Safeguarding trans issues

[Hamiltonfan]

My friend is the most amazing mum. Her son has started to identify as female which she doesn't accept . He is neurodiverse with multiple issues going on and she believes this is a phase he is going through to try and fit in. She found out today that she has been flagged as a safeguarding risk and social services are being involved. To say she is devastated is an understatement. Please be kind. Can anyone offer any words of support or legislation around this? Thank you.

Community note:

Butterflyhatched is apparently a trans woman who took puberty blockers as a child, and who spends a lot of time on here telling women that women's rights and child safeguarding transphobic if they involve anyone saying "no" to a trans person in any circumstances.

The good news is that puberty blockers have just been banned.

In her shoes I would think she needs to take a two pronged approach, one with social services/the school and one with her son.

With the authorities I think her first step should be to read the Cass review from cover to cover and then respond to the referral politely pointing out that what she has been doing is compliant with the recommendations in the Cass review, and what they are doing (opening a social services investigation for not using her son's preferred pronouns) appears not to be compliant. She could conclude by saying that as the parent of a gender distressed child who has stayed on top of the media coverage of this issue, she was under the impression that everyone was supposed to be implementing the recommendations in Cass now (here would be a good time to include a quote or two from Wes Streeting), and ask whether the local authority has decided to take a different approach.

With her son, she should try to get him off the internet as much as possible. Are there things they could do together which would give them a chance to reconnect in a screen free environment? A friend of mine with a teenage daughter having similar issues has had some success with going on long hikes. The ideal activity is something that physically tires you out and/or requires a lot of concentration but still allows you to talk to the other person. Outdoor pursuits like hiking, cycling, horse riding and so on work well. I've also had a similar effect from learning to drive and learning to ski. If her son really isn't into outdoor pursuits then is there an indoor project they could embark on together like building models or upcycling furniture? Literally anything that will give them long periods of time together focusing on something other than gender and with no screens.

My daughter spent several months, aged two, insisting she was not a girl but a bear. ("Not wash hands! Wash paws!") In an attempt to prepare her for the birth of a sibling I told her the story of her own birth - "And then you came out of my tummy and we said 'Oh, it’s a lovely little girl!' " which she immediately corrected to "No! You said 'Oh, it’s a lovely little bear!' " I had a vision of the scene in the delivery room, with the midwife exclaiming "Congratulations, it’s a bear!"

Luckily the phase passed before we ran out of honey.

On a more serious note, I feel very sorry for OP's friend and hope her son grows out of this difficult phase before any lasting damage is done. Having read a number of posts by Butterfly on another thread, I have a very low opinion of their suitability as an adviser on this issue.

As others have said she needs to ask them why this is happening given she is following the conclusions of the Cass report that has been accepted by the government. Why are school/SS not following this?

@ButterflyHatched

‘I can pretty confidently say that any illusions as to the idea of transition being about 'fitting in' will very, very swiftly dissolve in contact with the stark reality’.

So that’s a no to going along with the illusion, then? Because your experience says it doesn’t work.

Just to add to this information: Butterflyhatched is a male who sometimes claims to have a DSD which meant that puberty was 'sluggish' (whatever that's supposed to mean) and they would have been infertile as an adult even without the puberty blockers.

Butterfly's story appears to vary slightly depending on what seems to be the most convincing argument for a particular thread.

But obviously if Butterfly is a male with a DSD, their history is irrelevant to what is happening to children who do not have a DSD.

@thirdfiddle She can be reassuring about transition being an option that's available when you're an adult

He will still be male, when he is an adult no matter what he wears or what drugs or surgeries he has.

Reading through some of these posts it has just occured to me that what some of these children are really seeking is boundaries; they need to feel safe and contained.

When a child has no boundaries, and is presented only with endless possibilities , choices and opportunities. it can be overwhelming. Being told that you can be whatever you want is simply not true. We all have to work within the realm of what is possible at any given moment.

The mother above who put her foot down was doing her child a necessary service. A child who seeks to transition in order to fit in or find favour with their social group will inevitably find disappointment; and worse will find relationships and friendships even more difficult and compromised in future.

Transitioning represents an effort to feel comfortable in oneself; an effort to feel congruent......yet at the same time transitioning actually creates a whole other level of incongruence in which one can never really fit in at all.

Chroomy · Today 06:34

I'm sorry that your daughter and you had to go through such a horrible period. And glad and impressed that you were able to have success with a sensible result.

@ButterflyHatched

"Strange. When I was a persistently gender dysphoric but not depressed, not autistic, bisexual child who had never spoken to a trans activist in my life but was extremely sure about what I needed, I'm very sure I was transsexual. I mean, I expressed clear and persistent identification with the female sex throughout childhood alongside intense gender dysphoria which was partially alleviated the moment I received GnRH agonist treatment, mostly alleviated after a couple of years of CSH treatment and almost completely alleviated after surgery."

Can you explain to me how 'identification with the female sex' manifests? In what way are boys and girls childhoods, feelings, interests, thoughts, experiences different if you remove all gender stereotyping?

Because I hate to break it to you but liking pink, wearing skirts, having long hair, painted nails and make up, doesn't mean you are female. I would fail the Gender Recognition Certificate tests, because I don't conform to the gender stereotypes we enforce on girls from infancy. But I am definitely a woman, and very comfortable with my female body, I just don't fit into the patriarchal box.

I'm very happy for you that your hormonal and surgical treatment have almost alleviated your dysphoria, but you are still genetically (and in most ways, physically) male, and this is not hate speech, it's a statement of fact. I genuinely wish you peace and happiness, but I don't think you can speak for women, and although I'm very open to hearing your thoughts and experiences of being trans, I won't be complicit in affirming delusions.

Beautifully put!

I mean, I expressed clear and persistent identification with the female sex throughout childhood

and yet as an adult even on an anonymous board your communication consistently reads as male, that identification didn’t go very far

I hope that's the end of the story for your child.

What a blessing it would be to not experience crushing, persistent gender dysphoria throughout childhood and into adulthood; for it to just go away one day. To discover that you actually don't need any treatment and can crack on with your life safe in the knowledge that you are no longer the target of the group of people dedicating their lives to removing your rights and protection from discrimination alongside your future treatment prospects.

Some children aren't so lucky. Please cherish your child having been able to take the easy road - the other one is much, much harder.

Wow - crashing onto a thread where women are speaking about their mentally vulnerable children and telling the parent of an autistic child who self harmed that she's taken an "easy road"?

The extent of your self absorption alongside your utter ignorance about children's lives is never ending isn't it?

I have a few non-trans female friends who post on here occasionally (most of them have been driven off by now though).

One of the unifying experiences several have mentioned to me has been the way they were being accused of secretly being male once they started disagreeing with other posters. I find that absolutely fascinating.

Yours is a very vanishingly rare experience.

Maybe they are male. How would you know? You often inform us that we can't always tell

Community note:

Butterflyhatched is apparently a trans woman who took puberty blockers as a child, and who spends a lot of time on here telling women that women's rights and child safeguarding transphobic if they involve anyone saying "no" to a trans person in any circumstances.

Where on earth did Butterflyhatched get puberty blockers as a chikd? 🙄

It’s scary isn’t it?

I'm not even sure what your argument here is?

This child would clearly have had an even harder time if their dysphoria had been persistent and they'd decided to transition. It's one less thing they have to deal with in life. They don't have to worry about being the victim of transphobia; they don't have to worry about the government taking away future treatment options because it turns out they don't actually need it after all. They still have all sorts of stuff to deal with, but the list is slightly shorter and the road slightly more straightforward now.

Isn't that a good thing?

HamiltonFan I hope your friend pointing out she’s following Cass recommendations to SS is enough to get them to back off. Parents that leap all into supporting the new identity make it hard for a child to say maybe they were mistaken at a later stage.

It may be worth putting in place some internet parental controls limiting what porn he has access to.

I feel desperately sad for parents in this situation.

I know, and now the possibility of anyone else who needs this treatment (which Cass herself said she hopes will still be able to happen in cases of clear need) getting the chance I did has collapsed away to nothing.

That's a pretty grim sacrifice from where we're standing. "Sorry you can't have the treatment your predecessors had for the last three decades, but I'm afraid that your needs are less important than the chance that some children might only be pretending to experience persistent gender dysphoria and consistently lying to clinicians for years at a time." isn't ever a nice conversation to have.

And that, in a nutshell, is why puberty blockers should not be administered to children. Most will pass through puberty, lose their dysphoria and travel the more straightforward road.

Yes, it is a good thing. So you must agree that giving children puberty blockers (which fixes them in a trans identity, since nearly all children on puberty blockers end up on cross-sex hormones) is the wrong thing to do.

Much better to let them grow up first, and then, if they still feel the need, to transition as adults, once they have the mental capacity to fully understand the consequences of doing so.