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Original poster

Increase in transgender children.

162 replies

mumtoaninja · 07/04/2015 18:18

Don't shoot me if this is in the wrong section...I'm fairly new and still trying to navigate my way around!
Anyway, I watched an item on the news today about an increase in the number of transgender children being referred by gps.
My very first thought was is this generational? These days, parents are much more relaxed about what their darling offspring play with. Boys are happily playing with dolls and other 'pink' stuff and girls are playing more rough and tumble 'boys' games than they did maybe 50 years ago. Don't get me wrong, I've never encouraged my children (girl & boy) to play with gender specific toys, however they have both steered towards such toys. DS is mad on action figures/cars/gross stuff whereas my DD loves anything pink and sparkly. Each has had ample opportunity to play with the others toys, also at nursery and play dates but they choose not to. I do know several parents who push dolls and such on boys because 'why shouldn't their boy have a baby doll' etc.
Genuine question - is our new found open-mindedness causing children to grow up feeling confused about their gender?

OP posts:
IrenetheQuaint · 08/04/2015 21:52

Having differentiated shoes for pre-pubescent boys and girls is ridiculous in the first place.

I loathed puberty and if someone had offered me hormone blockers at 10 I'd have bitten their hand off... now in my 30s I am happy to be an adult woman and am very glad they didn't.

Floundering · 08/04/2015 22:02

Nicki I'm glad to hear it, sadly not every parent is as sensible. That is my point.

Oddboots EXACTLY!!! That is why I put the quote marks, kids shoes are kids shoes.

Society DOES push kids to conform to heterosexual norms as the default position and that's where the pressure is then put on those that feel different.

The OP's question was is there an increase in trans children. I would say no just an increase in awareness of the possibility and the willingness to talk about choices and thank god the availability of specialist support & advice for families like mine & GoGi

FloraFox · 08/04/2015 22:05

No wonder the child is frustrated over being TOLD it's not right to like random things.

Floundering · 08/04/2015 22:11

Which child Flora? Grin

Irene pubertal blockers are not handed out like sweeties to those who fancy them, if at age 10 you had not had some years of counselling and psychological assessment, there is no way you would have got them!

FloraFox · 08/04/2015 22:22

Any child looking longingly at shoes and being told it's not right to like them.

tigersack · 08/04/2015 22:24

I know I shudda
I didn't read the whole thread
My ds now 19 up to 5 lived in a.pink tu tu dress up of his sister and a nurse outfit
We have 4 kids and had a range of girls and boys choices
He seems a raging heterosexual man
)says he fancies girls and has had several 'serious' girlfriends
He is very sensitive and caring
Who knows??

hobNong · 08/04/2015 22:39

Why do we call blue things boy things? Why do we say dresses are for girls? I'm sorry but I do not accept that if a boy wants to wear a dress and play with dolls, that this makes him trans. We decide that things are masculine and feminine, that is not a natural state of affairs. We make it up. That's why it's now normal for women to wear 'men's' trousers.

If someone has dsyphoria about their actual body parts, that's a different matter. If they hate their girl or boy genitals that's not the same as not like the clothes that society has decided they should like. However, I'm not convinced surgery is the best answer for this. If someone with bdd hated their arms, I do not think we would chop them off, we would counsel them and support them in that way.

tomatodizzymum · 08/04/2015 22:44

It is incredibly difficult to seperate the children who are only socially in the wrong gender and those that are both in the wrong gender and actually physically born the wrong sex. Sex and gender are intertwined. gender identity is gender specific roles and cultural norms for the two different sexes.

I was that little girl that was looking longingly at the "boys shoes" and feeling frustrated because I KNEW that it wasn't "right" to feel that way. Even if they are bought for you, it doesn't actually make you happy. I wasn't happy being a boy, I was just slightly happier than I was as a girl. There are thousands of children like this, all over the world. It's no where near the same as being transgender.

Those that need to change their gender are the ones who really deeply are both socially and biologically in the wrong sex/gender. I cannot even begin to imagine what that must be like for them and their families. I just think that this should be done when they have reached biological and social maturity, perhaps the idea that it can be done in childhood is alarming because it does affect the rest of their lives.

AtSea1979 · 08/04/2015 22:50

When I was younger I wanted to be a boy, I cut my hair short, i wore 'boys' clothes and I played with 'boys' toys. When my hormones kicks in I liked boys and I wanted boobs. As an adult, I'm neither straight nor trans. I still prefer none 'girly girl' stuff and don't wear dresses and feel comfy in jeans and tshirt. I look back on my childhood and say I was a tom boy. I used to battle with my mum and insist I wanted to be a boy and my mum would just sigh and leave me to it, these days it seems I'd end up in some clinic being told I had some condition but it ok because I can be myself Confused

AtSea1979 · 08/04/2015 22:51

Sorry I meant I am straight (not gay)

hobNong · 08/04/2015 22:54

Same here AtSea. I didn't even have an interest in boys until I was about 16 and I hated my changing body because of all the unwanted male attention it got.

almondcakes · 08/04/2015 22:55

That isn't what gender identity is.

The UK is legally obliged by the UN to reduce stereotyped roles for men and women. In that sense, everyone is in the wrong gender role.

Gender identity is an internal sense of whether someone considers themselves to be male, female or neither.

almondcakes · 08/04/2015 22:57

Sea, yes, about one in ten children feel the way you did. It is a common experience.

AtSea1979 · 08/04/2015 22:58

But Almond surely they are basing that sense of feeling female/male on the external environment around them.

almondcakes · 08/04/2015 23:02

Atsea, I think different individuals are basing it on different things. It doesn't have a specific enough or well defined enough meaning to be based on any particular thing.

There isn't a test you can take where there is a checklist of traits somebody with a female gender identity has, so you can look at it and say, oh I am a woman.

It has no particular objective meaning.

Floundering · 08/04/2015 23:06

Hob exactly, Eddie Izzards quote springs to mind

" I don't wear womens dresses I like to wear dresses"

I reiterate again though, getting surgery for body dysphoria, if appropriate like getting any other treatment, is a long & drawn out process involving hours of psychological assessment before surgery is considered. Many trans people don't ever have surgery or only top surgery.

hobNong · 08/04/2015 23:06

Well I have no sense of gender identity. What does that mean?

almondcakes · 08/04/2015 23:08

It means exactly what you say. You don't have one. You don't have to have one.

AtSea1979 · 08/04/2015 23:11

I don't want to cause offense but surgery is so drastic. If a person with body dysphoria like anorexia wanted surgery to remove any excess fat/skin to look slimmer, would the surgeon do it? Or treat the psychological dysphoria with the aim of curing them so they are a 'normal' weight/body shape. But it seems transgender/gender dysphoria in young children is not being treated as a problem but as something to be embraced?

hobNong · 08/04/2015 23:11

Ive mentioned this on another thread, but there was a thread on here once asking what made you feel like a woman, if you did feel like one, and pretty much everyone who answered had no internal sense of gender. All the answers were basically that they were a woman because they had the sexual organs and because of the socialisation.

tomatodizzymum · 08/04/2015 23:14

Exactly AtSea. They can only feel female or male if those have first been constructed by the external environment or culture. What an isolated tribal amazonian man considers to be male will not be the same as a British man's idea of what it means to be male. Both will have exactly the same basic physical experiences of being a man, but even some physical experiences will differ because they are linked to and constructed by society.

CSLewis · 08/04/2015 23:19

FYI There's a thread currently in Telly Addicts called Louis Theroux Transgender Kids, which raises some interesting points.

almondcakes · 08/04/2015 23:20

Tomato you said:

"gender identity is gender specific roles and cultural norms for the two different sexes."

It may very well be that gender specific roles cause gender identity, but it is not true that gender identity is gender specific roles.

A gender identity and a gender role are not the same thing. What gender roles means is clearly defined, as in Flora's earlier WHO post.

Floundering · 08/04/2015 23:31

AtSea of course surgery is drastic, which is why it is NOT contemplated for YEARS, and only then after hours of counselling, assessment, and living life as the chosen gender for at least two years in a full role as that persona. ( younger in the US but still after lengthy assessment)

To read some of the comments on here anyone would think hormones were being handed out like free school milk & surgery offered to every child who likes dressing up!!

tomatodizzymum · 08/04/2015 23:36

I thought gender identity was the extent that someone identifies with either the gender role of their sex or the gender role of the opposite sex or with both (neither).

Is it not?

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