Safeguarding trans issues

Yours is a very vanishingly rare experience.

I have a few non-trans female friends who post on here occasionally (most of them have been driven off by now though).

One of the unifying experiences several have mentioned to me has been the way they were being accused of secretly being male once they started disagreeing with other posters. I find that absolutely fascinating.

Wow - crashing onto a thread where women are speaking about their mentally vulnerable children and telling the parent of an autistic child who self harmed that she's taken an "easy road"?

The extent of your self absorption alongside your utter ignorance about children's lives is never ending isn't it?

I hope that's the end of the story for your child.

What a blessing it would be to not experience crushing, persistent gender dysphoria throughout childhood and into adulthood; for it to just go away one day. To discover that you actually don't need any treatment and can crack on with your life safe in the knowledge that you are no longer the target of the group of people dedicating their lives to removing your rights and protection from discrimination alongside your future treatment prospects.

Some children aren't so lucky. Please cherish your child having been able to take the easy road - the other one is much, much harder.

I mean, I expressed clear and persistent identification with the female sex throughout childhood

and yet as an adult even on an anonymous board your communication consistently reads as male, that identification didn’t go very far

Beautifully put!

@ButterflyHatched

"Strange. When I was a persistently gender dysphoric but not depressed, not autistic, bisexual child who had never spoken to a trans activist in my life but was extremely sure about what I needed, I'm very sure I was transsexual. I mean, I expressed clear and persistent identification with the female sex throughout childhood alongside intense gender dysphoria which was partially alleviated the moment I received GnRH agonist treatment, mostly alleviated after a couple of years of CSH treatment and almost completely alleviated after surgery."

Can you explain to me how 'identification with the female sex' manifests? In what way are boys and girls childhoods, feelings, interests, thoughts, experiences different if you remove all gender stereotyping?

Because I hate to break it to you but liking pink, wearing skirts, having long hair, painted nails and make up, doesn't mean you are female. I would fail the Gender Recognition Certificate tests, because I don't conform to the gender stereotypes we enforce on girls from infancy. But I am definitely a woman, and very comfortable with my female body, I just don't fit into the patriarchal box.

I'm very happy for you that your hormonal and surgical treatment have almost alleviated your dysphoria, but you are still genetically (and in most ways, physically) male, and this is not hate speech, it's a statement of fact. I genuinely wish you peace and happiness, but I don't think you can speak for women, and although I'm very open to hearing your thoughts and experiences of being trans, I won't be complicit in affirming delusions.

Chroomy · Today 06:34

I'm sorry that your daughter and you had to go through such a horrible period. And glad and impressed that you were able to have success with a sensible result.

Reading through some of these posts it has just occured to me that what some of these children are really seeking is boundaries; they need to feel safe and contained.

When a child has no boundaries, and is presented only with endless possibilities , choices and opportunities. it can be overwhelming. Being told that you can be whatever you want is simply not true. We all have to work within the realm of what is possible at any given moment.

The mother above who put her foot down was doing her child a necessary service. A child who seeks to transition in order to fit in or find favour with their social group will inevitably find disappointment; and worse will find relationships and friendships even more difficult and compromised in future.

Transitioning represents an effort to feel comfortable in oneself; an effort to feel congruent......yet at the same time transitioning actually creates a whole other level of incongruence in which one can never really fit in at all.

@thirdfiddle She can be reassuring about transition being an option that's available when you're an adult

He will still be male, when he is an adult no matter what he wears or what drugs or surgeries he has.

Just to add to this information: Butterflyhatched is a male who sometimes claims to have a DSD which meant that puberty was 'sluggish' (whatever that's supposed to mean) and they would have been infertile as an adult even without the puberty blockers.

Butterfly's story appears to vary slightly depending on what seems to be the most convincing argument for a particular thread.

But obviously if Butterfly is a male with a DSD, their history is irrelevant to what is happening to children who do not have a DSD.

@ButterflyHatched

‘I can pretty confidently say that any illusions as to the idea of transition being about 'fitting in' will very, very swiftly dissolve in contact with the stark reality’.

So that’s a no to going along with the illusion, then? Because your experience says it doesn’t work.

As others have said she needs to ask them why this is happening given she is following the conclusions of the Cass report that has been accepted by the government. Why are school/SS not following this?

My daughter spent several months, aged two, insisting she was not a girl but a bear. ("Not wash hands! Wash paws!") In an attempt to prepare her for the birth of a sibling I told her the story of her own birth - "And then you came out of my tummy and we said 'Oh, it’s a lovely little girl!' " which she immediately corrected to "No! You said 'Oh, it’s a lovely little bear!' " I had a vision of the scene in the delivery room, with the midwife exclaiming "Congratulations, it’s a bear!"

Luckily the phase passed before we ran out of honey.

On a more serious note, I feel very sorry for OP's friend and hope her son grows out of this difficult phase before any lasting damage is done. Having read a number of posts by Butterfly on another thread, I have a very low opinion of their suitability as an adviser on this issue.

The good news is that puberty blockers have just been banned.

In her shoes I would think she needs to take a two pronged approach, one with social services/the school and one with her son.

With the authorities I think her first step should be to read the Cass review from cover to cover and then respond to the referral politely pointing out that what she has been doing is compliant with the recommendations in the Cass review, and what they are doing (opening a social services investigation for not using her son's preferred pronouns) appears not to be compliant. She could conclude by saying that as the parent of a gender distressed child who has stayed on top of the media coverage of this issue, she was under the impression that everyone was supposed to be implementing the recommendations in Cass now (here would be a good time to include a quote or two from Wes Streeting), and ask whether the local authority has decided to take a different approach.

With her son, she should try to get him off the internet as much as possible. Are there things they could do together which would give them a chance to reconnect in a screen free environment? A friend of mine with a teenage daughter having similar issues has had some success with going on long hikes. The ideal activity is something that physically tires you out and/or requires a lot of concentration but still allows you to talk to the other person. Outdoor pursuits like hiking, cycling, horse riding and so on work well. I've also had a similar effect from learning to drive and learning to ski. If her son really isn't into outdoor pursuits then is there an indoor project they could embark on together like building models or upcycling furniture? Literally anything that will give them long periods of time together focusing on something other than gender and with no screens.

Community note:

Butterflyhatched is apparently a trans woman who took puberty blockers as a child, and who spends a lot of time on here telling women that women's rights and child safeguarding transphobic if they involve anyone saying "no" to a trans person in any circumstances.

Bull.

My autistic child went through this, she was influenced by peers and trans teachers
It confused her so much she cut her leg to ribbons as an outlet.

I said enough and put my foot down.

Banned her 'chosen name' and male pronouns.
Told school I would take legal action of they continued to use them.

4 months it took for her to forget it completely and now a year later she's back to her normal self and is quite gender critical.

Can you not? I'm not on the app...

Pronouns. Bloody hell.

My heart really goes out to her.

He can't have puberty blockers, and hormonal treatment wont' be possible for another two years, so there is a bit of time.

And yet you're still the same sex you were born as.

Hamiltonfan · Today 08:50

ROGD mum I will message you if I can figure out how to!

On a post, to the right of the username and date / time, there are 3 horizontal dots

Click on them and a menu appears.

There's a blue envelope icon, with PM next to it, click on that and you can send a message.

I think the most important thing is her continuing to communicate with her son. Listening to what's troubling him is really important. She can be reassuring about transition being an option that's available when you're an adult along with being measured about not feeling it's the right thing to do now and explaining her reasons.

Also looking into anything he wants to change that is easily supported without needing to transition at all e.g. loads of boys have long hair, wear colourful clothes or makeup, or maybe there are hobbies or activities he enjoys that someone's making him feel are 'for girls' but aren't actually.

If social services even want to talk to her on the word of what is clearly an activist teacher, there are now plenty of reputable sources she can point them to to show that the watchful waiting approach she's advocating for is not abusive. I'd print out the pages of Cass where they go into possible sources and outcomes of feelings of gender discomfort, and where Cass talks about social transition being itself a serious psychological intervention.