Robert Webb in the Times

Damn. Won't open for me. Glad to hear people are commenting as such though.

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine

I forget to add this tweet from the thread

I've been grateful to have the partnership of my wife @TheresaThorn. She wrote this beautiful book which explains gender in language any kid can understand. It's so important for kids (cis or trans) to know adults' assumptions don't define them, they do. [Link to purchase book]

Crass.

I forget to add this tweet from the thread

I've been grateful to have the partnership of my wife @TheresaThorn. She wrote this beautiful book which explains gender in language any kid can understand. It's so important for kids (cis or trans) to know adults' assumptions don't define them, they do. [Link to purchase book]

From the twitter thread ItsAllGoingToBeFine linked to:

twitter.com/JesseThorn/status/1377288524521558022

Read the comments. People each have their own line and many see that Thorn has overstepped it horribly.

The interviewers child came out as trans when they were in kindergarten

As a dissenter on the idea of any such thing as an innate gender identity, the idea of the vegan cat springs to mind.

When she enters puberty, she'll start taking a pill that prevents testosterone from changing her body.

You'll have to go to court first mate.

Jesse Thorn is off his rocker.

It's awful parenting to tell a child that they are a boy/girl and therefore they must express themselves in a certain way.

It's worse to tell a child that the way that they express themselves determines whether or not they are to be sent down a lifelong medical pathway that they are too young to understand the implications of.

I'm glad that Robert clearly has no patience with either of these. I'm off to buy his books now.

Thanks @QuentinWinters. I'm off to check it out now.

🦡🌈🤍

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine

Wow.

And miraculously the kid turned out to be trans. Jesus Christ. And he said both his kids are "gender non-conforming".

Funny that.

This thread by Thorn is illuminating,:

twitter.com/JesseThorn/status/1377287133921116160?s=19

Excerpts:

When she started kindergarten, my wife was bathing her. An adult friend of ours had just come out as trans, and my wife mentioned that not all girls have vaginas and not all boys have penises.

Why would you tell your small child that?! Why?!

Talking to trans friends, I learned why it's so important to clearly tell kids that private parts don't determine gender. Little kids often don't know what "trans" is, so they just assume... well... that they're broken. Give kids some language and they can tell you who they are.

She socially transitioned in kindergarten. She had girl play clothes already that she wore at home when she felt like it, but my wife took her to Target to pick out some clothes. She chose a pink and purple My Little Pony dress.

We still had to (have to) be on guard all the time. Every new care situation (camp, sports, babysitter, friends' parents) had to get a briefing. We had to check every room for jerks. Because being misgendered, or forced to explain yourself is traumatic for a young kid.

When she enters puberty, she'll start taking a pill that prevents testosterone from changing her body. This treatment is safe and reversible, and is also used for kids with "precocious puberty" (puberty that starts too early).

Trans kids take hormone blockers because while stated gender identities are stable starting from the time kids can express them, a ten or eleven-year-old's brain is still growing by leaps and bounds. So long-term decisions about bodies are postponed a bit.

When our kid is in her teens, she'll decide how she feels about her body. She can do nothing and have a "boy's" puberty. She can take hormones and go through a "girl's" puberty. When she's a young adult, she can (if she choses) have surgical interventions.

His book "How not to be a boy" is brilliant badger

I just popped on Twitter and saw some of the hate Robert was getting. It sickens me. He has my support.

I'm glad this thread was bumped. Just gained some massive respect for Robert Webb.

🦡🌈🤍

Skimming through this without looking at Thorn's twitter or listening to the interview and I just knew that it would be a little boy 'coming out' as a girl. Because if it was the other way round - a girl wanting to wear trousers and play with cars and construction toys - it just wouldn't have the same amount of dramatic fanfare about it. Which just shows what bollocks 'gender' is.

Robert Webb is a decent, thoughtful man. Owen Jones is, well, Owen Jones.

Sneering that he 'crumbled' may not have the effect Jones thinks.

Oh and Owen Jones is a despicable, nasty little bully. But he gets to give his "Good Ally" badge another polish I suppose.

It's striking that there's no mention of the possibility that their child might be gay anywhere in the piece, neither in relation to their own child nor any of the other families they're writing for.

'Biz and I co-authored a parenting humor book in 2017 (Countryman Press) called “You’re Doing A Great Job! 100 Ways You’re Winning At Parenting.”'

This is a variation of the "guilt" thing Dr David Bell was talking about in the Dysphoric documentary.

That has a consequence of relieving the parents of guilt. So the parents may even join up and say: "yes, we support you in being trans" for unconscious reasons. Not because they're bad people, but for reasons they themselves don't understand.

But again, the services don't question that. And the parents who do question it, may have real concerns, are othered. So these tyrannical organisations, which do not see themselves as tyrannical, are to some extent unwittingly exploiting the vulnerability of parents.

Maybe guilt wasn't the reason they started on this path in this case.

But either way, once you're on it, added guilt locks you in.

Another difficulty is just that although I am a girl and my daughter is a girl, I will never know what it’s like to be a trans girl.

She admits she doesn't know what it's like to be a trans girl, but she accepts at face value that her 5-year-old child who she 'thought was a boy' knew what it was like to 'feel like a girl'.

[quote nauticant]It's a family business:

thepridela.com/2019/06/la-mom-writes-picture-book-breaking-down-gender-identity-for-trans-kids/[/quote]
'Biz and I co-authored a parenting humor book in 2017 (Countryman Press) called “You’re Doing A Great Job! 100 Ways You’re Winning At Parenting.”'

And again with @AnyOldPrion's great point about doubt, and their desire for constant validation regarding the decision they've made for their child.

[quote nauticant]It's a family business:

thepridela.com/2019/06/la-mom-writes-picture-book-breaking-down-gender-identity-for-trans-kids/[/quote]
Ah!

"Navigating gender can be confusing for anyone."

Yeah no shit. It would probably help immensely if we could have tight definitions of things...

Mrs Thorn expresses regret that she delayed faciliating the transition of her child and it didn't happen until the child was 5 years old:

And it was a significant setback because our daughter could have been living as her authentic self much sooner if she hadn’t had to first convince her parents that she is who she is. So, there’s some guilt there, for me.

It's a family business:

thepridela.com/2019/06/la-mom-writes-picture-book-breaking-down-gender-identity-for-trans-kids/