An explosion’: what is behind the rise in girls questioning their gender identity?

[dick27]

Worth a read, in the Guardian www.theguardian.com/society/2022/nov/24/an-explosion-what-is-behind-the-rise-in-girls-questioning-their-gender-identity?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

The Guardian tiptoes delicately towards reality, stopping off to take Gendered Intelligence seriously along the way.

Wow!! This is shocking for the guardian. Actually some sense!

Wonder if OJ is having a hissy fit?

This is a real breakthrough moment for the Guardian. The article is open to the idea that there might be multiple explanations for teenagers wanting to transition.

Amelia Gentleman is an excellent journalist. Interesting that she does not use the word ‘son’ to refer to these young people other than in direct quotes from the parents.

Exactly. They even say "trans-identified" and "help their child to accept their natal sex".

The Guardian is definitely on the way to reality. I may even be able to subscribe again soon!

The Guardian may be heading back to reality, but not before allowing several senior female journalists to be bullied out. Which is really shameful.

They're going to have to do a lot, lot more than put out one article in which Gendered Intelligence pop up to equate gender distress with being left-handed, for me to be persuaded it's worth paying for again!

Agree Amelia Gentleman is a good reporter, I thought her work on the Windrush scandal was so impressive.

She did put something out not so long ago that inferred she may have been looking into this - it was discussed on here, can't remember what it was (search is giving me nothing!). So really glad to see the hunch was correct!

I can't wait for JKRs tweet about it

She comments on the lack of alternative advice for families... so the article is nicely timed for the release of the Gender Exploratory Therapy Association (GETA)'s "Clinical Guide for Therapists Working with Gender-Questioning Youth" on 3rd December.

Parents will at least be able to ask for a therapist who knows about the GETA guidelines and even follows them(!). From what Stella O'Malley says about them they're exactly what you'd expect exploratory therapy to be. Exploratory. No more presuming from the off that a trans identity will (or wont) be the answer to whatever is making a young girl question her gender.

("She" being Amelia Gentleman not JKR )

She’s married to Boris Johnson’s brother, Joe, who always seemed sensible too.

I hope sense is prevailing now too. Nature can make awful errors with humans but it doesn’t get it wrong on such a scale as this.

I had a feeling Amelia Gentleman was going to write something about this - she's been following a lot of gender-critical people on Twitter, and she wrote one of the recent news stories in the Guardian about the LGBA/Mermaids case.

I had hoped she was planning a Mermaids expose - I suppose that was being over-optimistic.

I thought the article was OK. It was balanced, and I don't really think this is an issue people should be balanced about. It's a bit like writing a balanced article about female genital mutilation, or child sex abuse. There is nothing in there about the long-term medicalisation of young women who go down this route, and the detrimental, longlasting impact of cross-sex hormones.

I think the harm being done to a cohort of teenage girls will eventually be regarded as the great medical scandal of our age, and the article doesn't reflect this.

Agreed RoyalCorgi.

It's an excellent article. The Guardian has come a long way from the days when they reported on the trial of the trans woman Lauren Jeska who attempted to murder an investigator from UK athletics who was investigating Jeska's eligibility to compete. As I recall, the Guardian omitted to mention the fact that Jeska is trans and the reason they attempted murder.

It's definitely progress for the G - and I liked the gentle supportive approach to parents, letting them speak about their experiences.
It's always worth noting that Gendered Intelligence always talk about "trans people" when speaking about children - a useful sleight of hand to pretend that children are merely mini adults. They also run a programme to send into schools (at considerable expense for the school) random adults to "mentor" other people's children who are confused about their sex. I'm never quite sure what the qualifications are for random adults to discuss such intimate and profound issues with vulnerable children or how this ever gets past any school safeguarding policy

Agree with everything Royal Corgi days.

The references to 'biological' girls and 'adolescents registered as female at birth' set my teeth on edge.

They seem to have tried to balance the article by using more trans-positive stories from parents and children. I’ll need to re-read it, but the more negative ones about being trans come from people that just didn’t bother to transition in the end, rather than those that regret medical treatment. That might be reflective of the ages of the participants. They probably come from the cohort that were treated by GIDS before it got completely taken over and the decent therapists left.

Hopefully it’s a sign that the guardian are going to have more sense in this area. Too little, too late, really. How long has the interim Cass review been out?

Whilst I agree with @RoyalCorgi , I'm thinking that if the article had been less balanced The Guardian may not have published it.

The Guardian has been giving their readership half the story on this for so long I can imagine they need to gently drip feed the facts to them a bit at a time, so they don't trigger all the collective cognitive dissonance out there.

More analysis than I've ever seen in the Guardian before, but zero references to harm of binders and mermaids' influence there (one girl mentions "pain in ribs still there") and zero references to growing numbers of detransisters.

The analysis cited parental opinions of triggers but not descriptions from detransitioners of sexism, misogyny, puberty, online influences including porn (for both sexes).

Yes it could be a drip drip rayon but I thought that about WH and they've been shites this week,

We all know that what is fuelling this is the constant messaging of this ideology by organisations that should know better and be more responsible. BBC and NHS and the entire education system.

If I look at a photo from my school days we’d all be classed as trans. 1 Lesbian between us, all happy women. Society is making normal girls think they need to change into something they are not.

IT HAS TO STOP.