To think this will be one of the big scandals of our time?

[Betty184]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5027927/NHS-pressured-kids-change-sex.html

www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/first-cut-is-the-deepest-but-reversal-also-traumatic-for-trans-community/news-story/4b46bf9bba4fdbe9f3451d47fc081677

gender identity? No such thing.

Life changing medical support - I'd rather the money was spent elsewhere. You know, where it is really needed.

It certainly is life changing, a lifetime on cross sex hormones, consequences unknown. A lifetime of sterility. A lifetime of unnecessary surgery. All because someone doesn't fit into our sexist societies definition of their sex.

This is an excellent article. The more I find out about the new trans movement the more concerned I am.

When I first started to comment on these threads I was unaware of the extent and agenda of current trans activism. Naively I was talking from the position of my earlier education and exposure to those (few) trans adults that were public in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Silencing academics and critical analysis is pernicious and suggests a radical, offensive position rather than that of defending stigmatised minorities.

you lot want to ban access to life-changing medical support essentially

You lot?? Not a term I'd have chosen myself, but there you go

And some of us don't want to ban access at all ... what we would like is a period of calm reflection before stampeding towards medical procedures on not yet fully formed youngsters

you lot want to ban access to life-changing medical support essentially

This is certainly not true of me.

No one would cut someone's leg off following a couple of years of feeling that it was an alien limb. Some, few, do eventually get this type of surgery after years of therapy and careful exploration of the reasons for these feelings. Gender reassignment is of the same order of magnitude (maybe higher because of the impact on fertility); so clinicians should be even more cautious.

Excellent article.

We will look back on this business as the Emperor's new clothes.

Did someone just compare gender reassignment to Heelies trainers?

Brilliant.

life-changing medical support

Support, yes. Counselling, yes. Help, yes.
Surgery to alter your genitals? Not until after a lot of support.

Don't get me wrong, I do actually largely agree with the OP but why use the DM as a source? If it were about any other issue you people would accuse the writers of twisting and exaggerating things, so why would it be different on this issue?

And if you know this stuff happening because you have found it from other sources, then why not use those sources to back up your arguemnt, rather than a media outlet widely known for spouting shite?

A couple of posters have asked why I linked to the Daily Mail – and the answer is simple. It was one of two newspapers (both linked) which have published articles on this this weekend which I think is at least a small shift in the media which has up until now largely been ignoring these concerns* and just publishing individual pro-child transition stories without any thought about why there has been a huge increase, why it is especially in girls and autistic young people etc. There are articles and sites out there which look into this issue (transgender trend is a good one) but many individual articles will focus on one particular aspect, be too lengthy or assume some prior knowledge of the issues/terminology. Mainstream newspaper articles, when written well, can convey a lot of information in a very readable way which doesn’t require that prior knowledge of the subject.

For those who prefer it, this is a recent non-tabloid article on the subject which also includes more information on the mental and physical effects from de-transitioners: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00332925.2017.1350804#.WdfQ3Bw_1hs.twitter

(The Times have published a number of articles questioning some aspects of the current trans movement but I don’t think* they’ve written such a comprehensive article on the transing of children)

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.

We do have an idea because that is who we are talking about – Not the minority of trans-identifying children who will be trans throughout their life (ie will continue to believe they are and want to physically present as the opposite sex through adulthood) but the 80+% who will desist.

I’m another one who is sure that, if I was growing up today I would identify as trans. I was a teenage lesbian who felt isolated from the other girls, didn’t share their interests and preferred to hang out with the boys. Then, following a long period of sexual harassment (involving some of the boys I’d befriended), I came to hate how my body made me be treated, I hated having breasts and the attention/treatment that got you, I wanted to get rid of them and hid my body in loose clothing to disguise it etc. I am convinced that, if I had grown up in the current climate, I would have believed I was a trans man and it concerns me that medical professionals are being encouraged just to take what the young person tells them at face value rather than to use their expertise to tease out and address the underlying issues.

I think some of the trans adults advising public bodies on how to treat trans children have good intentions (I think ‘trans’ is a now a very broad umbrella of different people with a mix of different motivations) but they are telling them what they wish had happened to them. They can’t represent the experience of those of us who were (and are) non-gender-conforming but are glad we weren’t transitioned as children or young people. I think the increasing ‘social contagion’ and removal of ‘gatekeeping’ will actually disproportionately affect -and increase the numbers of - this majority of young people who would naturally desist in adulthood, more than it will affect those with a life-long trans identification.

"It certainly is life changing, a lifetime on cross sex hormones, consequences unknown. A lifetime of sterility. A lifetime of unnecessary surgery. All because someone doesn't fit into our sexist societies definition of their sex."

^This . I've heard both surgeries can leave the person very "raw" down there (for lack of a better word), and sometimes in never ending discomfort/pain.

An interesting point re. the relationship between gender & sex - if gender if nothing to do with biological sex then why should sex-change be needed? Adult men saying they are suddenly women but with no desire for a physical sex change make me very suspicious. In all the cases I have seen where very young children are transgender and parents have been forced to act with eg. hormone treatment because the kids have become depressed and/or suicidal, they can't wait to literally become the other sex & not just gender - see horror stories of self-mutilation/trying to cut penises off etc. Inevitably if they try to catch these cases earlier by discussing issue before it gets to this stage, there will be some uncertainty/borderline cases, I think there should be a mandatory waiting period of eg. at least 5 years by age 14 or limiting treatment to hormone blockers until over 18, there seem to be many now caught up in this net that simply don't conform to society's idea of what a gender should look like, or indeed the parents' own ideas which will vary wildly. Makes me so glad I had the freedom (like many on here) to be an 'ungirly girl' (don't really like the term tomboy), climbing trees and wearing my sludgy brown corduroy dungarees! Shops full of nothing but pink & blue kids clothes make me despair, we're going backwards!!

You're all desperately afraid of the future?

Quite frankly, yes, I am terrified of what is happening and what will happen in the future.

I'm terrified that young vulnerable people with gender dysphoria are unable to get the mental health support they need because it is 'transphobic' to treat it as a mental health issue and I'm scared this lack of mental health support will only get worse in future.

Should try being trans.

Already have.

I support counselling and further developing protocols, but you lot want to ban access to life-changing medical support essentially.

I think you're confusing us with trans rights activists.

I'm terrified that young vulnerable people with gender dysphoria are unable to get the mental health support they need because it is 'transphobic' to treat it as a mental health issue
Exactly. I think the worry, and completely and understandably so, is that it will be seen in the same light as people who tried to cure gayness in the 50s.

The Australian newspaper might be Murdoch's personal puff project, run at a loss to prop up neoliberalism in Australia, but it does often run good Indigenous articles. Perhaps it can be good on critiquing trans fascism too.

YANBU.

It's a scary world our kids are growing up in. I agree that this'll be looked on in years to come as a scandal and people will wonder wtf we were all thinking letting this go on.

Absolutely spot on. Yes a very small minority of people may need s sex change but it is a very small minority. Unfortunately as is often with these things the activists seem intent on pushing this down people's throats to make it seem much more common than it is so they can feel less of a minority. Imo no hormones or surgery should be allowed until at least 25. People change so much. I think back to all the tomboys I knew growing up no doubt today mermaids would be persuading the parents these kids were transgender. They are all now quite feminine mums. Also the pc movement fail to see the harm and how these trends often mask something else. One friends daughter suddenly announced she was gay. Years later turns out she wasn't at all, just didn't want to be near men after being raped by uncle. This wasn't a permanent change. Imagine if this experience had pushed her down a transgender route. 4 year olds being pushed into a transgender role by pc parents it's horrifying

The Australian is the Australian version of the Daily Mail.

Read with caution.

YANBU.

The Australian is the Australian version of the Daily Mail.

It most certainly is not. It has run articles and features on indigenous matters by indigenous people for years. It is ridiculously concerned with trashing Labor at every turn, most headlines are about Labor, and is very right-wing. However there is none of the hatred of women that characterises the Daily Fail. The weekend books and culture mag is good and on the whole, there is a level of engagement with ideas that the DM never gets anywhere near.

The Times might be its closest equivalent, with less readership?

So it's either similar to the Daily Mail or the Times?

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

Sorry that you went through such a terrible experience as a child

Now, your psychotherapist would feel nervous about questioning your gender identity, as would your GP. The NHS has whole-heartedly embraced the idea that to do so is 'conversion therapy', i.e. the same as trying to turn gay people straight. So you might well have ended up on the path to puberty blocker then HRT and/or surgery, whatever the private misgivings of the HCPs you saw, because they would be at risk of losing their jobs if they tried to tell you that you might not really be a boy.

The Australian is definitely not the Daily Mail. As someone said, it’s very similar to The Times.

The Daily Telegraph is more akin to the Daily Mail, albeit it insults your intelligence somewhat less than the Mail.

Now, your psychotherapist would feel nervous about questioning your gender identity, as would your GP. The NHS has whole-heartedly embraced the idea that to do so is 'conversion therapy', i.e. the same as trying to turn gay people straight. So you might well have ended up on the path to puberty blocker then HRT and/or surgery, whatever the private misgivings of the HCPs you saw, because they would be at risk of losing their jobs if they tried to tell you that you might not really be a boy.*

And the big problem is that it takes someone very strong to say ‘actually I was wrong’.
To walk away means walking away from all the support, the friends, the caring.
Someone could very easily find it hard to stop the treatment.