TW who supports the SC ruling - AMA

@illinivich

"Nobody is born trans, its cultural based. Everyone who discovers that they are trans do so when they hear about it."

I don't know about being born trans, but in my case, I knew it at 6, and I knew nothing about trans people.

That said, if I had to decide whether to make child!me transition or not, it would be an absolute no. Children need to be protected against making decisions with huge consequences they don't understand.

My sons an archeologist. Retrospectively, we realise he was destined to be because of the time he loved exporing in a museum dig as a child.

The times he was obsessed about being a fireman, or a deepsea diver, have, of course been conveniently forgotten.

Vanishing (LOL) has not appeared for a bit so fill y ya boots@TroubledWatersTW

this is supposed to be about transexuals who know they are biological men.

I don't want to make this thread about me, so I'll give one reply on this point and stop. To be clear, I'm not in favour of childhood transition. I totally understand your perspective @illinivich, and I doubt there is anything I can say that would convince you otherwise, but I truly believe that it's not the case that I am retconning. I don't doubt that some people do retcon, I'm just saying that I truly believe I am not doing. The truth is important to me, I'm trying to describe it accurately.

Before I came out my mother was staunchly GC. She might well have written the exact post you just wrote. That's how I'm aware of mumsnet, and why I'm supportive of much of what is discussed here. I remember her talking about the Forstater case, I remember her delight at JKRs first tweets. She was fully of the opinion that TWs were mostly or all just AGP men.

When I came out to her, as you might expect, her initial reaction was extremely negative. However, when I raised the conversation we had had back when I was 8 or so, her reaction changed. That was before I learned that trans people exist (that was aged 10 via TV, I remember clearly). Because the fact is she remembered that conversation from when I was 8, she remembered how odd it was, how awkward I was, how inexplicable what I was saying was. I was ultimately talking about wanting to be castrated. When I explained it was because of the gender dysphoria I've felt my whole life, she just knew that it was all true. At the time she said she'd felt very confused and ultimately dismissed the conversation as 'kids are weird', and given I didn't bring it up again, that was fine. But after revealing the GD it all clicked into place. That's what convinced her that GD in males really can be persistent from childhood, and she ultimately now agrees transition is a sensible option in my case.

Of course, perhaps she is just wanting to support me, wanting to retcon too or something? But we both remember that conversation, she even mentioned bits I'd forgotten. If nothing else, it's a sign there has been something mentally wrong with me since childhood.

“Recognise transexuals within their sex” excellent phrase which the SC ruling has pretty much said

Retconning.

Nobody is born trans, its cultural based. Everyone who discovers that they are trans do so when they hear about it. Or discovers their child is trans when they are told the indicators.

The reason children don't have the language for transition is that transition is primarily about secondary sex characteristics, and 5 years olds don't have those to change.

Children see the difference between how boys and girls are treated and play, or get involved in imaginative play and can believe they are a character, but that's not anywhere close to the transition meant by an adult man.

And that's what i find so unforgivable. The adult men who transition, retcon their childhood and promote that to children because they want to pretend its not sexually motivated.

The reason we didnt have children with GD 20 or 30 years ago is because adults didnt need children to be trans.

Please don't worry about language use on my part, I am rather hard to offend! 😀You can just speak clearly.

Well I'm terribly sorry that the young person is going through all that. I sincerely hope they aren't persistently experiencing gender dysphoria and that they don't ultimately have to go through the troubles of a medical transition. Life will be much simpler for them if they don't.

As @MumOfYoungTransAdult wisely says, the issue is that in some cases such identities do not persist, and in some cases they do. I certainly did feel gender dysphoria from a very young age, and that has been totally persistent and unchanged into adulthood. But I fully and wholeheartedly believe those who say they felt similarly in childhood, but it did not persist. I actually didn't know Stella fell into that category, that is very interesting.

I ultimately didn't transition until adulthood. The positive is that at least now I have the benefit of knowing that it is persistent in my case, whereas I suppose if I had transitioned young I might have doubted. I did try to mention feeling that I might be trans as a child, but it really wasn't "a thing" when I was young, and I lacked the language to describe it. If I was young nowadays, I surely would have transitioned young. I really hope it works out for the teenager you describe! I think puberty will cause huge problems for them, regardless of how persistent it is.

I've actuslly never said 'i feel like a woman' to anyone, I've always been very clear transitioning because of my sex characteristics makes me a transsexual and not the same as a woman. It's of course, down to anyone else what their perception of me is.

If tw/transsexuals didnt want to be seen as women, there wouldnt be a GRA, no one would change their name and the demand would be to recognise transsexuals as a class within their sex not the opposite.

Changing id, name and having surgery and hormones, having trans awareness campaigns, isnt neutral. Its manipulating people perception of what sex they are and how we as a society should think a woman is.

Men using women as a description for themselves, then saying, but i never claimed to be a female woman, are still claiming that they are a woman. They are just saying that been female isnt that important.

Hi @TonTonMacoute Yes there are children who decide they are the other sex for a long time and from no apparent outside influence; usually they change their minds at puberty. One of the most active people against child transition went through this experience herself - that's therapist Stella O'Malley of the Genspect organisation and "Gender a Wider Lens" podcasts (which I found fascinating by the way even when episodes had nothing to do with me or my child!) She started thinking she was really a boy very young and kept going but changed her mind at puberty with no interference either way. It's why she is so strongly against transitioning children, there is simply no way to tell if the dysphoria will "stick" or not and the statistics say that it probably wont. Which is different from @VanishingVision 's experience but they don't negate each other.

And the problem with "social transition" and "affirmation" for children is that evidence shows that it may convince some children they can become or should become the other sex, when left to themselves they would simply outgrow it.

I agree and have been reading with the greatest interest and have learned a lot.

I also think any parent who convinces a school to allow their child to be treated as the opposite sex is acting in the very opposite of best interest of the child. Even before Dr Cass wrote in her report about the fact that it was not a neutral act, there were clinicians raising the alarm that changing pronouns, and changing sex markers for children. Not through ‘hatred’ but because ithad strong potential for locking them into an identity that then feel they can not change.

@VanishingVision Good idea to write to your MP. Letters from your perspective could be very powerful.

Would you mind saying, what are the health risks that you're aware of from the hormones you're taking? I've found it really difficult to get a clear picture of the physical effects. I've seen a lot of discussion online about psychology but surprisingly little about physical health.

As a child, I hated pink and loved toy cars. I looked like a boy and acted like one. At 12 or 13, I too also had a boy’s name picked out and asked my mum to use it. She politely declined and said clearly, ‘you cannot change sex’.

This was decades ago. We had a poorly working TV and that is it. At that time there was truly no chance of ‘social contagion’. According to some people, apparently that would have been me expressing my identity.

No. It really wasn’t. Looking back, I realise it was me rejecting a sexist society, even then. I hated being female.

I never wanted pink anything. I wanted blue. Blue bedding, blue clothes. I still hate pink and wear mostly black.

When I see people declaring that as a child they just knew and then use sexist stereotypes to qualify that belief, I am sorry, but that is concerning behaviour. I think that is retconning a child hood shaped by sexist stereotypes at the very least.

Any child should be able to do any activity and have any interest that is healthy for them. To allocate any activity as being for girls or boys is sexism. And to base a child’s life decisions on that is hugely concerning. To allow a child to live as if they are materially something they materially are not is not making healthy choices for that child.

Thank you! I mean raise a hand if you live with chronic pain, lipodema, or are an amputee. Or if a medication has caused weight gain, or if your skin seems to be allergic to AIR, or if your fundamentalist parents have never let you cut your hair - MOST people feel their bodies are in some way an enemy at some point.
It's the only body we have and our only mechanism for existing and experiencing the world. We ARE our bodies, whether we like it or not, and wishing you didn't have a peen doesn't justify inverting it to make a grotesque, non-functional facsimile of a vagina.

I would be rather hesitant declaring a child had no possibility of social contagion or outside influence if the school they are about to go to has agreed to allow them to join as the opposite sex.

That sounds to me like denial.

If any country’s school allows a child to join as the opposite sex, that is a country that likely needs its teaching resources checked for any content that may have influenced children.

This is where "transwoman" is such a deceptive term, suggesting that what is happening is about becoming a woman. Men Rejecting Manhood is much more accurate, because trying to be a woman is - by definition - a rejection of manhood, yet - given the binary and unchanging nature of sex - there is no becoming a woman is any sense at all. IMO

It also depends on an absurdly strict Cartesian mind/body split. As if the mind were just the brain and could live independently of the body. As you say, it works best in the context of quasi-religious belief.

I think that from a medical point of view there really are only two treatment approaches that can possibly exist.

"This is a mental health issue and mental health issues require mental health treatment, not hormones and surgeries"

"People who claim to be trans have a unique condition, which involves the mind accurately self-diagnosing that the body is somewhere in the "not quite right" to "completely wrong" range due to secondary sex characteristics. We need to do whatever the patient says we should do"

Either we trust some or all patients, or we treat based on common sense and evidence (which I believe both conclude the same thing - no medical transition)

This

"the metaphor of being a prisoner in a body that isn't mine." Such a bizarre take.

(1) Why would anyone assume that they are in the wrong body? Surely it is more illogical to assume that it is not the body 100% wrong, it is the brain that is a little bit confused / distressed?

(2) Why would anyone assume that the wrong body narrative is anything more than a quasi-religious belief, and why would anyone assume that others would change their lives to accommodate a quasi-religious belief?

(3) The whole wrong body narrative is, in my view, little more than an announcement of mental health issues (incl dysphoria) and that the person concerned does not believe that their MH issues need treating.

You seem a bit touchy.

If you dont want people to comment on your post, you shouldn't post on a public forum.

@TonTonMacoute pretty rude of you mate.

i really do not buy that a child of the age you mention says i am not my birth sex or any comparative iteration.

a child of that age does not have the capacity to understand such a concept of otherness since they have not yet emerged from egocentricity.

it is possible they were more interested in more “female associated “ interests. And i suppose that if they were that being discouraged from that they might object.

the shorter version is you made that up.

@VanishingVision I for one am deeply grateful you started this thread - I was one of the "early responders" I've found the conversation and your thoughtful way of addressing issues very interesting....Yup, being derailed was annoying but once we came back to you, that was a relief....

In response to
h, I understand I'm not getting upset. Perhaps disheartened or concerned that I've taken up too much space here.

You can't take up too much space here - that is the joy of different threads - those who are interested engage, those who aren't usually move on if they are well-intentioned.... You came on here with tact and dignity and hesitancy and for that I am deeply appreciative

Thank you