Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Trans kids

327 replies

Macareaux · 02/11/2019 12:17

This is an interesting article in a US publication about trans kids and rapid onset gender dysphoria.

After considering many aspects of the issue and anecdotal reports and data, the writer comes to the the conclusion that the distilled problem is that there is no way of determining which children are truly trans and which are not.

If we are to progress then sooner or later these mainstream writers are going to have to have the courage to say that there is no such thing as a transgender child.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/11/andrew-sullivan-hard-questions-gender-transitions-for-young.html

OP posts:
Thread gallery
6
Smallblanket · 03/11/2019 15:22

Good article summarising the ethical considerations of the affirmation approach in treatment when there are multiple "unknown unknowns"

bjgp.org/content/69/688/555

Lamahaha · 03/11/2019 18:43

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Lamahaha · 03/11/2019 18:44

Why do I not preview enough? I the first sentence that should be FB not GB.

Lamahaha · 03/11/2019 18:47

Even more autocorrects: girl in the first line should be irl and terms at the paragraph end should be terfs.

Datun · 03/11/2019 19:04

ROGD has been debunked

I'm not posting links.

🤣

OhHolyJesus · 03/11/2019 19:22

I have to watch what I say here but I did want to say that it's possible to have a small number of kids who transition go into adulthood and find happiness, beyond the blockers, hormones, surgery, dysmorphia, depression and anxiety. I'd say that based on what we know about detransitioners and the botched, experimental surgery, it's likely to be a very, very small percentage that actually end up happy with the results.

Even if they are happy and satisfied with the surgery, their ability to experience sex in the same way as if they had not had surgery is zero. They might not have anything to compare it to if they are a virgin before the surgery but it's not possible to experience sex with altered genitals in the same way had the genitals not been altered.

Many people say after all different kinds of major surgery that theirs legs, arms, internal organs etc are never the same again. I think for this reason alone the surgery needs to be banned.

As you can socially self ID (even though no laws have been passed) and get a GRC without surgically altering your body why do we not just say no surgery until 25+ minimum?

JanesKettle · 03/11/2019 19:58

As you can socially self ID (even though no laws have been passed) and get a GRC without surgically altering your body why do we not just say no surgery until 25+ minimum?

You can't treat legal adults differently on the basis of age (although it happens with pay - my dd is paid more as a 20yr old than as a 19yr old, so go figure.)

However, I strongly believe that waiting till the mid to late twenties to have invasive cosmetic surgery is sensible, given what we now know about the brain, and it's lack of maturations until much later than what we consider 'adult'.

My goal with my eldest with GD has never been to prevent her transitioning completely - it's been to get to her to cognitive adulthood with as many options as possible on the table. If, as an adult, she makes the choice to take opposite sex hormones or have cosmetic surgery, that's her business. All the 'trans her now/real self' cheerleaders are focused on is not her wellbeing, but her ability to pass in the future, which is nuts, because she's really short. As a 'man' she'll stand out a mile. Regardless of fuzz on the face.

My son is years and years away from cognitive maturity. There is no damn way I am going to be complicit in foreclosing on his identity now. And however rah-rah TRA's want to phrase it, that's what happens when you commit a child to a trans status through blockers, cross sex drugs, and surgery. You close off future options for them.

This is the kind of thing you'd here on 4th Wave, and other so-called 'anti-trans' groups that Littman drew from. In fact, she drew from groups of parents who were taking the long view of their child's wellbeing, many of whom are parents of gay and lesbian kids, and most of whom did not rule out transition for their child as mature adults, if their gender dysphoria was to persist and remain intractable.

Personally, I think there's a fucking IQ gap of a zillion between the parents who throw a 'yay, my baby is really a girl/boy! party' and those parents who say 'hang on, let's think about this for a minute, taking into account what we know (fluidity of identity at this developmental stage of psychological development, other models of social contagion) and what we don't (any evidence base that this cohort persists even with watchful waiting, and the side effects of treatment over the short, mid and long term do not outweigh any potential positives in reduction in dysphoria short, mid to long term).

Those posters who truly fear for the lives of the ROGD kids living with their awful parents, my suggestion to you is that you start promoting the need for high quality research on ROGD adolescents and their outcomes. And by high quality, I don't mean 'an article a psychologist wrote based on incomplete data from an entirely different cohort study'.

The MINUTE I have that data in my hand - the replicable data that says GD persists over the long-term to the same extent in ROGD kids as it does in those whose dysphoria has been present since childhood, that it is untreatable by newer forms of therapy like DBT, that persistence rates in those treated with blockers and hormones in their teens is similar to those not treated with blockers and hormones, that suicidal ideation post-transition remains consistently and significantly lower than before transition over the short, mid and long term, that health effects of surgery and hormones over the life time does not produce major or intractable effects on physical health - then I'll agree that this isn't experiemental treatment, and I'll consider it for my minor child.

So instead of insisting the evidence is already in, and the parents who wait and watch are nasty bigots, go out and fundraise and rally for the research - proper research. Stop shutting down academics whose politics or focus you don't like. That's what you can do for ROGD kids instead of calling their parents liars/they were always trans. What b/s.

JanesKettle · 03/11/2019 19:59

*hear

Smallblanket · 03/11/2019 19:59

Even better - why not separate sex from gender so that nobody wants surgery or cross sex hormones?

JanesKettle · 03/11/2019 20:03

Well, yeah, that was the whole 70's/80's/90's thing.

This whole genderist bull is just a meme.

(I will say though, this is a cultural problem, not a family problem. My kids grew up in a 'boys and girls can do anything/no bioessentialism/present how you like/being gay is great' home, and they still both became ROGD. It's a fucking dangerous meme.)

TemporaryPermanent · 03/11/2019 22:13

Still thinking about consent.

Consent in the uk WRT medical treatment means freedom to agree to or to refuse medical treatment that is offered to you.

It does not mean you can ever demand a specific medical treatment. Doctors and surgeons cannot be compelled to offer medical treatment that they feel is not clinically indicated.

That's why proper research is so important. Influencing what is offered to children. Because they can't demand it.

Unless of course they have a parent who will take them overseas to get that treatment even though no doctor in the local health system thinks it is indicated.

JellySlice · 04/11/2019 07:12

You can't treat legal adults differently on the basis of age

Then why is it that women under 35 struggle to get sterilised, or have elective hysterectomy for crippling endometriosis, even if they are certain that they do not want to have any more children, or to have any children at all?

Datun · 04/11/2019 07:22

JanesKettle

That's an excellent post. I've meant to say, for a while, I find your contributions invaluable. Sensible, informed, intelligent and compassionate. Thank you.

Lamahaha · 04/11/2019 11:57

OK, my last post has been deleted. Never mind.
The transkid it refered to is actually a celebrity in the USA.
Here is their (mother's) website.
www.jamiebruesehoff.com/rebekah

OhHolyJesus · 04/11/2019 12:01

I agree Janes - I'm very anti Botox for under 30s and boob jobs for under 21s is just plain wrong for me. Bodies, boobs and brains all reach maturity at different times and mostly after the legal age of 18.

I think it's reasonable to expect some people to lose weight before an operation is carried out if there is a risk to life and similarly I think counselling and assessment should take place before anyone has genital surgery but I think having the age limit set somewhere around 25 and after at least 6-12 months of counselling would prevent (some) regrettable decisions. Obviously a big issue is mental health help and provision and availability of services. I do wish we could focus on that.

I wanted to be sterilised at 23 and I wasn't allowed to make that decision without counselling as it was a likely permanent decision to remove my chance to have a baby. This is what I wanted at the time. I'm now a mum of 1.

ROGD is one of the areas that frightens me the most. I agree, need more research and for that we need time. Wish I had a pause button for real life so we could just learn more and stop surgeries on all these children and young people, even if just for a year to provide some initial research before a longer term study.

CharlieParley · 04/11/2019 13:14

For me personally, it sits too close to selectively choosing a group to get answers that proved her hypothesis instead of asking a varied sample and observing the result, to be comfortable.

Then you may not have understood the point of the study.

  1. Littman posted links asking for participants on websites advocating the watchful waiting approach as well as those advocating the affirmative approach. The former are not anti-trans, the latter are not pro-trans, they are disagreeing on policy issues and medical approaches.

  2. Pittman sought to gather information on a particular cohort of children now identifying as trans - those who presented atypically after puberty not before (as the previous 60 years worth of research had found).

She wanted to describe the phenomenon, not explain it.

This is exactly what she did and this is why the updated version of her paper republished after extensive peer review and all manner of other scrutiny was left essentially unchanged.

  1. That's because studies like the one in question use the same methodology across the social sciences. Which you cannot help but notice when you read the research published by those advocating for the affirmative approach. Littman used the same methods they employ.

The amnesiac rejection of her methodology is pretty amusing because it is one that applies to every single study used to argue for the affirmative approach (or other actions supporting transgender ideology and legislation). They usually have a number of other qualitative issues Littman's paper didn't have, but even if we assume equal levels in quality, it's still ironic.

kesstrel · 04/11/2019 13:37

Charlie It's long been clear that most people slamming Littman's study have no idea whatsoever about the differences between quantitative and qualitative approaches in psychology studies, or what the purpose of a qualitative study like Littman's is (note the poster's use of the word "prove").

CharlieParley · 04/11/2019 13:53

Yes, kesstrel that is also my impression.

SisterWendyBuckett · 04/11/2019 14:41

I urge everyone to read this book: Inventing Transgender Children and Young People, edited by Michelle Moore and Heather Brunskell-Evans. Published by Cambridge Scholars.

I'm just a mum of a young adult lesbian, who developed ROGD after a traumatic period in her life.

In the February she was a young woman, asking the children she worked with to call her Miss 'X'; by the April she was non-binary and started binding her breasts; by the July she was convinced she was a 'boy' who needed testosterone and 'top surgery'.

She went in secret to the GP, having been told what to say by her trans friends, and was straight away referred on to the adult GIDS. Within the year, she was successfully given a diagnosis of 'gender dysphoria' and started on testosterone.

This is one household where ROGD is most certainly real, causing devastation to family relationships and
closing down the health and future options for an emotionally vulnerable young woman.

The book contains a number of essays from psychiatrists, psychologists, academics, teachers, health professionals who have direct links to the Tavistock GIDS, and de-transitioners.

It is a painful and intense read for me, as it highlights and reveals so much that I've personally witnessed with my own daughter.

I feel sick to the core to see in print the reality of what is being done to our children and young people in the name of gender identity.

So much discussion, research and critical thinking has been suppressed and shut down because of bullying and threats by a number of influential and powerful lobby groups. They have politicised the debate and are pursuing an ideology which requires children to be the poster kids for a social justice and political rights movement.

To quote from a chapter by Stephanie Davis-Arai: "Over the past few years we have seen the spread of a global transgender political rights movement which has changed the landscape beyond recognition. Established meanings of words are up for grabs and the battle to re-order society according to the principles of post-modernist queer and identity politics is not only being fought out in the political arena but in the classroom and the consulting room...it is now clear that within the issue of political rights versus clinical care and safeguarding of children and young people, the waters have become very muddied indeed...the political goal to establish the 'affirmation' approach not only seeks to dictate the treatment of children with gender dysphoria but entails the re-education and indoctrination of all children into the ideology activists campaign to enforce throughout society.
^
"The theory of 'innate gender identity' compels every child to re-define themselves within this framework as either 'trans' or 'cis'."^

The book isn't cheap, but every contributor has something of huge importance to say and their expertise and analysis need to be given as wide an audience as possible.

Fieldofgreycorn · 04/11/2019 14:51

properly controlled studies of Trans kids testing affirmation only model versus the wait and see approach.

How would you design that?

Birdsfoottrefoil · 04/11/2019 15:47

You would select participants from those who would currently follow the experimental affirmation approach, but instead of simply affirming them all you would randomly allocate them to affirmation treatment or talk therapy (ideally the treatment arm would get talk therapy too but that doesn’t seem to be current practice). Then follow them up, preferably long term (20+ years).

Birdsfoottrefoil · 04/11/2019 15:49

Not sure why you think it would be difficult to design such a study? In a normal world I would say there are a heap of ethical concerns with the affirmation approach but as it is current practice to provide this risky experimental treatment....

midcenturylegs · 04/11/2019 16:47

@SisterWendyBuckett On other parts of Mumsnet I might post the flowers symbol. I can't imagine what hell you've gone through.

At aged 10 years old and then later I probably would have been told I was a girl in a boy's body and should have gone though GRA.. used to want to be a fireman and swung from trees to improve my strength. Then from 16 developed anorexia which I suffered from for 10 years and was sectioned twice. I just didn't like my body because I'd suffered physical and emotional trauma and which had made me hate myself. Not gender dysmorphia!

SisterWendyBuckett · 04/11/2019 17:30

Thank you Mid, and for sharing your own story too.

I'm really sorry that things were so hard for you.

I've noticed that anorexia and eating disorders are also discussed by some detransitioners.

It does seem to be part of a connected range of issues that can affect trans identified females.

Helena from the Pique Resistance group writes beautifully about her experiences. She says she's hoping to do a series of writing by detransitioners who have/had eating disorders. I'd be very interested to read this as I think there are a number of dots that still need to be joined here.

SisterWendyBuckett · 04/11/2019 17:32

Should have read 'Pique Resilience.'

Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.

This thread is closed and is no longer accepting replies. Click here to start a new thread.