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?

I'll watch the documentary with interest this evening. I expect that Theroux will have done a suitably sensitive job of it. Thanks for flagging it up, OP.

The article is far short of what I expect from the Guardian; it bothers me that girl are boiled down to shoes and boys to trucks.

I do wish I had an explanation, that I could understand, of why gender body dysphoria is treated differently than of types of body dysphoria. I have the same questions as ELTB.

But if you talk to your male infant a lot, that's not going to turn him female, just like a verbally neglected girl isn't going to become a boy.

gender dysphoria and bdd are two different things....

Is what way tibbysmum?

There are plenty of adults who experienced panic attacks and tears at the idea of growing up the sex they are. The vast majority come to terms with it as they grow up as teenagers.
Hormone blockers do have side effects.

Ehric, apologies, I am about to have a houseful - I will come back later but I am quite sure Google will enlighten you in the meantime.

But what about all the boys, for instance, who grow up liking girls toys and glitter and clothes and make-up… and end up being just gay. None of the gay men I know want to be women, even though they grew up liking girls stuff. Do people worry that children who are gay but not transgender will be persuaded to change sex when, in fact, that is not ultimately what they would have chosen?

I grew up playing with cars, climbing trees and digging in the mud. I had no interest in dolls or princesses.
I have grown up to be a heterosexual female.

I think it is possible for someone as an adult to look back and say 'I always knew I was different, I didn't like typically boys/girls things.' But it's not always possible for someone to start from that point and look forwards.

But what about all the boys, for instance, who grow up liking girls toys and glitter and clothes and make-up… and end up being just gay.

Or even the ones who end up just being straight.

There is a massive great elephant in the room of public debate about this issue, and it renders the self-reports and aspirations of trans people extremely problematic. They can only express their situation using the language that we have, and the categories that we take for granted, but unfortunately that language and categorisation is full of made up assumptions and fallacies.

The idea that you can be born in the wrong body presupposes that there is such a thing as a "right" body.

The idea that you are deeply and physically different from other people because you don't "identify" with the gender role you were assigned, presupposes that those other people do.

Neither of these presuppositions are valid, IMO.

I did google and have been reading this Kat Callahan Jezebel Article. I'm trying to read it openly and take what she is saying at face value. I need to reread later (after eating all my choc eggs by myself ) and organise my thoughts.

MythicalChicken, I don't think children are ever "persuaded to change sex". Cases I've heard of where children are transgender are very much child-led. I would imagine it's incredibly rare for a parent to push their child into something like this.

I'm quite looking forward to the documentary, really.

Those of you who don't agree with allowing children to take hormone blockers etc - where would you say people are able to start making those choices? I know of someone (not directly, more a friend-of-a-friend situation) who is currently supporting their 15-year-old son through hormone treatment and eventually surgery. I also know someone who's a year older than me (so late 20s) who came out as trans a couple of years ago, yet she's known for years that she was trans. It seems to me that she could have had a much easier time of it if she could have started treatment earlier in her life.

*Sorry, when, not where! As in, at what age.

Yes, here's a different Guardian article summarising the research on brains being 'softwired' by socialisation www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/15/girls-boys-think-same-way . Brain scans are a red herring, they just show how we've been socialised not created by biology. You can see that same result in studies showing how learning languages extend brain connections, how survivors of abuse have parts of their brains atrophied, and so on.

Deciding an 18 month old was 'born into the wrong body' is really odd, and you don't then need to look very far to wonder why the 5 or 10 yr old might be unhappy with their gender.

The only difference between BDD and gender dysphoria in that article are the way medical professionals have decided to label and treat them.

If someone who has a BDD and believes they are smelly wants surgery (issues of smell are a common form of BDD), who are we to label them mentally ill and deny them surgery? Neuroscience shows their brains are different, smelliness is a spectrum not a binary, it is up to the individual to decide how smelly they feel they are or want to be, lots of people have surgery for psychological reasons, and cis bodied people use deodorant all the time without having the buying of deodorants policed by psychologists.

Sorry, am referring to the Jezebel article not the Guardian ones.

I think my problem with the treatment of transgender children is the explicit propagation of strict gender roles. At present we live in a highly gendered society - as much as I believe in gender as a social construct, it is a reality for a lot of people, and I can understand adults wanting to change the way they are perceived in order to feel comfortable in their clothing/behaviour/roles. But by treating children who naturally challenge gender stereotypes (as many many children do before having it trained out of them) as being transgender, it seems the opportunity to say, yes, my son is feminine and that's ok, is lost, and it acts against the idea that society will ever allow gender non-conforming people to be themselves.

Yonic - not so much a question of what would convince me, I assumed there must be some definitive research given how the statement I quoted was phrased. And I was interested to know what it was, given that I could only find conflicting viewpoints.

Also, something of a redundant question on your part since if I knew that there was an authoritative source to support the PP point, I wouldn't need to ask what it was

"Cases I've heard of where children are transgender are very much child-led. I would imagine it's incredibly rare for a parent to push their child into something like this."

Child led at 18 months?? Rare for parents to push gender??

I've just been sent some photos of a new family baby. A sea of pink with a baby lost in the middle. Genderfication starts from birth. Every transgender story I've read about talks about rejecting the stereotypical behaviours imposed, nothing else.

There's a huge amount of homophobia underpinning a lot of stories of transgender children, particularly in the US. The Guardian article includes this gem: "In the US the treatment of transgender children is arguably more accepted and advanced than it is in the UK." How about encouraging children to love themselves as they are?

As usual no mention of the most "accepted and advanced" place for transgendered adults: Iran.

Flora, you might find this interview with Louis Theroux more nuanced and responsible than the Guardian article:

www.vice.com/en_uk/read/an-interview-with-louis-theroux

There is no definitive research on the brain, which is by its nature plastic, that can prove physiological differences independent of the environment and society in which that brain has developed.

Whether the assumed basis of the difference is sex, gender, skin colour, eye colour, hair colour or whatever.

What people disagree on is how much socialisation can be stripped out from any brain studies. What they also disagree on is how much any physical differences within the brain correspond to behavioural difference.

As said, there is no decisive evidence that there are any innate gender qualities that are present at birth. The trans orthodoxy states that there are 'male and female brains' as if this is fact which has become very hard to challenge.
I cannot understand how anyone can be a feminist and accept this as fact. It also fails to stand up to any sort of critical analysis.
Feeling like a woman is not something that women in general can quantify. What makes men believe they feel like a woman when they have never had the experience of being one? All the things that we understand to be female or feminine are either biological which a male cannot experience or socialised which a male also cannot experience.
The gendered traits that trans men envy in women are not innate, they are developed through socialisation and as such cannot be 'felt' by someone who has never been socialised female.
And vice versa.

Sorry trans women in the last sentence not trans men.

What I take from this and it could be completely wrong is

1. body dismorphia would involve say a man looking at this penis (or leg or arm) and thinking it's a horrible, ugly penis (or leg or arm)but not that he isn't a man.

1. Sex dysphoria would involve looking at the penis and thinking that's a damn fine penis if I wanted to be /felt like a man but as I'm not/don't feel like a man I'm not thrilled by it.

3.My friend's daughter on the other hand ,as far as I know was perfectly happy with her physical body,was happy being a girl but simply didn't want to wear feminine clothes.

4 where I lose it completely was in a blog by a lesbian transgender woman who loves her penis, has no intention of getting surgery or even using hormones and wants to use her penis on other lesbian women (lesbian women clearly being from how she described it women with vaginas , not women like herself women with female penises)

Yeah the 'female penis' concept. Yeah.