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)

It's always about the trans isn't it, no one else's feelings or safety or dignity or privacy or rights to be told the truth matters.

That post from Butters was the most emotionally manipulative I’ve seen in a long time.

@OldCrone I said gender dysphoria not transsexual. Gender dysphoria is the latest/modern term prior to that it was gender identity disorder in children. It’s also known as gender incongruence.

The 4000% increase in referrals to GIDS suggests historically it was extremely small numbers and predominantly male children. There are studies going back decades to indicate it is not just a modern phenomenon. The numbers are however a modern phenomenon.

The 4000% increase is interesting as it means historically there was 1 child with GD for every 4000 schools.

@MrsOvertonsWindow fair points.

I agree the current situation does need addressing but that is not the same as focusing on one child which this thread is predominantly about.

Please would you explain what you think the difference is between a transsexual and a gender dysphoric person who is on a medical pathway, or intending to embark on such a pathway?

@OldCrone we are talking about a child.

Children of the same age as this child have been treated with puberty blockers. This is the first step on a medical pathway. Can you answer my question now?

What is the difference between a transsexual and a gender dysphoric person who is on a medical pathway, or intending to embark on such a pathway?

Do you agree with me that transsexualism is for adults, and that children shouldn't be encouraged to start on a medical pathway which will leave them infertile and with impaired sexual function, at an age when they are far too young to understand what this means?

@OldCrone Sorry got waylaid and inadvertently posted.

The Interim Cass Review ( hopefully in this post) contains a diagram showing the complex pathways into and out of gender dysphoria. It is clear that the advice from Cass is that even affirmation is not a neutral act. It is also clear that children can grow out of gender dysphoria and so no child should be having medical treatment be that puberty blockers, cross sex hormones or surgery.

A transsexual is an old fashioned term for an adult who may, or may not, have gender dysphoria who chooses to take cross sex hormones or have surgery. Only a small number of the current trans population would be considered transsexuals as most don’t have surgery or take cross sex hormones.

This thread and my comments have been about children. How do we know if a child’s gender dysphoria has been triggered by sexual abuse? In that scenario allowing them to have a gender neutral facilities may actually give them space to work through what has happened to them.

@Propertylover
The 4000% increase is interesting as it means historically there was 1 child with GD for every 4000 schools.
This would surely only be the case if there is now 1 child with GD for every school.

Not necessarily as some schools have more than one child presenting with GD. This is why social contagion is something that needs to be researched.

One of the biggest failings we have is the lack of accurate and appropriate data collection by the NHS and GIDS. Professor Alice Sullivan is currently looking at this https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/headlines/2023/oct/gender-data-collected-public-bodies-set-review

The 4000% increase is interesting as it means historically there was 1 child with GD for every 4000 schools.

Where did you get your figures from and what are you actually trying to say with this statistic?

@Propertylover
This thread and my comments have been about children. How do we know if a child’s gender dysphoria has been triggered by sexual abuse? In that scenario allowing them to have a gender neutral facilities may actually give them space to work through what has happened to them.

My comments have also been about children.

Here's the definition of transsexual from an online dictionary:

used to describe a person whose gender is not the same as the physical body they were born with

I think it's useful to use this word to describe children because the nice sanitised 'trans' or 'transgender' implies that these children are just playing around with gender, which makes it sound so harmless. 'Transsexual' makes it clear that we're talking about something sexual, which really shouldn't be anything to do with children.

They are all medical definitions, and the moves from transsexualism, to gender dysphoria, and most recently gender incongruence, reflect a slow movement away from medicalisation over the years, and recognition that medicalisation isn’t needed for everyone with those conditions.

Why are children put on puberty blockers then?

The move away from medicalisation seems to only apply to males, particularly heterosexual middle-aged males who transition after fathering children.

Meanwhile children barely in their teens are put on puberty blockers which lead to cross sex hormones in almost every case, which means that they will be infertile and have impaired sexual function.

Great idea to do away with the medicalisation. It should start with stopping all these medical interventions for children.

@OldCrone That is an extract from my fuller response and was a throw away example to explain why many adults did not have children in their school who were openly GD.

The 4000% stat is quoted quite often. This is a Scottish GMT response https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/consultation-analysis/2021/09/sex-and-gender-in-data-working-group-draft-data-collection-guidance-consultation-responses/documents/response-2/response-2/govscot%3Adocument/Response%2B2.pdf and it is quoted in para 2.2.3

“2.2.3. This patterning is evident in referrals to the Gender Identity Development Services (GIDS) in the UK, where the number of girls far outstrips that of boys. Referrals of natal girls to GIDS increased by more than 4,000% from 2010 to 2017/18: from 40 to 1,806.24 In 2017/18, natal girls accounted for 72% of referrals to GIDS.25 By contrast, GIRES reported that in 2007, of those aged 15 years and over presenting to gender services, the split was 80% male to 20% female.”

What this quote shows is in 2010 only 40 girls were referred for GD so very few schools would have a girl with GD. Obviously the number of boys is higher but still we are talking small numbers as recently as 2010.

"They are all medical definitions, and the moves from transsexualism, to gender dysphoria, and most recently gender incongruence, reflect a slow movement away from medicalisation over the years, and recognition that medicalisation isn’t needed for everyone with those conditions".

Yet @Lemonlemonlemonapple there's an insatiable demand for access to the NHS to enable child sex change. Medicine is under siege with efforts to remove factual sex based language and exclude women's identity from health services to allegedly enable the "inclusion" of people thinking they're the opposite sex who apparently are unable to access health care unless their demands are centred.
Even the terminally confused leader of the labour party has committed to "cutting NHS waiting lists for LGBT+ people waiting for urgent physical and mental health care". Not sure why us gays and lesbians should suddenly be propelled to the top of waiting lists for cancer, heart disease and other treatments but he appears to think it's a vote winner. 🙄

@OldCrone in England puberty blockers on the NHS are being limited to proper trials https://www.bmj.com/content/381/bmj.p1344. Sadly some parents and children obtain them on the Internet.

I completely agree that puberty blockers lead to cross sex hormones and should not be prescribed. Some countries who were seen to be leading on medicalisation are changing their mind e.g. Norway.

@OldCrone a definition from the captured Cambridge University who define a woman as

an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth:

• She was the first trans woman elected to a national office.
• Mary is a woman who was assigned male at birth.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/woman

Sorry, I should have been clearer. It was this bit I was querying. I know about the GIDS statistic.
historically there was 1 child with GD for every 4000 schools.

I just wondered how you calculated this. There are about 32,000 schools in the UK. You seem to be saying that historically there were about 8 children with GD of school age at any one time. Is that right? Where does this figure come from? It doesn't tie in with the 40 referrals a year you mention later.

@oldcrone as I said it was a throw away example for how many children in the 1960s, 70s, 80s may have gone to a school where one child openly had GD.

To be clear I didn’t do a calculation.

I think gender incongruence, or whatever you want to call it, is quite common, and people can need help with it. So making help more accessible and better in quality would be positive. I don’t think it’s helpful to talk about “sex changes”, or the old medical terms transsexualism / transsexual, as the help that’s needed isn’t necessarily physical interventions, but counselling and psychological. That old terminology had too much presumption of a particular outcome I think.

Yet "sex change" is what's being sold to children by transactivists. It's the mangling and neutralising language that's contributed to this getting so far. "Top surgery" instead of double mastectomies etc. So I prefer to use language that reflects the reality of what's being done to these children.

I agree that therapy & counselling for those thinking their sex is wrong is the appropriate response. But the history of GIDs shows us that this has been resisted with immediate affirmation being promoted by many of the the Mermaids / Gendered Intelligence influenced medics working there.

These are adult issues and not for children and young people still growing and maturing. Children have always found maturing - physically and mentally - to be challenging - the hormonal soup of adolescence etc. Yet we've allowed queer theorists / transactivists to persuade children that it's possible to navigate their way out of their sexed bodies by changing them.

That's unforgivable.

Yep. Surprised you haven't been reported for that tras love reporting facts

Saying "The 4000% increase is interesting as it means historically there was 1 child with GD for every 4000 schools" suggested that it was more than just a random figure pulled out of the air.

But I'll accept that what you said wasn't what you meant to say and I'll leave this now as there obviously isn't more to it. I was just wondering what the source was for the 1 child in 4000 schools, but if there isn't one there's nothing more to discuss about this.

@OldCrone if you read my whole post I made an evidenced point about the 4000% increase in GIDS referrals.

I literally dropped the % and said 1 in 4000, my maths may be wrong but the fact that there is a 4000% increase means that it would have been rare for posters to have been at school with a classmate who openly identified as having GD.