to think it is dangerous & wrong to teach children to think they can be "born into the wrong body" instead of teaching resilience?

[SpeakUpXXWomen]

Stereotypes, lies and thought crime are in and logic is out.

CAMHS is completely overrun and we are in the midst of a mental health epidemic.

We keep pouring money into ideologies with NO scientific basis whatsoever cooked up by people with no child behaviour expertise or qualifications. We are paying these people to undermine children's natural confidence and dismantle safeguarding and sex based rights. We are paying these people to lie to children and it is doing serious damage, targeting vulnerable groups such as those who have suffered abuse or will likely be homosexual adults and those who are on the autistic spectrum.

AIBU to think this is utterly batshit and the money would be better spent teaching children resilience and funding the mental health services we need instead?

Why are we campaigning to help children with eating disorders overcome their difficulties whilst simultaneously forcing healthy children to deny themselves completely if they do not crush themselves into a stereotypical box?

@RevealTheLegend thanks for sharing. What do you think would best have helped you?

I'm worried. I don't see many people questioning why the increase in trans identifying teenagers. Why aren't more people asking why? Whatever happened to non-conforming teenagers, they all seem to rush to fit into a box now, and if it's not pretty pink and sparkly it must be male.

I hate this ‘wrong body’ stuff too. What about kids born with, say, one arm, with albinism, with a tumour or huge birthmark. What if they are rather short or tall? Have a tendency to be under or overweight? Or if your mum had taken medication before you were born and you suffered physically as a result. Now in these cases I could have sympathy with someone saying ‘this body isn’t right - it’s bit really fair’.

And what exactly is it that has be put in the wrong body then? Your soul, your essence, your thoughts and feelings?

Your body is a bag of chemicals wrapped in skin. It’s not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ it just is. No amount of modification or lies can change your DNA.

Lees

Thank you for asking!!

I’ve posted bits and pieces about this over the years under different names. My other parent had the ‘right‘ attitude. You are you. Wear what you feel comfortable in, do the things that interest you. Chose a hobby and Don’t keep looking over your shoulder to ask if it’s a boy thing or a girl thing. It’s just a thing you do.

Oddly enough, the old, pree kool aid Eddie Izzard was revelatory for me. That line‚. ‘These aren’t women’s clothes, they’re my clothes, Eddies clothes‘

For me as well, I had (unknowingly) a lot of internalised misogyny from not having diverse female role models. I was pretty much told I was going to HAVE to grow up into a homemaker, or the sort of women I saw in movies or on tv. So I had better start trying. As a grownup I feel loads better about my biological sex now I see more diverse role models.

I see no evidence that there is any less bullshit pressure on young women nowadays.

I think we fight back by affirming constantly gender stereotypes are bullshit, and having role models. Visible women, just doing stuff

I totally agree that in years to come, people will look back at what is being done to children now and demand to know how/why it was allowed. Young people’s bodies are being mutilated and their fertility erased - how is this ever the right approach?

Suicide “statistics” are bandied about, irresponsibly, yet somehow this is not a mental health condition?

Unfortunately for those pushing this, they won’t be able to say we didn’t warn them.

It isn’t at all like the way we treat issues like anorexia - if we treated anorexia the same, we’d be telling sufferers to starve themselves, giving them weight loss drugs to help them in their journey. Why don’t we do that?

What I don't understand is that long term studies following men who had fully medically transitioned to being transwomen were MORE suicidal 20 years later than before they had any surgery?

This has been the case in America at John Hopkins University Medical Center - which receives the most medical funding for research from the federal government than any other institution and another long-term study I believe from The Netherlands.

Full medical transition does not seem to be the answer to this kind of psychological suffering.

www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex-change

The pro-transgender advocates do not want to know, said McHugh, that studies show between 70% and 80% of children who express transgender feelings “spontaneously lose those feelings” over time. Also, for those who had sexual reassignment surgery, most said they were “satisfied” with the operation “but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn’t have the surgery.”

“And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a ‘satisfied’ but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs,” said Dr. McHugh.

The former Johns Hopkins chief of psychiatry also warned against enabling or encouraging certain subgroups of the transgendered, such as young people “susceptible to suggestion from ‘everything is normal’ sex education,” and the schools’ “diversity counselors” who, like “cult leaders,” may “encourage these young people to distance themselves from their families and offer advice on rebutting arguments against having transgender surgery.”

Dr. McHugh also reported that there are “misguided doctors” who, working with very young children who seem to imitate the opposite sex, will administer “puberty-delaying hormones to render later sex-change surgeries less onerous – even though the drugs stunt the children’s growth and risk causing sterility.”

Such action comes “close to child abuse,” said Dr. McHugh, given that close to 80% of those kids will “abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if untreated ….”

As a parent myself I also am horrified by what is happening in society with the message about being in the wrong body. It totally ties in with the distorted view of ‘perfect’ body images for both boys and girls that are all over social media every single day. Is it any wonder so many kids feel awful about themselves when there is so much pressure to look perfect (thanks Instagram) - let alone when you feel confused about your gender it must make those feelings even more intense and it seems that the answer is not to move towards childen accepting their own bodies but to change them
I have always tried to teach my DC to love and care for the body they have, not try to make a new one. I can’t stop them altering their body as an adult but I am not about to help them do this as a child

I know a few trans people. I went to school with someone who quietly transitioned to live as a Male - 20 years ago, Friend was very much accepted in school as himself and dressed how he felt comfortable. No one forced him to do anything at all, except work hard at school. I don’t recall he actually transitioned with hormones until adulthood and decided that was the route to take that was most comfortable. He lived his childhood awkwardly, it wasn’t always easy but it also wasn’t a childhood full of surgery and appointments and counselling. Now lives a happy balanced life how they feel comfortable.

I also know someone who has transitioned and detransitioned 3 TIMES and IMO, this person has a mental illness. But because it is not acceptable to attach mental illness to gender dysphoria this person is in constant turmoil - without the help they actually need and having to undergo reverse surgery

As a child I never wore pink and hated dolls. I loved dungarees and jigsaws and mecanno. I was still a girly girl though at heart.

My niece was born when I was 15 and by then it was a flurry of pink and frills and bug ugly dollies. I’m not sure what happened between the early 70s and mid 80s.

I think it is unbelievably wrong for children who are already confused about who they are in this social-media-crazed world. It was tough enough working out who you were before such advances in technology let alone now. And now schools want to teach about trans issues. This can only add to the overbearing ‘rights and wrongs’ our young children feel.
The curriculum should focus solely on accepting people for who they are not what they think they should be. And that is the underlying issue of the world.
There are girls who enjoy and play football (a stereotypically male sport) and men who walk around wearing make up (a stereotypically girly thing). And accepting these people who express themselves in that way should be celebrated, not somebody who is confused and being pushed towards something that may not be right for them. Very difficult to come back from if the wrong decision is made for that person. Let them come to the conclusion on their own, like many people before now have done.
Sorry, but science is science and that cannot be changed.

Back in the 1980's I was happy being a girl, but did not adhere to the typical girl stereotypes, short hair, boys school uniform, loved playing football, and playing with boys toys. I was just left to be me, and grew into my own skin as a teenager, accepted who I was. I discovered that I could be Female and dress how I want. Now I would be identified as having gender disphoria, and convinced by 'professionals' that I confused and really wanted to be male. Which was not the case. Of course there are kids who do want to be the opposite sex right into adulthood and that is fine. They can use drugs and physically change their appearance when they are 18. When they are mature enough to make that huge decision, not when they are an unsure 11/12 year old.

What defines gender though? Surely if we tackle the stereotypes associated with gender no one would need to change because they would just be being themselves. Your genitals define your gender, not how you look or behave.
Maybe if we taught children that all clothes were for everyone and all toys were for everyone then children could just grow up to be who they are and not be taught to fit into a box

Exacty Dodgy, that a child does not have to be a boy, to want short hair and to ware non girl clothes, that they don't have to be a boy, to play with masculine toys, they can do that as they are, the same with boys, that they don't have to be a girl to wear long hair, or a dress. They don't have to be a girl, to play girl type games and have dolls. Once they are an adult with better understanding and able to make very big decisions that will affect them for the rest of their lives, than they can decide what they want to do. Placing that decision in the hands of a young child who does not have the capacity is wrong.

There are age restrictions on drugs and surgery for a reason, to protect children who have not got the mental capacity to make such big decisions about their body.

YANBU, I desperately wanted to be a boy, and if I were born now I'm pretty sure I would have gone online and found adults who would have coached me what to say when I presented to medical professionals, and I would be one of the 2000% increase in young women presenting with gender dysphoria. Actually for me it was a combination of witnessing domestic violence and being traumatised by that, plus wanting to climb trees and play football. These are things with a social remedy, not a medicalised one. It's frightening.

I agree, kids probably think they have to pocess the opposite sex genitals to dress how they dress, or play with the toys for that sex. Girls have to be taught that you don't have to have a penis, to be an Engineer or scientist, or to have short hair and play with transformers, in the same way boys have to to taught, that they don't have to have a vulva, to have long hair, be a nurse, and dress in a femenine way.

Then once they become adults, then they can have the capacity to make major decisions about their body if they still feel the way they feel, not at 9,10,11, that is ludricous.