Transgender Documentary on BBC2 Thursday 2100 "Transgender Kids: Who Knows best?"

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Looks like an interesting watch, that does not just accept the trans children or they will kill themselves rhetoric. I just hope the BBC actually do show it and aren't bullied into not showing it.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b088kxbw

The blurb:

Around the world there has been a huge increase in the number of children being referred to gender clinics - boys saying they want to be girls and vice versa. Increasingly, parents are encouraged to adopt a 'gender affirmative' approach - fully supporting their children's change of identity. But is this approach right?

In this challenging documentary, BBC Two's award-winning This World strand travels to Canada, where one of the world's leading experts in childhood gender dysphoria (the condition where children are unhappy with their biological sex) lost his job for challenging the new orthodoxy that children know best. Speaking on TV for the first time since his clinic was closed, Dr Kenneth Zucker believes he is a victim of the politicisation of transgender issues. The film presents evidence that most children with gender dysphoria eventually overcome the feelings without transitioning and questions the science behind the idea that a boy could somehow be born with a 'female brain' or vice versa. It also features 'Lou' - who was born female and had a double mastectomy as part of transitioning to a man. She now says it is a decision that 'haunts' her and feels that her gender dysphoria should have been treated as a mental health issue.

Fish, your posts are so valuable here. You more than anyone have made me think about the awful position parents with children who may have gender dysphoria are in, when my first inclination was to be scathing and critical. Much more than all the agenda driven histrionics like that idiot in the huff post.

What Venus said. Thank you for sticking around and sharing your experience with us, Fish.

Thanks venus

I feel the need to redeem myself a bit, when transgender children started becoming more mainstream I was defending the process they go through and talking a lot about how difficult it is to even get offered blockers.

Now the whole thing has changed and I feel pretty embarrassed about some of the things I was defending, the last 18 months especially have been a real eye opener for me.

Don't feel embarrassed. The current trend sounds very much like the compassionate route if you don't apply any critical thinking to it. In all honesty, if this was a couple of years ago and I had had a child who was gender disphoric, I have no doubt I would have travelled along the "transing" route.

You are very brave and doing your best under very difficult circumstances.

Fish
I can't imagine how difficult it must be for you and your family

There is nothing to feel embarrassed about fish it is part of the human experience to have our minds changed as new evidence comes to light or as situations change.

Puberty blockers are not without harms, hormone therapy has definite harms attached and surgery would be an irreversible harm should that young person later desist, as the majority do. So, my question for the people who wish to push these treatments onto children is this: How many children is an acceptable number to be harmed unnecessarily for the minority to feel ok? Can we agree on a number of children/young people who's lives and bodies must suffer irreparable harm for no reason in order to satisfy a minority?

Fish you are a wise and loving mother. I think many of us started off with very different opinions to those we hold now. I used to believe that people working in child MH would be cautious and risk averse. I used to think that transwomen were all sex dysphoric gay men who had all had the surgery. Now I know better on both counts.

As that minority are clearly narcissists, I imagine that the amount of collateral damage they would find acceptable is quite high.

I have been reading reviews on it

This is good. And encouraging

nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/you-should-watch-the-bbcs-kenneth-zucker-documentary.html?mid=twitter-share-scienceofus

I would say that it's a majority rather than a minority, Venus. I work it out thusly:

Only 20% transwomen have, or plan to have, SRS. I'd imagine they're the gay men of my understanding, the old-fashioned transsexuals. As 27% report themselves attracted to men only, and some people may be unable to undergo the surgery, let's say there's a third who are the much-reviled truscum. And two thirds who aren't.

A third, roughly are bisexual, and another third are exclusively attracted to women. I think I'd be safe to say that very few of the het guys have had SRS and that it's as rare as hen's teeth for anyone in that last third to have had the op.

Any person who has a penis and is sexually interested to women is a heterosexual man. Any male who can keep a straight face while putting clothes over his dick, and demanding that the world agree he's a woman is, to my mind, unavoidably narcissistic. There's also the issue that lesbian communities are reporting being overwhelmed by a kind of trans invasion, with pushy TRA types causing the destruction of lesbian space: festivals, bars, meetings. This behaviour is narcissistic to the max.

So I reckon it's between 30-40%, at the least. The trans umbrella has grown so wide that in terms of male transgenders it now covers a huge number of narcissistic people whose motivation for transition is primarily sexual.

Sorry, very rambling, I'm in bed ill. What I'm saying is that I agree it's a minority but think it's a big one, maybe 40%.

Sorry, what a mash up! I really must be ill and will lay off the posting until I am back thinking at my proper speed. I meant the bit at the end: that it's a minority but a very large one.

I've not yet watched the documentary but feel the same as the opinions on this thread.

Being relatively new to this issue, can anyone point me to some reading materials? In particular on the issue of trans and/vs. feminism.

What's the etymology of "truscum"? I never did dare google it.

IMO a large majority of those who push for child transitions are the narcissistic type. Same as a large percentage of TAs are the narcissistic type.

Basically anyone who shouts on about how female areas should be a free for all is a dick. Those with dysphoria and such have been using female areas for years and don't draw attention to themselves as they just want to get on with their lives as comfortably as possible after a hell of a journey to get to that stage. ONLY after the push for obvious males to be included, cotton ceiling, lady-dick, etc etc has any of this been a problem.

I do not agree with medical intervention for preteens. What other areas of life do the under 16s get to 'make the choice' about whats best for them, so to speak? What would those thinking its fine to delay puberty (and in turn, guarantee transition as an adult, as the desist rate is 0% once blockers are started) make of allowing kids to make their own choices in other medical settings...or infact just other areas of life, since the child knows best and all. Don't want to go to school? Oh fine, you know better. Fancy a boob job at 8 years old, great go right ahead! And so on. Its just fucking crazy.

The 80% grow out of it figure is truly frightening. But the worst part is how some just want to dismiss those people as collateral damage. As I understand, the 80% who 'grow out of it' also will most likely simply be gay adults. When looking at it like that, I cannot see this push for child transitions as anything other than gay conversion therapy and I am perplexed at the support from Stonewall and such.

Truscum would be 'old school transsexuals'. Those who actually do get surgery and such and tend to agree sex dysphoria is an essential part of being transgender. Those who are transgender but horrified with the recent claims of 'lesbians should shag male people or they are bigoted' and so on...

'Truscum are people who think dysphoria is an essential component of being trans and anyone who doesn't experience it is fake, “appropriating transness”, a “transtrender”, etc. They very often exclude non-binary and agender people as well.'

So is it literally "true scum" then? The extremist TRAs are such a charming bunch.

Yes you can't get a tattoo until you are 18 because you might regret it but Susie Green took her 17 year old son abroad for castration and teens are taking hormone drugs willy nilly. It's a fucking scandal and in 20 years time will be looked back as a bigger scandal than Saville or Rotherham. But for now the lefties and libfems are supporting the abuse of children.

Truscum - those who show us up as the pervs we are. Those who do actually suffer instead of pretending to like we do. Those who have empathy with women instead of expecting them to be fuckholes. Those who we are latching onto in an attempt to get our own way. Those who do actually deserve sympathy and such, and truly do feel 'trapped in the wrong body' rather than having a fetish.

And so on...

Also before I am called transphopbic for that 17.09 post, can anyone tell me how it is possible to be trans without suffering sex dysphoria? If you are not 'trapped in the wrong body' so to speak, what exactly are you transitioning to? Only thing left is dress sense and such, which is just personal opinion.

Don't forget as well that of the 20% who don't desist, lots will be on blockers so may have desisted themselves also. So the natural rate of desistence could be higher.

Because being trans is totally subjective, unquantifiable and varies from person to person meaningless narcissism

Oh gosh. The therapist from the documentary saying that "deep down in side where the music plays" was wonderful because it was "so precise" keeps replaying in my head.

I think some people have no notion of "subjective".

It seemed like a very religious sentiment to me. Gender identity is a soul

The therapist was sooo creepy. And anyone who could speak in such a manner about what is a very complex issue (40% of trans children are on the ASD, an unknown number have been sexually abused) as if it was just some jolly dress up game doesn't have any of the normal professional gravitas in place. He was like an actor with his florid language and over the top gestures. Grotesque.