The kind of “girl” that a boy who identifies as a girl thinks he is

[MyAmpleSheep]

How do people who celebrate the transitioning of five year old children know that the kind of girl a boy who identities as a “girl” identifies as is the same kind of girl that a girl who identifies as a “girl” is?

Other than than from what he sees girls doing, how can a boy “know” what being a girl is, to be sure he is one?

is it posited that there is an innate sense of boy:girl that exists outside of the experience of seeing and being the presence of others?

If a child was “raised by wolves”, could they be trans? If that child had a male body and reached the age of 20 never having seen or met or known of the existence of women is it possible for them to grow up with dysphoria? When eventually discovering the other sex would they suddenly recognize “they had been born in the wrong body”?

I think we would all agree that little children are capable of forming beliefs that they are all kinds of things, it seems to be part of how their minds develop and how they integrate themselves into the world around them, and vice versa.

That 'explains' why they think they are rabbits or dinosaurs or aliens from outer space, so presumably that also 'explains' why some little boys think they are girls and vice versa.

Took a wee break so may have missed things

You are told - you are a girl overtly

but there are tons of below the radar communications about what makes a boy or a girl

girls toys and boys toys - be that in a toy shop or grandmas handing you the doll and your brother the car

girls are taught to be more fearful and care more about appearances from a very early age - they are dressed differently in frills quite often ( give me the ick which is why I remember frills )

girls are taught that they are better at reading nicely than boys and that boys are better at building and being noisy - it’s assumed and you learn what is expected and why it’s expected form the way an adult will smile or frown - the work of an instant but children are very perceptive about sensing approval or disapproval because their very lives depend on it

so if your tastes and talents are not those that are right for the girl you are told you are - hey somethings wrong

the something wrong is of course our highly gendered society but it’s easier to think “I’m wrong. I’m actually a boy “

now this wasn’t clear to me as a child but as an adult I realise how strongly aware I am of the look a teacher gives a child , the way a mother talks to their child - I pick up on things that pass others by. For some children those innocent , normal , looks and words will really sting

Also imaginary friends.

And different children will respond to all this in different ways depending on their personality and social factors and trauma that they might be experiencing.

Took a wee break so may have missed things

You might have missed being used as an example of somebody who is completely oblivious to stereotypes.

It's important to be accurate.

I didn't say she was oblivious to stereotypes. Who is? And even if she was, how would I know?

I said she described an personal experience of gender incongruence very vividly without reference to stereotypes such as, "I thought I was a boy because i hated wearing dresses".

You ignored her previous reference to gendered stereotypes because it didn’t suit your hypothesis

My "hypothesis" was simply that it is possible to describe gender incongruence without reference to stereotypes. It is.

Gender is social expectations of how a man or a woman should behave. The stereotype is intrinsic to the word.

You might as well say 'it is possible to describe glass delusion without explaining what glass is'.

I wouldn’t say it was as simplistic as that…

But, I sometimes think, does the boy in question (especially at age 5) want to be “not a boy” as opposed to actually wanting to be a girl? (in other words this is an age where gender identity / sex / male & female roles come into focus for children. Again at the onset of puberty). Boys are naturally more physical at this age, and maybe some boys want a way to escape play-fighting etc?

Is there more male to female transitioning? Although there is no doubt internal feelings, I think external influences (the Internet, peer pressure) are massively at play in what we are now seeing with the Trans phenomenon.

' ...when i went back to work, Jack's favorite outfits were the tutu and the snow white costume and again, that was fine, but not for dad. So Jackie’s dad struggled, and he blamed me. His thoughts were that because I allowed the Polly Pocket and My Little Pony that I was facilitating and encouraging, and I disagreed, and it caused tensions. What I had come to the conclusion with over sort of the sort of years up until she was about two, was that I had a very sensitive, quite feminine little boy who was probably gay, but Jack's dad did not approve of our child's effeminate behavior'

How does a child under two act 'effeminate'?

It's such a sad story. A child shouldn't be 'allowed' or disallowed toys, just because of their sex. Children should be allowed to play with any toys they please. And no parent should assume they know their child's future sexuality before the age of two.

The focus on that clip is all on Jackie's father, who is reported as homophobic. But Susie says she had, before he reached the age of two, come to the conclusion that Jackie was 'probably gay'.

This in itself is very weird.

Is there more male to female transitioning?

It varies across age groups.

Until about 10 years most were male and there were very few children.

There was an exponential rise in girls being referred for treatment from about 2015.

Is there also the question of “Woke-Mum” another modern aspect? Yes, mothers can be naturally more in tune with the child. But what about their own ideologies / influences? I know a mum who takes her sons to drag queen shows more as a reflection of how cool she is. However, it can’t be denied that in the past children just weren’t listened to as they are in today’s world. More so by their fathers, too.

I see what you mean, but I wouldn't call that stereotyping. The point is that it’s recognition of being male. It wouldn’t matter what the name was or whether the person liked the name—it’s simply the fact that being called that name affirmed their internal representation of themselves as male.

I am with you to this point, with no agreement that what the person believes they are feeling is actual maleness, just a pleasure at being perceived as male in a society bound with male stereotyping.

You are completely stuck on this idea that in order to feel 'male' one must know objectively how that feels or how other people feel it. That's a very common misunderstanding,

It's not a misunderstanding at all. In order to know that you feel the same way as someone else feels, then both parties need to be able to describe the same experience in similar ways. I don't feel like a female, I only feel like myself. I couldn't describe what feeling female is like. My existence as a female is confirmed by the presence of 2 X chromosomes and no Y.

but that's not how cognitive experience works at all. There is no 'objective' way to feel male, and recognising oneself as 'male' doesn't involve imagining anything about what someone else's experience of being male is.

Exactly. There is no right way to feel male. Maleness is the possession of a Y chromosome, not a feeling.

My four year old knows she's a girl - not because she knows how other girls experience being a girl, but simply because she knows she is one.

She calls herself a girl because people call her a girl. She knows she is herself. She feels like herself.

I recognise my arm is attached to my body. I have no idea how other people recognise their arms (I've never wondered or imagine it) - I just know my arm and I feel it attached to my body. I recognise the face in the mirror as my own. That recognition doesn’t depend on knowing what anyone else’s experience of recognising their face feels like. .

I think you are somewhat off the point here. You can see your arm and your face.

I feel pain without knowing precisely how anyone else experiences pain. I recognise hunger without needing access to anyone else’s experience of it, etc etc etc. We don’t need to experience someone else’s internal state in order to recognise our own.

Well you're getting closer now. We can compare notes that pain hurts and hunger makes us want to eat. There is no further description for "feeling female" without gender stereotyping. The opposite of feeling pain is not feeling pain. The opposite of feeling hunger is not feeling hunger. The opposite of feeling male is not feeling male. It is not "feeling female".

"Feeling female", as opposed to being female, is always bound up in rejecting what it means in society to be a man, often a gay man, and embracing what one has perceived around one of being a woman, which is heavily gender stereotyped.

I think circling back to her description is useful and revealing. She did indeed describe her experience vividly without reference to stereotypes. That is true. To you that was enough. Case closed. Rather than wondering what other influences may have led to her experiencing gender incongruence.

She’s expanded on that since, but if you’d have actively listened, rather than just telling her she was “incorrect” about heavily gendered stereotypes, then you may already have had some insight as to how she got there.

But, I sometimes think, does the boy in question (especially at age 5) want to be “not a boy” as opposed to actually wanting to be a girl?

I think this is probably true of many trans-identified people. They do not want to be the sex they are, for a variety of reasons. Since sex is binary, they assume they must therefore be the opposite sex in some way. It is, ironically, the binary nature of sex that is part of the problem. I think we can see people trying to move away from that with 'non-binary' and 'eunuch' genders, which I feel are actually a much more 'honest' response to feelings of dislike of their actual sex.

Presumably there are legions of middle-aged women choosing to transition having been previously unable to live as the men they always were?

Likewise all those teenage suicides in years gone by when those with gender incongruence couldn't be put on the PB->CSH train.

Here are some papers that explain the issues with historic desistance research:

Temple Newhook, J., et al. (2018). Learning to listen to trans and gender diverse children: A response to Zucker (2018) and Steensma and Cohen-Kettenis (2018). International Journal of Transgenderism, 19(2), 246–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2018.1471767
Karrington, B. (2022). Defining desistance: Exploring desistance in transgender and gender expansive youth through systematic literature review. Transgender Health, 7(3), 189–212. https://doi.org/10.1089/trgh.2020.0129
Olson, K. R. (2016). Prepubescent transgender children: What we do and do not know. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 55(3), 155–156.e3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2015.11.015
Ashley, F. (2022). The clinical irrelevance of “desistance” research for transgender and gender creative youth. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 9(4), 387–397. https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000504
Skinner, S. R., et al. (2024). Recognizing and responding to misleading trans health research. International Journal of Transgender Health, 25(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2024.2289318

And here is that reference again to neuroscience, while the same poster has dismissed neuroscientists observations of real people and of studies on animals of brain developmental issues using Puberty blockers.

The hypocrisy is there for anyone to see.

It is not 'counterintuitive' that a person can claim that how they 'recognise' themselves as the opposite sex. It is impossible. Because their reference for doing so is also purely subjectively constructed and doesn't represent material reality.

Unfortunately I can't read the full articles, but Ashley F proposes “that transition for “desisters” is not comparably harmful to delays for trans youth" which is odd because in 2024 Chase Strangio said there was no evidence that transition reduced suicide rates, whereas we know that transition will entail life long medical care and have a permanent physical affect, possibly including sterility.

Again, you have to ask what happened to all the youth who did not have access to this treatment before somebody decided to offer it. It's not like Cystic fibrosis (1 in 2,500 births) where introduction of better care has obviously improved outcomes.

Meanwhile, the courts have repeatedly held that to insist on medical transition would violate human rights.

Something isn't adding up here.

"does the boy in question (especially at age 5) want to be “not a boy” as opposed to actually wanting to be a girl? "

This has long been recognised as being a significant factor.

The young female people I have in my day to day life reject being female in today's society. We have had numerous male people with transgender identities tell us here on FWR that they did not identify with being 'male'. Some of them told us how toxic they found masculine behaviour. It was a clear rejection of them being associated with male people rather than them 'recognising' themselves as being female people.