DSD12 nipping it in the bud

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Hi I’m after some advice. My DSD (12) is being utterly sucked in by gender ideology. She has a friend who is trans and is very dominant. She has no supervision online, and as such all her algorithms are #trans etc etc.

Her mum doesn’t think restricting social media will make any difference, but beyond that we (me and her mum) very much align that you can’t change your sex. As step mum I can’t influence how much time she spends on the internet when she’s not with me. We have spent so much of her childhood teaching her about the value of women! We have tried to teach her that her sex is her sex and she can’t change that and the rest is her personality and that’s up to her. It’s incredibly frustrating.

Are there any particularly good resources out there for us to guide DSD through this time?

Oh my god, they suspend children at your school for saying people can't change sex??!

Show her the end results on twitter. The after pictures of gender affirmation and daily after care needed. It is pretty sick that they are going for kids who aren't sexually active so won't understand the implications of lifelong infertility and physical disability. Show her the final state "genitalia" the success stories are left with. An ideology that pushes widescale sterilisation, medicalisation and shortened life span as an end goal for anyone who shows any non standard gender (under the ironic tag of affirmation). Should be a new black mirror episode

it's a two day internal suspension to voice gender critical beliefs in my child school)

WTAF?? That's ridiculous.

No they aren’t. They are saying you can change gender, not sex

People really are saying you can change sex. It was debated in parliament just this week.

Petition A: clarify the Equality Act to make clear that sex means (biological/birth/actual) sex. Petition B: leave it as it is, which at least currently according to the Haldane judgement (to be appealed?) says that sex may mean sex as modified by a gender recognition certificate, or possibly actual sex, depending on ... what exactly isn't clear, but it seems like a recipe for further expensive legal tussling. Great howlings and declarings that if sex is deemed to be not changed then trans people are being genocided and their existence denied.

ScotGov initially tried to assert that anyone who asserted a gender identity had changed sex for purposes of discrimination legislation, which was carried in the first FWS judicial review, then overturned at appeal. Then they reverted to only if you had a GRC. It's all in legal papers and Hansard. No more pretending it's not happening.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-06-12/debates/F74BD8CC-4807-46F4-AA51-5402B7CFE8F9/LegislativeDefinitionOfSex

I've had the same experience but with my own daughter. I constantly discussed gender stereotypes with her since tiny, discussed the difference of gender and sex, which she understood, similarly to you I was very masculine as a child and teen, I think in part due to having an extremely misogynistic step father, so I was very sensitive to sexism. So the regression into gender stereotypes is very emotive for me and I found it very hard to deal with.

My daughter didn't have internet access until she was 14 and then restricted. But she still fell down the rabbit hole and followed all her friends when she was around 12. If she has alternative type friend (most likely neurodivergent) this is simply unavoidable. It is the alternative to alternative music. Being different is the key to their identity. Self harm self diagnosing of tics etc is closely aligned. If this happens too, I say try not to be alarmed and take it with a pinch of salt.

My daughter's best friend is 'he' on the school register and she refers to all her female friends as he or them. She has had phases of wanting to be he/him but mostly wanted to be non binary. She never asked me to change her pronouns (I expect she knew I would refuse) but did other people. But she is 16 now and I'm definitely seeing it start to tail off a bit. She has recently admitted it is really cringey that she was obsessed with announcing she was asexual/pansexual/any other sexual etc when she was younger and finds the obsessive flag waving a bit cringey too. She finds the name she wanted everyone to call her cringey. She has removed all her tags from her social media. She still definitely identifies with gender ideology, but I now see hope that this might be something she grows out of and sees the other point of view, and it isn't all consuming for her anymore. I think the best method is to smile and nod as much as possible, but to not agree to the change in pronouns if requested. Tell her that is fine for her to do with her friends but you won't do it until she is at least an adult.

I agree with those who are talking about the 'unfashionable' element of it.

DS12 and his friends seem to think the whole gender identity thing is bit silly.

I think the younger kids are starting to see through it tbh.

I think the pictures are a bit too graphic for a twelve year old. However, an explanation of the effects of testosterone on the female body may be instructive, especially the risk of vaginal atrophy and how that can lead to incontinence issues and even the need for a hysterectomy. Inflicting a bunch of medical issues that are more normally experienced by women in their fifties, on yourself while you're still in your twenties is not a wise course of action.

This is crazy.
I'd be challenging this immediately.

Are they gender-critical views that's being voiced, or are they being personal about a trans kid?

I'd have agreed with you before my son started secondary school, but they see worse on the bus now. I think total honesty with clear language is the only way to nip things in the bud. There are only two biological sexes and you can't change it by wishing really hard. They need to see the outcomes.

Well yeah, if you mean literal biological sex change.

But they believe that gender identity supercedes biology to the point that they are equivalent to the opposite sex.

So they think they are the opposite sex, even when they admit that it's impossible on the biological level.