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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Kokeshi123 · 29/10/2017 11:54

Yes.

There will be a huge backlash sooner or later, but by then there will already be lots of very confused people who have done some things to their bodies that are hard to reverse.

We need to decide what sort of society we want to be. Do we want to become more and more like, say, Brazil or Iran (where there are high rates of gender reassignment due to cultural inability to deal with the fact that some people are gender-nonconforming or gay or both)? I don't want to live in that kind of society.

It is OK to just be a non-gender-conforming man or woman, for goodness' sake!

ASmallSteph · 29/10/2017 11:57

Puzzled it was DamnDeDoubtance who used the phrase (which I picked up by contagion!)

Mummyoflittledragon · 29/10/2017 11:58

This is barbaric and senseless. Yes, some children, who wish to be the opposite sex as a child may wish to be the opposite gender as an adult. But it is society and societies view of gender, which needs to change. Not the children, who have pieces of themselves hacked off and take life changing drugs. They are the ones paying the price.

PashPash · 29/10/2017 11:58

It scares me.

Im pretty androgynous, I was a huge tomboy as a kid. Looking back it was a response to how shit the expectations were of girls, and how to me boys got to do all the fun stuff. I didn’t want to be a boy, I just wanted to play football and climb trees. As I got older It was also, as a teen a reaction to my emerging realisation of the feeling that women were very much second class citizens.

I think nowadays I’d have been pushed down the trans route. And then wouldn’t have been able to have kids.

And all Because other people are desperate to label.

Im coming to realise that all my life has been a low level fight against being labelled by someone else.

WickedLazy · 29/10/2017 12:00

Children taking hormones to change sex is madness. It shouldn't matter what's between anyones legs, if everything functions as it should. Sexuality is such a complicated thing, and not something children should be thinking about! If it's not about sex, then it's about personality? If you love make up, clothes and are dramatic or emotional, you must be female? :S To me being female is about hormones, instinct (maternal and otherwise), contraception and pregnancy worries, menstruation, misogyny, dealing with misogyny, male agression and violence, harassment of all types, power and control issues like coercment and rape. Biology, and bigger issues that need to be addressed, that affect men too. Expectations from society and family. No boy or man can know what's it's truly like to be female, because they aren't. They can become a crude approximation, but that's it, (and vice versa of course!).

londonrach · 29/10/2017 12:04

Agree. Along with those electric fags (unknown health risks) and heelers (trainers with wheels thatdamage your back). Yanbu

rubybleu · 29/10/2017 12:06

When I was at school 18 years ago, the cool/daring thing to do was to declare yourself a lesbian. We had about 15 in my year group of 120 girls.

18 years on, only of the original group of girls remains a lesbian and a couple of others have come out since school.

At other girls schools, everyone had an eating disorder. Some girls (including my cousin) genuinely had an issue but when the numbers are approaching a quarter of the year group...?

Teenagers experiment and push the boundaries. For me, the huge uptick in transgender teens are the same girls (and boys) of my era who were really keen to ensure you knew that they were lesbian or anorexic or any of the other labels we tried on as we figured out who we were. For many it’s a passing phase - but we’re pushing them into irreversible treatment.

flyingpigsinclover · 29/10/2017 12:17

Yes. In time it will be spoken about like the enforced emigration of children to Australia.

Puzzledandpissedoff · 29/10/2017 12:19

Puzzled it was DamnDeDoubtance who used the phrase (which I picked up by contagion!)

Apologies for that, Steph ... still an excellent point though Wink

Interesting, too, that rubybleu picked up on the point about teenage experimentation/boundary pushing. Once, that was exactly how it was seen: young folk quite naturally trying out different roles for themselves before settling on a choice as they matured

When the hell did that turn into an assumption that the current choice must be the permanent one and subjected to medication/surgery?

MissionItsPossible · 29/10/2017 12:20

What have heelies and e-cigarettes got to do with children changing gender? Confused

WitchBitchHarpyTerfThatsMe · 29/10/2017 12:31

Totally agree OP.

Mummylin · 29/10/2017 12:56

I also totally agree with Op. I think there will be lots of totally confused people as the children grow up. Some parents and medical people will have a lot to answer to.

HidingBehindTheWallpaper · 29/10/2017 12:57

Increasingly it’s girls who hate themselves for being female, hating their bodies. Many of them have been raped and sexually abused and gender transition is a means to escape from the conflict they feel being female. This trauma is not the same as someone who, from a very young age, feels they are essentially male.

This. This is the bit that is worrying me. It’s the young women women who don’t feel that they conform to the plucking, waxing, drawing your face on ideals that seems to be what being a young woman means these days.
They feel that they aren’t being female right so therefore must be male.

HidingBehindTheWallpaper · 29/10/2017 12:59

Also we are constantly being told that someone’s gender has nothing to do with their genitalia, female penis and men having periods, so if that it the case then why is anyone having surgery.

PricklyBall · 29/10/2017 13:06

Hiding, I think (hope) there have to be additional vulnerabilities there on top of simply not wanting to wax/pluck/primp/be sexualised against your will. I get the impression that a lot of the girls who identify as female-to-trans are often somewhere on the aspergers' spectrum (thus want "black and white rules" about sexual stereotypes, and when they don't fit into the stereotypes associated with their biological sex, decide they're the opposite sex), or have been traumatised by past sexual abuse (so not only see trans as an escape route, but also have poor boundaries so are more vulnerable to online grooming by trans-cultists).

I think more neurotypical/ less traumatised young women who want to "identify out" of sex-based harrassment and abuse (not that you can, but they think they can) go down the non-binary/asexual/gender fluid/heinz 57 varieties route instead. This is much less damaging as it doesn't involve irreversible medical interventions, and there is the hope they will grow out of it.

PricklyBall · 29/10/2017 13:09

Just to clarify - that's poor boundaries as a result of the abuse (not poor boundaries leading to abuse). It's fairly well documented among abuse survivors that part of the psychological damage after abuse is being left doubting yourself and what boundaries you're allowed to assert (the classic "you escaped a level 10 shit, so now you think level 7 shittiness is normal" pattern that some women find themselves struggling with on the relationships board).

TheSecondOfHerName · 29/10/2017 13:17

I had gender dysphoria as a child, particularly strongly between the ages of 6 and about 12. It was triggered by (a) being a victim of a serious sexual assault and (b) not wanting to be female because I didn't want to grow up to be like my mother, who has a personality disorder.

I sought help in my late teens. Thankfully I was offered psychotherapy which helped me resolve the issues. If it had been 25 years later, perhaps I would have been offered gender reassignment instead, but that would have been addressing the symptom not the cause.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 29/10/2017 13:18

It's worrying. I was browsing on Twitter earlier and saw a tweet from a young person who I assume is biologically female. The tweet was something like 'When you tell your girlfriend you're trans...' and attached were screenshots of a conversation by text. Now, firstly, who broaches a huge subject like this by text? And secondly, having done that, who puts it all on Twitter for anyone to read? Hmm

But thirdly, reading the texts, the gf was saying exactly what I was thinking, namely that the woman now identifying as trans is troubled and struggling with being a lesbian. And my goodness me, the comments! 99% of them were unquestioningly supporting the tweeter and slamming the girlfriend. I hope both of them have some good real life support, as they're going to need it.

SchadenfreudePersonified · 29/10/2017 13:23

Also we are constantly being told that someone’s gender has nothing to do with their genitalia, female penis and men having periods, so if that it the case then why is anyone having surgery.

Good point Wallpaper

Surgery should be unnecessary if it's what in your head that counts.

HidingBehindTheWallpaper · 29/10/2017 13:24

A young family member is going down the ‘identifying her way out of being female’ route. She has been seen at the clinic the name of which escapes me. Right now she is living and identifying as male, but also wearing make up.
20 years ago she would have been just plain gay. She looks a lot like a young Sue Perkins to be fair. (Which is a good thing in my book, I love her)
It all seems so bloody confusing. Heaven help a young person trying to make sense of it all.

HidingBehindTheWallpaper · 29/10/2017 13:29

I would like to say that I am not transphobic in the slightest. I give not a shit how you identify or what gender your partner is.
I worry that a lot of this sound like section 28 where schools were not allowed to mention homosexuality.
However I feel that being offered any kind of hormone supplements or surgery at a young age is so wrong. Support acceptance love etc are what is needed. No one should be making a life altering choice as an teenager.

SilverSpot · 29/10/2017 13:30

I was a total tomboy. Wanted to be a boy. Because I like do climbing trees and being really active and didn’t like wearing dresses.

Thank god im not a child now! I’d probably be convinced I wasn’t actually a boy.

I’m extreemly happy with both my gender and my sex and very happy as a beautiful woman who scrubs up well in a dress whilst spending most of my time in jeans and a hoody.

Some of my ‘male’ characteristic have been very helpful in life - especially at work.

SilverSpot · 29/10/2017 13:32

OH FFS iPhone

I’d probably be convinced I was actually a boy

kinkajoukid · 29/10/2017 13:52

Amongst many other reasons to be cautious and concerned, I just cannot understand why our government is pushing this so much? Why one earth do they care so much about trans issues over all others?

It makes me wonder what are they getting out of this because when they have slashed the budget for supported housing for those with mental health issues, I just don't believe they care about people's well being. Clearly they don't care about women or fairness/ equality.

liminality · 29/10/2017 13:56

The Australian is a right wing think tank. And the other is the daily mail.
I am all for increasing research into these areas but come on. You're all desperately afraid of the future? Should try being trans. Read some better sources for starters.
I support counselling and further developing protocols, but you lot want to ban access to life-changing medical support essentially. All because 'I was a tomboy and and happy in my gender identity'.
You. Have. No. Idea.