Trans Kids Are Less Conservative About Gender Roles Than Cis Kids

[WAKAME]

It is often suggested in gender critical circles that trans people have very rigid and conservative views of gender roles and stereotypes, but a recent study has found that trans kids (and their siblings) are actually less rigid about gender stereotypes than their cis peers.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28913950

This is no surprise to trans people of course - we spend our lives fighting against imposed gender roles - the pre-transition life of a trans woman for example, is typically spent being told by homophobes not to be so girly, whilst her post-transition life is typically spent being told by TERFs how manly she is.

So it is a sad irony that whilst trans kids are "more willing to indicate a desire to befriend and attend school with someone who violates gender stereotypes", it is be amongst gender non-conforming women that they will find many of the people who repeatedly accuse them of perpetuating gender stereotypes.

Still, from a feminist perspective, it's nice to know that trans kids are leading the way by helping to support their gender non-conforming peers, whilst also helping to educate the people around them about the acceptance of human diversity. And as more and more trans people come out in childhood and access the help they need, I am sure things are only going to get better :-)

How do they know they're gender non conforming?

Exactly. If these children really were immune to gender binaries, there would be no resistance.

Just think that through for a moment...

I imagine you have been thinking it through for a lifetime and still can't really explain what it means either.

Well first define some gender stereotypes and then measure agaiant your chosen stereotypes ?

Nope sorry that won't work if gender is innate and nothing to do with sterotypes

Wakame seems to have found a new bunch of women to bother. Must have got bored at Feminist Current.

There is no such thing as a cis woman. There is no such thing as a trans six-year-old.

We have a vast body of child development knowledge to draw on. What is it about transgender ideology that, in order to be valid, it has to trash centuries of research, knowledge and understanding in every single sphere it comes into contact with?

Oh, I know. Could it be that gender identity theory is a religious cult and has no bearing on material reality whatsoever.

“Cis”

What is this? Does not compute.

Autocorrect changed it to cos which I do understand but it doesn’t recognise cis.

I know it’s goady, but Wakame’s recent posts have peaked me. Maybe that’s the plan.

Oh! A lightbulb moment

I feel I must apologise to you all. You see, I am one of those Soc Lib Fems that spent so much of their lives fighting for equality, eradicating sex based differences. I relished every gender stereotype I could identify and rail against.

I see I was successful to such an extent that nowadays there are many children who are just kids, don't conform to the old fashioned gender stereotypes of yor, they just are what they are!

So why are there a load of adults, brought up believing in those gender stereotypes, now trying to make my success, that total LACK OF GENDER AWARENESS, mean that a kid must be trans something or other?

As a feminist, a woman who obviously tied too hard and actually bloody succeeded, I can either apologise for stepping outside my acceptable role or I can shout OI, MERMAID, LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE (yes, that is what I am listening to as I work/digress )

I say that as a woman who grew up as a tomboy, all toy guns (sorry), cars and few dresses. Guess what, I am a heterosexual woman, married for decades to an actual man and STILL I do not conform to many gender stereotypes. Yet I am not trans, nor did I ever feel I was not female!

Had you asked me, as a kid, way back in the 60s/70s if guns were for boys and dollies for girls I would have laughed an told you not to be so silly - you probably would have described me as a liberal non conforming/trans child. You would have been wrong!

This is no surprise to trans people of course - we spend our lives fighting against imposed gender roles No dear, you spend your lives trying to inhabit those gender roles. You must do, or you would have no need to trans from anything to anything else, you could just be who you are!

Wakame believes 2 year olds can be perceived as transgender and should be treated as the opposite sex, so there you go.

The sentence where you claim to have been a trans girl tomboy says it all to me.

Your identification with womanhood is clearly 100% to do with behaviours/opinions/preferences.

Just get into your head: womanhood is about having certain physical biological characteristics. It's fine to be feminine.

A stag with broken antlers is still a stag.

What does treated as the opposite sex even mean? There are a few situations where sex matters, but I am struggling to think of a case where the sex of a child matters. If you are treating children differently simply because of their sex...wow. And why?

Part of the findings in this study however could possibly be linked to the higher than average incidence of autistic spectrum disorder in girls who feel they would like to be transgender. Being not neurotypical, it's no surprise that people who have ASD, which includes having Asperger's often don't feel they fit in socially. And before anyone has a go about being offensive to people with ASD or to transgender people, I myself have slight ASD.

My impression of mtf transgender people who are in the public eye is that they often go out of their way to confirm to an extremely sexualised patriarchal stereotype of women. Hair extensions, long nails, figure hugging clothes, tons of make up etc. How they must look down on me, a mere cis woman with my minimal grooming and lack of interest in flicking my hair extensions and my clothes bought from charity shops because I don't want to buy new clothes that have been made in sweat shops by children and women. Are they broadminded enough to accept me, a plain, scruffy middled-aged 'cis' woman as a woman?

Anyway, This supposed evidence that trannies are more broadminded than the rest of us is very dodgy, as pps have said.

Wakame believes 2 year olds can be perceived as transgender and should be treated as the opposite sex, so there you g

@Ereshkigal
Fucksake! My 2 year old wasn't even sure they were human - should I have treated them as a dog because they constantly wanted to be one? 😂

Kids understand the world in the way we help them understand it OP. I also had to help my 2 year old come to terms with being human. They're fine now

Honestly what's next?!

I would suggest parenting or chat as better subject areas for this. It might fit in here if this was a feminist journal, but it isn't.

For the abstract of the study -the sample size is tiny, far too small to make any sort even correlation claim and as it says even in the abstract the authors believe there are several possible reasons, and as you've posted an article where only the abstract is visible without paying, we can't really discuss the methology such as how they defined transgender kids of that age group, how they defined any of their terms or how they checked anyone in the control group was, in fact, cis which is your claims and not the abstract's claim. You make a lot of claims based on very little.

And the fact you seem to think that trans people are the only people who spend their lives fighting gender stereotypes would be laughable if it didn't show how narrow minded and ignorant of the pain of others you are. Many people across the identity spectrum have to deal with pain and threats and violence due to not conforming to sex role expectations. As an example, my eldest son has literally since infancy had people tell him how girly he is, how he talks like a girl, how he looks like a girl and is too pretty to be a boy, how he acts like a girl, how he likes girly things. He has had his posession broken and attacked by bullies over this and had people who think they're all progressive and helpful tell him he can grow up to be a woman which did not go over well with him (I had to spend quite a while explaining to a very upset child that that wouldn't just happen to him, we discussed in detail how the person probably was trying to be nice and the many treatments that actually requires) because all he wants is for people to recognize he's a boy just as he is. That and to build giant robots to protect people and play all the video games, those are kinda of his goals in life at this point.

I get WAKAME, you like to use all these labels for people and to assume characteristics on them based those labels...but people and the world are complicated than that. There might just be 'cis' people (which even Serano and similar who were among the first to really popularize those terms admits it's a nebulous and not a firm category in the way you are using it) who are more sex-role nonconforming and more accepting of others than you are. Trans people neither have a claim to being alone in struggling with gender stereotypes or in being kind to others because of not conforming to them.

WAKAME

I honestly don't understand the logic behind transactivism.

It would be far better for transactivists to go onto threads about rape and prostitution, about women's rights to abortion and pre-and post maternity care, etc. And talk about the problems women face, empathising and sympathising with anecdotes, and expressing support for campaigns. Giving of time and, if possible, money.

And then at the end say, oh by the way I'm trans. That is inclusivity. By your own actions.

Transactivists complain about not being included in feminism. No one can include or exclude someone in feminism.

If you talked on some threads about women's issues, you would be 'doing feminism'. 'In', by your own actions.

Instead of setting yourself up as a relentless opponent to women.

In the OP WAKAME regers to the homphobic bullying that transchildren often recieve.

The subject of homophobia before transition seems to come up over and over again, yet I havent seen it discussed much.

We have effeminate boys and masculine girls who transition after extensive homophobic bullying. Why is transition, sterilisation, radical surgeries and a lifetime of medication seemingly accepted as a way of escaping bullying?
Why are we not encouraging these children to grow as non gender conforming homosexuals?

I wonder how many children wouldnt have to transition if they were accepted as non gender conforming homsexuals?

Transactivists complain about not being included in feminism. No one can include or exclude someone in feminism.

This. What they mean of course is that sometimes it doesn't centre them.

The trans group was 75% natal male compared with 25% natal females in the control group. This is a massive potential confounder that was not adjusted for in the statistical analysis.

There's also the fact that we can only conclude that trans kids are accepting of gender non-confortmity after transitioning to their trans gender and being exposed to lots of other gender non-conforming people. We have no idea what their views were prior to transitioning - very possibly/likely the act of identifying as trans may affect their views/responses to questionnaires in the survey.

Quite. How many children can accurately articulate their unconscious understanding about gender?

DN4GeekinDerby - you are doing sterling work on many of these threads and I thank you for it.

The author has drunk the Kool-Aid, and is making a lucrative career of it:
www.seattletimes.com/life/lifestyle/uw-researcher-wins-1-million-national-science-foundation-grant-to-study-transgender-youth/

The main finding among prepubescent transgender children?

“It’s the most uninteresting thing,” Olson said: Prepubescent transgender kids look like the kids who share their gender identity. Trans girls look like girls, and trans boys look like boys.

“If one fact was reversed, and if they were the opposite sex at birth, then nothing would be interesting about them.”

Another finding: 92 percent showed signs of being transgender before they were 4 years old.

I believe this is child abuse. Let kids be kids. They should themselves decide how they wish to identify themselves - when of age as adults. Until then, we should leave them well alone.

This is the chickens coming home to roost, in normalising the wider LGBTQI agenda in our schools. Let them choose to be what they identify as when they are consenting legal adults. It is their decision then.

Another finding: 92 percent showed signs of being transgender before they were 4 years old.

Translation: Kids under 4 show few signs of gender conformity. Something changes when they reach 4, when they start to conform to gender stereotypes.

But you wouldn't get so much money thrown at you if you phrased your research question that way!

There is something really quite aggressive about a transwoman coming into a female space and using the word 'cis,' which women here have repeatedly stated they find offensive.

This. 100 times over.

How do you show signs of being trans when you’re under four?

My five year old wants to marry a donkey and told me yesterday that she’s a triangle. Clearly, the parents of these children were looking for those signs. It doesn’t take a genius to reverse engineer this as self-fulfilling prophecy.