That schools should not be telling children they are born in the wrong bodies?

[WandaWomblesaurus]

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11646881/I-asked-daughters-teachers-not-call-boy-reported-social-services.html?s=08

This is so alarming now - just how many children do we think are born in the wrong bodies?

Is this not now just science fiction?

YABU - Rainbows are magic

YANBU - It's brainwashing. No child is born in the wrong body and schools must be held to account.

The only high profile campaigning you will see is for access to free cosmetic surgery /SRS and drugs
There is no push for investigative / talking therapy, as the accepted narrative is that the MH problems are only due to a lack of access to drugs and surgery, and hateful transphobia to anyone who says NO

The rot started way way back with the mix of language between transexual and transvestites - look on the feminist board for info of the history of the Beaumont society for how that worked

The next step to remove it as a MH issue (thereby throwing transexuals under the bus) and removing the need for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria - mainly because the majority pushing are transvestites, and would be easily identified and refused GRC by the current model.

To prove its not a MH issue, it needs to be inherant, there from birth, part of who they are (like being gay/lesbian) so by that reasoning it needs to be present from birth/childhood. So in a world thats becoming increasingly gendered (due to marketing/consumerism/porn????) its possible to spot the outliers. Beaumont society was traditionally strongly anti gay - they refused entry to transexuals - and we know that the male drive when lost in fetish is selfish to the extreme (read multiple stories of the surprisingly narcissistic partners of the transwidows) so in order to fulfil their desires, does it matter if gay kids and autistic kids get damaged???

so we see a push in education, and a push in trendy online circles to re-educate the youth from cradle, and their parents/teachers of this new gender identity issue.

Children are the casulties. The teens/young people, riling against society as many have done before, but never having the power given here, are the foot soldiers. The funding coming from the opportunistic drug and surgery companies, and the power from the middle aged rich white men, who previously would have in previous eras been exposed as 'rich MP/High Court Judge caught in compromising position' but who now get awarded for coming to work as Pippa.

When you understand how young people are used to prop up the males who have very different motivations (usually denied vehemently), you cannot go back.

I find the first instinct people have is to accuse you of conspiracy theories. It is far better that people come to see it in their own time. I know of no person who legitimately travels the opposite direction.

There is a reason for it. People seeking the truth, however blunt, cannot ignore the truths they discover.

I know of no person who legitimately travels the opposite direction.

I think many parents legitimatise it in their own heads in the role of protector of their child.

It baffles me that intelligent women who are confident in their opinions block and cry bigot though. If their arguments were genuinely sound and not just 'won't you think of my child', then they would have the courage of their convictions to explain why we are wrong.

It’s the Daily Mail. I read several newspapers and they never report things in an unbiased and holistic way. Few of them do, but the DM is one of the worst for misrepresenting things and hyperbole- I therefore choose never to base opinions upon or waste emotions on anything they publish.

I haven't done enough research (yet) but for some time now the thing that has worried me more than anything is the increasing acceptance and increasing ubiquity of pornography in society, and the untold damage that is doing to society and people (changing the way we think feel, experience pain and pleasure and understand who we are... the list goes on)... I am starting to think that the two things are not unrelated

Children are the casulties.

Yes all children are the casualties not just the ones who are sold the lie and put on a harmful pathway but also the ones who have to lie about what they can see with their own eyes and, of course, the girls who will lose out to the inclusion of males in their spaces and sports.

One thing that confuses me about the zealots is that they position this as so important that it must be acted on immediately or very serious consequences (even suicide) are likely, but also so trivial that it doesn't warrant any investigation.

That is fine. But if that is your only discussion point for this thread, it says more about you and your prejudices than anything else.

The daily mail, the Telegraph and the Times are some of the only papers that publish anything on this topic.

Would you like to tell us what you dispute about the article?

It’s the Daily Mail. I read several newspapers and they never report things in an unbiased and holistic way. Few of them do, but the DM is one of the worst for misrepresenting things and hyperbole- I therefore choose never to base opinions upon or waste emotions on anything they publish.

Do feel free to link to a less biassed version from another newspaper. I am no fan of the DM but silence is also bias.

You can go look at the named sources like Transgender Trend if you want to check for bias.

I therefore choose never to base opinions upon or waste emotions on anything they publish.

Lucky you. I wish I could afford to do that.

Absolutely. Trans children’s charity Mermaids, a charity used and signposted to by many schools employed several men extremely questionable out if work interests.

One employee posted frequently and graphically on social media about his use of sex toys, one did a very explicit porn shoot for a magazine (using his real name and fully linkable to Mermaids) and a trustee has spent years advocating for greater acceptance for paedophiles. All have now left ir resigned but their activities were very open and there is no chance that their employer was not aware.

Mermaids also advertised directly for a young person to do a photoshoot in their bedroom and recruited an 11 yr old boy who posed for pictures with a male model sat on a bed dressed in exaggerated dolly costumes which are associated with a strand of porn. Last time I looked it was still on their website.

This is just one children’s charity in the trans sector. There are a number of other charities in the sector aimed at children that gave serious safeguarding failings, be that hosting mixed sex mixed age swimming sessions with parents not allowed and only requirements to ‘cover your bottom half’ to another charity being led by James Rennie, one of the worst paedophiles ever convicted in Scotland.

There still hasn’t been a proper investigation of this charity that runs events fit young people and complainants are coming forward saying that they were groomed and exposed to adult sexual activity.

I am emphatically not saying that all trans people are predators as we are frequently accused, but if you exempt a group from safeguarding rules and turn a blind eye to their behaviour, you will definitely attract predators. That’s how it works, be it Catholic priests or 1980s children tv presenters. If any group is regarded as being above suspicion that privilege will be abused.

Meanwhile the Scottish government has just made it easier for any predator to erase a previous identity and obtain a new birth certificate. The concept of trans is explained as a person having gender dysphoria. The Scottish government have just opened up the GRC process to people who do not have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. As there is no widely accepted working definition of trans or gender identity, it has effectively opened it up to everyone. Including the fraudsters and the predators.

Back in the summer I watched one of the committee meetings about the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform ask whether worries about promoting trans identities to young people were not just another Section 28 (a shameful local goverment bill against "promoting" homosexuality in schools in the 1980s). The answer they got didn't hit the spot for me and I've been thinking about it ever since. Here is my answer:

Sexual orientation is very hard to influence. Who you fancy is who you fancy. What turns you in is what turns you on. if you're ashameed of your sexual orientation, if you try to hide it or change it, if other people tell you its uncool, if you believe its boring or shameful or scary - who you fancy is still who you fancy. At most society can change whether young people dare to admit it to themseves or to others, whether they want to explore or experiment, and whether they dare to act on their feelings. Society can't change what sex they feel attracted to.

But gender identity is a lot about body image. And young people's body image is very very influencable. Sure, there are always going to be a few people who are sure their body is "wrong" no matter what, and some people who are very happy in their body as it is. But the rest of us, we take what we get but we don't feel perfect. We're get embarrassed aboout our bodies, we compare ourselves to others and to ideals, and we want to improve. And if we keep picking up messages telling us, oh look how much bettter I'd feel about my body if I was slimmer, or had bigger boobs, or smaller boobs, or fuller lips, or was more athletic, or if I was the opposite sex...

And sure, some changes can make us happier and healthier. But then there's all the anorexics and the bulimics and over-exercisers and the serial cosmetic surgery candidates. The minority who do more and more and more, and are no happier, and end up harming themselves. It's only too easy for young people to believe that if only they had a different body they would be happy, and to talk themselves into, or be talked into, all sorts of dysphorias including gender dysphoria.

The Scottish govt has decided to validate one type of body image problem with a certificate for 16 year olds, one that declares "I know I would be happier as the other sex, forever". And the government agrees with me, says that's fine, just on my own say-so, no need for a professional to question whether I could be just as happy in some other less physically harmful way. What does that do to unhappy young people?

(And other bits of gender identity that aren't about body image are about social image - and that's obviously influencable too.)

I don't think that promoting dysphoria or physical transition in young people is what the Scottish govt intended. No-one who has a GRC is forced to have hormones or surgery. For a few people, especially older people who have considered and rejected these already, the GRC has no such effect, maybe even the opposite. But can we believe this validation wont affect very many vulnerable young people in this way?

Maybe the old rhetoric about Section 28 sounds the same as some of the rhetoric against promoting transition. Well, the rhetoric may be the same but the facts are different. So let's pay attention to the facts and not the rhetoric!

It is not unrelated at all.

If you start looking at queer theory and where it seeks to destabilise society including language, you will find some of the reasons for your thinking there.

There was a thread here this week about two males walking through the IKEA restaurant in their dog gimp masks. (Pup play for those who don’t know) and the number of people who were unconcerned about being part of these two male’s sexual fetish and children included too was concerning.

”But then there's all the anorexics and the bulimics and over-exercisers and the serial cosmetic surgery candidates. The minority who do more and more and more, and are no happier, and end up harming themselves. It's only too easy for young people to believe that if only they had a different body they would be happy,”

Yes. This.

This is an interview with Oli London who is very open about his addiction to cosmetic surgery and his identity issues. He is actually quite brave to do this interview and it is worth listening.

He was also about to undergo genital surgery as well when he stopped and thought some more.

This is a really interesting read on the topic

ceriblack.substack.com/p/guest-post

Oli London is a very very interesting character. Wasn't he claiming to be trans - Korean at one point, which is what led to the facial surgery?

I was determined to read all the parts before saying something. Then I got to the Jeffrey Marsh videos.

No parent in any other situation would let their child any where near this man. So why does he get a pass under the trans umbrella?

He is a very strange individual and if his videos were about anything else parents would be as aghast at his videos as they are of Andrew Tates.

I've watched a lot of his stuff and he honestly is a very scary individual. And that has nothing to do with his trans status or his clothes or his make-up. His words are worrying.

I've watched a lot of his stuff and he honestly is a very scary individual. And that has nothing to do with his trans status or his clothes or his make-up. His words are worrying.

He is terrifying. Encouraging children to communicate online with him, promising to be their ‘family’ if their parents aren’t immediately fully on board with a child’s self diagnosis of trans with all the life changing consequences that entails.

He calls himself their ‘auncle’ as he is ‘non binary’ and I think in the past has said he uses womens spaces and says that we can’t stop him.

He has also been paid to sell us tampons along with Dylan Mulvaney.

Oli London is interesting but very extreme, yes he did the Korean thing. I don't suppose he could have been stopped by anyone but himself! It's hard to relate to such an extreme.

One thing that does resonate with me is the repeated, step by step nature of what he did. It's not, first I decicde my end goal for my transition, then I decide all the steps I'll need to get there, one by one, then I figure out if they are worth it, and only then I do them all, one by one. It's much more "first i'll try this, how do I feel, then i'll try that, how do i feel..." and rinse and repeat. And every step you are further away from a normal healthy functioning body of either sex, and every small step makes it physically harder to go back to the start.

And you might take a lot of steps and not realise that the starting point was better than where you are now, and better than anywhere you can get to from where you are now, until you can't get back there.

One of the most scary things about the regret/detrans stories is when it takes the shock of surgery to make a young person realise it was all a "mistake".

Yes. That is the issue. The stages he went through. He didn’t set out to have that much surgery. That he was trans was not even on his radar until recently according to him.

It was part of his need to change his body.

It is this way we are letting our young people down. He is certainly not a teenager, but it doesn’t seem like any one really spent the time to talk him through things.

it doesn’t seem like any one really spent the time to talk him through things.

Was he amenable to being talked through things? He seemed to treat every obstacle as another challenge, which is quite admirable in a way!

But too many of those who are willing to talk get affirmed - you're trans, you need to try this.

And on a more normal everyday scale, as a parent, it's easy to go along with it - oh it's only clothes, only pronouns, only a name, and then it's only hormones(!)..... and of course there's no point terrifying ourselves. Young people do move off the pathway, or stop where they are. Some. We just don't know how many, or who, or how.

Young people do move off the pathway, or stop where they are. Some. We just don't know how many, or who, or how.

I think, with everything, it's so important to give young people an easy way out without losing too much face. And that's why it's so important for parents and schools to not become overly invested in supporting young people in case they start to feel backed into a corner, like they may let people down or disappoint them if they don't want any of it anymore. Obviously, excessive opposition can have the same effect but I do believe there's a lot to be said for gentle guidance, gentle interest, being available to explore at their pace and having absolute limits. Not just for this issue either.

And - to return to the article - schools are putting children on this pathway when a child says so, and moving them along it when a child says so too.

Closely related for people who don't like the DM, there is this in the Times from September - sorry I can't give a proper share token. It mainly summarises the content of a video made by a Scottish state school, shown at the Scottish Learning Festival and to be promoted to other schools.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/teachers-face-significant-challenges-to-avoid-outing-trans-pupils-to-their-parents-2fwhwrnpx

Velvian, I understand you and I sympathise. But what a terrifying state we’ve come to.

This is such a wise post that bears repeating. Thank you MumOfYoungTransAdult

I encouraged them to challenge stereotypes and did so with toys and clothes I bought.

@Ofcourseshecan I don't think that does any harm. Challenge the stereotypes but reassure them they're still the same sex - a boy who wears pink, a girl who plays football, whatever. As long as you don't tell them it could mean they're a different gender, or sex.