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.

I was just like your DD. Quite pissed off I was a girl actually, it seemed to get in the way of everything I liked and wanted.
Eventually I found a way to be me, still not gender confirming. DH loves me, my body gave me two kids. I'm happy being female, and think it should be ok to be a female in whatever way you want to do it... Doesn't mean you need to go to war with your body. Or people should assume you don't want to be female

I definitely don't conform to typical feminine gender stereotypes. I dress modestly, mostly in trousers (very, very rarely wear dresses etc); I don't wear heeled shoes and I don't wear make up (ever)... As a child, I liked playing with train sets, toy cars and lego. I only owned a Barbie to take to school for own toys day, as the other girls would pass remarks if I didn't have one to bring... However, I have never, ever questioned my gender identity. I'm a woman. End of conversation.

I wish we had more focus on people just being themselves and less focus on trying to put people into boxes or claiming that there is something wrong with their "assigned at birth" sex.

Men and women come in all shapes and sizes, with varied interests. Be happy being you - I think that's the message we should share.

That is not to deny that some people are transgender. In fact, my stepson is. He began to socially transition when he was 12, medically transitioning from about 15 years old. He is now a gay man. He seems very happy and content in his choices and knows that he is loved for who he is - gender not being any sort of issue or limitation on that love.

You're doing great.

The whole point of gender as a concept is to tell people what they can NOT do. Eg girls can't want to be astronauts and boys can't want to be nurses.

It's all bollocks.

I'm a woman because I have a female body and I'm an adult. My female body meant that I got pregnant and if I could have made him do that .... But he was male and it was impossible for him to do so.

Tell your DD that reproductive potential is what differentiates the sexes. Features as curvy hips or facial hair are secondary characteristics. Wearing skirts and playing with Action Man (and my boys have done both) are socially ascribed, not intrinsic, features.

Girls who prefer to act like boys are traditionally called tomboys. They may grow out of it or they may not. It's no one else's business but hers.

If anyone tells your beautiful daughter thst she's trans, kill them. It'll be for their own good.

@IamaRevenant

So I am a TERF. Happy to own it, although my SIL and several friends use that as an insult regularly.

Welcome to the TERF side We can offer excellent snacks ( <offers biscuit> ) and a dry sense of humour.

TERF was a term generally used as a slur but we reclaimed it…

That is awful, your poor niece. As a young girl, i played football, had action men, loved cars, bikes and cowboys. I have never been "girly" but i am 100% female. If i had been born in the last 15 years i fear i would be in the same situation as your niece. I can only hope her mother pays the price in years to come.

Totally agree.

I'm a primary teacher and I've taught several girls who sound like your daughter.

Only one of those girls had parents who were completely supportive of their gender non conforming ways. The rest of them were frustrated and upset because they were told those things were for boys.

I was the one who told them about women's football encouraged them to see that they could like anything they wanted.

Strict adherence to reductive stereotypes underpins all of this nonsense.

They don’t teach this in my daughter’s school.

also she’s a girl who likes football, sports and has never enjoyed playing with dolls. she’s still a girl.

Sorry hit the wrong button - not unreasonable. Why on earth would you want your child to disable themselves on purpose with hormones/surgery if there was a path to them being happy as they are, where they can just be themselves.

YADNU
It's very damaging for young people.

Totally. My H looks fucking great with eyeliner and nail polish and bright blue long hair, I try to encourage it all I can, he's still all man 😅

Similarly my niece looked awesome whether she was in the suit she wore to her dad and stepmum's wedding or the minidress she just wore to my sister's. I honestly cannot see her as a boy (neither can her mum or dad... this is all coming from school and SM). She's what we'd have called a tomboy. As is her mum, stepmum and aunts (me included). And she's gay and has a (lovely) girlfriend but that doesn't mean she's a boy.

My DN is 15 and is in the same situation. Apparently around half her class are now trans or non binary. It's going too far.

I’m repeating myself but why do we even use the word ‘tomboy’? I stopped using it when my two DDs (now late teens) were little. Why suggest that anything a girl does or doesn’t do makes her a quasi-boy? I was born in the late 60s and came of age in the 1980s. Men wore makeup; women wore dungarees. We climbed trees, rolled in the mud, played cops and robbers. No-one - in my world anyway - saw that as impacting on your biological sex.

It feels like we’ve suddenly been catapulted back about 150 years with the most regressive notions of what it means to be a girl or woman. It’s so troubling.

Exactly. I call myself a MERF. Male exclusionary. I have no problem with females being in female spaces. Males I do.

I was working for a charity who housed women and children in London who were fleeing abusive relationships. This was in 2008. We only had female care staff, no men were allowed in any of the hostels and this absolutely included transwomen. It was written into our policies (this was pre equality act). The act was badly written with regard to single sex exemptions and I think have created a bit of a loophole for men to exploit, where no uncertainty had previously existed.

So happy this was not an issue when I grew up. My parents were gender critical in the sense that they did not want to push us in to stereotypes. I loved football and I was very adventureous like one of my brothers. My other brother loved to play with dolls and was very calm. Today we would be on drugs and have undergone surgery surely..

The emphasis should be children can have a broad range of interests and whatever they wear etc

We should remove the adult idea of ‘trans’

And just let children be free as the sex they are, and can’t charge

Male exclusionary. I have no problem with females being in female spaces. Males I do.

Good point

OP, you and your daughter sound great. There are many ways to be a woman and I absolutely agree that celebrating women who your daughter may see as inspirational and role models will be valuable.

Good luck to you both.

Thanks for this sensible and cheering thread, OP.

We need more role models of happy, healthy, gender non-conforming women.

It'll just have to be us, seeing as the world's gone a bit weird about stereotypes in the past few years.

I find it hard that we can promote boys identifying as girls and vice versa at the same age they also think they are astraunauts or Chase from Paw Patrol.

All the very best to you and your DD. I hope you can both keep strong and navigate your way through all this pressure and confusion. It must be harder with a neurodivergent child for whom things may seem more black and white.

This is really concerning. There must be decision makers allowing this who don’t agree with this ideology. Perhaps they are afraid to to speak out for fear of appearing transphobic and losing their job?

A culture of aggression and silencing has been hugely damaging

When my sons were born in the early 2010s you could have bought pink/ blue gendered everything.

I didn't know what sex of babies I was having and bought things that I liked that I would want to use for more than one baby. For clothes, I didn't restrict to the "boys" section and bought attractive, practical clothes.

As they've grown up, I've gone along with their interests and likes and haven't restricted them to "boy" clichés. The result is two children happy with long hair, and to wear some "feminine" garments because the textiles are comfortable to them. One likes lighter "feminine" colours and doesn't restrict himself purely to "masculine" sludge colours. They don't define their masculinity through their varying degrees of (un) interest in football, they're free to like what they like and are confident in their sense of self.

Sometimes people assume that they're girls because they're still young enough to look androgenous; they just politely correct them.

One is autistic. It's better for him that we focus on meeting his autistic needs and being comfortable than getting distracted by pathologising "gender preferences". Most of it's obvious- he doesn't like the sensory assault of the hairdressers, and likes certain fabrics.

I know another younger child who is more concious of gender. Fortunately the parents are just working with what the child likes and not blowing it into a big identity issue. This gives more flexibility for the child to adapt as they get older and hormones hit. The child also likes some clichés of their own sex as well as the opposite, so pushing trans-identities would deny them of some of their genuine interests. There is also neurodiversity in the family...

While posting, I've randomly put on a 100 synth-pop hits video... things were so much progressive at breaking boundaries 40 years ago. It's a shame that we've hit regressive attitudes in recent years. The irony is that "non-binary" is actually reinforcing stereotypes and pushing them into binary extremes and undoing the hard-won progress of recent decades.

Agree, and I think it's very wrong for schools to be pushing this agenda on kids and something I would have pulled my children out of as you did.
When I was growing up there were plenty of girls who hated skirts and make up, were considered tom boys. Everyone just lived their lives back then without anyone jumping on this behaviour and turning it into something it's not. All those girls ended up having very normal lives as girls/women and even as far as I know straight. My daughter loves dolls and her favourite colour is pink, but she's also great at kicking a football around with her dad. We should just let kids be kids, if they're going to go down another route in adult life fine, that's their choice, but never something that should be put on them in childhood or influenced in any way.