Children's Social Transition

[MalagaNights]

Given the closing of the Tavi and the conservative leadership candidates both speaking about concerns about puberty blockers, I've started to think more about social transition and how we challenge and change the assumption that this must be supported.

It is now totally assumed and supported by all professional organisations who work with young people that the correct practice is to use the pronouns young people request and to refer to them as the sex or gender identity they choose.

These assumptions of practice are now deeply ingrained.

They are shared by teachers, psychologists, social workers, mental health professionals. It is just stated as fact mostly now, without comment or challenge.

The assumption is underpinned by principles, or slogans, such as 'lived experience' 'young person's voice' and the idea that your identity is central and must be protected.

Understandably the focus has been on the devastating impact of medicalisation, but I'm wondering how we are going to change the embedded assumptions and practice around social transition which now exist within schools and all professions who work with young people.

So basically self id for children.

So would the mechanism for change be for the Dfe to issue guidelines around watchful waiting being the practice rather than social transition and this then reflected in the KCSIE?

This is what I'm trying to think about:
What are the mechanisms for addressing this in schools?

It's not going to come bottom up. Everyone is terrified and currently believes the only way of protecting yourself is to affirm.
The concept of a trans child is now a shared belief across education.

But how could central government impose new guidelines or practice?

It needs the clinicians and psychologists to give really clear protocols based on evidence, which the government and charities can then use as guidance.

But the psycholgists are so captured by the ideology and not the evidence.

The trans ideology is pushed via the DfE's overarching Equality Act Guidance which was updated in 2018, It's superficial and pushes schools to adult groups like GIRES and of course Stonewall for "advice" as well as recommending the Cornwall guidelines. All biased inappropriate sources.

I'm not sure that there's any other guidance which is where the problem lies. Self invested adult groups have leapt in to push their personal preferences and nobody in education's realised that they have no relevant expertise - just a wish to see more "trans children".

The Bayswater group are pushing for new guidance - Lucy Bannerman covered it for the Times yesterday:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/065eb3ce-0f70-11ed-93cf-b011fa7fe86b?shareToken=1f8757ab15824c042a1062ee40179392

Well quite.

I am facing this situation in the wider family. I can cope with the new name (it is fairly unusual and not gender specific as far as I can see) but using "they" just does not come naturally to me and I have said to her - "I am getting on a bit and will get that wrong, but all you need to know is I love you and respect you."

That is what these young people need during their confused period. Love and respect to keep them going till they are old enough to make a permanent decision either way. Respect for how they feel is important.

You're right MalagaNights. Just imposing new guidelines on schools is unlikely to work. Because they'd be saying "don't socially affirm" or "don't have all mixed sex toilets" and policies aren't written like that. This is a massive social mess and somehow we've got to enable schools to step back from their unthinking cheerleading to a more professional approach.

All the trans policies (usually written for schools by activists) blur professional boundaries and give schools a role at the centre of enabling the child to transition. Somehow schools need to return to their professional role in learning. They don't cheer lead anorexics or dabble with self harming children. They know their boundaries, refer appropriately and look at how the vulnerable child can be supported when in the schools system - they don't dismantle systems and beliefs as demanded by trans activists.

Sorry for the ramble, but this is a really challenging mess to undo.

As a teacher, I suggest the thing that would help most in getting this is to remove the DfE requirement to teach "gender identity". There is a petition to get this removed from the guidelines but it doesn't have many signatures yet. If you are someone who has supported crowdfunders, I really suggest you sign this petition.

Schools are terrified of failing Ofsted, so as long as gender identity is in the DfE guidance then the schools and teachers have their hands tied.

That's a really good point justgotosleepffs. Ofsted left one of the Stonewall protection rackets last year, but the dogma is still there.
I do hope that with Cass red flagging the role of schools with social transitioning that there are numerous high level discussions going on - hopefully excluding those captured civil servants who will simply be told what is to happen?
The whole edifice around children must be impossible to sustain now that Cass has pointed out the extreme harm being done to children.

There is a petition to get this removed from the guidelines but it doesn't have many signatures yet. If you are someone who has supported crowdfunders, I really suggest you sign this petition.

There's a link to the petition on this thread:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4585082-rse-content-on-gender-vs-sex

The youngest child I've seen socially transition was 5. I agree completely that it isn't a neutral move but I also think these children - and the children around them now referring to them as the opposite sex - believe they can actually change sex. I don't think there is much social difference between boys and girls before puberty except for the gendered expectations and stereotypes of the society in which they live. But at puberty that all goes haywire. If you've been told you are a boy by everyone around you and then enter female puberty, how do you deal with that reality without medicalizing? Or admitting that no, actually, you can wear what you want and call yourself any name you want, and even ask people to call you particular pronouns, but nothing magically physically changes. I honestly think a lot of teens seems to believe changing sex is a realistic proposition physically.

Social transition also makes it very difficult for children to slough that identity if they find it doesn’t suit, if everyone tells you that they always knew you were a girl/ boy/ agender, then it’s difficult to move on. It’s as if when I truly believed my destiny was to be a jockey, my mother had gone out, murdered all the jockeys and bought every racehorse for me.Quite tough to then say I like punk rock and smoking now.
Actually I have seen this happen when promising young sportspeople stop wanting to get out of bed to train. Can be very difficult if the parents have bought into the whole culture.
But I do also think that children are getting bored with trans now. It just isnt special anymore. But I do see a lot of people in their 30s now making announcements. Crack on, I say. Borrowing your little sisters castoffs..

A gender non conforming 16 yr old I know (but has always had long hair) seems to be a proper eco rad fem.

Many of her friends are tied up with this bs, whereas she's arguing that she can, as a woman, do what ever she wants, the same as men, but accepting biological differences.

She's basically a young breathing version of invisible women. I suggested it to her mum but actually, her daughter seems to be very aware of how women are discriminated against left right and centre. Last time I saw her she was very proud of her new huge back pack designed to fit woman's bodies.

I believe that this will slowly fade among the young. Unfortunately the more vulnerable children will potentially still be targeted and have parents who "believe." It's very much in and amongst send groups. And the NAS of course.

I so, so hope that things worked out ok for your son @windo
Flowers for you, words are not enough 💐

@OldCrone here's one example.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26895269.2022.2081645

Conflates gender non conformity with diagnosis and "gender reassignment."

"Trans is an adjective to describe people whose gender identity does not align with the gender they were assigned at birth, with the adjective cis applying to those who are not trans (Ashley, 2022). Trans children’s rights in England, Scotland and Wales are protected under the Equality Act 2010, with “gender reassignment” one of nine protected characteristics (Wadham et al., 2016). As growing numbers of trans children assert their identity in childhood, schools are grappling with how to adapt, with many schools drawing upon anti-bullying frameworks (Barnes & Carlile, 2018). In the absence of national governmental guidance, UK schools are looking to a wide-range of informal guidance material, with diverse approaches to trans inclusion and varied levels of commitment to trans children’s equality and safety at school (Horton, 2020)."

(Bold my own. All children have an equal right to safety under KCSIE. That's the main point of it.)

Genevieve Gluck has described how WPATH have self generated research articles that they all cite in more articles which builds an image of rigorous academic research.

From what I can tell, you can generate a PhD and many articles by just citing anything published by WPATH or others writing the same stuff, eg Carlile. (Baring in mind WPATH refer to the eunuch archives which has 4000 stories of abuse and castration of children, some by drs, and 3 US academics have been involved with the site using it as an 'evidence base' since the 1990s.)

Thread on WPATH and good interview with Gluck.

WPATH www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4601058-wpath

The current government need to 1. create the guidelines for the new Cass review led GIDS and then 2. generate the guidance for schools.

On this subject may I draw your attention to this on the petitions board if you haven’t already seen it?

It a petition against teaching children ( and young ones get included) that we all have a ‘gender identity’. This implies that anyone may have an identity that does not match their sex.

RSE content on gender vs sex | Mumsnet

www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4585082-rse-content-on-gender-vs-sex

As well as posters talking about the invention of the 'trans child' and the, doomed to failure, need for everyone to always validate them, it also perpetuates the ideology. And can affect children who, up until then, have not been involved.

Stephanie Davis Arai said that when a boy comes to school with long hair, make up, and all the corresponding femininity, many girls will look at him and think if that's a girl what the hell am I?

Allowing child transitioning is presupposing an agreement with the ideology, and a acceptance of the cementing of gender stereotypes.

So yes guidelines need to be issued and it needs to stop being taught. Hopefully, all the different strands undermining the ideology are coming together.

The push to make everything a celebration of aspiration and bravery was powerful and insidious. I think it was GIRES or gendered intelligence who said schools should celebrate a trans child with a coming out cakes and balloons.

It's a lot to roll back. But fortunately, one of the aspects to this ideology, is that once you start to see it through a different lens, everything collapses very quickly.

One thing I've noticed in our primary school, with at least six trans kids, is parents thinking it's good parenting to ask their children regularly whether they feel they are a boy or girl.

The two families I know well seem to have stopped asking once they got the opposite sex answer. One child in particular would have kept giving different answers until they got it "right."

We don't ask our kids if they think they are thin or fat, if they might want a nose job when they are older etc. we don't encourage them to analyse themselves. The planting of this seed, by asking what they feel like, is not neutral either.

The two families I know well seem to have stopped asking once they got the opposite sex answer.

What happened then? Did they decide the child was trans or did they realise that they were confusing them?

The Cass review states social transition is not neutral, but I think the case needs to be made it is harmful and schools should not engage with it.

Its is harmful because it confuses all children asked to support it, and therefore leads to a potential increase in trans identity across schools or communities (as is seen), and it reinforces gender stereotypes.

It's harmful because it places a child in trying to be percieved as one sex when their body is another, thereby increasing the dysphoria with the reality of their body which doesn't match their presentation. It is this dissonanace whihc leads to the desperation for puberty blockers as the reality of a devloping body whihc can no longer be hidden whilsts trying to present as the other sex is now unbearable. It blows the whole lie out the water.

It places young people in the position where their sense of self is so fragile it relies on the compliance of everyone they intrecat with to state the lie they are trying to present. Such a fragile sense of self will enevitably lead to deeper mental helath issues.

It suggets to young people that they can enforce the compliance of the outside wrl with their inner world view and they shuold expect this. This is not the case, and never can be and shouldn't be, and leading them to expect this will impact mental health.

It's harmful because it leads to a much higher rate of persistance, thereby lowering the rate of desistance whihc would represent a positive integration between body and identity. Surely the best outcome?

Insightful post MalagaNights.
Maybe I could add the point that it's also harmful as it renders teachers / schools "professionally dangerous". They have no qualifications in gender ideology. Their professional expertise in dealing with vulnerable / mentally unwell children has been undermined by trans activists attempting to change all aspects of the school in pursuit of their queer theory agenda.
Teachers are encouraged to repeatedly breach their professional / safeguarding boundaries and with the support of the useful idiots in the unions / the DfE civil servants, are socially transitioning other people's children solely as a political act.

Yes these both need to happen.

It would be good to know what guidance is going to be given for the new gender clinics? Will they give guidance on social transitioning?

The school guidance will need to be based on the clinical guidance, and if it recommends against social tranistion this will be hugely controversial, as schools and children's professsionals, including psychologists, are so captured by this ideology. Lived experience, personal identity and the 'child's voice' are sacroscant principles.

If schools where told best practice is:

Pronoun use across the school should be in line with children's biological sex.

In cases where children are known to be experiencing gender dysphoria staff should aim to minimise use of gendered pronouns in direct reference to them, as much as possible, to reduce distress.

Consistent and accurate language to describe biological sex should be used to avoid confusion: all male children should be referred to as boys, and all female children as girls.

In cases where children are known to be experiencing gender dysphoria staff should minimise and avoid where possible referring directly to the child's sex to reduce distress.

All children should be referred to by their preferred name following consultation and agreement with parents.

All children have the option of a trousers, skirts and dresses from a school uniform list.

All children should use the toilet and changing facilies for their biological sex.

In cases where children are known to be expereincing geneder dysphoria adaptations to meet thier needs such as finding a private space or seperate toilet should be discussed and agreed.

Gender stereotypes which suggest that any activity or preference is limited to or linked with biological sex should be avoided.

Just typing this makes me thing about all the heads that would explode...

Also that schools should only take advice about individuals / groups from properly qualified experts in child development / psychology / safeguarding? Self interested political lobby groups have no business weighing on on individual children or aspects of the school organisation.

This would result in some cases parents supporting social transition at home, but schools refusing to use preferred pronouns in schools, which would be very difficult.

I guess what the guidance should probably say is:

Schools should not support social transition unless receommended by a clinician attached to one of the new regulated clinics.
Until then the type of practice I wrote above should be used.

If this was school guidance, it would begin to filter to parents and other professionals that social transition is not something to undertake themseleves but something which happens only after assessment at one of the clinics following guidance.

I'm trying to think through how these types of chnages can come about.