"My 15 yr old trans son is going through menopause - and I'm so proud of him"

[bettybeans]

http://www.essentialkids.com.au/health/health-wellbeing/my-15yearold-transgender-son-is-going-through-menopause--and-im-so-proud-of-him-20200416-h1nfe0

Christ almighty. I have been trying very hard not to go in heavy on parents of trans kids who make decisions that I simply don't understand but this whole situation just brought out absolute fury. The way she speaks about this process just enrages and saddens me in a way I can't adequately articulate. It's quite simply terrifying. I feel like I'm reading about a baptism or something.

This kid didn't stand a chance and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

Nice tag teaming, d00des.

My 12 yo just had a huge kick off at me because I've taken her phone charger until tomorrow. She was shouty & really annoying, but at least reasonably consistent in her arsiness.

Gosh, this thread is meandering all over the shop.

I just wanted to take issue with social transitioning. Apparently, the biggest indicator of whether a child will go on puberty blockers is if they socially transition. And, as we all know, almost 100% of children on puberty blockers go on to cross sex hormones.

Social transitioning is not a neutral action.

Exactly. Part of how teenagers “look” is their pubertal development. So it stands to reason that if one area of appearance is encouraged, then other areas - breast development, facial hair, body shape - will follow.

Funny how the threads about blatant child abuse, artificially inducing menopause in otherwise healthy teenage girls, always end up being 'what about men tho?'
Strange aint it.
I dont care about men. Do what you want, wear what you want but don't use your fetish or victim mentality as an excuse for mutilating children.
Weird how lady penis is a thing but gentleman vulva is not. I wonder why?
Girls are bearing the brunt of this fucked up
ideology from every direction and it makes me sick.
We see you

And I want to address mental health.

Every day at work I deal with children with a variety of neurodevelopmental conditions and mental health disorders. Commonly there are crises. They are usually worsening of chronic problems. Occasionally, maybe once a month, a crisis is so significant I have to refer a child to the acute mental health team.

The acute mental health team, by definition, deals with acute mental health crisis in children on a daily basis. These are children who are suicidal, self harming, etc. The reasons are depression, anxiety, family crisis, abuse, anorexia, trauma, etc etc. The children are assessed, a safety plan is sorted and then treatment and follow up organised. It’s very hard work, but in the vast majority of cases children are kept safe. Treatment can be long, difficult, have ups and downs, can be successful and sometimes continues into adulthood. But it happens. At no stage does anyone say that the children can’t be kept safe.

So that brings be to children with gender dysphoria. What separates out these children from all the other children who present with mental health crises on a regular basis? Why are we told that children with gender dysphoria must go on puberty blockers for their mental health, when every other child with an equally distressing mental health state is able to be managed with methods and strategies that don’t result in permanent changes to that child’s body?

Why are the acute mental health specialists not stepping in and saying that they can help these children with gender dysphoria without resorting to puberty blockers? Why can a child who’s overdosed on paracetamol, or cut themselves extensively requiring hospitalisation be kept safe by those around them with help and support from mental health specialists, but a child distressed about their gender can’t?

KathyBriggs

I think that in general the concept for mumsnet was as much about parenting as being a mum specifically, but really that's up to the people who own the site. It's not necessarily practical to try and be too restrictive on an open forum, anyway.

Many men's sports are open to women if they are able to compete, there have been women professional hockey players for example. Not many though, because overall women cannot compete at that level. It's the main why there are separate women's divisions. If you tried to combine, say, weight lifting, boxing, sprinting, you simply would have men winning at everything past the most casual level. In some cases, and football may be one, women don't compete with men because it isn't particularly safe.

I'm afraid ideology doesn't trump reality in these cases. While an individual woman can do what the particular individual woman can do, as a group there are clear and significant differences between men's and women's performance as a group.

Not remotely surprised to see pretty much unanimous horror at this situation. Even after a whole 24 hours+ I'm unable to move beyond the idea that this is just the most colossal betrayal and dereliction of parenting duty. Our girls and our boys rely on us to give them the right advice, tools, wisdom and support to get through youth and adolescence.

Even in the most difficult circumstances you surely must choose the path that maintains a clear way out, or at least a means of changing path. They're kids. Like we all once were. How can these parents have forgotten that absolute certainties re: identity are almost non-existent. How can they ignore the different weighting of socio-digital and socio-cultural influence - the pressures that exist now that didn't influence behaviour before.

It's not progressive to abandon your instinct for caution or scrutiny in favour of politically fashionable identity fluff. If you find it confusing, it's not because its expansively or progressively complex, it's just incoherent and doesn't make any sense. Sticking with it doesn't make you enlightened, it just makes you reckless and perhaps even a little lazy.

If sterilising teen girls doesn't stop you in your tracks, what fucking will?

I am do glad to have found this group because this is a complete scandal and is not allowed to be discussed anywhere else.
I would fight to my last breath to protect my children and can't imagine encouraging them to do anything so final and devastating.

Anyone who thinks that “keeping women out of men’s football” is “incredibly sexist” knows nothing about a) football b) the physical capabilities of men and c) those of women.

blubellsarebells

I have often thought very much along the same lines. (Although emos weren’t a thing yet when I went to school.) I must admit that I find that childhood gender stereotyping seemed more ingrained here in UK at primary school than when my own daughter was in Australia when we changed part way through. She really struggled as she was not ‘girly’ enough to fit in. That was just not an issue when we were in Australia and she has many friends there now still that have very similar interests and styles who are ‘just kids’.

Here she feels like a non-conforming Introvert because of the constant message of ‘that’s for the boys’ or ‘your weird’. So, I agree that it is a hard and disturbing time to be a teenager. I would have be definitely scooped up in that very wide ranging slide posted earlier. I am here learning as much as I can, partly because I want to be proactive for my daughter. The rest of the reasons revolve around the cognitive dissonance in my own head at how far reaching this is and how it got here.

That poor kid.

I’ve been on those drugs. They are horrifying, and I can’t even imagine how much worse they are when you’re already a vulnerable teen whose brain is still in the process of developing.

The sunny, flip tone taken about a fifteen year old going through fucking menopause makes me the most godawful combination of sick and angry. What’s WRONG with the woman? Jesus.

The lid will blow off this soon, thanks to the bravery of people like Keira, and in twenty years time we’ll be looking back on the damage done to young people in the same way we look back on lobotomies now. Mermaids will be the next Kids Company.

And I will remember the people (the adults, not the children) who supported it so thoughtlessly. I won’t let them weasel off the hook with “but we didn’t know! We thought we were doing the right thing!”. All of the information was there to tell you the danger of what you were doing. All of it was freely available, and presented to you, but you made the choice to ignore it, in favour of an ideological fantasy.

Christ, this thread!

.. One of my pet peeves is to hear that womxn can't do a certain job because we are not as 'physically capable' as men. That is a prime example of Patriarchal conditioning..

No, ducks, one of the prime examples of Patriarchal conditioning is your use of the word "womxn". (The menz have told you to say that word and you have dutifully obeyed.)

What do you have to say about "mxn"?

Bet you've never heard of them...

Perhaps this fills in more of the back story.

www.sbs.com.au/topics/pride/agenda/article/2019/09/05/ditching-gender-inclusive-toilet-signs-will-hurt-my-son

‘Trans and gender diverse people are hearing opinions on what their rights should and shouldn’t be every day – often from people who have no direct knowledge of their experience.‘

Then the very next paragraph ... ’Last week we heard Victorian MP Bernie Finn claim that allowing people to change sex on their birth certificate would “inevitably” lead to women being molested, and the Victorian Women’s Guild claiming that women escaping domestic violence will be traumatised by having to share space with trans women.’

Yes, this author may not truly read what she writes. So, she criticizes people for their opinions that she feels don’t consider other’s experiences then backhands DV victims who express their views about sharing spaces with penises.

Obviously, she must quiet the clanging bells in her head at that one because .. maybe .. they are girldicks so NOT real penises, and cross-sex hormones obviously eliminate all male biological advantage.

Alternate title "Carolyn Doesn't Understand Why She Should Be Expected To Care About Anyone She's Not Related To".

It seems so.

It’s a big change for a parent who spent those early years reading fairy books and sewing sequins on tutus – but what I realised early on is that my primary job as a parent is to love and accept my child.

One can't help but wonder if things might have turned out differently for this person's child if they hadn't been so focused on the princess model of girlhood. I did ballet for years and still managed to get through childhood without a sequined tutu. Granted that the zeitgeist has shifted in a princesses and lumberjacks direction to an alarming degree in general, but individual parents still have some influence on their children.

so focused on the princess model of girlhood

I was heartbroken when my daughter at age four insisted that all her clothes were pink. This was a child who lived bob the builder and the wiggles and reading stories about everything and everyone (luckily for us, it was only the clothes that changed). The tantrums did wear me down I confess, but then I introduced her to ruby gloom and she gravitated to monster high. The pink was still there but much more goth like than princess. Instead of a dolls house, she got a coffin shaped house.

‘Loved’ not lived.

My niece went exactly the same way! She now owns a full range of babygoth merchandise and is showing all the signs of having a totally normal adolescence.

Wow, glad this thread got back on track because there are some important issues being discussed here. I guess Saturday night brings a lot a clowns out.

NotBad, Bluebells and Winesalot I agree with all of your points I see a lot of paralells with eating disorders an self harming why is this not treated the same way?
It is sad that boys and girls cannot just be themselves these days, I see it with a lot of friends children and its just so odd, that cannot grow organically they seem to have so much more social expectations than I and my peers did as children in the 70s and 80s.

One can't help but wonder if things might have turned out differently for this person's child if they hadn't been so focused on the princess model of girlhood.

You see this a lot don't you? I was reading an article about a celebrity couple in the US whose young boy was transitioning to 'be a girl' as they didn't feel like a boy. They were presenting it as the child was the driver in all this but then talked at great lengths of the very traditional roles and expectations that their other children met and it made me feel so sad.

This is a boy who is just not a 'laddish' child made to feel that he is less of a boy so he must present as a girl to feel valued.

That article shows no self awareness or empathy.

"It’s a big change for a parent who spent those early years reading fairy books and sewing sequins on tutus – but what I realised early on is that my primary job as a parent is to love and accept my child.

Doing that costs me nothing."

Why can't boys read fairy books and wear sequins? Why wouldn't you just let your child wear what they want to wear? Why can none of the 'born in the wrong body' parents explain what they mean by 'trans' without relying on gender stereotypes?

"Just as leaving those signs alone and keeping personal opinions to himself would also have cost the Prime Minister nothing, but he chose a different – more damaging – path."

Can she not understand that some women need sex segregated spaces in situations where they are vulnerable - that this does cost them something?

These parents that insist on rigid stereotypes need help.

I couldn't get past fairy books..

NotBad, Bluebells and Winesalot I agree with all of your points I see a lot of paralells with eating disorders an self harming why is this not treated the same way?

Anyone.whos in their thirties now with kids surely grew up in the generation of " stop being so ridiculous" "pack it in" and " if sue jumped off a cliff would you do it?"

Hand me downs were still normal when I was a kid and I had several things that were given to my younger brother so when they were bought they werent stereotypically girly as they had to go to him. It was normal to swap with neighbours etc.

How the hell did the kids of then grow up to be so rigid in their stereotypes now.

Especially when every single girl i went to school with moaned how unfair it was we couldn't even wear trousers and we hassled the teachers at high school all the time about it.