The dreaded issue arose with my son…

[HeadAgainstWall0923]

Today my 9 year old son told me that boys can change to girls, and girls can change to boys, and they can choose whether to be a boy or a girl whenever they want.

When I asked him where he’d heard that he said he’d been told it at school.

I feel so disheartened.

Fuck. I am flummoxed by posters thinking feminists are either upholding or supporting gender stereotypes. Or why posters think even indirectly telling children that there is a particular way to live as a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ is a positive and progressive step.

Teaching biological facts aka the FACT that males cannot become females is not "transphobic". This is exactly why I've already had to pre-warn my children about what is being taught in schools right now and how the trans narrative taught in schools/society comes from a very fascist view point in that the narrative doesn't follow biological facts and breathing even slightly in a way they don't like will land you a label, as is evidenced by many of the bigoted comments from the "you are transphobic" lot.

"Because having been through this with my own child where five out of their friends (there was 7 in the group) all declared trans identities within 6 months of each other, I can fucking assure you that you really need to have some pretty clear definitions to give when you are asked questions in conversations such as the OP has had. Calling it transphobic to expect to be able to substantiate your answer with non-circular logic or falsehoods is not going to cut it I am afraid. It will simply mean your child has little to base their knowledge on. And at the end of the day, that is on you as a parent"

Well said.

Actually, I am really still struggling with how a poster can simply dismiss feminist discussion of rejection of there being a particular way of ‘living as a man/woman’ as transphobic undercurrents.

Bizarre to expect anything different from a feminist chat board. Maybe that poster doesn’t understand feminism?

Indeed.

What did you tell him?

That some men like eyeshadow and baking so they must be females as men can't like those things and some women like to have short hair and drink pints of beer so they are really men?

I know some people here take issue with the concept of "gender identity". Personally I don't see the problem.

I see more of a problem with the idea that anyone could "change gender". Maybe there are exceptions, but a lot of the time trans people can't pass as the gender they identify with.

Whether it's all "stereotypes" or not, they can't pass. We would recognise that at the psychological level they don't fit with being a woman or man.

Maybe we shouldn't care. Maybe gender is meaningless. I'm not so sure.

Sometimes it can be very hard to see outside our own experience. Men often find it almost impossible to see things from the pov of women.

I wonder how this thread would go if year 6 boys talked about chopping off other parts of their bodies they didn't want to a younger child...
It's so acceptable for primary school children to consider castration is it?
"I'll pluck out an eye if I feel like a pirate when I get older".

At least hair grows back... kids dreams need to remain dreams until they understand what they are asking for.
I definitely wouldn't be explaining eye plucking to future pirates! Even with santa involved. Just don't harm yourself until you are old enough to live with the consequences. End of.

The rest of this is just too batshit.

If you teach your child people stay the same sex throughout life then Uncle Julian becomes Auntie Julia, what are you going to say? That's wrong and a lie and don't talk to that person?

No, of course not. Why do you people always pretend that we would act in such a way, the evil TERF trope. It's absurd.

You'd tell them Uncle Julian want you call him Auntie Julia. He's still the same person only he wants to pretend to be a woman. We'll be polite and in a limited way go along with the pretence to make them happy. A white lie like telling someone their bum does not look big in those jeans. But as we know, Auntie Julia is still the same man he always was.

Over on the trans widows threads women are having to explain to their children that Daddy doesn’t want to be called Daddy anymore and that the parent-who-used-be-known-as-dad is going to wear a wig and a dress to meet their teacher at Parents Evening.

It wouldn’t be kind to those children to tell them their Daddy has changed sex and is now their other Mummy and it wouldn’t be respectful to their actual mother(and even if you do try and hide the truth a cheek swab and a 23andme account will show them which ’Mummy’ supplied the sperm chromosome that made them).

Is it only the kids with special gender identities that have to be treated with kindness or can the kids with trans parents, siblings, aunties, uncles, cousins etc have a smidgen of compassion too?

We are knee deep in straw men from everyone who states there is a problem with this thread.

There never seems an ability to actually read, understand and connect with what women are actually saying. And it's not that women are not explaining, in detail, frequently.

Is it a set to broadcast and not receive issue? A terror of having personal faith tainted by listening/reading and understanding? Deep discomfort with dissonance? Being trapped in an identified as reality with a fear of listening to facts/anyone not enabling it? I wish I knew.

I imagine CRISPR gene editing will eventually enable biological sex change in humans, though the person would still have the wrong set of internal organs, and have to have transplants.

They will have a unique experience certainly, and a valuable one. But it will not be the same experience as a woman, born in a female body and having lived entirely within a natural female body from the start.

People can do to themselves whatever the hell they want. And they can get off everyone else's toes while they do it.

Even if this does become possible, which I highly doubt, is this really a priority for research?

Wouldn't the finest brains in medical science be put to better use finding cures for cancer, Alzheimers or Parkinsons, or God forbid, endometriosis, PCOS and infertility and pregnancy loss in female women?

I hope it isn't a priority, but with load enough voices or financial support, who knows?

In an embryo, yes.

not in a fetus and definitely not in a teen or adult.

So I don’t see how it will be useful for trans people?

It has always happened, and will always happen, that older children enjoy "lording it over" younger children, especially their siblings, with any newly-acquired knowledge. "Everybody knows 'Nemo' means 'Nobody', you're so silly!" Sex, and now gender, is just another of those things. "Hey, guess how babies are made!"

Really nothing to do with grooming.

It absolutely is fucking to do with grooming when the whole extreme trans culture revolves around shaming a) anyone who states facts ie can't change biology, b) being gay/lesbian is "transphobic" because it "excludes trans people", c) you have even the slightest "tomboy"/"effeminate" inclination and you're TOLD you "must be trans" and you are SHAMED if you're not- it is utterly rampant on social media (Jeffrey Marsh, for example, who explicity targets children - "I'll be your new parent/don't tell your parents/your parents are wrong-against you/I'm your new best friend"). Children who might have autism etc are told "you're trans!" - they are GUIDED down the trans path and told "you don't have to tell your parents". They are GUIDED by trans activists to websites/people who can secretly supply them with damaging/life-changing puberty blockers.

IT. IS. GROOMING.

That's a pretty tall order. CRISPR/Cas9 works by snipping out one gene or DNA sequence and replacing it with another. But you'd have to target every male-specific or female-specific gene, and there are rather a lot of those (take your pick of anything from 'several dozen male-specific' to '13,294 sex-biased genes' in the literature). It's not a case of plopping in a whole X chromosome instead of a Y -- though that's what one of my kids assumed could be done.

HirplesWithHaggis
It has always happened, and will always happen, that older children enjoy "lording it over" younger children,
and when that behaviour becomes sexualised and controlling, adults who are mandatory reporters who have had safeguarding training should be able to see the problem even if you can't.

I said that yes, that’s correct but he then said that if he asked a doctor to take out his testicles then that would mean he’d been changed into a girl.

It's so insulting when people say that a man with no testicles is the same as a woman. Likewise when people claim that for sports, a man who has taken hormones is the same as a women.

We are not butchered men. We are a whole different biological sex.

Also insulting to anyone who's had body parts removed after illness - as if that has any effect on your sex.

Absolutely agree when it's adults doing the shaming. Not when it's 10/11yo talking to 8/9 yo.

I do see the problem if the behaviour becomes sexualised or controlling. But kids exchanging "info" in the playground are neither.

And yes, adults should step in if it becomes either.