The whole thing is worth a read, but some things jumped out at me from this.
We hear from another trans-identified teen during the panel discussion, Jordan, a 17-year-old FtoM. We also hear fromJordan’s mom, Heidi, who leads a local support group for trans-identified youth and their families.
Heidi—who at several points mentions her strong church affiliation–talks about some of the childhood experiences that convinced her that her daughter was actually her son, including this [4:37]:
When Jordan was about 2 it became clear to me that Jordan likedboy things—you know trucks, video games, violence…when he was about between 2 and 4 I noticed he wouldrip off the pretty little dresses I would put on him. Would go screaming through the houseand would not leave the house until he had on his brother’s big, holey T-shirts. I just thought he was atomboyand that it was aphase. He was driving me nutsbut it was a phase. During this time I worked for a very large church… We are Christians… We were told by everyone around us tomake that kid wear a dress.
Another kid screaming in a dress.
Mom tried to force her kid to wear dresses: check. The kid liked trucks: check. A girl not wanting to wear dresses is ”a phase”: check. Mom didn’t like this (it drove her nuts): check. Mom was involved with a church, whose members wanted her to “make” her child wear a dress.
Could this stuff be any more obvious?
Jordan seems to agree that an aversion to wearing dresses is a key sign of one’s innate gender identity [4:44].
My mom put me in a dress at Easter. [But I] went to church in dirty jeans and a big T-shirt.That was kind of a big signal.
A big signal of what? That Jordan didn’t like dresses, preferred to wear jeans? What is this obsession withdressesthat we see in each and every media story about girls who are “really boys?” When did we step intothis time machine, returning to the turn of the 20thcentury? Even Katherine Hepburn wore pants and eschewed dresses in the 1940s.
Then there’s this from Heidi [4:40]:
[During the elementary school years] I was [putting up] posters of really strong women. You know, like the singer Pink? Oh, this is a real kick-ass girl, you can be like her…when he had a crush on her. It was things like that.
Things like… not wanting a lesbian daughter? This conference took place in 2016,in the San Francisco Bay Area–for decades considered one of the most gay-friendly places in the USA, and the audience tittered at this revelation of Jordan’ssame-sex attraction—as if that were a sign Jordan was actually a boy!
Mom goes on to describe how Jordan was diagnosed with a whole “plethora” of mental health issues, from ADD to bipolar to mood disorders, and concludes that it was being trans that was the root of all these other problems; once Jordan transitioned, everything else cleared up: the self hatred, the self harm, the unhappiness.
This is an increasingly common refrain, and in fact, Ehrensaft at several points in her presentation asserts that “gender is the cure” for an array of other mental health issues. What wedon’tsee, from Ehrensaft or anyone else, is actual evidence that allowing children to “transition” results in improvements in mental health over the long haul. What we are beginning to see in accounts from some people who have detransitioned is thattransition essentially put their other issues on hold for a while—only to re-arise when the initial transition exhilaration began to dissipate.
We haveevidence from several studiesthat gender dysphoria often co-presents with other mental health issues. Ehrensaft and others like her are now turning such research on its head, positing that thecauseof comorbid mental health problems is a child being somehow thwarted in their gender identity.
Returning to the conference, although Jordan’s “gender expression” is not assumed to be the real reason for transition, it is telling that, as always, it isexamples ofhow a person does or does not conform tosex-stereotyped behaviors that are presented as the evidence for being transgender.
And that goes even for babies, according to Ehrensaft. Duringthe audience Q&A, a man asks how one might tell if a pre-verbal one or two-year-old is transgender. Ehrensaft’s answer, delivered with a knowing and confident smile [Clip for this excerpt is here, starting at approx. 2:05-2:06 in main video]:
[Preverbal children] are very action oriented. This is where mirroring is really important. And listening to actions. So let me give you an example.
I have a colleague who is transgender. There is a video of him as a toddler–he was assigned female at birth–tearing barrettes out of then-her hair.And throwing them on the ground. And sobbing.That’s a gender message.
Continues: 4thwavenow.com/2016/09/29/gender-affirmative-therapist-baby-who-hates-barrettes-trans-boy-questioning-sterilization-of-11-year-olds-same-as-denying-cancer-treatment/