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.

Oh. So you cannot give a clear explanation so you are leaving?

Hilariously you have continued to show that you seem to hold some prejudice about this through the use of 'echo chamber' and declaring there is a 'transphobic undercurrant'! What a hypocrite.

It seems that you exist in an echo chamber where you believe in unsubstantiated mantras such as 'live as a man' while not being able to define just that. Yet breezily tell parents how easy it is to inform their children.

Has it sunk in that you cannot explain "live as a man" without resorting to supporting someone's belief in themselves that defies material reality? That if you are asked to explain the difference to a child who will use that information as a base to make their future decisions, you cannot. Yet, you claim to not support gender stereotypes???

Has the dissonance sunk in yet?

Or have you simply resorted to telling anyone who questions you that they are giving off 'transphobic undercurrents' to make yourself feel better?

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.

And unquestioning support of allowing changes to policy in safeguarding to be made based on prioritising 'gender' and not 'sex' when sex does indeed matter, then leaves children open to harm.

You think living as the opposite sex is all about stereotypes. Can you understand why feminists would think this is regressive?

This is the Feminism: Sex and Gender board. Of course we understand about gender stereotyping.

What has this got to do with children being taught that they can change sex?

most of us can visually tell the difference between a trans-woman and a woman

Or on the radio. The truth is that there are multiple cues to someone's sex, often very difficult to disguise.

That's a bit of a circular argument though, you notice the transpeople who are noticeable but not the ones who aren't. How would you know?

What about people who naturally look masculine or feminine despite that not being their sex? Would you suspect them of being trans?

Because someone said you shouldn't mention gender at all and others have said gender can't be discussed without reinforcing harmful stereotypes.

Can you quote directly where people have said this? Because I think you've misunderstood what they were saying. This is the Sex and Gender board. We discuss gender all the time, that's what this board is for.

I have met/known several trans people. Every single one of them was very obviously their natal sex, no matter what clothes they were wearing or hairstyles they had.

People actually 'passing' as the opposite sex is vanishingly rare.

No.

I can honestly say in all my years of living I have never come across someone where I haven’t been able to tell whether they are a man or a woman.

I cannot imagine a scenario where a person would come across another person and genuinely have absolutely no idea what sex they were.

The physical differences between men and women are very clear to see regardless of how masculine or feminine they look.

MargotBamborough · Today 11:28

Justtochat · Today 11:26

No-one is suggesting it’s good to encourage a child to think they should change their gender.
Nobody should be encouraging children to think about gender full stop, unless they can actually explain what gender is and why anyone should care.

How is any of that relevant to male people using women's toilets or children wanting puberty blockers?

You are suggesting that if two men want to hold hands in Britain, as they do in the Middle East, then they might feel the need to transition to do so? Seriously?

Yes, gendered expectations and roles exist - but nobody , in our culture, anyway -is forced to conform to them.

Same sex attrraction is no longer illegal. Gay people can get married. Boys can have long hair, girls can have short hair. That is what children see when they look around. But suggesting that a boy is really a girl becaude he likes dressing up and plays with the girls at playgroup is seriously regressive.

So you taught your child that if they were unhappy with sexed aspects of their body (eg growing breasts at puberty) they could choose to become the opposite sex?

Surely you realise that children can believe something they are told is factual even when it’s obvious to all adults around them that it’s made up guff (Santa, tooth fairy, the ice cream van plays a tune when the ice cream is all sold out etc).

Genital operations performed on transgender people are crude and brutal, often resulting in incontinence,
& anorgasmia (and always resulting in infertility).
People who transition have difficult lives because they are fighting against material reality itself, so no matter how kind the public are, they will almost inevitably come to to the point where they realise how futile all their personal pain and suffering was.

Corinna Cohn, who had genital surgery at 19 and is now mid-late 40s has said that gender transition was like setting off from a riverbank in a boat without anyone warning teenage Cohn that reaching the opposite bank would be impossible, and now Cohn is trapped in that metaphorical boat for the rest of Cohn’s life.

Why would you want to encourage this outcome in a generation of young people?
What do you get out of it? You are convincing yourself that you are kind and righteous and we are awful transphobes, when what we actually want is for vulnerable teens to make it to old age with their bodies healthy and whole and for them to be able to
wear whatever they want and have same sex partnerships without shame, if that’s their sexual orientation.

Dr Az Hakeem ran a support group for post op transsexuals and he’s said that the people who were least likely to feel unsatisfied with their transition where the ones with the highest number of autistic traits because they didn’t notice all the subtle social interactions of those around them, that the black and white thinking of ‘wearing a blouse, so I can’t possibly be mistaken for a bloke!’ protected them from regret.

I dunno about you, but I think doctors sterilising autistic people on the basis that they aren’t socially aware enough to later regret it is a bit of a problem and has the whiff of eugenics about it.

What was said that we shouldn't confuse and mislead children when talking about the concept of gender identity.

Female people more reliably can accurately sex a person. It has to do with skeletal proportions, gait, voice and other male sex cues. Unless a male has had particularly impressive facial feminisation surgery, it is quite detectable by the face, including eyes.

Yes, there will be people who are mis sexed. However, the whole 'masculine female' thing is usually instantly fixed when that female moves or talks.

If you don't trust your own instincts, why don't you?

Perhaps this poster is referring to us stating that describing 'living as a man/woman' has to resort to gender stereotypes as a point of differentiation.

I would still like to see that defined by the way so that a child can understand what 'living as a man/woman' means. I cannot see how telling a child that some people 'live as a man/woman' helps any child unless they understand what this means materially.

Some men look quite feminine, and some women look quite masculine, but you can still tell their sex. Sex is intuited and picked up upon in so many ways that are virtually instinctive.

Young women can pass better than young men - but even then that is only on first impression - a few more seconds and the sex is often apparent.
I saw once such young woman on Sunday. She had a young son ( about 3) or her partner had a young son. She had a moustache and was obviously identifying as trans. I did wonder whethere the child was expected to call her Daddy. I didn't hear - butv what i did hear was very much a female voice/tone - and her intereaction with thec hild was also a give-away.

I see trans identified people on a frequent baisis where i live - and the reason I know that is because you can always tell. i also see an increasing number of cross dressing men - often older, and dressed in quite overly sexualised ways.

overtly sexualised ways

Re: passing - I also think it's a very cruel idea.

If you visit any online spaces where trans people congregate they are often full of pictures of people asking if they 'pass' or not. Reassuring, if unrealistic, comments may provide a bit of an ego boost, but in the long run only increase the cognitive dissonance; unease at being 'clocked', and the pressure to achieve the impossible.

Contrapoints - someone held in high esteem by many trans activists - recently talked quite movingly about his recent realisation that he would never be a woman.

There is nothing wrong with being a non-conforming man or woman.

'"...there is a certain level of delusion that often accompanies the early stages of transition and I do think it's unfortunate that 90% of people being very vocal about being trans will be people in that stage ..... [you move on with your life] ...leaves you with this unfortunate situation where the people talking about trans don't really know what they are talking about "

"I've learned what transitioning actually means, what is possible, what is not possible......I feel like there was a kind of mania almost that prompts the start of transition where you sort of think that anything is possible ... I feel like now there's a sort of disillusionment that sets in a few years in where you realise the things that hormones are gonna change have changed and at this point you know you've kind of ruined your life. You've ruined your life as it was, your relationship to your family is irreparable.. you have socially started over and you have to deal with the fact that no you will never be a cis person of the gender you identify with and so you are stuck in this very difficult existence.... I just feel very negative about being trans lately ..... I don't wanna be trans it sucks....I feel like I'm stuck with it. Defying the established social order is hard. Violating the most basic categories of human society has negative consequences. You learn that a lot of people are really shallow. You learn to cope"'

Contrapoints

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4793827-some-contrapoint-quotes?reply=125748567

Yes, let kids be kids.

Let them do sport and music and their frigging homework, rather than sitting around contemplating the gender identity that the members of this weird new religion are telling them they all must have.

What you’re describing as ‚playing with gender‘ is not the same modern day gender ideology promotes though.
Men might wear perfume and hold hands in the Middle East - do they consider themselves women because of that and change their pronouns to she/ her?
I don’t think anyone on this board objects to people being gender-nonconforming.

Source: s

Older children shouldn't be trying to 'educate' younger children on sex, gender or sex education. The school should do something about it. Its far too close to grooming behaviour to tolerate.

Thanks Arabella.

I think it is very important to listen to trans people, even the ones who I don’t agree with. Some of those are clear, like Contrapoints, that they will never achieve ‘living as man/woman’. Yet this mantra like line is roll out as some kind of fact.

The reality is that trans people are trans people. They believe in having a gender identity that is not materially definable. They should be respected as trans people, but not at the expense of the needs of children and women. And respecting trans people does not mean repeating mantras and teaching children to believe in mantras.