How to react re children telling you about trans friends

[plainwhitecheese]

Dd14 tells me she's going out tomorrow, I ask who, she tells me (I've changed names) Lucy, Beth, Sarah and Josh

I know of the girls but ask who is josh

She says oh it's my mate who you know as Laura, he's trans and goes by Josh

So. I feel bad because I feel like 20 years ago people were dismissive of people being gay etc and I don't want to be ignorant and transphobic. But, much against how I wish I felt, I find it hard to stop my eyes rolling a bit.

I don't want to be ignorant, and bigoted. It almost feels to me like the pure amount of people proclaiming to be trans almost makes a mockery out of those with genuine body dismorphia. Or do I just need to get a grip and realise it's not up to me to feel a certain way about how people identify

If you read the full essay, @Starlee, you will see that it is also about “gender” as well.

It’s just not true that gender dysphoria is not classed as a mental illness. Dysphoria, as the links you gave posted also show, is the condition of feeling distress about one’s gender. Why do you think gender clinics in psychiatric services take referrals at all? If it was no longer classed as a psychiatric condition there would be no reason to have any referrals at all. (Or indeed, any medical/surgical transition at all.)

Rather, what you say is what many trans activists want to be true; but this isn’t actually the case.

A huge amount of the edifice of gender ideology rests on the claim that it is a distressing psychiatric condition which transition alleviates. A very large part of the “beKind” acceptance of trans identities relies on this assumption. People believe being trans is a vulnerable and distressing condition that is improved by medical transition. Take that away, and what do you have? You may not like the result. If being trans is not a psychiatric condition, how do you think people will take to it being purely a choice for men to be in women’s and children’s spaces just because they want to? It might well be the death of all public sympathy for the whole ideology.

Gender ideology is riven with contradictions and inconsistencies like this. Activists want to have it that being trans is distress that needs alleviating and being terribly vulnerable to suicide, and at the same time that it’s not a psychiatric condition; they want it to be a choice and an identity but also evidence of an innate gendered soul; they want gender to be both performance and fluid and clothes, but also a deep inner authentic self. But be careful what you wish for.

@nightwakingmoon Being distressed over something isn't the same thing as having a mental illness.
Gender clinics still have psychiatric evaluations because they are still required by law to get a gender recognition certificate. There are current talks to improve the GRA as it is now outdated and inefficient.
Gender dysphoria IS NOT a mental illness. WHO/Europe brief – transgender health in the context of ICD-11

Gender dysphoria IS known by other names, fromGov.uk - you’ve been diagnosed with gender dysphoria (discomfort with your birth gender) - this is also called gender identity disorder, gender incongruence or transsexualism
And activists do NOT say being transgender is a choice, it is not a choice, same as being gay/straight or black/white is not a choice, you either are, or are not, no choice involved.

You actually are female if you have a female body along with all the female functions. There is no getting away from that.

in a similar situation I just said
“Ok, have fun”

If gender dysphoria is not a mental illness then why is the NHS involved in any way? Either it's an illness requiring "treatment" in the form of drugs and surgery via the NHS - or it's not.