Bloody hell BBC

[WorkingItOutAsIGo]

Reading the BBC news online this morning and there is not one, but two stories about transgender people. One promoting the transition of a small child, and the other promoting sport for transgender athletes. The latter in particular looks like a direct attempt to counter the news discussion over the last few days in sport.

This isn’t news, it’s wartime propaganda.

Thank you Floral for your timely reminder of Bunbury's sage advice.

I think my problem with what you are saying, Sarah, is that it means we should care less about 'non-trans children' who are misdirected into transition than about 'trans children' who are delayed or discouraged from doing so.

But detransition is a thing, and is appallingly difficult to deal with once permanent changes have been made.

The quibbling about what constitutes a mother and so on is largely irrelevant.

When it comes down to it, Sarah thinks that validating the child's desire to be the opposite sex is the kind, supportive thing to do, whereas most of us think it is cruel and abusive, on a par with foot binding, female genital mutilation or castrating boy singers. There isn't really a bridge between those two positions.

Personally I think that in the long run we will be proved right, and future generations will look back in horror at the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery on children and young adults.

I could be wrong - maybe it will all turn out swimmingly well for those children and they'll all be delighted with their new bodies and there won't be any long-term health impacts. Not putting money on it, though.

My 7 year old DSD knows where babies come from. There are age appropriate ways of saying things.

OK, Sarah, can you tell me the age-appropriate way for telling a 7-year-old that if they make the choice as a child to take puberty blocking drugs followed by cross-sex hormones, they will probably grow up to have no sexual function and will be sterile.

Do you think a 7-year-old is mature enough to understand the implications of this course of action?

Wouldn't it be kinder to tell them that they can express themselves in any way they want to, but that changing sex is impossible?

I use 1 towel and DH uses 2. Bugger.
Seriously though, as someone who grew up in an era where we all wore weird clothes of any description, had hair of any length (commonly short at one side and long at the other) and wore make up or not, jewellery or not, probably platform boots, etc etc, how the hell did we get to this stage where stereotypes seem to be worse than ever and why is nobody even looking at pulling that stupid house of cards down. And why are people of both sexes trying to dehumanise themselves by looking like dolls? Is there suddenly something inherently wrong with being just a person? Is it the JUST part?

OK, Sarah, can you tell me the age-appropriate way for telling a 7-year-old that if they make the choice as a child to take puberty blocking drugs followed by cross-sex hormones, they will probably grow up to have no sexual function and will be sterile.

And to be medicated for life, in an untested experiment.

Because I'd love to know how you tell this to children in an 'age-appropriate way'.

I love the bicycle analogy! She's brilliant.

Just saw this

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/newsbeat-47457088/i-m-15-going-through-the-menopause-and-won-t-have-kids

It's a 15 yo girl experiencing early menopause and hence lifetime infertility.

All quite clear and biologically spelled out.

Big contrast to all the 'stunning and brave' trans kids where they gloss over the self-same scenario.

Also she's quite clear that at 15 she doesn't really understand the (in her case entirely unavoidable) consequences of infertility - her parents have more awareness and understanding of it - children are incapable of informed consent to being made infertile.

To relate this back to the post I made earlier, one of the reasons my daughter has PTSD is because there is no way to contextualise her experience in an age appropriate way.
You wouldn’t even let a kid of her age watch a tv drama depicting what she has lived through/seen her friends on the ward die of.

The realities of being transgender similarly cannot be explained in an age appropriate manner.

Betty and your DD

Perhaps Sarah doesn't see a need for separating girls and boys at all in school.

Why the need for cubicles in mixed gender toilets? If a trans girl needs to use a urinal, surely another girl shouldn't have a problem with that? There should be urinals in girls toilets too.
Perhaps our daughters should play the boys at rugby, and go and share communal changing rooms & showers afterwards.

I find the increased used of gender stereotypes such a backward hateful way of thinking.

We should accept ourselves in the body we were born in but be free to express ourselves outwardly in whatever way we like without making judgements about others.

We should love, cherish and respect the body we were born with and protect it as far as we can so that we can live a long, healthy and happy life. For some, this takes some work but our children should be taught to love their bodies, not feel revulsion towards them.

There should be research into different treatments for dismorphia and a proper analysis of outcomes to see which is best, with the motto 'First do no harm' at it'so root.

If a trans girl needs to use a urinal, surely another girl shouldn't have a problem with that?

Trans girls are more than capable of weeing in a normal toilet, or do you all have urinals at home?

we pity any parent (such as you) who would propel their child down a road which finishes with amputated genitalia.

I wouldn't propel my child down that route at all. I'd openly and honestly talk to them and encourage and help them to explore each and every option. If they chose to go down the transition route after lots of discussion and exploration then I would 100% support them.

Sorry @Ihaventgottimeforthis I misread your post. No I don't think a cis girl should be okay with a trans girl using urinals. I think it would be far easier to have gender neutral toilets, all of which having cubicles. I find it odd then in a male toilet a lot of people choose to use urinals but hey ho, each to their own.

I give up trying to type and read coherently. I'm sure you all get the gist of what I'm trying to say.

I wouldn't propel my child down that route at all. I'd openly and honestly talk to them and encourage and help them to explore each and every option. If they chose to go down the transition route after lots of discussion and exploration then I would 100% support them.

If you have lied to a child, told them that taking drugs and surgery will make them able to change sex, rather than tell them the truth which is that they will need to be medicated for life, that they will become irreversibly infertile, that they will almost definitely have some sort of sexual dysfunction, that they may have problems with their bones, that they might lose IQ points, that there could be huge complications around any surgery, that there is no changing their mind, then you have essentially propelled them a certain way.

And besides, a child is not capable of understanding the implications of any of the above anyway, they are not developed enough to have to capacity to understand it. So it would be literally impossible to 'explore' sufficiently enough to give informed consent.

It's a bit of a catch 22 this old puberty thing isn't it?

Cis is meaningless... female girls are not a subset of girls - they are what the word describes.

"Help them to explore each and every option"

7 (or 9) year olds have none of the knowledge, experience, context or understanding of anatomy, sexuality or consequence required for decision-making of this magnitude. None. You can't ask them to consider scenarios that they simply don't have the capacity to understand. Also, even if they could, you can't even advise them truthfully and with full information because nobody actually knows exactly what the long term consequences are likely to be for the body. I cannot get my head around this idea at all. It's utterly insane.

"Well, if you're absolutely sure darling" 😑

New research is suggesting that puberty blockers will create an eight point drop in the person's IQ. And their spatial awareness and memory function will be irreversibly compromised.

The lie that puberty blockers are harmless and reversible is now being revealed. They are marketed and billed as a pause to puberty. But if you drop 8 IQ points and compromise your spatial awareness/memory/cognitive ability, how can you come to any kind of informed decision about anything?

At aged 10 or 11.

You could pause their puberty until they were 25, and they would be in no better a position.

In fact their position is much worse.

The only possible reason you would do this is if the alternative was death.

Enter debunked suicide statistics, stage left.

Sarah, Jazz Jennings is the trans poster girl. Have you seen her? Absolutely sure (at least on TV) that this was what she wanted, throwing parties for it before surgery.

Utterly unprepared for the pain, the repeat surgeries, the fact that she hadn't enough genital tissue to work with; no concept of sexual pleasure, no concept really of adult relationships and boundaries, because this is a young person kept artificially immature for years.

This, I repeat, is the poster kid for 'pausing puberty' in order to create a more womanly appearance in a male child. Those are the results that Jazz makes public. God knows what the poor kid really thinks, in the small hours of the night.

Jazz Jennings' life objectively gets worse and worse, and people are cheering it on more and more.

The pressure on her to keep smiling must be overwhelming.