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)

Negeme, you’ve just expressed everything I’ve been trying to get my head round so eloquently. Thank you.

I'm confused now, Butterfly. Are you now saying that your problems at school were because you were gay? Section 28 was about homosexuality.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/9/section/28/enacted

There's nothing in there about transsexualism/transgenderism.

“But what exactly is this 'gender incongruence'?
**
To me it looks nothing more than a kind of unhappiness (albeit often extreme) at one's sex.”

You answered your own question right at the beginning. That pretty much is the definition of gender incongruence.

Gender incongruence is simply unhappiness about one's sex?

The treatment for this should then be to try to reconcile the person with their sex. Because sex can't be changed, and efforts to change the body to resemble the opposite sex, and try to convince the rest of the world that the person has changed sex, are bound to fail.

"You answered your own question right at the beginning. That pretty much is the definition of gender incongruence".

Except most children struggle with their pubertal bodies during childhood / adolescence, as parents and those who work with children know. Which is why those adults who rush in to persuade children that their bodies must be wrong and can be fixed by "changing sex" are so hazardous to children. Framing the natural process of mind / body development /alignment as having a faulty body is unforgivable.

That's why proponents of this ideology should not be allowed to sell this nonsense to children below the age of consent.

Indeed. I suspected the same.

I agree.

Indeed so.

If my child is unhappy with the size of her feet, it would be wrong of me to help her/him facilitate the cutting-off of toes. And so on ...

You're very welcome. Thanks for the encouragement.

Discussions like this are so important as the realisation of what has actually been told to children emerge. So many parents have been unaware of the extreme levels of capture in schools, youth services, children's charities, the DfE etc by the trans lobby. We need to be able to talk, think, reflect and work out how to protect and support all of our children so that they can grow up safely and free from external age inappropriate pressures.

It’s not quite as simple as that: Gender incongruence is unhappiness with assigned sex. It also covers people with developmental variations, where a societal sex role has been chosen for them when they were young, but they are unhappy with it. People can choose which societal category to live in (and sometimes have to consciously choose), even if they can’t choose how they developed. It’s the same medical diagnosis in ICD11 (where gender incongruence is defined) for trans and intersex people.

Ideally you’d want people to feel they needed as little medical intervention as possible though, and without society pressuring them into body modification.

"Assigned sex"?

Sex isn't "assigned". It is identified.

A societal role may be defined. That's a different thing altogether.

You can flout society's expectations of your sex, but you can't change your sex.

It’s a medical diagnosis. It’s based on assigned sex. That’s just how it is.

https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http%3a%2f%2fid.who.int%2ficd%2fentity%2f344733949

I can't see anything about DSDs here.

Gender incongruence of childhood is characterised by a marked incongruence between an individual’s experienced/expressed gender and the assigned sex in pre-pubertal children. It includes a strong desire to be a different gender than the assigned sex; a strong dislike on the child’s part of his or her sexual anatomy or anticipated secondary sex characteristics and/or a strong desire for the primary and/or anticipated secondary sex characteristics that match the experienced gender; and make-believe or fantasy play, toys, games, or activities and playmates that are typical of the experienced gender rather than the assigned sex. The incongruence must have persisted for about 2 years. Gender variant behaviour and preferences alone are not a basis for assigning the diagnosis.

As has been noted before, it is very similar to Body Integrity Dysphoria.

Body integrity dysphoria is characterised by an intense and persistent desire to become physically disabled in a significant way (e.g. major limb amputee, paraplegic, blind), with onset by early adolescence accompanied by persistent discomfort, or intense feelings of inappropriateness concerning current non-disabled body configuration. The desire to become physically disabled results in harmful consequences, as manifested by either the preoccupation with the desire (including time spent pretending to be disabled) significantly interfering with productivity, with leisure activities, or with social functioning (e.g. person is unwilling to have a close relationships because it would make it difficult to pretend) or by attempts to actually become disabled have resulted in the person putting his or her health or life in significant jeopardy. The disturbance is not better accounted for by another mental, behavioural or neurodevelopmental disorder, by a Disease of the Nervous System or by another medical condition, or by Malingering.

Should people with this condition be helped to become disabled?

make-believe or fantasy play, toys, games, or activities and playmates that are typical of the experienced gender rather than the assigned sex.

Why this is seen as an indication of any sort of medical condition is beyond me.

It’s the same diagnosis used for both these days. In the past it wasn’t, but medicine has over time realised that the gender identity issues that trans and intersex people face are the same, and it’s one diagnosis now.

Can you link to a source for that statement?

Off the top of my head I can’t find anything, but if you can find records of the discussions that took place over the years as the DSM and ICD gender incongruence / gender dysphoria / gender identity disorder diagnostic categories evolved you should find discussions about including intersex people. Googling the history of those diagnoses may find things. Historically the mental aspect was considered separately for trans and intersex people, but it isn’t anymore.

When you've googled and found it you can post it here. I'm not going to waste my time searching for something that may not exist - I've only got your word for it that it does, and you can't seem to find it. Let me know when you do.

I haven’t the time to google it either. I’m not sure why you’re expecting me to do research for you! I don’t have a need to convince you of the history; I can’t see much point spending time going back over the history of how these diagnoses developed myself. If you want to research the history do; if you don’t want to don’t!

I'm not asking you to 'do research' for me, which is a very odd thing to say. It's not as though I really want to know about something and I'm expecting others to provide information, which is what this seems to imply

You said: "It’s the same diagnosis used for both these days. In the past it wasn’t, but medicine has over time realised that the gender identity issues that trans and intersex people face are the same, and it’s one diagnosis now."

All I did was ask you to back up your statement with some evidence, which could be as simple as one single link to a source. You have declined, so I assume this is because it's just something you made up.

I don’t really care whether you think I made it up or not. Think whatever you like, lol.

So you're not going to answer?

No, I’m not going to spend time googling the history for you.