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.

Ailynn Now that you identify as a woman, are you sexually attracted to males or females?

Ailynn - can you give some examples of how you felt female? Was it in things you did/didn't do, or how you thought about situations, or something else?

Ailynn, being brought up in a strongly religious home seems to be quite a common experience for trans people, from what I've read. I think it much more likely that you realised that you were attracted to other boys, but could not accept this, or perhaps had never even heard of gay people, so rationalised it as 'well I must be a girl then'
I'm making the assumption from your post that you're attracted to men

I simply with all my soul felt female, yet I was terrified for anyone to know...so I hid it all my life.

As a person of strong faith in Jesus Christ, I deeply struggled with these feelings all my life.

What is the connection between faith in Jesus Christ and struggling with the feelings you had? Is it not more likely that you are a man with personality traits that are typically attributed to women who grew up in an environment with conservative and deeply held views that men should have stereotypical male personality traits and should not exhibit stereotypically female ("weaker") personality traits? This seems more likely than that your grandmother's exposure to chemicals transformed a "male soul" into a "female soul".

I can imagine that a gay person with strong religious beliefs or from a strongly religious background would find the idea of being transgender an extraordinary relief. It's not sinful to be transgender- it's a medical condition that can be "fixed".......

It's so incredibly sad that a lifetime of hormone treatment and possible surgery is thought to be preferable to simply being gay or lesbian. It really shows that homophobia is still a massive problem and there shame attached to being homosexual for many people

YY, a lot of transactivists seem very homophobic. I have seen it said that lesbians are simple transmen in denial...

And there was a piece in a magazine which had comments from parents of "trans" children, both for and against transition. At least a couple of the pro ones were along the lines of how happy and relieved they were that their child was not gay...

Yy on the BBC doc the dad of the 17 yr old who had SRS said he was glad to see his daughter running, instead of a son who ran like a girl.
Now anyone who can't at least imagine that there's a connection between the father's attitude, and the 17 year old having his penis removed to become a straight young woman is not being entirely candid I think.

Yes that running comment. My eyebrows shot firmly up when he said that.

Coincidence? 🤷‍♀️

DeviTheGaelet Ok hugh assuming your theory is right, what is your suggestion?

As far as I know, the problem is specifically to do with synthetic hormones. The pharmaceutical industry has always promoted them being no different in their effects from the naturally occurring hormones they're designed to mimic, however there are important differences. The human body has enzymes, hormone binding globulins etc that do things like transform one hormone into another, or bind up the hormone to temporarily render it inactive. In general, the synthetics completely bypass those systems, and the result is that they can get into places and do all sorts of things that the naturally occurring hormones wouldn't. That includes being able to cross the placenta and wreak all sorts of harm on the developing foetus.

One important property of the naturally occurring hormones (particularly progesterone) is that they act as a raw material for the production of other hormones. The synthetics don't. It's a bit like the difference between saccharin and sugar, both taste sweet, but your body can only use one as a source of energy.

The synthetics can also "clog up" some of the body's hormone processing enzymes, for instance many progestins are inhibitors of the enzyme 5alpha reductase, which is the enzyme that converts testosterone into DHT (and is also involved in the conversion of progesterone into allopregnanolone, an important neurosteroid).

Synthetics aren't just harmful to the unborn child either. One thing we've found in our trans HRT forum is that the synthetics have all sorts of harmful (and even deadly) side effects when used for HRT in adults, and the pharmaceutical industry must have surely maimed or killed a very large number of women by promoting synthetics for women's HRT. By contrast, as long as their levels are kept within the normal female range, bioidentical estradiol and progesterone seem to be fine. We haven't been able to find any concrete evidence of harm in the scientific literature, and we have forum members who've been taking them for decades without incident.

So I think the problem is specifically with synthetics, and you can probably use bioidentical progesterone during pregnancy if need be without harming your child. Obviously someone needs to do some proper studies to confirm that though!

Hugh- why are you still talking about male and female brains?

I'be just finished watching the documentary and think it was fair and balanced. I'm surprised at the responses, to be honest, as it showed at least 2 people who were very happy with their transition.

A brain in a male body is male
A brain in a female body is female
I watched a YouTube tube video this morning by a tw who asserts that both gender AND biological sex are social constructs. Will it never end? 😫

My above post is not to imply that I think there are inherent differences between the brains of the 2 sexes

Hugh- why are you still talking about male and female brains?

Because other posters persist in talking about the issues raised in the BBC programme. Once they shut up about that, Hughspeaks will probably to be content to leave the thread alone.

DeviTheGaelet The woman in the video is genetically male, but has Swyer's syndrome. What this means is that her embryonic gonads failed to develop into testicles, but instead remained in their undifferentiated state. As a result, all her prenatal development took place without any testicular hormones being present and as you can see, the result is a person who is physically female even though she's genetically male. She was born with the full set of female reproductive organs too, apart from ovaries (in their place will have been "streak gonads", which are the remains of the undifferentiated tissue that failed to develop into testicular tissue).

What Swyer's syndrome shows is that it's not the Y chromosome that causes a genetically male person to develop as male, but the testicles. If for whatever reason the testicles don't develop or don't produce their hormones, that person will develop as female.

There is also a condition called Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS), which also produces genetically male people who are physically female. CAIS involves a mutation that renders that person completely insensitive to androgenic hormones (testosterone and DHT), so although the hormones are actually present, all that person's development takes place as if the hormones weren't there. As with Swyer's syndrome, the result is a person who is genetically male but physically female. In fact, CAIS women tend to be very attractive and voluptuously feminine, since although their bodies can't respond to testosterone, they can (and do) convert it into estradiol. Swyer's women tend to be a lot less strikingly feminine, because their bodies can't produce sex hormones at all, so without hormone treatment, their bodies will always remain in a childlike state and they can never mature into womanhood. From what the woman in that video says, it sounds like her doctors have messed up her hormone treatment (a not unusual occurrence!).

Because other posters persist in talking about the issues raised in the BBC programme. Once they shut up about that, Hughspeaks will probably to be content to leave the thread alone.

Given the title of the thread that might take a while....

Well I'm not going to shut up about it. Hugh, the thread isn't about intersex conditions. It's about why children who are normal in terms of sexual development are deciding that they feel like the opposite sex, or identity more with stereotypical behaviour if the opposite sex. And somehow it's becoming accepted that they therefore need to change their bodies to match this false belief that they have about themselves, including castration at a young age 😫

In the absence of a 'hide poster' option, which would be useful for persistent derailers, we can choose to stay on topic.

"Hugh- why are you still talking about male and female brains?

Because other posters persist in talking about the issues raised in the BBC programme. Once they shut up about that, Hughspeaks will probably to be content to leave the thread alone."

Sorry?

This video posits the idea that biological sex is a social construct

On some other planet, maybe... Meanwhile back on Earth...

Sorry, I know we shouldn't feed the troll but I can't let that bit about bioidentical hormones go unchallenged. There is NO evidence that so called bioidentical hormones are better, or less harmful or have fewer side effects than synthetic ones. It is categorically untrue they are safer and the premise for this is based on the false belief that natural=better.
But, as has been said, this is not what this thread is about.