How do you challenge a public body who declares that EVERYONE has a gender identity, as a fact?

OhHolyJesus
I am not sure that all three year olds do understand the difference between sexes other than recognising them superficially, if they don’t have a sibling of the opposite sex.
My grandson when looking at a potty training book where a little girl was sitting on a potty with a roll of toilet paper in front of her, asked, “Now will she wipe her penis?”
And three year olds may believe that sex can change in that Katie Alcock shows that video where the small child first recognised one doll as male, and another with different clothes as female; but when a handbag from the female doll was put in the male doll’s hands, and asked again whether it was a man or a woman, answered that it was a female.

Children this age would also not really understand how a man and a woman make a baby together.

So while I do agree that children this young will say they are a girl or a boy because they can superficially identify things in their life by then, it is misleading of the NHS to say that children as young as 2-3 understand sex (called gender by them) or that they even fully understand gender.

Complain. The right to gender critical beliefs is now enshrined in law in the UK, since the Maya case. A public body using public funds to make those kind of statements about such a controversial issue is inconsistent with respecting gender critical beliefs.

So the NHS website needs to start by defining sex and defining gender.

Yes they do, I'd like to see a finite definition of 'gender' that didn't base it on feelings or sex-based stereotypes.

As for small children recognising the difference between the sexes, yes they do. At 2 or 3 a child would know a girl is different from a boy and vice versa. They wouldn't know how many chromosomes there are or what the SRY gene does but they know the basic difference and that there are two sexes.

I'm not sure why the NHS feels the need to write about it on their website though, I can't see the link between that and medicine/illness. It can only be a link with the ideological concept of gender identity that the NHS would feel the need to mention it.

Does the NHS have the ideological stance that a toddler could have gender dysphoria? Upon what evidence is this based?

I agree, and shall write too.

Just wanted to say thank you for this thread OP, and indeed all of your threads and posts. I find them bang on the money. I will get writing to nhs.

As a bloke, I can see that gender stereotyping is probably the weapon which has been used the most to hold back girl's and women's opportunities the most.

Hmm, not sure whether it's that or the fact that women do the whole brunt of pregnancy followed by the main brunt of early childcare which segues into delays to career and then the majority of later childcare.

Plus, we're physically smaller and less muscular.

We last longer, though.

What does the NHS mean though?

Because if they do mean sex ( but are using gender as a euphemism), 2-3 year olds do not really understand what sex they are.

The NHS means sex.

Sex and gender have always bee used interchangeably by scientists.

So many people use gender as a polite word for sex. There are also many sentences in which using sex correctly sounds rude and Brits are circumlocutory prudes, so they say gender.

FFS.

The whole page here assumes that everyone has a gender identity… and this is supposed to be proper evidence based NHS health advice. It’s appallingly politicised:

www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/

“OhHolyJesus

"and the emergence of a range of gender-typical behaviours"

Replace that with sex-based and it makes more sense and is also easily challenged as the NHS are then saying that there are stereotypes based on sex (true) and they can be damaging to children (true).

In the current climate it's perfectly reasonable to challenge the use of the word 'gender' in this context and strongly suggest it be changed for accuracy.“

Small children may say they are a boy or a girl, but they do not truly understand enough to understand what their sex is. They are simply using words of identification based on the stereotypes they see around.

So the NHS website needs to start by defining sex and defining gender.

Then the NHS website should explain that small children do not understand their sex, that knowledge of this only emerges from an older age 6 - 9 (?).

Small children may well however say they are a boy or a girl based on what they have been told, and based on how the boys, girls, men and woman around them normally look and behave.

As for sex based or gender based behaviour in children if 2-6 does anyone know the truth of this? I am asking as a genuine question. Has anyone entangled what is inborn and what copied or taught?

People say for example that little boys who seem more effeminate - liking dolls say - are a bit more likely to grow up to be gay. Does that mean their effeminacy was inborn? (Some parents apparently want to trans these children in some cultures.) Is it true that little boys are more likely to like cars and trains etc, and have good spatial awareness? If so is that inborn?

Sorry, my link to Katie Alcock ate itself!

This should work better:
medium.com/@katieja/young-children-reality-sex-and-gender-3421f4f165f1

"and the emergence of a range of gender-typical behaviours"

Replace that with sex-based and it makes more sense and is also easily challenged as the NHS are then saying that there are stereotypes based on sex (true) and they can be damaging to children (true).

In the current climate it's perfectly reasonable to challenge the use of the word 'gender' in this context and strongly suggest it be changed for accuracy.

InvisibleDragon
I wasn’t able to find the page on your link
“medium.com”
But I was just about to send this one with Katie Alcock’s article with videos from Transgender trend. I agree with everything you said, and the OP.

www.transgendertrend.com/young-children/

This is really irritating.

This is good, established psychological theory about normal development of sex/gender awareness during childhood, but it's being misrepresented to imply that everyone has an inherent gender identity.

Katie Alcock has written about development of sex constancy understanding in children here:
medium.com/@katieja?p=3421f4f165f1

In short:

• children become aware that people can be boys or girls around 2 years old. So they know "I'm a boy, mum is a lady, dad is a man" but they don't really know what that means at first.
• between ages 3-5 children assign people as boy or girl based on external features like clothes, hair length, accessories. So a child will say a doll is a boy if it wears "boy" clothes, but will say the same doll is a girl if it is wearing a dress.
• by age 6 - 7, children develop an understanding that sex is a fixed attribute that does not change because of external features. So you can be a boy wearing a dress and that's fine.

There's a nice video demonstration of this change in development here:

This is one of the reasons why Diane Ehrensaft's theories about gender communications are such guff - because at 18months or whatever a child has no understanding of their sex/gender, they just don't like wearing hair clips (or whatever).

Its also when they start to pick up sexist ideas. Both my boys went through a phase of speaking very negatively about girls and how they did not like girls, in the early years. Its really disturbing how those ideas are out there in our culture that such young children start absorb and express them.

Yes this has been troubling me a lot recently. I will get writing.

I would question why the NHS are pushing for gender stereotypical behaviour, when the rest of us are trying to break down gender stereotypes.
As a bloke, I can see that gender stereotyping is probably the weapon which has been used the most to hold back girl's and women's opportunities the most.

Here are the guidelines for website content, you've got them on accuracy as the first point.

https://www.nhs.uk/our-policies/content-policy/

Point out the ambiguity and how that is being used as justification for snd to promote an ideology that isn't widely accepted

The word 'usually' is their get-out there.

The problem is the NHS is being all delicate and using gender when it meant sex. Which enables proponents of gender identity to misuse this. So actually this should be challenged.

What is bad is that people are deliberately misinterpreting and representing something to try abs change society

Well, I could write to say I expect to see links to the evidence of that claim. Perhaps include my MP.
Anyone know how you write to the NHS?