Help with talking to a 12 yr old about trans issues

@nightwakingmoon Your posts on this thread have been so, so interesting, thank you.

Medical surgery - do you mean double mastectomy? That's rare among children in the U.K. yes. Thankfully because the NHS won't do it on childrn.

But on www.gofundme.com/s?q=Top+surgery+U.K. there are over a thousand young women crowdfunding for mastectomies and breast reductions.

Yes exactly. It’s like a revived form of dualism - very anti-materialist. The body is treated as alien but also plastic - it’s material to be reshaped and reformed.

That’s why the rise in cosmetic surgery is so key to the whole ideology - it could only coexist with the idea that it’s a moral imperative to reshape your body into its true, most “beautiful” state, whether that means via the whole Kardashian culture of contouring and plastic surgery, or by disavowing the body as unimportant or something that can be glossed over by changing language (as if changing one’s pronouns or name somehow reshapes bodily reality).

Sometimes “queer” culture likes to present itself as the opposite to “basic” Kardashian culture - but in reality, again it’s the flipside - similarly totally in thrall to the whole ideal that happiness can only be found via medicalisation, surgery, consumerism, makeup, body art and clothes; and “curating” your body into something that reflects a constructed idea of your “real” self. Actually accepting the material realities of the body is total anathema!

I would deal with it by telling your child that some people experience a condition known as body dysmorphia and explain in simple terms what that means.

Except - legally, I’m afraid, “gender reassignment” or transition (in the Equality Act, for example), covers any stage of transition - including simply proposing to transition.

Very few people have all the surgery and some cannot have it for medical reasons; yet they may well have had irreversible treatment in other ways. Binders have been shown to have a very high risk of tissue damage, both complicating future mastectomies, but also causing aesthetic damage to the breast that actually increases users’ reports of “dysphoria” about their breasts.

The sites can say what they like.

How many transgender people have you actually met?

I'm sure.

But you're pedalling a lie that lots of kids fully transition. They don't. I'd be interested to see your stats about how many actually use binders.

You can say that some people believe that they have a gender identity that is separate to their physical body,

what strikes me soooo much with gender ideology is how it separates mind and body. As if our bodies are somehow alien to us.

a mentally and physically healthy person doesn’t see themselves as separate from their body

so you could say something like that. If your DS plays any kind of sport, or a musical instrument then he might be able to be guided by that experience - when your mind and body are integrated and you can achieve great things.

In other words, you'd describe it as completely and utterly negative.

I like this. Very well put and succinctly.

post-trans.com

It's not 'hysteria' about binders. They're damaging.

Yeah, this too!

DD told me the other day that “Phoebe says she thinks she’s a boy and wants to change into a boy because if you’re a girl you have to get pregnant if you have sex and she doesn’t want to be pregnant. Is that true?”

Well, I never thought I would be explaining contraception and phalloplasty all in one go at bedtime, but you can only be factual really, as so much guff circulates about at that age. DD said “But can doctors make an actual penis?” and I told her what they can do; and her reaction was “WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO DO THAT JUST TO TELL THEMSELVES A LIE?”

Quite.

Taking testosterone certainly qualifies as a medical transition. All the transgender sites interpret it that way. Bilateral mastectomy is fairly common among trans men but any further surgery is pretty rare and so is genital surgery for trans women. Mostly medical transitioning seems to be taking hormones.

It might be better, next time she asks you what you think, to flip it straight back to her and ask her first. That way you might get what she actually thinks. I'd be worried in the scenario that you've described, that she is just agreeing with you because you are her mum and a trusted adult.

To children I'd frame it as a religious belief system. But I would also talk about the medical dangers, and the inherent misogyny of the movement. And that no-one really know what it is to 'feel like' anyone else.

No, you're fine.

To me, transitioned means fully. Testosterone, medical surgery. Very rare.

there is a lot of hysteria about binders but that is not transition.

that is not transitioned You mentioned mastectomies earlier so was that an assumption?

Ask him what he thinks it means? It's not hard to have an actual conversation with someone if you are willing to be open, ask questions and actually listen to the answer.

No she hasn't had the respectful answers. I don't know what thread you are reading.

MN is all very lovely but what if this was their child who was in the situation?

Just like whatever scientific studies you produce a great number of people will be taking ivermectin because they read stuff on the internet and they don’t believe in your science anyway, so much of the gender ideology circulating amongst young people is impervious to actual medical or factual evidence because whatever you argue it’s automatically “transphobic”. It’s exactly the same kind of movement duplicating the same methods of social contagion, and just as deeply antithetical to reason or scientific materialism or data.

So interesting! This is very helpful for me, because I have come across the "water down the duck's back'" response to linking to ten articles showing something is untrue so many times online!

I mean not reading the articles at all, because they must be wrong if they don't show what the person already believes. And I understand the reluctance, because I have had to dig through stuff I don't want to be true also, but I was taught to do exactly that so that if I still disagree with them I have the arsenal to explain why. And sometimes this has changed my mind, too.

And the somewhat mirror image cases of the right and the left! Thank you so much. You have given me interesting things to think about.

What do you mean by medically? I don't wish to badger you but I think a blurring of what words mean often leads to people talking at cross purposes.

What do you mean by fully-transitioned?
I know young women who wear binders, take testosterone, and have socially transitioned.
I wouldn't ask them if they have had a mastectomy, as it would not be appropriate.

Medically.

What do you mean by 'fully transitioned' @stopwaitingforpermissiontobeyou?

You said you hadn't seen anyone transition. I wonder if the word means something different to you than it does to me