Harrowing first-person account of transboy culture

Really interesting reading of the article and the thread. Total minefield. Agree with the pp who mentioned goth and emo. That was me - I was looking for a reason why I wasn't in the popular crowd and why the boys didn't like me and why I was shy and sad sometimes, and dressing goth and being "alternative" explained that - I would totally have gone in for trans, I see that now having read this.
Feel for my daughter and the world she's going to grow up in. I hope it's something less sinister than ED / self harm/ trans.

True. They have no "male interests", and the motivation for their transition isn't that they feel like they're male. It's more that they idolize certain males, and want to transform into them, or their "type". It's like a kiddie crush when you don't know if you want someone or want to be someone.

Ahh Tumblr. I loved it when it was just a site to find others with shared interests.

There has always been a huge swathe of teenaged girls who have hated their bodies, hated becoming adult women, and hated themselves full stop really. This is just the current manifestation of those thoughts.

When I was a teenager 20 years ago, we only had anorexia and self harm. If we'd had "trans" I am 100% sure that would have been me.

I know it's not especially helpful to draw parallels between things that aren't really the same, but I'm just imagining how differently my life would have turned out if I'd gone to the GP (weighing 7 stone) and said "I'm really fat and I need to lose weight, but my mum insists I'm skinny and unwell" and the GP had said to me "of course you're fat if you say you are. It's disgusting that your mum is refusing to acknowledge your true authentic self. Let's slip you some diet pills secretly and when you're 18 you can have a gastric bypass"

Wow. What a brave woman to share her story, its terrifying that this is happening to so many young females.

I also found it heartbreaking to read, and very interesting. It confirms something I've had unformed in my head for a while, that for many transing teenage girls, the goal isn't to transition out of one sex into the other, it is to move out of the dreaded 'cishet' into 'trans'.

Trans has become decoupled from -sexual already, now it's being decoupled from -gender. Being trans is the entire aim and identity in of itself. Stating "I am trans" is all of it for young girls like Helena. It's "I am special", "I am different - but in a good way", and also "I am not broken, I am not mentally ill, I am not wrong - I only feel those things because I am trans and the world is unaccepting of trans people like me". As well as "I am not a straight, white, middle class, cis-gender BAD PERSON FROM THE OPPRESSOR CLASS". It is not only "I'm not like all the other girls" it's "I'm not like all the other Oppressors".

I also agree with @HermioneWeasley re. the teenage-girlification of gay men. The gay men I know are just... men. They may be a bit more feminine (obviously some are not) but they aren't girls, they aren't interested in acting like they're 14 years old at a sleepover.

Me too - early 30s now but very similar experience. I had an eating disorder tumblr way back in 2011.

This 100%. I’m a teacher too and see this.

I fully agree that Tumblr is a toxic place. I’m in my late 20s now but spent a lot of time on it in my mid teens. It was instrumental in my developing an eating disorder. They cracked down on pro-ED materials but gender ideology stuff has sprung up in its place.

It's interesting that she wasn't interested in 'blokey' things. I'm a teacher and we have had the typical explosion of transboys in the last few years and I've been struck that every single one of them stays firmly in the girls' friendship circles. If anything, they have fewer male friends than most of the girls. Other than cutting their hair, binding their breasts, wearing baggier trousers, using the disabled toilets and being told they are special, they are not 'living as boys' in any way, because they don't actually want to. They just want to escape the expectations on girls.

And that you need special treatment

It’s the government’s and councils and health boards and politicians and schools who are encouraging this.

why as a young person being appladed and told you are the most vulnerable ever would you not belive it

Helena sounds remarkably intelligent, articulate and perceptive considering she's in her early twenties. It seems hard that those skills - nascent as they would have been in her teens - weren't sufficient to help her then.

Agree totally.

The gay men I know in relationships... Yes actually often one is slightly more "effeminate" or camp. Sure they have female friends. But they're actually really really bloke-ish too and do a lot of men only stuff. And their sex lives are different without the power imbalances inherent in het relationships. Lots of hitting up grindr for threesomes etc. It really is nothing a teen girl imagines.

You're right. Even for teenagers- who'd you expect to have an immature understanding of sexual and romantic relationships- there's contact with reality at all. Which maybe wouldn't be so bad if they realised that these cartoonish depictions of gay men were largely fantasy but they don't. So much of their life is spent online and there's such a denigration of anything which isn't perceived as new or progressive that they don't seem to have any reference point to check it against.

Poor girl. One flew over the cuckoo’s nest. Anyone can join the mad house, but they can’t leave! Very scary.

My kids are most definitely not having unsupervised access to the internet!

This makes sense. I don’t have tumblr but I do read a lot of fanfic and you can see how these girls have absorbed these beliefs - they seem to genuinely believe that men can get pregnant, that gay men find trans men sexy and that actual gay men in relationships act like teenage girls with lots of crying about feelings and snuggling and ice cream. It’s extremely odd and very uncomfortable- a sort of infantilising and emasculating of gay men.

this picture is a perfect example - drawn by a young trans man. The hundreds (thousands?) of comments from anime avatars were all about how cute and wholesome it was. These people are fleeing adult sexuality. They are desperately immature.

"The answer.
Get your kids off the internet."

No. I don't agree with that. Loads of dc fortunately don't go down this path. We have to look more closely at those that do: often unhappy, unsettled, abc instead of recognising that it's ok/normal time feel that way, and listen to Radiohead and write shit poetry, then go down / get dragged into this. But why that happens is complex.

Fortunately most teens don't.

No wonder so many young people are fucked up

A friend of mine had exactly the same experience (but fortunately for a much shorter time period, and didn't start hormones) - she was part of a fandom for a show that revolved around gay men, announced she was trans, and changed her name to the main celeb's real life boyfriend's name. Then the show got cancelled and she wound up meeting a guy and falling in love with him, got married very quickly, and just forgot all about being trans. The man she fell in love with happened to be a Pastor so she went from being trans and heavily into queer fandom to being a Christian pastor's wife very quickly. I guess she was searching for something.

Totally agree with this. I feel a bit mean for thinking this way, especially as I can really understand the need for acceptance, validation and 'likes', but I do think that it would benefit these young people to spend more time offline and reconnect with people and the actual world they live in.

I hope things get better for Helena going forward. She is a talented writer. Her story is very moving yet not mawkish? That is hard to pull off , she has a way with words. The explanation of 'fandom' is a real eye opener for me. Keep writing, Helena if you read this

I had an interesting conversation with my DD recently - I think we both learnt something new. We were chatting about books and TV stuff and it strayed into fandoms and teen friendly topics. She loves Heartstopper but doesn't like Alice Osemans books as much (darker and more woke). Off the back of that conversation it made me realise that the reach and impact of fandoms and fanfiction is probably a mystery to many parents and I think has taken over the role of being the place where many young teens find their tribes in a way that feels safe (but the horrors are harder to spot).
The world of webcomics is also huge.
In turn I think I have made DD consider whether romantic/soft porn depictions of gay male relationships written by often older women should be taken as being a reliable depiction of actual relationships between men. I suspect there's a lot of young women consuming this material - probably because stuff featuring women is often (not always) written from the male gaze.

Well done, MrsHoho — sounds as if your good sense and perseverance are paying off. But my God, what a struggle. And shame on those adults who are pushing children into this.