Poor kid

[Pratchet]

someone should answer for this

Me too.

Ffs. Im horrified. Gender non-conforming girls are not boys born in the wrong body. How much longer is this going to go on?

#iwasthatchildtoo makes quite a nice hashtag.

I hope no doctor prescribes puberty blocking drugs for that child

'first do no harm'

I was also that child. I also went from happily wearing dresses (in fact, refusing to wear anything but dresses!) to, one day, deciding I was never wearing dresses, and I never have worn makeup. Most of my interests were "boy" stereotyped, from microscopy to rock collections to astronomy to catching crawly things from the stream and digging in the dirt.

My mother was a pathological narcissist who loved for us kids to do anything that could get her a little quote in the local newspaper or any other thrill of a tiny bit of fame. I shudder to think what would have become of me -- especially as I look on at my two children, who would never have existed in a world where I'd been sterilized.

I certainly had shades of that child. I'm pretty sure I thought I wanted to be a boy at one point (like George in the Famous Five). I was a goth as a teen and hated anything "girlie". Luckily in the 80s/90s this was not seen as being trans.

We were all this child. Hating pink and dresses and what society expected of us. We all spent years embarrassed and distressed at our developing or lack of developing bodies and it takes til adulthood to realise the problem isn't you but everyone else

No "we" were not. The mother's idea that her child must be a boy because the child rejects feminine things is absurd but this idea that growing up as a girl is some sort of hell to get through is no better.

I agree that it's wrong to say it is all girls experience, but it certainly was like that for some of us. Great for you that you had no problems though.

I was also this child.

Thank goodness that in the 80s we had goth to see us through.

Also...the whole dramatic bra burning & new name after one's favourite Youtuber?

Surely to goodness the sensible parent of a gender non conforming 12yo Charlotte would just call them Charlie, buy them some trousers, applaud the rather cool haircut & then, I dunno, wait & see what happened.

I was that child too. Preferred trousers. Climbed trees. Rode my bicycle everywhere (and it had to be a proper bike with big wheels, not of your shopping bike nonsense). Played football and was devastated when not allowed to play in the school team at primary age. Cried when I had to put my vests away and get a bra at 10/11. Didn't care about my hair, let my mum decide (still have the same hairstyle now actually).

But I grew out of it, and grew into my body and my femaleness. Am straight, but find some women attractive. Still reject stereotypes. Bought my son a toy hoover for his 3rd birthday co it was what he wanted, to the horror of my mum. He's not trans or gay either, but if he had been that would be fine.

I weep for this child. Please just let them find themselves, don't push them into a box that will trap them in a lifetime of confusion and self-doubt.

I haven't read all the article but was struck by the mother describing her child as a tom boy for not wanting their long hair to be styled or their mum putting make on them. That's not anywhere close to how I would describe a tom boy. Most gender non conforming girls (aka tom boy) would surely have asked for their hair to be cut? I'd expect to see mention of rough and tumble play, friends with boys, playing football etc. All sex role stereotypes so not particularly meaningful but when did girl = long hair become girl = long styled hair?

and why was a deed poll required? This child could easily have started to use a unisex version of her given name and used it everywhere without any paperwork being required or questions asked. It seems like a non story so I agree with others that the motivation of the parent in selling their story to the paper (and no I don't trust the mail but it was in a local paper first) is questionable.

or what Purple said

Some years back my daughter (who has 3 brothers) insisted she wanted her hair short. From 4-7 we went for short cuts as every time it went past her ears she was upset. At 7 she decided that she no longer had a sore head when using a hairbrush and at 8.5 it is regulation ‘girl’ length.

At about the same time my eldest (boy) announced that he was done with haircuts. From 9 till almost 12 it was worn in a ponytail and rarely even trimmed because he was anxious about it. Sometimes he was mistaken for a girl. That bothered him a few times.

I lost track of the number of times I was asked if one/both were trans, or why they chose those hairstyles. And silliest of all, how many times I was asked if my 9-11 year old boy had long hair because of my wants, or his.

What I’ve found terrifying/fascinating is how often a hairstyle is the big evidence for gender/sex and ‘proof’ that a child is in the wrong body. I don’t understand how fully grown adults, who often have a pretty reasonable education, can believe that hairstyles are a sign of anything other than parental choice or personal choice and has nothing to do with genitalia. Watch some videos of girls ‘turning into’ boys and the hair chop is clearly hugely emotional for the mothers and often the child.

Hair is hair

And a child who is school refusing and feeling anxious should not have their image and personal information shared like this. The entire thing is a nasty mess and the poor children in the middle need support.

So keep these threads alive. Because there must be one place online where women can freely share and mourn for the future and present of children and young people. Where we can try to build an alternative narrative. A space that one day might welcome survivors of this huge experiment.

Rode my bicycle everywhere (and it had to be a proper bike with big wheels, not of your shopping bike nonsense)

I keep seeing on FWR mentions of riding a bicycle as some sort of evidence of being a "gender non conforming girl" / "tom boy"

Why ? What on earth is "tomboyish" about having a bicycle?

Honestly some of the things which FWR posters declare to be on the list of things which that nasty, gender enforcing society says are only meant for boys are absurd and show as blinkered and stereotyped an attitude as those you purportedly deplore.

I particularly liked one poster once proudly proclaiming her son's evidence of bucking gender stereotypes because he liked music.

@Giddy99: No child is being mutilated again that is showing ignorance about what happens at a gender clinic,

Lupron, with its sideeffects and potential to cause osteoporosis when taken for a long time, could justifiably be considered chemical mutilation.

Lass: Why ? What on earth is "tomboyish" about having a bicycle?

This goes right back to the suffragettes and rational dress movement. Men, not wanting women to move around freely with their newly-acquired bicycles, declared cycling to be unfeminine.

Climbed trees

And this one is the gold standard of being a gender non conforming little girl. Why ? It is bizarre. Where do you (collective you) get this notion that society frowns on this or that it is bucking gender stereotypes?

Lass: this idea that growing up as a girl is some sort of hell to get through is no better.

Except that for many of us, growing up as a girl was hell. Sexually assaulted before I left primary school, early puberty so having to manage menstruation at primary school, bullying, violence, boys telling me that lego was not for girls or only letting me use the pink crayon, wolf-whistled at in school uniform at 13. Yes, a walk in the park, that was

This goes right back to the suffragettes and rational dress movement. Men, not wanting women to move around freely with their newly-acquired bicycles, declared cycling to be unfeminine

I am assuming that no one banging on here about how gender non conforming they were as a child was a child 100 years ago. It is absurd. No one thinks riding a bike isn't for girls.

Lass: Where do you (collective you) get this notion that society frowns on this [tree climbing in girls] or that it is bucking gender stereotypes?

Hmm, I dunno. Perhaps it was my grandmother's insistence on cladding me in skirts, mary jane shoes, and white socks so that I couldn't climb trees?

Hi Lass. When I was a child (70s mostly) boys had racer bikes and girls had shopping bikes. Racers had big wheels, skinny tyres, drop handlebars and at least 5 gears. Shopping bikes had small wheels, fat tyres, 3 or sometimes no gears and a basket on the front. The disapproval when I rode my 10-gear Eddie Mercx racer to school were palpable.

The ultimate prize was the Raleigh Chopper, and they were definitely Not For Girls.

Having my bike was one of my first "fuck you"s to what I considered to be the Establishment. It may not be relevant now, iyt very much was back then.

Also re climbing trees. Girls were not expected to engage in activities that would get them dirty or dishevelled, even then. We had tea sets and dollies to play with. The idea of us running about climbing trees etc was very unladylike and was what classed us as tomboys. These days we would probably qualify as GNC at the very least, back then we just wanted the freedom to play that our brothers had.

HTH

*was not were

Lass: when girls are put in impractical clothes that get caught in chains and wheels so that they can't ride a bike, it's pretty clear that their parents/grandparents are more concerned about the girl looking girly than about her riding a bike. The attitude that bikes are mostly a boy/man thing persists, despite starting 100 years ago. When is the women's TdF? There isn't one! I've never met a man who can't ride a bike, but I've met plenty of women who can't. Bearing in mind that learning to cycle is a skill usually learned in childhood, that's pretty telling about their parents attitude to cycling in girls.

I wore dresses and skirts. I lived on a farm and climbed trees. Girl children born in the late 1950s weren't routinely wearing trousers.

Climbing trees as an activity doesn't have much going for it really- my brother wasn't interested.

mary jane shoes

Patent mary janes at that, so if you scuffed them, they were ruined. I swear she thought I was some kind of doll.