stereotypes at school are certainly coming under open pressure to transition as more socially acceptable. The fuss made of and protections and attention hedged around trans children is certainly far greater than around any other vulnerable or bullied group. You can't blame kids at all for seeing where the easier/nicer path lies.

No, and this is where it all gets incredibly muddy.

Because parents whose children are transitioning are locked into a conflict that they can sometimes find horrifying. And yet at the same time the children's popularity goes up. But if there are underlying issues, their mental health goes down.

The rolling, spinning spikiness of it all needs ironing out. It needs categorising. And it needs clarification and clearness.

Another reason why language is so crucial.

My son told me the other day that a school friend who was a girl called one thing is now a boy called something else.

I said to him, you should always be respectful if someone changes their name, but you know it's not possible to change sex, yes?

I dealt with my own daughter the same way when she said she was a boy - I have always been happy for her to present herself to the world as she wants, but I have always been entirely honest about reality.

This keeps being presented as a confusing path to tread, but it seems very basic to me. Material reality exists, and humans are also endlessly creative and imaginative. Both these things are true - it's entirely possible to acknowledge inner feelings, and also acknowledge the immutable parts of material reality. This really shouldn't be so hard.

*You can't change sex no matter what you do. The problems surrounding your sex are never going away. Your body is an inescapable prison for want of a better expression. Solutions will not come from wanting to change your body for this reason.

Yet we fail to adequately communicate this. This framing sets the tone for everything that follows.*

100% this.

I wonder if part of the reason we don't communicate this (apart from not being "kind") is that we live in a culture of entitlement where we don't like to hear, sorry but that just isn't possible/ok/going to happen. Surrogacy is one that springs to mind here. Rather than tell a wealthy person that they will never have a child with a biological link to them, we tell them that they can buy the body of a poorer woman and use her for breeding purposes.

Datun you are so right about the feting of men who transition and the contrast with how effeminate men are treated.

Were Larry Greyson or Melvyn Hayes ever celebrated as stunning and brave? Actually they both were. They were themselves, openly in their work, and were laughed at for it with all the flak that came with it. Frankie Howerd, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey. All able to be on stage and in character the flamboyant, camp, effeminate men and to behave in ways that would have got them arrested or beaten up off set. And it wouldn't have been women who were the threat, this is and has always been about men policing toxic masculinity.

Lesbian and girls not obeying stereotypes at school are certainly coming under open pressure to transition as more socially acceptable. The fuss made of and protections and attention hedged around trans children is certainly far greater than around any other vulnerable or bullied group. You can't blame kids at all for seeing where the easier/nicer path lies.

My degree is in communication but I've also done a management course and I find how the two fit together striking and applicable to just about everything in life.

Failures in management are rooted in deciding the outcome before identifying what the problem is at its heart rather than assuming it, exploring it fully without prejudice and preconceived ideas, then coming up with a range of solutions which you list the pros and cons of each often with a consultantion to pick up ones you might have missed and THEN deciding on a course of action.

The trans agenda started out with a narrative which was set - people should be able to be the gender identity they felt comfortable with. Once set all the other bits had to fit in with the already decided outcome. This in particular cut out the consultation part of the process.

Affirmation only? How the hell does this fit in with good management practice?

This is basic level stuff, not a high academic standard which requires you to be brain box of the year.

From there communication was only done to fit the narrative by the original framing rather than looking at the wider actual problems faced by those in society.

See Stonewall and its selective interests for the most glaring examples. It has been fundamentally mismanaged.

The problem was never that people were 'born the wrong sex'. Yet this was what was decided the problem was.

The wrong sex narrative can be very strongly linked to sexism for this reason. You can not remove sexism from transactivism as a result. It is crucial to its make up.

You can't change sex no matter what you do. The problems surrounding your sex are never going away. Your body is an inescapable prison for want of a better expression. Solutions will not come from wanting to change your body for this reason.

Yet we fail to adequately communicate this. This framing sets the tone for everything that follows.

The problem was that some people are gender non-conforming.

Everything stems from your understanding of which of the two paths of framing the problem you follow.

Trans ideology has the premise that you can replace sex with gender. Thus it is always going to be laced with sexism because it started out identifying the problem as our sex not our gender.

Hence where we are.

And why you ultimately can not dip in and out of being an ally and being gender critical. Not without cognitive dissonance and total incoherence. If you do, you simply have some denial going on somewhere.

And that is what everyone, particularly the OP, should look very long and very hard at.

Why are schools going for toilets not comfort in your body?

That may well be a rhetorical question. But clearly because it is much easier to fiddle around with toilet arrangements than it is to confront the complexities of addressing all the factors that have brought us to this point.

Thanks for your post. You nailed it from the outset when you said Language matters hugely. Our capacity to communicate, our capacity to solve problems and even science are being undermined by the attempts to re-define language. We lie to be kind. I don't know what sort of kindness that is but it makes it very hard to move forward if that's the starting point.