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”?

Can you explain to me in a comprehensible way how you are differentiating between gender typing and gender stereotyping when acquired by a child in the context of that child being trans from birth?

Google suggests that they are essentially the same, with typing being normal child development and stereotyping being the unacceptable assignment of the characteristics going on gender typing to prove who do not conform to that stereotype.

Oh, you're back @Lacksie .

Any possibility of an answer to my question?

apologies i got my tabs in a twist ,it is the one i meant! think im going to have to ban myself from mumsnet yet again as i get far too obessessed with the topic!

Should say

Google suggests that they are essentially the same, with typing being normal child development and stereotyping being the unacceptable assignment of the same characteristics as gender typing to people who do not conform to that stereotype.

And in the context of the discussion on this thread they are the same thing

I think we got the answer a long time ago from the lack of an answer - "I'm a girl", said by a boy, means "I don't want to be a boy".

It's my understanding stereotyping happens before both. Wasn't there an experiment where an unborn baby who kicks is described differently depending on whether they are known to be male or female? If it's a boy, wow you'll have a footballer there, if it's a girl ooh, she'll be trouble.

Stereotyping happens from the get go.

Lacksy is also not taking into account trans people's own description of why they think they are trans. Detransitioners all talk about stereotyping. Many men talk about pornography.

And as for having the neurological imprint of the opposite sex, and then pursuing those stereotypes, I wouldn't mind, but almost all men who identify as women, one hundred percent inhabit the stereotypes of men, not women!

Just let that penetrate

a child can only know how the world interacts with those labelled girls and those labelled boys. We learn through observation

ergo if they reject one label or desire another it must be because of how they see the world treating those labels

as the child gets older and hits puberty obviously it becomes much harder with body hatred and hatred of the changes reinforcing their notions

And as Helle points out, so what?

Let's say people genuinely do think they're the opposite sex. They're not. The end

please could you link to the specific papers you are talking about. Is what you have written above ,your words, a summary taken from the web or something copied and pasted from any of Ruble's work? She is a Prof of social psychology so her work is going to be informed by various theories and she will be exploring these and positing further theories as a result of her research.

-you have writen "These theories, which have focused on gender-typical children" - can you explain where and how Ruble has classified these children as "gender typical" ? What is "gender typical" unless we revert to stereotypes?

-you wrote in the post prior to this "”What I'm trying to explain is that for a small minority of children this development happens differently. Because the child's identifies themselves as being in the "wrong" category you are all assuming that this must have come from learning about stereotypes and subtle parenting cues . But that doesn't follow and there's actually no evidence for it” - please could you describe which areas of Rubles work show that children who go onto show gender confusion are "developing differently"?

-I certainly don't think that it is a simple case of gender confusion arising from nurture alone, as Ruble and co-author said "Parental expectations about what it means to have a child who is either a boy or girl (expectations colored by cultural values, etc.) become displayed as actions with the child (e.g., glances, touching, toy offering), and these embodied expectations interact with the child's phenotypic and early behavioral features. Thus, gender socialization involves parents and siblings, peers, other socialization agents, and the individual child, who all act and interact in varied contexts.”

-I feel you are actually making leaps in thinking in order to justify parents being encouraged to raise their children as if they were the opposite sex. As Cass stated, social transition is not a neutral act .

-From my laymans understanding, developmental theories actually suggest an extremely complex picture - as Ruble comments "different combinations of biological, cognitive, and socialization processes could contribute to individual differences in gender typing at different times.”

Well there clearly is evidence that subtle stereotypes affect children’s identity

the evidence is that the rate of trans identification varies by culture

unlike homosexuality which is consistent across all societies

@Tinyterrier thank you for sharing your friends story , I refer you to my (extreme fringe) reincarnation past lives theory. If your friend is Catholic, what is their attitude towards homosexuality?

My point is, whatever the theory behind “transness” the reality is that we are all born into a sexed body ,none of us can escape the multiple external influences on our development, that we all may have different ways of relating to our body and relating to our experiences….. but no child should ever be sent down the route of believing that it is possible to change this sexed body via harmful medical interventions. As social transition often leads to medical transition ( and I cannot imagine the added psychological confusion of socially transitioning a young child) we should not be doing this either.

This is the difference that can be described as philosophical belief. The belief that a child is who they say they are when there is no possible way for them to be what they say they are. Words such as ‘understanding’ and ‘recognition’ are used to attempt make this identification meaningful.

Let's unpack this.

Affirmative approaches say that we should recognise a child's neuro-cognitive / psychological experience of sex (gender) for exactly what it is.

That psychological experience is real; it is part of who someone is, just like being autistic or being gay is a part of who someone is.

To recognise that psychological experience is not to promote a false "belief", it is to recognise what is real.

Now what can that recognition and understanding involve?

The first step is really simple. It can involve listening to the child and taking them seriously.

"I hear you when you tell me your a girl. That's what you feel. I hear you when you tell me that matters to you deeply.
I hear you when you say it hurts you so much when I call you a boy.
I'm not just going to say "that's nice dear, you're a boy, now let's go to the park", because I hear your pain and your pain matters to me".

What else can recognition involve?

Can we change their chromosomes? No. A child born with XY chromosomes will always have XY chromosomes, and there's no use pretending otherwise.
But can we change the words we use to address that child - to 'girl' and 'she' instead of 'boy' and 'he'?
Of course we can. That's as simple as speaking one word instead of another. You might say we shouldn't do that because then words will lose all meaning and society will collapse. I disagree of course, but that's a different debate - it's about what we should do, not what we can do, and that involves a meaningful consideration of the various consequences of both approaches, not just declaring "we can't do that! Because it's a lie!"

What else can we do?

Can we change the person's physiology to create functioning female reproductive anatomy? No. That child will never grow up to be a woman who can give birth. We shouldn't pretend otherwise.
But can we give that person Oestrogen therapy and testosterone suppression to alter some of their secondary sex characteristics to reduce some of the psychological distress associated with body dysphoria? Yes we can - we can give them feminising hormones so that they grow breasts, redistribute fat, have reduced muscle mass and body hair growth, for example.
Should we do that? At and what age?
Again - those are questions that require meaningful consideration of the benefits, harms and risks of doing so, versus doing nothing. There's no use simply trying to shut the conversation down by pretending it's impossible.

The story also illustrates how children make reference to and create meaning from something external that they already have some understanding of. In this case god. It was god that made the mistake. Not allah or the great goddess.

A boy who believes he is a girl already must understand a girl as something different from him. Surely we should look at what he believes those differences are and why he thinks that means he is a girl. For example ‘boys marry girls, girls marry boys, I want to marry a boy therefore I am a girl’. ‘Boys are tough, girls are sensitive, I am sensitive, therefore I am a girl’ ‘mummy says I am not like my brother, my brother is a boy, therefore I am a girl’ etc.

so you make this child a lifelong medical patient. He’ll still have to use male spaces so what exactly will he gain?

it will just be very obvious he is not the girl everyone is telling him he is. He is a bit m, will grow to be a man and nothing can change that.

I don't know how to explain this to you more clearly.

I linked some of Ruble's specific papers above.

Ruble's papers are focused on exploring children's cognitive development in relation to gender - they are describing the normal process of development for children who do not have gender dysphoria.

The theory is that as children come to identify as 'male' or 'female' , they become interested in/ motivated to learn and explore what gender means - the social stereotypes, norms, behaviours, expected of girls and boys. In other words, a child does not first learn "girls like dresses" and then decide she is a girl because she likes dresses. She first learns "I am a girl" and with this learning she becomes interested in testing out and exploring the idea that "girls wear dresses".

I am saying that Ruble's model of cognitive development also fits the empirical evidence on how gender incongruent children develop learning in relation to gender. Ruble does not address this question specifically (at least in the classical papers that I cited - I don't know if she's written stuff on this more recently).
the classic literature I cited is from the early 2000s and does not focus on gender incongruent children. However, her model works well when we also apply it to this minority group of gender incongruent children. The central difference is of course that for these children, the first step "I am a girl, I am a boy", runs counter to what we would expect based on physical anatomy and what the child has been told. Ruble's work does not explore this and does not answer the question of why this happens.

It would be really handy if the "pattern matching"/"identity is a choice" poster or posters could go off and argue their case with Stonewall and mainstream transactivism instead of bothering us all the time. So much time spent arguing against a view that is massively counter to what any mainstream transactivism is advancing in public debate and the courts. And then they have the cheek to behave as if they're "educating" us in something well known. Mate your view is niche even within transactivism. Go and convince the trans lobby that their identities are a choice based on pattern matching.

Thank you Zbcdeg for also following up Lacksie's links and also wondering what the appeal of Diane Ruble is as a support for Lackie's position.

When I asked Lacksie to explaint his, I got this reply yesterday:
Her work draws on cognitive-developmental theories in which children’s emerging recognition of belonging to a gender category motivates them to explore its social meanings, norms and expectations. In other words, identification is understood as helping to drive the acquisition of gender stereotypes, rather than being the product of those stereotypes.

If I said I didn't quite grasp the meaning of that, I'd probably be told [again] to educate myself, or there'd be implications that I just wasn't up to it intellectually, or was blinkered by prejudice or something, so I let it go.

Anyway, it looks like we all agree that from the earliest age, children are exposed to gender-related meanings, norms, expectations, and that young children's use of language is such that words like 'boy' or 'girl' may have a wider and less settled meaning for them than they do for adults.

It appears to me that a little boy, at a certain stage of linguistic and psychological development, saying he is in fact a girl, is using a word and a concept that cannot be divorced from his social environment, and his verbal skills.

Lacksie will, I'm sure, disagree, imply that I'm being dense or prejudiced, and produce a new argument which shifts away from the previous one, concedes points made by other posters, but wraps it all up so it appears that L. is still and has always been right.

I think we are, like the giant Lacksie Laxey wheel on the Isle of Man, going around and around in big circles.

I'm out.

Tinyterrier's little Catholic 3-year-old will of course have been exposed to loud and clear social stereotypes of men and women - the god who completely messed up the child's body by giving him a penis instead of a vagina [sorry, a 3 year old boy knows about vaginas?] is God the Father.

There is no God the Mother.
There is Mary the Mother of God, but she is not god, she gave birth to God. Not God the Father, God the Son..

You have to hand it to Catholicism, it gives a little child very complex concepts to exercise their little brains!

I know, I was that chiild

And there's the wedge. Just because a child really, really believes it, you have to affirm it.

No. They're not the opposite sex. No one is, including you.

You haven’t given any specific links to any specific papers that I can find , if you have them please can you re-link? Particularly anything that states this “they are describing the normal process of development for children who do not have gender dysphoria.”

Can you also explain to me this comment “minority group of gender incongruent children” - what methods or assessments are available to define “gender incongruence” in young children? How would a researcher be able to separate out “gender congruency” in young children at the various stages of development? I’m putting this point specifically because although gender distress around genitals is part of the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, one of the reasons for distress around genitals in young children is sexual abuse.

I did. Rtft. However, here are two useful papers for you:

1. Martin, Ruble & Szkrybalo (2002)

Martin, C. L., Ruble, D. N., & Szkrybalo, J. (2002). Cognitive theories of early gender development. Psychological Bulletin, 128(6), 903–933.

1. Martin & Ruble (2004)

Martin, C. L., & Ruble, D. N. (2004). Children's search for gender cues: Cognitive perspectives on gender development. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13(2), 67–70.

These papers examine typical patterns of gender development, rather than specifically investigating children with gender incongruence.

They don't explicitly state that, but it's clear from the research questions, methodology and populations studied. That doesn't mean every child was screened for gender dysphoria, simply that this wasn't the phenomenon the research was designed to investigate.

You can verify that by reading the papers.

No. They're not the opposite sex. No one is, including you.

What a sophisticated, cogent and well-justified argument. Thank you for sharing.

And that's your problem. Saying humans can't change sex doesn't have to be a sophisticated argument.