AIBU to think this is child abuse? (trans related)

[pisacake]

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/10/raising-a-non-binary-child-as-long-as-one-of-the-side-effects-wasnt-death-it-was-the-right-way

Basically 14yo daughter came out first as lesbian, then as a boy shortly after that. She didn't want to be examined by NHS gender clinic she was referred by trans-child charity to private 'trans-your-child-by-post' GP gendergp.co.uk/.

Said Dr. sent puberty blockers, then 3 months later testosterone gel, but had second thoughts, stopping the T-gel, and remaining on the puberty blockers. Now her mum says 'It will be 18 months before they can even be referred for adult surgery. '

AIBU to think that this is horrific child abuse and that these medications should not even be an option for children under the age of 18, confused about their sexuality?

It is quite clearly child abuse. Various scandalous aspects to this are:

1. Mermaids being allowed to peddle dangerous propaganda that encourages children to take life-altering medication.

1. A GP who can prescribe powerful hormonal drugs to children without even seeing them.

1. A national newspaper publishing an entirely uncritical account of a child undergoing this abuse without even thinking about the obvious implications.

Absolutely bloody appalling.

Ekphrasis
I agree - blaming the mother and the child seems unkind. Most parents can understand how challenging it is to have an unhappy child and when you find help that seemingly has an answer, it must be so tempting to grasp it.
Sadly the 'help' on offer from many transgender pressure groups is not from those with insight into children /adolescent issues. It is from those wanting to push their own agenda.
This article demonstrates how the CEO of Mermaids took her child abroad for drug treatment when they were 12 and for surgery when they were 16.
www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/from-jack-to-jackie-part-2-i-thank-my-bullies-interview-1-4020697

They're not objective, just talking about bullying - they are pushing their own beliefs / world view. People who work with children are meant to 'neutral' and not push a particular political viewpoint. Schools allowing Mermaids and other groups to work with children are enabling 'social contagion'.

Horrific. Mermaids is nothing but a pressure group and should not be able to work with kids at all IMO. Theres already been a case where the judge barred mermaids from having any contact with a family.

I fined the whole notion of puberty blockers fucking horrendous. They are dangerous drugs, they have caused issues in grown women who took them for short periods of time for an actual legitimate reason (ie. Not because they do not follow stereotypes.) so what on earth they will be doing to young bodies who take them for ages, then followed by cross sex hormones for life..its just awful to think about really.

Yes, I would say it is child abuse, though I really do feel for parents in that situation as they are signposted to groups such as mermaids, who peddle dubious statistics about suicide and such, and basically scare parents into transitioning their child. They encourage people to buy hormones and such off the internet for fucks sake, that should be enough to shut them down. Though what else can be expected from a group where the leader took her own (underage) kid abroad to castrate them because they could do it earlier than waiting here.

I agree that therapy would be the best option, but not everyone has the funds to afford private counselling with a therapist who specialises in trans/questioning dc.

They should not have to be able to afford private therapy. Therapy should be the first course of treatment, however transactivists have fought to have this part of treatment removed and 'affirmation only'. using the analogy of its like gay conversion therapy. But its not. Gay conversion therapy was trying to change what someone is. Therapy for trans issues is trying to get them to accept what they are.

There was a heartbreaking post on here a year or so ago from a parent of a 'trans child' who was trying to find therapy and failing, they also lost all support from mermaids (I think it was) once they made the decision to NOT go down the puberty blocker route. They have had to pay for private therapy because of this and now are having financial difficulties, but their child is much better. If they had been put on blockers, followed by cross sex hormones, this does not give them time to figure out who they are and there is no going back really.

WRT to suicide.
Young people with ASD are extremely vulnerable to suicide threats/Suicide and self harm.
They are also a group who seem to be targeted as 'likely to be trans'. This is alarming. I don't want autistic people co-opted by the transradicals.

On a related issue..my autistic child is convinced he is fat and too tall. He is neither but because he is obsessed with certain people he thinks if he doesn't look exactly like them he is fat and a freak.

This causes him to restrict his food. He now has an ED.

So he is getting treatment. It is recognised that just because he thinks he is fat and too tall that doesn't mean he is and that his solution is a bad one (not eating).

But if he thought he had to have breasts and cut off his penis in order to be the perfect person. That he was a freak unless he looked like his heroes, would this be indulged rather than treated?

WHY is it different?

TheFirstMrsDV
I'm glad your son is getting treatment and so sorry that this is affecting him.
It's such a glaring nonsense isn't it? Those of us in education keep pointing out the difference between the treatment of eating disorders where we actively steer children away from the online grooming pro ana sites and doctors, psychologists et al have no problem in identifying an ED and offering support. But gender critical children are thrown to the activist wolves with the 'memorandum of understanding" which instructs complete agreement with a child's diagnosis. Schools are told to 'celebrate' and instantly agree to a child's self diagnosis. And of course, everyone is silenced with the threat of 'transphobia'

www.transgendertrend.com/children-left-unprotected-by-new-memorandum-of-understanding-on-conversion-therapy/

Sighs.... If it wasn't so serious I'd give up as it does my head in that these pressure groups have been given so much dangerous power. BUT, we're talking about children here FFS.

I thought this thread was insightful until Popchyck decided to post about how often it is single mothers.

Really? Where’s the evidence?

I am a single mother so my first thought is not another thing to lay at single mothers’ doors. But then I think you know, if FTM transition is about escaping being a women and what it entails, daughters of single mothers see their mums doing not only the shit wife work, but usually a heck of a lot of dad stuff too (if you wish to gender activities). I mean, it would be a way of opting out of being the one responsible for EVERYTHING and at fault regardless.

Thanks rowdy
I know of several parents of girls with autism who are dealing with the trans stuff.
They are all pretty liberal types. They were getting ready for their DDs to reveal that they were gay.
Now they are at a loss what to do. None of the parents I know are convinced their child is trans. They are not ashamed of having a trans child. They just don't believe its true. Its bloody hard to dissuade a child with autism from something though. Or even discuss alternatives.

That article was shoddy journalism. It read like an advertorial for Mermsids. Very disappointing from the Guardian.

I’ve gone from ‘very disappointing from the Guardian’ to ‘same piss-poor journalism from the Guardian’. I don’t think I even feel disappointment any more. Which is sad.

I don't miss the Guardian at all. I cancelled my subscription when I realised they were actively silencing gender critical women - I now read the Times - and actually enjoy their cracking investigative journalism. Of course I also have to read views that I disagree with, but that's a refreshing change.

The link to ASD is interesting. Certainly my experience shows that the vast majority of people identifying as trans/non binary also have an ASD diagnosis.

The line from Mermaids about the generation being non-conforming seems at odds with the idea if you don't neatly fit in the box then you must transition.

@TheRebel

Am I the only one who thinks that if your child doesn’t fit in at school it might be a good idea to encourage them to do things the other kids do in order to fit in, rather than encouraging them to be different and get bullied.

Or we could crack down on the bullying?

Why should someone change who they are? I'd have had an easier time of it in school if I'd pretended not to like books and to like chart music rather than indie. But why on earth should I have? And how would I have kept it up, faking an interest in something I cared nothing about?

I joined my first young lesbian group in 1985 (so yeah, I'm not a young lesbian anymore...). I remember at one of our meetings, somebody saying she had been convinced she was a boy when she was younger, wanted to be a boy, prayed to be a boy. And EVERY OTHER WOMAN IN THE ROOM - except me - said they had gone through the exact same thing.

Now, it wasn't easy to come out as lesbian in the mid 80s, and I had rather seen that incident as being a sign of the times. But I suspect similar is happening now, because teenagers with sexuality issues are confused, and impressionable, and vulnerable.

I kept in touch with most of that group for years - some I am still friends with - and they all became perfectly happy, healthy, functioning lesbian women.

I think I've said this before on here but I'll say it again. When I was younger I idolised my older sister. When I was about 4 or 5 I wanted to do everything she did. I begged my mom to paint my nails and she said no until she relented and painted one of my little finger nails. I also used to clop along the house in high heels. After 6 I grew out of this. Reading articles like this I do wonder if I was 5 now compared to being 5 in the early 90s and if my parents were those type of parents how different my life would be. It's completely wrong. Shame on the Guardian for promoting this but it doesn't surprise me lately

My DD has anorexia, it was at a time when she was struggling with puberty, being different and under pressure from the YouTube myth of normality. She needed a reason and hers was that she was fat it could have easily been her gender (sex). Strangely one of the biggest concerns of the eating disorder team and her goal of weight restoration was her periods and the stalling of puberty and yet blockers do exactly that. Puberty is not a time to be making what could turn out to be lifelong decisions.

Yes bould, I think it's due to how the natural hormones affect the skeleton in terms of bone density etc. Which don't get going if body fat is reduced. (Bone density can be later improved through exercise and things like Pilates though) I don't know how puberty blockers work but I have a feeling there's a link to how the final ossification of growing bones would be.

Sorry to hear about your daughter

I'm changing my name. Had no idea my identity here might have these associations. Xx

My head is just exploding with all this shit.

How can a patent say the things that women is saying about her poor DD. About her shape and what she chooses to wear and not be told “shut the fuck up you stupid, thick person”
This family needs SS intervention to protect this child. I can’t believe we are letting parents getting away with this abuse.

I wondered if anyone would pick up on the single mother/absent father thing, EmyRoo. It certainly wasn't intended to offend. Of course not all transgender children have mothers who parent alone. And mothers still do most of the caregiving in this society while fathers can be absent or less involved. My point was that this can lead to single mothers being socially isolated through having little support and money and therefore perhaps vulnerable to the kind of tactics used by certain support forums. Not all of course.

It was based entirely on my own observations of watching a few TV programmes and articles such as the one in this thread and others discussed on here such as:

Lancashire Post

Guardian

Mirror

Guardian

All of those articles state that the mother of the children is a single mum. If you want to do a search of articles about transgender children in the press, look at how many mothers of these children comment compared to how few fathers do. There's quite a difference. But I don't think it is wrong to wonder why mothers are seemingly so prominent in the issue of transgender children while fathers barely feature. Is it just in the reporting of it or is something else going on as well?

Maybe it is purely down to mothers being more involved in their children's lives and being more powerful advocates for them.

Again, certainly no offence intended.

@mirime obviously in a perfect world there would be no bullying but in real life sometimes it’s easier to just go along with everyone else, especially for the things that aren’t important like wearing makeup, than deliberately making yourself ‘different’ and attracting bullies.

As an adult you quite often have to feign interest in things you don’t particularly care about, like your bosses new car or your coworkers diet, but you do, so that you can rub along together, you don’t have to change your whole personality to do it though.

In the article in the op the poor child sounds like they never quite fit in and the mother has enabled them ‘othering’ themselves and lead to them being bullied and being deeply unhappy and confused, my point is that it didn’t have to get to the point where they’re talking all kinds of body altering drugs.

I was bullied awfully all through school and my parents were the old hippie types who didn’t believe in conforming and didn’t really believe it was that important to have friends, and honestly I wish someone had told me to just go along with what the other kids liked, it would have made life so much easier.

It sounds like Caleb has gender dysphoria and is a very confused child. All of you criticising the mum and doctors here, what would you do if your child hated themselves and desperately wanted to change? If your dc was threatening suicide

Talk to them. Tell them things will sort themselves out one way or another. Puberty doesn't last forever. Leave any big decisions until they are adult. Helping them come to terms with having boobs, periods. Helping them make friends, integrate, joining clubs and after school activities.

Certainly not making their whole life about one thing and prescribing drugs that will affect the rest of their lives.

They should not have to be able to afford private therapy. Therapy should be the first course of treatment

Let’s be realistic here. With MH Services for everyone under so much pressure, where do you think this instant treatment will come from?

In our county there is a wait of 6 months for counselling for anxiety and depression.

Yeah I suppose thats right, the NHS is on its knees really. The therapy thing though, from what parents of trans kids have said on here, all support ends if you do not want to go down the blockers route, and any therapy thats actually given is 'affirmation'. I do not know if this has just been the experience of a few and they just happen to be on here, of course thats possible, but that should not be happening at all. I know that this whole 'affirmation' and 'fuck you if you do not want blockers' approach has been the reason at least one parent on here has ended up totally broke for having to fund their own treatment. I don't get how all support can end when drugs are refused, the child still has dysphoria and will need support whatever the choice, right?! Seems so wrong to me.