Guardian article

[Brainstorm21]

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/15/what-i-should-have-done-when-my-12-year-old-told-me-he-was-transgender?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Top surgery at 17?

And T at 16. I hope Connor is ok.

Oh look, the Guardian with a pro trans article. Who would have thought it?

I saw this on Facebook - there were quite a lot of shocked comments from people.

Is this in the UK? Giving a child a mastectomy?

Writer is based in Australia I think.

What an extraordinarily shallow article. It reads almost like a puff piece. No exploration, no discussion, no wider context, no journalism. No Debate.

@thinkingaboutLangCleg

Is this in the UK? Giving a child a mastectomy?

This was written by an Australian parent who has written similar articles about her trans child for several years

This smacks of the desire to bring people in to the cult. What she has allowed to happen to her child is beyond words, but others doing the same will be validating. Smacks of Susie Green.

Using your child to write articles. With pictures too. What teenager would be happy with that. It’s abuse of power if you ask me.

I saw this article. Prominently placed for the digital edition and wondered who made that decision. Is it Katherine Viner who would decide to present a one-sided opinion piece as news?

After Suzanne Moore left and a number of articles I stopped my financial support and adopted a watchful waiting attitude. Recently I’d started to feel that perhaps there was, at least, some balance creeping back in the perspectives. Now, I think this article is the proverbial straw.

Makes me incredibly sad. And angry. The Graun was the only mainstream paper that reported the whole of political reality, has done amazing investigative reporting vs the Torygraph or Times and I want to support it.

But this article has the potential to harm so many children and convince confused parents to doubt their instincts. I just really do not get it. Just why?

This is shocking. Both the “parenting” and the journalism.

That poor child.

To clarify, I kind of get the parent.. nothing like a poacher turned gamekeeper to express a repeated and strident need for constant external validation to suppress the inner doubts. This is a common phenomenon.

It’s the decision of a major UK newspaper and supposedly intelligent and cynical journalists that I don’t get. To be so utterly lacking in balance and judgement as to place this article on its front page of the digital edition.

The Guardian absolutely refused to publish the expenses scandal and suppressed reporting the Rotherham child abuse. Both issues I'd expected an ethical left wing paper to deal with. So, I take with a pinch of salt their investigative reporting credentials.

Desperatly trying to claw back the young tru belivers in the US after a couple of balanced articles in the weekend edition?
Is the Gruan trying to play both sides.

The Guardian, the paper of the quality left.

Never saw a war it did not like.

I started skimming this last night, and then just deleted the Guardian app instead. I'm looking forward to being less annoyed by my phone in the coming weeks.

I wouldn’t even blame The Graun playing both sides by, for example, reporting on a study that suggested transitioning might have some psychosocial benefits for some adult individuals. And several years ago it included two pieces on adult detransitioners 9one male, one female) who detransitioned some 10/15 years later with huge regret. But this piece? Incredible.

Makes me incredibly sad. And angry. The Graun was the only mainstream paper that reported the whole of political reality, has done amazing investigative reporting vs the Torygraph or Times and I want to support it

I have always been a Guardian reader, but it hasn't been in the business of reporting political reality for a long time. Remember "cast your vote enthusiastically for the LibDems" in 2010? I now find the Telegraph is eye-openingly interesting. Of course I don't agree with some of their columnists, but I am interested in reading views I don't agree with (or don't initially think I agree with).

I do find myself able to trust their straight news reporting in a way that is simply impossible with the Guardian. Wi Spa?

Investigative journalism? It was the Daily Mail who stuck with the Stephen Lawrence story.

It was their awful reporting of the Cologne NYE attacks in 2015 which turned me away from the Guardian. It hasn't got any better.

^''What if he changes his mind? What if people give him a hard time? What if his younger siblings are confused? What if I feel weird or uncomfortable?

The answer those all of those questions, of course, is “who cares?”^

.... Who. Cares .

Wow what an unbelievably shallow response. Who cares of said child wants a baby and to breastfeed them in the future.

Who cares aye?

Yes it’s really suffered under a million paper cuts of revenue loss and repeated efforts to reduce costs. So so sad. But it’s also suffering under its editorial choices. Those seem to be self inflicted.

Whilst I read a variety of sources for perspective, I cannot bring myself to support the Torygraph by buying the bloody paper copy and won’t pay for the digital edition.

Just a strange time to be living through when so many supposedly ‘liberal’ folk have lost all critical facility and circle back to being totalitarian in views and actions. Power corrupts?

Siblings are always so supportive in these puff piece articles, they always get it straight away despite the performative angst and disbelief of the parent. Because the young people are so much more accepting and progressive.

Horrified at this article. No, you haven't got a son: what you have is a daughter who's had an unnecessary double mastectomy and is taking a drug, testosterone that will cause permanent harm and probably shorten her life. She will never have anything approaching a normal sex life and she will almost certainly never have children. There's every chance that in three or four years she will regret what she's done. And she will blame you for not stopping her.

The Guardian is criminally irresponsible in publishing this article. I hope one day it is held to account.

The comments are the only redeeming feature . Elsewhere the paper has a story about the campaign to end FGM. Viner has had an irony bypass operation.

There’s always a pseudo maturity to these children. Well, according to their parents. They are always resilient, brave, steadfast and consistent.

I honestly think it’s because parents have been through hell and back and need to feel as though the hard bit is over, their child now has their physical/social transition needs met and they are now ready to become a young adult.

Whereas, of course, the worst part is still to come. Their 17 year old will become a masculinised 25 year old with a very limited number of people with whom they can be in a relationship, reduced/no fertility, complications of testosterone on a female reproductive system and the loss of their breasts when they were still a child.