"Children in Need are currently funding 37 projects to the value of over £2.6 million specifically focused on young people affected by issues of sexual identity and gender identity."

[flashbac]

www.bbcchildreninneed.co.uk/changing-lives/stories/supporting-lgbtq-young-people-aross-the-uk/
Just posting a reminder of the causes CIN promote...

I think that Children in need give funding to Young carers. My dc are young carers, and they have been a massive help every year they've been growing up. They help loads of children to do things they otherwise wouldn't be able to do.

I think they fund childline as well, who have also been great when my dc have been struggling with various things.

I don't mind donating.

She hasn't settled on a sexuality yet (she says) and wears very gender neutral clothes. She already gets stared at by typical presenting women and girls in public toilets and ladies changing rooms

I think this is her perception. I always wear trousers and jeans, I wear a dress once every few years. I can't imagine anyone would look askance at me because I don't wear dresses or skirts. And anyone can have short hair.

The amount of gender stereotyping that goes on is ridiculous. You do not have to be male to wear trousers and you do not have to be female to wear a dress and make-up.

But to get back to to the thread topic, giving funding to support for teens whatever their needs, isn't a bad thing. It would be different if CiN supported breast binding and the like - I hope they don't. I don't donate anyway, I give to other things.

Good for them. All the more reason to donate.

No I grew up in the era of section 28 and lots of my friends dying of AIDS.

So I absolutely agree with you that young women are being indoctrinated into a damaging ideology if they don't fit the gender norms but there is much greater acceptance (and less death) of the LGB community.

As I said, sexuality and gender identity are not the same thing. Many of the girls who don't identify as girls at the moment may not be lesbians or bisexual, they may just really hate being massively oversexualised and I don't blame them at all for wanting to opt out of that. And they are vulnerable to the ghouls who have a vested interest in getting them to change their bodies.

Not all lesbians are butch. Not all girls who prefer trousers and short hair are lesbians.

I cannot remember the last time I wore a skirt or dress. I am in my 50's and have always dressed in trousers, tee shirts, DM style boots etc. My hair was extremely short at times - shaved on the sides. Why do you assume I would be less accepting than a kid? I think anyone should be free to dress as they want and that clothing stereotypes are regressive.
It's nobody's business but hers what she chooses to wear and there are plenty of adult women who are fight against the gender stereotyping that might restrict her choice.

I frankly don't believe this. Have you actually witnessed this behaviour? Because it sounds to me as if your DD is paranoid.
I'd suggest any mental health issues she has, started a bit closer to home.

Or you're just a liar trying to push an agenda.

Many high streets and you find females wearing jeans, T-shirts/jumpers/hoodies and trainers.

You'd be hard pressed to find ones that aren't this time of year, certainly where I live. The only thing worn by girls and not boys tends to be leggings.

TheKeatingFive · Today 09:03
Well I think we can blame Lego for establishing ideas of girls and boys toys.

No, quite the reverse! Lego was marketed to both boys and girls and the original sets were quite basic so definitely unisex. It is only more recently that the sets have become more complex and more gender specific.

Meccano, on the other hand, missed a trick with only marketing to boys. Although I did have a basic Meccano set - well edgy, me!

Or you're just a liar trying to push an agenda.

I think thats more likely. I dress in jeans and hoodies/jumpers most days now, as do most of the women I know. Its certainly not uncommon.

THIS!
It's the lack of due diligence exercised by CiN. Their spectacular failure to notice the lack of safeguarding, the paedophile supporting, porn enabling employees, providing breast binders to children in secret from their parents at Mermaids.

Of course vulnerable children need mental health support - and much more of it. What they don't need is "attention" from self invested queer theory activists self identifying as "counsellors" with behaviour that is akin to gaslighting (there's a better word). They need neutral organisations without an agenda, high professional standards & impeccable safeguarding. That's what CiN have failed to establish in too many instances.

everyone is within their rights only to support straight people but I am surprised how many are ok with admitting that

Bovrilly, no one here is saying they only support straight people. They don’t support charities that encourage children to think they are born in the wrong body.

Sexuality = gay, straight or bisexual. Gender identity is not about sexuality. A high percentage of transwomen are heterosexual adult males.

Gender identity is about imagining you are the opposite sex, or any of 100 other invented ‘genders’ or identities. It is very far from being harmless nonsense, as it involves children being put on drugs to prevent puberty, and girls having their breasts amputated etc.

She already gets stared at by typical presenting women and girls in public toilets and ladies changing rooms.

That is very strange, Alexander, unless she is trying successfully to make herself look male. In other words, deliberately gaslighting other women. I have never seen a naturally boyish-looking woman, or a woman in typical male clothes, getting stared at in women’s spaces.

More likely your DD’s mental health issues are caused by the sex-stereotyping rubbish pushed on children by the gender identity movement, via social media and (shamefully) in schools. This feeds on the disruptive effects of normal hormonal changes during puberty and adolescence.

I hope you can help her steer her way through to a happy and healthy acceptance of her natural body.

And yet my experience is also of being stared at and challenged in public toilets, and being called Sir in shops. (posted further up the thread).
Just because you’ve never witnessed it or experienced it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
And no, I’m not deliberately trying to make myself ‘look male’ (whatever that means). I’m just me.

In my experience of young people struggling with gender identity, in every case it's a current culture-driven coping strategy to deal with all the other issues they have - exoerience of racism, undiagnosed or diagnosed neurodiversity, trauma, general 'not fitting in', mental health difficulties of various types.

More support for children and young people suffering in those ways is welcome. If it has to come in a gender envelope, then in a way I'm sorry about that but it is also the current cultural expression of these issues and meets the children where they are.

The problem is when it ‘comes in a gender envelope’ too often those other problems are precisely not discussed and everything goes in to a big gender box, sealed and stamped.

Mermaids is also promoting the idea, through workshops for SEN, (which all GC are barred from), that trans is an inborn aspect of being autistic, rather than an identity an autistic person, a girl especially, might use to gain acceptance and attention at school, or might hide behind as an explanation to themselves for other difficulties. What if the Mermaids approach prevails in the sphere of SEN too?

I see we've got the usual 'if you have a boundary of any kind you are failing children'....

There are many ways to support children. Funding organisations that are helping children to harm and safeguarding disasters are not one of them.

@lieselotte "But to get back to to the thread topic, giving funding to support for teens whatever their needs, isn't a bad thing. It would be different if CiN supported breast binding and the like - I hope they don't. I don't donate anyway, I give to other things."

CIN give a lot of money to mermaids and mermaids didn't hide the fact they were sending breast binders to young teenage girls therefore CIN do in fact support breast binding. And probably "and the like stuff as well."

Are shops not supposed to address you? Are women supposed to ignore men in women's toilets and changing rooms? I mean, I know you're a woman but that seems to be what you're implying.

I'm still not clear how funding from CIN would help address people thinking you're a bloke.

You can address people in shops with out gendering it. A simple "Are you ok there?' Or "can i help you?" without a sir/madam on the end. If you're not entirely sure, just make it neutral.
Ditto loos. If you're not sure, maybe don't say anything. I mean, what am I supposed to do to prove I"m in the right place?

I wasn't particularly responding to the subject of the thread, more to the poster that said her daughter got stared at in public places, and everyone saying 'this never happens / has never happened to me.

The difficulty is that a lot of the "support" doesn't help children come to terms with their physical sex, or with their body as it is, or with the issues underlying their gender questioning. Instead it confirms and embeds their sense that the problem is that they are the "wrong sex" or "in the wrong body". And that is harmful.

Posts like this make me terrified for my teen dd. She hasn't settled on a sexuality yet (she says) and wears very gender neutral clothes. She already gets stared at by typical presenting women and girls in public toilets and ladies changing rooms. Luckily kids her are are much more accepting than adult women, but attitudes are still isolating and cause her massive mental health issues.

Have you seen her being stared at in toilets or changing rooms? I've never seen a woman stare at someone they don't know in a changing room to be honest! Teenage girls can be very sensitive and tranlsate "I think my boobs aren't big enough" to "everyone is staring at me". Or do you mean that she is not dressing in a "gender neutral" way but is deliberately dressing as if she is male?

You (and she) might be getting cause and effect the wroing way round. Teenage girls with mental health issues can fix on gender as the cause.

lieslotte apologies if you think we're denying your DD's lived experience. I can only say that my niece is at a non-uniform secondary school and there is a very healthy mix of girls with a 'uniform' of fake-tanned, straightened hair, salon eyebrows and nails - and girls with band-T-shirts, over-sized check shirts, beanies, jeans, Converse, short, floppy 'boy' hair - and a bunch of styles in between. If the fake-tanned girl walked into a toilet full of the 'short-haired' girls they'd get stared at, and if the 'short-haired' girl walked into a toilet full of fake tanned girls they'd get stared at too.

Teendom is absolutely ruthlessly self-conscious and judgemental. I'm sure I'm not alone as a teen having a mother say 'For God's Sake NO ONE cares what you look like' as I faffed about trying to get my fringe in exactly the right position. I used to go about feeling I had a spotlight on me (and not in a fabulous Ru Paul way!)

I feel for your daughter. She says she's not decided on her sexuality yet. She'll not be alone in that. As long as you've got her back. Does she have no friends that look like her or like what she likes? What she and other teenagers need are places to hang out where they won't get given a lecture about gender bread men and offered binders as soon as they admit to not enjoying wearing a skirt.

If CIN was supporting youth work and youth centres for young people of all shapes and sizes I'd be more of a cheerleader for them. As it is, I've grown suspicious of all large charities these days. I don't have any spare funds but when I do, I give to local charities where the money goes more directly to the intended recipients. And as someone else said, I don't need a badge or a wristband to tell the world I'm charitable.

Surely "everyone is staring at me because...." is how teenagers tell you "I feel self conscious about...."

Clymene· Today 08:15

Witchcraftandhokum · Today 08:11

I'm not a big supporter of CIN but on the back of this thread I'll be making a donation.

Ooh edgy!

It's not really. I would support any research into this after multiple suicide attempts by my transgender nephew.

Sorry. I didn't