To think we’ve got it wrong about gender identity in children

[Itsmyshadow]

I have a 9 year old daughter who doesn’t fit the typical gender stereotype for a girl. She loves football, gaming and Pokémon. From a very young age she’s liked “boys” things, has always gravitated towards friendships with boys, and between the ages of 4 and 7 was quite adamant that she was a boy not a girl.

As her mum I’ve therefore taken a keener interest in gender discussions and what children are told about gender than I otherwise would have. Being completely transparent for this thread, I would very much prefer she remains a girl as her life will be so much more straightforward if that is the case.

As parents we have therefore done everything we can to help her get comfortable in who she is as a girl. We focus on the success of women in sport as much as men, watch lots of women’s football and will be watching the women compete in the olympics and paraolympics and celebrating how well they all do (we will watch the men too). DD now plays for a girl’s football team and boy’s football team (having only previously played for the boys team), and through sport has has met and made friends with girls who are much more like her.

At present she is happily identifying as a girl. I know this is a very fragile status however.

This is why I am so annoyed that in schools, primary schools, children are being taught that people can change their gender. Last year at DD’s school they had a “Pride Day” and invited an external pressure group in to do workshops with the kids, in which they were told sex is “assigned at birth according to what a doctor observes” and were shown pictures of the man presenting in dresses and told people can change their gender. We opted DD out of this workshop, but another child told her afterwards that she was a boy and should change her gender.

Why are we telling school kids this who are too young to understand? I feel this does so much damage to kids like my DD.

Shouldn’t we stop promoting a trans ideology and instead be telling children that they can be whoever they want to be regardless of their biological sex?

I feel so much good could be done by overtly celebrating women’s achievements (including those who have excelled in sport or in the army) both overtly on International Women’s Day and more subtly e.g. setting a passage to read and answer questions on about Rosa Parks or the England Women’s Football team. Same for men, schools could really celebrate the successes of men who do not meet a traditional male stereotype.

If schools really focused on driving home the message that men and women can be whoever they want to be and that their sex does not constrain them, I really feel most of the gender uncertainty in young people would go away, and we could save young people a whole load of mental and potentially physical trauma.

That was me as a kid & a teenager, loved anything like cars, football, played mainly with boys, had short hair & dressed like a boy. I even got dragged out of the girls toilets by a teacher at school who thought I was a boy. It took me until I was 16 to start to like anything remotely girlish & to change the way I dressed. I still prefer the company of men to women, when I worked, I hated to be stuck in a group of women & always got on better with men.

What is unkind about anything anyone has said? How can you read " you have a a sex and you should not allow that to limit what you do based on restrictive stereotypes "as hateful.

It's far more hateful to outsource the psychological well being if your child onto everyone else just so you don't have to tell the child the truth.

You are simply parroting a script. Using all the buzzwords. Hate. Kindness. Happy child better than dead one.

But you have not addressed a single point. How is colluding with a lie, a dangerous lie that results in physical and mental and psychological harm. Damage to perfectly healthy functioning bodies, the loving approach. Being a parent means taking the hit some times. Being the one who says no in order to keep your child safe. No matter how much its something they don't want to here.

You would not tell an anorexic child they were fat. You would not tell a dangerously obese child they were fit and well. You would not tell a drug addict that they really do need those drugs. You would not tell an alcoholic that they will feel better when they finish that bottle of cheap vodka. So why lie about something as fundamental as a child's sex. How can they ever trust you if you would.lie about something so obvious.

You seek help to get people to accept the reality if situations that can't be changed. You don't isolate them further from the world by keeping them within a bubble if others who will keep up the lie and make out everyone else hates them. That's just abusive.

You are simply parroting a script. Using all the buzzwords. Hate. Kindness. Happy child better than dead one.

Exactly. It is quite extraordinary to me how many people seem to have parked their brains when it comes to this issue and are simply repeating nonsense that they've been fed. Our children deserve so much better than that.

You would not tell an anorexic child they were fat. You would not tell a dangerously obese child they were fit and well. You would not tell a drug addict that they really do need those drugs. You would not tell an alcoholic that they will feel better when they finish that bottle of cheap vodka. So why lie about something as fundamental as a child's sex. How can they ever trust you if you would.lie about something so obvious.

Quite

It happened before 2010 but it was the internet. To sound like an ‘old fogey’, I was there when it started. It was around 2000 when home computers became accessible to the majority of homes, and suddenly all of us who were ‘weird’ (see undiagnosed ND) at school had a safe place to talk to each other. The website that started it in particular was Tumblr, I used to read as teens my age sat and wrote out endless lists of ‘new’ sexualities such as ‘florasexual’, even I thought it was too much despite a constant feeling of being ‘odd’ (I even questioned if I was actually a boy myself after spending too much time on there - thank fuck there was no real life encouragement at the time!).

I do believe that a small minority are born into the 'wrong body' but also that so many young people now are seeing this as a possible solution to other worries and concerns

What exactly is a wrong body, especially when it’s perfectly healthy physically? If those with mental distress apparently have ‘wrong bodies’, what does that reflect on those who are actually disabled by the bodies they were born into and cannot simply believe themselves healthy?

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. I was undiagnosed autistic and had what would now be diagnosed as gender dysphoria.

I didn’t fit in from a fairly young age, I wanted to be a boy, but thankfully no one took that seriously, in the same way that no one would have affirmed that a goth is indeed a goth and would be for life, or in a way that no one in their right mind would affirm an anorexic mindset.

It was very much accepted that I was a tomboy and that was fine. There was zero pressure on any girls (possibly can’t say the same for boys) to conform to a pretty pink princess look (like there is now). Clothes were less gendered, shorter hair lengths were the norm, short hair on girls was fine, never questioned.

I still now (nearing 50) feel incredibly uncomfortable if I wear clothes that don’t feel like me, or if my hair grows. It actually all contributes to a severe mental decline for me. I’m a woman though, and grew up in a time to know that however I want to dress, whatever activities I choose to do, I am still a woman, and I can do whatever I like.
Today’s children are actively being told (by teachers in some cases, by their peers, by internet groomers) that if they don’t fit the mould they must be trans, and for some weird reason this is all too often leapt on as the great solution to typical autistic teen angst. Why any adult thinks this is ok is beyond me. What the fuck has happened to differences being ok? Instead it seems to be so problematic for anyone to be non conforming, so much so that restrictive labels have been created to try to neatly fit everyone into. It’s so narrow minded and harmful.

All these so called progressives really need to have a good hard look at what they’re advocating for. It’s really not some utopia, it’s restrictive and controlling for everyone involved - from the teens not being able to express themselves freely without the ever present gender agenda oppressing them, to the people forced to see people as the opposite sex, to using wrong-sex pronouns, to be kind in a movement that is so unkind it’s unreal. It’s a bonkers movement, the only winners those who will inevitably make money from it. Trans kids certainly aren’t winning, they’ve been groomed into expecting the world to bend to their desires/delisions, apart from everything else that’s being done to them, and that’s a sure way to heartbreak.

None of this will end well.

Hi Op. I feel very strongly about this as I was similar to your daughter when I was round her age - total tomboy, all my friends were boys and I wanted to be a boy so much that my mum took me to the doctor when I was 5 (this was in the 1970s).

I'm now 50, and while I’ve always been sporty and never into hair/nails/makeup and i have a technical career, I am straight, fairly feminine woman and married with kids.

I have no doubt that if I was born in current times, I might have been put on an irreversible path or at least been completely in turmoil and confused by the idea given to me that I could change into a boy.

The way gender is currently talked about in schools and presented to young people is very worrying. It is stereotyping what it means to be male or female when people are just individuals with different likes and dislikes. Children should be taught that there’s no right or wrong way to “be” the the sex that they are…they can dress any way they want, have any interests they want and eventually marry whoever they like. I do understand that real gender dysphoria does affect some people, but this has always been a very rare condition and changing genders and body modifications should be a last resort for people with extreme dysphoria. It shouldn’t be presented to feminine boys or tomboy girls as a solution to them not fitting stereotypes.

I hope your daughter has the resilience to challenge other people when they tell her what she “is” or “isn’t”. She’s an awesome individual!

Oh my word.

In a lovely thread full of thoughtful, considered posts, this reads like an extremist butting in with a pamphlet.

Starts off with an admonition to be kind, which is actually a scold, a way to signal we are wrong and must not talk.

Then discusses children in terms of the 'skin they're in'. We are whole human beings, we do not have gendered souls. We are not a collection of body parts.

Buying their first binder? In the way that some mothers like to do the breast ironing, you mean?

Nobody on here has shown any 'hate', but your post is deeply appalling.

Really shocking that people are advocating binders. They can be harmful

Completely agree and it's very good advice for @Itsmyshadow Feel for you OP, look for all the support you can whilst goibg6 through this.
This is a very important post and thread, imo
It's hard to believe what a muddle adults have got into over this issue. Thank goodness for the Cass report at least. History sometimes gives a sense of perspective,, e. g. pink was a little boys' colour until the early 20th century, see link
www.mdhistory.org/little-boys-in-pink-dresses/#:~:text=It%20is%20not%20until%20the,little%20boys%20stopped%20wearing%20dresses.

89% of those using binders reported at least one harmful effect.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6298447/

Being concerned about gender dysphoria doesn't you don't love and support and try to understand your child. And I think you're down playing it saying - if it's a phase - so what? Do you have a child with gender dysphoria?

Lots of people saying when I was young I was a 'tomboy'. But isn't one of the problems that there isn't an equivalent for boys?

I think it’s good old fashioned toxic masculinity - a girl being boyish wasn’t seen as an issue, but the equivalent words for a boy were insults - e.g. “sissy” or “jessie”.

Far better for the culture around masculinity to change and for boys not to be ridiculed if they enjoy playing with dolls or like the colour pink rather than tell them that they are not being male correctly and that they therefore might “be a girl inside”.

There is so much talk of acceptance and inclusivity (usually as a stick to beat people with as well as #bekind) ...but at the same time enforcing ever narrower gender stereotypes.

Actual acceptance and inclusivity would surely mean recognising that there isn't a right or wrong way to be, or feel, like a girl or a boy? And that for many, puberty and teen years will include feeling conflicted or confused about emotions, sexuality, identity, body changes ....and thats quite normal and temporary, and doesn't need medical intervention. (MH problems excepted)

Absolutely correct. Those of us over 50 actually thought this sexist crap had been thrown out years ago, only to find it returning with a dreadful vengeance this century.

Yes, I agree but how can we do that for our boys that want to identify as girls?

https://www.transgendertrend.com/the-suicide-myth/

An article on the oft repeated assertion 'better a happy child than a dead one ', with a look at the evidence it relies on.

It's grotesque to use this argument, and highly irresponsible.

Vulnerable children deserve better. The 'affirm everything or they'll kill themselves' argument is again, appalling.

It sounds like you’re a really supportive parent OP. I wouldn’t be supportive of those kinds of messages being taught to my child and would also opt out. I think there is a big problem with glossing over the fact that many (though not all) individuals that experience gender dysmorphia are neurodivergent, and end up gravitating towards trans ideology as means of being accepted for being ‘different’.

I think the schools are being hugely damaging to the children by foisting this on them at such a young and impressionable age. How can they possibly make a decision about the rest of their lives when they’ve barely hit puberty! I think it’s disgusting to be honest. Children should be children. If they want to play with boys toys and mix with boys, That’s absolutely fine, I was the same but I’m very feminine now and my sexuality and gender never came into question. I have very recently however been diagnosed with ADHD which may have contributed to my behaviour as a youngster. I think you are approaching this absolutely fantastically by encouraging her to see the value in women undertaking roles that predominantly and historically have been male dominated. I wish you all the best.

It's impossible to change sex because it is in every cell of the body. I'm a girl. My dad taught me to repair my bike, put stickasoles on my shoes to make them last longer, and complete a tax return. My favourite hobby was sciencey things including botany, chemistry, and reading science fiction books and horror comics . I shudder to think what the gender fascists would have made of me.

I went to an all-girls school, where we were just girls learning, no bias, no boys stealing the limelight and hogging the bunsen burners in Chemistry lessons.

Had 2 children, both nursed by me so fulfilled my womanly duties. Daughter is the same and took up a 'male' career.

And here I am, a successful career in IT behind me, still working in science, and gaming on my PS5 whenever I get a minute.

Perhaps give your girl the confidence to do what she finds interesting and engaging. We need more women scientists and engineers, in some respects she is in a privileged position as she can break the fetters of what society expects of females. There are some wonderful female role models out there. Florence Nightingale (nursing, statistics), Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars in 1967 - the men got the Nobel prize!, Ada Lovelace Mathematician and programmer, Marie Curie, physicist and chemist and many more. Hundreds of us women changing the world. There is no need to be a boy.

Good luck.

How do boys learn that they can “identify” as girls? Why is this idea being taught rather than the idea that boys can be feminine but still be boys? Gender stereotyping has regressed terribly in the past 10 years.

Just be mindful that there are people in this world who DO have transkids and remember the first rule of life - Be Kind. It's really tough because they know how hard it's going to be for their child in terms of acceptance.

There are people in this world who believe that they have trans kids. And yes, being kind is indeed one of the most important things. But it's not unkind if people don't share the belief that "we all have a gender identity." Another important thing is safeguarding. Another is evidence-based medical care. Another is fairness: is it fair for a (transwo)man who says that they are a woman to demand access to women's sports and spaces, when not everyone shares their (asserted) belief?

I would happily be wrong. Just as I would happily be wrong in my atheist position that there is no god. In fact I would be delighted to be wrong, because tens of thousands of children and young people worldwide have irrevocably changed their bodies to match their perception of their gender identity.

It's clear that people have believed in variations of gender identity for centuries. The Two Spirit belief of a transcendent soul that is a mixture of "masculine" and "feminine" and the Indian hirja are examples of this. But people who had these beliefs in history weren't changing their endochrine systems or chopping off body parts. In many cases, having a "third gender" was/is a convenient way to mask an intolerance for homosexuality in men, where some (but obviously not all) gay men prefer clothing and hobbies that are more stereotypically associated with women. If anyone hasn't read it, Helen Joyce's book "Trans" is a great way to understand more about this side of things.

Unfortunately, parents are being coerced in to believing that if they don't support their child's transgender identity, their child will kill themselves. There is an example of this kind of rhetoric on this thread.

It's sad seeing facts (that we all have one body and it's ours forever, that there is no single way to "be" a boy or a girl) being called hateful.

Unfortunately books like Helen Joyce's (and also the brilliant My "Body is Me!" by Rachel Rooney) are branded as hateful simply because they build on understanding the self from a premise of biological reality.

The publishing industry has been gagged for several years on this topic but thankfully, that's changing. Hopefully we'll see more books that help people to make up their own minds about what they believe and that help parents support their children through childhood and adolesence.

Even though I'm a non-believer, I fully support those that do believe having access to evidence-based care. What does that look like? The Cass Report is a great baseline for all ages: a) it comes from a position of belief (it has a whole section on gender identity) b) it advocates exploratory therapy to unpick why someone might be experiencing distress about their body, setting aside a focus on gender identity belief as a start point (i.e
exploration without bias) and c) it makes recommendations that any medical interventions need to be properly researched with a full understanding of long term outcomes.

The fact that we don't have adequate long-term research in to irreversible medical interventions that have been done to thousands of children and young people is of huge concern, whether you're a believer in the concept of gender identity or not.

My DS has learnt it from peers.

I feel for you, OP. My dd1 was never remotely into any girly things as a child, e.g. never liked dolls or any typically girls’ activities - hated ever having to wear a dress. (We were living abroad where she was allowed to wear shorts.) She enjoyed anything active, rough and tumble. She was what used to be called a tomboy.

She eventually turned into a very female teen and woman, married with 3 children, but if she’d been born a few decades later I’m sure someone - probably at school - would have tried to convince her that she’d been born in the wrong body.