Holly Branson - identified as boy for a decade before desisting

[nevertrustaherdofcows]

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8521783/Holly-Branson-reveals-dressed-peed-like-boy-11.html

Concluding her post, she wrote: 'I’m sharing my experience because the love and support my parents gave me taught me one of life’s most important lessons: we should respect everyone’s right to be who they want to be - with no judgement.

Seems to me her parents let her get on with it. They didn't take her to the doctor, go to Mermaids or put her on puberty blockers. They just said 'that's nice, dear' and then she eventually grew out of it.

Exactly!

That's lovely, and exactly what you would hope parents would do. Not pathologise, not make it a big deal, just allow a kid to be a kid and get on with living. Perfect.

A friend's mother used to make her wear incredibly girly stuff all the time, and she hated it. Always struck me as shitty, when parents ladle their dreams and expectations on their kids - in any direction. Just let them get on with growing up who they are, and don't make a fuss, or make their identity part of your own.

Interesting that she said she started identifying as a boy shortly after her younger brother was born. I've not really thought that much about the influence of siblings on gender identity but it makes a lot of sense.

One of my female relations decided she was a boy. Dressed as a boy, used a boy's name - maybe for 3 or 4 years. No-one really thought much about it, went along with it. After a while she started using her given name again and decided she wasn't a boy after all.

This gives me hope

Really? I always thought virgin as being quite a rainbow company. That doesn’t quite match with the current trends does it?

Shiloh Jolie-Pitt is another. Afaik with her too it’s just accepted by the family & they don’t make a big deal out of it. Hoping it’ll stay that way...

micky.com.au/angelina-jolie-speaks-about-daughter-shiloh-dressing-like-a-boy/?amp

My sister ‘dressed as a boy’, had ‘boys’ toys, short hair etc. My parents just let her get on with it. God alone knows what would have happened to her in the school system these days. Granted she still wears ‘boys clothes’ but has been known to wear a dress (rarely but it has happened of her own feee will).

I now realise why she wore a suit to her parents wedding as a young child. As she should be able to, if she wants.

My sister wore a top hat and tails to a relatives wedding!

Pretty sure I read somewhere Shiloh Pitt-Jolie has been put on puberty blockers.

@frazzledasarock

Pretty sure I read somewhere Shiloh Pitt-Jolie has been put on puberty blockers.

I read that too. However, there are different stories out there and it looks like this might be 'fake news'.

Shiloh was still being referred to as 'she' in May 2020 in an article about her 14th birthday.

@twoHopes
As a child it was mainly having my brother as the 'barometer' for how males are treated that highlighted how I was being treated differently in some instances just because I was a girl.
It always struck me as deeply wrong and unfair but I wouldn't have known without the comparison. I wanted to be treated as a boy a lot. Eventually I realised what I really wanted was to not be treated as a shitty version of a girl but as myself. Thanks feminism!!

The thing to hang on to here is that she is now the apparently happy, and no doubt exhausted, mother of three little kids. Had her parents been the sort to 'enable' their child's expression of gender and had today's battery of lobby groups, puberty blocking drugs (aka synthetic cross-sex hormones) and surgeons with more skill than judgment (first do no harm?) she could easily have ended up without breasts to feed her babies or a uterus to grow them in, facing a lifetime of medication and repeated (bodged) surgeries to try to create organs her body never had and could never have grown.

Her mum and dad could be GIDS poster parents for the 'watchful waiting' they recommend.

I'm so glad nobody wrecked her body and her future by rushing to 'correct' her when there was nothing wrong to correct. Would that all children had such parents to live, nurture and support them as they grow, waiting to see who emerges rather than imposing their own expectations and stereotypes.

I used to not particularly like Richard Branson but hes gone up in my estimation. Of course he may have taken a different route if this was today but there we are.

Child had idea, child changes mind. No medication or surgery needed. The end.

@wellbehavedwomen

That's lovely, and exactly what you would hope parents would do. Not pathologise, not make it a big deal, just allow a kid to be a kid and get on with living. Perfect.

A friend's mother used to make her wear incredibly girly stuff all the time, and she hated it. Always struck me as shitty, when parents ladle their dreams and expectations on their kids - in any direction. Just let them get on with growing up who they are, and don't make a fuss, or make their identity part of your own.

As opposed to Suzy Green, whom it seems did the very opposite and medicalised her son's trauma caused by shitty parenting.

I've got a friend who wanted to be a boy around 14 then reverted around 18. We called her by her chosen name and pronouns, but she never sought medical care. I think this approach is usually fine, then at 18 (and not before) it's their choice, I know too ftm who are now very happy so I m not anti, I just think puberty is a hard time and they need to get through it before making lifelong decisions

I was the same. Desperately wanted to be a boy from about 6-11, wore boys clothes all the time (including my football kit under my first communion dress), short hair, loved football, two brothers.

Parents just let me get on with it. Now a happy middle aged mother of two.

This is a lovely story. I loved the photo of her in the suit at her parent’s wedding. This is how to accept your child.

Her life could be very very different had her parents been otherwise inclined. Do parents who go the other way seriously consider this before they trot into social media with their ‘beautiful stories’? So many lives...

See I think when you read the interview in full (assuming it's printed as said so nothing out of context etc) then yes I think it sounds like the Bransons did let her get in with it, did watchful waiting but didn't indulge any 'fantasy' and Holly did come out of a phase (her words).

If however you just read the headline "let everyone love their own reality etc" it can be interpreted as you're a mean bigot if you question whether TWAW as that's a persons reality. So perfect for TRAs to screech from the rooftops about.

But anyway, I'm really glad the approach they took as a family let Holly just be a kid and she's now grown happily into a woman with lovely kids of her own.

My friends daughter also went through this age 8-10. We all had to call her George and she rejected everything girly. We thought it was sweet and went along with it.

She grew out of it when her little sister was born. She is still football mad and refuses to wear a dress. I dread to think what would have happens if she was born into a family that would have pumped her full of puberty blockers.

I should mention her boy phase It started not long after her phase of believing she was a lion and we all had to call her Simba.

My sister had a ‘boys’ name that we always used when we played and she gave me one too. She still loves robots and is sports mad.

She even did drag at one point (king bit queen). Deffo a woman though.

But would she have jumped at the chance of ‘becoming a boy as a child’ - definitely most likely. At puberty/when she discovered girls - definitely not.

These are the girls who are now at risk from going along with treatment and desisting later.