Dittany;
I would have to strongly disagree with your suggestion that parents who allow their child to express a non-typical gender identity are child abusers, indeed I would go further than that and argue that it is you who is advocating child abuse here.
A lot of people here seem to be putting their own spin on Jazz?s videos on youtube, claiming she is not happy etc. Indeed these people are indulging in the worst behaviour of bigoted transphobes the world over; namely deliberately using the wrong gender. The minimum Jazz deserves is for her to be recognised in the gender she chooses to present. Your deliberate use of ?he? effectively erases her chosen identity and is imposing your own bias on her identity. Your behaviour in this respect reveals a hidden agenda, by denying her the right to express herself in the way she wishes you are effectively denying her the right to exist as a human being. I find this particularly distasteful.
Further than this however you appear to have decided that she is ?miserable? and being forced to be transgender. The basis for this spin you place on her is largely on subjective elements which again demonstrate your own biases and prejudices.
As a primary school teacher with 20 years experience I know that the tone of Jazz?s performance on stage is pretty normal whenever you get kids of her age performing on stage. Indeed I would be very surprised, and frankly quite concerned if any child got up on stage and performed like one of the contestants in ?Little Miss Sunshine?. The mere fact that she is up on stage and performing at all demonstrates positive self-image of the kind good parents should be encouraging in their child.
However it is the suggestion that parents who accept their transgender child?s behaviour and do not try and enforce normatively gendered behaviour against the clear wishes of the child, are somehow abusing their children. This is a particularly nasty and pernicious view. In expressing this view you are effectively advocating the psychological torture of transgender children. 20 to 30 years ago, a small group of psychiatrists in Midwestern America and Canada advocated the same sort of treatment for transgender children as you do. The ?treatment? for trans children was the same treatment used by a number of right-wing Christian organisations to ?treat? homosexuality in adults; Aversion therapy, a form of psychological torture which has been shown, not merely to fail, but to result in depression and suicidal tendencies in its victims. Aversion therapy is not based on any credibly psychological theories accepted within the psychological/psychiatric community
As such Dittany, you are advocating a form of homespun aversion therapy; this has been tried extensively in the United States, again largely in the right-wing bible belt, on transgender children. The children were subjected to punishments for engaging in behaviour related to their desired gender identity and had all clothes and toys relating to this removed from them. They were given rewards for the behaviour the adults wanted. Needless to say this resulted in extensive loss of self-esteem, underperformance at school and psychological problems I have described.
Unfortunately parents in this country still seem to indulge this sort of crude exercise of power when it comes to transgender children, as your deliberate misgendering of Jazz suggests, the Dittany Doctrine represents a dehumanising of trans kids to the extent that their treatment should be the same as the treatment one would subject animals, such as dogs to. I taught a transgender 5-year-old child once. She wanted to be a girl and was completely open about this. As a result of social pressure from others in the local community, who expressed similar opinions to yours, her parents decided to prevent her from being a girl and from expressing her identity. To this end they removed everything she liked including clothes and toys. When this failed they resorted to violence. In the knowledge that they would not be permitted to beat their child in the UK, they sent her to her uncle in Bangladesh who gave her a dress and then beat her black and blue with a stick. She was kept there until the cuts and bruises healed and she was shipped back to the UK. As soon as she got back into the classroom she went straight to the dressing-up box and emerged as a princess?
This continued to happen several times with social services claiming they cold not act because the assaults were occurring outside the UK. The child?s mental health deteriorated substantially throughout this time and by the time she left the school she was being treated for depression, and was self-harming. When I challenged her parents about her treatment, they said they did not want to be considered bad parents and were being criticised by members of the local community and were petrified of being ostracized by people expressing similar opinions to yours.
Therefore your statement will effectively result in parents, like those of the child I taught, being pressured into what is effectively the exercise of coercive physical power and torture of transgender children. As such I believe your comments are not merely an example of extreme ignorance but they constitute incitement to child abuse. It is you who is the child abuser on this thread.
In terms of research into how best to deal with transgender children two studies are particularly important, Ghasemi studied a transgender child in Iran and Matzner studied transgender children in Hawaii. These studies were carried out in 1999 and 2001. The significance of them is the fact that Iran has a particularly low tolerance of transgender children, a country in which the Dittany Doctrine is dominant, where they are generally treated in a way which you would approve of, their gender identities are considered problematic and they are forced, often under the threat of violence and social exclusion, to conform to normatively gendered behaviour. Hawaii, by contrast, has a culture, similar to many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, which accepts transgender people and transgender children. The Iranian child became a social outcast, was bullied, not merely by her own family but by other children, other children?s parents and teachers in her schools, she self harmed and attempted suicide. In Hawaii, Matzner?s study revealed children who were accepted by their communities, schools and families and who grew up as well-adjusted, productive and happy members of society. Indeed, so much so that Hawaii has elected a transgender woman as its state governor.
This demonstrates that the Dittany Doctrine, whilst being applied by amateur ?comonsense? psychiatrists against transgender children on a regular basis throughout the western world and beyond, results in children who are subjected to amateur psychological torture, bullied, assaulted, humiliated and who develop with low self-esteem, depression, self-harming tendencies and potentially suicidal tendencies.
My own research into the lives of transgender children, which will be published in a peer-reviewed academic journal in the Autumn demonstrates the damage which the Dittany Doctrine causes to transgender children. This results in less than a third of trans children telling anyone they are trans before they are 18, and in most of those cases they wait until they are 15 or more before they tell anyone, and then they most commonly tell a gay or lesbian friend rather than their parents because they are aware of the likely consequences of revealing who they are.
The concealment and suppression that are the consequences of the social non-acceptance of the Dittany Doctrine result in substantial underachievement in school, low self-esteem and self-hatred which has consequences for these people well into adulthood, in many cases causing them to have psychological problems.
The evidence suggests that the implications of the type of statement you have made here represent a particularly good illustration of the prejudice which transgender children are up against throughout their childhoods. Interestingly 7% of transgender children in primary school reported being bullied by other children?s parents. Your attitude represents a particularly good example of the multilevel prejudice these children have to face.
Contrary to what you suggest, parents with transgender children who allow them to be who they are and to freely express their personalities are being human, caring and especially supportive of their children. That they are doing so in the face of the sort of prejudice and social coercion demonstrates a particularly high level of courage in protecting their kids against people like you.