Transgender kids article in today's Guardian

[TerraNovice]

Did anyone see this article about Louis Theroux's documentary that airs tonight? www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/05/transgender-kids-children-change-sex-families

Admittedly I have some issues with it. Is it really good to give kids hormone blockers from childhood? And I do find one of the mothers' statement problematic where she says she felt like she had a little girl because her son liked her shoes and "feminine" things and wasn't interested if you put a truck in front of him. I find these ideas of gender really reductive. A child who is uninterested in traditional masculine or feminine toys etc may not necessarily be transgender, they could be an effeminate boy or a butch girl. Why pump them full of hormones when they are very little?

Any thoughts?

Transexuality is big in Iran because homosexuality is punishable by death! If you're attracted to the same sex, it's celibacy, sex change or death for you.

And in Iran, yes, clearly women's choices are highly constrained - but I highly doubt many men (who haven't thought much about feminism) would see that as the case in the UK or US today.

From the little I've read since Flora's raised this having to deal with the odd "transexclusionary radical feminist" is the least of the worries a transitioned trans person in Iran will have to deal with.

StillLost there are MtF who believe that life as a woman is much easier. They are, in general, wrong, although for them personally their lives may have been easier if they had been born women but the general female experience is certainly not easier than the male.

Thanks stilllost but it was the difference in rates of MtF / FtM that I was interested in. It makes perfect sense within an Iranian cultural context for that to be the case - IF cultural norms are accepted as a cause of some transitions.

Stillostatthestation, a lot of MtFs have sexual motivations for transitioning. transgenderreality.com/2015/03/27/special-edition-sissies-fetishists-and-kinksters/

Here's the source for there being more FTM than MTF in Iran.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4301205/

Thanks Flora a very interesting article ... In many ways!

When I was a child, I was a tomboy, liked boys clothes, toys, and wanted to be a boy for a while but happy in my own skin and do not want to change my gender. I still wished I had gone into flight training and become a Pilot but that's another story. I think one of the kids on the show was unsure, he liked being a girl and a boy, and liked boys and girls things, when older wanted to remain a boy when questioned. In that situation I would hold off the threapy and medication, and just let the kids be happy how he is, and see what he feels when older.

StillLostAtTheStation I am a seventies child so not massively younger than you (in the scheme of things) I went to a girls school that absolutely pushed the academic and I expected to succeed. But I was also very interested in the world and it didn't take much to see that all the power belonged to men.

Plus my mother was pretty traditional and totally favoured all the men in her life, presenting a view that women were really there to support men's success. I don't think she was particularly unusual back then, or even now for that matter.

More fundamentally I had extremely painful periods and I was sexually assaulted when I was about 12 or so. So no I didn't think that being a girl was all that fantastic. Pretending to be male was one of my defenses in living an independent life and I thought it worked pretty well.

GoGiYerHeedAWobble: Are you seriously starting HRT at age 10?

My understanding is that it's usually recommended to wait until 12 at the earliest.

The majority of boys who are gender dysphoric in childhood grow out of it ("desist") by about age 10 or 11 (in the end, most identify as gay men in the long term), so it's generally not considered advisable to start taking medical steps towards transition at such a young age.