Guardian report on young children's speech and gender

[Ekphrasis]

(Feel like adding Guardian in the title is click bait now!)

I'm still half asleep and it warrants a more thorough read but I feel the overwhelming results of the study were that it's the stereotyping of the adults that's at test here.

I think the guardian is attempting to make too many links to gender dysphoria and the title is rather misleading.

This could be misconstrued as early trans identities, but who / what really causes distress in a child who doesn't 'fit' with the gender stereotype linked to their sex? It's not from the child.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/16/child-gender-speech-age-five-research-university-minnesota?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

I felt it was extremely homophobic.

But the team also found that boys who pronounced an “s” with a lisp were also considered to sound less prototypically boy-like.
*
That, said Munson, was surprising.

“We never see [that pronunciation] in adult men in gay populations or really in adult men very much at all, or women for that matter,” he said . “But what we do find is that they are very prevalent in stereotypical portrayal of gay men’s speech.”*

“Perhaps the reason that we see a higher incidence of the [lisp] in these kids is because the parents were troubled by it because the parents themselves had this stereotype in their minds,” he said.

That article means nothing unless the children were monitored until adulthood.

Kinda reminds me of that woman who gave that talk that's on you tube about refusing to wear hair clips and undoing poppers on baby grows being gender messages ..

I am extremely uncomfortable seeing kids involved in anything to do with this.

Leave them alome

It's significant that adult stereotypes were in play, and yes, homophobic ones too.

I wonder if the results would be the same in another country? Ie are stereotypes the same as they were in this area of the US?

Last para:

Instead, he said, understanding why children pick up sounds from certain people could help researchers aid children who have difficulties learning language.

I think the whole thing has been badly reported and taken out of context. (Obvs) Some children on the autistic spectrum adopt accents from much loved tv characters/ personalities completely different to their families (pretty much learning to talk from those sources) and I wonder if the origins of the research are more linked to this. And we know there's a higher %of autism within the trans community.

I thought it sounded like absolute junk science wuth the researchers very much wanting to make a point. The guardian have jumped on it gleefully. It's so shit.

And homophobic

"Researchers in the US, looked at a group of 90 youngsters who had been brought to a gender clinic by parents because they were their children were behaving differently to others of their biological sex".
(from the Telegraph)

so this is not a scientific sample.

Not sure it really matters much apart from the fact the Guardian wants to get the topic in as many articles as they possibly can.

The guardian printed that as science? Wow. Just wow.

No it's not science. It's a snap shot of social stereotyping homophobia in action.

It links to another article essentially talking about the same thing.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/17/camp-the-voice-gay-rights?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

Loads of waffle about how children pick up speech patterns from loads of sources, then right at the end (if you're still reading) we get this:

While Munson said gender dysphoria/GID is a good predictor of who is going to grow up to be a adult gay man, he rejected concerns that speech traits in childhood could be used to predict future sexual orientation

So all the stuff about speech traits is a bit of a sideshow, but there is a correlation between GID in childhood and sexual orientation according to this scientist.