to find CBBC's 'Just a Girl' programme re a transgender child inappropriate?

[PatButchersEarring]

..totally prepared to be told I am being U on this one, but...

My 7 year old daughter is currently watching 'Just a Girl' on CBBC. This seems to be a dramatisation about a pre-teen, transgender girl- so born a born, but living as a girl. Also either currently or looking into taking hormone blockers.

AIBU to think this is an inappropriate topic for a young age group?

Wow "silly people who don't have the confidence to be themselves"

Really?
The point is truly Trans teens for example have more courage than most and actually don't want attention or fuss

My dd watched this. She is a girl who likes wearing 'boys' clothes and playing football. She actually asked me, anxiously, if that meant she was a boy.

And this is the issue of giving this mainstream coverage - more children encouraged to think they have been 'born in the wrong body' because they don't think the things that gender roles deem that they should.

I think when people refer to child abuse, they are talking about parents and Drs who do allow the child to have hormones and blockers. So not you Elsa. It sounds very difficult and I think I would probably proceed in the same way you say you have if my child came to me and said they were trans. And hope they would grow out of it and learn to accept their body as it is.

We have a child who identifies as the opposite gender in my children's school. The parents don't push gender stereotypes, and have allowed both the transgender child (and their older sibling, who is the same birth gender as the younger sibling and is completely comfortable with it) to express themselves / dress themselves / play with whatever was most comfortable to them since they were able to express an opinion.

The child has been through a lot of counselling and medical care, and is currently awaiting an appointment at the Tavistock. Hormones are NOT given on a whim, and are not given because parents encourage their children to participate in non-traditional gender activities. My friends (the child's parents) have gone through a rigorous process themselves and have had a lot of great advice from the NHS.

Having this child in the school has allowed me to have a discussion on inclusivity with my own children when they asked me (after knowing the child for quite some time!!!) "is X a boy or a girl?" I think it's great that CBBC is showing this programme to allow parents who don't have a transgender child in their kids' school to have a similar conversation.

shrug I find watching perfectly healthy children being medicalised on a whim silly and attention seeking, yes.

The thing is, if the child is going to the Tavistock, isn't that going to reinforce the feeling that they "should" be the opposite sex? Also, if they do end up being put on "just blockers" the overwhelming likelihood is that they will then end up on hormones, unable to have children, and with various attendant health problems. For example the risk of blood clots in the body is increased in girls who take testosterone. That's not what I would want for my child and I would fight tooth and nail for that not to happen.

My dd watched this. She is a girl who likes wearing 'boys' clothes and playing football. She actually asked me, anxiously, if that meant she was a boy.

So that's an opportunity for YOU as a parent to say no, girls can like football and wearing comfy clothes. It's not a bad thing for a programme to start that discussion, and it's really NOT going to make a lot of kids push to be transgender, any more than seeing people of the same sex on telly in a relationship is going to make them gay.

Elsa
You have allowed your DC to have a different name and act as they want. You have helped them access counselling. You haven't given them hormones or surgery. I think most posters on here would be supportive of your position.
I think most of us are directing our anger at the same place as you ie the websites that say ( boy +doll = girl); the people pushing hormones on children.

@ageingrunner, the referral to the Tavistock has come after YEARS of local counselling and discussions with GPs and psychologists. Several medical professionals, none of whom has a particular agenda apart from the child's welfare, have agreed that the referral is the best way for the child to talk about options for the future. Even the referral doesn't mean automatic hormones or gender assignment, it is a chance for the child to honestly discuss and understand the implications of different avenues for them.

Good post Elsa!
I'm also a parent of a gender questioning child, and I despair that people think it's something I am suggesting or enforcing.
My daughter wears boys clothes because she wants people to think she's a boy, we don't think she's a boy because she wears blue!
She doesn't play stereotypically boy games, or stereotypically girl games, but she is very clear that she wants to be counted as a boy.
To all the people who bemoan that there aren't more gender options in our blue/pink society, I entirely agree, but that doesn't help my seven year old right now! I can't change society to make her feel comfortable, but I can let her choose what she wants to wear and what she wants to be called. I can debate endlessly why she feels this way, and why it distresses her so much to be given a pink option, but it doesn't change HOW she feels, or what I can do to help.
Knowing that some other children are going through similar feelings has been very helpful to her, seeing some transition and some non-conforming, has shown her there are different options.
I think a programme on cbbc is a good start for discussions in lots of different homes, so I'm all for it.

We really really need less "a boy wants to wear a dress / play with a doll and is therefore a girl" bollocks and a lot more "boys and girls can wear anything and play with anything they want". If we lived in a society where it was acceptable for any men to go full Izzard, there would be a lot less of this nonsense.

HUGE round of applause for Alconbury. Exactly what I think too. All this "my four year old son likes wearing pink and playing with Barbie so is identifying as a girl" is just BOLLOCKS. It's a young child playing with stuff. Men and women, girls and boys, teens of both sexes can wear what they like and do whatever activities they like. A teenage girl who wants to play rugby and wear a tracksuit isn't "identifying as a boy" or "non-binary" or whatever the trendy term is these days. She's just finding out who she is.

Tolerance is a great thing and all kids should be brought up to be kind to everyone and accept them for who they are. If there weren't threads about Dads being cross that their sons have dolls or mothers not liking their girls not wearing make-up, this would be far less important.

I wouldn't be particularly comfortable with my 8 year old watching this sort of thing, especially as it appears to have been made poorly.

I sympathise with people having difficulties with gender.
As much as I might like us to all live in a world where everyone can dress or behave as they want without being called girly/cissy/butch/nancy/pussy (can't thing of as many abusive terms for masculine), we don't live their yet. As individuals we all deserve compassion and understanding.

However the current narrative that the way to solve the problem is to permanently change bodies to fit 'gender', when nobody even knows what gender is or whether it exists, is wrong.

Meanwhile redefining the term 'woman' or 'man' to some vague abstract idea is unhelpful to people who have to deal with the real concrete fact of their sex.

i think we overestimate he influence of parents, and under influence the way the world at large constantly reinforces "gender".

I don't wear makeup, dye my grey hair or diet. It hasn't stopped my two tweenagers starting to obsess about fashion, looks, and weight.

NoHat,I can't help thinking that it's likely to be a slippery slope, and if the child was not referred, they would be statistically overwhelmingly likely to be happy with their birth sex when they have been allowed to go through puberty. I'm not really sure I can see how going to the Tavistock would be helpful for zany child, seeing as the evidence shows that a child left alone would most likely be gay and happy with their body. What's the point?

Any child, not zany child

Someone always compares these situations to gay people or gay parents

Being gay is not a mental disorder

Being gay does not involved a child taking life altering medication

Being gay does not reinforce very damaging stereotypes that set boys and girls, especially girls, back decades

Having gay parents has very little affect on children, as opposed to being told they're a 'trans' child

Like others when I was little I cut my hair short myself (which my mother's as thrilled about as you can imagine), wore boyish clothes, played with boys toys and when I played games I often said I had to be a boy called Sam.

Was I trans? A boy trapped in a girl's body?

No. I had two older brothers who I looked up to and played with a lot. It terrifies me that if my parents had been the liberal batshit crazy kind you see these days, I may have been put through unnecessary procedures and given confusing messages. Come 10 or 11 I was more than happy as a girl, I am now a woman very comfortable with my sex. I have no gender identity. Mainly because gender identity is a load of bollocks.

Transing of children is dangerous and I urge those letting it slide to have a long hard think about what it men's and why children 'identify' as trans

I'd like the BBC to make a kids programme to counter the blue/pink culture of today. So you'd have boys with short hair who play footie as well as boys who enjoy sewing or some other "female " activity. I think that it is a real problem that gender definitions are so narrow (especially at primary) and think that it is harder for boys who like the "feminine" rather than vice versa.
Children see women who know more about cars than men or men who are better cooks than women so I can't see why they wouldn't be more receptive to sexuality being a complex spectrum. Personally I don't own a single dress or lipstick but I have long hair and a fetish for handbags and perfume so my kids should know better that being female is more complicated than owning a vagina and liking high heels but they all ended up feeling like that- especially at primary.

Some of the stories on here are extremely sad. Being a user of the mental health services for all my adult life, I can not help but feel heartbroken that problems start so young. I have no idea if being trans is a physical thing in the genes or a mental health thing but stories like children who are mutilating themselves has made me feel it's the latter.

My daughter wears boys clothes because she wants people to think she's a boy, we don't think she's a boy because she wears blue!
She doesn't play stereotypically boy games, or stereotypically girl games, but she is very clear that she wants to be counted as a boy.

Fucking hell I've known loads of 7 year olds be like this over the years. A couple have turned out to be gay and the others moved out of the phase after a few years. I would think it was entirely normal and the idea of actually transitioning wouldnt even CROSS MY MIND

The world has gone completely nuts. Is it normal to be this self indulgent nowadays? I am delighted to be old enough to remember life when girls could spend years with short hair and dungarees and noone batted a bloody eyelid!

Empress that's frightening. I feel really sad that Izzard said that, I used to respect him so much for just wearing a dress sometimes and not making a big deal of it.
As for the Science Museum, what kind of science is 'brain sex'? Not your actual scientific science, that's for sure.

@ageingrunner, what evidence is that? Do you have a link?

We're not talking about a child who occasionally says "I wish I were a boy/girl." My own DD went through a phase of saying she wished she were a boy, we didn't make a big deal about it and now she's very happy being a super-sporty girl. The child who is going to the Tavistock is a completely different situation, and no one in their life is acting on a whim.

The transgender adults I know have told me that they knew as long as they can remember that they felt that they were in the wrong body, but because of societal pressure, put off transitioning until their middle age and were miserable as a result. Is that a better option?

I'll find one

tigersteeth, thats just a pretty normal part of childhood imo. most kids go through something similar, sometimes an animal, opposite sex, imaginary creature. its just normal.

sexnotgender.com/studies-and-reports-transgender-children/

This is quite helpful I think