When Exactly did Trans/Non Binary Become So Commonplace?

[miniaturepixieonacid]

This isn't to start (yet another!) debate on the rights and wrongs of gender identification, transitioning etc. Just pondering on how quickly and in what year it became so common.

I'm just watching an old episode of Waterloo Road (Drama set in a comprehensive school) where one of the characters (Casey Barry for anyone who watched it) realises that she wants to be a boy rather than a tomboy and everyone reacts as if it's extremely unusual. The other pupils mock and bully her, her brother gets violent and tells her she is disgusting and a freak and the teachers talk about what a difficult road she has ahead and how much support she will need.

The episode is set in 2013. Not the 1990s. Only just over 10 years ago. But in a Year 10/11 class in a comprehensive in 2024 this wouldn't even raise an eyebrow, would it. There will be several trans and non binary pupils (maybe even several per year group) and pupils would consider it normal.

I teach in a prep school (only goes up to Year 8) so we haven't actually yet had a single pupil transition to the opposite gender. There's one 10 year old who I could potentially see it happening to over the next couple of years but it hasn't yet. So I'm relatively unknowledgable about the whole thing.

Interested to know from secondary school teachers who have been teaching for 10+ years what year you think it was that transitioning and being non binary went from rare to a relatively popular trend.

Have people always had 'gender dysphoria'?

Or has the mission of transing the dead women who had to pretend they were men to get published/jobs/freedoms influenced you here?

It all started with John Money's horrific experiment on David Reimer. Which went very badly wrong in so many ways.

Have you read the Tavistock report? Most young people who identify as trans were known to be neurodivergent, or victims of childhood abuse. Vulnerable children who should have had access to mental healthcare rather than instantly accepting that they were obviously ‘in the wrong body’. Transgenderism has been used to cover trauma of young people who either don’t understand themselves or want to escape their bodies due to the abuse they’ve suffered.

Lets not forget the kids who say they are trans were TEN TIMES as likely to have a registered sex offender as a parent.

That would be great if there was a ban on life altering, irreversible medications and surgeries on anyone under 18 and over 18 only after a lengthy period of assessment and therapy.

But we don't have the luxury of "oh let them experiment they'll figure it out in time and it will all be fine, let's be more accepting" when children are having major surgeries that will never be able to be reversed and taking pills that have huge long term effects.

An adult woman who knows she doesn't ever want children isn't generally allowed to be sterilised because she might change her mind in ten years or more but it's ok to remove a child's breasts and give them drugs that massively alter their body? That's seriously fucked up.

The episode is set in 2013

Maybe there is a correlation between it being featured in Waterloo Road and it becoming more widespread?! Perhaps that did play a role?

Let's also not forget the massive misogyny of all this.
Between the cries of terf and the widespread use of Karen to describe pretty much any older woman who isn't meek enough - women are being effectively silenced. Losing our spaces, the increase in control over women's bodies in the USA, being told our needs are unimportant and we need to put ourselves last and stfu while doing it, fighting for women's rights is now not for women's rights but anti trans. We aren't even allowed to put ourselves first in the areas we're fighting for ourselves!

The question not enough people are asking is why is there such an attack on women's rights coming from so many angles.

I fully support everyone ‘being themselves’.
But pretending to be something you’re not particularly when it involves medical treatments that permanently damage your health, is NOT ‘being yourself’.

Nor is it anything like ‘being gay’, which doesn’t require the involvement of doctors, or the expectation that everyone around you pretends you are something you’re not.

The story of WHY so much of society is currently colluding in the most preposterous batshittery I’ve ever seen is fascinating.

If you are interested, you should read ‘Trans’ by Helen Joyce, or listen to any interviews with Helen Joyce. She is a professional journalist (used to be an editor at the Economist) who discovered this story, and telling it has become her full time job. She is an amazingly intelligent and clear speaker. Her interview with Richard Dawkins, available on YouTube, is a very good introduction.

Maybe there is a correlation between it being featured in Waterloo Road and it becoming more widespread?! Perhaps that did play a role?

Transactivists carefully managed media presence for years. There is an agency called "Trans Media Watch" run by Lib Dem MP candidate Helen Belcher.

One of the things I always find interesting in these threads is to take a step back and look at the language and arguments (in the debating sense) that people use.

Generally speaking, those speaking up for women's rights and safeguarding children will, sooner or later, respond with something along the lines of: read the Denton report; read the Cass review into the Tavistock Clinic; look at the HMPPS statistics for sex offenders in custody; read up about the John Money experiment; see the judgement in this tribunal case etc. I.e. published documents, often peer-reviewed (or in the case of the Denton report written by trans activists themselves), usually objective / factual. While those who are not, or much less, concerned with women's rights and child safeguarding usually rely on emotive language alone, or even downright insults.

It's the encapsulation of reality v feelings, which is one of the central points at the heart of this issue, in a nutshell.

I have a child who was early secondary in 2013. There are 240 kids per year and he’d never heard of a trans student. It’s possible that there were hence the phrasing that he’d never heard of somebody.
His sibling is 5 years younger and he went through the same secondary and knows kids in his year identifying as trans, non-binary and other genders.

In around 2012/13 one of the transvestites I knew (of 3) told me in grave tones he had realised he was actually transgender. I was surprised- I took this to mean he was transexual and planning to have "the op".
He didn't, thankfully, but he did go full time, dressing up, quitting his job (he was in trades, couldn't work in the gear!) and generally making his whole life about the transgender thing, at times in a rather obsessive and aggressive way, which drove many friends away.
Years ago, early noughties, I knew a young woman who decided she wanted to be seen as male, chose a male name and settled down with a female partner. I felt at the time that maybe there was some conflict about her own homosexuality, and was a bit disturbed that a woman was taking off label male hormones, but genuinely hoped she would go on to have a happier life.
Other than those examples I heard nothing of trans until 2017 when it seemed to explode out of nowhere.
The one thing that I keep coming back to is the total lack of similarity between the male transvestite and the self hating young lesbian. These groups do not at all seem to share the same dysphoria/ motivation.
I'm not anti trans, I grew up in the 90s like PPS and am totally comfortable with men in make up and women in combat boots...I don't even particularly care if some men get off on wearing ladies clothes. But the normalisation of the self loathing of teenage girls bothers me very much. I never felt I fit into gender norms (despite outwardly being very femme) but I saw it as a failure of society, not of my biology.

Yes but it was seen as a very very unusual thing then.

Why do you assume self hating?

My partner was a lesbian for years. Had relationships, most of our friends are lesbians. When he identified as a lesbian he was very much out, and frankly super butch and crazy hot, but he didn't feel like himself.

He wasn't self hating because he was gay.

Coronation Street did NOT 'do it' years ago.

They pretended that a woman was a man who had 'transitioned' to be a woman. So they double bluffed everyone.

It would not have worked if they had actually cast a male person in that role.

You don’t ’identify’ as a lesbian, if you’re female and in a relationship with a female then you are a lesbian/same sex attracted. This is one of the biggest issues with the current gender ideology, conflicting gender with sex and pushing same sex attracted people back into the closet.

Transactivists carefully managed media presence for years. There is an agency called "Trans Media Watch" run by Lib Dem MP candidate Helen Belcher.

More likely soaps looking for controversial attention grabbing story lines than some big conspiracy theory. Most subjects feature in soaps eventually. They’ve helped normalise lots of things.

Is it really that common? I just assumed we are always just hearing more about it. 20 years of working for a big multinational in the city I've only known of two trans people and met one.

’Hayley’ was transsexual though and they have been around for many years (I remember transsexual people back in the 60s/70s). Since circa 2015 it’s been about gender, which no longer means the same thing.

There's a kid at DD's school that returned after summer to start year 1, aged 5, and it was announced that she is now a girl. The kids were a little confused but accepted it well enough. DD used to say to me 'she's not really a girl, she just wants to be'. They're y3 now and I think have forgotten that this child started school as a boy.

Adults lying to small children is a terrible thing to do. Children will believe anything adults tell them, that’s why we’re able to create the fantasies of the tooth fairy and Santa. What happens to that little boy when he matures and realises he’s not, and never can be a girl? Horrifying.

‘When he identified as a lesbian’ isn’t a sentence I ever thought I’d hear. I know I’m very ignorant on all this gender stuff but I don’t understand that.

The same with the JKR hate. I've never seen a person criticising JKR's stance as transphobic quote JKR's words to substantiate their claim.

My partner was a lesbian for years. Had relationships, most of our friends are lesbians. When he identified as a lesbian he was very much out, and frankly super butch and crazy hot, but he didn't feel like himself.
I'm glad your partner feels happier now. I'm sure some people have genuine dysphoria that means they feel better presenting as the opposite sex. I just don't think the thousands and thousands of teenage girls currently trying to get out of being girls by identifying as trans or non binary are doing it because they have some deep down feeling they are really male. They just seem to want to be "Not Girls" and definitely "Not Lesbians".
I see it with friends daughters and I hope they will grow out if it frankly.
What adult women and men do to themselves, for whatever reason, is up to them.

Many other cultures in the world have a far more fluid approach to gender and sexuality, and have done for centuries. People are increasingly able to chose how to express their gender and live their sexuality however they chose, without rigid frameworks. Why does it matter to you, or anyone. Why does it all need labels.

Also, what I don't understand is- if you are a lesbian and now believe your partner is a man...how are you still attracted to them?

Look at the play Galatea by John Lyly, from the 1580s. the two central characters are queer, trans lovers. it's nothing new, it's just now in the open.