GC Mumsnetters - What do you think about teens identifying as the opposite sex WITHOUT medical transitioning?

[RectifiedFootball]

This is a question that I feel isn't asked enough. There is so much content saying that kids should avoid being transgender completely, and content saying that kids should have full bodily autonomy (aka: be allowed hormones immediately on request at 13) that I feel it's impossible to know what poeple think about social transitioning on it's own.

So, GC Mumsnetters - What do you think about teens identifying as the opposite sex without medical transitioning?

RectifiedFootball

Listen to this ^

Ask yourself questions. Listen to the answers you are giving yourself. (or other people are giving you).

Think about what you mean by transitioning. Think about what you mean by they are transitioning to the opposite sex, despite knowing that they haven't changed sex.

what are they actually doing, and why?

I might be being a bit dense, but I don't understand what you mean by transitioning here, other than 'wearing clothes / having a haircut / trying to emulate the behaviour' of the opposite sex.

Social transitioning if you like. All fine up to a point, until you expect people around you to go along with your view of yourself and get huffy if they don't. Telling your child that everyone at large will accommodate their wishes is never going to have a positive outcome.

Breaking away from sex based stereotypes? Great idea, crack on

Breaking away from sex based stereotypes? Great idea, crack on

Exactly.

Women wanting to wear men's clothes or act in a way they think is masculine, is not gender non-conforming, if they say the reason is because they're really a man. Or are identifying as a man.

It's actually conforming to gender. I want to be like this so I have to be a man to be it. That is just cementing in the gender.

It's reinforcing it.

The transactivist pushed idea that these people are gender non-conforming is actually the opposite.

I want to be masculine, so I have to 'be a man'. I want to be feminine, so I have to be a woman.

It's about as conforming as you can get.

And because of that, it just reinforces the gender stereotypes.

It's sexist.

What you should have is I want to be masculine, and I'm a woman, and I'm going to be masculine.

Not, if I want to be masculine I have to pretend I'm a man!

IME ‘social transition’ of teens is accompanied by an immediate plummet in mental health when said teen finds themselves being constantly ‘deadnamed’ or ‘misgendered’ because the whole world and it’s wife still sees them as the sex they were born as.

Freedom from gendered stereotypes is to be encouraged, but there is no freedom from one’s sexed body.

Changing sex is impossible, ‘social transition’ is the first step on a impossible journey.

You've said what it wouldn't involve, but what would it involve in your scenario?

What would it be asking of other people, especially the child's peers and adults in their life?

Part of good mental health and attending to ones feelings, is also recognising the impact one has on the other humans one shares the world with.

Being a girl with short hair who wears tracksuits and plays football / boy with long hair who wears skirts and likes knitting isn't making unreasonable demands on anyone else. These two fictional kids changing their names is also not asking for anything that harms anyone else; new names are not hard to process in the way wrong sex pronouns are.

As soon as pronouns are demanded, then harm starts to be caused to others (in terms of mental processing; coercive threat to conform regardless of belief; inherent sexism). The harm gets greater the more that is demanded, from inclusion in opposite sex social clubs, through sports all the way to changing rooms.

Identify WITH the opposite sex ✅
Identify AS the opposite sex ❌

It entirely depends what it means,

If it means a boy can enter the girls' loos and changing, then no it's very harmful.

It's also gaslighting peers if the child is insisting that they're referred to as ten opposite sex via pronouns etc.

What does "identifying as the opposite sex" actually mean?

Agree with pps - you can’t be the opposite sex, so it’s a project that’s doomed to cause you more angst and sadness, especially if you expect everyone around you to play along.

If you’re not going to “transition” your body, then you are doing one of two things. 1) impersonating the opposite sex or 2) being gender non-conforming. The second one is by far the healthier and happier option and is actually what “transgender” should technically mean - that you are drawn to the supposed gender norms associated with the opposite sex, or just want to experiment with gender expression, like we did in the 80s.

It’s still a sexist term, because it’s essentially saying that gender stereotypes do belong to each sex and you are “crossing” over to the other one by being trans - as opposed to trying to question and challenge those stereotypes and realise that many people break out of them all the time. But if that’s what “transgender” could come to mean, then so many of these kids could accept their physical sex and stop worrying about it and we could stop this ridiculous situation where laws and policies are being made that punish people for understanding facts.

Anything that encourages a girl to believe she “is” somehow a boy and other people have to agree (or vv) is just going to perpetuate that and it can’t work. Reality will out.

It can't be started too often how sad and regressive all this is. Children and teenagers being gaslit by random adults that their legitimate insecurities about growing up mean that their sex is wrong. That their bodies are flawed. That the solution lies with these adults and dangerous groups who will "help them change sex" and solve all their mental and physical problems.

We are failing these children and continue to fail them until we remove these groups from being able to influence children too young to have the capacity to reject their toxic messages.

Does everyone have to pretend they're the opposite sex?

I find this all hard to relate to as someone that grew up when there were actual restrictions on male and female careers and other shit like females needing a male approval for a bank account etc.

What did we do in that moment in time?

Changed the discrimination.

I served in the armed forces when women were restricted in the jobs permitted and were put on women's payscales and were fired if pregnant.

We changed that.

The result is that we are in the 2020s in the non repressive religious world where we can do what ever we want with the will and the capacity, and our breasts and childbearing function, or ability to impregnate is actually simply part of our lives as male and female species, not an indicator of conforming.

So what the actual fuck is the purpose of this?

It's a weird outcome. Only really understandable if you REMEMBER the age group of the men that have rammed the concept of transition into current day thinking.

It's actually a post war and boomer idea that ought to be understood as a latent lag response to a time and culture that no longer exists.

That makes absolutely no sense at all.

So you are suggesting that it might be ok for a child to LARP as the opposite sex?

As long as the lads stay TF out of girls spaces and sports. As long as children are taught that women's and girls' boundaries are non negotiable and no one can change sex. As long as children are taught there is absolutely nothing wrong with being an effeminate boy or a masculine girl.
Then I'll think about it.

1. Any teen who is led to believe they are tge opposite sex will feel distressed by the parts of their vist whih clearly twll a different story. Even if they don't go so far as to actually modify them, why would I sypport something which increases a teen's chance of haring their body?

2.Every teen I know of who has identified as the opposite sex was a confused and unhappy soul prior to transition. Once they transition, this becomes the focus andnone of the other issues are properly addressed. I know of a young person with very obvious mental health issues, potentially problematic home life and massive self harm issues where all those other issues were just ignored. Its was as if the life-threatening self harm was a normal side effect to be expected in this trans kid. I don't know this child any more because the family move to different areas often, so the poor kid is ripped out of their school as soon as they get settled, but this poor girl has been spectacularly failed by those who have unquesioningly embraced her trans identity.

So no, I wouldn't support children doing something that causes them to hate their bodies and often leads to other more serious problems being ignored

What I feel most uncomfortable about with the whole thing is it seems so regressive in a way, like it's more acceptable to be trans than a girl or boy who doesn't fit with traditional gender stereotypes. I don't have an issue with trans individuals as individuals, but just feel a little sad at the way society seems to be going, moving away from the notion that it's ok to be an effeminate gay or bi bloke who doesn't like sports, or a butch woman who prefers blokes' clothes etc etc.

This. I would suggest an autism screen and / or a gentle exploratory conversation about sexuality and any evidence of childhood sexual abuse.

And you've put what I was trying to get across much more eloquently!

So yes to gender non-conforming and not feeling trapped by what your sex "should" be doing, but it's so sad that so many kids seem to think the only way of being themselves is to identify as the opposite sex.

"Identifying as the opposite sex", then, boils down simply to a boy saying "I'm a girl" or a girl saying "I'm a boy". Is that it?

If so, my attitude - if not my child or one under my care - would be a silent shrug and perhaps a raised eyebrow. Same as "I'm cool" or "I'm a superhero" or "I'm a dinosaur".

My own child? Depends on context.

Following a discussion about gender identity in PSHE at school? -- I'd explain carefully and thoroughly, age-appropriately, the stupidity and incoherence of gender ideology. (Including, perhaps, an analysis of the history of the notion of 'identity' in such contexts. (Yes, I can do that age-appropriately.))

Just out of the blue, a throw-away remark? -- "Oh, yes? Good for you my love. And I'm the Queen of Sheba".

Or, well, and mutatis mutandis in other contexts. You get the idea.

Of course "identifying as the opposite sex" might mean something else. But if so, what?