Children's Social Transition

The two families I know well seem to have stopped asking once they got the opposite sex answer.

What happened then? Did they decide the child was trans or did they realise that they were confusing them?

One thing I've noticed in our primary school, with at least six trans kids, is parents thinking it's good parenting to ask their children regularly whether they feel they are a boy or girl.

The two families I know well seem to have stopped asking once they got the opposite sex answer. One child in particular would have kept giving different answers until they got it "right."

We don't ask our kids if they think they are thin or fat, if they might want a nose job when they are older etc. we don't encourage them to analyse themselves. The planting of this seed, by asking what they feel like, is not neutral either.

As well as posters talking about the invention of the 'trans child' and the, doomed to failure, need for everyone to always validate them, it also perpetuates the ideology. And can affect children who, up until then, have not been involved.

Stephanie Davis Arai said that when a boy comes to school with long hair, make up, and all the corresponding femininity, many girls will look at him and think if that's a girl what the hell am I?

Allowing child transitioning is presupposing an agreement with the ideology, and a acceptance of the cementing of gender stereotypes.

So yes guidelines need to be issued and it needs to stop being taught. Hopefully, all the different strands undermining the ideology are coming together.

The push to make everything a celebration of aspiration and bravery was powerful and insidious. I think it was GIRES or gendered intelligence who said schools should celebrate a trans child with a coming out cakes and balloons.

It's a lot to roll back. But fortunately, one of the aspects to this ideology, is that once you start to see it through a different lens, everything collapses very quickly.

On this subject may I draw your attention to this on the petitions board if you haven’t already seen it?

It a petition against teaching children ( and young ones get included) that we all have a ‘gender identity’. This implies that anyone may have an identity that does not match their sex.

RSE content on gender vs sex | Mumsnet

www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4585082-rse-content-on-gender-vs-sex

The current government need to 1. create the guidelines for the new Cass review led GIDS and then 2. generate the guidance for schools.

Thread on WPATH and good interview with Gluck.

WPATH www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4601058-wpath

Conflates gender non conformity with diagnosis and "gender reassignment."

"Trans is an adjective to describe people whose gender identity does not align with the gender they were assigned at birth, with the adjective cis applying to those who are not trans (Ashley, 2022). Trans children’s rights in England, Scotland and Wales are protected under the Equality Act 2010, with “gender reassignment” one of nine protected characteristics (Wadham et al., 2016). As growing numbers of trans children assert their identity in childhood, schools are grappling with how to adapt, with many schools drawing upon anti-bullying frameworks (Barnes & Carlile, 2018). In the absence of national governmental guidance, UK schools are looking to a wide-range of informal guidance material, with diverse approaches to trans inclusion and varied levels of commitment to trans children’s equality and safety at school (Horton, 2020)."

(Bold my own. All children have an equal right to safety under KCSIE. That's the main point of it.)

Genevieve Gluck has described how WPATH have self generated research articles that they all cite in more articles which builds an image of rigorous academic research.

From what I can tell, you can generate a PhD and many articles by just citing anything published by WPATH or others writing the same stuff, eg Carlile. (Baring in mind WPATH refer to the eunuch archives which has 4000 stories of abuse and castration of children, some by drs, and 3 US academics have been involved with the site using it as an 'evidence base' since the 1990s.)

@OldCrone here's one example.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26895269.2022.2081645

I so, so hope that things worked out ok for your son @windo
Flowers for you, words are not enough 💐

A gender non conforming 16 yr old I know (but has always had long hair) seems to be a proper eco rad fem.

Many of her friends are tied up with this bs, whereas she's arguing that she can, as a woman, do what ever she wants, the same as men, but accepting biological differences.

She's basically a young breathing version of invisible women. I suggested it to her mum but actually, her daughter seems to be very aware of how women are discriminated against left right and centre. Last time I saw her she was very proud of her new huge back pack designed to fit woman's bodies.

I believe that this will slowly fade among the young. Unfortunately the more vulnerable children will potentially still be targeted and have parents who "believe." It's very much in and amongst send groups. And the NAS of course.

Social transition also makes it very difficult for children to slough that identity if they find it doesn’t suit, if everyone tells you that they always knew you were a girl/ boy/ agender, then it’s difficult to move on. It’s as if when I truly believed my destiny was to be a jockey, my mother had gone out, murdered all the jockeys and bought every racehorse for me.Quite tough to then say I like punk rock and smoking now.
Actually I have seen this happen when promising young sportspeople stop wanting to get out of bed to train. Can be very difficult if the parents have bought into the whole culture.
But I do also think that children are getting bored with trans now. It just isnt special anymore. But I do see a lot of people in their 30s now making announcements. Crack on, I say. Borrowing your little sisters castoffs..

The youngest child I've seen socially transition was 5. I agree completely that it isn't a neutral move but I also think these children - and the children around them now referring to them as the opposite sex - believe they can actually change sex. I don't think there is much social difference between boys and girls before puberty except for the gendered expectations and stereotypes of the society in which they live. But at puberty that all goes haywire. If you've been told you are a boy by everyone around you and then enter female puberty, how do you deal with that reality without medicalizing? Or admitting that no, actually, you can wear what you want and call yourself any name you want, and even ask people to call you particular pronouns, but nothing magically physically changes. I honestly think a lot of teens seems to believe changing sex is a realistic proposition physically.

There is a petition to get this removed from the guidelines but it doesn't have many signatures yet. If you are someone who has supported crowdfunders, I really suggest you sign this petition.

There's a link to the petition on this thread:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4585082-rse-content-on-gender-vs-sex

That's a really good point justgotosleepffs. Ofsted left one of the Stonewall protection rackets last year, but the dogma is still there.
I do hope that with Cass red flagging the role of schools with social transitioning that there are numerous high level discussions going on - hopefully excluding those captured civil servants who will simply be told what is to happen?
The whole edifice around children must be impossible to sustain now that Cass has pointed out the extreme harm being done to children.

As a teacher, I suggest the thing that would help most in getting this is to remove the DfE requirement to teach "gender identity". There is a petition to get this removed from the guidelines but it doesn't have many signatures yet. If you are someone who has supported crowdfunders, I really suggest you sign this petition.

Schools are terrified of failing Ofsted, so as long as gender identity is in the DfE guidance then the schools and teachers have their hands tied.

You're right MalagaNights. Just imposing new guidelines on schools is unlikely to work. Because they'd be saying "don't socially affirm" or "don't have all mixed sex toilets" and policies aren't written like that. This is a massive social mess and somehow we've got to enable schools to step back from their unthinking cheerleading to a more professional approach.

All the trans policies (usually written for schools by activists) blur professional boundaries and give schools a role at the centre of enabling the child to transition. Somehow schools need to return to their professional role in learning. They don't cheer lead anorexics or dabble with self harming children. They know their boundaries, refer appropriately and look at how the vulnerable child can be supported when in the schools system - they don't dismantle systems and beliefs as demanded by trans activists.

Sorry for the ramble, but this is a really challenging mess to undo.

Well quite.

I am facing this situation in the wider family. I can cope with the new name (it is fairly unusual and not gender specific as far as I can see) but using "they" just does not come naturally to me and I have said to her - "I am getting on a bit and will get that wrong, but all you need to know is I love you and respect you."

That is what these young people need during their confused period. Love and respect to keep them going till they are old enough to make a permanent decision either way. Respect for how they feel is important.

The trans ideology is pushed via the DfE's overarching Equality Act Guidance which was updated in 2018, It's superficial and pushes schools to adult groups like GIRES and of course Stonewall for "advice" as well as recommending the Cornwall guidelines. All biased inappropriate sources.

I'm not sure that there's any other guidance which is where the problem lies. Self invested adult groups have leapt in to push their personal preferences and nobody in education's realised that they have no relevant expertise - just a wish to see more "trans children".

The Bayswater group are pushing for new guidance - Lucy Bannerman covered it for the Times yesterday:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/065eb3ce-0f70-11ed-93cf-b011fa7fe86b?shareToken=1f8757ab15824c042a1062ee40179392

So basically self id for children.

The statutory safeguarding document (that everyone working in schools has to read every September), ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’, has nothing on ‘trans’ children. It is an unacceptable omission.

Nothing will change until it's embedded in that.

But that can't happen until there are clear uniform guidelines across the nhs and also until there are clear guidelines from the dfe regarding the approach to take - which will have to go hand in hand with KCSIE.

Do any of them define what they mean by a 'trans child'?

Nope.

It's assumed you understand that they are 'trans' from the outset.

Do any of them define what they mean by a 'trans child'?

Is this a child who self-identifies as trans? Or is it a child who has been diagnosed by professionals as suffering from gender dysphoria? If so, what are the diagnostic criteria (all the ones I've seen are based on stereotypes)?

Do they believe that a child can literally be born in the wrong body?

Up until about 10 or 20 years ago, 'transgender' didn't exist. There were transsexuals and transvestites. Nobody would have suggested that children could be either. The terms 'trans' and 'transgender', like the idea of 'trans children' itself are designed to "take the sex right out of the trans experience" in the words of American TRA Autumn Sandeen.

Before ex-husband my transed my beautiful gender non-conforming gay son I used to think social transition was nothing to worry about, But now I realise the evil that it is social transition has to be banned in every way

The statutory safeguarding document (that everyone working in schools has to read every September), ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’, has nothing on ‘trans’ children. It is an unacceptable omission.

Over the last decade, it has become quite common to receive emails saying ‘— student should now be known as — and is now using the —pronoun’. One might lazily assume that a sound apparatus of multi-agency consultation and sensitive dialogue with primary carers has been in motion long before this email is sent to the whole school but, actually, no: it usually means that a busybody / gossipy type of teacher has been approached by a vulnerable child who has told them that they think they are ‘trans’, and in a flurry of heroic virtue-signalling, that teacher has socially transitioned them by whole-school email before the child has even got home that evening.

The Keeping Children Safe in Education document needs to advise teachers in these situations to contact the Designated Safeguarding Lead. And this moment that we seem to have reached where it has finally been recognised that socially transitioning a child is not a neutral act and may affect a child’s outcomes, needs to be clarified for schools in this September’s KCSIE document. This is long overdue. Come on, DfE!