Louie Theroux Transgender Kids

[dancemom]

Is anyone else watching this?

red - YY, and this is what makes me want to shout at the screen, because it was all about how to change yourself and very little about how to change society. With Crystal/Cole, it was just stated that he went to school as a he and could only be a she at home. And, as I said, with Nicky the parents were saying that other children didn't understand she wasn't gay, but they didn't film any bit saying 'oh, this is awful, how do we get the school to clamp down on homophobic bullying?'.

You can't know what's not included in a programme, but it felt uneven to me.

I also found it dubious when LT was asking Nicky if she liked what she saw in the mirror. Now, how many teenagers are going to think - honestly - 'yes, I love everything and I have no issues at all'?! You would feel an enormous pressure to feel as if you're not allowed to have anxieties.

Ultimately, I think society has to change its attitudes to gender.

I mean, FGS, I went to school in a tiny village in the early 90s and people were still enlightened enough to accept the lad who spent his life dressing up as Tina Turner (yes, really) without making a big deal of it.

There were several children on the program who hadn't had years of counselling and instead had just been rushed in to 'help' them.

Nicky had seen 15 minutes of a program about TG and identified herself and a year later had completely switched to a female persona, was having hormone blockers and discussing surgery and the young boy who'd had a double mastectomy a year after developing breasts because he didn't like them with no mention of identifying as male beforehand were particularly unsettling cases.

Crystal/Cole also unsettled me because it seemed like he was being pulled in different directions by his parents and didn't really know what he wanted or who he was.

I found it fascinating im not sure about the hormone blockers seemed really invasive i dont know if some of the parents have jumped to quick to label their children transgender little camille was only 5 but i do think her parents would be open to letting her explore this and go back to sebastian. I think cole/crystal was more transvestite than transgender and mum was pushing it. I love how sensitive and interested Louis is in his programmes

Yeah, they didn't seem to want to talk about 'hey, maybe you're neither gender! Maybe it is all a social construct!' did they?!

I think very few people naturally fit into a binary view of gender completely.

Strongly agree with RedToothBrush's comments above.

I also feel that the programmers spending however many tens/hundreds? of thousands of pounds making this programme, with an attention-grabbing title, are also doing the public a dis-service. This subtly implies that this phenomena is much more prevalent and common than in fact is the case, and that might make other parents even quicker to jump to conclusions about their own young children, and maybe feel that they need to be 'doing things' about changing their children, as all these other parents are.

The other thing that makes my blood BOIL is throwing around statistics that, literally in the same line, they admit that there is no proven evidence for!!

"It is estimated that between 2% and 5% of the population experience some form of this, although statistical analysis is patchy." If it's so patchy, why are you endorsing it by quoting it?

"In Britain no major government or administrative surveys have included a question where transgender people can choose to identify themselves, but it is thought that there are between 300,000 and 500,000 trans people in the UK." Thought??!? BY WHOM?!? On what evidence?? Or is none necessary for thoughts on subjects like this?

The media has a massive part to play in forming and massaging public perception, on all sorts of subjects, and this kind of fatuous vagueness on the statistical evidence (and omission of things like the suicide rate of pre/post-transitioned adults, as a op mentioned) is IMO outrageous.

Dd has a friend who doesnt identify (is that the right word) as boy or girl andjust goes by name she is a girl and doesnt mind being called girl but prefers name

A surprising number of babies are born with genitals which aren't one or the other gender but somewhere in between.

How they fit into this I'm not sure - but I do think its another thing that's worthy of note in a documentary of this nature and important to our understanding of a number of children going through this.

I think Louis picked a topic that a one-hour programme was inadequate to cover. Obvious his focus of transgender children was deliberately narrow but the children were too young to really articulate their thinking. Perhaps that's one reason for caution in this whole debate, it seemed to be adults interpreting their children's wishes and then feeding the words and courses of action to the children while telling them it was their choice.

Louis tried to get around this by talking to adults, but that threw up more questions. If Minerva wanted to be a woman, why did she not mind having a penis? Why did the young lad only want 'top' surgery and not 'bottom' surgery? How common is that?

Louis' style is to politely ask the questions that the viewer wants answered, but this time I felt he held back or was constrained by the length of the programme, which was a shame.

Yes I always wonder if the clinics check their patient's DNA to see if any of them have an intersex condition which might help explain why they don't feel particularly one binary gender. I know in the adult TG community over here though that idea (checking underlying DNA) is unpopular as some see it as too glib an explanation. If I had a child with ambiguous genitalia or feelings about gender (genuine, not just a little kid liking tutus) it's the first thing I'd check - but I am scientifically trained so tend to see factor perhaps.the importance of DNA more than other.

Genuinely intersex people are a statistically negligible category. They do exist of course but not in any significant numbers. The category of biologically intersex does not explain or legitimise the concept of transgender children.

I found the teen who had had her breasts removed but didn't seem bothered by any other part of her very worrying.
A lot of girls are worried/scared about growing up and going through puberty. My DD was one, she used to say she didnt want to be an adult. There are girls who stop eating to try to stop developing.
Having a double mastectomy is a massive step to take.

I wondered how the ops were being paid for. I'm sure the parents insurance wouldn't cover something like that.

I can't believe anyone would do a mastectomy on a child of that age. So permanent

There is a lot of strong feeling about people with intersex conditions (which are rare). Some people feel it's not ok to compare being transgender and being intersex - basically, because some people who were born with ambiguous genitalia don't feel that what they experience is the same as being trans, and vice versa.

There's a really difficult history to it. It used to be that children born with clitorises that were unusually long, or penises that were unusually short, were given surgery when very young, to give them what looked like a vagina. The thing was that it was easier to do it this way around. But, that surgery was fairly primitive, and tended to remove either reproductive capacity or capacity to orgasm, or both.

I think it is now generally recognised that if a child is born with ambiguous genitalia, the best thing to do is to preserve sexual/reproductive function and explain to the child that they just look a bit different down there, and let them have surgery later if need be.

But it's not really comparable to trans surgeries, where the issue isn't that someone's genitalia are in any way medically unusual, but the person feels they are wrong.

I want to know if the insurance was footing the bill. Can't believe how quick the medics were to start hacking away.

I agree. I felt Cole was being forced into the transgender thing my his mum who refused to refer to him as he not seeing she was being as polarising as his dad. Preschool and primary school aged kids "choosing" a gender is silly as they don't really have any concept of gender as an adult at that age and there is far more stereotyping of boy v girl clothes and toys as a child than there is as an adult where you can be a girl but wear trousers and be a mechanic or engineer. There is less flexibility for men and I think that is why there are far more m to f transgender folk although as a feminist I dislike the stereotypes involved and don't think there is such a thing as being "really a girl" but with xy chromosome and male genitalia. What does "really a girl" mean to these men? Wanting long hair and to wear girly clothes? I don't see this huge difference between being male or female that means you have to change your body to express who you want to be.
I think it's sad people can't just feel comfortable in their own body but wear whatever clothes they want and play with what they want without feeling the need to change their pronoun to justify their actions.
My son dressed up in girlie clothes and played with barbies when young, my brother used to enjoy playing Rapunzel when my sibs and I acted as kids.
Men can't "become" women and vv. You just end up as a sort of intersex. Far better to accept we all have some male and female characteristics and see gender as a continuum, much of which is socially constructed.