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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

11yo "transitioning" advice

37 replies

simpletask · 20/02/2026 22:28

I have a close friend whose 11yo daughter decided recently that they were unsure of their gender and would now be referred to as "they". Within the space of a few weeks this had changed and the child has a male name and referred to as he/him.
The child has spoken to me about binding and is also into the "furry" culture.

The child has a diagnosis of asd.

I have spoken to my friend about the risks of over affirming but the affirmation is getting stronger. School has changed the child's name and using preferred pronouns.

I'm so very concerned that this child is exposed to a world where she even knows what binding is and I worry about the path she is on where everyone around her is affirming this new gender. I worry about what will happen when she starts her periods.

Where would you start in speaking to this friend?

I also have a child the same age, and she does not understand this sudden change at all so I'm also seeking advice on how to address this with my own daughter.

OP posts:
RedToothBrush · 20/02/2026 22:55

A copy of Hannah Barnes Book is about to come through her door.

simpletask · 20/02/2026 23:02

RedToothBrush · 20/02/2026 22:55

A copy of Hannah Barnes Book is about to come through her door.

Thank you, I'll have a look.

She's very very closed off to hearing anything other than overly affirming. I think this is my biggest worry.

OP posts:
ArabellaScott · 20/02/2026 23:09

Oh gosh, the poor child.

The child has spoken to me about binding and is also into the "furry" culture.

Both of these things are red flags. Furry culture has a lot of adult content. Binding is very unhealthy.

Addressing intermet safety may be the first thing. I'd wonder if she's being groomed, I'm afraid.

ArabellaScott · 20/02/2026 23:14

Re your own daughter - its a good reason to have some open chats about it all. See what questions she has. Try and answer her honestly and straightforwardly.

simpletask · 20/02/2026 23:15

My friend is quite isolated, it would be very easy for me to be very vocal about this with her but I know she'd cut ties and I worry about the child at the heart of all of this.

There's definitely an issue with unlimited and unrestricted Internet access.

OP posts:
ArabellaScott · 20/02/2026 23:18

I wonder if you can just address that, without going anywhere near the hot button trans issue?

simpletask · 20/02/2026 23:19

Thanks, that's a good idea.

OP posts:
ArabellaScott · 20/02/2026 23:24

the trans stuff is most likely to be a phase, unless circumstances push her to maintain it for longer. Its more worrying as a symptom of deeper issues, really. But you may be limited in what you can realistically do, unless you see more definite red flags.

Lamelie · 20/02/2026 23:24

simpletask · 20/02/2026 23:15

My friend is quite isolated, it would be very easy for me to be very vocal about this with her but I know she'd cut ties and I worry about the child at the heart of all of this.

There's definitely an issue with unlimited and unrestricted Internet access.

Prioritise your own daughter over your friend.
“Friend's daughter has got caught up with some dangerous trendy ideas, it’s particularly worrying because she’s still growing like you, and she could damage her body permanently whilst not really knowing what the long term consequences are- no one does. The family needs time to work out what’s going on so we won’t be seeing them for a while”
Are they in touch independently?

tropicaltrance · 20/02/2026 23:29

Asking questions that get her to start questioning herself will probably be more effective than telling her what you think. The latter just makes people get defensive and entrenched because they feel judged.

HildegardP · 20/02/2026 23:31

www.transgendertrend.com is a good source of info on how to talk to your daughter about all this & to the other child's parents, maybe start with the resources for parents & for schools. There's also a book aimed at parents by Sasha Ayad, Lisa Marchiano & Stella O'Malley, When Kids Say They're Trans that you might find helpful.

Hilary Cass' report is worth anyone's time, webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20250310143642/cass.independent-review.uk/ particularly in this case with regard to social transition. It is not a neutral step, it is a powerful intervention & should not be embarked upon at the behest of amateurs or ideologues. Despite the flabby govt guidance, the reality is that school teachers are not psychiatrists or clinical psychologists, school counsellors would be operating far beyond their competence in advising (or supporting on a child's say-so) any social transitio.n Schools are not insured to diagnose, or to accept & act upon children's self-diagnoses, or to recommend clinical pathways such as social transition.

Ben Ryan's Substack benryan.substack.com/ gathers a lot of relevant US stories together & the parents might find the articles on US detransitioner lawsuits particularly interesting, they are, er, surprisingly under-reported in the UK the court documents are worth a look. Note in particular that the long-vaunted "medical consensus" in favour of underage transition isn't there anymore.

Although commissioned by noted whackdoodle RFK Jnr, America's HHS report on gender dysphoria was conducted by sane & competent people & is worth reading; opa.hhs.gov/gender-dysphoria-report.

As an ASD adult whose own gender woes did not resolve until my early 20s, I second the suggestion of Hannah Barnes' book. Dr Az Hakeem worked with adult trans patients at the Tavistock for many years & his book, Detrans, though more confronting, has some useful things to say about ASD & gender identities (It's not widely sold so try Amazon). It's bad enough that we get misdiagnosed with Personality Disorders, getting misdiagnosed as the opposite sex is inexcusable.

If the other child's parents have even a scintilla of doubt (the "affirm or your child will die" threats do still happen so perhaps they feel they have no choice) https://www.bayswatersupport.org.uk/ might prove useful to them.

Only total ignorance of the Furry scene could account for permitting a child to be involved. It's a highly sexualised subculture with many crossovers into extreme fetishes & paraphilias, & is entirely unsuitable for minors.

I'm sure others will suggest all the useful stuff I've missed out or missed seeing myself.

(Sorry if any of those links don't show live for you, they all work if cut & pasted.)

Good luck!

simpletask · 20/02/2026 23:39

Lamelie · 20/02/2026 23:24

Prioritise your own daughter over your friend.
“Friend's daughter has got caught up with some dangerous trendy ideas, it’s particularly worrying because she’s still growing like you, and she could damage her body permanently whilst not really knowing what the long term consequences are- no one does. The family needs time to work out what’s going on so we won’t be seeing them for a while”
Are they in touch independently?

No, they aren't. They went to the same primary school but different secondaries. We see them sporadically and mostly when I initiate it.

I'm definitely prioritising my daughter, she just thinks that her friend has a new nickname at the moment but the questions are starting to come.

OP posts:
Baital · 20/02/2026 23:44

Trans and furry? It's all the MN buttons, congratulations!

SingleSexSpacesInSchools · 21/02/2026 00:12

From personal experience. The furry thing is a massive read flag. Accompanied with unfiltered internet access this kid is in trouble. I’d figure out how to I escalate to authorities in some way that was not directly about the affirmation issue.

ScrollingLeaves · 21/02/2026 13:01

simpletask · 20/02/2026 23:15

My friend is quite isolated, it would be very easy for me to be very vocal about this with her but I know she'd cut ties and I worry about the child at the heart of all of this.

There's definitely an issue with unlimited and unrestricted Internet access.

Perhaps talk about internet access in general without mentioning her own or her child’s.
Mention how other children have been dangerously affected, give examples, and tell her you are going to restrict/do x re your own child’s internet use from now on.

gototogo · 21/02/2026 13:09

The furry stuff is even more weird. There’s a girl that comes into my shop wearing ears and a tail, I always compliment her on the lovely tail but also clearly state it’s fun dressing up, it’s a case of saying their outfit is nice but it’s not real. When it comes to trans it’s fine to use neutral pronouns and a chosen name, I can’t get exercised over that but i clearly say it’s fine not to be feminine and mine to wear neutral clothes but not fine to do anything that isn’t reversible. I know girls who went through this phase then reverted to happy adult lesbians, all in 20’s now

Igmum · 21/02/2026 15:12

So sorry your friend’s daughter is going through this Simple. The good news is that she will almost certainly grow out of it (my DD, also ASD did). The bad news is that all the adults around her pushing and affirming her won’t help.

There’s some great resources here. I won’t repeat those but would add:

Yes, prioritise your DD and make sure she knows the difference between sex and gender and that you cannot change sex.

I’m not sure what sort of a relationship you have with the other girl but could you get her out and about doing something that is nothing to do with trans - preferably something physical? Climbing, walks, playing in the park, zip wires, skating - anything. A few days on a farm with animals and no WiFi. The trans ideology dominates online. At 11 she’s more likely to want to go out and do something fun. This gets much harder at 14 or 15 when teenagers can turn into troglodytes/shift away from parents and towards their peer groups. You don’t have to talk about trans stuff, just give her something else to get interested in. Even better if mum comes too and can be persuaded to do whatever it is regularly with her DD.

Good luck and thank you for being sane and being there.

simpletask · 21/02/2026 21:35

Igmum · 21/02/2026 15:12

So sorry your friend’s daughter is going through this Simple. The good news is that she will almost certainly grow out of it (my DD, also ASD did). The bad news is that all the adults around her pushing and affirming her won’t help.

There’s some great resources here. I won’t repeat those but would add:

Yes, prioritise your DD and make sure she knows the difference between sex and gender and that you cannot change sex.

I’m not sure what sort of a relationship you have with the other girl but could you get her out and about doing something that is nothing to do with trans - preferably something physical? Climbing, walks, playing in the park, zip wires, skating - anything. A few days on a farm with animals and no WiFi. The trans ideology dominates online. At 11 she’s more likely to want to go out and do something fun. This gets much harder at 14 or 15 when teenagers can turn into troglodytes/shift away from parents and towards their peer groups. You don’t have to talk about trans stuff, just give her something else to get interested in. Even better if mum comes too and can be persuaded to do whatever it is regularly with her DD.

Good luck and thank you for being sane and being there.

I'm going to try this, she's so entrenched in the online world that nothing "real" seems to interest her. I worry so much that the overly affirming approach is being taken by everyone around her including school that it leaves her no way out should she change her mind.

We are seeing them tomorrow so there may be a chance for further chats to understand how much time she's spending online.

OP posts:
Shmoigel · 22/02/2026 22:04

This is what peaked me. I worked in SEN education and the amount of children and teens who were allowed to socially transition and bind was truly alarming. These children should be safeguarded not encouraged to make decisions that may have long lasting consequences. It left me uneasy that there was some greater issue like population control going on.

HildegardP · 22/02/2026 23:46

Shmoigel · 22/02/2026 22:04

This is what peaked me. I worked in SEN education and the amount of children and teens who were allowed to socially transition and bind was truly alarming. These children should be safeguarded not encouraged to make decisions that may have long lasting consequences. It left me uneasy that there was some greater issue like population control going on.

Lawks, it's much simpler than that. To Pinocchio's plaintive desire to be a real boy, add the Q+. Back in the 70s & early 80s, PIE had successfully conned organisations like Liberty, as well as many politicians who ought to have known better, convincing them that "paedophile rights" was a liberal & liberatory struggle, but by 1984 they had lost that support, members had been subject to numerous prosecutions & the organisation fell apart.

Just a few years later, a group of very extreme BDSM fetishists lost a series of court cases (including at Strasbourg) thereby establishing that, in the UK at least, there are sex acts to which nobody can consent, basically because they cross the threshold of grievious bodily harm.

Both of those groups were comprised of people motivated by a paraphilic disorder, just like the AGPs. Men, & it's almost always men, who suffer from these disorders live lives dominated by their paraphilia, they are incapable of accepting that their sexual goals are wrong, or that the legal prohibitions & social taboos against them should stand.

Both groups have strategised for years to find a new way to force the State to indulge them, trans & "Queer" politics are a godsend for them. Now, the T has plenty of paraphilics of its own & far too many trans people assume a right to violate the social & sexual boundaries of others in pursuit of "validation" [waves at the oxymoron, "AMAB lesbian"] so the Q+ was inevitable, & unlike the old gay liberation movement, nobody takes out the trash so it's easy for the guys who get thrills from cutting body parts off their "slaves" & the plain old child predators to wrap themelves & their objectives in a Progress Pride flag while intoning thought-terminating clichés like "AccEPtaNcE WitHOuT eXCePtiON" & telling any opponents or ditherers that they are evil bigots who want trans & Queer people dead. Remember, most normies still mistakenly think "Queer" means "LGB".

The groups mentioned above are far from the only bad actors in the coalition, some don't even realise the other groups exist. The less informed & more naive an "ally" is, the more useful they are, because such people shy away from asking why Admiral Rachel Levine successfully pressurised WPATH into removing lower age limits for "gender affiring surgeries", & from reading the Eunuch Chapter in WPATH's SOC8, & from understanding what lay behind that chapter (a long collaboration with The Eunuch Archives, the Internet's oldest & largest forum dedicated to castration fetish).

Nobody really wants to know that respected senior academics & captains of industry, perhaps even one's own friends or rellies, while away their free time penning erotic fiction based on forced castration, often of little boys. I wish I didn't know it because I want to live in a world where such men don't seek out others with whom to share their repellent ideas but instead seek out & receive effective therapy. Others shy away from the knowledge because any engagement with the topic gives them the ick. Yet others are determined not to know because to know would shake their conviction that they're Good & Sophisticated People, allies to the vulnerable & defenders of the downtrodden, rather than the stooges & Useful Idiots they really are.

There are lots of other special interest groups to whom the TQ+ pursuit of "absolute bodily autonomy", at any age, is useful. For example, body modification itself can become an obsessive compulsion, & a sexualised one. There are reasons why something as mundane as a medical supply company might find the TQ+ promising in revenue terms & therefore worth supporting.

The coalition is unspoken, its elements often disguised, even firewalled one from another, but they work together indifferent to any other objective but their own. The stress laid on being an "embattled minority" imposes a kind of omerta, & people with an obsessive goal are not famed for their second order thinking. All this sails along on the tide of allies' carefully-curated ignorance.

PurpleLovecats · 22/02/2026 23:54

You seem overly invested. This is something for your friend and their child to navigate. Maybe they will transition, maybe not. It’s their journey, not yours.
surely you just tell your own child that some people explore different things?

simpletask · 23/02/2026 05:58

PurpleLovecats · 22/02/2026 23:54

You seem overly invested. This is something for your friend and their child to navigate. Maybe they will transition, maybe not. It’s their journey, not yours.
surely you just tell your own child that some people explore different things?

Yes I am invested because I care for my friend and her child. I'm concerned that the approach being taken currently is setting her up for failure for many many reasons. Her body is about to go through puberty and regardless of if she will transition as an adult, the people in her life are affirming that she is a boy now. I'm worried about the access she has to trans and furry ideology online and simply can't sit by and watch and be complicit in something that I feel is harming her.

OP posts:
RedToothBrush · 23/02/2026 07:36

simpletask · 23/02/2026 05:58

Yes I am invested because I care for my friend and her child. I'm concerned that the approach being taken currently is setting her up for failure for many many reasons. Her body is about to go through puberty and regardless of if she will transition as an adult, the people in her life are affirming that she is a boy now. I'm worried about the access she has to trans and furry ideology online and simply can't sit by and watch and be complicit in something that I feel is harming her.

You are overinvested.

It doesn't matter how you feel. She's not going to listen to a word you say because she's already overinvested in transitioning.

You are not going to be able to get through to someone who is already that entrenched.

You have a saviour complex. You can't save her. She's in a cult. It's like an addiction. She can't be saved until she wants to be saved and is ready to listen.

A failure to understand this, no matter how much you care means you are on a hiding to nothing where you will end up very upset.

You ARE powerless to intervene here. She's not your child and social services won't do shit because they support this stuff.

It sucks. Unfortunately that's the situation. I hope in future that changes but right now that's the dynamics of the matter. Beyond giving a book which they may or may not read and letting them make up their own minds you are helpless and it's not a nice feeling.

Yes you may have to just sit back and watch because you may be given no other choice.

ArabellaScott · 23/02/2026 08:33

Wanting to help doesn't automatically mean a saviour complex! As is said so often, child safeguarding is everyone's responsibility. Although sadly you are quite correct in that there is realistically very little OP can do to help.

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