To believe that Parents must have the right to tell their children they are not “in the wrong body” and children cant be “transgender”?

[DoubleMM]

The government wants to bring in a law that threatens anyone including parents with up to five years in prison for denying a child’s or an adult’s “transgender identity” -. The draft Bill is in Committee stage. Labour have committed to making it law. Surely this is just bringing back the Scottish Parliament’s vote that everyone has to agree? That men are women if they say they are? This time parents are in the firing line if they dont agree to their child being “transed” at school or elsewhere? The Bill proposes that the courts should be able to make an order to enforce compliance on parents. Surely this can’t be allowed to go through without a fight?

There is nothing in your post that demonstrates the OP is incorrect.

Given the attempts already made by trans activists it absolutely WILL be used against parents as OP describes.

We should all consider why the government and activists have been able to provide almost zero examples of recent behaviour that would be caught by this bill that is not already criminalised and doesn’t involved telling a child (or adult) the truth about biology.

The trans activists are utterly relentless in their attempts to enshrine ‘gender ideology’ in law, I’ll give them that.

Exactly. Very well said.

We have seen the extreme reactions of the trans activists to the simple act of being told that no one can change sex and women have rights independent of men (even men who wear dresses). There have been p*ss protests on the steps of the EHRC offices, topless men protesting in London, and such serious threats of violence that the EHRC - our human rights regulator was forced to move offices. Etc etc.

It does not take a huge leap of imagination to picture those very same activists weaponising vulnerable children to try and demonstrate that the thresholds for criminality in the bill are met.

@rosa17 and @Bloozie and others who call us bigots:

Please read Gay Men's Network arguments about this, linked above. Then ask yourselves 'if gay men, who have arguably been the most victimised cohort in the UK by conversion practices, are opposed to this Bill could there actually be something in it?'

You might be surprised.

If you are female you have a certain set of chromosomes. Males have a different set. That is irrefutable. Some people do not have a definite sex, e.g. hermaphrodites, and these are very very rare.

You cannot change your biological sex.

Sorry, but teachers involve social services for little more than a teenager throwing a tantrum already. Or even just because a teacher reports the parents as being abusive for not supporting a child’s social transition - trust me. Experienced it first hand. Twice.

I went through full SS investigations (lasting nearly 6months the first time, and involved interviewing absolutely every person vaguely connected to our family, other than my husband’s employers) for a single ‘concerned’ phone call by a raging trans-activist deputy head.

That’s awful @AnonyMumAuDHD and the process is the punishment.

Thank you, OP. This is an outrageous bill!
My daughter was trans for FOUR (long) years. And then she wasn't. In an instant, it was over (she fell in love with a boy and reconnected with her ONE human (female) body).
We supported her as a person, but were clear we did NOT think she was a boy trapped in a girl's body, and were completely against medical intervention.

After it stoped, she asked me what I thought it had all been about. I said pretending to be a boy and dressing in baggy trackies and hoodies gave her 'freedom from' (instead of 'freedom to'), and it kept her protected during a very difficult time in life. No dating, instead, indicating she wanted to be seen as a PERSON, not judged on how girly, pretty, 'hot' she was. She was young for her age, dreamy and eccentric. She was NOT a boy.

Unfortunately, after she 'came out as trans', four girls in her small friendship group said they were boys too. One (possibly 2) are still clinging to the trans identity, all these years later, hoping it will make their multiple struggles (including autism for 2 of them) go away. It is a false promise!!

At the time, a friend suggested we send her to a gender therapist, then told me a friend's daughter was going there – she's now had a mastectomy and years of testosterone. I am SO glad I decided to go for a 'normal' therapist, for space to talk/reflect, NOT to an 'affirming' therapist, to be ushered along a pathway with broken promises at the end of the rainbow.

No child is in the right body, and it should not be criminal to explain to your child that they have ONE young, gorgeous, healthy body, and the priority is to treat it well, not stunt it with puberty blockers, harm it with cross-sex hormones and dream of turning 18 so they can hack off irreplaceable body parts!

Wouldn’t it depend on the child’s reaction? I’m genuinely wondering - if a parent tells their child they can’t change sex, and it does seriously distress them, would that not count?

No humans are hermaphrodite.

People with differences of sexual development (intersex in old terms) are still either male or female

No. I know people who had severe punishments re being gay. That is terrible.
Gender stuff is different (my daughter was trans for 4 years then desisted).
After she 'came out', several of her friends said they were boys too. Two were autistic, one at least is still deeply distressed and dreaming of mastectomy as the fix for her difficulties.

No child is born in the wrong body. My daughter wasn't a boy trapped in a girl. I needed to be able to explain this, and that the medical interventions had serious, irreversible consequences. And to refuse a 'gender therapist'. We were patient and kind, but also CLEAR on reality.

Too many kids who believe they're gay are now being convinced their body is the problem. Boys wanting to 'be a lesbian'. Girls who are lesbian, but ashamed about it, thinking being a 'straight man' will be better. And sad girls who hate their bodies. And girls who like boys, but believe they can become a 'gay man'.

What is more cruel than telling a girl she can grow up into a gay man?? Do you know any gay men? They do NOT want a girl. My daughter went on a date with a guy from a dating app (hopefully not Grindr), and said as soon as she walked into the cafe, she saw his face, and knew. He just said, no thank you and left. I think it was a big moment, facing up to reality.

She could not be a gay man, just as she wasn't going to be a male premiership footballer – her dream – which shows the level of 'rationality' she was at!!!!! She was a teenager!!! We all had crazy dreams as a teenager. That's part of being a teen, but most crazy phases don't come with irreversible damage to your one healthy body!

Not agreeding to a gender therapist or gender clinic could potentially cause 'psychological distress' if the child tells a court that. Should I have gone to prison? I helped protect her from her teenage level of thinking. She is now a healthy, happy adult, with no medical consequences, (even from the horrid binder – found it recently when clearing out her room and was SO HAPPY TO THROW IT AWAY FOR GOOD!!)

It is just so sad to hear stories like this - your dd could so easily have gone the way of her friend. It is unfathomable to me, in this age of safeguarding-awareness, that people and circumstances can be allowed to pull children into harm's way, down a route of harming their bodies irretrievably. And so many organisations and "services" are contributing to that pull, rather than trying to prevent it.

This bill won't just prosecute strong parents like this one, resolutely trying to keep their daughters safe from harm. It will also deter weaker and less certain parents, from trusting their instincts to keep their child safe.

It's a green light to groomers that, if they want to pull a child away from his or her parents, if they use LGB or T as an angle, it'll be easier to get away with it because the parents will come under more scrutiny than if it were a "straight" groomer.

I'm not saying groomers are more likely to be LGB or T. But the bill makes it easier for those who happen to be.

The only real life experience I have of this is one of dds friends who went through a phase of wanting to be a girl when they were 11.

He was told by his mother, a friend of mine, not to be so fucking ridiculous and by the time the summer holidays rolled around, he’d never mentioned it again. He’s currently a very happy 14 year old boy, him and dd are still firm friends as always.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened to him if she had been one of those parents who was all for it and leaped at the chance to help him be a girl.

Sorry, meant NO CHILD IS IN THE WRONG BODY (of course)!

… or shit stirring

This is the problem with legislating for motive and with political bias.

If one's child is abusing drugs or problem gambling etc, it is completely expected that the parent might take strong measures to protect them. For example going into the child's room and removing all drugs, maybe preventing them from seeing "friends" who are providing the drugs. Maybe restricting internet availability. These would all cause significant distress to the child, but the outcome is keeping the child safe.

If a child is trying to hormones off the internet, wear a binder, etc, most parents would also try to keep the child safe and do similar things eg remove the drugs/binder from the child's room, maybe restrict the Internet, try to prevent the child from seeing the people providing these things.

A couple of pp on this thread are saying that second set of parents are abusers.

That's how successful this campaign has been. It's driving a wedge between vulnerable children and the parents who are trying to keep them safe. Who benefits??

This is so true about kids who are/think they might be gay

My daughter is 14. She’s recently started to have conversations with me and her adult brother about how she thinks she might like women instead of men. Yeah, no shit Sherlock, we both, and dh, have thought that for quite a few years now! It’s not a surprise to us at all (and of course, no issue).

She was telling me and ds how some of the girls at her all girls school were saying she might be trans - ds shut that down immediately and said, no, lesbians are women, and are happy being women. They don’t want to be men.

Dd said yes, she knew that but it was hard to explain that to some of the girls at her school.

She’s very self assured though, and she isn’t swayed by peers, but it would be easy for a girl that didn’t have a family she could speak to, to listen to nonsense like that.

Of course conversion therapy is abhorrent.

Thankfully there is no evidence that it is happening in the UK and therefore no need for a law banning it.

ALL the abusive behaviours covered by the act are already crimes on the statute book.

Ironically, some of them would result in lower penalties if they were prosecuted under the proposed Bill rather than under existing laws.

it “should not become law if it does in its current form it will be struck down on judicial review as incompatible with the human rights of parents”

I doubt it. Parentsl rights are not absolute. Under various frameworks like the UN Convention on the Rigjts of the Child, the best interests of the child are the primary consideratio n

That’s not the way legislation works (as you probably know)

I think everyone on this thread is unanimous that the interests of the child are paramount.

What many of us are trying to explain, is that this Bill might actually enable children to be harmed, and get in the way of parents trying to protect children from being harmed.

Some parents are, tragically, harmful to their children. We have laws and social services that provide processes for protecting children when these harms are identified. Not perfectly, and some slip through the net, sadly.

But the vast majority of parents care about their children, and care more than anyone else does. if you systematically legislate to weaken parents' ability to protect their children, but only for one category of children, you're opening the door to bad actors who want to harm children. You're announcing to them "if you want to abuse a child, here's a way, the parents will find it harder to stop you".

Thank you. I haven't been following this (other stuff been going on in recent months) but reading through this thread that's exactly what I found myself wondering. Probably pointless to write to my MP but I should anyway. She may be facing a tricky campaign next general election now that our borough is in the hands of the Green Party, after decades of being solidly Labour.

Is it too much to hope that there might be a few grown ups left in Labour who can see that the Greens are going to self-destruct and they could appeal to voters who don't want Tory/Reform etc but do want some common sense policies based on evidence? Surely there must even now be more of us than the hotheads who follow science when it fits with what they want to believe and not when it doesn't.

“Quite. There's no evidence that conversion therapy is happening in this country. None. At all”

Bullshit.

Extensive research, data collection, and independent reports from both government agencies and LGBT+ support charities demonstrate that conversion practices do actively happen in the UK.

For example, the UK Government’s National LGBT Survey: In a self-reporting sample of over 108,000 LGBT respondents, 5% reported being offered conversion therapy in their lifetime, and 2% reported having undergone it.

So yes, there is evidence - but how lovely it must be to live in a world of absolute certainty, untroubled by fact, data or nuance

Well I know where o will spend my retirement years then , with 4 kids if they all come up with that Sh* I will be in a long time

They're a lost cause. I mentioned in a thread a few months back that I wrote to my local councillors (Labour), after several councils signed an open letter saying they didn't want to follow the new guidance about single sex services. One did write back asking for further detail of my views, counter-arguing the old chestnut that masculine looking women might end up getting excluded. I didn't get any further reply when I wrote him a long response back. I told him about the patient in Lambeth, a trans identified female who was sectioned, she requested the male ward and was raped by an inmate within hours of arrival.

As a parent, I'd do anything to prevent that happening to my daughter. Anything. But the hospital just put her in there.

These Labour MPs are in a privileged bubble, the bubble that JKR described in her recent essay. They don't come across the worst case scenarios in real life, so they don't believe that they exist.