Police referring to missing trans children by gender identity and not sex

Molten - I think then you get wailing and hair tearing about "outing a child as trans".
They can't win.

Surely the obvious solution is to use their own language to try to be as clear as possible.

E.g. Have you seen James? James is a 14 year old transboy, assigned female at birth. He was last seen at x, wearing x, this is a recent photo. James may also be going by their birth name of Jamie.

I suppose nothing is better than the complete opposite but most humans will automatically go ‘missing child? Boy or girl?’

which is something that’s come up a few times recently, trying to remember where, Helen Joyce or Maya Forstater maybe?

rang true for me anyway, especially as I’m immersed in groups for parents of gender distressed teens - some use sex based language, some use gender based, so there is always a moment or two of sorting out whether the parent is talking about a male or female child, then the actual discussion continues.

I'd agree with @WalrusSubmarine - being neutral might actually help - some will 'see' a girl, some won't, or maybe they chatted to a kid in the boy's toilets or something.

Yes. Manufactured crisis that only they can fix! Selling us both the problem and the solution.

Why mention sex or gender at all if it’s just further confusing the issue. There are many ways to neutralise it “Police are concerned about a missing 13 year old wearing jeans and red top - see recent photo”.

The idea that we can ask people to look for someone while we’re misleading on a very key bit of data is just irrational.

Seen similar. With a really blurred photo.

I say this is on Stonewall and friends. Without their propaganda, would it ever have occurred to these kids that someone who mentioned their sex was an enemy? There was noone, not one child in my large school who keeled over in horror at mention of their sex. This is a manufactured crisis, and Stonewall and Mermaids manufactured it.

Hell no

I'm not going to agree that the police should pretend this child is the opposite sex, any more than I'd agree they call an anorexic a fat person.

Yes, I think we need people in authority to make it clear that sometimes sex is an important thing to note.

Given that the police now routinely describe male paedophiles, rapists and sex offenders as women, they're not going to change their stance for a missing child.

I completely appreciate the issue but until there's an agreement that on occasions, accurately sexing people is essential for reasons of safety then the needs of vulnerable children will be very low in the priorities. Nothing about this issue gets discussed with reference to all the complexities. It's not allowed. And children like this suffer.

We had the same problem in our area. I could tell the photo was of someone of the opposite sex. The police need to give their heads a wobble.

The same has happened near me before. "Boy name is missing" with accompanying photo of a girl with short hair in school uniform. The uniform of the girls school in the town - as any local person would know. Cue lots of confused posts and then lots of others calling people bigots for pointing out the obvious. 🙄

A police force would rather give out misleading information about a missing child than risk 'misgendering' them. I fear this could potentially have a detrimental impact on how missing children are found, putting the child at greater risk

you are completely and utterly right

and its also dangerous not to warn people about criminals in the same way

They should have covered both bases - ie using he/him, but then also mention that they may identify as a female - its what the police did for a (wo)man hunt a couple of years ago.

Not everyone will have a photo

better safe than sorry

Personally I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with that- if the police put that on a missing poster it would turn in to a battle about the police being transphobic- it would, they are criticised for anything and everything and in a world where there's already scrutiny on how the police treat minority groups this wouldn't go down well.

It's also a very difficult one for police to get right (or whoever made the poster). Some trans children have mental health issues based around their gender identity. Misgendering them on a missing poster which is then seen by the child, could actually be very damaging as well, so there are more complex safeguarding issues to consider here.

e.g. I could well imagine a scenario where the child has run away from home due to issues around gender identity - they then see a missing poster of themselves where they are misgendered - thinking the info was provided by their parents, who they have been having a lot of arguments with at home. This further impacts their mental health and makes them even less likely to approach someone who might be able to help/ return home.

These things are really not straightforward.

I suppose what could have helped is saying that the child is questioning their gender identity etc., but I do not agree that the child should have been described as female if he identifies as male.

If there is a picture of the child then everyone reading it knows what they look like and will be able to identify them if they see them, regardless of gender/ sex they are referred to as.

If you have a photo of the person, gender/ sex is not really a piece of information that you need.

It was misleading. The picture was very clearly of a female child. Yet the description was at total odds to the image. Leading to some genuine confused comments under the FB post. It would have been clearer to say that "James" is a missing female child who identifies as a boy, then continue with the rest of the information using the child's name and male pronouns if they are concerned the child might see the online post.

The other issue though is the child themselves is likely to see any social media posts.

refer to that child in the “wrong” gender and it may trigger them into doing something stupid, or make them resistant to seeking help from
Police.

so what do you do? Probably the lower risk is to use their preferred gender so they know police will treat them how they want to be. Adults hopefully will see the SM posts and realise the trans issue, or at least be looking for that child in the picture.

these kids have many many issues, which tend to be focussed into the trans identity, and fighting against them on it won’t help in this situation.

It's hardly misleading if there's a picture of the child, that's what's the most important thing is for recognising them - please don't pretend the pronouns are going to make it harder to find the child, they're not

Not everyone will see the picture straight away. They might hear about it on the radio first. If they hear something along the lines of " we are looking for a man in his mid 40s whos driving a red Mercedes with a 12 year old boy/girl wearing a blue hoodie amd black jeans" then discount the car they are behind at the petrol garage because thr child is not the sex they were told then that is indeed misleading.

Yes, if you didn't want to be found you would just revert to sex type, like that male sex offender who was described as "a woman who may be dressed as a man" by police.

I've seen this before (with a MTF child) and the description was about a girl wearing a bright pink wig going missing.

It was pretty obvious that the teenager would take off the wig, and be unrecognisable as a normal looking teenage boy.

This ideology is a child protection issue.

Can you imagine the criticism on a police force if they said the missing person was a female yet the family would have specifically said they identify as a male.

What's wrong with saying that they are female but identify as a boy?