In 10 years, we'll ask how we allowed the trans lobby to hijack childhood

[hackmum]

Opinion piece by Celia Walden in the Telegraph. (Apologies if someone's already posted this - I can't see it anywhere.)

www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/10-years-ask-did-allow-trans-lobby-hijack-childhood/

I can't read the whole thing, unfortunately, as my free articles have run out.

The 'right-left' dichotomy is a red herring. Far too many of my peers who call themselves 'left' have arse-all idea what it means, and as far as I can tell are just parroting whatever they think makes them properly-thinking and good people. That's how they justify gleefully shouting down women as 'TERFs' and transphobes without a passing thought to the idea that we may actually have a shred of empathy for anyone - all they need to know is that we are bad bad bad conservative fundamentalists.

It saves them from actually having to do some of the actual wife-work of real emotional labour - they can pretend to have already done that by saying the right thing and defending the most vulnerable from transphobes. It's easy, and comforting, to assume we are generally-phobes and regressive and holding on to 'cis' privilege - far easier than admitting that the situation is complex, and far easier than admitting their own complicity in hurting people.

When a hardline activist confronts me with the narrative of your words are killing trans people I wonder if they will ever be able to admit to themselves that pushing the narrative of suicide and transition being the only choices, the promises they give to trans-questioning people that they have the right to be believed without question, and the insistence that any dissent and disagreement is transphobia, makes them at least as responsible for the mess this is making of people's heads as my insistence that I should be able to name material reality as what it is.

(Yeah I'm feeling salty at the moment)

I am so pleased to see this thread on here. It’s insane all this rubbish about young children wanting to swop genders and parents, schools going full pelt to make it happen. My ds when ages 5 wanted to be a lion. Shit......was I supposed to find someone to transform him for fear of neglecting his needs and being a neglectful patent?? My other son, when a similar age, went through a phase of wanting to be black. His view was that being black is the coolest thing ever. Should I have got his skin dyed?
My god, parents jump on the ‘my child is really special and different wagon’ It will be interesting to see those children in 20 years time.

Shocking,

Ozziewozzie a lot of posters on here (including me) genuinely think we will have a wave of adults, medically transitioned with the support of their family and medical 'experts', suing said experts for letting them 'decide' so young to do something that would render them infertile and lifelong-dependent on cross-sex hormones.

Nobody knows what the long-term effects of blockers + cross-sex hormones will be. The impression I get is that adults on long term cross-sex hormones have a plethora of issues to deal with - and that's having gone through puberty already. These children are being experimented on in the name of progressiveness.

Just look at what happened to poor Jazz Jennings. We are going to see that situation over and over again.

I feel desperately sorry for Jazz Jennings. And I grieve for all the children who will grow up without fertility or sexual function because of decisions made on their behalf when they were too young to have any idea what was being stolen from them.

Luckily, the NHS takes a very cautious approach. In the USA, however, 13 and 14 year olds are being given double mastectomies...

@maniacmagpie I’m unsure what your point is to me. I get the impression you thought I was opposing your opinion. Not the case at all.

Agreed Ozzie. A big chunk of this is coming from parents imo. I appreciate that it must be incredibly difficult if your child is troubled and confused about who they are, but I think more than a few parents are enjoying the specialness. Others have just been well and truly taken in by the Mermaids rhetoric and they genuinely seem blind to all other perspectives. I know one mum of a teenage boy who I’d hitherto considered to be completely sensible and grounded in every way. Now her son is taking puberty blockers and she’s called me a nazi and accused me of wanting transpeople to kill themselves, simply because I stated that I think extensive talking therapy should be tried before any drugs are prescribed. What I actually said to her was very mild, as in I didn’t give her my properly considered opinion, just the edited, trying not to cause offence or compound an already difficult situation version, but you’d think I’d gone at her with a pitchfork. It’s like she’s a different person. I do not recognise this fanatic that has emerged in the last year. It’s so bloody worrying. The amount of brainwashing that’s going on with these parents makes them mindless slaves to the trans machine. They’re completely closed off to critical thought to the point where they’re completely incapable of making informed decisions about their own children. In ten years I fully expect an awful lot of angry and disgruntled parents as well, and it is they who will carry the guilt of what is being done to their kids.

For once being able to say ‘I bloody well told you so’ won’t be satisfying.

Words killing people is such a weird concept.

I grew up as a fat child in the 80s and lived with tehat til I eating disordered mtysekd out of it age 16.

I;ve never seen it as being literally killed with words. What?

Ozziewozzie sorry, not my intention at all. Apologies that it was unclear - I'm agreeing with you. I didn't need to aim it at you and in retrospect I see why it comes across as opposition

It illustrates the massive power schools now have.
I just don’t think it’s their remit. Teachers are not qualified in this area- they are qualified to teach. I think they have no business past saying it’s fine to be straight, gay, bisexual trans. They have no business past that. Lots of people I know are speaking to their kids at home- about all this before secondary schools get a chance to start filling their heads with nonsense. At the moment I think that’s all parents can realistically achieve, by being as open about the facts as they can and making themselves their children’s ally. Before schools can move in. I have happily told my lot that schools have no business talking to them behind my back about medical issues- and they fully understand at their age. I haven’t lost my initial shock that safeguarding is being shredded still. It’s a disgrace, hopefully the next parent who feels their school has overstepped the mark will get some legal help.

I think its great Celia has written this, she may well be best known as wife of Piers Morgan but she is an intelligent woman, educated at Newnham College (Cambridges all female college).

That's a very apt analogy, Aspie.

Yes, it is! May I pinch it?

Go ahead - I steal from everyone else!

The fact that people who normally agree on very little agree on this isn't a sign of the OMG we're becoming right wing apocalypse to come, it's a sign of how incredibly bloody obvious the thing we find ourselves agreeing on is. Of course people can't change sex, and claiming that they can do so via declarative statements is several steps further into completely fucking bonkers from claiming they can do so medically. Water is wet, fire is hot, sun rises in the east. Sex is biological and cannot be changed. Gender is a collection of cultural demands and expectations that feminists think we'd be better off without and conservatives are often rather fond of.

Far too many of my peers who call themselves 'left' have arse-all idea what it means, and as far as I can tell are just parroting whatever they think makes them properly-thinking and good people.

I mentioned 'moral licensing' on a different thread yesterday, I think it's part of the psychology here.

uk.businessinsider.com/what-moral-licensing-means-2017-11

www.refinery29.com/en-gb/liberal-men-sexual-harassment-moral-licensing-misogyny

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-licensing

Far too many of my peers who call themselves 'left' have arse-all idea what it means, and as far as I can tell are just parroting whatever they think makes them properly-thinking and good people.

Agree, this drives me nuts too. It's about the 'identity' of being left-wing and seen to be good rather than actually being or doing anything left wing in reality. And/or good for that matter. It's become a surface-level thing with no critical thinking involved and little ability to recognise obvious discrepancies between narrative and reality. Again, plenty of cognitive dissonance in action. Of course, if you allow dissenting voices to be silenced, you can happily live in that bubble forever. It becomes its own reality.

I think social class has a lot to do with it. I note too that almost all of the friends and acquaintances who parrot the most without question are resolutely middle class and often with little lived experience of the hardships and difficult realities under discussion. It is all entirely theoretical - following a trend rather than anything substantial.

ErrolTheDragon thanks for articulating something I've not had the words for. I feel like there's also an element of 'it's ok to attack the big bad wolf' at play, I don't really know how to articulate that.

hellandhairnets it's a terrible thing that facebook and other social media have enabled - the ability of people to do nothing but be the good person when it costs them nothing. Virtue-signalling is a scourge. Nobody wants to look like the baddie. Your comment on class is very pertinent. I'd add to that that my peers are young (I'm the tail-end of student age) and so the women in particular have not experienced the wage gap, being talked over by work colleagues, the motherhood penalty, and so on.

I wonder if the strength of the bubble they are creating exacerbates the strength of the angry response when someone comes along to poke a hole in it -the less accustomed to criticism and disagreement you become, the more it must hurt. It's like they want to be able to 'block and stay safe' IRL too.

I have a kid cousin. 9 or 10 years old. The thought of this ideology reaching her as she hits puberty terrifies me. That was a contributing factor in my realisation that I could not defend or ignore this ideology any more. Knowing that there are people out there who would tell her if she liked science, or cars, or sports, that she might be a boy - pushing the idea of 'harmless' drugs for her to 'figure out who she is' - terrifies me.

I am shamelessly GNC, and that's ok. I hope she knows that's ok too.