pizzaback-deactivated20201011 asked:
slaybia-majora-deactivated20160 answered:
My children wouldn’t feel the need to “identify” as anything other than themselves because they understand that how they look and what they wear doesn’t change anything. They are smart enough to know that sex can’t be changed and that nothing is “feminine” or “masculine”.
I can totally see what you are saying with this. At the same time though… it does seem like you are seriously underestimating the influence of the outside world on children. Kids can and do develop certain identities/disorders regardless of how their parents raise them—whether that’s an eating disorder or a gender identity disorder—and it really doesn’t help much to tell a child with an obsessive hatred of/dissociation from their own body that that body is perfect the way it is, any more than it would help an anorexic.
What I’m saying is… accept that we live in a society that hates gender nonconformance, a society where kids become trans. Your parenting can try to prevent that, but you’ve got no guarantee of succeeding. Certainly go after adults and authority figures who try to pressure kids into transitioning (doctors etc) but like… if a child wants to transition and is feeling suicidal or wants to hurt themselves because of it, it really does not help to say ‘oh just do feminine/masculine things, don’t mutilate your beautiful body!’, that’s like telling a person with depression ‘but you have it so good! look at all the wonderful things you have!’. It makes matters worse and entrenches the need to transition even more firmly in the kid.
I’m not a parent so I can’t offer any actual advice, but I think it’s important for gender-critical parents to move away from the idea that ‘in an ideal world, no one would ever have to transition!’. First of all that’s not necessarily true, second of all, we don’t live in that world. Support people with sex/gender dysphoria, support people who transition, support people who detransition (this is important! detransitioning is not a horrible fate of doom)—reserve your criticism and negativity for the industries that create them, the ‘allies’ pushing dubious theory, and ofc the late transitioning rich white male fetishists who are even making this a whole thing in the first place
I mean I don’t intend any offense or anything and I have no idea what your situation is irl, maybe this isn’t even relevant to you lol. But it is one place I think there’s kind of a ‘generation gap’ of understanding and maybe that’s why this post is causing so many arguments? I don’t even know I can delete this if it’s stupid
You raise some interesting points here. There is such a delicate balance with teenagers, who tend to discount their parents’ advice and opinions about just about everything. And at this stage of life, it’s easy to want to act NOW, future consequences be damned.
It’s hard to “support” transition itself if you really feel (as I do) that it would be harmful. What I can do is understand why a person would want to transition, and point to alternatives. I just wish “gender” therapists and trans activists showed more interest in those alternatives.
And yeah: the people driving this runaway train are “the ‘allies’ pushing dubious theory, and ofc the late transitioning rich white male fetishists who are even making this a whole thing in the first place.”
Pretty much what 4thwavenow said.
People seem to think that if one of my children came to me and told me they would rather be a different gender than I would suddenly hate them and throw them out onto the street, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. If I were ever faced with that, they would need me even more than ever and abandoning one of my children is never an option to me.
The bottom line is that I would find them the help they needed to get to the root of why they felt it necessary to transition as opposed to simply and suddenly forcing them into a transition they may regret.
What’s tough is finding the help that gender nonconforming kids need to NOT transition in the professional community; there is currently a bias with therapists and some doctors to simply agree right off the bat with a kid who says, “I’m transgender.” The whole basis of current trans activism is “informed consent” (i.e., very little in the way of “gatekeeping” for anyone who says they are trans) and self-identification: If I say I’m trans, I am. Period.
Also, kids often go to a therapist already armed with what to say/how to act based on what they’ve imbibed on Reddit, YouTube, and Tumblr. They get coached how to convince therapists to write that letter that will get them hormones.
