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actually publishing a young trans person's own words on the subject of their own existence and how the government's draft guidance is likely to affect the people it directly pertains to.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

Butterfly won’t answer.

Upthread someone else has suggested that instead of children changing for PE they wear their kit to school. This is a decent compromise for primary and Butterfly won’t even acknowledge that tiny suggestion because it means boys won’t be changing with girls. So it is ignored.

As for the rest, there is no go reasons so all we will get is doom mongering and emotive language. This is why it has been “no debate” for so long. They have no debate to bring. TRAs want mixed sex facilities, including sharing sleeping accommodation on school trips, changing and washing facilities.

But they also know how bad it looks to admit it so it’s deflect, despair, demand.

I will wear your disbelief with pride. "Too happy to be real." What a testament!

The point I was making clearly whooshed past your head.

Nothing to do with happiness. Or existing. it’s the whole ‘Butterfly is not like other people; Butterfly is better and more special than everyone else and the fate of the entire universe hangs on Butterfly’s brilliance’ thing. Which IS the narrative you peddle here.

And the way the plot twists to show another way that Butterfly is even more special than previously advertised. The rules (including the way the natural world works) don’t apply to Butterfly because Butterfly is the special and perfect and it is always all about Butterfly.

Again, it’s remarkable that you claim
everyone else is posting in bad faith.

Having grown up wearing PE kit to school on days when it was needed, it is an easy alternative. We wore uniforms when necesssary of course. I could not quite understand why it is not standard practice.

I mean, I wore shorts, occasionally trackie daks, to primary school most of the time. Must have been a boy and I didn’t know it. I did have the same short hair cut that my brother did too.

“Again, it’s remarkable that you claim everyone else is posting in bad faith.”

Except that when you realise that many of the words written by that poster means the opposite, ‘bad faith’ could potentially mean the opposite. If males can be women, ‘bad faith’ can mean ‘good faith’.

Do you think you could perhaps give an iota of consideration to people who do not have special trans identities but also have rights and needs? People such as, oh, I don't know, women maybe?

Have you given any thought to my question which I have now asked you at least three times?

I'll paraphrase it here:

Is there any reason why we can't use the word "women" exclusively for members of the childbearing sex, and come up with a different word for all people who agree that they share your gender identity?

A compromise definitely exists, but you wouldn't know it. It goes to a different school. No, I'm not going to introduce you. I'm not doing the work for you. You'll have to Google it.

I think it is quite obvious that @ButterflyHatched does not give a single shiny shit about any of those women or girls.

Butterfly won’t answer.

... TRAs want mixed sex facilities, including sharing sleeping accommodation on school trips, changing and washing facilities.

I think for the lurkers, and I was one of them, this needs to be spelled out very, very clearly. How does Butterfly propose to handle any objections or issues with mixed sex spaces for teen boys and girls? My guess just ignore it and wait till all the girls who object, are homeschooled or pushed into submission by calls of bigotry and transphobia. But it would be nice if Butterfly proves me wrong and actually comes with a workeable compromise that balances the needs of all children.

Also for the lurkers, if Butterfly doesn't come back with a workeable solution for all children, that is because some people, and I suspect Butterflyis one of them , just don't care enough to look for a compromise. All they want is to get what they want. It is useless debating this with them, they just don't care.

Although it’s useful for demonstrating that the adults shouting “no debate!” And “TWAW! TMAM! Non binary are VALID!” have no arguments beyond “we want!” and have no taste for compromise whatsoever (Butters has already told us third spaces are “DanGeRoUs!” how exactly this would be true in schools I do not know, but then neither do they) it’s worth remembering they are just some random on the internet and any solution they could be arsed to discuss still gets us nowhere.

It’s the important people that need to be answering these questions. They are the ones that need reminding. This is just ego stuff.

Yes. Rather.

It was apparent from the ‘I haven’t got time to discuss it with you bullies, but I will pop on to keep scolding you all and accusing you falsely of being bullies. I am so reasonable that my so called compromise is so good, but I simply have no time to outline it …’ school of thought.

Like we haven’t seen this before. And we haven’t then, when pressed, been told the compromise is either what we have been doing but the poster is so ill informed that they didn’t know this, or that it was a solution women have been proposing for years and then had this rejected by a group of trans people who have extreme demands.

But apparently, some posters really think this endless superficial scolding actually works against well reasoned, and supported by evidence if needed, discussion. When really, all it seems to do is make those posters making those superficial but false accusations and claims, feel morally superior and thus good about themselves.

I recommend any lurker who has wondered about the reactions on this thread and what seems to be a continuing discussion, should always use the search function on Mumsnet.

But really, it doesn’t matter. This thread has enough on it now to show the full motivations and inconsistencies and logical flaws of a male individual who has for decades shown such contempt for the needs of female people of all ages.

You see, Helleofabore the scolding bothers me. Not for myself, that boat’s long sunk but it IS working on young girls.

Right now we are telling young girls “be kind” and whilst in and of itself that is no bad thing, they’re also being told “be kind to this boy who is so much more fragile, deserving and oppressed than you. Be kind at your own expense (imagine I remembered how to do italics there) because if you don’t you are a terrible, horrible person who probably wants them dead.”

And that is a truly shit message. And girls are socialised to be accepting, this is not a bad thing and boys most def should have it too. So they accept and befriend- which I want to stress is good and right- but there’s a constant boundary push going on. It’s not enough to be friends with a boy with a trans identity, you have to accept he’s a girl, just like you!

Bit then these kids get to puberty and suddenly there’s a discomfort if they have to undress or share a room with an opposite sex child. And we say that is right and proper when that boy calls himself a boy but terrible when that boy says he is a girl. It’s guilt and boundary encroachment and we need girls to be able to say “actually, I support you and care about you but there are times we need our own spaces and that’s actually ok. It’s NOT ok to demand entrance.

people in charge are failing girls here, let alone women.

My school is really diverse, ethnically and culturally. Which means not only do we have a high Muslim population but a lot of Christians, mostly from African countries. They aren’t your Righwingwhitenazibigotchristian of Twitter fame. And those girls have a right to be respected just as much as a white transgirl, their families need to feel their daughters can come to our school and have their beliefs respected. Because that is tolerance.
So what do all those girls do in this shiny trans utopia? Saying “well, their beliefs are wrong they should change them” doesn’t work for a kid who literally cannot leave their community even if they wanted to (and should not have to!)

Yes. I agree.

I have often asked lesbian posters who join in the scolding or the spreading of misinformation on these threads what they personally have done to ensure that young teenage lesbians fully understand that it is not transphobic to reject a person who is male as a prospective sex partner of that male declares they are ‘women’. Not one has ever replied other than to deny that teenaged lesbians think this.

Whereas I have personally witnessed multiple times teenaged lesbians who have told other teenaged lesbians that to reject males with trans identities is very transphobic. And conversely that to consider a female who is a ‘man’ means that they are not lesbians.

I have asked so many times now what those adult lesbians are actively doing to dispel this misinformation and either posters flounce or they just never come and answer beyond a further weak denial.

It is just one aspect of this. There are so many. But as you say, it is all about compelled belief.

Scolding posters who declare no one but trans people are being harmed are really very ignorant to the reality. Usually they are either fully entrenched in ideological thinking or perhaps they are privileged in that they and their families can live untouched by the issues. But I agree that children and adolescents and vulnerable adults are being very poorly served by those who come and scold and lecture us.

Another great question. And one that has been asked in different ways on this and other threads.

One poster did tell us that those people with religious beliefs just needed to get over their beliefs. They were a male poster who had declared their trans identity as an adult. And repeated every negative sexist stereotype forced on female people as their aspirational list of what a woman or girl was.

It is horrific to watch unfurl, but in seeing it, it is highly educational. And never forgotten.

Why is it OK to tell a teenage girl from a religious background (and, as you say, no realistic prospect of leaving her community even if she wanted to) to just change her beliefs that do not permit her to share a single sex space with a member of the opposite sex, but not OK to tell a male person with a transgender identity to just change their belief that they are a woman?

Surely if people like @ButterflyHatched just stopped believing that they are women the whole problem would go away overnight?

Bollocks did anyone prescribe GnRHa medication at GIDS in 2000.

What is even worse though is the refusal to acknowledge that they have needs. They are ignored as an inconvenience.

It never takes long to go from 'most marginalised and vulnerable™' to 'I'm going to do what I want and you'd better get used to it', does it?

So helpful for lurkers.

And tbh I doubt most of us care how Butters and all the other TWAW (trans and allies alike) see themselves, as long as there’s the courtesy that not everyone will believe the same.

It’s as intolerant as religious people who insist atheists and agnostics must believe in a god or else they’re wicked heathens.

Of course not. The idea was only just being rolled out in the Netherlands at that time.

And when the practice was first started, PBs were administered to children at much later stages of puberty. They were certainly not administered at Tanner stage 2 like they are now, which is essentially barely any pubertal development. There can be zero equivalence to a male who was medically transitioned years ago to the male children who are medically transitioned now; the current cohort have had zero development of sexual function, no option of fertility, no tissue available to make a fake vagina. There is no shared experience to be had. And that’s before we even get to the girls given the same treatment pathway at the same pubertal stage.

Hope your sibling is doing well! Sounds like they had a lot more tests than I had when I presented to GIDS nearly a quarter of a century ago. I've never had a brain scan and only had some very basic blood tests to ensure it was safe to be placed on Blockers at the time.

I can't tell whether you are misgendering them or not. Hopefully not as that doesn't sound like a good foundation for a positive family relationship.

Do you talk much? Have you disclosed your ideological stance toward trans people? Was their transition the catalyst for you developing these views, or did you only develop them later - and if so, how do they feel about how you've changed and how that changes the dynamic of your relationship?

Another example of it all being about the Trans person. No clue about any detrimental affect this could have on any other members of the family.

Absolutely.

But that's a feature of transgenderism, not a bug.

Unfortunately, this belief in gender identities is really nothing more and nothing less than a form of extreme individualism.

I believe I should be allowed to use spaces for the opposite sex, which were specifically created for people who are not like me to have space away from people who are like me.

I justify this on the grounds of my own, indefinable, indescribable, unprovable, subjectively experienced identity.

The way I see myself takes priority over the way you see me, and over objectively verifiable facts and science.

I expect you to place more importance on my identity than on your own rights, dignity, opportunities and even safety.

If you refuse to do this you are a bigot.

Me, me, me, me, myself and I. Nothing and no one else matters.

It's just supreme selfishness.

A summary article for those who might not be clear. Some relevant quotes:

Puberty suppression remained exceptional for some years. By 2000, GnRHa had been administered to only 7 children under the age of 16 (Cohen-Kettenis et al., Citation2000)

A British television documentary from the mid-1990s provides a glimpse of actual practice (Morse, Citation1996). The Wrong Body took three English young people to Amsterdam and Utrecht, to see transgender medicine at its most advanced. Fredd Foley, aged 13, met Gooren to learn about puberty suppression; this was around the time it was proposed in the medical literature (Gooren and Delemarre-van de Waal Citation1996). After returning to England and being refused GnRHa by the London clinic, Foley’s mother telephoned Gooren who agreed to write a three-month prescription of triptorelin. “If your child knows for sure he is transsexual,” he said, “I would not let puberty happen.” Gooren’s willingness to prescribe drugs for a child in another country, met briefly in front of the cameras, against the wishes of the child’s own psychiatrist

In 2007 she took her son Jackie, aged 12, to Boston to obtain GnRHa from Spack (Sloan, Citation2011). A presentation at Mermaids instructed parents in this medical tourism (Mermaids, Citation2007). Spack treated seven more British children over the next few years (Glass)

Di Ceglie was soon replaced as director of the London clinic (renamed the Gender Identity Development Service and located at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust) by Polly Carmichael, a clinical psychologist. The clinic in 2011 began to offer GnRHa from the age of 12, initially as part of an experimental study (Biggs, Citation2019b, Citation2019c).

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0092623X.2022.2121238

Were you given puberty blockers in the early 2000s Butterfly?

You're making an emotive appeal here when women are actually asking for facts, logic and practical solutions.

Emotive appeals are fine but they don't work as solutions. For those we need people to actually engage and discuss things and the answers can't all just be about one person's feelings and emotions.

Everyone has feelings and emotions, you see. All of us.