A Childhood is Not Reversible - Transgender Trend latest blog

[Leafstamp]

This was posted on another thread but I think it's so powerful it's worthy of its own thread.

www.transgendertrend.com/childhood-social-transition/

Some significant paragraphs as follows:

Joseph has a choice and neither of his options are good. Either he pretends there’s nothing different even though he can see there is in the boys’ toilet every day, or he gets increasingly distressed about the fact that everyone is telling him he is a boy, he lives in the world as a boy – but he doesn’t actually have the body of a boy. Usually this is too much for him to deal with and so he blocks it out. He disconnects from his body.

A childhood is not reversible. What we grow up being told in our childhood matters for our whole lives. It forms part of how we understand ourselves and our place in the world. A child who grows up being told they are a boy whilst knowing they are a girl will only have that experience. They can’t go back and do it again.

Social transition isn’t reversible, because what we tell our children for years can’t be reversed. When we disconnect them from their biological sex, we set up patterns of denial and secrets. We set them up to hate their bodies at puberty, to beg for blockers and binders, because for years we told them they could change sex, and they believed us.

This is such a powerful and tragic piece of writing. Every school (and parent) in the country needs to read it. Our children deserve so much better.

That nails my concerns about the whole trans child thing really. Just because a child doesn't start medical treatment doesn't mean we do no harm by social transition. I'm still trying to escape the social messages of my childhood in my 50s, and that was just stereotypical bullshit. There is so much damage being done by the idea you can just change sex if you want to. We will have a generation of traumatised kids.

It is Not Kind to lie to children, to promise them something they can never have.

Watched this whole thing play out on FB with an ex-colleague. Their son (who was a bit of an effeminate 4year old) was now a girl and got a new name. Cue lots of compliments and support. Went on like this for a few years until recently another post and the child now re-identifies as a boy, he got a 3rd new name as well. Can't imagine what kind of psychological impact this will have on him and his 3 siblings as they all grow up.

Thankfully he was too young to have been on oestrogen or even puberty blockers so hopefully his physical development will be totally normal.

This is superb - and worrying. Needs to be read by all our politicians.

This has always seemed obvious to me, and I find it hard to understand why it isn't to others.

But having watched things unfold I think it comes from this wider and simpler adoption of the idea that we are born with all of these different capacities fully determined. Sexuality, gender, personality, even mental health issues are spoken about this way now a lot of the time, they are seen as innate.

Over time people think these things are revealed, but you can't really (and shouldn't really) try to change them. Just give necessary support when they appear.

There is little understanding that anything goes on in terms of constructing or building a stable personality or that it will be affected by what is reflected back by family, society, literature/the arts, etc.

I suppose what that might mean is it's a result of the concept of liberalism applied to the personality.

Thank you for sharing, this is excellent.

Yes why isn't this so obvious to adults? This is why this ideology in particular needs to be kept right out of primary schools. As TT point out at this age what goes into children stays in them.

Bumping this as it ought to be read by every parent and teacher involved in any way with socially transitioning children. These are the consequences.

I'm having counselling now in my 50s to try to come to terms with what I was told as a child - still struggling with a childhood lack of support and acceptance from my parents. I was never good enough. Don't damage children.

This "lying and secrets" is a large part of what I worry about with child social transition. It's not like Santa Claus where everyone grows out of it. In fact, it's the affirmation of the fantasy into adulthood that must be terribly distressing to the pubescent and teen child who no longer believes in things like fairies or elves.

A woman in the US was "outed" on social media for having a son (young, maybe 7 or 8) who she was passing off as a girl. She called it her family's "precious secret." That said everything to me - she knew it was a lie. www.cnn.com/2021/11/28/us/minnesota-school-board-transgender-hate/index.html

@Masdintle

I'm having counselling now in my 50s to try to come to terms with what I was told as a child - still struggling with a childhood lack of support and acceptance from my parents. I was never good enough. Don't damage children.

I can relate to this. When I had a period of very poor mental health my GP talked to me about the significance of 'the messages we hear in childhood'.