If you're GC, what should trans people actually do?

[AmaListening]

I'd like to understand what someone with gender critical views thinks trans people should do.

Maybe let's make it specific with a couple of famous examples: Laverne Cox (trans woman), and Elliot Page (trans man).

Imagine you had it exactly your way. What should those human beings, who feel and identify the way they do, do about every aspect like: names, pronouns, surgery, clothing, relationships, social spaces, work, sports.

How should Laverne speak about her own identity? Should Elliot not have had top surgery?

I'd really like to understand what the world looks like for trans people if we carry GC views through to their end points.

If a child of mine persisted in saying they were not the sex they were born as, first I'd facilitate the child in the behaviour that made them comfortable, and wait for them to grow out of it. If they didn't grow out of it, then my next thought would be therapy, not surgery.

No 3 year old should be looking in a mirror daily and analysing their self image. Whether that's to lament not being a tractor or not being female. It's not healthy all round, and perhaps a symptom of our superficial surface obsessed society. At age 3 there should be no noticeable differences in how a boy or girl is treated. If you've managed to create an environment where there is, then it's the adults failure not a medical issue with the child.

What do you think her 'experience' is? A girl can't possibly know what it's like to be a boy. She hasn't had any more experience of being a boy than you have.

All anyone can do is imagine what it might be like to be the opposite sex, and imagine that they would prefer to be the opposite sex, but it's not possible to 'feel like' something you have no experience of being.

But what is ‘feeling like a girl’?

I’ve always known I was a biological female. I disagree with patriarchy that says I am ‘less than’ males, that I was wrong, that I ‘argue like a man’, that I should accept being treated in a certain way because I have breasts and a vagina, that I should like certain things because of my physicality. So do I ‘feel like a man’ because I believe I should be treated with respect and have agency over my life and my choices? Because that’s how males are socialised.

I’ve always known that if I’d been born male, with the same personality, my life would have been much easier. That doesn’t mean that I am a man in the ‘wrong body’, it means that society is screwed when it comes to gender norms. And it means that things put in place to level the playing field are so important and can’t be ‘got round’ by simply identifying into a more disadvantaged group.

Elliot identified at age 3 that he felt male. ... I doubt by the time he's 30 he'll still be saying the same thing. I guess that's the difference?

Then Elliott is reviewing the past with the benefit of a lot of hindsight. It's not even clear what it means for a girl to "feel male" at the age of three. Children go through different developmental phases and the chances that a girl will continue to "feel male" consistently through all those phases up to adulthood are very slim especially if no adults start cementing it in their minds as them having a gender problem which the nice doctors can fix for them when they get older. And [[https://pitt.substack.com/p/true-believer is an alternative perspective from a parent who did that.

Should Elliot not have had top surgery?

Why the trivialising words "top surgery"? I suppose you mean a double radical mastectomy which is major surgery with long term health and physical effects. A few women have this as elective surgery if they are at very high risk of breast cancer due to the BRCA genes and they do not call it "top surgery". They take it as seriously as it deserves.

So when someone else born with XX chromosomes and a vagina writes that they've always felt like a boy, that's fascinating to me and I "believe" them because they're telling me their experience.

Have you never interrogated whether it actually makes sense? How does she know what being a boy would feel like?

Now I am getting old I’m starting to think that pre teen girls wanting to be boys is actually commonplace and probably a reaction to the world they are trying to navigate through.

There are many women here who as kids dressed in boys clothes, wanted a boys name, had their hair cut into boys styles etc. I was a kid in the 70s, we were explicitly told what girl and boys could and couldn’t do. Right down to school subjects. By the 80s my Home Ec class had one boy in it and people found that odd. Because cooking was for girls. Times have changed.

So wanting to be a boy, feeling you weren’t a girl, thinking there must be something wrong with you seems an understandable reaction from a girl who can’t be clean, quiet, demure whatever the definition of “girl” is in a sexist world.
and that’s before you get to the kids with trauma, SEN diagnosis, burgeoning same sex attraction..

i believe there are some who will continue to feel this way into adulthood , but others will begin to accept themselves, this seems like a part of growing up. But no-one wants to let this play out anymore. It’s affirm, medicalise, celebrate… And that’s not necessarily the right answer.

And even those who persist with their dysphoric feelings are still the sex they are born as. Changes can only be cosmetic. Not everyone is going to see you as you wish to be seen. No one is endangering Elliot Paige by seeing EP as a woman, many in fact are sympathetic. Most aren’t that interested. But (and I can’t stress this enough) no one wishes harm and if anyone thinks they’re unsafe because someone disagrees that is worrying.

@AmaListening why are you ok with denying natal women and girls the status of elite athletes when they are the beset there is for their sex? Why is it fair that they be denied their sports success because natal men will always be bigger, stronger, have greater lung capacity?

Why are you ok with changing things such that natal women like my DD will be put at risk of actual physical harm due to the presence of natal men on the supposedly female squads?

Can you please answer this. Thank you.

Helpful, thanks. And then? If therapy didn't seem to help?

To be honest most people do not really have any memory before the age of four years old; and those earlier memories that do tend to stick are just momen tary feelings or small visual snapshots of life encapsulated in time.

A child of 3 years old has no concept of male or female or of what is considered 'appropriate' gendered behaviour unless it is consistently pushed by the parents or care givers. Children are operating at the level of nouns and verbs and being responsive in realtionships with others.

Obviously there is a differencecbetween believeing a person's account of their own feelings; and actually believing that what they feel is an accurate reflection of reality. The job of counselling or psychotherapy is usually to hold that space and permit the person to explore the meanings that lie beneath their feelings.

Yep.

It may be useful, OP, to read up on the Cass Review.

Many children go through a period of 'gender confusion' or 'gender questioning'. If left alone, almost all of them will come through this - many will turn out to be same-sex attracted.

Many of the children being treated for 'gender' issues have comorbidities. A startlingly high number, in fact.

https://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/preschool/Pages/Developmental-Milestones-3-to-4-Year-Olds.aspx

The thing is that puberty “cures” most cases of gender dysphoria, so blocking the only known cure seems inexplicable to me. And giving cross-sex hormones to bodies ill-equipped to deal with them does not seem like a good alternative solution, especially after two or three “counselling sessions” where whatever the child says is affirmed and not explored.

I'm not sure if you are in the U.K? But there was a televised dramatisation of the childhood of Mermaid's ( child gender charity) founder, Susie Green's, son.
He was a sensitive toddler and liked to play with his sister's toys. His father had a major isue with this and reportedly removed the toys from the child telling him that therse were " girls toys". the boy eventually concluded that if he liked and wanted such toys so much then he must be a girl.

You can also respect that this person genuinely feels this way, and holds this belief. But respecting others to the same extent requires placing limits and boundaries as to how far others should be reorganised and deprived of resources and rights in order to enable this belief and feelings to go uninterrupted.

I am absolutely delighted to respect TQ+ people and their beliefs, as I respect those of other faiths that I do not share. I have no respect for anyone of any faith who wishes to exclude and redefine and punish others for not being willing or even able to enact their belief around them at all times.

And the elephant in the room is that unfortunately Isla Bryson and Karen White and Katie Dolotowski and an ever increasing list of others demonstrates that not all of those who sincerely hold this belief and feelings are those of good faith with solely pure intentions. This part has to be faced. This is not one homogenous group that can all be met and understood in one identical way - although it would be convenient for Isla and co if they were. A vulnerable teenaged Autistic female transitioner is not the same as a middle aged male transitioning from a marriage and several children.

In that article I linked to the psychaiatrist author suggested that there is a common progress of - little girl ( 3 or 4) says that she feels like a boy. Parents affirm (no problem, there are no major sex differences at that age), name change, give hair cut, new clothes, and then they and the school become utterly invested in no debate, any questions are transphobia. The child picks up on that and toes the line, unable to ask any further questions. Then puberty arrives. Devastation.

Could happen the other way around, obviously.

@AmaListening "Helpful, thanks. And then? If therapy didn't seem to help?"

I don't know-I'd have to deal with that when it happened. Incidentally- it's not actually uncommon for small children to wish they were the opposite sex. I suspect it was more common when gender stereotypes were enforced more rigorously than they generally are now- if you see your brother doing exciting stuff why wouldn't you wish you were a boy?

I think the job of a parent or teacher is to pepare children for the practical, everyday reality of life, whilst also encouraging their creativity and imagination.

It is one thing to permit a child the space to imagine; pretend; play act; try out; dress up: explore - but quite another to encourage a child to believe they are something they are not - and which will inevitably cause them a great deal of extended suffering going forward.

Another question I have is why gender dysphoria is treated differently to other dysphorias? We don't "affirm" anorexia...

I think they should be able to dress and look however they want, and sleep with whoever they want, but they should respect the biological reality of their underlying sex and not claim otherwise, nor use sex-specific provisions.

and the irony is that (some) trans women's insistence that they have unchallenged access to female sex-specific provisions is 100% male behaviour based on their male entitlement.

I'm not ok with this. I don't think I said I was?

You said what did people want transwomen to do for sports.

So you DON'T agree with natal men who present as female being in women's sport?

And do you realise that according to some transfolk that makes you transphobic?