Female to male

[nightshade]

So in light of the current transgender debates that I've just recently become aware of...

I am presuming that female to male numbers are less?..

Academically and observationally why is this?

The number of young girls referred to clinics is so much higher than the number of boys.

Is it?...

I don't know why this surprises me..

What about changing their gender?..how do the numbers stack up there?

Also, there are very few older (virtually none?), say 40+, female to male trans people while there are considerably more male to female.

Put simply, this means in people choosing to go through some form of transition, from deciding to wear dresses to full gender reassignment surgery, there are there several different things happening at once.

It’s not that there are fewer FTT than MTT, rather that in general they don’t grandstand, make demands and belittle men in the same way that MTT do to women. For me it’s one of the most striking ways to appreciate the male privilege behind the trans movement.

Also, the majority of the increase in transmen comes from teen girls rather than middle-aged rich white men - it’s really not surprising that their voices are heard less.

Also, there are very few older (virtually none?), say 40+, female to male trans people while there are considerably more male to female.

Bah, I was trying to say that there are considerably fewer women who are making a transition to be transmen at an older age, say 40+, than there are older men who are making a transition to be transwomen.

Fewer women are doing it for shits and giggles.

Until recently there were far fewer women and girls transitioning than men and boys, and that's still the case for those who transition in later life. The recent exponential growth in trans children is made up of around 70% girls.

The reasons males and females transition appear to be quite different. Almost without exception, the girls are either lesbian, autistic or have a history of sexual abuse (or some combination).

Male transitioners used to pretty much fit into two 'types' - effeminate gay boys, who tend to transition young, and older straight or bi men with autogynephilia (a fetish where they become aroused at the idea of themselves as a woman). This is now more complicated as transition is easier to obtain with very little questioning of motives, so some AGP males are transitioning much earlier. Also the heinz 57 varieties of gender thing makes it more complicated, although I believe these will mostly turn out to be a short lived fad.

Miranda Yardley has written a couple of pieces on this topic:

Children's transgender narratives

Adult male's transgender narratives

There's also a very good piece in the times on the topic of girls transitioning.

Yes, the increase of young women going to the Tavistock clinic is of such alarming proportions that if it were another class of medicine, there would be national alarm bells set off - say for example if the same amount of females presented with anorexia. But, because it is trans related, professionals are somewhat reluctant to discuss openly the issue, though they have alerted the powers that be to the rise in numbers. I'm not blaming them by the way, it's just as it is.

And is there the same level of violence toward female to male?

Are they better at hiding?..avoiding confrontation?.

My understanding that the level of violence against TIMs is actually pretty low if you take out factors like sex work?

Id guess one reason could be that TIFs "pass" much better?

"Almost without exception, the girls are either lesbian, autistic or have a history of sexual abuse (or some combination)." I'd agree with the lesbian bit, as regards what happened in the past. So, personally in the lesbian community, I've known a few women who have transitioned, and also some women who nearly transitioned. In the wider community, we have people like Pat Califia and the former lesbian writer Red Jordan Arobateau. These are people who were known in the wider gay and lesbian community, but (unlike people like Chaz Bono) not so well known outside that.

As regards women who wanted to transition to become gay men -- I've only known one such person. Someone who used to hang out with the gay men, but frankly, they weren't that interested. The rest of us, I guess used to think it was just very sad, because however much they wanted to be male and wanted to be a gay man with other gay men, it wasn't going to happen (possibly except with someone like themselves). This seems to be more of a thing now, at least on the internet..........

The current pattern and trends amongst youth are very different, as seemingly are the attitudes towards butch lesbians and camp gay men (not bad, just boring?). It is a very rapid, recent, and enormous change. Hmmm, I wonder why that might be????

And is work with young people to help them come to terms with their biological identity current practice?.. or seen as forcing them into acceptable social identities?

And is work with young people to help them come to terms with their biological identity current practice

I believe that it is deemed conversion therapy and therefore considered very unethical (illegal?) - anyone practising it would lose their job.

So can practitioners only focus on transitioning rather than exploring the reasons behind the wish to transition?..

Surely most young people only focus on the future and usually rose tinted solution that they perceive to be a solution...

Not many I have met want to consider the possibility that a radical change will not be as liberating as they believe...

If a lot of gender issue is about poor social experience and a reaction to this then as in most counselling it is about learning to put into perspective and live positively within ones skin?

Apologies for horrible link

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.psychotherapy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/UKCP-Memorandum-of-Understanding-on-Conversion-Therapy-in-the-UK.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiBmar5hdPXAhVLBsAKHfUjApwQFggmMAA&usg=AOvVaw0U17Q1a-tdAj4EBHKew7Ty" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.psychotherapy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/UKCP-Memorandum-of-Understanding-on-Conversion-Therapy-in-the-UK.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiBmar5hdPXAhVLBsAKHfUjApwQFggmMAA&usg=AOvVaw0U17Q1a-tdAj4EBHKew7Ty

I understand conversion therapy it'sall going to be fine (sorry haven't learnt how to tag)!.

What I'm more puzzled with is this an extention of the idea that children should not have boundaries? ...mainstream parenting where child is told they are right no matter how they behave?...and allowing children to believe that whatever they want to be/do in life is totally possible?

Is the system another product of I want therefore I can have?

(Not explaining this very well)!

This survey on women who have detransitioned shoudl provide some insight:

guideonragingstars.tumblr.com/post/149877706175/female-detransition-and-reidentification-survey

The data is here:
www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-RCWYCNGM/

Here's the young woman - detransitioned herself - who created and ran the survey. She's worth listening to.

I think there is a large element of parents sacrificing the child's later happiness as an adult (by not giving the life long effects of thransitioning enough critical thought and attention) for happiness as a child fitting in, here and now.

But you can't really blame them, they're fed such lies by people associated with groups like Mermaids about how it's all safe and how you're saving your child from suicide. Their stats on suicide don't stack up, incidentally, but if everyone around you repeats lines like "better a living son than a dead daughter" how would you know that was based on a fallacy?

Fascinating raisins...so there is a lack of coping methods counselling finding alternate ways to express oneself and a seemingly direct pathway to drugs and permanent interventions...

With evidence to show that it can be a passing phase...

Much like germaine greers idea that it is in essence another generation of the adolescent rite of passage?

I am finding this more and more in my line of work...

The general public take an issue...demand..expect medical social and legal intervention..without having the interventionists saying 'slowly slowly'.

Is this the culture of litigation and human rights?

I understand conversion therapy it'sall going to be fine

Sorry I wasn't trying to suggest that, more prove that I wasn't making it up as it sounds so unbelievable, and to show that believing that you cannot change sex and using that to counsel a child against it would be conversion therapy.

No offence taken its all going to b fine. .

I'm just always acutely aware of the need to try and pick words on these things .

Didn't want to sound like an advocate for conversion but also genuinely aware of the cause and affects of all types of identity crisis..

Standard approaches in other fields would include cbt...talking therapies.etc .to establish exactly what the issue is....

I can't quite get my head around what has happened to move from 'I want to be a boy/girl' to ..here's a lot of nasty drugs and we can chop your bits off....

Particularly in light of all the other services offered in other fields..alongside our horror at ear piercing circumcision ..

Is it purely down to 'the child wants to'?

The general public take an issue...demand..expect medical social and legal intervention..without having the interventionists saying 'slowly slowly'.

Except generally in any other area 'slowly, slowly' wins in the end, despite the demands of noisy activists. Generally we can ask questions and have a debate and consider all the angles and come up with solutions that do the most good and the least harm.

One of the things that alarms me most about the transactivist agenda is the speed with which changes are being made and cemented into law/statutory guidance. Here we have #nodebate and the framing of questioning as a hateful act.

The suicide rhetoric around trans kids is shocking emotional blackmail, backed up by the memorandum of understanding which makes it incredibly risky for any HCP to deviate from wholehearted affirmation of whatever the patient before them declares their identity to be.

One thing to bear in mind as you learn about this nightshade is that you will continually be reading things where you'll think "surely this can't be right, I must have understood/been misled, because this is too bizarre to be true".

Most of the times when I've thought that, it's turned out that this crazy stuff that can't be true is, in fact, true. I've learned that logic, and things fitting together in a consistent way, do not apply at all in this area.

I'm finding in our field (which is totally not linked to gender issues) that there is a main theme running through all areas of society..

Namely lack of leadership...schools failing for it..governments crumbling for it ...services at the mercy of policy writers due to it..

The word no seems to have been eradicated and replaced with jump...

I feel that those in power (right through the management systems)are not making decisions with sound evidence and academia behind them?

The right to choice and self determination being top of the list...Maslow would turn in his grave..

Has psychology and sociology list it's foothold?..

Only asking because I'm not an academic but would have loved to have been!