Testosterone gives transmen incontinence, bladder & bowel problems

Yes, why on earth would any child have “revulsion, distress and horror” to a part of the body that they have to be taught is private and not to be exposed in the same way as any other non-pants part. 🤔

That is seriously concerning and should, surely, lead any right thinking person to ask why that might be?

What hasn't struck me until I read that recent AMA was that both that poster and here, Jazz, describe gender dysphoria as centring on revulsion, distress, or horror at their genitalia. At a very young age.

The thing is, I believe we all understand here that for research to be something we can generalize about, we need to be talking about the same group of people.

There are clearly a number of groups who get drawn under the trans umbrella and I don't think it's in any way clear they are related.

Among youth, it seems like many are likely trying to understand their own sexuality. There is a reason we recognize "types" like the effeminate gay man or butch lesbian - it's because our emerging sexuality interacts with cultural norms around who we want to be sexually attractive to, at a very deep level. So most pre teens and teens are trying to create a sense of identity, but those who are not heterosexual have a slightly different path to follow.

That being said, we also know that youth who have BPD, or have been sexually assaulted, or are autistic also seems to be more likely than average to think they are gender confuse.

Straight males, and small children, seem to be different groups again.

I don't think we can apply the generalizations about sexuality across these populations.

The school involvement is very new. Trans was not something that was mentioned at all when I was in primary (I’m 24) or secondary for that matter, beyond a sign in a corridor with the definitions of all the new niche sexualities (demisexual et al)

It is much more of a thing now, or at least was a couple of years back, thanks primarily to Stonewall.

No, you're quite right, it was a lazy way of writing it. And I have personal experience of the opposite, so you'd think I'd know.

Is there any correlation, at all? Between effeminate male behaviour in childhood and adult sexual orientation?

TLC. They've discovered that there's a lot of money to be made form encouraging human beings' baser instincts to gawp at the afflicted. See also:

• Here Comes Honey Boo Boo - in which viewers were encouraged to mock a poor, under-educated, unhealthy white rural American family whose youngest child did beauty pageants, and whose matriarch recently died young of heart failure
• My 600lb Life - in which viewers were encouraged to mock morbidly obese, severely mentally ill, poverty stricken and often drug addicted people as they tried and often failed to lose weight on a starvation diet

Yes, it definitely is disproportionately affecting children who would grow up to be gay or lesbian. I was just disputing what some posters were saying on this thread that Jazz Jennings would definitely have grown up to be gay. A boy with gender dysphoria is more likely than not to grow up to be gay (two thirds of such boys are, according to the studies mentioned by Transgender Trend), but this isn't a certainty.

If the child is just gender non-conforming, the proportion is much lower - only 10-12%:

In the group of children who exhibited GNC behaviours 10-12% grew up to be a gay men or lesbian women. This compares to a baseline of only 1.2-1.7% of children who did not exhibit GNC behaviours growing up to be gay.

We don't know if JJ genuinely had gender dysphoria, or just liked dressing up in tutus. If the latter, there's a 90% probability that he wouldn't have grown up to be gay. If he did have gender dysphoria there's still a 1 in 3 chance that he wouldn't have been gay.

I have no idea what the figures are for the converse - what proportion of gay men and lesbians were gender non-conforming or had gender dysphoria as children. There may be a much stronger correlation.

@TicklishLemur I would love to be able to reestablish contact with some ground rules. I don't think it will happen any time soon, but I will wait for ever/as long as it takes. I'm glad you have a relationship with your son, I hope he appreciates you being there for him.
I think life used to be simpler before the internet and I'm sure I'm not alone in craving family contact.

I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through 💐

I would agree with others that it is worth continuing to send cards and show that you love her. On a pragmatic level, if you were able to re-establish contact would it be worth considering avoiding the issue? Although I’m reluctant to advise someone not to express their views, if it meant you were able to maintain a relationship then perhaps it would be worth it?

That is the approach that my wife and I take with our son. Even with medication he has some delusions and unusual thinking. However, if we notice them we just make a mental note and let his support staff know because trying to deny them or argue with him gets us nowhere and damages the relationship. I normally just change the subject to something we can have a nice discussion about like hobbies or recent activities he has done.

I appreciate my son’s case is very different though so please do say if my advice is unwelcome or hurtful. I really do hope it won’t be.

Oh I see, I must be honest I only did O levels so I’m not brilliant with statistics. I thought it meant that most were gay/lesbian, I wouldn’t ever knowingly spread mistruths. As far as I can see though it’s still fair to say it is disproportionately affecting children and young people who would become gay/lesbian if not interfered with?

Thank you so much SaltPorridge. It does feel like a bereavement in some ways though without the helpful rituals and understanding friends.

In fact some friends I've lost contact with as obviously I'm the bigot /transphobe and they can't see any of the nuance.

I have had friends transition years ago and I didn't/ don't have any problem as treating them as their acquired sex.

The difference when your own child chooses to transition is that you know if they showed any sign of being different growing up, you know how they presented in the years before they left home. You know what happened and how they followed instructions to get hormones at a private clinic and how all your reservations were swept aside whilst they surrounded themselves with an echo chamber.

You know that you said too much because you love them so much and can't bear to watch them take irreversible steps they may regret later.

You know they are still the same person and your love is not conditional on what they do or don't do, which is why it hurts so much to be excluded from their life.

The fact that most pre-pubertal children with gender dysphoria end up being lesbian and gay adults is based on good quality research.

Your link doesn't show this, certainly not for girls. Only those whose gender dysphoria persists post puberty are likely to grow up to be lesbians.

for natal girls with gender dysphoria virtually all those whose dysphoria persisted into adolescence also exhibited a lesbian identity. In contrast, girls whose gender dysphoria resolved by adolescence were straight.

It is more true of boys, since a much larger percentage of those whose gender dysphoria doesn't persist, grow up to be gay.

for natal boys with gender dysphoria virtually all those whose dysphoria persisted into adolescence also exhibited a gay identity. In contrast to the girls, the boys whose gender dysphoria resolved by adolescence exhibited a range of straight, bisexual and gay identities. The frequency of same-sex attraction in this group of boys is much higher than we see in boys who have never had gender dysphoria (1-2% in general population) which suggests that even when gender dysphoria resolves before adolescence it is still predictive of a gay identity later.

Another study also found similar results.

Using the largest sample to date, with a follow-up mean age of 20.58 years, the study found only a 12.2% persistence rate. 87.8 % desisted and 63.6% grew up to be gay.

If 63.6% are gay, that means 36.4% are not. So although it's quite a large percentage who grow up to be gay, it would be wrong say that all, or nearly all, little boys with gender dysphoria will be gay, because more than a third of them will not, which is a significant proportion. You could say it's 'most' of them, since it's more than half, but I think it would be wrong to say that a young boy with gender dysphoria will 'probably' be gay, because there's a one in three chance that he will not.

The family of that child are horrendous, but on what planet is it acceptable for a mainstream production company, to pay for this abuse to be filmed and televised. Also what sort of person watches this abuse, to the extent that it continues to be made?

Thanks. I'll have a look at that later.

For some reason YouTube thought I wanted to watch this. I didn't. I tried, but I bailed when they cited WPATH approvingly. Not having watched the whole thing, I can't say for certain that they didn't cover Cass or the study in the OP. If anyone wants to have a look you're a stronger person than i

I had a quick scroll through the comments, didn't see any dissention. I'm assuming modded or down voted to oblivion.

Hi yes you can find transgender trend’s summary of some of the research here. It does link to the actual papers themselves if you want to read them instead.

The fact that most pre-pubertal children with gender dysphoria end up being lesbian and gay adults is based on good quality research.

Can you post a link? I've not seen any research about this, although as others have mentioned, whistleblowers from GIDS were concerned about the fact that many (or most) of the adolescents referred to them were same-sex attracted.

Poor, poor child. I say child, despite his age, because that is what he is and will always remain due to the medical malpractice inflicted on him.

The callousness with which his family have treated him is beyond belief. Even disregarding the effects of the hormones they were pumping into him, obesity is a common problem for people struggling with mental illness. To see that as something to mock a disturbed and struggling young person for is the height of cruelty.

It is also hard to believe how they have both castrated him, preventing any hope of normal sexual function or attraction, and also sexually abused and objectified him. That video of his mother threatening to rape him (frankly how else could I describe a threat to force a dilator into a child’s genitals - surgically created or otherwise) is one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen.

The fact that most pre-pubertal children with gender dysphoria end up being lesbian and gay adults is based on good quality research. Wearing a tutu is also not evidence of gender dysphoria, most children at that age are just playing and learning when they dress up.

The point I really meant to make was that Jazz could be a healthy and happy young adult now, capable of forming loving relationships and having a fulfilling sex life. The reason I have mentioned the gay/lesbian aspect is that as a lesbian it is particularly concerning to see how this issue is disproportionately affecting L&G young people. We began to understand that homosexuality is not an illness long ago, but society now turns a blind eye when children are castrated and mutilated, as long as they identify or are identified as transgender.

Again it really wasn’t the main point I was trying to make, which is just how much has been stolen from Jazz. Not only his physical and mental health, but the love, family and sexual fulfilment we understand to be crucial for well-being in adulthood.

People were right to point out that I made an assumption when saying he would be a gay man, but not to deny the link between gender dysphoria in children and high rates or homosexuality in adolescence/adulthood.

I am so sorry for your loss.
It is like a cult, and people do grow up and leave cults. Sending a birthday card lets them know you do care about them.
Having said that I hope you have some support in the real world who knows the details and can help you decide what to do.

He's had a few 'corrective' surgeries too if I'm not mistaken.

What's happened to Jazz, and Jackie Green and all the other similar cases, is beyond my comprehension. We have two children, a few years older than Jazz. If we had had concerns about either of them when they were very young, we'd have sought medical advice but we wouldn't just have accepted uncritically anything that seemed odd or counter-intuitive. We'd have wanted a lot of assurance that what we were being advised was backed up by good research and years of success in clinical practice.

If Jazz's parents had done this, back in the very early 2000s (Jazz was born in 2000) my understanding is that they would have found out that the standard treatment for gender dysphoria in children and teenagers in preceding decades was watchful waiting, not social transition, and certainly not disrupting their normal hormones or putting them through surgery.

They would have been told that research showed that in most cases gender dysphoria resolved once the child was through puberty, i.e. the dysphoric child became a non-dysphoric adult who was no longer distressed by their sexed body.

They would also have been told that in a tiny handful of cases the dysphoria continued into adult life, and in that case, the adult might decide, after years of counselling and therapy, to take artificial hormones and/or have surgery, but that only a minority of dysphoric adult men did this, and the outcomes weren't great (in any respect, physically or psychologically or socially).

Articles about the Dutch puberty blocker protocol started to be published at the very end of the 1990s, so that was still very experimental when Jazz was first taken to a gender specialist.

I've never watched I am Jazz but I gather that one of the first gender 'experts' consulted was a relative. Is this even ethical? It may well have been a factor in why the parents went along with the medical intervention route.

Malcolm Clark has a trenchant article on Jazz here. https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/08/20/the-tragedy-of-jazz-jennings/

Article about I am Jazz from several years ago by an endocrinologist. A voice in the wilderness in the US, sadly. https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/04/21220/?fbclid=IwAR3rD5yqhydMeHdyaOxrXmx8c-rStXursNyZFRR0Hr6A-9C82fiP2VTev1g

Well that's a depressing read.

Jazz never stood a chance of growing up into a happy healthy adult. That his entire childhood of abuse has been filmed, with some abuse manufactured just to improve viewing ratings is hard to comprehend as a outside observer. I doubt Jazz is ever going to be able to realise just how badly abused he was.

All those surgeries and medications and mental health problems all so he can apparently live his best life as a woman! I fear Jazz won't make old bones.

I hope Jazz sues his parents to oblivion.