There's more trans people nowadays because it is more accepted

[itssunnyyay]

Thoughts?

I was with a friend of mine at the weekend who is a primary teacher and she mentioned that there are 2 kids in year 5 at her school who are trans, one is a trans girl and one is a trans boy.

She then said 'do you think that trans is more common now because parents and society in general are more accepting of it?' .. so clearly she is wondering a little bit about it and this is the conclusion she has come to.

Tbh, I kind of tried to change the subject because I knew she would view my thoughts as bigoted, but If her idea was true, then why has no one that we went to school with now come out as trans? If the only reason there now seems to be more trans people than before, was that it is now more accepted, then surely we would be seeing people of all ages suddenly coming out as trans?

@MrsAvocet

I think you are right TheRealityCheque - for many it is a trend. My DS says that he us in a minority in his friendship group as he is openly a straight male. Interestingly his group is what are generally the highest academic achievers in the year group - the nerdy kids. I don't know if that is significant. The problem is that the only residual effects most of us have of our teenage "phases" are a few embarrassing photos and memories. Some of these kids are going to be physically and psychologically altered forever. It bothers me greatly to see several of DS's friends who only a couple of years ago were bright, happy kids getting sucked into this.

This is something that really scares me about having children.. I'd like children in the next 3/4 years but I do worry.. hopefully in 15 years by the time they're in secondary school.. there will be a different trend? Although, what might that be 😵‍💫

I'm so glad my dc aren't young now. When DS1 was about 8/9 ish (he's 17 now) he told me he sometimes wished he was a girl because he liked a lot of 'girl things'. I pointed out that they were just things (dancing and sewing mainly) and that there was nothing inherently girly about them. I also explored with him if he wanted to use a girls name, while explaining that he aptly always be a boy.

He's now a happy gay teen. Although he does err on the side of twaw

I think there are more trans people now because we think both that gender dysphoria equals trans, and that there’s no requirement for gender dysphoria in order to be trans. Most of the people who are ‘trans’, aren’t. Non binary is counted as trans but is fucking meaningless, except as far as it demonstrates how much the whole thing is based on and enforces stereotypes, conformity and rigid gender roles.

I think it is a trend that will pass but I think will have largely positive long term effects in terms of people feeling more able to be how they want outside gender norms.

Already I think it's moved on from 'Stunning and brave' to being a fairly matter-of-fact thing that isn't a big deal in this group. My suspicion is that within a few years, many of my teen's peer group, who are obsessing over their precise sexuality before they are actually 'sexual' will realise that they're not gay and/or that identifying as male or non-binary complicates things and makes it harder to find a relationship with the people they're attracted to and people will start to desist and/or NBness will become purely an aesthetic (which is mostly what it is really to pre-sexual young teens). I don't actually think these kids are trying to be 'cool', but it is more like the equivalent of being a punk or an emo than it is actually transgenderdness. Interestingly I suppose the move away from fashion being linked to music scenes, which is a distinct trend as brought on my social media, has been one of the reasons for gender as an axis of teen identity.

I think it's not really helpful to introduce to young kids an idea that everyone can be whatever sex they want or that tastes may indicate gender identity - I hate to use the word 'confuse', but I suppose it makes them just overthink it. DC says they 'have never felt they are any particular gender' and I've told them that's normal - I never felt one either but I'm still female. A better line to take I feel is is 'People can like whatever they want regardless of being men/women/boys/girls. There is a small number of people who need medical help to live as a different sex to the one they were born in'

Apart from one older FTM the Guardian (who else) interviewed a while back, I've never heard of any woman over 40 years old who's gone in for full surgical transition (not just they/them pronouns and a haircut). I've also never read of any FTM who didn't have in their background any of male violence, other childhood trauma, autism or internalised homophobia about being attracted to women.

Would be genuinely interested to see it, as I only ever seem to see middle aged men and younger females discussed in the news and the scientific literature.

I was talking about this with my DP over the weekend. At school we each knew a raft of non-conformists (DP included) who marked out their individuality with goth or emo or hippy dress, views, ideologies, affectations. I don't recall any of them ever being either counselled or lauded for being brave or 'true to themselves'.

Between us we know precisely one person who carried that into adult life and still in his 40s lives a very spiritual 'hippy' lifestyle and so could be considered 'genuine' rather than just trying a lifestyle on for size.

Everyone else grew out of their 'thing' somewhere between GCSEs and Uni. Often it aligned with leaving the classmates they'd known all their childhood behind and joining the wider world.

We also know one adult between us who has transitioned in adulthood, on the basis that she now feels free to do so (MTF transition).

I would think / hope that this will all prove itself to be another trend, although sadly one with further-reaching psychological consequences than an regrettable piercing or questionable over-use of eye-liner.

I still know a few middle-aged people who are into being goths, hippies or similar subcultures. None of them seem to require the exhausting validation that TRAs demand, and none of them are lifelong medical patients because of their identity.

Why was my post deleted?

In the ‘70s, 80’s, 90’s and ‘00s the only trans people I knew of were the older men dressed in fishnets and revealing women’s clothing, hanging around in the ladies public toilets. I’ve never met an older woman wanting to become a man. I was a tom boy then and still am today. What a waste of all these kid’s precious youth being tied up in this trend. It’s horrifying that they are pushing this in schools.

However for there to be a 4000% rise in gender referals for one demographic (young and adolescent girls), I think questions have to be asked. I believer that a tiny % of that group will be trans require medical intervention to live their lives comfortably... and despite the panic I think most of the rest will desist before anything damaging is done,

I want to make a very clear point here. That % increase is in REFERRALS and referrals only. There is a HUGE number of teenage and younger females who are identifying as trans who are not referred.

I would not count on enough of those going through treatment ‘desisting’ before harm. I am happy to post links to a paper written in Australia which also mirrors what was written in the interim Cass report. These young transitioners are arriving pre-prepped with how to manipulate the system. In fact, too many (enough to cause concern with the world’s clinics) are not giving themselves a chance.

And they are prepped thanks to lobby groups, trans influencers and social media.

There's also the question of what "really trans" means. People tend to talk about it as a kind of objective category.

In reality what it has been in the past is a treatment pathway for certain problems some people have with their sexed body. The underlying problem was a sense of alienation from the body. Changing the appearance of the body was an attempt to mitigate that. Nothing more.

We now seem instead to have built "being trans" into a social construct about how you buck gender norms, for people who somehow feel those norms don't reflect their authentic selves. It's a world where getting plastic surgery makes you more yourself.

At that age (assuming controlled internet access), it's being pushed by parents. Typically they are homophobic and/or deeply religious.

@IvyTwines

I think it's more that today's children are caught in a pincer movement that our generation didn't have to deal with: the severe binary division of pink and blue marketing in toys and clothes, social media and especially the easy-access and increasingly violent porn that's giving them a totally warped idea of what's expected of them sexually, in relationships, and the lack of decent real world youth cultures with their music scenes, gigs, clubs and style tribes to safely experiment in. Instead they've got an online rabbit-hole world where they can be easily accessed and manipulated by anonymous strangers with agendas from any part of the globe. And of course, unlike previous manifestations of youth unhappiness and discomfort in their changing bodies, transitioning is incredibly lucrative for big pharma, plastic surgeons and crowdfunding sites, for whom it creates patients for life, including when they change their mind and need reconstruction work. Follow the money.

This. All of this. Thankyou for articulating this so clearly!

It's media and social media led social contagion.

There was an island somewhere (I need to look it up as I've mentioned this a lot) that didn't get TV till relatively late. Prior to tv they had no recorded mental health issues such as anorexia. Within a decade of TV they did. Women and girls are particularly vulnerable to the impact of media sources - big study out this week demonstrating this?

As Helen Joyce outlines in trans, there were a number of snake oil experimental "drs" who messed about with hormones for people with cross dressing fetishes.

There's buckets of homophobia and confusion over gender stereotypes in the mix. All societies/ cultures that have rigid gender roles and stereotypes have developed "categories" of permissible "third sexes." These have been merrily appropriated, pathologised and medicalised.

Gender stereotyping in toys and tv got worse from the 80s onwards in particular. It's only in the last 10 years that things like Disney, Lego, barbie and toy manufacturers have begun to attempt to reverse that trend. Watch and compare rapunzel and encanto...

So it's big pharma plus social media led contagion. And porn. All stand to profit from it.

Case in point- tiktok tic epidemic. Instagram self harm contagion. Ana sites.

Mostly girls affected.

The Fiji study didn’t actually show that at all though WarriorN - I’m not accusing you of referencing it in a wool-pulling effort, it’s endlessly thrown about as “proof” it’s All About The Media, including by people who should absolutely know better.

What the media is responsible for is what the archly superior-feeling acid-tongued anorexics & bulimics would deem wannarexics & fauxlemics. Not in the truly cruel sense of “you’re too fat to sit with us”; but rather the girls at school who’ve eaten breakfast & will go home & eat again, but sit & hold court at lunch, demanding to be coaxed through eating either a lettuce leaf or, alternatively, a calorie-dense - but always delicious - “fear food” (latter followed by weeping & the threat they will vomit if left unattended for even a second). Some do try harder (as it were), but they seek the secrets of the translucent girls who cluster by the radiators, baggy uniforms hanging from bony frames; & all the Tips & Tricks the internet has to offer to (happily) no avail. They have no inner sense of an eating disorder - perhaps none of disordered eating, even, despite the carefully curated performances. Mercifully not everyone’s brain has the override function that lets them embrace self-destruction [in that form]. Wannas & fauxs littered* all the online spaces for people with eating disorders in the 90s & 00s; sometimes being honest, sometimes telling a fantasy version of their “anorexia story” based on the endless YouTube videos & spates of documentaries about paeds ED treatment. For people who were only ever tourists, fitspo began to edge out thinspo (& bonespo) - & then BoPo appeared & scooped them up.

BoPo is particularly important when it comes to the girls who self-identified as anorexic at (for example) 16 stone, BMI 28, after losing 4lbs in 6 months. Not, to be clear, girls who’d recovered & then kept gaining weight &/or developed BED. Not overweight bulimics. There was a movement saying you could be anorexic at any weight & self-ID was valid. That doctors refusing to diagnose you were ignorant & gatekeeping. Goodness knows eating disorders aren’t about weight. But the diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa are clear on the BMI under 17.5 bit & OSFED isn’t a dirty acronym. Absolutely insistent it was anorexic they were though. Often claiming that they needed nutritional supplement drinks, or even tube feeding, and that it was fatphobia & discrimination & gatekeeping stopping them from receiving appropriate & necessary treatment. With the rise of body positivity though, there was a substantial migration of members of this group into the BoPo movement & anorexia recovery spaces. In these new spaces, they didn’t talk about never having been underweight etc, but were… very vocal about the media & how pressured they felt to meet standards of beauty shown there. (I’m really sorry I don’t have any links for you - it’s online discussions from years ago, lots from platforms no longer in existence.)

Arguably, the media does pretty much the same thing with the phenomenon of the trans child they used to do with anorexic adolescents. As with the endless articles there used to be about eating disorders** a how-to guide for symptoms is supplied. Attention - & sympathy - is guaranteed. You have the option of becoming an advocate & an activist. For some people, it will present an irresistible prospect…

• there are far fewer such spaces than there used to be, but there are now chronically/functionally anorexic women in their forties & fifties who helped make early spaces involved in making & remaking new spaces to evade the bans on discussion of self-harm & eating disorders ** which had a negative impact on people with the genetic predisposition to eating disorders, yes, but were not sufficient to flip the switch (as it were)

I am sorry OP, but I really do think we need to start engaging in conversations like these. We can't just keep avoiding them and then coming on here. An option here was just to offer some suggestions in answer to her question - she did actually invite a discussion.

There is no hope of people realising our views are reasonable if we refuse to have conversations when the opportunity naturally arises and instead let them get their views of us from the lies gender ideologues tell about what we say and who we are.

No thanks for clarifying Nitro.

My memory is hazy and the book where I read it is actually about the impact of advertising and how that's created a capitalist driven depression where no one feels good enough.

There's still no denying the impact of SM on our girls though. And some boys. And I still maintain trans a socially driven idea magnified by online social platforms. We do also have an issue with self diagnosis of a range of neuro divergent conditions, some which may be genuine and others not. And with it a real 'them and us,' tribal attitude, around the conditions too.

Someone pointed out to me recently that stroke can be seen as causing a neuro divergent condition in many, as does brain injury, but it's not something that's seen as trendy enough. See #neurospicy on tiktok.

There's also the question of what "really trans" means. People tend to talk about it as a kind of objective category.

In reality what it has been in the past is a treatment pathway for certain problems some people have with their sexed body. The underlying problem was a sense of alienation from the body. Changing the appearance of the body was an attempt to mitigate that. Nothing more.

We now seem instead to have built "being trans" into a social construct about how you buck gender norms, for people who somehow feel those norms don't reflect their authentic selves. It's a world where getting plastic surgery makes you more yourself.

Exactly. People are frequently not on the same page in terms of understanding and definition when they talk about "trans" issues.

There was an island somewhere (I need to look it up as I've mentioned this a lot) that didn't get TV till relatively late. Prior to tv they had no recorded mental health issues such as anorexia

Anorexia has always existed and is culturally interpreted, such as seen as a religious expression through the lens of extreme fasting in some African countries where female bodies are considered more attractive with fat, or in European countries in centuries past.

Someone said that there wasn't a glut of children committing suicide 50 years ago because they couldn't transition.

In many ways children were freer to explorer their gender expression years ago, whereas now any deviation is seen as a pathway to transition.

@WarriorN

No thanks for clarifying Nitro.

My memory is hazy and the book where I read it is actually about the impact of advertising and how that's created a capitalist driven depression where no one feels good enough.

There's still no denying the impact of SM on our girls though. And some boys. And I still maintain trans a socially driven idea magnified by online social platforms. We do also have an issue with self diagnosis of a range of neuro divergent conditions, some which may be genuine and others not. And with it a real 'them and us,' tribal attitude, around the conditions too.

Someone pointed out to me recently that stroke can be seen as causing a neuro divergent condition in many, as does brain injury, but it's not something that's seen as trendy enough. See #neurospicy on tiktok.

You might be thinking about the article The Americanization of Mental Illness, or there is a book based on the article if I am remembering correctly.

It's apparently well understood that many things that we in the west think of as objective categories of mental illness, like anorexia, are no such thing. While they probably represent some kinds of underlying psychological and biological capacities, they are very much culturally constructed.

You see quite different normative ways of being mentally ill in different cultures. There are a few which seem to be more like a "traditional" illness and follow much similar patters, schizophrenia being one. But overall it's not the case.

www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html

@tellmewhentheLangshiplandscoz

There is no such thing as a trans child that young, just a projecting parent

^ This. With bells on.

I read a tweet the other day that said something like "in the 1970s and 80s I spent many hours pretending to be the Bionic Woman and Wonderwoman. Today I am a proud gay man and hate to think what would have happened to me if I were a child today."

The homophobia and total lack of willingness to break down gender stereotypes is currently so strong that we would prefer to trans our children rather than help them to embrace their individuality