Please look at this and voice your thoughts

[DoubleTweenQueen]

Ok, so, it has come to my attention lately that gender-questioning is becoming more prevalent - particularly with pre-teen and teen girls.

DD2 seems to be questioning her own identity - doesn’t surprise me. Consider it a normal part of painful adolescence, particularly how women are portrayed and treated.
She has just turned 12. Was bullied when she was 9. Developed GAD; changed schools. Felt better, made new friends, more relaxed with life.

Then the pandemic - fear, worry, social isolation, introduction to tech for education and contact, her older sister succumbed to an eating disorder which has been a source of pain and more worry, and continues to be.

DD2 got into minecraft and you tubers who did minecraft. From there she has acquired quite a grounding in the toxicity of gender politics, mostly from the US it seems.

She seems to have been facilitated by school in her new thoughts about herself - she says she is demi-female, wants to change her pronouns to ‘they’ and her name. This is the first I’ve heard of it, by accident. No-one has mentioned anything about her questioning her identity or any upset from her at all. School have not talked to me at all regarding what else might be going on in her life - first term of senior school. I have filled them in. They are backpedaling.

What I have learned very quickly is that schools appear to be counselling children who are gender questioning, by affirming their thoughts through counselling in school - which is confidential and not shared with parents because the current thought seems to be - once a child questions their gender, they are identified as a ‘protected minority’ and supported and affirmed. Some schools are also enabling children to change their pronouns and name in school - step towards social transition.

This is counter to current thought regarding providing a safe neutral space for children to question and grow, without enabling or influence a move in a trans direction, and one they could feel unable to renege upon at a later date.

More worrying, there is a bill currently being drawn up in Parliament regarding the ban on ‘conversion therapy’ - heavily lobbied for by LGBT+ groups.
This wouldn’t seem to be an issue, apart from this does actually impact the field of child psychology in that when a gender-questioning child goes for therapy or support, the counsellor or psychologist may not look for co-morbidities, i.e. delve deeper to question whether the gender-questioning is a symptom of some deeper issue - anxiety, trauma, neurological-diversity. This is just bonkers! But look at what happened at The Tavistock clinic.........

I aam posting here, because most (including me) were blissfully unaware of the stealth by which this ideology is creeping into our schools and soon nurseries - under the guise of inclusion and anti-bullying. That our children have just gone through two years of difficulty and over-exposure to tech and social media. That their mental health has truly suffered.

If you have older children in secondary school - ask them if they hear of students declaring they are non-binary, interested in changing name or pronouns, interested in Communism and vegetarianism - it seems to go together.
It is very common now. Social contagion as bad as eating disorders, and potentially as damaging, if enabled to move down the pathway of puberty blockers, hormones, surgery!

Please look into this, and make yourselves heard!!

www.transgendertrend.com/conversion-therapy-legal-opinion/

Also - look at Genspect, and the Bayswater Support Group.

These are children, who are vulnerable and neuro-plastic. They are influenced heavily by SM. Please make yourselves aware, before this becomes law, and when your gender-questioning child goes for any sort of counselling, they will be met not with in-depth discussion about what has led them to their belief about themselves being wrong, or weird, or ‘other’ (so normal for adolescents!!) - but affirmation of a trans identity, and not looking for co-morbidities, because it will be against the law

Thanks for reading.

Put here for traffic, but MN can move wherever they like.

I would like to see MN also look into this, as an important parental issue (if they dare )

Vote - YABU - you’re hysterical
YANBU - you might be on to something

I never considered myself as a particularly close minded person. I'd always describe myself as open minded.

Now I realise I'm not. Because my reaction to my pre-teen young child telling me they wished to be known by a new name and as 'they' etc etc would be ' don't be so silly.'

But parents aren't allowed to do that anymore are they? You're not allowed to eye roll or tell your child it's a phase or that they're being daft and to shush now.

And yet, it's my natural reaction unfortunately. Can't see it changing anytime soon.

@ButteredOwl
Although that phrase would not be useful, the response to not go along with new pronouns and name are advised as the watch & wait approach, and that's not being closed-minded.

@HarrietsChariot
"Being trans", as in feeling severe distress at one's sexed body, and desiring to be tge opposite sex = a real condition
"Being trans", as in being born with a boy's brain in a girl's body = not real. There are no such thing as male brains and female brains.

Not eating meat and being anti-fascist are IMO admirable things which show concern for others and society as a whole. Neither are 'fads' and they predate social media.

I really wish you hadn't linked them with trans ideology which is the opposite, in my view.

Take a breath, OP
Know that Mumsnet is not necessarily the best place for exploring your (legitimate) concerns.

I have a 20yo and a 14yo here at home, all colours and stripes and tribes passing through in friendship groups and everyone is doing fine.

This site which I've frequented for the best part of 18 years (I'm an ex.rollercoaster.ie - which was a kind of Irish mumsnet - for a while)
But honestly there's such a weird vibe about younger young people asking questions about their identity that's stomped on.
You sound a bit panicked. Take a few breaths. It will work itself out

Except, @SunscreenCentral, everyone is not doing fine. Those left alone to grow out of it, probably, yes. Those girls like Keira Bell, who are left breast less, damaged by PBS, binders, mastectomies are not fine. Scott Newgents arm problems are not fine. What has been done to Jazz in the name of affirmation is not kind. Stopping therapists talking about kids sexuality, abuse, feelings of alienation, happily transing autistic kids who have never felt they fit? Simply agreeing with their own diagnosis of what is likely an extremely complex mental health issue? Not fine.

YANBU OP

Children/teens should be assisted, but parents should never be kept in the dark.

Nobody has the right to snatch children from their own families in order to push agendas.

Ignoring co-morbidities gives whoever is orchestrating this a chance to beef up numbers in order to achieve some sort of critical mass (of what would potentially otherwise be a very small group). It's very worrying indeed

OP maybe you can ask MN to amend the title to make it a bit clearer what the thread is about as it's surprising it has so few posts

I am a teen counsellor and I feel strongly that children should be able to access our service with or without parental support. If I had concerns about a client's wellbeing or safety I may inform the parents (or GP for eg.) But I would gently explore a child's gender confusion, I would challenge their thoughts if appropriate. Like I do with all clients. I would not tell them to transition or facilitate access to a clinic but heavily encourage them to talk to their parents.

As a parent my youngest has gone through gender confusion, saying she's gender fluid. Funnily enough as soon as I listened and acknowledged it she seems to have dropped it. It's important to listen to them and validate their feelings, but not to railroad them into anything. It's a time if identity confusion, I remember it well!!

I'm wondering if a religious school might be a wise choice in the current climate, purely because they tend to be more socially conservative and thus may take a more neutral view

Thankfully the Catholic church has not succumbed to all of this nonsense. It's likely others haven't either

@crossstitchingnana First there is the distinction between children and teens, but I would agree that if a young person is in desperate need of support, being able to access counseling is preferred of course, but if they have been upset sufficiently to feel the need to access such a service, their parents should be told that has happened.

Parents have known that child since birth and can be a wealth of information as to childhood and family trauma you might otherwise not get from the child themselves. Also potential signs of neuro-diversity.

I don't believe parents should ever be left out of the loop, and legally I don't believe that should be happening unless there is a history of any form of abuse or neglect in the home.

Children are being influenced to be very adamant in their self-determination. Schools are being told that parents needn't be involved. I saw an lgbgt source of reference for the Department of Education which suggested parents should be kept at bay as they are often unhelpful!
It is the law now in many countries, including Scotland, I believe, and likely will be in England soon.

The high court earlier this year upheld an appeal by the Tavistock clinic Vs Kiera Bell, to determine that parental consent was not required to prescribe puberty blockers for under 16s.

How can this be rational, when it's essential for school to have my agreement before they can administer paracetamol to my child? How?

Gender distress with body dysphoria needs cast-iron safeguards for children and under 18s, but whatever was in place is being systematically eroded, and the proposed ban on conversion therapy will exacerbate that.
It is far too all-encompassing - I've read the document. I'm a scientist and have a very good eye for detail. It is quite dangerously badly put together.

Double, just as your post got me thinking "oh dear, shades of 1960's China in the ideology, parental alienation & denunciation stakes ...

If you have older children in secondary school - ask them if they hear of students declaring they are non-binary, interested in changing name or pronouns, interested in Communism and vegetarianism - it seems to go together.
It is very common now. Social contagion as bad as eating disorders, and potentially as damaging, if enabled to move down the pathway of puberty blockers, hormones, surgery!

YABU. It feels like a mass grooming exercise, taking the 'normal' teen angst about general issues of identity, & subverting it into something that simply doesn't need to be taken with such po-faced determination to make it something bigger & more serious than it is. By which I mean, on an individual level, which of us, as teens, didn't try on various identities for size?
Imagine if the 1970's school counsellors saw you with a banned piercing & took you off to indoctrinate you into how your were "A Punk Now, so no other options are available, & you must freeze your identity forever, in fact we recommend you have surgery to permanently weld some safety pins into your face, because this feeling of Being A Punk is immutable & will never change" ...

@crossstitchingnana I hope, as a professional interest, you might take a look at this if you have time:
genspect.org/conferences/

The trouble with that kind of argument is that it suggests that there is something inherently wrong with being trans, that being trans is a symptom of trauma and by extension it's not a real "thing". You are starting from the point of view that a child who says they are transgender is misunderstanding things or is only saying that because of there being something else wrong in their life.

But @HarrietsChariot, much as I applaud the reasonable & balanced tone of the rest of your longer post, this simply isn't true.

There's no suggestion that being trans is wrong.
There's a suggestion that misdiagnosis is rife, that impressionable kids are able to hang other issues on a label of trans-curiousness, & that these other - possibly much deeper & more problematic - issues get co-opted by adults keen to promote a notion that changing gender will solve problems ... with no proper attempt to establish what those problems genuinely are.

@CharlotteMaytimes

Agree with all this - lots on the feminism board about it, but also lots of TRAs like to come here and tell us all that Mumsnet is a pit of transphobic bigoted scum. Think it’s slowly shifting though, after all the companies pulled out of Stonewall’s Gender Diversity Scheme, and their CEO did an absolutely disastrous interview on Woman’s Hour last week. It’s finally filtering through to enough people, so the tide is turning against the blind removal of the rights of women and girls, not to mention lesbians (a protected group Stonewall has chucked fully under the bus in the name of ✨gender ideology✨).

Fingers crossed this momentum keeps gathering and we can protect and support trans people the way they need, without dismantling valuable protections for other (much, much bigger) groups who need theirs too.

This. Loving Stonewall finally getting the shit they deserve.

@crossstitchingnana Finally - I have found that my DD has been counselled, along with friends too - by a grown-up at school, due to emotional distress over just this - at 11yrs old. One parent was informed, but I never was. (Indy)
I have spoken to school. They were under a very odd impression of my relationship with dd and were completely unaware of what previous and current stressors are, which have been and are quite relevant.
But DD has been influenced that I couldn't be of any support or use to her on this subject, and has verbally and physically attacked me due to the pressure and turmoil that has been caused her.

I will not affirm, but am focusing on her and fun interests, and her overall self-esteem and pride in who she is as a whole person. She is calmer and so much happier in her own skin, and very affectionate again.

In my case - and I know directly this has happened for other parents too - school and counseling, and not informing us her parents, has driven a wedge between her and us and actually made her suffering and internal conflict worse. The approach is not serving or safeguarding children.

Children are being influenced to be very adamant in their self-determination. Schools are being told that parents needn't be involved. I saw an lgbgt source of reference for the Department of Education which suggested parents should be kept at bay as they are often unhelpful!

Yup - as above Double, parental alienation - what's next, denunciation & the removal of parental influence between the State & young people?
State education has of course always been used as a way to indoctrinate kids in ways the State feels are helpful to itself, not the human beings it purports to serve. In this case, the agents of the State seem to be the woke - or those who are (rightly) becoming too afraid of the woke to engage their own brains & resist indoctrination.

To be clear, I know & love transpeople in my own life.
Nothing wrong with it, & special protections need to be in place for the trans community. But I think it's fucking rich to complain about the horrors of conversion therapy while simultaneously grooming kids to ... opt for another kind of conversion, without exploring all other avenues & often without any contribution from experts.
It all feels very South Park "mmm-kay".

@ChargingBuck Yes, my concerns are for the clear dangers in laxity regarding safeguarding children, only.

The Ban on Conversion Therapy has my full and unequivocal support, as does the focus on inclusion and anti-bullying for any individual or group, apart from what I and many others, including LGB Alliance and health professionals, identify as a potentially very stark reduction in safeguarding of children and young teens.
I have asked for gender and physical dysphoria to be dealt with separately.

My other daughter also has body dysphoria, which manifests as an eating disorder.
Where is the research in the field of psychology that is looking into parallels between forms of psychological distress in children, rather than affirming trans as a special case? We don’t affirm eating disorders. Why is trans becoming untouchable? I have a transwoman in my life, I don’t deny that for many people it is an incredibly important reality, but the current situation that is building for young people, particularly girls, is truly worrying.

Double, couldn't agree more about the unthinking, bull-in-a-china-shop approach towards telling kids that things they experience during one of the most turbulent times in a human's psyche are immutable, & need chemical & surgical intervention in order to fix the perceived 'problem' in stone.

If your kid was experiencing a bout of anxiety, would you want the school keeping that secret from you, & encouraging your kid to self-ID as an anxious person, who must now be medicated for the rest of her life, because her anxiety Will Never Change?

It's so damaging, & so detrimental to what should be a time in a young person's life to feel free to explore many ways of identifying, & many things, causes, & ideas to identify with. Some important, some less so - but the litmus test of importance should be IF THESE THINGS REMAIN IMPORTANT TO THE CHILD ON REACHING FULL ADULTHOOD. To the CHILD - not to the child's brainwashers hellbent on selling her the notion that her own body is somehow wrong.

Making too big a deal out of something which is likely to be transitory seems to me so wrongheaded I can't see how there isn't a sinister agenda behind it (looking at YOU, Stonewall. Looking at YOU, the patriarchy - undermining women & girls via the vehicle of letting us know our bodies will never be acceptable, or good enough ...).

I'm not prescribing views, but happen to find Lauren Black an astoundingly clear, relevant & brave voice in the wilderness. If her article, life experience & attitude is helpful to your family - hurrah! - so here it is:
lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/03/lauren-black-i-am-a-butch-lesbian-i-live-with-gender-dysphoria-i-do-not-believe-my-deep-discomfort-with-my-female-body-means-that-i-should-take-steps-to-change-it/

@ChargingBuck I will read - thankyou x

So, I heard back from school.

No answers to specific questions about LGBT+ 'club'.
Conflated interpretation of Equalities Act.
Contradictions.

Still no wiser or included in any sort of discussion.

Actually feel worse at the clear unprofessional approach of a senior person, compared to the open detailed desire for information and discussion.

Feeling well and truly brushed off, as well as no wiser or further forward in ensuring DD is being adequately safeguarded.

Fairly stunned actually.

Moving towards plan B.

I wonder if our kids are at the same school the unprofessionalism sounds familiar as does alot of what u have spoken about.
Nearly half of my child's friendship group are now non binary.
The kids sound brainwashed.

@Greenfields124 I doubt it. This seems to be the situation in most schools now - the national teaching unions are all on board with gender ideology apparently. Look at what’s happened too in US, Canada, and Scotland.

It’s just most parents haven’t realised yet. Can’t wait to see the uproar when they do.

Have been poring over school policy and found reference to Stonewall guidance over the curriculum. Jigsaw pieces falling into place.

Go to plan B op, whatever that is.

Your quote from Stonewall guidance upthread makes me so angry - the one basically telling girls to ‘get over it’ if there’s a person with penis in their bathroom. This teaches girls to ignore their own safeguarding instincts and teaches them that their rights to privacy and dignity and comfort (not to mention safety) come way down the list. Boys and men must be prioritised first.

It makes no sense to me that children are not allowed to be counselled over any dysphoric thoughts when it comes to ‘gender’. They are when it comes to other forms of dysphoria such as eating disorders.

What is ‘gender non-conforming’ anyway? Surely it’s ‘child with a personality, and who does not wish to live entirely according to the box labelled ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ by society’.

Gender non-conforming now seems to mean ‘you don’t adhere to stereotypes so you must now literally be perceived as the opposite sex and quite possibly have your body mutilated in order to fit into that category’. Any child being put on that pathway deserves to have had the appropriate therapy and counselling beforehand and schools need to back off and be a neutral safe space for all children.