Help with talking to a 12 yr old about trans issues

[GoingOnce]

My son has a friend whose sister is apparently now his brother. I sense my son wants to talk to me about this and I want to have the right language to engage sensibly in a conversation. He has swallowed whole the ideology that people can change their gender as this has been “explained” to them at school. The child does not attend my son’s school but still attends a girls school - whilst going by a new name, wearing an adapted and having a special toilet assigned just for them.

The child in question (and the entire family) is struggling. There is self-harm and have been suicide attempts. I do not want to criticise them or their child. But I do want my child to realise that they are being presented with one narrative here. (I am quite certain the parents are simply going along with the whole thing because they are terrified of their child’s mental state and what they might do next. I feel very sorry for them).

Any advice for how I can discuss this sensibly? I can’t believe at age 12 we are already having to talk about all this.

transexual was an inaccurate concept in the first place. You can't have it both ways - you cant claim that one cant change sex and then refer to transexuals.

As you have rightly pointed out, most people (not children) dont transition. So this 'research' about medication is largely untrue, and de transitioning (if you don't agree with transitioning I'm not sure how you can claim de transitioning as a concept - if people say that transgender is an unindentifable concept then how does one transition?)

What annoys me is people claiming TRA dont care about children (which is true, they don't) while completely shutting down normal human beings who are not TRA's but do care about children, while pretending their aim is the welfare of children when in fact it isn't, it's an agenda against transgender.

As for sympathy and understandig for children, a simple read of these boards tell us the exact opposite.

What annoys me is people claiming TRA dont care about children (which is true, they don't) while completely shutting down normal human beings who are not TRA's but do care about children, while pretending their aim is the welfare of children when in fact it isn't, it's an agenda against transgender.

Can you rewrite this in a different way please? I'm really not clear what you mean. I think most women on FWR care passionately about children. That's why there is such concern about safeguarding. It's about protecting children.

It's funny how you try and spin people caring about children in this scenario to still be about an agenda against trans people.

It's a constant stream of if you state you care and are worried about one set of people you are always "showing you have a problem with trans people." You make every single situation about trans people.

Nope I just care about kids, stop putting words into people's mouths and making out they are doing things they clearly aren't.
Trying to cast doubt on their worries for the children.

And in regards to not having sympathy and understanding children, you couldn't be more wrong.🤦🏼‍♀️

'you make every single situation about trans people' is an odd stance to take on a thread about trans people

you may care about children but it is simply untrue to say that every post on this thread, or similar threads, is out of care for children.

It's not about protecting children. It' about furthering an agenda.

Can you explain what you mean? What do you believe is the purpose of this 'agenda' that you are accusing people of promoting? Why do you think people who express concern about children aren't really concerned about children?

No it's not an odd stance to take, particularly when my post and others specifically identified TRAs as the people harming children.
TRAs aren't defined as trans people.

You were doing the classic thing TRAs do which is any worry for another party you divert the attention away back onto trans people and then make out there is some sort of "hidden agenda."

There isn't, I care about children alot, THEY are the most vulnerable in society.
I will stand up for them and anyone causing them harm, and I certainly won't be villanised for it.

Well said sunflower

Preserving the fertility, body functionality, physical.and mental health amd safguarding of children is not an " agenda"

If you are so lost down a rabbit hole you see a right afforded to everyone else but trans children as an agenda then I don't think there's any helping you.

And if we are talking about caring for children. Where are the tras?

They don't seem to care much for keira bell do they..susie green doesn't think.that accidentally making someone trans is a negative outcome. Then there's the dr who thinks they can " just get some" when asked what happens of they change their mind after the mastectomies. Marcie bowers was no where to be seen when JJs op when wrong befire jj even got home. And Dr Gallagher gets upset when she doesn't get to yeet enough texts. And not forgetting prescribing drugs from illegal clinics as per another dr. The drs in Sweden who fired the whistle blowers when it transpired 15 year olds had the spines of elderly women.

The care and concern for children is non existent.

Who's there for these kids ? Really? The only ones fighting fir them is people like us

I thought that was such an absurd stance that I must have misinterpreted your convoluted sentence.

So in your scenario, you are the 'normal person' who does care about children while I/we don't care about children at all but are pretending to as a smokescreen to further an agenda against transgender?

Rereading your 100 (!) posts on this thread, it's clear that you are the one with an agenda.

You insist that all children who say they are trans are trans without any interest in understanding why a child might have an issue in comping to terms with the changes wrought by puberty.

That isn't caring about children. That is about furthering an agenda.

You said you appreciated the article from transgender trend by a clinical psychologist that another poster shared so I'm going to share it again.

https://www.transgendertrend.com/teenager-says-theyre-transgender/

Trying to be perceived as one sex, whilst developing the body of another, is never going to be a trivial thing to do. We can’t reverse the experiences of adolescence.

You say very few children who are trans (I'm using your words) medically transition but then what? As they get older, it becomes painfully ever more obvious that they are not the sex they are pretending to be. How can it be anything other than a total headfuck when you are using the name Jeremy, everyone around you calls you jeremy and uses male pronouns and yet you look in the mirror and see a girl staring back at you?

How is that a kindness?

Let's not refer to someones personal sensitive experience as nonsense.

Why is the issue the words we use. Not the fact that the children are being taught unscientific and unverifable nonsense as fact.

You are angry at the wrong people. The issue isn't that we call it nonsense. The issue is that children are being gaslit into thinking people are who they say they are and being called bigots if they object. They are no longer able to say they feel unsafe or why incase it hurts someone else's feelings. Something adults around them shoukd he teaching them the tools to deal with . Instead they are outsourcing the responsibility of validation identity onto everyone else

Hi OP, I also have a 12yo and this topic has started to come up.

I am used to talking to my kids about religion, where the rest of my family has a strong faith but I am an atheist. I use the same sort of approach with this issue. It's quite possible to hold wildly different views on big issues but still care about people and I think that's the key here.

This is a kid that you know, and who is having a tough time. So the main thing really is concern that they are ok. And then answer any questions as they come up.

If it helps, I have explained to my 12yo that some people feel really strongly that they are a different gender to what they were born as, and believe that they would be happier to live as if they are the opposite sex. So maybe they were born as a girl, and they have a physically female body, but they feel like they are a boy. I don't think anything really makes you a girl or boy apart from the body type you have, and I don't agree that anyone can literally change sex, but I don't think anyone should have to conform to gender stereotypes, and I do think it's a tough path to take. I told my DC they will have to make their own minds up and they will probably know kids in school who are non binary or trans. We can be respectful even if we disagree, and we can look out for trans people and stand up for them if they are getting bullied for being different.

The most worrying thing about these post is you think you are right.

If TERF is worthy of a strike then I don't understand why comparing someone to a TRA isn't.

"I thought that was such an absurd stance that I must have misinterpreted your convoluted sentence." No you didn't. Passive agression is boring.

That's exactly what i'm saying.

Thanks for counting my posts, but it's hardly unusual for someone on the "other" side of the argument to have more than others. I haven't been talking to myself.

Re your last sentence, to be quite honest, that has got absolutely nothing to do with you. If that's what they want to do, that's up to them. And thankfully away from MN, in real life, the majority of people don't say things as self indulgent as that and support other people.

Let's not refer to someones personal sensitive experience as nonsense.

When did we have to defer to any person’s personal experience no matter what?

Some people are delusional. Some are mentally ill. Or paranoid, or obsessive, or unreasonable, or neurotic, or believe in conspiracy theories, or Wicca, or David Icke, or take LSD, or have poor memories, or believe any old shit they read on the internet. Since when did “personal experience” become the arbiter of truth?

Sometimes someone’s “personal experience” is just plain wrong or mistaken. We are able to be respectful to people in lots of other areas of life without deferring to their viewpoints as necessarily correct. Reducing everything to “personal experience”, as if that means it must therefore be a sacred cow, is not how we behave in most areas of life - why should we do it here?

How come whatboutery is OK as long as it suits?

I think you'll find we live the vast majority of our life by personal experience.

Where’s the “whataboutery”?

We don’t do science, or medicine, or law, or education, or aerodynamics, or making iPhones, or teaching geography, or learning to play the piano, or driving in a car, by “personal experience”. We do it by rules and regulations and principles and extrapolations, all based on material reality, history, evidence, abstraction, system and method.

I look forward to you inventing a computer chip by “personal experience” alone. Or flying a plane. Or running a systems test. Or managing the process of a White Paper through parliament. Or sewing a dress.

Nearly all of our lives are negotiated via our reliance on systems and processes and abstract methods. We just have either naturalised these so that we forget we are obeying artificial rules (driving, for example); or we overlook the extent to which we rely on technologies and systems that we don’t ourselves understand (yet we’re completely reliant on other people knowing how to).

Imagine you’re washed up on a remote island of people who haven’t met another stranger for centuries. What can you teach the islanders from your civilisation? What “personal experience” can you bring them that is valuable to them, that isn’t just a kind of fantasy story about your land of magical technology? Can you build engines, distill chemicals, carve wood, treat illnesses, make fabric, manage agricultural processes?

The thing is, you might not be able to, but all around you are literally people who do those things every day - farmers and vets and nurses and scientists and systems engineers and software designers and so on and so on, all of whom rely on their knowledge of abstract fields and practical expertise based in the real material world.

Whose knowledge of sexual reproduction is superior, a sheep farmer or a gynaecologist or a research scientist in genetics — or a teenager who’s been lapping up guff about the “spectrum of gender” on Tumblr, or a politician who claims that men can grow cervixes? Are all their “personal experiences” equally valid on the idea of sex, then?

Or, put it another way, @stopwaitingforpermissiontobeyou — if someone came up to you in a hospital and said that they weren’t a nurse or doctor and had no training or even a GCSE in biology, but they had had plenty of experience of having blood taken themselves, and so they were sure they could take yours just fine — would you be letting them near your arm with the needle and cannula?

Or would you insist that someone who had the requisite certified medical or nursing knowledge and professional expertise do it instead?

Because if you wouldn’t, then that says it all about how you really value “personal experience”, doesn’t it?

Your first question is whataboutery - the first paragraph about being mentally ill and so on.

And in answer to your question -

No, I wouldn't.

But that's very different, and a total strawman, as well you know.

In the same sense when I have religious friends, who believe their loved one is going off to be with people in the afterlife, I don't go "NO THEY'RE NOT".

What I personally believe about changing gender isn't the point here, because ultimately, it's nothing to dow ith me (and the posts about being worried about childrens' welfare is disambigious, as is using them to make their point).

It’s not “whataboutery” or a straw man at — “transsexualism” was until recently classed as a mental illness per se; and “gender dysphoria” still is! Why do you think so many people are claiming that they are suffering terribly from “gender dysphoria”? They themselves are claiming that it is psychological distress/mental illness.

Many psychologists and clinicians have for years made comparisons between gender dysphoria and anorexia, body dysmorphic disorder, and body integrity disorder. So yes: mental illness is relevant. We don’t accept an anorexic’s “personal experience” as medical fact equal to a clinician’s view. We don’t say a depressive’s personal experience of the world is just as medically right as their doctor’s is. We don’t “validate” the perceptions of someone with body dysmorphic disorder by giving them plastic surgery on demand because they must be right.

Not everyone’s “experience” is accurate, or equal in validity, in terms of how it reflects the reality of the world. Some experiences are misunderstood, or false, or delusional, or psychologically distorted. Some people are just wrong about things.

As I said before, we can respect people as people without having to “validate” the content of their beliefs. We do this in lots of areas of life, from mental illness to psychological disturbance to all sorts of “normal” personality quirks to religious belief to stuff people believe in that they read online. All of these things are beliefs and behaviours, and are perfectly up for discussion and debate. We aren’t compelled to treat any of them as sacred cows as long as we treat other people with respect.

And yes, if you don’t believe in the afterlife, you don’t say “no you daft noodle there is no magic sky grandpa” to your bereaved religious friends —

BUT if your 12 year old asks you about philosophical objections to religion as an intellectual debate, you are perfectly entitled to say it then.

And yes, you are perfectly entitled to discuss your lack of belief in the magic sky grandpas on discussion forums on the internet, or write books about it, or debate the history of atheism, or discuss it as a topic with children taking GCSE RE, or vote for people who also don’t believe in magic sky grandpas, or not to be sacked from your job for saying “I’m an atheist”. As are we re: gender ideology.

Good job I don't need any help then.

'A right afforded to everyone else but trans children' - you mean like, the freedom to make their own choices and be supported?