Holly Branson - identified as boy for a decade before desisting

Just saw a news story in my feed about a Jamie Oliver’s littlest child (I think) and how he likes to dress up and loves frozen, likes girls etc and is off to an all boys school. I hope they just do the same as the Bransons...

I hope this story is publicised widely. Just like the examples on this thread, many of us know people who did not conform to norms as children and still found their place as they grew older.

We had exactly the same with DD. Older brother and boy cousins his age, who she wanted to play with. It started aged two and started tapering away when she was about nine when the other girls started to outgrow pink and wear jeans.

We more or less left her to it. We explained that she had to wear a dress at school otherwise the school would not let her move up from nursery to reception, but otherwise she wore boy swimming trunks, played after school football and was often the only girl invited to boys parties. As her Yr 1 teacher said "She knows who she is." (She was being punished for fighting - she took on all the boys to protect the new boy.)

From secondary she had no issue with being a girl, though one who is sporty and practical.

I assume that primary teachers are used to seeing girls and boys who identify as the opposite sex, many of whom, but perhaps not all, grow out of it. Mermaids trainers who come in and attempt to teach them something different from their own experience must irritate. I am relieved that DD is now 22. Other mothers were very supportive, with mothers of boys often saying that they liked their sons having close friends who were girls. All bar one American who was seriously disapproving. I don't know if this was cultural and that even then gender stereotypes were more strongly adhered to in the US. Things would be much harder today.

I wonder if HB's decision to go back to being a girl at age eleven had anything to do with her using the Gents wasn't fun any more. And actually a bit dangerous.

I remember DD2 sobbing with the realisation that she couldn't grow up to be a boy aged about 3 and me absolutely crapping myself that, if certain sectors of society got hold of her, the path that she would be pushed down.

I played it very factual - that she was a girl, girls grow up into women - but that girls can play all the games boys can and do anything the boys can do apart from wee standing up (chucking in a spot of toilet humour to lighten the mood) and just went with whatever she wanted to wear at home - which was lots of blue, lots of trousers and superhero stuff for a few years.

Now, aged 7 she has hit pink "girlie" phase with a vengeance - but superheroes and dinosaurs are still cooler than unicorns and pink dresses are definitely "my style."

(Dinosaurs are apparently cooler as they can eat the unicorns)

She's never going to slot neatly into the very very frilly pretty little girls in her class group - that's not who she is - but she knows she's a girl and she's OK with that.

I loved being a tomboy as a child, thought George from Famous Five was marvellous, liked that the contraction of my name was gender neutral and was quietly pleased if someone mistook me to be a boy. Grew out of it.

As opposed to Suzy Green, whom it seems did the very opposite and medicalised her son's trauma caused by shitty parenting.

Indeed - you wonder where the child would now be with the Branston ‘run along now and do your thing’ approach.

Actually - I think we can all guess and state which approach is preferable for children.

the nature v. nurture conversation makes so much sense. The lady referred to on the thread yesterday with the trans (ftm) autistic child. In her interviews (there's been various tv interviews on This Morning etc - Mienna Jones), she says that her child liked wearing boys clothes and wanted to wear boys superhero costumes from a young age, then at age 5 decided she was going to be a boy named Dexter. Mienna didn't really see this coming but accepted it but given that her child is autistic and found typical girls clothes to be uncomfortable. Dexter has enormous sensory issues - so in order to be relieved from the pain of wearing 'girls' clothes, the literal brain of an autistic child would make a very obvious leap - I need to wear boys clothes, therefore I am a boy. Dexter now seems to be thinking that they want to revert to being a girl so hopefully will swerve any medical intervention.

All of these lovely children and young people would nowvin 2020 attract the label 'gender non-conforming' and doubtless there'd be discussions and recommendations, when what we could - and I believe should - be doing is watching them grow and marvelling at how interesting their personalities are as they emerge.

If they are troubled or distressed or unhappy or the target of bullies we need to support or intervene, but not otherwise.

When did the space allowed for personality contract to such narrow and rigid parameters?

How are we failing to recognise huge chunks of this push to 'transition' children as gay conversion therapy by other means?

My darling god daughter was the same. Only wore her brothers clothes, including pants, from as soon as she could walk until she was about 12. Played rugby and cricket, skateboarding everywhere. Short hair for ease.
At 13 she wore a dress for the first time since babyhood when she was a bridesmaid, and gradually grew out of the ‘I want to be a boy’ phase, now has a boyfriend but still skateboards everywhere and has plans to be a landscape gardener. She’s great ❤️

I suspect family dynamics have some part to play too. I remember reading a piece about a family where both parents were trans - and then their child (4 or 5) decided they were trans too. Not really amazing.

Doesn’t Charlize Theron have two adopted (not related to each other) trans kids - what are the chances of that? I seem to remember another story of a family with 2 (or even 3?) adopted trans kids.

My brother now says he "just knew" he was "born in the wrong body" from about age 6 or 7. He's 3 years younger than me.

There was nothing innate about this, even though he think it is. It was my mother repeatedly saying it. My brother just doesnt remember (and never had as good a memory as me in the first place which has always been really odd - I remember from age 2, he only remembers from age 6).

I was there. I know what happened. I remember where it came from.

The sibling / parent thing and the formation of identity is important and a very overlooked area. Our identity as children isn't formed individually but also as a family unit and how we fit into that. It's symbiotic.

The whole trans ideology is founded on this idea that identity is formed and exists in isolation. It does not. Not does changing your identity an individual act, it affects the identity of others around you. For example the wife who is forced to identify as a lesbian whilst being held hostage in a heterosexual relationship.

I WISH there was something being studied on the family dynamics of families in this, because the commonalities that seem to crop up constantly are fascinating. The more I learn, the more I am convinced its societal and absolutely not innate or genetic and its something to do with how identities and relationships with others develop at key points.

These are the girls who are now at risk from going along with treatment and desisting later.

My sister had a ‘boys’ name that we always used when we played and she gave me one too. She still loves robots and is sports mad.

She even did drag at one point (king bit queen). Deffo a woman though.

But would she have jumped at the chance of ‘becoming a boy as a child’ - definitely most likely. At puberty/when she discovered girls - definitely not.

My friends daughter also went through this age 8-10. We all had to call her George and she rejected everything girly. We thought it was sweet and went along with it.

She grew out of it when her little sister was born. She is still football mad and refuses to wear a dress. I dread to think what would have happens if she was born into a family that would have pumped her full of puberty blockers.

I should mention her boy phase It started not long after her phase of believing she was a lion and we all had to call her Simba.

See I think when you read the interview in full (assuming it's printed as said so nothing out of context etc) then yes I think it sounds like the Bransons did let her get in with it, did watchful waiting but didn't indulge any 'fantasy' and Holly did come out of a phase (her words).

If however you just read the headline "let everyone love their own reality etc" it can be interpreted as you're a mean bigot if you question whether TWAW as that's a persons reality. So perfect for TRAs to screech from the rooftops about.

But anyway, I'm really glad the approach they took as a family let Holly just be a kid and she's now grown happily into a woman with lovely kids of her own.

Her life could be very very different had her parents been otherwise inclined. Do parents who go the other way seriously consider this before they trot into social media with their ‘beautiful stories’? So many lives...

This is a lovely story. I loved the photo of her in the suit at her parent’s wedding. This is how to accept your child.

I was the same. Desperately wanted to be a boy from about 6-11, wore boys clothes all the time (including my football kit under my first communion dress), short hair, loved football, two brothers.

Parents just let me get on with it. Now a happy middle aged mother of two.

I've got a friend who wanted to be a boy around 14 then reverted around 18. We called her by her chosen name and pronouns, but she never sought medical care. I think this approach is usually fine, then at 18 (and not before) it's their choice, I know too ftm who are now very happy so I m not anti, I just think puberty is a hard time and they need to get through it before making lifelong decisions

I used to not particularly like Richard Branson but hes gone up in my estimation. Of course he may have taken a different route if this was today but there we are.

Child had idea, child changes mind. No medication or surgery needed. The end.

The thing to hang on to here is that she is now the apparently happy, and no doubt exhausted, mother of three little kids. Had her parents been the sort to 'enable' their child's expression of gender and had today's battery of lobby groups, puberty blocking drugs (aka synthetic cross-sex hormones) and surgeons with more skill than judgment (first do no harm?) she could easily have ended up without breasts to feed her babies or a uterus to grow them in, facing a lifetime of medication and repeated (bodged) surgeries to try to create organs her body never had and could never have grown.

Her mum and dad could be GIDS poster parents for the 'watchful waiting' they recommend.

I'm so glad nobody wrecked her body and her future by rushing to 'correct' her when there was nothing wrong to correct. Would that all children had such parents to live, nurture and support them as they grow, waiting to see who emerges rather than imposing their own expectations and stereotypes.

@twoHopes
As a child it was mainly having my brother as the 'barometer' for how males are treated that highlighted how I was being treated differently in some instances just because I was a girl.
It always struck me as deeply wrong and unfair but I wouldn't have known without the comparison. I wanted to be treated as a boy a lot. Eventually I realised what I really wanted was to not be treated as a shitty version of a girl but as myself. Thanks feminism!!

Shiloh was still being referred to as 'she' in May 2020 in an article about her 14th birthday.