DD’s friends changing gender at school

[AFS1]

My daughter is in yr 7. In the last month or so an increasing number of her female friends have changed their names to boys’ names and decided they want to be addressed as “he/him”. We’re up to at least 4, including her best friend who she’s known since they were in reception (and has never once demonstrated even the slightest hint of gender dysphoria). My daughter is desperately trying to respect the various requests but is becoming increasingly confused and upset by it all. She feels like she doesn’t really know her friends anymore and that she doesn’t fit in with them.

It very much feels like a phase to me, but it’s really beginning to have an impact on my daughter. It also feels like it’s getting out of hand. WIBU to speak to the school about it all? I don’t really know what they could do, but it just seems that maybe some work needs to be done around this issue.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this? I’d be really grateful for any advice about what to do and say. Thanks.

@toocold54

If the numbers were always like this, and it’s not a fad and not social contagion, why isn’t there a 4000% increase in middle aged women flocking to gender clinics now? Or even just socially transitioning?

It is a lot harder for a middle aged women to transition. There is still a lot of stigma attached which is why there’s more f-m than m-f because of the stigma attached.

Many of us wanted to be a different gender when we were younger which was probably more to do with our hobbies, hairstyle choices etc which we were taught was only for boys.

I think the best thing would be to have less sports, hobbies, clothing, colours etc that are classed as male or female.

But even if the kids are going through phases what’s the harm? Chances are they’ll go through a punk or gothic phase too but it’s just part of becoming who they are.

Shouldn't the narrative then be that boys can do anything they want and girls can do anything they want and still be boys and girls respectively? I thought that was the direction we were heading towards but in the last 3 years or so the narrative has been increasingly if you like x are you sure you aren't a boy and if you like y are you sure you aren't a girl? If I were in school now as my tomboy self I'm pretty sure I could be persuaded that I was trans based on my preferred hobbies, clothes etc.

It's also more harmful than a goth phase too as some more 'enthusiastic' parents will be putting these children on puberty blockers which could have serious long term ramifications.

GirlCrush

How is it naive? Or embarrassing? Plenty of time to transition when they are adults. With the capacity to make those life changing decisions.

@GirlCrush

well this isn't going anywhere and will only increase as time goes on

enlighten your kids, but maybe some mums netters need to educate themselves first

You’re a bit late to the party with your “educate yourselves” bullshit.

Most MNers on this board are way more knowledgeable than the TRAs who post one or sometimes two posts on threads like this and then run away.

Lots of D's year group said they were trans, gay, bi, gender fluid. Only 1 has stayed transgender through dress only not blockers.and all those who said they were gay and now with opposite sex partners. It seems to be they all want label or maybe to shock. Da announced to us he thought he may be bi we said not to put a label on himself and he can be whatever he wants

@endofthelinefinally

I feel so sorry for girls in school today. One rape a day in schools in England. No single sex toilets or changing rooms. Boys watching extreme violent porn on their phones from the age of around 8. Upskirting. Sharing photos obtained by threats and coersion. Then outside school there is the usual ogling, groping, cat calling by men who should behave better. Girls are subject to so much more physical and psychological abuse than we were a generation ago. No wonder they try to identify out of it.

This. I never fitted with the girls at school. I felt I had nothing in common with them. I wanted to do boy stuff. I am so glad this wasn't around back then.

Now as an adult I can see what it was that I was rejecting. It had everything to do with stereotypes and expectations and nothing to do with the fact of being female.

I feel a huge amount of sympathy for the girls who are being groomed to believe that they can identify out of being female.
And the girls who know that their friends can't change sex by changing their pronouns.
And the girls who are forced to accept boys in their private spaces.

@goshthatsawful

Why does she feel like she doesn’t know them/ fit in anymore? Has she never had male friends? She does now!

No she does not, her friends are still female

It's like it's not enough to be gay anymore. Or a tomboy. Girls don't have to wear pink, get married and have babies. If you don't want to do that it doesn't mean you have to be a boy.

@H2OConnoisseur I agree. My daughter is constantly being told by one of her classmates that she gives off 'bi vibes' - because of the clothes she wears, pictures she likes, songs she listens to...because she likes frogs!! If she were less secure in herself she might be persuaded the friend is right. We're moving backwards.

Humans sometimes need to be separated by biological sex because one lot are the impregnators and the others are the impregnees. For many blindingly obvious reasons.

In all other contexts it is not necessary or desirable to distinguish between the sexes.

For some bizarre reason we seem to be forgetting this nowadays.

It's like a plague sweeping through secondary schools. I have daughters several years apart and I see the difference a few years make, so I can believe the 4000% increase figure. The school facilitates this with teachers taking up the new names and pronouns very seriously. All fine, but aiding and abetting them in changing their bodies permanently should be criminal. Teenagers want some kind of a label like this. No one wants to be "basic", so they invent a marginalisation.

Not RTFT.

Yes, loads at DD (girls) school. Esp in her group of friends.

Imo if it's names and labels and clothes and hair yes ok fine.

You need to watch the social media and watsapp groups etc. DD had a forwarded message about how on X date transphobic people had planned to go out and murder trans kids. Her friend was omg I'm terrified.

I had a chat with her about essentially how ridiculous that was.

Not least because her and all her friends are very obviously bogstandard schoolgirls!

All the stuff on various sites stressing. Your parents will disown you. High incidence of suicide self harm etc. Is being consumed.

I mean at that age no one understands you do they?! That was the case for all kids that age and onwards. Without it we wouldn't have nearly as much great music...

As long as it's just superficial stuff I'd just go with it.

If she wants to not feel left out then non binary is always a good option.

Being a 12 year old girl really sucks. I hated it. Your body grows in all sorts of alarming ways. Your hormones start going crazy. You start your periods and have to deal with the that. And you suddenly realise that as a female you are likely to spend the rest of your life being discriminated against, being sexually harassed and have a 1 in 4 chance of being raped.

And then there is a shining beacon ahead of you. And it seems that all you have to do is announce that you are a boy and you want to be called Jack and apparently all of that goes away.

The only thing that surprises me is that there are any girls left!

But that doesn’t make sense. How is there simultaneously a joyful lack of stigma resulting in a 4000% increase in girls wanting to present as boys and buckets of stigma for adult women? Anyone who is actually a woman appreciates that generally confidence increases with age.

Of course it does.
Those of older generations are more likely brought up with views that changing gender is wrong (so is being gay etc) so they are more likely to have that opinion and keep it to themselves. They are also more likely to get married and have jobs, children etc which would make life much more difficult to completely change.
Whereas young people are constantly going through changes anyway and today there is more acceptance of transgender issues and more support on SM etc.

An adult women is less likely to go from plain Jane to goth with studded necklaces and full black and white makeup overnight, than a young person is.
I’d say change is more acceptable in young people as it happens all the time.

I’m so glad I was a teenager in the 90s. I wanted to be a boy until I was ~16. I had shirt hair, wore boys clothes (only skirt I owned was my school skirt as I had to wear it) and hated been a girl, growing boobs, periods, etc. I played football, didn’t wear make up, no interest in clothes (I still rarely wear make up and don’t care about clothes!). I am so glad that I wasn’t pressured into seeing anyone as I think I would have done anything to ‘be’ a boy at that stage in my life. I am happy as a woman and content in my body. I just wasn’t a stereotypical girl.

It's confusing for adults let alone children. I'm hoping it's a fad and calms back down to the small percent who genuinely feel the need for surgery.

At one point mullets were all the rage and many jumped in to fit in. Now the idea appeals to very few.

Shouldn't the narrative then be that boys can do anything they want and girls can do anything they want and still be boys and girls respectively?

Yes I completely agree!
And I do think it is more acceptable for boys to do ‘female’ things and vice versa nowadays.

@haveaday

My DD(9) is v good friends with trans boy in her class. She is aware of the transition and doesn't really care, liked her before, likes him now. But she recently said to me, am I gay or bi or straight? I really want to know. Why are 9 yr olds worrying about this. I cried. A lot.

I'd have cried too. A 9 year old should be accepting of others, but they know too much these days and as a result they question themselves and become confused. At 9 puberty hasn't even started for many/most children so many are not attracted to males or females......yet they know so much that some of them end up questioning wether they are asexual or not. Utter madness!!

toocold54

This makes me quite angry.

Are you seriously suggesting that the only barrier to me "living as a man" is my own inability to envisage it being a legitimate option? Please.

@Enough4me

It's confusing for adults let alone children. I'm hoping it's a fad and calms back down to the small percent who genuinely feel the need for surgery.

At one point mullets were all the rage and many jumped in to fit in. Now the idea appeals to very few.

Exactly, and some do! But not many.

OP, if you’ve got time you might also want to look at the Transgender Trend website:

www.transgendertrend.com/

And there’s also the Safe Schools Alliance, which might be a help if you feel there is anything you want to tackle with the school:

safeschoolsallianceuk.net/

Do you know if the school staff are “affirming” them, ie changing names on the register, using male pronouns in class, or is it just their friends they are expecting this of?

In an ideal world, you would be able to speak to the school and they would recognise this as a form of social contagion, and perhaps have an assembly on the dangers of peer pressure and spending too much time online obsessing about your “gender identity”.

But sadly these days schools are more likely to be the ones promoting the concept of “gender identity”, and even if they’re not doing that, they probably won’t want to say or do anything that could possibly be seen as “transphobic”. And the current definition of “transphobia” is pretty much anything that isn’t full endorsement of transgenderist ideology around gender identity etc. So you may not find them very receptive if you do approach them. But it’s worth thinking about.

It really must be so confusing for your DD, feeling like the girls she thought she knew are all morphing into strangers, and also feeling excluded given that they’re all talking about this all the time. No wonder she’s upset.

On the bright side, Y7 is a time when most children start branching out and making new friends, and there will be lots of social flux going on in her year group now in general, so maybe you could encourage her to focus a bit less on this group of friends and be open to forming some new friendships.

Also let her know she doesn’t have to go along with this - there are an awful lot of people questioning this whole phenomenon and it’s not the simple case that “respect my pronouns = good, forget my pronouns = bad”. Encourage her to think critically about this, with you at least.

Good luck to you and her.

Those of older generations are more likely brought up with views that changing gender is wrong (so is being gay etc) so they are more likely to have that opinion and keep it to themselves.

Where is your evidence that there are all of these middle aged women who desperately want to transition but aren’t “because sigma”.

Your evidence that the current 4000% increase in girls presenting to gender clinics isn’t indicative of a phase or social contagion but reflects how many women and girls have always felt?

Girls are being taken to gender clinics - which is where the stats come from - by their middle aged mothers.

I’m not really interested in your made-up explanations of why this group supposedly exists but is invisible, just the evidence please.

This makes me quite angry.

Are you seriously suggesting that the only barrier to me "living as a man" is my own inability to envisage it being a legitimate option? Please.

@Grellbunt I’m not sure what you mean. If you are an adult and want to live as a man then you are free to do so but it is often quite difficult to many adults to do this.

It's the "in" thing at the moment. And it's being rammed down our throats.
Kids all want to fit in and not be different.
Most likely when the next fad comes in ppl will go with that.
Encourage your daughter to widen her friendship group.

I'm glad in my day it was barbie vs Sindy . Or care bears vs Rainbow brite🌈.

You need www.transgendertrend.com/