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.

This really worries me on two levels. The first is the idea that to be a girl you have to like wearing dresses and playing with girls toys which is bollocks. What does being a girl actually mean? I always say to my two the only thing that boys can't do that girls can is have a baby. All the other stuff is societal.

The other aspect to this is when I was a child I dressed like a boy, had short hair, climbed trees, my buddies were boys, I dressed up as a boxer for Halloween etc. No one batted an eye lid But I grew up, got my period, got married and had babies.

If I was a brought up now would my parents have me to a clinic and would i have been put on the path of reassignment? If you asked me then if I identitied more with boys than girls I would have said yes.

Plasticity, Southall.

But if this brain with "feminine traits" is in a male body, then surely it is a male brain. Just like the body's arms and legs are male arms and legs. Why does having feminine traits mean the brain is not male? Surely it just means that male brains have more variation than was previously thought? And that variation includes brains with a lot of feminine traits.

Sorry political correctness has gone mad and we as a society are condoning the damage an aggressive transsexual agenda is doing to our children. Of course gender co-exists with physical sex from birth. That doesn't mean little boys can't dress up in frilly petticoats ( mine all did) or that girls have to wear pink. It means children are taught to grow and develop their sexuality in the gender of their sex. Little girls copying mummy and little boys copying daddy - it's how children learn from role models about all sorts of things. Teenage girls don't need to learn to shave their faces unless we pump them full of drugs they don't need. Teenage boys don't need to know how to manage periods (except to understand their sisters). Teenage boys don't need to get HPV vaccine. Teenage girls don't need such detailed knowledge of testicular cancer. Healthy children with good role modelling tend to grow to healthy adults with a very clear perspective about their identity- sexual or otherwise.

No words

Raga my child is a bit older than yours but is currently presenting to the outside world as a member of the opposite sex.

For us this has been going on for many years, probably around 6 years now.

A way back when we started, before trans activists got involved, I would have wholeheartedly encouraged you to seek support from a clinic. It used to be difficult, you used to have to fight to be heard, they never used to blindly accept what you say within a couple of appointments.

It is terrifying how much things have changed. The professionals aren't allowed to question things anymore and there is very little mental health help now. I have had to pay privately to get my child mental health support that is neutral and not encouraging.

For all those who think parents like me are attention seekers, have munchausen by proxy and are abusive, can I ask how much you know about the whole process? Or do you just make assumptions based on a few parents who pimp their kids out for blogs and TV appearances? They don't represent the majority of us who are struggling to do our best with little to no help.

Op the school have handled it badly, but they all have to take a pro trans stance now, thank the activists for that. You should probably go to the local authority rather than the school to complain as the schools hands are tied.

My child's school had some training and did some work with the kids about breaking stereotypes and being accepting (not focusing on trans issues at all) I got to sit in on some lessons and it was brilliant and the way I would wish all schools to go about it. Things are changing so much now though it's unreal.

The more I think about this issue, the more I have come to believe that what we have here is a colossal knowledge failure in wider culture about gender and gender performance.

What constitutes cultural masculine and feminine behaviour in the west is not a universal set of markers across cultures or history. Therefore these markers cannot be innate or connected essentially to biological sex class.

For example, soccer is a girl's sport in the US, yet in South America, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, it is perceived as a male sport.

Embroidery in Western Europe has traditionally been seen as a women's art. Not so in Kashmir, where fine embroidery is a specifically male enterprise.

Again commerce has been a traditionally male occupation in Western Europe. Yet in west Africa, it was traditionally women that acted as merchants in the market place, running stalls and buying and selling.

When you look at gender performance through history, the subject gets even more murky. Prior to the Georgian period, it was generally perceived that men were the passive sexualised partner and were told to "do their husbandly duty" and pretty much "lie back and think of England" whereas women were the sexually rapacious class.

Pink was once a boys' colour; blue was once a girls'. Tears and showing emotion was once perceived as the high of refined male sensibility. In the 17th century, men did "ballet" in order to refine their movements for court.

And this is all before we get onto variations on warrior culture between men and women.

All I see in this issue is a drive for extreme cultural conformity to a set of cultural and social performance markers that are very much of this place and this time. My feeling is that if you can persuade people to believe these are innate and essential to the point of medical and surgical intervention, you can persuade people of anything.

And that should really worry us all.

My children haven't had any exposure to trans ideology yet at school or elsewhere. But I have primed them so that they can see an untruth when they encounter it. As such, they know that there are two sexes (and my 9 year old and I have discussed intersex conditions too) and no such thing as feeling like a girl/boy or pink brain/blue brain. They know you can be kind to someone even whilst knowing that they are completely wrong about something. We've talked about how different religions believe different things and we live in society where people are allowed to believe different things as long as no-one tries to make other people pretend they believe it too.

They know that science and faith or belief are different things. They also know that adults can get things wrong. They know, I hope, that if something is true you can test it out to see if it is true or not.

I pity the first adult who tries to tell my daughter that it's possible to feel like a girl, and that she has to accept that lie.

I thought that the point of transitioning was to relieve extreme mental distress caused by being the wrong sex. Seems strange there is no sign of mental distress at all. I would sort of expect it to be there if he genuinely felt he was in the wrong body.

One thing among many about this that bothers me is that it's adults promoting this and these children are almost experiments. They're being given hormone treatment, puberty blockers and what will the side effects be long term?

I'm surprised mermaids are still going after being discredited in the family court case where the child was removed from its mother. That was horrifying, not just what they did, but how they reacted afterward.

If you have female brain traits but were born with a penis, you will identify as a female in a male body and vice versa.

Bullshit.

There are a couple of innate brain differences in males and females, but they are to do with future production of sex hormones. Other than that, innate language acquisition and a handful of reflexes, babies brains are almost entirely plastic.

The "sexed" differences found in adult's brains are almost entirely down to either the action of sex hormones on brain function, including the action of pregnancy related hormones in women who have been pregnant or socialised and learned behaviour.

For example, Black Cab drivers have enlarged area in the brain related to long term memory and retrieval. This does not mean that if you found similarly enlarged areas of the brain in people who are not Black Cab drivers, that they should start identifying as Black Cab drivers.

Your adult brain is the sum of your experiences and socialisation.

My DD is 5 and we had a discussion this morning - a tiny little drip feed of tolerance and acceptance. She said a boy from her class "looks like a girl because he has long hair." We talked about how it was fine to have short hair, long hair or no hair and to wear whatever you wanted, but since her friend has a willy, he's a boy.

"Well, I haven't checked whether he does have a willy but he does have a boy face. I wonder if he'd like to borrow my bobbles to keep his hair off his face?"

End of discussion, move on to Paw Patrol and whether the bin men would come soon.

At such a young age they really don't need to be fed that there's a right and wrong way to be a boy or girl.

What is a "female brain trait"?

No Ragamuffin this current thinking that its possible to be born in the wrong body is a myth. How can anyone be born in the wrong body? Or how it feels to be anything other than what they are?

I hated my burgeoning female body, and as young as five was sure and certain I was a boy and would evolve into a boy. Looking back all of that was a response to the crap deal in store for me as a girl growing up. Your son is responding to the crap deal in store for him as a boy growing up- that in society he is expected to be 'strong', tearless, fearless and macho.

That crossed my mind Bill. that if a tiny boy didnt want their penis, feels like a girl (whatdver that means to a small child) then surely there would be signs of distress? So perhaps no MH issues means it really is just a typical phase? I imagine that would be some sort of relief Ragamuffin?

"If you have female brain traits but were born with a penis, you will identify as a female in a male body and vice versa." hahaha, please do link to evidence, ta.

And on the subject of pronouns Ragamuffin, I refuse as a feminist to bestow 'she' on a male no matter what PC dictates are in vogue. I will not support the lie that your child is female.

"What is a "female brain trait"?" It's an inborn desire to wear blusher, lipstick and frilly dresses. Or so we are made to believe.

Werk you are now on my fantasy dinner party guest list, you sound very interesting.

Fish thank you for that explanation of gender as culture and time-fluid, and not an innate characteristic

That adult's should consider endorsing "wrong body" to any child for even a millisecond is unacceptable.

If any child has a perception that their body is 'wrong' it's our job to fix that by helping them accept and feel positive about their bodies. I struggle to put myself in the minds of parents who can look at their perfect children's bodies and think, yep, I'll help you alter yourself irrevocably rather than spend every minute reinforcing how awesome and perfect your body already is for the brain you have.

Werkzallhourz Fri 24-Feb-17 13:56:48 fantastic post.

(I did NOT put that apostrophe in there, I swear)

I would be VERY VERY unhappy if this had been done in our school.

I almost wish this would happen to my DC, so I could unleash a team of lawyers to teach the school of human biology and the limits of their authority. And to set a precedent for all UK schools.

Someone will have to do it, I fear. How about it, OP?