My Transgender Kid

[kua]

Anyone watching? Half way through, quite different kids, though gender stereotypes seem to be a quite strong theme.

Nick was lovely. I don't think he particularly needed to talk about being kind as he so obviously was. I wonder how he would react to being told he wouldn't be the person he is if his parents had just allowed him to wear boys' clothes.

Italiangreyhound's post from earlier on seems eminently sensible.

I find it hard to imagine no one in these families or in their immediate area had thought people could be a female and like things often liked by males or vice versa. So I am sure the parents would have gone there first. We were seeing them after years of this, so this place at the point where the documentary was filmed was not where it all began.

I do think there is much more going on here for these kids than simply liking things that are identified as being for the opposite sex. I think for some kids they do totally identify as the opposite sex so by extension they are wanting to avoid things that are socially connected to the sex they are biologically.

I don't think anyone's really said that. just trying to point out that indulging even the negative aspects of a stereo type, could result in being hurtful for people.

there is clearly more to it than.just clothing. but a parebts job is to support them which they seem. to be doing and those kids are so lucky because clearly the parents are really fighting for their kids. and it is also to try and shape how they develop as a person and allowing them to act they way they do with the gender identity as an excuse is not going to help. George can't help being a boy on a girls body. but his sister can't help being his twin either. and she is managing to deal with loosing her sister without being cruel. and it was a shame that George was excused for being so cruel when n equally his sister can't help being a girl nor liking what she likes.

Well at lesst one poster has I didn't get why George couldn't just wear trousers, have short hair and be a tom boy without her parents suggesting that that meant she was a boy

Another Nic fan here. He is lovely. Not so keen on George, he's only little though - so I feel quite mean saying that.

lass I have similar feelings about sport. I just don't get it, loads of my friends love watching sport (male and female) it just baffles me.

The acquisition of identifiable markers is interesting - I have an acquaintance that was transitioning that I would meet both as a man and as a woman. He would discuss his love of track racing fast bikes, and how he would be sad to give that up at the end of his journey. She would ask me what colour nail polish she should wear (I don't do make-up, and am equally as clueless about bikes). I did ask why giving up bikes was necessary (and by extension, why wearing nail polish was necessary) - surely that's just performing gender? Largely the answer I got was about conforming - and as an adult the RL test is largely about conforming, so I kind of get it. But it did all leave me feeling rather sad - to feel as though you can't really be true to yourself and have to essentially perform gender for passing/ cultural acceptance. But there was a huge sense of being baffled, as though I should be in some sense fully aware of why it would be necessary to wear nail varnish, and that as a woman I should be able to dole out make-up based advice... so I came away still unsure whether the gender performance was deliberate to conform, or whether it was accepted as innate gender difference and that was what was providing the impetus to transition.

Ds's best friend is ftm. He's 13 and started living as a boy this year. My ds is not known for his emotional intelligence but has stood by his friend through some difficult (catholic) school issues, and is just completely accepting of the facts. X lives as a boy now. For him it is a complete no-brainer, whereas I am the one worrying and wanting to make sure everything is ok.

I haven't seen this programme, but we get 'I am Jazz' and it absolutely highlights the same issues around stereotyping. As Jazz is older, with older siblings, it is also interesting to see the same absolute acceptance in her siblings as ds shows. Literally a shrug and 'Jazz is a girl' or 'x is a boy'.

I do think the editing/ interviewing deliberately just portrays the stereotypical side deliberately though. There is just no questioning of these 'facts'. I often find myself shouting at the tv 'but why does that make her a girl???!'

Is this on iplayer?

It's on Channel 4 so you can get it on the "all 4" app on a phone and I assume on the desk top version (and sit through loads of advert)

No I get why you don't like sport, Lass. I just don't think you are immune to socialisation either.

I've come across that too madwoman. I spoke to a (very emotionally intelligent) transman about this recently and he said that because the legal & medical barriers to transition function in such a gender stereotypical way, it's easiest to play along and say "I'm a woman because I love shoes and kittens" or whatever, and then what often happens is that people settle into the gender as they get older and become less stereotypical. I'm sure there's an element of that with these children.

Oh and I don't speak for all feminists, and some people on this thread identifying as feminists are not speaking for me. So can you stop lumping us into one homogeneous group.

The kids seemed very mature really.
I don't understand why pink and sparkles is only girly. It is just a Disney- American version of a girl.
I would be interested to see how transgender kids in countries not affected by Disney princesses present.

Scallops - What I said was It seems impossible for some feminists to accept girls or women are capable of making their own mind up about having zero interest in sport.

It's up to you whether you are one of those feminists.

Is the little qualifier about "socialisation" intended to show you still can't quite believe a school girl can, of her own mind, query what exactly is so wonderful about hitting a hockey ball into a net and decide , nothing and there are more profitable and enjoyable activities ? (In my case Latin and maths)

Vashta, it's all so bizarre, isn't it? The illusion that society is moving away from the gender binary (Jenner, multiple tv shows with transgender kids etc) whereas in reality, permission to transition medically and legally rests on absolute performance of stereotypical 'norms' in accordance with that binary. As a feminist, I get irritated by societal expectations based on gender, but the expectations are even more consolidated for any mtf acquaintance. It's gender policing under the guise of gender liberalism.

I find the devaluing of femininity on this thread depressing.

I think it would be interesting if they made a tv show about gender expression in kids who weren't trans.

I find absolute acceptance of 'femininity' and 'masculinity' depressing. It's all socialization - including the devaluing. In order to devalue it, you have to accept it as a thing. It is exactly why my ds gave up ballet. He's sticking with mlp though, possibly out of bloody mindedness and exasperation that these things are gendered.

I find having differing expectations of human beings by virtue of their sex more depressing.

But yes - a rigorously researched and open series on how children learn gender would be very interesting. we could call it 'they fuck you up, your mum and dad, they may not mean to, but they do' a la Philip Larkin...

No that's not what I meant Lass. I actually didn't mean it to refer to your dislike of sport (although I can see why you'd think that would be the case). But I do think that because we are all socialised to a certain extent it is difficult to know how much about why we like/dislike something is innate to is and how much is down to the messages we receive.

I agree mathanxiety. Although masculinity tends to be revered rather than devalued even when some of it is harmful to women or society as a whole. So challenging those aspects should be encouraged, frankly.

And yy about some research/tv show about expressing gender in general, almondpudding.

Scallops, I think both are an issue - that there are such things as gender roles and that one of those roles is dominant over the other.

I think that's at the heart of the current issues around gender - many people seem only able to see a problem with one or the other, not both.

Agree almondpudding. Gender as a hierarchy. Which is why men wouldn't feel comfortable wearing women's clothes but it's OK for women to wear men's clothes (to use the example upthread). And I think a lot of reaction to feminity is in reaction to it being viewe and treated as lesser.

"impossible for some feminists to accept girls or women are capable of making their own mind up about having zero interest in sport."

Of course girls/women can have no interest in sports. Surely nobody doubts that.

The issue downthread was with your declaration "I loathe sports because they are pointless and boring". This sounds more like social conditioning* than a conclusion reached through an individual thinking for herself to me, because if you thought about this rationally for a minute, you would figure out that (1) regular physical activity is essential to good health so sports are not "pointless", and (2) there are loads of different sports very different from each other from billiards to white water rafting and it is impossible to call them all "boring", especially since you haven't tried any of them.

Now, the interesting part is you surprisingly believing that this conditioning is biological and innate, something to do with your brain. You believe all this (wanting to wear skirts and never wanting to wear trousers, hating all sports, etc) is your "innate sense of gender". Which means you believe all women share your feelings about clothes and sports since those, you think, are part of being a woman.

But those superficial bits of gender role are not a biological result of being born female. Obviously, since the vast majority of women don't mind wearing trousers and most have nothing against sports.

• In your particular case, not for any woman who isn't interested in sports.

I'm sure Lass is right, and that liking wearing skirts and hating sports is an innate part of the female brain.

I'm sure the men of Tonga and Samoa agree with her on the wearing skirts thing too. And the men of Scotland, must all be female, because they wear skirts/kilts.

S'obvious, innit.

Not too sure which part of the brain this innate skirt wearing bit is seated in though, presumably a part that men have lost in the West since the time of the Romans, but have retained in the East. I'm sure there's scope there for some fascinating research. I look forward to reading what the results of telling Saudi/Omani men that they are innately female because they don't like wearing trousers will be.

I'm sure Lass is right, and that liking wearing skirts and hating sports is an innate part of the female brain

I didn't say that. I'll explain again since the sport part seems to cause so much difficulty.

I'm fed up of the assertion by some feminists that girls don't like sports just because the nasty old patriarchy says they are not supposed.

I don't like sports and never have because I personally find sport really boring. Apparently however, unlike choosing to wear cargo pants which is a real choice a good enlightened feminist would make, I can't possibly have come to that decision on my own.

I see Cote is still insisting this dislike is due to social conditioning because clearly as a Stepford Wife I couldn't possibly have come to that conclusion myself. Oh and come off it with the idea that sport is essential to good health - no it isn't. I walk a lot, eat healthily, have never smoked, hardly drink and am not overweight.

It really is very insulting. You would be furious if a man continued to tell you over and over that you were wrong and he knows better.

I wonder Cote I'm very fond of the operas of Mozart and Handel and Benjamin Britten but Wagner leaves me cold. Is that social conditioning too or is my poor Stepford brain capable of making that choice?

As for choice of clothes I'm a woman. I like being a woman. I don't want to be a man. I don't want to look like a man and I don't want to wear men's clothes.

In the current western society I live in men don't tend to wear Edina Ronay dresses. Probably if I lived in Saudi or Oman or Ancient Rome I wouldn't want to wear their traditional men's clothes either.

Wagner is notoriously masculine though. and a ton of people don't like Wagner, having been brought up that way.

Anyhoo. Sports and femininity is always interesting. You only had to spend five minutes in a secondary school in the late twentieth century to realize that teen girls were supposed to bunk off pe, not supposed to sweat, and that wearing gym skirts was an invitation for lechery and corned beef legs, never a good thing in isolation or combination. So while Lass's own particular dislike of sport may well be sod all to do with her being a woman, there are a whole swathe of mn posters who have very definitely been socially conditioned to believe that sport is just not feminine, and is something to be disliked. A bit like Wagner. Any of the remember pe? threads will happily confirm this. (I am led to believe that Wagner had some very defined ideas about what constituted masculinity and femininity around the arts though).

Interestingly, 'I am Jazz' does deal with sports a bit, as she plays soccer (not unusual for a girl in North America) but does have some issues with the legalities of which team she is supposed to play on, and whether the move to high school will be problematic in terms of her soccer league (with the associated suggestion that high school is brutal and not only will she be torn to shreds for being trans, but will find that a lot of the girl's teams will believe it is inherently unfair for her to play in the league).

I don't like 'sport', but I love to run and ski. This is because I am a cranky, miserable hermit and can't be doing with relying on other people, having them rely on me, or socializing. Mostly I have run with dudes though, so have developed a method of breathing that does not give away how fucked I am. This is not vanity, this is so that the bastards will never know how close to dropping dead I am until it happens It's a psychological phenomena left over from days of being told how rubbish girls are at sport.

Ah, I knew my dislike of Wagner must be attributable to my Stepford brain !

I hated PE from around Primary 3. Even when it was an all girls' class with a female PE teacher. I wasn't fat, just hopelessly uncordinated and useless at it and as more games or track events were introduced the more I failed to see what the point of any of them were.

I had a long cycle ride every day to and from the point where the school bus picked me up and from 14 onwards an even longer cycle ride to my weekend job so got plenty of exercise.

Well I don't know about anyone else, Lass, but I'm bowled over by your dating profile.

abbieanders

Not sure I'd describe wearing cargo pants as a feminist choice. And I don't think anyone else has. It was offered up as an alternative to dresses and skirts. Not the definitive line in what constitutes a feminist choice.

And Wagner was a misogynist (weren't they all!). Not a fan, personally, but not as bad as Vaughan-Williams.