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 :-)

A couple of examples would be great.

Can humans change sex? Yes or no?

And if no, is there a third gamete?

When I was 4, I thought I was an alien. I didn't understand or identify with other children and how they behaved. It didn't make any sense to me. I was a withdrawn, unhappy child. I used to wish for the 'people like me' to come down on their spaceship and take me to my real planet where I'd fit in.

I'm not an alien. I'm autistic, although it took decades of struggle with depression and feelings of isolation before I figured that out.

Why is this relevant to the thread? I also resisted gender socialisation. If as a 4-year-old I'd said I was really a 'boy' instead of 'alien' I dread to think where it might have led. But of course I don't know what it's like to be a boy any more than I know what it's like to be an alien. Being uncomfortable or unhappy with the sex you are and trying to reject it is obviously a difficult experience for a child. It doesn't make them the opposite sex. It doesn't even make them 'feel like' the opposite sex, because how can they possibly know how that feels? They know how they feel, subjectively. That's it.

The forced transitioning of gender non conforming children by transgender advocates is abusive to children. It has no place here nor in the schools.

many human sexual characteristics are highly malleable

If you are referring the the surgery performed on them to form facsimiles of the opposite sex then I suppose you could say that meant they were malleable. That's all though.

You misunderstand - being trans is primarily about your body. I was a tomboy growing up, but I also had a female identity - gender identity and gender role are different things. That's why some trans women are feminine heterosexuals and some are butch lesbians.

So you were born a male, but in your mind "should" have been a girl, and now you are a transwoman....

I think you should precisely define a "feminine heterosexual transwoman", and a "butch lesbian transwoman", physically, and add it to the DM comments on the ManFriday article.

I'm sure it will be a revelation to most people.

Well hold on. Surely being a tomboy is a type of gender role isn't it? Little girls who like trucks aren't allowed to just be normal little girls, no, they are little girls with male interests apparently. Even the term gender nonconformist affirms gender roles.

Out of curiosity though, how do you define gender without gender norms and gender roles? You have used a lot of gender normative language here yet claim to be gender nonconformist. I'm not sure that you understand what nonconformist means. It isn't about being different to our rebbelling against the majority view, it is about not seeing the majority view in the first place.

Hi Wakame. Am I understanding you correctly then that as a child you longed for a female body instead of a male one and to use the word girl about yourself instead of boy? In which case gender roles and gender identity didn't come into it for you at all? That's really interesting.

I've spent the day with two TIMs in different situations. They didn't meet I'd know one another and I didn't know them. I have nothing else to say about this very dull experience other than they didn't pass (obviously) and we have no shared experiences. They are transwomen and I am a woman. We both wear mascara. That's pretty much it.

What is gender? What is gender from a child's point of view?

Well usually it is a series of norms that are associated with a particular sex that boys and girls either internalize as belonging correctly to them or they don't. Either way they are not usually able to escape them if they wish to, since most of the society they are growing up in holds tightly to them.

The children often think the norms belong fully to their sex and that they were born that way. Often children have a stronger and more simplistic sense of gender identity than adults because it is the stage when gender identity is actively being developed as part of the formation of identity as a whole and it is part of how they differentiate themselves from others. Obviously this varies a lot depending on culture.

But in Wakame's case it seems to be that it was just the word 'girl' and a particular body image.

OP I'm delighted you don't waste your time making yourself overly sexualised. I wish 'millions of cis' women wouldn't either. It's harmful.

You don't address the high incidence of ASD in ftm transmales. I suspect this is because you don't care about them. Or about people who have ASD.

My impression of transwomen in public is that they don't seem to care about much except themselves. But then I do have ASD so I might have got that wrong.

mirandayardley.com/en/17-signs-i-am-an-autogynephile-and-didnt-know-it/

Hi Rogue. This is a particular interest of mine and I cannot for the life of me understand why it is not the subject of urgent and extensive research.

Yes. And why is ASD underdiagnosed in females?

You misunderstand - being trans is primarily about your body.

This sounds very much like Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID).

Sufferers from BIID experience a mismatch between their physically healthy body and the body with which they identify. They identify as disabled. They often desire a specific amputation to achieve the disabled body they want: for example, the left leg below the knee. The analogy with Gender Identity Disorder is clear: someone with Gender Identity Disorder experiences a mismatch of some kind between their chromosomal and genital sex and the sex they identify with.

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/body-integrity-identity-disorder-the-condition-where-sufferers-want-to-be-disabled-a6680306.html

How would such a young child long for pa female body though?

I have seen a video of a child saying “I knew I was really a girl because I like dolls” and can understand how a child migh5 think that way.
But to long for a girl”s body?

Yes. Why on earth would you support someone to try to be something they aren't and can't ever be? Especially when it's time- consuming, harmful to health and very expensive.

Absolutely Rogue. It is entirely possible that the under diagnosis of asd in girls is one reason why the number of young ftm trans teens so far outweigh mtf

That's not really surprising though is it? The feminist objection to extremist gender ideology is against the idea that gender non conforming kids should be encouraged to think they need to live as though they actually are the opposite sex just because they don't conform to imposed cultural gender role norms.

Quite.

And for a 6 year old to be 'cis' they would have to be a complete girly girl, always in princess dresses and so on. Given anyone who is NOT stereotypically 100% feminine/masculine is not cis apparently.

Its just such nonsense.

The highly sexualised environment they go through puberty in is another possible cause. I can well see how rejection of changes to be a mature female is a rejection of the oversexualised landscape they find themselves in. And I have a lot of sympathy for that.

The problem is that your question doesn't really make sense because no one is 100% male or female. You can however change the degree of physical masculinity of femininity you have.

Eh? Masculinity or femininity has bugger all to do with being male or female. Noone is 100% male or female indeed...I would agree that noone (or next to noone, maybe a couple of people exist) is 100% masculine or feminine though, which is why 'cis' is utter nonsense.

Hi Wakame. Am I understanding you correctly then that as a child you longed for a female body instead of a male one and to use the word girl about yourself instead of boy? In which case gender roles and gender identity didn't come into it for you at all? That's really interesting.

Thats how it sounds to me. But this is how it always tends to come across from transsexual people. 'Transgender' is an entirely different kettle of fish, and seems all about the stereotypes rather than discomfort with ones sexed body.