*sigh* Jeremy Clarkson is off on one again, do we have a thread yet?!

[DorynownotFloundering]

bit of info

Now I defend his right to have his own vile opinions but this will start a shit storm of abuse against transkids and their parents yet again and by putting said opinions, and factually incorrect statements in a Sunday paper column is just not on. (if entirely in character)

Funnily enough it's been pulled from all the online editions today.

In the words of the inimitable Mr Bowie who once signed off an email to a friend thus:-

Rhoda Borrocks

Trans is trendy, and being liberal is trendy

This for me is the crux of it.

I think I may have seen it all now. Of course no child becomes trans because it is trendy. Not least because, as pointed out, it's a very long, hard road which a child won't take without being closely checked and scrutinised every step of the way. No child is given puberty blockers because their parent thinks it's a cool thing to do.

Can any of you imagine what it is like to know you are in the wrong body and that you should have been born a man but to be forced to go through the process of developing breasts and having periods; and then later having to go through mastectomies knowing that treatment had been available which could have prevented that? Do you think that the mental scars that causes might just cause more damage than puberty blockers?

People have all kinds of other delusions as well, such as believing they should be paraplegic, or have fewer limbs than they do. These delusions also cause suffering. Should they be treated surgically, for example by severing the sufferer's spinal column so they are truly paralysed? Or amputating a healthy limb?

Transgenderism has no more scientific basis than the obsessive desire to be an amputee. What is the difference, truly, between wanting a sexed body that objectively you can't have, and wanting fewer limbs or no sensation below the waist?

No. The suffering caused by such delusions is unfortunate, and should be met with compassion. But what needs to be treated in medical terms is the psychiatric condition, not a perfectly healthy body that is at odds with the individual's self-perception. An individual's desire to alter his or her body to conform with their delusions can perhaps be justified in libertarian terms, as an extreme expression of bodily autonomy, but it has no basis in science or fact. It's unethical in the extreme to apply that level of radical autonomy to children. And it certainly doesn't warrant the kind of mass cultural collusion transgenderism is now acquiring, as some kind of special category where people who insist on other kinds of 'identification' (such as transabled, transrace, trans-fat, transspecies) are rightly seen as delusional.

I don't comment on many of these threads as I feel I am very ignorant about the topic, but I did know a man who started the process of transition to female and was given hormones almost immediately. I can imagine why as he is intelligent, forceful and manipulative. He stopped the hormones after a few weeks and had a lot of surgery, some of which was designed to make him look more masculine. All the surgery he had was supposed to happen only after counselling, but if someone has decided on the solution they want it takes an exceptional counsellor to challenge that, and he could be quite intimidating to anyone questioning his motives. I know all this because I married him. I have not yet met anyone transgender that I would say made transition look like a rational choice or inevitable outcome, but in his case he was a damaged person seeking to manage or erase painful feelings, and surely our priority as a society should be to look at dealing with the feelings rather than normalising an extreme reaction to them? Especially in children. I would link some of this to the pathetic shreds that is all that seems to be left of CAMHS.

I agree no child is trans because its trendy.

But No disgruntled I can't imagine how awful that would be. But I can imagine that when I said I hated skirts and dresses because they were girly, and I wanted to wear trousers like boys. If my parents had said no you are girl you have to wear skirts, I think I would have been very upset, angry determined and feel unfairly treated. I think I would have cried and shouted from the roof tops I wanted to be a boy! Because boys get to wear trousers and play with cool stuff. I was 5 when I decided girl stuff was not for me.

Imagine if I was 5 now and my parents only answer as to why I behaved like that is because I was actually and boy stuck in a girls body. At 5 I'd have believed them, and if it ment I could wear trousers, play with my brothers toys and have all my hair cut off then I most probably would have said yes yes yes I'm a boy I must be a boy.

@Samcro... Thank you!

This issue really troubles me. I am very "left wing" by any definition, but I genuinely (naively?) thought we'd nearly reached a point where we just accepted people for who they were, and a world (or at least our small part of it) where you could do "boy/girl" things, as a member of either sex/gender, even down to dresses etc. without fear of reprisal or discrimination. I envisioned a world where people could look, dress and sleep with people as they chose, without having to put a label on it, or face stigma for it.
But instead I seem to be seeing a weird inversion of my beliefs, into one that is maybe more agreeable to those who oppose homosexuality. Ie if you fancy boys, and like wearing "girls" clothing then you must be a girl, "we can get that fixed".
As in my previous post, I am very "masculine " in so many ways, and have been for the vast majority of my life, but I enjoy the (biological) female bits of me as much as the "male" parts of me.
If at say, 11 or 12, you'd offered me the chance to change sex I'd have jumped at it. But now, I'm grateful to get the "best of both worlds"

In equal measure I want the people who really need to change sex to be able to do so freely, and the people who are happy doing non gender stereotypical things to be able to do so also, without label or coercion to fit a "type".

How on earth can children be allowed to make these decisions when they are 'children'? They can't smoke, drink, drive or have sex, legally, or even choose which parent they live with. But they can make a decision about their gender.

@OTheHugeManatee completely agree... See my latest post....it's a bizarre inversion of left wing views to suit those who think if you fancy boys and wear a dress, you are a "girl".
I'm not entirely sure why this worries me quite so much, but I have expressed it as clearly as I can!

Just ignore JC. Work stuff out for yourself. He's a bleep

Jesus Christ? Jeremy Corbyn?

Jeremy (C)hunt??

Sorry, couldn't resist!

Jeremy Clarkson is an obnoxious prat. But he is right about this.

There is no such thing as being born in the wrong body. Some people do experience dysphoria for various reasons such as a mismatch between society imposed gender stereotypes and desired behaviour or because of societal homophobia (by 'changing sex' you can be straight instead of gay).

But it should not be the first or even second or third resort to try and address such dysphoria by surgery. Do you treat an anorexic who believes they are fat by giving them liposuction?

It is clear from the many TV programmes and other reports that parents are believing their children are 'trans' if they demonstrate traits culturally associated with the opposite sex. Going along with it and telling your child that they are in the wrong body or putting them n a path to 'transition' is child abuse - intentional or otherwise.

Research shows that the suicide rates are no lower post-transition demonstrating that it is not an effective fix.

Jeremy, erm um, Kyle? Ok ok. but still

He isn't actually wrong though, on this issue.

It absolutely blows my mind that children who are too young to choose what they eat for breakfast of a Monday morning are deemed able to decide they are being raised the wrong sex.

What the fuck.

We talked on other thread what does it mean to "feel like a girl/boy" and a lot of us "cis" types had not a clue. I'm sure I'd be fine as a bloke, would hardly be different... Still happy to be female.

Friend talks about how as a child she had a phase of strongly wanting to be a boy... the feeling passed, very happy as a woman ever since.

Children should have the freedom to try on & cast off different identities. The thing is, they can't possibly know what those identities mean and their passion to be Other may be based on total whims (because children are actually full of whims).

I don't see how a child can even understand if they are TG, can have that strong a gender identity, or can understand what it is to be transG & make that choice. So on this one, I'm more with Clarkson than against. Teens & Adults are different, heavy hormones have been at work in their brains & they have more brain development by then.

That's a wonderful post Manatee, and I agree with every word.

I would just like to quote GruntledOne for a moment:

'Can any of you imagine what it is like to know you are in the wrong body and that you should have been born a man but to be forced to go through the process of developing breasts and having periods....'

No. I can't imagine that because thankfully I've never been in a position where I believed something that was categorically untrue, to the extent that I resented the whole physiological process I was going through.

How can someone 'know' that they are in the 'wrong body'? How does that even begin to make sense?

The body you have cannot, by definition, be the wrong one. It's yours and it's the only one you're going to get.

It would be like deciding you live in the wrong house, and taking up residence in the one next door instead, because you 'know' it's your house despite what the paperwork says.

It's crazy.

In other words it is the belief that's dysfunctional, not the body itself. I have sympathy for those who believe stuff like this about themselves (know they should have been born a man/woman/dog/whatever) because there's clearly something wrong with them.

I identify sometimes as someone I've seen in a film, or a book - I can almost imagine I'm taking on a part of their identity, their facial expressions, the way they speak perhaps. It doesn't last long. It's called escapism. Sometimes 'acting' in this role helps me deal with certain situations better - when I'm finding my children hard work, I sometimes imagine I'm my sister, who is good with children, and I talk a bit like she would or I think 'what would she do?' and it helps me to think from a different perspective.

Stuff like that, I think, is normal - it's a mixture of learning and copying - trying things out. And escaping briefly from the rut you have got into as yourself.

If you then go on to decide that this is your true personality, that you actually are this other person, that would cross the line into deluded. Using other people's behaviour and style and whatever as inspiration, to help build your own self, is normal. It doesn't however change what and who you were born as, in any way.

'Can any of you imagine what it is like to know you are in the wrong body and that you should have been born a man but to be forced to go through the process of developing breasts and having periods....'

Yes. that was me. But I'm not trans or wish to be trans as an adult.

How can someone 'know' that they are in the 'wrong body'? How does that even begin to make sense?

How about talking to someone in that position rather than loftily assuming that they must be wrong? Look at Jan Morris, for instance. She was born male and has been living happily as a woman for over 40 years having undergone medical transition. Who the fuck are we to tell her that she's deluded?

I don't know anyone to ask.

Exactly dimots every single woman I know would love to never have periods (especially those who've completed their families and now see them as having no point whatsoever) and those of us with large tits would love to be smaller so we can actually run comfortably. But not one of us thinks that means we must secretly want to be men.

Since when did the dislike of some aspects of our sex mean we must automatically want to belong to the other sex?

Actually I know the answer to that. It was when the medical profession introduced artificial hormones and surgery that could apparently make it possible. Before that you had no choice, you had to just get on with it. I hope it comes back to bite the medical/psychiatry professions on their arses. I wouldn't entrust my child's physical or mental health to those charlatans.

Maybe you shouldn't make assumptions then, Pipistrella?

Personally I don't understand why transgender is a fashionable left-wing cause when its founding idea - boys and girls have different brains and gender-stereotypical behaviour is innate - is so utterly, prehistorically conservative. That's my issue. It all FEELS so much like misogyny and a man's version of what a woman is.

I know two little boys currently who dress as princesses, like dresses and long hair and dolls and are 'softer' and gentler than their male peers. Both mothers are doing the same with all their children (male/female, stereotypical behavior and otherwise), "anyone can play with anything; anyone can act any way as long as it doesn't hurt friends". The End.

It's annoying to find oneself aligned with a knobber like Clarkson. I wouldn't take the piss, laugh and be mean like him but I think the current message to children is just wrong.