Transing a 4 year old

[ShadowChancellor]

On Monday, all the children at my kids school were taught about being transgender because the parent of a reception kid have decided that X is actually Y and are now sending their kid in as the opposite sex and have changed their name.

According to my kid they were shown a video that was all about how if you were a boy and liked girl things and girl clothes you were a girl and it was all very positive.

No parents were told before this happened. We only found out when the kids came out of school on Monday and told us.

AIBU to a) think that transing a kid at 4 years old is more to do with the parents not liking the fact that their kid prefers girls toys to boys toys and b) that the other parents should've been told before they showed our kids this film and promoted it all in school.

Its caused a lot of confusion with the younger kids who think you can change whether you are a boy or girl just by wishing it and didn't mention at all all of the problems that it can cause.

What the fuck would the trans lobby make of Prince or Bowie now?

www.feministcurrent.com/2016/04/23/prince-was-not-trans-he-is-proof-that-men-need-not-be-masculine/

if you were a boy and liked girl things and girl clothes you were a girl

Un-fucking-believable.

4 years old.

My 4 year old boy has long blonde curly hair. He plays with dolls. He pisses about with my makeup and shoes if he can get his hands on them. He draws tattoos on himself to be like Mummy. And he blinking loves having his toenails painted. He is a boy. None of the above emasculates him in any way. He is a child. A four year old. If his nursery showed him a video giving him the impression (rightly or wrongly) that the above meant he was a girl, I'd go mental.

Today he's decided he is a dog. He's crawling around on all fours howling like a hound. Am I going to put a lead on him? No. Because I'm not fucking insane.

My parents were VERY sexist, as well as very buttoned up, so we didn't talk about bodies in my house. I can remember having a row with my mother at about the age of 7 (funnily enough around the time when my brothers were allowed to run free, and I was told I had to learn to iron, cook, and clean because 'you'll have a husband of your own one day to look after') where I absolutely INSISTED that I did not want to be a girl (because being a girl looking fucking rubbish)

Girls today are under FAR more pressure with regard to the their bodies, exposure to porn (I saw porn at the age of eight, it really really really disturbed me and upset me), hassle from boys, gendered toys, social media. Is it any wonder four more times girls as boys are turning up at gender clinics.

It's right that girls and boys are rejecting the soul crushing, suffocationg boxes of GENDER (which is NOT REAL) - but it's not right that we are telling them that the solution is to choose the other box.

I've never really thought about why I wanted to be a boy, but I guess I got the message somewhere that being girly was somehow not as fun.

Same. I refused dresses, hated pink, despised dolls - aside from the dolls thing (still don't like them) I now enjoy those things because now, as an adult, I know that there's no value attached. If I like pink, that's fine, it doesn't make me weaker or less brave. But as a kid I associated those things with the negative stereotype of girls, and I didn't want to be that stereotype. So I rejected them outright.

I wanted the advantages boys got, and so I chose to only wear trousers, to only wear blue, to cut my hair short. In a different time I'd have given myself a boys name. I'm glad I grew up when I did.

GirlScout72, I fulfilled all those criteria as a child too.

I'm a married mum of 5, definitely heterosexual.

It's actually quite scary.

freddorika, just getting back to you. I'm not sure if I've missed this, but we don't know what the video was do we? Without having seen it, none of us, including the OP really know. I was just guessing it was probably more about being kind/ acceptance of others and venus if that makes me naive, well hey that's okay. Without seeing what the kids were shown I might well be being so. I certainly wouldn't want my child of any age to have gender stereotypes reinforced, but.. issues of identity, sexuality, etc seem to have been dealt with really well in the schools I know. What they seem to aim for is for children to be kind and be tolerant. So I still think that's a good message!

MeBitch
"I think a lot of this from teenage girls is just about signalling to their male peers that they do not want to 'send nudes' and do the things some boys see in porn films now and want to act out. I can see a lot of young women wanting to set themselves apart from the overtly aggressive sexuality which is currently considered normal."

That is a v v interesting angle.

I spend my childhood climbing trees, making models, generally having a fun time. I had cropped hair, hated dresses and was into 'boy' things except they weren't, they were just normal childhood fun. As an adult I still have more in common with men than women, Christ knows what life would be like if I was born five years ago. For what it's worth, I've never identified as anything other then me. I am what I am and don't need labelling, neither do children who are just children - whether male, female or whatever else is fine, it's just them being them and they don't need labelling whether it's autism, gender or anything else. They just need love and acceptance.

Encouraging kids to trans is not kind, it's child abuse

But the school are not necessarily encouraging kids to be trans, Mercy. My point is that they're probably just encouraging kids to be kind and to accept the other children in their school. That's very different.

Absolutely Hemlock. My son is around the same age, he went through a stage of liking pink and he gets my wife to paint his toenails but he is just a 4 and a half year old. He is in no position to want or need any suggestion that he might be trans. He has never suggested that he wants to be female but I will accept whatever he wants to do when he is old enough to make a mature decision. It is his body and quite simply, he is no way old enough to make a qualified decision.

This is getting ridiculous now, my 4 year old said he was a dog but I didn't call him fido and get dog biscuits in

I'd be complaining that they put your kid through that. My son dressed as a princess at nursery and never would I have even been bothered, other ds has a pink buggy and a dolly. Does this mean I should transition them both?

Get a complaint in, causing confusion for children at that age isn't on, sounds like the parents need to get a grip

I believe the OP.
Very interested in gatorademebitch 's take as my own 14yoDD has hinted at similar.

You might want to discuss that theory with the OP Tra because that is not what this thread is about, But yeh, the OP has got it wrong because the trans thing is so sensible

Yes like many previous posters I was a tomboy. For me, my rejection of girly things was exacerbated by my conviction that I was plain and not pretty enough to deserve them; the whole lipstick on a pig thing. (I was no monster, just an average looking snub nosed, frizzy haired, blonde eyelashed kid who was later transformed with a few beauty products). I wanted to be a boy, partly because I was a failure as a girl.

But in these days, when young girls are constantly bombarded with airbrushed images of perfection, how much stronger must these feelings of inadequacy be?

It is his body and quite simply, he is no way old enough to make a qualified decision.

Absolutely, we don't even let kids that young choose what to eat freely. Why would we expect them to make a massive decision to live as another gender?!

But the school are not necessarily encouraging kids to be trans, Mercy. My point is that they're probably just encouraging kids to be kind and to accept the other children in their school.

I'm sure their intent was very good. However as the kids have come away thinking that the toys you play with show which gender you are, it is not harmless. Good intentions or not.

I believe you that this happened too. It's so crazy and horrible that it just has to be true. What is the world coming to?

they're probably just encouraging kids to be kind and to accept the other children in their school.

That's not the description given by the OP.

The message her child received was that if you liked "girl" things, then you were a girl. Not on and damaging.

fFucking outrageous and id be complaining to the school and requesting, no, insisting that thet warn me if they are going to show scientifically and biologically impossible information to my child at such an impressionable age. The school would surely raise concerns if they found you were showing inappropriate videos to your child so you need to do the same.

ive told ds1 to tell me immediately if any of this shit starts in his school so i can withdraw him from those lessons

OP, not sure if this helps but the UK is signed up to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Schools have a legal obligation to teach in particular CEDAW article 5 (a) which specifically concerns itself with tackling gender stereotypes.

Article 5 states "Parties shall take all appropriate measures: (a) To modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women;

(b) To ensure that family education includes a proper understanding of maternity as a social function and the recognition of the common responsibility of men and women in the upbringing and development of their children, it being understood that the interest of the children is the primordial consideration in all cases."

www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CEDAW.aspx

In your shoes I'd get some more info on this in terms of how it's meant to be taught at the age group of your child, and demonstrate how the GID criteria for kids, and CEDAW are entirely at odds.

Has there been a link to the video yet?

Very worrying!
I do wonder if this is partly happening because children's toys and clothes are so much more strongly gender defined than they were when we were growing up. Despite our efforts to break down gender stereotypes I have the feeling they are getting worse (for kids). Dolls - in our day - weren't so extremely glittery and pink (all my boys had dolls but not easy to find non-glittery pink ones). Girls clothes are becoming more extremely defined as girls clothes.- We just had trousers and t-shirts. Even my special 'sunday' clothes were neutral. I get a headache from the pink overload in girls clothes and toy sections in shops.
One of my boys at this age (about 4) said his favourite colour was pink and at 10 y.o. still loves pink today (but won't admit it if his brothers or friends are listening) , all my boys dressed up in princess dresses - I thought it was adorable, not transgender.. My pink loving boy also likes playing with girls and boys equally (but the girls at 9/10 years old will NOT play with the boys).
The list posted by Girlscout is completely open to interpretation.

Bloody hell, GirlScout, I'm glad that wasn't around in the 70s- though actually, my (incredibly reactionary in many ways) parents wouldn't have sought for help and a diagnosis for a refusal to conform to societal gender norms. One of my brothers also spent years playing with "girls" toys and hates sport etc- he's also clearly dodged a bullet...

Surely this is a fairly normal part of childhood? What is behind the current fashion of medicalising and pathologising perfectly normal human responses these days?