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.

Haven't rtft but I would be fuming.
My friend's 4 year old thinks she's a dog, but aside from the parents no way would I want my child being confused by eg girls don't like trousers and climbing trees

It has as much place in a school as a video teaching children that the world was made in 7 days and that evolution is a lie made up by scientists.

And now the school ought to be tripling their efforts to undo the harm. Showing videos about how stereotypes are harmful. Providing role models for girls and boys that break the stereotypical mould. Explaining biology. Rewarding non conformity and encouraging children to see the difference between pretending and reality. Never, ever coercing children to lie about themselves.

That is fucking madness.

If a 4 year old likes clothes and toys marketed at the opposite sex, then they should be left to explore and wear and play what they want. Chances are is doesn't mean anything significant and they are just exploring.

But actually going this far with it? Fucking crazy.

I've got no problem with people presenting how they wish, the gender boxes are far too small and could do with expanding or just being got rid of altogether.

I really hate the narrative about a woman being a feeling. Being a woman is all about the biology; identifying as a man is not going to stop my periods or PMT or stop me having a chance of getting ovarian cancer.
And a transwoman is not going to avoid getting prostate cancer or other male only complications by identifying as a female.

You can't identify out of your biology and using gender as a basis for anything is just reinforcing stereotypes.

I have heard it proposed from a couple of different sources that the big funding for the trans movement is coming, not from people who are concerned with those suffering from sex disphoria, but from lobbyists who want to change laws and societal perceptions around children's ability to consent to sex.

It is logical to conclude that if children can make self diagnose and then make decisions about their sexed bodies (what they are and how they should look/be treated/medicated) as early as two and that ability to self diagnose is held as sacred, then why shouldn't they be able to decide other things about their bodies - like who has access to them and how?

It is well established that groomed and coerced children will often "consent" to, and even seemingly initiate sexual contact with adults however, legally this is negated because we as a society understand that children cannot understand the full implications of their decisions. However, the transing of children (namely "positive affirmation"), knocks that into a cocked hat.

It is child abuse to put these kind of decisions in the laps of minors and it is dangerous ground that is potentially paving the way to much greater abuses of children and it will strip parents of the ability to advocate for our children's safety.

It is also throwing people with actual Sex disphoria under a bus because the backlash from this will be visited upon them.

We all need to be strongly questioning this rhetoric and oppose anything that even whispers that children are capable of total self determination. They aren't. They can't and they need adult help to navigate a complex and confusing world.

Biological sex is immutable. Self expression is fluid. Teaching our children how to live happily in reality is the true job of a parent and its not an easy one but we cannot allow our children to be convinced that the "impossible dream" will make them happy - it is a cruel lie.

That's disturbing, Ben, but it makes sense

Great post Ben.

Want some light relief that challenges all the trans stuff, please do watch this:

Wow Ben I'd never even considered those terrifying broader implications.

No idea what the video was or why they felt the need I show it.

We have had 3 or 4 children over the years at my infant school who have worn clothes, their hair etc in a way normally worn by the opposite sex to what they are. So 3 little girls who preferred to wear 'boys' clothes/hair styles, etc and one little boy who preferred to have his hair long and wear dresses.

No videos, no fuss, other children not spoken to about it, and all from reception ages. We never mentioned their sex to any other child, though did refer to them by their assigned sex at birth in reports, meetings etc. It has just never been an issue for the other children - they all just play regardless. The parents just decided, some with professional guidance at early years education stage, to not make a fuss and let their child wear/be whatever at this stage, but to always refer to their own child as their assigned sex at these young ages.
No idea what happens as they've gotten older and moved on to upper primary and then secondary as my school ends at age 7. But in the time they're at our school it's not been made a big deal.

That sounds exactly the way it should be, Hulababy.

Great post Ben

I'd concur, after my strange excursions in the world of Queer Theory, I've seen arguments that 'age' is also a social construct and 'biology is a philosophical argument' and indeed have had that argument with (heterosexual) middle aged men who support the trans narrative and spend a lot of time online trolling women who are gender critical.

Most of their argument is incomprehensible post modern verbiage (and as a result deliberately obscure and incomprehensible) but ANYWHERE I see men arguing 'age' is a social construct, every warning light on my dashboard starts screaming nonce.

I'm not suggesting trans people are padeophiles, 90% are autogynephiles who fetishize womanhood and their misogyny and 10% have genuine dysphoria, and 80% keep their penis, even they take hormones and get boobs (that ought to raise a few eyebrows for starters!). However it's kinda immaterial what they are, as Gender Self ID, just leaves the door wide open for predators to exploit it to access women and kids.

But take this tweet by a transwomen that I saw the other day - and this is by no means the worst I've seen - not only is it offensive (deeply offensive, to women and mothers) it really has some unsavoury undertones. I think parents ought to be extremely wary who they are turning to for advice, as I feel the kids trans narrative is the human shield for these autogyns ...

I also read a hideous discussion by a white, male, het 'socialist' progressive who was arguing for 'race play' in BDSM - eroticized racism, is just a game apparently. Yuk!

I also agree re the backlash, and many gender critical trans people (who are doubly villified by their own community, the slur I believe is 'truscum' - despite the fact these older transsexuals dealt with this crap on their own in the 80s and 90s and paved the way for the community that has now turned on them) are shouting very loudly that the current direction of travel is very harmful to trans people themselves.

Nobody listens of course.

Blimey, Girlscout, that is pretty scary.

If a woman with no children started trying to lactate using a breast pump everyone would think she was stark staring bonkers, but if it's a transwoman, then of course it's fine!

We are not allowed to call it a fetish without having 'transphobe' yelled at us, but how is that not fetishistic?! Obviously, that is one case, but that person is not alone.

And Ben, your take on it is very, very scary.

It makes sense to me, though, that allowing a child to make that sort of decision aged 4 is no different from them giving consent to all sorts of things we would never deem appropriate.

You want a tattoo, Charlie? Of course you can if that's how you feel and if it will damage your mental health if I say no.

I like the idea of age being a social construct. I also vote for weight to be one too..I now identify as a 21 year old weighing 8 1/2 stone and I demand you all agree. If you tell me I'm 52 and 13 stone, well that's literal violence and you'll, like literally kill me

Age as a social construct...

How about this cute six-year-old?

@Empress how could anyone object to that sweet child
Jesus, there's some seriously deluded people in the world

You are wise to be scared. These are not theoretical concerns. Let me tell you what happened to my daughter. She has autism. She was first exposed to this at school by a kid who came out as trans. Over the years, others followed. School was very affirming. Two year ago, my daughter told me she was trans. She is convinced she is a boy. We went to gender therapists thinking they would help me figure out what to do. Instead, they told me I needed to support her transition or she was at risk for suicide. My life has become a nightmare and I am sickened by what is going on in society. People are afraid to speak out against this or they are labeled a bigot and a transphobe. I used to be liberal minded on this until this became personal. I warn you: don't back down on this issue. Protect your child from this as much as you can.

No one is born in the wrong body. It's scientifically untenable. People have gender dysphoria and it should be treated with any means possible.

^^This exactly simply well put

ben

In terms of giving children or under age youngsters authority to do anything they like, wasn't there case recently of an underage transboy in America who accessed medical treatment against the explicit wishes of her parents, with the medical community fully behind her?

The mother wasn't told and it was deliberately kept from her by the medical staff because they thought the girl knew best.

And yes, I too think it is blurring the lines between acceptable and unacceptable for a wealth of dodgy reasons. And I bet you any money paedophiles are rubbing their hands in glee.

This started with a minority of people with gender dysphoria not wanting to be fired from their jobs for presenting as the opposite sex.

That slope has become so bloody slippery so that now we can't talk about menstruation and abortion, calling someone the wrong pronoun is a hate crime, men are allowed access to women and girls everywhere, the word woman has no definition, breasts are now chests, a penis is female, and 4 year olds are determining their future based on how they feel that day.

All from not being able to fire someone in a dress.

This has all happened in a frighteningly short time.

I don't think anyone can afford to be complacent. Hopefully the TRAs will come up with something so ridiculous that tipping point will be reached.

On the other hand you would've thought that all the above was fairly ridiculous 2-3 years ago.

The school will have sought advice and have been told they are duty bound to keep the party line on being accepting - by which they mean advancing magical thinking.

If the argument was made that the child preferred to dress as the opposite sex and called by those pronouns I wouldnt object - its the fact that they are saying it actually makes them the opposite sex which is the problem. Its magical thinking.

Teach acceptance yes but also teach reality

Interesting, isn't it. If a child said:
I'm not going to attend school any more
I'm going to get marrried
I'm going to have cosmetic surgery
I'm going to drink alcohol
I'm going to take drugs
I'm going to stop eating
I'm going to self harm
I'm going to kill myself
I'm going to stay in my room for ever, I can't face outside
I'm going to deselect myself from society
I'm going to have sex with my teacher

The adults looking after that child would, rightly, intervene.

I agree that feminists often forget that they have decades of grounding in theory that other people haven't read. Moreover, I suspect that us feminists also forget that this theory causes us to notice, research and collect other information from other disciplines and fit it into a feminist context that maybe other people do not see.

I admit I have a heightened awareness and sensitivity to insights into gender performance across history, purely because I am a feminist.

So I notice the "monobrow" beauty standard in the Roman republic. I notice the high warrior culture of Ancient Greece where men are expected to cry for their fallen comrades in order to be perceived as a true warrior. I notice and consider how traditional Islamic village culture splits the world into the domestic realm and the civic realm and what the parameters of those realms are and how power between men and women in those cultures interplays.

And through this, you start to realise just how constructed a lot of our modern understandings of femininity and masculinity actually are. And the extent to which our modern metanarratives are pure bunkum.

I noticed this lack when I watched the hands across the aisle video. One man asked a question about how parents should respond if their child starts to favour the artifacts of another gender. No one on the panel could actually frame a good response probably because their understandings of gender as performance are so embedded.

But we need to learn how to respond to people when they ask such questions. We need to be able to say "Benjamin Franklin wore an aquamarine coat with gold embroidery when he lived in London. He wore a powdered bouffant wig. Did his elaborate clothes make him somehow a woman? If not, then how does it make a young boy today, who likes ruffs and frills and fancy bright coloured clothes, feminine?"

This thread is utterly chilling

Yy. Bunkum.
I love that word.

Yes, I can't remember the details of that case but I'm fairly sure the mother is persuing legal action and rightly so, but I don't think she has contact with her child anymore.

I really do fear that there is a hidden agenda to strip parents of their decision making rights regarding our own children. That women on the BBC documentary hinted at it with her veiled threat of parents losing their children to this. She qualified it with saying that children would not speak to their parents or commit suicide and that's how they would be "lost" but I've seen too many post/tweets from trans activists referring to other people's non gender conforming children as "My" or "Our" trans children to doubt that really what they want is the power to take children from non-complying parents. Self identification and positive affirmation are very real steps towards that being a reality.

What makes me even more enraged by this is that, as you say, this all started with people trying to persue their human rights to safety, dignity employment, medical and housing rights which I couldn't be more in support of and I feel increasingly resentful as being branded a bigot because I won't roll over and say up is down and left is right.

The Emporer is stark bollock naked and I for one, will not be intimidated or bullied into saying different.