Year 8 trans child - in secret

[WoollyMammoth1]

The recent news article about the trans child at a primary school made me think of sharing a similar story at my DD school, big difference being is that's a secondary school.
DD is in year 8, there's a child in her year that identifies as a girl but is a boy. No one at school, besides staff knows, DD doesn't know either as whilst I feel bad withholding the information, I don't want her to keep this secret at school.

The child has a sibling at the school, who calls him by his girl name. They change in the disabled changing room and use the disabled toilet.

I found out through social media, the parent came up as a possible contact, their profile is open and there were many pictures of her children when younger making it very clear. Absolutely no doubt.

When I first found out, I researched and found there is little I can do. The child's rights seem to trump all others.

DD and the child started building a friendship last year, but this went sour. Which I am glad for considering the circumstances.

My issue here is the deceit and secrecy. Non of the year group know the child is a boy which is such an obvious safeguarding risk, and once they find out they'll feel betrayed. Any friendships are based on a lie. And I feel like I am condoning the situation by not saying anything, esp to DD.

The child lives further from school then most other kids, likely to try and ensure there were no other children at the school that might know them.

It feels wrong to keep things quiet, esp for my daughters, and other girls in her year's sake, so hoping that someone here may have some good ideas in where to go from here.

(Long term Mumsnetter, name changed for this post)

Brianna was not murdered because Brianna was trans.

Brianna was murdered because Brianna was vulnerable. Like many children (and adults) with autism, Brianna found social interaction difficult, and this resulted in isolation which caused the killers to target a lonely child desperate for friendship.

The other people on the murderers' list were not trans.

"You both took part in a brutal and planned murder which was sadistic in nature and where a secondary motive was hostility towards Brianna because of her transgender identity."

This girl has, against heavily stacked odds, managed to find a way to escape the way that trans people are still to this day treated in school. We have a current parent of a trans child at school in this very thread talking about how this is a huge safety concern for trans kids. Another vulnerable trans girl was murdered last year for being trans.

OP is crowdsourcing justification for tearing down the thin sliver of safety this child has.

Don't. Please.

..so don't even consider the girls who are being coerced and gaslit. Their privacy and dignity are being invaded. But don't even bother thinking about them. Just think about the precious boy whose feelings are being prioritised over the safety and sanity of the girls

Brianna was not murdered because Brianna was trans.

Yes she in part was. That was the verdict. Watch the judgement. Trying to deny the reality of what happened is ridiculous.

One of the posters in this thread has a trans son who is in a similar situation himself.

The people whose privacy and dignity are at risk of being invaded here are those who are understandably trying to protect themselves from what they have seen happening to other trans people who dared be open.

Are you seriously trying to say that discovering your friend is trans is damaging to a person's sanity?

Yes, butterfly!!! A pre-teen girl discovering that their best friend is actually a boy would be a complete head fuck! Obviously, I can’t believe anyone would need that pointing out.

You're not exactly coming from a neutral position on this are you? You've skin in the game so to speak.

If I found out my best friend at school was actually the opposite sex and had been lugging to me for a couple of years that would completely and utterly have fucked with my head as a young teen.

Don’t talk about “thin slivers of safety” when you have said on other threads that people should use changing facilities that they are comfortable with.

This kid may be changing away from girls but you would FULLY support them if they were changing with the girls, wouldn’t you?

You might not know but there are many things girls don’t want to talk to boys about- even the nice ones, even the gay ones, even the ones they’ve been told are girls.

Im deeply uncomfortable with the idea that girls can be lied to with the assumption they will “do the right thing” when the truth comes out.

Personally I think the only way forward is for trans to be accepted - not hidden. Just like every other social movement had to.

If the girls are so dangerous that they can't be told he's a boy now, how dangerous are they going to be when they find out he is a boy ( when he hits puberty) AND they've been lied to.

I can't see any way that this doesn't end in serious tears for everyone.

I agree that the only way forward is for trans people to be accepted. We don't have that option, currently. The safest route, where available, is still to hide.

Ah, "you shouldn't transition because of the way we will treat you if you do" my old friend.

These poor children - all of them. What is needed is for all the adults with a vested interest in promoting transitioning to be removed from being able to influence schools, child health care and all the other places where children socialise. Brianna's mother is promoting a campaign to remove social media from the phones etc of children below the age of 16 which would go some way to limit the influence of promoters of age inappropriate adult ideologies / interests towards children.

Professionals and parents must provide good quality child centred support & therapy for children believing they can change sex. Schools must regain their professional skills they have from dealing with children with similar vulnerabilities - self harm, eating disorders, loss & bereavement etc with allied professionals abandoning the immediate affirmation demanded by trans lobby groups. All must return to centring safeguarding and promoting the emotional health and wellbeing of all children.

Many schools have successfully thrown a safety net around their children and not allowed Stonewall, Global Butterflies, Gendered Intelligence etc in to promote their ideology at children below the age of consent. Others have been unthinkingly captured with children's rights to a safe, age appropriate environment free from political influence being compromised. This must stop.

"secondary motive"

Primary motive was Brianna's vulnerability which offered an easy target.

Secondary motives can be anything which isolates the individual and makes them vulnerable - acne, weight, wearing very thick glasses . . .

Do stop spreading this myth. I'm sure trans people get abuse, and maybe sometimes violence. But unless you've been living under a rock, I'm sure you know that Brianna Ghey was not murdered for being trans, and that there were 4 other teenagers on the hit list, none of whom were trans. Brianna wasn't even the first on the list.

Teenage boys are at far higher risk of stabbing than trans teenagers. According to these statistics, there were 69 teenagers murdered in the year to March 2022 in England and Wales, 72% male and 28% female; fairly typical totals, though an increase on the previous year. I don't know of a single trans teenager being murdered other than Brianna. Some stats for you here , suggesting that the risk of trans people being murdered is much lower than for other groups, though the numbers are too low to be statistically significant.

Trans people are accepted, and have been for many years.

What is NOT acceptable is that males can easily identify into spaces where females and children are vulnerable, or need space to maintain privacy, dignity. and fairness ie, no men (and TW are men) in women's toilets, changing rooms, prisons, hospital wards, sports etc.

If a woman or girl risks being made unsafe, uncomfortable or disadvantaged, then thee should not be a male in that space.

How can I possibly be neutral?

I endured years of firsthand demonstration of how brutally, senselessly cruel kids are to peers they perceive as trans. I know exactly what it is like. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Yet this thread asking whether or not to out a trans girl to her peers mysteriously exists nonetheless.

Primary motive was Brianna's vulnerability which offered an easy target.

That’s wrong as well. The primary motive was Scarlet’s sadistic desire to kill. Watch the judgement.

This is not how rights and acceptance have been fought for by everyone else.

Why on earth is it different?

Apart from those trans people who aren’t actually arguing for trans acceptance but for everyone to agree with their personal beliefs about their gender.

It's always awful when kids get bullied - and kids get bullied for a lot of reasons.

But that's never an excuse to lie, gaslight, or risk the safety of girl. How can you justify hurting girls because a boy is sad? Plenty of boys are sad for many other reasons yet we don't allow them to abuse girls to feel better!

I would suggest Butterfly and others ask themselves why girls should be second class citizens and put at physical risk (sports injuries, psychological issues and pregnancy) just because a unique subset of boys may be bullied by some other kids.

I'm never surprised by the patriarchy but I am always disappointed by it when it comes from people who claim they care about others.

No Butterfly, people shouldn't "transition" because it's based on a lie.

Man and Woman are not personality traits. People who believe they are have disordered thinking about sex and it is this, not some essential "transness", that is the true source of their distress.

Transition is a lie not just to other people but to the self as well.

Like many lies told for comfort, the coping mechanism might appear to help in the short term but it is an illusion. It doesn't deal with the disordered thinking but solidifies it, creating a fake "self" around it. It puts the trans person in the psychologically vulnerable position of having to deny reality and insist on the lie for the rest of their life.

It's not "being trans" that creates barriers between themselves and other people, it's having to keep a little of oneself always in reserve to make sure the lie is still holding.

It is not "kind" to facilitate this misapprehension. It is not kind to trans people to condone their disordered ideas about sex and gender since these are what is creating the distress in the first place, and it is certainly not kind to reduce all other humans to the same deluded and reductive system of gendered personalities that trans people impose on themselves.

All that energy, all the focus and love and self care that could go into living life is instead channelled into maintaining the lie. It's heartbreaking.