I would have asked for blockers and a mastectomy

[h1d1ng1npla1ns1ght]

My mum is a feminist, quite vocal, but has been pulled into gender ideology by her workplace. She talks about a lot of pre-pubescent children she knows through work as being trans, being “deadnamed”, but accepts that the science behind transitioning children is “inconvenient”, as in, it points us toward not transitioning children. I was talking to her recently and told her I would have asked for blockers as a child because I had anorexia. When you have anorexia, breasts are just extra fat; flabby, useless, soft, disgusting. I would have loved it if there was medicine to stop them from growing at all, and to have had them removed when they did grow. I’m very gender-conforming. I’ve never been a tomboy or anything. I just hated my body, I hated that it was going to change and I felt powerless. Even without an eating disorder puberty is uncomfortable and scary. If instead of “all I want in the world is to be thin, I’m afraid I will hurt myself if I can’t be that”, I had existed now and said, “all I want in the world is to be a boy, I’m afraid I will hurt myself if I can’t be that” do you think people could have seen past it or would I have been taken seriously? I really did hate my female body, just not for the same reason.
I’m rambling, I’m sorry. I have two young daughters and I’m so scared for them. I’m scared of the capitalist, consumerist, male-centred feminism that is so pervasive in their world right now.

My best friend called herself “Bill” and I called myself “Jim”, and we rode our bikes topless around the hot streets of Beirut because that’s what the boys did

Now that's a childhood!

Puberty is shit.

I expect I would have embraced the NB style. It would have been flag led, definitely.

I was a late developer so spent years wishing I had the body that my friends who hating as they spent all night before gcses rolling around with period pain and going green and fainting in chemistry.

At the same time, going shopping for training bras was horrific and I wished I wasn't.

I hated them at first as they got in the bloody way and I'd rather got used to not being like my mates by the time puberty hit for me.

Professionals will have an awareness of things like this and will have quite a rigorous process for assessing whether someone genuinely has gender dysphoria before giving out medications.

I think loads of people feel this way, that perhaps they don't understand this whole thing but surely out there somewhere, medical professionals do and are carefully assessing which kids are truely trans adults in waiting and which are just kids that don't conform to gender stereotypes, those struggling with emerging sexuality, those who have dissociated from their bodies due to trauma, autistic kids struggling to fit in socially... etc.

Read Hannah Barnes book "Time to Think" documenting the development of the UK's NHS gender identity services for children and it's many failings.

Then to understand the situation in the US, a combination of listening to the stories of detransitioners like Chloe Cole, and reading "Irreversible Damage" will give you a feel for how much more accessible "gender affirming" "care" like puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgeries are to children in the USA.

Children and Parents are trusting health care professionals to make a diagnosis and tell them what treatment will help them. But HCPs are frequently taking the self diagnosis of the child and progressing them to Irreversible hormones and surgeries as if they were adults electing to do cosmetic surgery that is fully about their choices and desires rather than clinical need.

I understand you assuming there's some kind of gate keeping and safe guarding going on but in the UK different clinicians were wildly different in their assessments of complex cases and kids were falling through the gap of not receiving proper mental health care from their local CAHMS because they had been referred to the Tavistock GIDS service who became very overloaded with cases, and the only tool in their toolbox was referring on to endocrinology or into the adult gender services of the kid would age out of their service by the time they got to the top of the waiting list. Both seemed to assume that if they got a referral from the Tavistock service that meant the kids were already properly assessed.

No one was really taking responsibility to make sure that the kids were really trans whatever that means or even to make sure they were following up patients to see if the treatment helped them.

I think we trusted there was a proper process for this stuff but the health care systems have got this badly wrong.

If you’re being bullied, then adopting a trans identity suddenly means it’s no longer just bullying, it’s discrimination. That’s much more powerful in terms of getting defended by teachers, police and other pupils. I was so badly bullied that I would have said anything to make it stop. To add to the complexity, boys bullying girls often resort to sexual abuse, leading the female victims to repress and hide their bodies.

"Professionals will have an awareness of things like this and will have quite a rigorous process for assessing whether someone genuinely has gender dysphoria before giving out medications."

An hours phone call or "counselling" as they called it is all it took for an acquaintances 14 yo daughter to get puberty blockers from a private GP. Rigorous!

As for me - I wanted to be a boy from around 4 (probably when I started school and was told I had to wear dresses or skirts that I hated) till I was around 15. My period started when I was 10. I hated it, along with the breasts that grew rapidly that caused a lot of attention and comments from people. I never fitted in with the other girls at school. I hated being a girl. I would have loved to have stopped it all!

Puberty is a shit time, periods are not fun, whatever age you are (47 and wishing they'd bugger off!)

I was diagnosed as autistic as an adult, which explains the awkwardness and never fitting in. If I was a kid now I could just be trans and find a group that would welcome me with open arms, like I always wanted. Scary!

Professionals will have an awareness of things like this and will have quite a rigorous process for assessing whether someone genuinely has gender dysphoria before giving out medications.

Sadly not. "If someone says they are trans, believe them". Any pushback risks being labelled conversion therapy - are you trying to convince a trans person they are really "cis"?

Have you heard of Gender GP?

Thank you, everyone, for your stories. They certainly make me feel less alone. It gives me hope that we’ve all grown up to be feminists.