Stella O'Malley, Trans Kids: It's Time To Talk

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Apologies if there is already a thread about this. Channel 4, 10.00 tonight. 'Stella O'Malley considers the huge rise in numbers of young people embarking on gender transition, through the prism of the gender identity issues she experienced when she was a child.' According to The Times no TRA groups were prepared to contribute to this . Stella feels this may be because she was a tomboy as a young girl, (even insisting she was a boy until she hit puberty), and is now a confident, mature woman who believes that nowadays she would be pressured to go down the transition route. Sounds like it will be worth watching.

L.U.T.Brew..
Can't say I agree with your analysis of the situation. To me it seems that young people today have it much harder than those of us born in the decades after the war, when the world was opening out, and people expected to be richer and with more opportunities than our parents. And so it proved. Young people today have less teenage pregnancies then 30 years ago,, drink less, and many reject drugs. Their prospects are much more limited than ours were., and the education system puts huge pressures on them.

There is something going wrong for young people; I agree with you there. But by and large it isn't that they get everything on a plate. That was what people said about my lot on the 60s, and with justice.And boy, did WE scream and shout and go on demos, like the TRAs of Bristol.

It is all pretty depressing, tbh; I am almost but not quite certain that there is no big expansion in genuine, lifelong GD.... although some of us wonder what chemicals and hormones we are all stuffing into ourselves, anti nataly as well.

Got a bit distracted by the footage of the Bristol meeting because I was excited about recognising so many of the speakers.
anyway it was a great documentary on I would recommend watching!

Hi Stella and thank you

Instagram has just over 200 posts on #detransition but 130K+ on #binding and 70K+ on #F2M as well as many other transitioning hashtags so it’s still being pushed heavily on there. The cutting hashtags you get a warning if you try to search these days, but cutting both tits off is A OK and cause for celebration. People need to be sending this shit to their MP’s, Schools and local safeguarding and asking WTAF is being done about this massive global scandal

Guardian article May 2018 'Schools pulled into row over helping transgender children
As more teens come out as trans, experts clash over how schools should help'
(extract)
"Davies-Arai says her broader concern is that by affirming students’ gender identity, schools may be nudging them down a route that can lead to cross-sex hormones and life-changing surgery without enough time to reflect. Teachers, she says, “are essentially being forced to collude in an experimental approach towards children with gender dysphoria”. She adds: “You can support children and accept them, without affirming their belief that their body is ‘wrong’.”

Adele Robinson (not her real name), a head of year at a secondary school, shares Davies-Arai’s worries. The school has had 12 children, all girls, come out as transgender in the past 18 months. The majority, she says, have autism, and some have experienced sexual abuse.

When they come out, she says, they have brought in information sourced from Tumblr blogs and YouTube videos. Although her team does its best to “support every child in a loving, kind and compassionate way”, she feels that staff are too frightened to challenge what she sees as harmful practices: “We have chest binders worn in school, which is horrible. If a child was cutting, they would be straight in with a counsellor. Yet damaging developing breast tissue goes unquestioned. It’s a gross failure in terms of child protection.” (continues)

www.theguardian.com/education/2018/may/15/transgender-row-teachers-afraid-challenge-breast-binding

This thread is relevent from July 2018, 'Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria' week.
Interesting to note the attempts to silence discussion by adult transwomen, both public figures and MN posters:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3315676-ROGDWEEK2018

from the thread above I wrote:
"I am reading the book 'TRANS: Exploring Gender Identity and Gender Dysphoria: A Guide for Everyone (including professionals)'

There are very useful introductory chapters by Dr Az Hakeem

There are also essays by a number of people with different perspectives. One of these is a transman Luka Griffen who set legal precedent in Australia:

In his essay Luka describes the discomfort felt as a young person and then as a teenager during puberty and the associated physical changes

Luka identifies the internet and YouTube specifically as been how he made sense of his feelings. referring to
‘How I knew I was trans’ , ‘Quiz: are you trans?’ and a YouTube video called,‘ How I knew I was transgender (and some advice on coming out)’ by Skylar Kergil which Luka describes as resonating completely with all of his feelings.
Luka describes a moment of epiphany,
"I felt so much relief. Because somebody actually knew how I was feeling, it helped give me a new understanding of myself. Some of the confusion, frustration, and anxiety was easier to deal with, just knowing there were other people in the world who felt like me. It was like a light had been turned on in my mind. I knew I was a transgender man, and I knew that I didn’t want to be called by my birth name."

Having read this, I searched YouTube 'Am I transgender?' many of the top rated videos are by young transmen. I watched a few and was struck by how many said, 'If you're asking the question, you probably are' there are also a great many similarities in these young people's YouTube narratives

www.amazon.co.uk/TRANS-Exploring-Gender-Identity-Dysphoria/dp/1911246496?tag=mumsnetforum-21

Kay, I don't think you are on social media to see the entitlement from the young trans activists out there. It is incredibly prolific. It is scary.

You have also not had veiled death threats issued by them because you are not supporting their line of transwomen ARE women (no we are not but can sometimes be regarded as such if we deserve to be).

Nor been verbally assaulted much as they do to Mumsnetters. People thinking like you are called Truscum, Quislings and even Nazi collaborators. The hatred is prolific. It has driven many transsexuals off social media because it shatters your perception of how we should behave.

This is not remotely the same as 1960s other than in a general sense that all youth generations rebel.

In the 1960s we did not make bomb threats that wreck any meeting of women they find out about. Nor condone violence against women. Nor show the offence taken at every turn if someone accidentally misgenders them. Nor the entitled demands to tear down posters that are literally just true words taken from a dictionary.

These tactics are out there every day in abundance. I had to see them for myself to believe them, because, like you, transitioned years ago and got on with life and happily and respectfully tried not to create any problems for others. I never protested when I had no rights at all because life is not all about rights and I was just content to be living truthfully to myself at last. It was enough and society compromised to help, which was fair and equitable.

Being trans should be about being yourself and living harmoniously with others without trying to make them believe what you believe as the one true god.

I watched the parliamentary debate on the GRA 'reforms' last week and it was shocking how many of the MPs from different parties have bought into all this trans are terribly oppressed and struggle so hard to get any rights and need to be given this that and the other.

No we aren't. Sorry and whilst not entirely a product of the young it is most obvious in the generation that have grown up with social media able to aim insults at anyone whilst behind a mask and it breeds a kind of invulnerability complex.

The internet is what has driven children into the arms of the trans mantra. When we were growing up being trans you felt you were the only person in the world like this as there was no community, no clinics, no daily blizzard of media coverage and - most importantly - no You Tube transitioners telling others - look at me - it is easy - just make the change.

This is what has turned a rare medical condition of still unknown cause but with very obvious psychological and social aspects into a social contagion and impacting the young more than any generation because of they live their lives on line.

Of course, not everyone is like this. But many are being swept along with it like these MPs were. They believed implicitly the claim that 41% of trans people have experienced a hate crime in the past year.

I have no idea of the validity of that but of true the question is not - oh, poor you, how can we give you more rights? But why is this happening to you now?

You and I have both been around a while. Not sure how long for you, but I transitioned more than 41 years ago and in all that time I have NEVER experienced a single hate crime. I don't think the reason is because I am just very lucky.

Something has shifted in attitudes and approach of today's trans people in what they call a hate crime.

Yes, I am sure really bad things do occasionally happen. But the definition of hate crime is now anything, Just like the definition of being trans is anybody.

There are no defined boundaries anymore. Everything is a blurred fuzzy mess in the same way the concepts of sex and gender and the rights and names of others are assimilated Borg like.

This is the kind of world that the children who experience what we experienced are growing up into and they are surrounded by this kind of influence not the ones we were.

In our day we knew something was wrong but not what. So we saw doctors as gender dysphoria very obviously is a problem not a cause. And we tried to resolve it and did what it took.

Today these youngsters see the adults simply saying who you feel is who you are and nobody must stand in your way. And there should be no boundaries. It is your right to declare you are not what your birth certificate says. This is where the entitlement emerges. Not the cry for help we had.

It is no wonder they are being swept along in increasing numbers - the ones who DO have dysphoria and the ones who think they do (but will eventually find out they don't - possibly too late for some to reel their lives back in) . Plus the ones who are just doing it because it seems like a cool idea as one of their friends did.

Sorry for these long posts. But I feel really passionately on this because I am very fearful for the present generation of children being innocently swept up in this. We seem to be sleepwalking into a tragedy believing that we are helping.

It is down to those few of us who have been there as that child and understand the problems in ways they are far too close to it to see for themselves to say what we think.

Lassupthebrew;

Actually, I AM on social media. I'm aware of the hoo ha, and the posturing. I just react a bit differently to it. :-)

But as we can easily communicate outside of Mumsnet, perhaps we should do that? This isn't our place to clog up, is it?

Very best wishes..
K

I'm wondering if all the posters with gender disphoria who don't feel the current wave of activism is speaking for them could join together and write to MPs or somehow get it out there that it's not in your name.

The internet is what has driven children into the arms of the trans mantra. When we were growing up being trans you felt you were the only person in the world like this as there was no community, no clinics, no daily blizzard of media coverage and - most importantly - no You Tube transitioners telling others - look at me - it is easy - just make the change.

Its also important to recognise the role that prominant older people within the transgender community have played in influencing both the narrative and younger people.

Guardian 2013:
'Voices from the trans community: 'There will always be prejudice'
It's more than 50 years since the UK's first trans person was outed in the press. So how do members of the community think life has changed for them since?'
(extract)
"In 25 years, [James Barrett lead clinician at the Charing Cross Gender Identity Clinic, the largest and oldest in the world] has seen trans people become "a networked bunch" – more so than other people, he thinks – thanks to the internet. [Paris] Lees, who also works for Trans Media Action, says social media is the "essential catalyst" for the transformation of trans people in society. "Society is in transition and we've woken up from the operation and there's no going back. We can't pretend that trans people don't exist any more," she says. "People have been taking the piss out of trans people for 60 years. The narrative on trans issues has been controlled by people who have no understanding of them. Social media is about us grabbing the narrative back and telling our own stories – this is our reality, this is what we go through and this is what matters to us. We're here, we're in your face, we definitely exist. That's the most important thing – realising we exist." (continues)
www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jan/22/voices-from-trans-community-prejudice

Telegraph 2014:
'Facebook's 71 gender options come to UK users'
(extract)
"Facebook worked with UK groups Press for Change and Gendered Intelligence to add 21 new options to ensure the list best reflected the ways UK users may choose to describe themselves.

"Gender identities are complex and for many people, describing themselves as just a man or just a woman has always been inadequate," said Professor Stephen Whittle, vice-president at Press for Change. The European Court of Human Rights has upheld the right to develop our gender identity, as key to our personal autonomy.

"By challenging the gender binary, Facebook will finally allow thousands of people to describe themselves as they are now and it will allow future generation of kids to become truly comfortable in their own skins." (continues)
www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10930654/Facebooks-71-gender-options-come-to-UK-users.html

Sorry for these long posts. But I feel really passionately on this because I am very fearful for the present generation of children being innocently swept up in this. We seem to be sleepwalking into a tragedy believing that we are helping

Lass you'll find the vast majority of women who post on FWR in full agreement with you.

lassupthebrew

Please don’t apologise for your long posts - your experience as an early transitioner, long before the days of social media, and your obvious concern for our current generation of gender questioning children makes you a valuable poster.

I don’t think late transitioners are able to see the potential problems as clearly as you can - their thoughts are too clouded with wistful what-might’ve-been. I don’t mean that as a criticism, it’s natural human behaviour in all sorts of circumstance, not just trans narratives, I just think it makes their opinions fairly useless!

I watched the parliamentary debate on the GRA 'reforms' last week and it was shocking how many of the MPs from different parties have bought into all this trans are terribly oppressed and struggle so hard to get any rights and need to be given this that and the other.

No we aren't. Sorry and whilst not entirely a product of the young it is most obvious in the generation that have grown up with social media able to aim insults at anyone whilst behind a mask and it breeds a kind of invulnerability complex.

It has to be recognised the role that older people in the transgender community are playing. They are prominant and influential TRAs:

From the 2013 Guardian article linked previously,

Christine Burns:
"In the 90s, when she was chair of the Women's Supper Club of the local Conservative party association in Cheshire, she quietly joined Press for Change. Even then, the new activists dared not be openly trans. "The thing that held us back in the 1990s campaigning was that fear of being out," admits Burns. Eventually, she came out in 1995; she jokes that she realised she was more embarrassed to be a member of the Conservative party than openly transsexual.

Much of their campaigning remained on the quiet. The passage of the 2004 law to give trans people legal status was "remarkable," says Burns, because "the government was able to pass an entire act in parliament without anyone throwing a fit in the press". In popular culture, the activists became more forthcoming in their attempts to increase popular understanding of trans issues."

www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jan/22/voices-from-trans-community-prejudice

The LibDem Layla Moran who was one of the MPs clearly influenced by TRAs propaganda acknowledged the influence/help she had received from Helen Belcher (Trans Media Watch)

James Kirkup comment:
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/11/this-mp-has-summed-up-everything-wrong-with-the-transgender-debate/

Here’s a little anecdote, I can’t stop thinking about it so I might as well share it:

DS (18) has just gone off to university. One of his new friends is a female born transman. DS has been brought up to not bat an eyelid at we affectionately call weirdos - we are a weirdo family and DS is the straight looking black sheep (see attached meme). DS also thinks the 72 Facebook genders are bullshit, hates the pronoun police and knows that human beings can not change sex (but being accepting of people’s quirks is important, and transpeople are people). He’s an aspie, and in him this manifests as being prone to saying the thing that other people are thinking (and not saying out of politeness).

He came home a week or two ago because he had a bad hangover and wanted his own bed. He tells me about his new friend L, and how he and L went off to the gents together and everyone stared at them but he ‘wasn’t bothered’.

So I said, ‘That’s cool, I’m glad I raised you to be open-minded... but what about the boys that ARE bothered?’

DS makes a ? face at me - so I carry on, ‘Don’t men and boys deserve spaces that offer privacy, away from women and girls? I don’t mean Old Boys Clubs, just places where you are naked, or partially naked, toilets, gym showers, what about saunas especially for gay men?’

DS looks a bit weirded out that his mum is talking to him about gay saunas but cautiously replies... ‘uhhhh, yeeessss’.

‘So is it fair that your friend L accesses these spaces, seeing as they have a female body, and not a male body?’

‘Well, no, but L IS gay, very gay. L talks about being gay all the time’

‘Help me out here, son, do you mean gay as in female bodied person attracted to other female bodied people? Because that’s what defines gayness, same-sex attraction.’

‘No, L fancies boys’

‘Well, that’s not being gay is it? A female body and a male body = boring old heterosexualality - like me and your DSD’

‘I suppose so. Anyway, L doesn’t even like other transpeople, L just didn’t want to be a woman. L said that to me, just like that, ‘I just didn’t want to grow up to be a woman’.

Anyway, since this exchange i’ve been lurking L’s instagram account. L has a quote from my son and a link to my son’s account in their bio (something you usually do to indicate a girlfriend/boyfriend). DS has a new casual girlfriend at uni who fits DS’s usual type, so the bio is deffo an unrequited action.

I’m really haunted by the idea that a smart, funny, heterosexual girl is so horrified at the thought of growing up to be a woman that they take on a gay male persona, despite being attracted to straight boys.
How has this happened?

Is there no way to be a butch, straight, woman anymore? I’m sure there was, or at least, the acceptable looks and behaviour for women used to be a much wider spectrum - my sister always had short hair in the 80s, for example. Wtf have we done to our girls?

Is there such a thing as a late-transitioning FtM, who isn’t attracted to women? I’m aware that there are some late-transitioning former-lesbians, but are there any/many straight ones? If not, why not?

Please can we have some proper studies? I don’t want transpeople to be researched out of existence, but surely we need some proper studies? Because this seems like a whole load of heart ache to me.

NHS transgender services ‘at breaking point,’ experts warn
Nick Duffy 23rd November 2018, 2:12 PM
(extract)
NHS services for transgender people in the UK are near breaking point, experts have warned a parliamentary committee.

The UK Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee today published submissions to an inquiry into LGBT healthcare, revealing the high level of concern about access to gender-related services.

The Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES) warned that “specialised gender services is growing exponentially,” adding that “excessive waits result in acute stress, self-harm, suicidality and resort to self-medication.”

GIRES warned that failing to meet the demand would be a “grave mistake,” while LGBT+ charity Stonewall added: “It is vital that NHS England set out a clear plan to increase capacity and reduce waiting times to gender identity services.” (continues)
www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/11/23/transgender-healthcare-uk-backlogs-nhs/

embedded Women & Equalities report:
www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/women-and-equalities-committee/inquiries/parliament-2017/inquiry11/publications/

It is a recognised truth that better mental health services are neccessary for all, especially for children and young people.
The crisis amongst girls was also identified recently.

Those TRA individuals, charities and organisations have a responsibility to also consider how they have contributed to the emotional well being of those they claim to represent. Especially the most vulnerable.
Reckless use and abuse of suicide statistics will have had an impact. So too the misinformation and propaganda.

Pink News twitter

Rowantrees, I know that Stephen Whittle and Christine Burns were influential (and both honoured by the Queen) for bringing about the GRA in 2004. Stephen Whittle is an equalities law professor. Press for Change in the late 90s probably was the first activism. But I am not sure what happened as it passed me by if it did until the GRA was under discussion and I followed the Hansard reports.

Not sure either of them are particularly influential out there presently but I certainly got the impression from what Stephen Whittle posted when he was on here earlier this year that we would disagree over self ID. I hope respectfully.

I do not know their views on children transitioning either, as I have not met them or seen them out there posting.

I am not suggesting that Kay or myself reflect all. Of course, we do not. And as you see even we do not agree 100%. But I do know we are far from alone on the transsexual side of things. Though most are scared to talk openly (hence that blog involving 14 of them saying as much).

Also - in reply to a comment earlier about contacting MPs - I have been told that what David Davies said in parliament the other day was partly informed in that way. You will note he was the only person to use that term in the debate. The government have fallen for the trans activist extermination of the term transsexual - which we feel has been deliberate appropriation - in much the same way that women, with justification, feel about the appropriation of the term woman by trans ideology.

Many holders of the GRC under the present rules also filled out the consultation in ways that I think most of you would likely not be too far away from supporting.

Some of the things I know we told the government are evident in the 131 page summary of the Scottish consultation released yesterday. As I recognise some of the highlighted remarks. Though, of course, we share those concerns with plenty of women who will have commented too.

But I agree that we need to mobilise around the aftermath of this excellent documentary which will have focused minds. And we need to make clear what we think. I am sure we will try.

As always the real problem is that there are under 5000 of us and an estimated half a million transgender pressing for self ID.

We have never been out and loud as we have families who we have to think about given the threats we get from trans activism when speaking out.

So there is a major imbalance. But more and more transsexuals have been 'peak transing' in the past year and emerging to reclaim the term and say no to trans activism. We have likely been slow recognising what was going on - like many women were I think.

But we are very aware now. And deeply concerned. I hope the real threat to children will prove the step too far that will bring more out into the open and speak up.

But we are very aware now. And deeply concerned. I hope the real threat to children will prove the step too far that will bring more out into the open and speak up

I hope so.
I would hope that those MPs who spoke against David Davies in the recent debate so sure that they were representing vulnerable people who are transgender would listen to those who have your experience & insight.
MPs will meet with their constituents. They need to hear other perspectives. This seems to be much more effective than letters.

It is a cliche but I do believe in the idea that it takes a village to raise a child.

I agree with you ROwantrees. This is the kind of thing we have to get people to do. Talk to the right people.

Debbie's good article yesterday will have helped.

Not sure either of them are particularly influential out there presently

Stephen Whittle certainly is influential. Whittle took part in the drafting of the original Yogyakarta Principles. Whenever you see governments and others referring to 'International best practices' regarding transgender rights, this is what they are referring to.

The Scottish Government actually spelt this out in their consultation document.

3.10. The view of the Scottish Government is that the 2004 Act requirements are unnecessarily intrusive and do not reflect the best practice now embodied in the Yogyakarta Principles and Resolution 2048.

It's weird, how did the Yogykarta Principles get to be a thing? They were put together by a tiny group of people on a niche cause, and haven't been adopted by the UN or anything, yet countries are rushing to sign up to them

How judges whatever league table DB was upset at us slipping to 4th on? And what is the criteria?

Yes. Why don't we mumsnetters create an international forum to set out gender critical best practices and we can get representatives around the world to sign up?... Judging by the 24 hour nature of MN that wouldn't be too hard to arrange and inform the UN, the EU, the UK govt and every major institution what they are and what they must sign up to.

If the TAs can have that clout, why not us?