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.

Don't be fucking stupid. Humans are exceptionally good at telling the sex of other humans. Women are better than men but men are also excellent at it. We know from sight, movement, sound and behaviour. We evolved to be able to do this extremely well. No-one passes in real life. Absolutely no-one.

Well I’m going to have the conversation tonight about gender, sex and transgenderism and I was hoping someone might be able to recommend any good websites or YouTube videos that help explain DNA/genes/chromosomes at a level that is appropriate for a 9 year old?

I’ve been searching myself and most resources and information available are aimed at GCSE level (understandably) which my son just wouldn’t be able to digest and understand.

You'll have talked about stereotypes already? I'm sure there will have been questions about pink and blue!

You can just say that 'gender' is the word people use for these 'rules'. Sometimes people confuse the two words or use them to mean the same thing.

And some people feel very strongly about these rules.

Oh yes, I have no worries about talking to him about gender, that’s quite an easy topic to discuss, it’s the discussion around DNA/Chromosomes that I’m struggling with. Obviously I understand it myself andI could explain it to another adult, but trying to find a way to explain it to a 9 year in a manner they will understand is what’s troubling me 😂

Ah, right, sorry!

Males are xy and females are xx codes in their cells? Does he need to know more than that?

I would hope not 😂

My son is just so inquisitive and his questions will keep coming at me and I’m pretty confident I’m going to end up going down a rabbit hole that I will have no idea how to navigate 😂

This is a useful video which may help you understand about chromosomes and the SRY gene which determines sex. It maybe a little complicated for a 9 year old to start with but if you watch it a couple of times it may help with an explanation.

I don't know about videos but if I were to try and explain it to a 9 year old I'd say imagine chromosomes like pieces of a jigsaw. A healthy human should have 23 pairs of chromosomes, making 46 in total. The sperm carries 23 and the egg carries 23 and when they join together there are 46 in total, of which you inherit 23 from your father and 23 from your mother, and the detail contained in them is your DNA which makes you into a unique individual and determines things like your hair colour and eye colour and height and your likelihood of getting certain illnesses and all kinds of other things we don't even know about. One of these pairs of chromosomes determines your sex and they are called X and Y chromosomes. A woman has two X chromosomes and a man has one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. All the eggs inside a woman contain one X chromosome, whereas half the sperm inside a man contain an X chromosome and the other half of the sperm contain a Y chromosome. At the moment of conception, one sperm out of millions will fertilise the egg, adding its 23 chromosomes to the 23 chromosomes already inside the egg. If the sperm contains a Y chromosome then the embryo's DNA will be male and the overall picture once all the pieces of the jigsaw are put together will include male reproductive organs, e.g. a penis and testicles, whereas if the sperm contains an X chromosome the embryos DNA will be female and the overall picture will include female reproductive organs such as a vagina and a womb.

Or another way of looking at it is that the egg contains half the ingredients for a recipe and the sperm contains the other half of the ingredients including the ingredient that determines whether the cake will be male flavour or female flavour. So if the sperm contains the male ingredient then the embryo will grow a penis and testicles, and if it contains the female ingredient then the embryo will grow a vagina and a womb.

The important thing is that the parts of the recipe, or the pieces of the jigsaw, are fixed at the moment the sperm meets the egg, so not at birth but actually 9 months before. Right after conception the embryo is only the size of a pin head and even if you looked at it under a microscope you wouldn't be able to tell whether it was a boy or a girl, but it would already have the DNA to grow into either a boy or a girl and can't be changed.

When someone transitions, they can take hormones which can make some parts of their body appear more like those of the opposite sex, or they can have surgery to make their private parts look more like those of the opposite sex. But it's not a real change. It doesn't change their DNA. It's like using a marker pen or stickers to change the picture on your jigsaw, or putting chocolate icing on your vanilla cake to make it more like a chocolate cake. It makes it look different on the surface but it is still the same jigsaw, or the same cake, underneath.

Adult female mammals produce eggs.
Adult male mammals produce sperm.
To create a baby animal you need a sperm cell and an egg cell as the sperm needs to fertilse the egg.
No mammal ever has changed from being able to produce sperm to producing eggs and vise versa.
Therefore mammals cannot change biological sex.
This is the basis of biological sex.
Maybe talk about other mammals as well as humans eg: horses (mares, stallions, foals), cats (queens, toms, kittens), deer (does, stags, fawns) etc.

Sorry, I thought I'd caught all my spelling errors.

• vice versa

These suggestions are perfect - thank you 👍

On the topic of horses you could mention a 'gelding' which is what a castrated male horse is called. As someone upthread said in regard to neutering/spaying male and female pet cats and dogs, this does not change their sex. A gelding is not a mare, they are a male horse with their testicles removed so that they can't get mares pregnant.

Well he’s just gone to bed following our initial conversation about how people can’t simply change from being a boy to being a girl.

I used a few cat analogies to keep his interest (he loves our pet cat) and it made the topic more relatable to him too.

I asked him:

If we put a nose-bag around our cat’s neck does that means he’s now a horse?

If we take our cat for a walk on a lead, does that mean he’s now a dog?

If we put reindeer horns on him, does that mean he becomes a reindeer or is he still a cat?

If we got a Post-it note and wrote “I am a pig on it” and stuck it to our cat’s head, does that mean he’s now a pig?

If we decided to keep him in a fish tank, does that mean he’s now a fish and not a cat?

If we started feeding him rabbit food does that mean he’s now a rabbit?

If we painted his fur and covered him in black and white stripes, does that mean he’s a zebra and no longer a cat?

If we changed his name to “Sweetheart” (that’s his friend’s rat’s name) does that mean our cat is now a rat?

Thankfully he said no to all these questions and seemed to understand what point I was making.

I told him that no matter what external changes we made to our cat’s
appearance or to our cat’s lived experience, he is still a cat and will always be a cat.

I said the same applies to people and that if a baby is born male they will always be male regardless of what changes they make to themselves or how they try to alter their appearance or live their life. I explained that even if males say they want to be a female and take on a female persona or lifestyle, they will still always be a male in the same way our cat will always be a cat.

I then mentioned his dad’s vasectomy and I asked him that because daddy no longer produces sperm and can’t make a baby, does that mean he’s not a man anymore and is now a woman? (thankfully he said no to this too).

I asked him if I had my breasts removed, cut my hair off, always wore trousers and changed my name to Stephen would that then mean I am a man and he would have to call me dad instead of mum?

He laughed at that and thankfully said no and that I would always be a lady and be his mummy no matter what I looked like.

So I’m happy with how the initial conversation went and he seemed to understand the logic behind what I was saying.

I will let that information sink in for now and give him time to digest it and no doubt he will come up with lots of questions over the upcoming days.

I wanted to keep it quite simple for our first conversation and then I can get more technical in future conversations when/if he asks questions that require more scientific explanations.

Do you know, I don't think you will need to have much of a follow up conversation. My 9 year old said she wanted to be a boy. I knew it was coming. There are only boys in her class and she feels left out. I told her she couldn't be a boy but she could choose to be a trans boy, and explained what that entailed. She seemed almost relieved.