woman loses residency of son she was raising as daughter

[BombadierFritz]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3859618/You-caused-son-great-harm-insisting-raising-girl-Boy-seven-sent-live-father-mother-raised-daughter.html

hmmm. ok so its daily mail reporting but I am conflicted
perhaps good if child was being pushed into something he wasnt
but wtf with the boringly stereotypical insistance on the type of toys played with

iPost and presumably the "gender fluid" would transition and detransition multiple times a day/week/month...

Atransmum - excuse my ignorance, but I had to look into GNC as its not actually something I had heard of. However, give what I read this is how I have personally been dealing with my child's sudden gender dysmorphia simply. I certainly have no intention of going down the hormonal blocking route or surgery, mainly because I think she's both confused and being led by the Internet world and simply because at her age, I don't believe we need to go down what I believe is quite an extreme route and would only be considered once she was 18. But that's my personal opinion based upon my family. As I stressed to my child and my others who have their own special needs, I see it as we are who we are and that's it, we don't need to be defined by gender or what society perseves as acceptable gender or dress code etc etc. But as a parent we can only support and guide the best we can

As your points suggest, ipost, there is no central record keeping. There are numerous reasons for this but one, that I find particularly concerning, is that few researchers are prepared to work with this group because every single detail of any research is so contentious. Poor Ray Blanchard, I think it was, who identified and described autogynaephilia, was (and I think still is) absolutely hounded by TRAs. Who is going to risk interacting with this patient group again?

The Tavistock keeps records but those only cover their patients, which in terms of trans teens is not exhaustive. After all we know that Susie Green of Mermaids got her son's SRS and hormones overseas. Other parents have presumably done the same.

And then there's the whole "who is transgender?" thing. As it seems to be anyone who feels like it today, it's impossible to measure in any useful way.

@Gidds

Being a supportive and open minded parent and doing what is best for the child is what we like to see. Letting your child explore their gender and be gender non-confirming is fine.

Hormone blockers should only really be used if your child is having significant issues with puberty, not as a default treatment.

Whether they are transgender and/or need to transition is something you can figure out in time.

^^ who is "we" here?

Good question Flora

What are you if you're not GNC? Gender conforming? What does that mean?

I'd really genuinely love to understand but I just don't get it. Unless it's more like a spectrum and actually it's only a tiny minority of people that are gender conforming and the rest of us are all "trans"!

I don't see there's anything "infamous" about Walt Heyer, ATM. His site, Sex Change Regret, has some very interesting material and links. He seems to have evidence that far more people regret transition than you say.

^^ who is "we" here?

I think ATransMum has forgotten she's not posting on the Mermaids forums!

As far as I know, if your are GNC, then you are not cis, so GNC = trans

Fourormore, it's not any deficiency in your understanding, though I imagine you already know that. It's that the whole business is wholly illogical. No one is wholly gender conforming, which should mean that all of us are trans. However, in practice, it appears that only the young or cool are GNC. The rest of us are supposed to be happy with fucking nonsense "cis".

From previous posts, I thought ATrans is an MTT parent (or has fathered children) not a mother of a trans child.

It's a Royal we. Not a royal wee.

I'm not on the Mermaids forums. Surely my opinions would indicate that...

"....and doing what is best for the child is what we like to see. Letting your child explore their gender and be gender non-confirming is fine."

But what about detransitioners, who despite having dysphoria, or finding that transitioning did help their dysphoria (or not), or who may have passed extremely well etc etc, instead decided that gender was nonsense! That it wasn't a question of social reasons, or not passing, or not getting on with T, or whatever?

That is the bit that is missing here from the supposed reasons for detransitioning, or what to do about your offspring, the stopping believing in the whole (innate) gender thing........................

Maybe, being very cynical here, the issue first and foremost is believing in gender in the first place. You may then still have body dysmorphia, but maybe then you can understand it a bit differently if you stop believing in the gender part.....................Not exploring, or conforming, or not conforming, just stopping believing! What keeps occuring to me is someone trying different religions, trying different sects, swapping churches every second weekend, and no one pointing out that maybe the whole problem is wanting a religion in the first place, rather than thinking you haven't found quite the right one yet.......................

I am happy for my daughters to be gender-non conforming. I will be quite chuffed if they decide to study engineering rather than beauty therapy. Currently they hate pink, wear jeans, loves climbing trees and go to Cubs not brownies. I gave them garages and tool kits and well as dolls when they were little and they have played with both. Every little boy I know has had a phase of loving to dress up as Disney princesses. Why is this even a 'thing'?

Sorry I got you wrong, ATrans, but the 'we' jarred on me a bit as well - didn't realise you were royal!

Somedyke, that is absolutely how it feels to me, having grown up in a religious family. People constantly trying to insist that gender identities are real, and that if I just work a little bit harder or try yet another different approach to it, this completely nebulous and ill defined thing will suddenly reveal itself to me.

Back a long time ago, when glass was becoming more affordable for societies around Europe, there was a culture-bound syndrome called the Glass Delusion.

People thought they were made of glass or in some way contained a huge amount of glass (one famous case thought she had an entire glass piano in her body, I believe). They believed this quite strongly, believed they were so fragile and delicate that they could be broken to pieces.

If Mermaids had been around at that time, they'd hear from kids with the Glass Delusion and talk to their parents about ensuring that their house was completely padded in all surfaces to avoid breaking their child, how to cope with a child who says their glass has been chipped, and how to avoid suicidality by making sure their children know that their parents believe 100% in the glass inside them.

No one doubts these children hold their beliefs sincerely. No one doubts their beliefs are causing them distress. But when children are distressed by sincerely-held beliefs, the first question adults should have isn't "how do I appease this obviously true belief," but "is this belief actually true, and if not, how do I re-orient my child to better understand the reality of his/her situation?"

It's not kind to children to tell them their every fear is valid. It's not kind to children to tell them that every bit of magical thinking they experience is real and true. Children rely on the adults in their lives to help them make sense of their feelings and experiences, and need guidance to help them understand when their beliefs are irrational or ill-founded, not blind encouragement of whatever beliefs they seem most strong-minded about.

Society always believed in gender, we all know that. But 'innate gender' or 'brain sex' or 'born in the wrong body' only became the 'standard' trans story relatively recently. Actually, it was a bit of a rehash, given that 'born in the wrong body' used to be an 'explanation' (okay, even I'm getting tired of all the inverted commas here!) for butch lesbians (who should obviously have been men, really, rather than inverts or the damned third sex. As opposed to femme partners who were confused ordinary women, see 'The Well of Loneliness'.....), or for effeminate gay men. Other than the 'weird hormones' explanation, or hormone washes in the womb, or how many elder siblings (did you go measure your finger ratio?).

But now this innate gender/brain sex line is so much the norm that it is twisting what little research has been done in the area. So, for example, those brain region size papers, who of course compare female on this end of the spectrum, male on the other end, and then find that trans is somewhere in the middle (and closer to the sex they identify as rather than their birth sex). Apart from the fact that the stats and the methodology of the papers is nonsense, just the fact that they are projecting their data onto that simple male/female axis and expecting trans to be somewhere in between speaks volumes. They aren't questioning that this is the sort of comparison to be making in this case.

What doesn't seem to be being looked at (or please elucidate if anyone has any info) is where dysphoria comes from, and whether the bodily gender/sex dysphoria is different in essence from other dysphorias. Instead, it seems (amongst lay folk at least), to be the obvious and logical response to a belief that the brain is sexed and being sexed differently to the body. Of course you'd have dysphoria!

Seems to me you can't ask the real questions (what exactly is trans and what helps gender dysphoria) because we are supposed to already know from the accounts of transfolk (apart from the ones like Anne Lawrence who say autogynephilia, but they are obviously not real trans or at least not the right sort of trans!), hence asking the questions is transphobia cos it's disbelieving transfolk...............

See for me, approaching Mermaids, I found the few I have spoken to to be very sensible and open minded to other options. I certainly haven't found them to push any idea upon me, but just explained things when I asked questions. To be totally honest, I would have made a run for the hills had they been anything but giving what I would deem sensible advice. As I've said before, I'm pretty laid back about most things but the quick pace that my child was finding out about gender dysmorphia, binders, hormone blockers, surgery etc made me reach for the phone for advice - and not just mermaids but the NSPCC too, who actually gave me the same kind of advice as Mermaids. I'm trying to steer my child away from stereotypes and just want her to be who she is without pigeon holing

How can any rational human being listen to what the head of mermaid has to say about her own child (felt they were gay at 18 months old!!!) and really think they are giving the whole picture?

Still haven't heard from one parent who says that after starting to get "support" from Mermaids, their child decided they were "cis" after all.

Still waiting.

I expect I'll be waiting forever.

Gidds as far as I know the NSPCC are taking their advice from Mermaids - or at least, they are featured on the NSPCC site.

And we're back to circular validation in an area where there was no official advice, so an organisation could step in and make a name for themselves: SmallOrg offers itself as expert, August Body #1 accepts SmallOrg with no close examination as no organised alternative and they don't hold relevant expertise in-house, other august bodies see August Body #1 endorse SmallOrg and think well, August Body #1 must have done their research so SmallOrg must be OK. SmallOrg cite August Bodies #1, #2 and #3 on website, other august bodies think, well, they must be expert, and so on. Funding follows, and here we are.

Some of this reads so sad. I don't conform to being a feminine woman but so what happened to feminists from the 60s who four against all those stereotypes?
It is also news to me that people's bodies and brains are now separate entities.
Obviously people and particularly teenagers question life but providing them with inaccurate information isn't going to help them either.

Hi, I was recently a Mermaid parent and whilst I don't know (nor should I) the story behind the mum whose child was taken away, I thought I'd give my experience of Mermaids. When I joined it was a relief to find a group of parents going through the same thing. I originally found the forums a great place for support and advice. I have also met with quite a few of the parents also. What I would say is that I have found Mermaids to be a very friendly bunch, however, when I look back at things that have been said to me it does start ringing alarm bells. One of the first things ever said to me by Mermaids was about the high rate of self harm and attempted suicide in the transgender community. I have brought that up in front of different health care professionals (inc the Tavistock) who have actually said that this is not correct. If a Trans person is not receiving support then yes, there could be a risk of self-harm and attempted suicide but this risk is no greater than a non Trans person. The other thing I got from some of the members is how bad and how slow the Tavistock is. The CEO almost frightens you about going to the Tavistock and encourages you to go private if you can afford it. The Tavistock takes things slow because changing gender should be a slow process. I was also told by another member to put my child on to cross sex hormones. My child is under 16. At no point did Mermaids ever talk about 'what happens if your child changes their mind'. I have found that there is a large group of parents who do want to help you but there's a group who seem to think they must fight with everyone. It is a shame as members have left Mermaids and others are talking about leaving. I think the success of the charity and its many awards may have gone to their head. It would be nice for everything to calm down again and for it to be a safe place. But essentially they have to remember they are a parent support group. They are there to support and share experiences but they are not professionals.