Are parents of 'Trans' children aware of the damage of full affirmation?

[Iloverosesandcarnations]

All children go through a stage of who am I? Confusion etc.

Am I a boy, a girl, do I fit it etc.

The social contagion of affirmation of 'I'm in the wrong body, so need to change it' it IMO so damaging.

Talking through, understanding that all children go through 'who am I'
rather than initial blind affirmation and ok.lrts change your name, clothing etc tell school rush into changes young BEFORE maturation, is so dangerous.

Cool, I'm a really mundane person, so I'm excited to be labelled "dangerous".

Any "debate" that excludes parents with lived experience, is going to be quite limited, from my point of view. Though I accept I am too "dangerous" to have a voice in this. So I will leave it as a TRAs vs MN GC and you can knock yourselves out with exchanging links.

But perhaps you can leave us out of it by not questioning us, as per the OP's title question

@akkakk
yes - of course it is tricky if a parent is blind-sided by a child telling them that actually they are a boy not girl etc. - but that is almost never the first step in the process - rewind and you will find all sorts of nefarious influences which have been playing a role against the parenting in place - social media / schools / GPs / government / charities / businesses / mainstream media / their friends / etc. - all have been pumping out a barrage of information telling children that if they are confused about their sexuality / worried about body changes / uncertain about their feelings / have thoughts and interests and passions and emotions more in line with a strictly controlled and artificial societal gender stereotype of the opposite sex - that they have been born into the wrong body...

You have a time machine I can use please? Along with magic clicks "biology biology biology" to make it all right again? And I might as well ask for a cure to my child's ASD whilst I'm here...😂😭

Flippant yes, but I'm not in disagreement with you. Just wish that these issues are as easily solved for our children as saying "I wish".

One of the most insidious strands of the TRA approach is how it encourages children to go NC with family members who don't affirm or don't affirm enthusiastically enough.

This is not restricted to bad actors on the internet, though they are horrific enough, but in certain states in the US and (I think) Aus, children can be removed from non affirming parents and placed in care. I do not have words for how awful that is.

I have been pretty clear that:

• there will be some parents who have actively played a role
• but there will be many who have not and who are innocent bystanders to an event forced upon them by lots of other influences

If you consider yourself 'dangerous' presumably you therefore have been promoting trans-ideology to your / a child as the comment was that the message was dangerous - if you have not been promoting that message then I fail to understand why you would label yourself that way.

If you consider this to be TRA v MN GC and (presumably) see yourself on the TRA side - then that would again suggest that you are a part of the process which has promoted dangerous messages etc.

If (and there has been no personal accusation) you have been a part of promoting the 'transition' of a child - then yes you would be a part of the issue being debated and it will be totally valid to question your decisions / judgement.

I have been involved in safeguarding in one way or another for over 20 years, and in child-care situations for over 30 years, professionally and as a volunteer - there is absolute clarity that:

• influencing a child / vulnerable adult to believe what is not true is a safeguarding issue
• doing the same but leading onto medicalisation is a safeguarding issue and abuse
• doing the same leading onto surgery is again a safeguarding issue and abuse

Taking any child or young adult down a route which tells them that they can be the opposite sex (which is biologically impossible) and then following that up with medicalisation and then surgery is not only actively misleading them it is abusing them - it is also removing the option of following a pathway to deal more appropriately with the issues they are facing (likely to be mental health related).

Of course lived experiences are a part of the debate - if for no other reason than that they highlight the imbalance of power so often seen between parents and schools or GPs or the NHS etc. This debate is sympathetic to those trapped as parents while others manipulate their child without allowing them to have a say... however any parent who has promoted transition will always have to answer the question as to why they were a part of that safeguarding issue / abuse.

I hope you understand that what is being written is sympathetic to those who have ended up in this situation - it is though important to be open and honest about it to prevent it happening to others - not pretend it is not an issue to protect the disempowered parent who tried to avoid it - but then not expose the issue which might help others.

Sadly none of this can reverse what has already happened - but it is imperative that we recognise where the issues originated and fix that to avoid other issues...

There is a real danger in relying on or assuming more relevance from a lived experience
you've said I'm dangerous. If you read my posts, you'll be able to see we didn't affirm the trans identity, the school did. We also had a health professional involved in DC (EHCP) try and start a referral to the Tavistock, that actually DC1 didnt want. We had a year of the school making noises about referring us to SS because of "safeguarding" as we weren't affirming. All of these professionals had been in their professions for many years. Even the psychiatrist said DC1 would need to "live as a woman" for 2 years and then join the waiting list for the medical pathway. Fortunately DC1 didn't stay on at that school and their next placement was inline with us on it not being in DC1's best interests to affirm the trans identity. We dropped all the outside therapists from his EHCP as DC1 didn't want them involved.
We do now affirm the non-binary identity, DC1 is 20.
But I refer you back to the OP's question, which IS patronising, as are many of the posts on here about how to deal with it, or assuming parents just whip out the trans flag and take to the streets with mega phones as TRAs

One thing I find very difficult and have never quite had adequately explained on here is how my trans daughter (transitioned as a young adult, fuck all I could do about it) was an innocent victim who was ill treated by the system as an autistic teen taught in school about gender ideology as a fact when they were vulnerable (yep, agree completely)

but as soon as my DC turned 18 they became a porn sick misogynistic fetishist cosplaying womanhood.

Literally overnight the same kid turned from victim to aggressor, despite the fact that my DC does not use female spaces. Is my DC moving through life in a way that makes sense to them and not inveigling them self into female only sports, competitions, jobs, spaces still a problem?

I am 100 percent in favour of stopping teaching this in our schools. I don't perceive that every trans woman is a threat, a bad actor, or a radical activist.

I think you have misread it then as that is not what it says...
There is indeed a danger in making assumptions of any kind and relying on or assuming more relevance from a lived experience - because a lived experience is only one facet of a many-faceted discussion / issue. That doesn't say that you are dangerous from having lived through your experience...

It does sound as though you have had a really tough time and as per my comments above - been steam-rollered by others in pursuit of some external agenda... I am sorry to hear about those experiences...

It depends I guess.

There are a few parents raising their children 'gender neutral' intentionally and I think those parents should be reported to social services for messing with their kids heads in some weird and badly thought out social experiment.

And some who must just be really worried about their kids and want to support them out of fear I guess.

But those parents who then demand the world bend around their children without thinking about their impact, winds me up. Ok, you are affirming but be truthful about the wider world and your child's expectations.

but your post was in response to my post, responding to another post(!) that I said lived in experiences from the primary carer was more relevant than those that observe it from a distance. These aren't people discussing it from a professional view, they don't have direct access to what has being on and when.

And as for professionals, my experience was that they were the ones affirming. At that time, the official guidelines were "watchful waiting" yet all those we came into contact with (which with the EHCP was a few) all wanted to run full charge into the affirmation/waiting list for Tavistock. Bizarrely my usual nemisis, the LA SEN Case Manager, was actually an ally during this period. Had she not have been, I'm sure I would have had the Social Services referral under safeguarding.

@Timpot
When you speak of your daughter I am presuming you mean your female child regardless of how she now presents herself.

If so, I have genuinely never come across anyone on the Feminist board threads say that a young woman (female) who identifies as a man is a porn soaked fetishist.

As for males who transition I have seen it - roughly speaking - as there being different groups:

• feminine possibly gay, autistic or both boys who from an early age want to be girls/women. ( Traditional often cited origins of transsexuals.)
• boys affected by sexual abuse wanting to escape their bodies.
• boys affected by trauma, autism, living in care.
• Some young men affected by manga porn and identifying with feminine role/ young men watching cissy porn and wanting to be at the cissy end of it.
• adult males who have married and had children some of whom become sexually besotted with themselves as women, so called autogynephiles.

Some of these men may have been vilified as porn soaked fetishists but usually only when there is a specific reason for doing so.

NB On the feminism and gender board at the moment there is a very respectful AMA discussion with a transgender male ( transwoman) which is informative and gives some nuanced perspectives.

@MeDepresso

I said lived in experiences from the primary carer was more relevant than those that observe it from a distance.

Completely agree for the specific scenario - for that parent / child etc.
My concern though in these online debates is that some extrapolate and assume their lived in experience to direct all discussion when I am sure that any two families going through the same apparent situation would acknowledge the differences

absolutely not getting at you personally...

@akkakk I should clarify (it's mentioned in my previous posts) that I'm talking about the Bayswater support group. For obvious reasons (the TRAs) I'm not going to share what the discussions there look like, but I'm confident to say they are more helpful than the discussions on MN.

I apologise as I had missed the end of your post about your DC not using female spaces and now realise you were speaking of a DC born male who now identifies as a woman.

I don’t think your DC as described -
not inveigling them self into female only sports, competitions, jobs, spaces - is a problem, and I have never seen that sort of approach described as being a problem.

If they don't mention intersex persons, they are not 'evidence' based

Why would they mention people with DSDs, that's an entirely separate issue.

I would say there is a big group of natal males who don't quite fit in any of your groups.

I would say they are equivalent to ROGD females but they transition a few years later, probably reflecting both later maturation of natal males and years of introspection/agonizing.

I would say they are typically autistic and yes, suffering from trauma but not trauma from abuse at home - trauma from living in a world that they don't feel they fit in. Socially, in sensory terms, and in terms of expectation secondary education is often an ordeal to be endured (or they go into school "refusal") and they retreat to online spaces where they find an accepting, heavily neurodivergent community that reflects to them that non-trans people never question their gender, they are an "egg" that needs to "crack" but watch out your family may disown you (hence much later transition that is proceeded in many cases by years of mental ill health and depression).

I view my trans daughter as a victim of the modern world. I would guess my young person would describe themselves as asexual. Not gay, but bodies and relationships and intimacy feel intolerable. There isn't an ounce of my DC that is bold or aggressive or screaming about their rights. And the same is the case for most other young autistic trans females I know. They are often gentle misfits who are deeply uncomfortable in their bodies, and I don't recognize them as having much in common with the late transitioning straight men "lesbians" or the often not autistic, very feminine gay males who transition. Or indeed, the educated middle class University campus rainbow mafia.

They don’t mention people with asthma either - neither medical condition is relevant to ‘trans’.

People with a medical condition that has affected their reproductive development have repeatedly asked trans activists to stop using them as a weapon in this. At least try and respect them.

Many trans kids are intersex, tho.

Cite your sources for that, please?

Given it's a very rare condition (and intersex is no longer the correct term).

Could you cite your sources first? You're the one saying intersex people (term nhs is using, btw) don't support trans right. Which is oxymoron, btw,

Actually that was a different poster. I was interested in where you had gotten your information from about many trans kids being DSD.

define many

Many was your words. I'm just asking where you got your information from.

nope

NHS refer to DSD - a term which came in c. 20 years ago
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/differences-in-sex-development/

Not difficult to be accurate 😏a quick google does wonders!