Childhood experiences of gender non-conformism

[ButterflyHatched]

A recurring theme in discussion amongst posters on this forum is that they either have, or have had, exhibited some or all of the past or current diagnostic criteria for gender incongruence/dysphoria.

It was pointed out that there would be value in creating a thread to give people a space to describe these experiences.

1. Do you think you meet these criteria currently?
2. Do you believe that you used to?
3. If so, how long ago, roughly, was this?
4. If so, did you pursue treatment of any kind?
5. If not, do you think you would have sought a referral to GIDS or GIC, had it been an available option you were aware of? Do you think you would you have desisted?
6. What is your general experience of the concept of gender, in whatever way you would choose to define it?

I'd suggest prospective posters take a look at some of the OP's posts with their intense fury and repeated implications about the motivations and politics of women posting on here.
I'd suggest this is more likely to be about screen capture not genuine debate. But then I've become a bit of a cynic of late.....

Maybe ask these people.

genspect.org/an-open-letter/?fbclid=IwAR2YFNNsqk_lFqb5Cl89Gd1QNjWMizY0gSbGELLAttZxd9XyP7KeFBjAhRo

I won't be commenting given post above.

A recurring theme in discussion amongst posters on this forum is that they either have, or have had, exhibited some or all of the past or current diagnostic criteria for gender incongruence/dysphoria.

The adult criteria are very different from those for children. I just posted the diagnostic criteria for children on the Keira Bell thread. Both sets of diagnostic criteria are here:

www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/gender-dysphoria/what-is-gender-dysphoria

The diagnostic criteria for children are based mainly on stereotypes, so I would expect most people to exhibit some of them. For adults it's more about wanting to change the body (plus a bit of gender woo). That's interesting since it is children who are being encouraged to get on a medical pathway, while adults can just identify as the opposite sex without needing to change their bodies or even intend to.

@MrsOvertonsWindow

I'd suggest prospective posters take a look at some of the OP's posts with their intense fury and repeated implications about the motivations and politics of women posting on here. I'd suggest this is more likely to be about screen capture not genuine debate. But then I've become a bit of a cynic of late.....

I'm not sure anything I can say will convince you otherwise, and would as a matter of principle advise against posting anything you might come to regret on an open forum in any case, but I thought this might be a genuinely informative exercise to spin off from an existing discussion - and I've recieved multiple requests from other posters on this forum to create this thread.

I can't guarantee that it won't be screenshotted or otherwise used for malicious purposes by someone else - there are clearly people on this very forum who regularly trawl other places looking for comments to deride and sneer at, as I've already seen this happen once today on another thread - but I can guarantee that I have no interest in using other people's struggles as a source of cheap point-scoring.

I've responded openly and in good faith to every question asked even in the face of repeated rudeness, have respected and observed requests when issued, have clarified points when meaning was initially unclear, and been honest about my own views and experiences of gender dysphoria as a child. I've been careful about mentioning topics likely to cause offence while participating in the robust discussion that this space proudly hosts.

If you are still unsure of my intentions, I might suggest rereading my engagement with posters here without the default assumption that I am attempting to cause harm, interacting in bad faith, or indeed particularly seething with fury.

There are a lot of very angry and upset, often quite young trans people on the internet seeking to lash out at their perceived enemies; I used to be one of them, over twenty years ago. I grew very tired of that a long, long time ago and constantly despair at the adversarial tone that has over time settled to be taken as a default between the feminisms; all it seems to do is obfuscate meaning, drive injury and insult and make any attempt at communication into an argument of contradications.

It's evident to me that we need to heal and find ways to actually discuss serious matters that affect a wide range of people with different needs in different ways. So, this is my attempt to create a positive space within which to do so. It is not my intention to dominate discussion, nor appropriate anyone's experiences. I checked with multiple posters before posting this and was given enthusiastic go-ahead to do so.

If anyone has any questions, or indeed just wants to hurl some abuse at a trans woman who has heard it all before, then you're more than welcome. I might even agree with you on half of it.

What is your definition of gender non conformity would be the best place to start.

Do you mean kicking back/ being uncomfortable with/ hating-

Gendered expectations of -

Appearance
Behaviour
Interests
Intelligence / aptitude/ suitability for different school subjects/ activities
Sexuality
Etc...

I think you really need to define your question fully. To get the feedback you are looking for rather than people using their own ideas if what it means.

A couple of people on the thread about the Bell v Tavistock judgment specifically said they considered they met (or had in the past met) the diagnostic criteria for gender incongruence/dysphoria, and would be happy to answer questions. Presumably they understand the terms of the question and will be along in due course to follow up on this.

@MrsOvertonsWindow the only ‘intense fury’ I’ve seen in connection with @ButterflyHatched’s posts has been directed at her, not coming from her. She has been admirably polite and calm, and clearly spent a good deal of time answering questions and addressing people’s comments in what seems to me to be entirely good faith.

I'm happy to respond to OP.

The question I asked is really important in order to do so.

What does OP mean by GNC? For this thread.

@NiceGerbil

What is your definition of gender non conformity would be the best place to start.

Do you mean kicking back/ being uncomfortable with/ hating-

Gendered expectations of -

Appearance
Behaviour
Interests
Intelligence / aptitude/ suitability for different school subjects/ activities
Sexuality
Etc...

I think you really need to define your question fully. To get the feedback you are looking for rather than people using their own ideas if what it means.

Any/all of the above! I think people using their own definitions in their own words is half the point. I'm deliberately using as broad a term as I can - while the initial thread was sparked by a poster mentioning matching the DSM diagnostic criteria for gender identity disorder, I don't want to constrain discussion to just that.

@OldCrone posted a link above to the current and past DSM criteria.

For reference, as pretty much a 'model' trans kid from the turn of the millennium who zoomed through the whole treatment pathway from puberty blockers to hormones to GRS and has had a largely very positive outcome: I just had a look and, owing to the stereotype nonsense, I fall slightly short of actually meeting the minimum 'modern' DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for gender incongruence in children. Uhoh, no blockers for you, B!

I think that probably says more about the set of stereotypes we still, after multiple revisions, use as official diagnosis criteria than it necessarily does me, but I thought it would be an interesting point to share - and again illustrate that this is coming from a point of genuine and earnest interest alongside an exasperated sigh.

I'll start with 6. I think of gender as a straitjacket that society tries to force people into. Restrictive, punitive and external. I want nothing do with it and the hill I am willing to die on is this one - fighting against enshrining gender identity (and thereby stereotypes) in law and for the sex-based rights of women.

I started publicly objecting to stereotypes before I was nine or ten, because I resented being forced to do a class on sewing/knitting at school. It was mandatory for girls. The boys got to go home early. I hated it.

A few years later we had metalwork/machining classes. The girls had to do boring stuff like drilling the same bloody holes into the same bloody nuts. The boys got to work a forge. I argued the heck out of that one. Especially when the teacher insisted only boys were capable. I didn't stop until I was allowed, too.

I was a nerd before that became trendy. I ran the school chess club, I was in maths club, I was responsible for the pupil library, I was the only girl in the computing club. I didn't care. It was more important for me to do the stuff I was interested in than worry about appearance or fitting in. I was not popular and my best friends were mostly nerdy boys.

I hated playing with dolls and spent my early childhood playing with construction toys, climbing trees and playing football with the neighbourhood boys.

My favourite piece of clothing was a red pair of dungarees with 11 pockets. I had a running away emergency ration pack under my bed for years. I obsessed about the name I would use for myself if I ran away.

I had no interest in makeup, fashion, clothes or a romantic interest in boys. I wore a suit to our youth ceremony. The last time my mother told me off for looking unfeminine was last week. I've been told I have an extreme male brain (which is a nonsense), I'm simply a normal woman with perfectly normal interests and preferences. (If you don't believe in gender that is.)

I wrestled with Sigmund Freud's concept of "penis envy" and rejected it as a patriarchal and mysoginist attempt to devalue my sex before I was a teen. I was acutely aware of being discriminated against and disadvantaged on the basis of my sex though and wanted to break out of the restrictions placed upon me by family and society.

When puberty set in, I hated it. I hated everything about it. It started years of hating and hiding my body. After an attempted rape at around that time, I knew I definitely did not want to grow up to be a woman. If all this stuff about self-id had been around then, I would have asked to transition to get away from all that, especially the sexual attention of men and boys.

My mother would not have let me and I would have made her life a living hell for it.

I only stopped feeling disgusted at my body last year after counselling helped me understand why I felt like that.

So

1. No
2. Yes, including distress
3. 70s, 80s, 90s. It got better after I had kids, because to grow a whole other person inside me was a life changing experience and I couldn't help but feel respect for the power of the female body - my body - to give life.
4. No. I grew up in a suck it up buttercup time of place, a society that penalised individualism and in poverty at the bottom third of society. Nobody gave a fuck about girls like me. Apart from my radfem mother. But I didn't understand her until I hit my 30s.
5. Yes, and it depends on whether my mother would have got through to me or not. I'd most likely be a detransitioner, because I am stubborn and would have transitioned precisely because my mother objected. I also would have been utterly convincing and convinced I was right.

Oh and I don't believe gender dysphoria is the correct name for this condition. I'd probably call it stereotype distress which can occur together with sex-based body dysmorphia (not catchy, I know, but I feel it's more honest).

'Any/all of the above! I think people using their own definitions in their own words is half the point. I'm deliberately using as broad a term as I can'.

Well yes people taking different things from the question depending on their own views is why I asked the question.

I wasn't on the original thread.

So you mean. A strong rejection or discomfort, hatred, confusion by any aspect of the gendered expectations due to their sex?

Sorry another question.

Gendered expectations due to sex are changeable and vary massively between countries, cultures, religions etc.

For example the gendered expectations of a couple of closed religious communities in my area are very much more strict and confining than the ones applied outside of those groups.

I would imagine that feeling deep distress at the gendered expectations is more common in those communities than outsiders. Especially for those who are female.

How do you approach that?

Another example - women and girls in Afghanistan at the moment and under the Taliban in the past. Their gender role has been massively altered.

How does gender nonconformity work with so many different situations?

Even in bog standard UK, gender roles have moved a lot in my lifetime.

As I said on the other thread, I'm interested in this discussion - to hear from other posters and to hear from butterfly and maybe other trans people if they're about.

I'll repeat it here, I definitely have some experience of being gender non-conforming and feeling distressed and angry about gendered expectations. I would love to understand the overlap and differences between our experiences. In no way do I think I am trans, or intend to minimise the genuine distress of trans people, or imply that I have had the same experience.

For me 'stereotype distress' is an accurate term for what I have experienced for as long as I can remember.

As a child (in the 80s) I felt like a child. I just felt like me. I knew I was a girl because of biology, and the only time I had any problem with being a girl was when other people tried to impose on me their ideas of what a girl should be like.

Thing is, the imposition of those stereotypes came pretty frequently. The kind of toys and clothes well-meaning relatives would buy me. The passing comments from my own father, and strangers. The stuff shown on TV and in books. It was incessant and from a very young age every time I came across it I felt angry.

I'm fairly non-conforming but never felt I should be a boy. Boys were generally part of the problem, mocking me for being a girl, trying to tell me how I should be.

I just wanted to get on with enjoying life. If I was a kid now I'd be identifying out of that shit by declaring myself non-binary - (and that's not meant as a flippant/derogatory comment).

My anger was towards society, and the sexist people, that tried to impose these stupid gender stereotypes on me.

When I hit my teens, it just added another layer to deal with. Now as well as periods and hormones to deal with, I had men and boys looking at me as a sex object, making comments about my body, touching me without my consent, generally being pervy. I was shy anyway and this was excruciatingly embarrassing, and at times very scary. I definitely felt that being a boy would be easier but I never had a desire to actually change sex. All my female friends were going through the same.

I still feel the same anger and frustration as an adult, and as a mother watching my kids be subjected to the same stereotypes.

So my experience of gender is that it is social expectations and stereotypes, imposed on me because of my biological sex.

Gender non-conformism, yes - but gender dysphoria, no. Back in the eighties and nineties, it wasn't a concept that if you stepped outside gender stereotypes, you might not actually be, mentally, the sex you were assigned at birth. I'm really glad I grew up before this current trend took hold.

1 not now, although still some discomfort
2 yes
3aged 10 till 20
4 no, not available
5 yes , snd once started unlikely to change my mind
6 it helps me to keep a clear distinction between sex, my body, and who I am

. I tend to view gender as the assumptions people make based on sex , the rules people try to enforce based on sex

I would like to live in a world where sex didn't matter, but the male default is so strong that I don't believe it is currently possible, attempts to de sex things risk marginalisation of females

Hope to read and contribute over weekend but got a horrid busy 6 days coming up

Thanks for starting

Posters on this thread might be interested to read the book Cracked by James Davis to understand just how arbitrary and entirely non-scientific many of the categories and diagnostic criteria in the DSM are. And I say this as a non neurotypical parent of a non neurotypical child who understands the value of diagnosis in our current system, whilst believing the whole system to be fucked.

1. Do you think you meet these criteria currently?

I doubt it.

1. Do you believe that you used to?

Possibly. I was happy in my mid teens. People used to say I was androgynous and it was a compliment back then. It turned out I was a late developer and then when I went to university I was horrified at the insistence and entitlement men had about having sex (think male student climbing up through my second floor window and announcing he was there to give me the fuck he felt I clearly needed, that kind of thing). I tried to rid myself of any outward sign that could be coded feminine (cropped hair, men’s clothes). At the same time I was understanding my bisexuality which had at first felt like a happy thing but as I became more concerned about what other people thought of me, it felt more painful than happy. I self-harmed.

1. If so, how long ago, roughly, was this?

Age 16-26 approx, so nearly 20 -30 years ago.

1. If so, did you pursue treatment of any kind?

Yes, I had therapy as I was suicidal.

1. If not, do you think you would have sought a referral to GIDS or GIC, had it been an available option you were aware of? Do you think you would you have desisted?

Possibly, as I think I would have brooded a lot on the concept of non-binary (I do sometimes even now). I would have been attracted by the idea of apparently desexing my body through mastectomy, or maybe wanted to try hormones to see if I could craft the happy and androgynous mid-teen I still wished I was instead of the tormented young person I had become.

1. What is your general experience of the concept of gender, in whatever way you would choose to define it?

As above, a set of awkward and sometimes toxic stereotypes assigned by society on the basis of a sexed body. Now it is calmer for me, as an introverted person with a family, I don’t have to physically encounter “society” much, but now I feel I have to engage with this topic to support young people I care about.

I’ll bite.

I was a gender non-conforming child. At home, I was close in age to my brother and all the neighbouring kids my age were boys.

I wanted to be a boy all through primary school. I played with boys and refused to wear skirts/dresses etc. I looked blank when given dolls as I had no interest in playing with them and couldn’t understand why anyone would. I asked for meccano for Christmas. The other girls seemed an alien species when they talked about clothes, what schoolbag they would get.

I found puberty difficult and the idea of breasts disgusting and developed an eating disorder. I had no interest whatsoever in having babies.

These feelings changed from 15 onwards and I am now comfortable in my skin, working in a male-dominated profession. I have two kids.

My niece has similar behaviour as a child but as she grew up now, not in the 80s, she was referred to the Tavistock, is on T and awaiting surgery to cut off her breasts.

1. No, definitely not. I feel very comfortable as a woman. I would hate to have lost out on the opportunity to be a mum and to experience all that goes with that. I identify strongly as a woman. The only criteria I still meet is dressing in a more stereotypically male way (I hate that btw- I dress as me, not in a masculine way).
2. I think I definitely would have met the criteria as a child. I hated everything about being a girl. If I could have waved a magic wand and been a boy I would have. My mum was very resistant to me presenting as a boy but I did as much as I could.
3. Age 7-15ish. So 20-30 years ago roughly.
4. No, I never considered it and nobody ever suggested it.
5. If I had been offered the option I think I probably would have pursued it. I’m not sure how far I would have got as the feelings reduced in my teen years and I slowly became more comfortable as a woman and by my 20s I was staunchly feminist and identified strongly as a woman.
6. I find the concept of gender a strange thing. I know for some it’s liberating but for me it seems like a straitjacket. I am me, I don’t really care how people read me but I am a woman. I want to wear what I want, do what I want without regard to whether it’s suitable for men or women. I’m just me. But, I am a woman, I have given birth and I have experiences that mean I am a woman. As for my gender I identify as a woman but I think some people would read me as blokey. I am still learning about this all. I actually studied gender at university but as part of a history degree and what I learnt then made more sense to me- biological sex and gender as separate things- than what I see now.

I had a similar childhood experience as RoastChicory.
I would not have asked for puberty blockers or to be transitioned. I was interested in science and nature and I knew that changing sex was impossible. I would have liked to have been born a boy but knew it was impossible for me to become one.
My family are sexist and my parents would have transitioned me in a heartbeat. They believed the older child should be a boy and the younger child a girl.

My experience is that the gender performance of children is ruthlessly policed, and that children who don't conform to expectations were more accepted in the past than today. Boys who 'feel feminine' or who like 'girls toys' or 'girls clothes' are no less male than their peers.

The question no one is asking is why are girls and boys so desperate to avoid puberty, which is a completely natural developmental stage. In my case, CSA was a component.

A society that tolerates medicating puberty instead of dealing with the discomfort associated with change is broken beyond repair.

These are the criteria for childhood gender dysphoria in the DSM-5:

A strong desire to be of the other gender or an insistence that one is the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
In boys (assigned gender), a strong preference for cross-dressing or simulating female attire; or in girls (assigned gender), a strong preference for wearing only typical masculine clothing and a strong resistance to the wearing of typical feminine clothing
A strong preference for cross-gender roles in make-believe play or fantasy play
A strong preference for the toys, games or activities stereotypically used or engaged in by the other gender
A strong preference for playmates of the other gender
In boys (assigned gender), a strong rejection of typically masculine toys, games, and activities and a strong avoidance of rough-and-tumble play; or in girls (assigned gender), a strong rejection of typically feminine toys, games, and activities
A strong dislike of one’s sexual anatomy
A strong desire for the physical sex characteristics that match one’s experienced gender

And for adults:

A marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and primary and/or secondary sex characteristics (or in young adolescents, the anticipated secondary sex characteristics)
A strong desire to be rid of one’s primary and/or secondary sex characteristics because of a marked incongruence with one’s experienced/expressed gender (or in young adolescents, a desire to prevent the development of the anticipated secondary sex characteristics)
A strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics of the other gender
A strong desire to be of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
A strong desire to be treated as the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)
A strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender (or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender)

So in answer to the OPs questions.

1. Do you think you meet these criteria currently?

This obviously refers to adult criteria. Answer: No, but it does depend what is meant by 'expressed gender'. Does that mean things like being in a male-dominated profession or having male-dominated leisure interests, or sometimes buying clothes from the men's department? In which case it could be a partial 'yes'.

1. Do you believe that you used to?

As far as the children criteria go, yes to most of those about stereotypes (that is all except the first and the last two). But when I was a child, it was perfectly normal to play with all sorts of toys and have a mixed sex group of friends. Clothes (other than school clothes and for formal occasions) were typically trousers or shorts for practicality when playing outdoors.

1. If so, how long ago, roughly, was this?

60s and 70s

1. If so, did you pursue treatment of any kind?

What for?

1. If not, do you think you would have sought a referral to GIDS or GIC, had it been an available option you were aware of? Do you think you would you have desisted?

No, but if this gender stuff had been around then I'd probably have identified as non-binary if the alternative was being put in a frilly pink girly gender box. I didn't want to be a boy. I knew that the only reason why I was sometimes prevented from doing what I wanted to was because of the sexist dinosaurs who were in charge, who I thought at the time were on their way out. How wrong I was.

1. What is your general experience of the concept of gender, in whatever way you would choose to define it

It's the social and cultural expectations which are placed on people because of their sex. It's oppressive and regressive.

In hindsight I was a very gender non conforming child, short hair, Lego, football, physics... but I would never have done anything about it because I was having too much fun to give it a second thought. If I was born now, and forced to analyse myself to death, who knows?

The difference between people who think a nose job will improve their lives and the rest of us, isn't nose size itself, but how much importance we place on our noses, how much thought we give it.

It is sad that some people are bullied and grow to hate their noses but I also imagine we'd see a huge increase in misery and nose jobs if we repeatedly asked people to categorise their noses and spend hours fixating on them. We are being asked to assume all trans children are the former, already traumatised, but in reality a lot would have carried on quite happily if they hadn't been exposed to so much guff. Not just TRA mantras but highly gendered toys and clothing from so young.

This is the issue I have with children and gender identity, not what their personalities might be, but that we are making them waste so much mental energy on something so unnecessary and that so many are getting caught up in it.

When I was young, the word gender was only used in language lessons. I liked “boy things”. Puberty was horrible because my menstrual cycle stopped me doing many of the sports I enjoyed. Now I’m a mother and a grandmother and so grateful the idea that I could have been anything other wasn’t around when I was growing up. The current slavery to sex based stereotypes astonishes me. I thought that we as a society were getting past that in the 70s and 80s. It’s so regressive and limiting. I fear for my granddaughters and the nonsense they’re exposed to (thankfully their parents are very resistant to bullshit).

I was gender non conforming as a child and still am. A colleague at work spontaneously referred to me as 'he' a few times in my early 20s which confused both of us. I'm often being called male terms. At Pride one year I went to an LGBT run shop to buy a bag and the assistant referred to me with male pronouns throughout which was weird as I didn't ask and I don't use them. I don't have a gender identity but I am female, a woman, don't identify as trans.

As a young child I had the idea that boys were inherently better than girls cos they got to do cooler stuff. Girls were pink and frilly and silly and boring and I wasn't like that. Old ladies would mistake me for a boy out shopping with my Mum (I had short hair, wore cords and check shirts a lot) and I loved it. I probably was 3 or 4 at the time. I loved this because you my mind cool stuff = boy = better and therefore they are appreciating my superiority. This was the late 70s.

I discovered I was same sex attracted in my 20s. I was diagnosed with autism at 40.

I haven't read the DSM V criteria but I doubt the vast swathes of (particularly autistic, LGB) children discovering gender on the internet have either. I have no doubt that the depressed, lonely, undiagnosed autistic child and teen that I was would've grabbed hold of trans ideology and run with it. Really scary.

*to my mind