"Transphobic bullying is rife": 15 y/o trans boy's view of coming out at school

[ButterflyHatched]

A rare and refreshing example of the mainstream media actually publishing a young trans person's own words on the subject of their own existence and how the government's draft guidance is likely to affect the people it directly pertains to.

‘Transphobic bullying is rife’: a 15-year-old trans boy’s view of coming out at school | Transgender | The Guardian

Oh look validation. And a massive post.

On a thread about bullying school child. Oh wait no it's not is it?

Not any more.

Who saw that coming?

@StragglyTinsel

Id argue that a genuinely empathetic approach to people who believe they are born in the wrong body is high quality mental health support to come to terms with material reality. Empathy doesn’t mean ‘affirm all their beliefs and give them what they want’.

Yeah, but that's going to depend on medical evidence for which approach works best. And we have the problem of what do we do if the evidence is limited and unclear.

However, I'm inclined to think it's a mistake to accept the other side's premise that it's wrong to be trying to cure people.

I actually don’t think this one is about ‘medical evidence’.

Modifying the body to treat mental health or just social adjustment issues is not about ‘evidence-based practice’. We can just set that aside entirely alongside witchcraft, flogging and prayer as avenues to explore and concentrate on which psychological therapies are most effective.

Absolutely no one is entertaining affirming the self image of anorexics. There’s no need to generate an evidence base to show that is a terrible idea. Medically and surgically screwing around with people’s bodies to try to create an impression of a sex change is equally ridiculous.

What we need is space for men to be men who line wearing dresses or make up or whatever stereotypes people might have of ‘femininity’. And vice versa. Acting like material reality should be reorganised to conform to these stereotypes is beyond ridiculous.

I'm disabled, my body is wrong because it doesn't work properly. Unfortunately I don't have the option to identify as able bodied and escape all the extra shit that my disability brings.

I also have mental health issues and don't demand that everyone pretends that my perception of myself is real.

I think that we have a moral obligation, as a society, to strive for compassionate policies that centre the struggles of vulnerable and marginalised people. I think it is even more especially important to bear this in mind at times like these where the easily-demonised become electorial punchbags.

No, you don't think that, because if you did you wouldn't be in favour of Muslim and Orthodox Jewish women having no public toilets/changing rooms/ hospital bays they can use so that you can use the one of your choice. We can see you.

@StragglyTinsel

Absolutely no one is entertaining affirming the self image of anorexics.

But what could that be other than an endorsement that they starve themselves to the point of death?

Let's imagine someone that wants a limb removed, because they have been "born in the wrong body". Now sure, ideally you would want to cure them of this idea and get them to accept their normal physical body. That's the best outcome, and you should be researching ways to achieve this.

But it can make sense, if you specify the right hypothetical conditions, that you should amputate the limb for them.

So for example, we imagine that they are seriously distressed; the evidence is that therapy or meds don't work for this condition, and removing limbs has been proven to take away the distress. You then balance the impairment of removing the limb against freeing the person from distress.

Seems to me that it can make sense in theory, and that it's not an equivalent situation to anorexia.

Damn it, you're right, Butterfly. Society must be organised around hairstyles.

Can't believe it's taken me this long. Thanks for the explanation of the science behind the magic jars. I had no idea.

So, I have short hair, where do I go?

centre the struggles of vulnerable and marginalised people

maybe, just maybe, believing yourself to be especially vulnerable and marginalised doesn’t actually make it true.

Maybe empathy and kindness would not be repeatedly telling a group of people how everyone hates them and they’re so vulnerable in this world of hate filled bigots. Maybe it would be helping people to realise they aren’t the centre of the bloody universe.

I have 3 sons. Once they reach the age of 6 or 7, it becomes pretty inconvenient to take them swimming because the changing rooms in my local pools rooms are single sex. But, the changing rooms are single sex for a reason and I am not more important than that.

Arguably primary school age boys are far more vulnerable unaccompanied in the men’s changing room than any adult trans woman. That still doesn’t mean I could take a 7 year old boy into the women’s changing rooms.

DS used to swim competitively and there were regular issues with inappropriate behaviour by naked adult men while all the club swimmers were trying to change. The answer was for the pool to better police the behaviour of men in the changing rooms.

Actually, it's been a while since I got to the hairdressers, it's kind of that awkward growing out phase.

Does shit hair this make me non-binary?

ButterflyHatched says:

Thankyou! Really didn't want this thread to turn into yet another round of 'grill Butterfly for five pages on whether she really really actually really honestly looks enough like a Real Woman(tm) to experience misogyny, then seamlessly switch to saying that reporting the daily experience of having to deal with it must be some kind of skeevy fetish'. I tried to suggest we skip straight to this part - thanks for choosing to engage in good faith. It is very much appreciated - hope it wasn't too tedious to read.

I think that we have a moral obligation, as a society, to strive for compassionate policies that centre the struggles of vulnerable and marginalised people. I think it is even more especially important to bear this in mind at times like these where the easily-demonised become electorial punchbags.

Unfortunately, BH has taken on board my sympathy over the difficulties of living with PAIS, but not my issues with trans ideology. I would love there to be a nice way to be very kind to ButterflyHatched which doesn't ride roughshod over women, and particularly women who are vulnerable or culturally oppressed. But I have never seen one suggested. It is not OK to let men into women's spaces, and the fact that there are difficult experiences for some people with DSDs and rather more people who believe in gender identity doesn't make it OK.

Show me a practical way to ease life for people with DSDs and people with an irrational belief in changing sex, and I will happily consider whether it is overall positive for society. But it has to be enforceable in law, and that means that the categories the law rely on must be stable and verifiable. All current variations of trans ideology fail that test, and I do not believe they are positive for society on balance.

Steady on! Remember when India Willoughby tried to shame me on Twitter for cutting my hair short in order to make a dramatic gender statement?

(so apparently only chaps with long hair are allowed to play this game?!)

It never ever is is it?

Its been spelt out explicitly that this is what the thread was really about by several posters. And of course thats been framed as 'bad faith'.

Its really not. The OP uses a prop to seek validation for themself. Its got fuck all to do with the issues around children which have been well documented by concerns laid out in the Cass Review...

Has the OP actually MENTIONED the Cass Review?

Quick Check:
Nope we have 'updated terminology', nowt about how social transitioning leads to medicalisation, absoluetely no acknowledgement of detransitioning or possible side effects / complications, nothing on how there is no evidence of significant improvement in quality of life, nothing about how transition itself can be related to mental health issue, but plenty about how the OP is definitely a woman, how trans issues are definitely the same as DSD issues, how the concept of women is purely about stereotypes and passing and then we finally get a validating post more about how womanly they are - which has precisely bugger all to with the article in the OP.

Is the Cass Review and its findings, which have been pointed out by more than one poster in this thread, somehow irrelevant? They've sure been glossed over and ignored by the OP in favour of pushing the idea that a woman is a to suit their interests rather than the interests of pretty much every other woman and girl.

The OP states: It would be patently ridiculous to any person who knows me to say I should use male facilities as I am clearly female. I know it's an edge case, but edge cases are the people who get marginalised by poorly written legislation.

The irony of this is OFF THE SCALE. Changing legislation to replace sex with gender would be devastating for women. It would be the worst legislation. A definition of 'woman' in law to be about 'a fuzzy feeling in your head and how you feel about stereotypes' would remove just about every legal protection women have in law.

But apparently its all about providing for the 'edge cases'. Not the OP alone, no no, that would be incorrect - the OP (who says they can't speak for others but then does a good job of appearing to do the opposite) absoluetely is representing a whole cohort of people and isn't speaking from a position of complete and total self interest to the complete exclusion and tone deafness of all other issues.

What the fuck is wrong with these people. Like that awful yeet the teet doctor. Never mind struck off, they should be jailed.

At primary school they wear PE kit on the days they do it so there's no faffing around with changing due to the lack of space for sex segregation in juniors. This works well and has the bonus effect of giving more time for actual PE.

My eldest is in secondary so is now having to change in front of lots of other girls. This is hard enough (and will be even worse when her periods start, not that Butterfly would understand or care) but would be unbearable if a boy was present.

How do schools think they can keep girls safe from boys with hormones raging when they expect the girls to get undressed in front of them? A boy staring at them, getting an erection is absolutely not acceptable to happen in the changing room for PE. What about when they are swimming and can't avoid removing underwear?

The irony of this is OFF THE SCALE. Changing legislation to replace sex with gender would be devastating for women. It would be the worst legislation.

of course it is. And would result in completely mixed sex spaces across-the-board. Women would be absolutely fucked.

And, it's not even something that butterfly wants! They just have to keep coming up with a whole load of word salad just to stay skirting around the issue.

I missed that!

Well, it's either organised by hairstyle or every space, everywhere is mixed sex. This will of course disproportionately impact on - er - the humans that carry wombs and inconveniently bleed from time to time from their genitals. But I guess it'll help all those 'edge cases', so that's great.

I am lucky that this wasn't a thing when I was in school, I can think of a number of boys who would have pretended to be girls to perv on us while changing. The boy who used to sit in class wanking and kept getting his dick out around girls would have been first in line.

I just wish that my children could also be guaranteed single sex changing.

And - shock horror - we had gay boys and lesbians. No transkids. How odd…

Yes, the 99% of the world without a gender identity are going to be seriously fucked over if we arrange society to suit the 1%.

As always the humans with wombs will be most disadvantaged by the 1%

If only we had a name for them, eh?

The law is enabling this already

Which is why women and dc are losing out

whoops

That is precisely what the new guidelines are intended to do. To ensure that girls and boys are afforded the right to single sex changing rooms etc.

As this thread shows, it's unlikely that the adult males insisting on their right to access changing rooms while girls undress will capture the public vote.

Unfortunately, BH has taken on board my sympathy over the difficulties of living with PAIS, but not my issues with trans ideology. I would love there to be a nice way to be very kind to ButterflyHatched which doesn't ride roughshod over women, and particularly women who are vulnerable or culturally oppressed. But I have never seen one suggested. It is not OK to let men into women's spaces, and the fact that there are difficult experiences for some people with DSDs and rather more people who believe in gender identity doesn't make it OK.

So are you advocating for the exclusion of all intersex women from womanhood, or just the ones who have had hormone therapy or gender affirmation surgery? Or is it just the ones who have experienced gender incongruence or dysphoria?

I understand that it's complicated but I think there is a danger of using that as an excuse to dismiss it because of how problematic it reveals axiomatic thinking on sex and gender to be.

I don't want creeps in safe spaces either. There are people of my acquaintance who I will not use public facilities with due to the way they have behaved toward me in the past. Some of them are trans, some are not - I certainly don't think people are immune to conducting themselves awfully due to being members of a marginalised group. I'm not blind to this issue and I'm keen to find a way forward.

I am also very aware of how easy it is to conflate 'trans' with 'creepy' due to underlying prejudice, and I retain the perhaps foolish hope that this prejudice may eventually be overcome even amongst those most ardently opposed to the inclusion of trans people in society.

I find myself naturally drawn to the sentiment that membership of said spaces should be conditional and subject to immediate, final and binding revocation on presentation of evidence that goodwill is being exploited. We don't have a precrime division unfortunately so we can't magically know who is a wrong'un beforehand - but that puts us into the same situation as almost every other social context.

Something sits uncomfortably with me, however. 'Only the nice well behaved trans children are allowed to keep their gender card' feels like it is from the same train of thought where it's ok to abuse people if they're assholes, and I don't think that is a society we actually want to have.