Transgender kids

[Aurellia]

Hi all

I know this topic has definitely been discussed before so apologies.

Can anyone recommend some resources on transgender kids (sites, films) and the process of identifying them, what happens next and their future?

My questions revolve around the following issues: if a child identifies as the opposite gender (very young child), how is the decision made to transition or identify as boy / girl, so different to gender assigned at birth?

And if this is done, doesnt this mean a certain set of gender stereotypes are enforced? Meaning we assign stereotypical traits to gender binaries which are passed to our child in order to even make the difference (so if mary feels like jack - whats the difference? WHY is there a difference? What does this tell us?) Does this reinforce gender binaries which are the social problem to begin with?

We already live in a very gendered society - and we are assigned a gender at birth. And this is hierarchical as we know.

So should we raise children which challenge gender stereotypes (assertive girls, sensitive boys who reject toxic masculinity - or kids identifying beyond the binary) and would this eliminate stereotypes and assumptions? How do transgender kids achieve this? I hope this makes sense and appreciate responses and resources so i can understand this better. Thank you!

you may find this of interest on this topic growinguptransgender.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/on-gender-stereotypes/

As far as I can tell, transgender children are not encouraged to challenge gender stereotypes. Instead they are taught that if they do not feel comfortable with the gender stereotypes associated with their sex, they must modify their bodies to approximate the physical sex associated with the gender they feel more comfortable with.
It is terribly sad that we seem to be moving to a society where it is more acceptable to mutilate a healthy body than it is to choose not to conform to gender stereotypes.

Not really anything academic but have you watch louis theroux transgender kids.

What tick said. It’s so sad that we are more comfortable with making people conform than we are accepting that men and women can be sensitive/strong/like pink/blue/whatever.

Thank you for sharing the blog, Theskyisgrey. I would certainly recommend reading it to anyone interested in a parent's perspective.

I think the parent makes important points and i can certainly see why trans* kids would have a more nuanced grasp of gender and a readiness to refute stereotypes.

But my question for this parent would be: if a child insists 'i am a girl' beyond simple liking of dresses, what does girl mean? Where did the child get the idea if girl? The parent claims that their transgender daughter wanted to wear a dress - strong preference for this item. So it started with this idea to begin with, i am a girl, i want a dress.

This is where it gets fuzzy with me: could she still be a gender-nonconforming child? Where do kids get the ideas of boyhood and girlhood if not from their context? Society is deeply hierarchical and divided by gender binaries. The equation of dress with femininity reinforces this notion - and that one must be a girl to wear it.

Give it s rest, I for one am mightily fed up with this nonsense, just be a parent, we have been procreating for millenia without any of these made up problems. Take the red pill and rejoin reality it is refreshing

Aurellia

It's a really interesting question. Does a boy feel like a girl and therefore gravitate towards girls' stuff? To express himself? Or does he, quite naturally, express an interest in all toys, without understanding gender, and then gets pushed towards saying he's a girl on the back of that?

Anecdotally, it would appear as though expressing an interest in the opposite sex toys gets a negative reaction and an assertion that those toys belong to the opposite sex.

I don't think it's difficult to believe that even one or two comments can have a profound effect on a child.

This is still anecdote, because it's only what I have read, but it appears as though a lot of these children come from houses where gender norms are rigorously enforced.

Parents seem to give themselves away by saying we told him those are girls' toys, we tried our best to stop him playing with them, etc.

Trans support groups will say this isn't true. You can't make a kid trans. But anyone with an ounce of analysis will see that many of the narratives are remarkably similar.

datun from my experience (early years teacher), it’s very rarely one or two comments either. I used to have a girl in my class (4 years old) who was OBSESSED with police cars. She was told daily that those were boys’ toys. By her parents, by her friends, even by support staff. Sometimes said in a joking way, sometimes with disgust, but at least 10 times a day, she had to defend her choice.

It would be draining for me, an adult, so God knows how she put up with it.

Well exactly ThisIsTheFirstStep. I said one or two comments, because I quite genuinely think that's all it takes.

And yes, I'm absolutely certain that it's a barrage. One woman took away all her child's toys, in an attempt to stop them playing with them. The message doesn't get clearer than that, in my opinion.

I'm sure most of us can remember the odd comment from a parent, teacher or someone in authority that absolutely floored us as kids.

I only had to tell my three year old once that Father Christmas existed.

ThisIsTheFirstStep All the years of talking about this stuff and these attitudes are still so entrenched and now seem to be being validated with this pink brain/blue brain hocus pocus.

I think there are two situations.

There are the children who choose to dress and play with what are considered as 'boys/girls items' and lean towards liking things that we have stereotyped as the opposite gender and are fed negative messaging similar to what thisis said. I think in those situations we need to stop the gender stereotyping bullshit and let our kids play with what they want and dress how they want and see how things develop as they get older.

But there are also children who hate their bodies and hate their private parts. I know a little boy who used to get very distressed and mention cutting it off and my daughters FTM who found puberty horrifying.
That's a different matter entirely tbh.

Sorry my daughters friend. Missed a word out!

This film was shown on the BBC early last year. It's quite balanced (for the BBC), so trans activists tried to stop it being shown - they succeeded in stopping it being shown in Canada.
Transgender Kids - Who Knows Best?

4thwavenow.com/ is 'a community of parents & others concerned about the medicalization of gender-atypical youth and rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD)'. Interesting articles, lots of comments (not all supportive).

I have no personal experience of this at all, thank goodness, but from reading some accounts it does seem as if sometimes a child is repeatedly told that they can't have/do something they like because it's for the opposite sex (e.g. dressing up clothes, short hair), or that they must have/do something they very much dislike because all boys/girls have that thing (e.g. wearing a dress, short hair). I can easily see how a very young child struggling to make sense of the world around them could reason, more or less unconsciously 'I like X - only girls like X - so I must be a girl' or vice versa.

Also, some parents from very socially conservative and/or religious backgrounds seem to find it easier to accept that a child has been 'born in the wrong body', something which they can classify as a medical problem and believe can be sorted by drugs and surgery, than to re-evaluate their attitudes to biological sex and gender and their deep-seated belief that gender nonconformity is a worrying sign of immorality and a possible predictor of homosexuality later in life.

The other common parental type I've noticed in stories of transgender children is the opposite to the first group. Parents who are very liberal, very out there in their thinking, in some cases identifying as transgender themselves. They are fully signed up to gender ideology and I sometimes get the feeling they were pushing their child towards being trans or at any rate gender nonconforming.

datun I wasn’t disagreeing with you at all. I totally agree that just one or two comments make a difference - I just meant that one or two comments may make a difference and that unfortunately, it’s not even like that. It’s endless.

I know a little boy who is obsessed with 'girl's things:' dressing up, princesses, ponies, pink, glitter, sparkles, playing with girls, dolls, etc. A friend gave him a tutu for his 7th birthday and he burst into tears of joy.

His mum is supportive but the men in his life (his dad, his grandfathers, his uncles) cannot stand this and deride it at every opportunity.

It has become a Very Big Issue and he's quite defensive and angry as a result.

It's children like this, who are getting such strong mixed messages, that I really fear for.

Well the other issues that have, on other occasions, been commented on this board, are that there seems to be some relationship between childhood sexual abuse and children wanting to change sex and that a higher proportion of children with autism get sucked into transgenderism.

Sadly, I think there is also a prestige that parents feel in having a transgender child.

People would often ask me how DS1 'identified' when he was about 5. He was five! Yes he was wearing a dress but he liked the twirliness. I could feel the temptation myself to guide him into being trans as he'd love to be a girl.

But one of my other sons wants to be a reptilian marsupial baby. Sorry lad, it's not happening.

ThisIsTheFirstStep

No, I know you weren't. We are agreeing, entirely!

I'm sure it's a mixture of things. There must be a percentage of the 2000 children who are showing up at gender clinics, who are merely confused.

Stephanie Davis Arai of TransgenderTrend has said that she has yet to see a girl transition who is not either autistic, lesbian, or has suffered past sexual trauma.

There is no doubt that gender dysphoria is a real condition. As is transablism, phantom leg syndrome, etc.

There is equally little doubt, that the egg shell walking around transgenderism is not allowing the different motivations to be separated out and investigated.

Is my wish that the entire issue remains a medical one, not a lifestyle one. None of this 'my authentic self'. It detracts from the issue and makes research into the causes almost impossible.

I saw a link to this on Twitter the other day. It's very sad. Couple of years old. I hope she's in a better place now.

moo I agree in principle but I am not sure if it is the prestige or more a 'look how great a parent I am in doing this'

Or maybe the 2 are so interlinked that they can't be separated.

Thank you for the website Gaspodethewonderdog.

Some really interesting research studies cited. Your point about the parents' backgrounds is interesting: either very conservative and likely to prefer / enforce gender norms and the other very open. The second group is more interesting: informed parents aware of the spectrum that is gender expression.