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Another day, another “news” story teaching us that playing with certain toys or liking certain foods means a toddler or an elementary school child is transgender. 

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/01/30/3617395/transgender-children-study/

This blogger always pushes back with verve.  (Excerpts below from linked righteous rant)

 …My parents kept trying to give me dolls and princess sparkly dresses, until eventually they gave up and let me have things I liked. I don’t think they minded that much really. Back in the day the idea I was trans would have never been a thought. They just said resignedly “OK, we have a bit of a tomboy”. 

 So so far we note that I preferred to play with boys and I didn’t like the toys “cisgender” girls are supposed to like. So I’m male on two counts. 

 Now food? Food is an issue? 

Women like different foods from men? As you’ve seen from my last post, I have issues with food. But my favourite food is gyoza (Japanese dumplings). I also like chicken a lot, especially fried ones (they do brilliant fried chicken in London) and omlet (which I can’t spell but can make). 

 Are those Boy Foods or Girl Foods? I need to know in case they take my vagina and uterus back when I’m not looking. 

 More fucking stupidity:

“Olson urged parents to support their children’s gender identity and pointed out that many of the parents in her study started out with negative reactions when their kids asserted that they were a different gender. This led to some serious mental health consequences for their kids, including becoming withdrawn and even self-harm.”

THEY WILL ALL KILL THEMSELVES YOU KNOW 

 I insisted for a few years I was a boy. Named Pete, in case you wondered. My parents reacted at first with mild amusement and then with frustration. Because it wasn’t true, you see. It was as true as when I was 3 and said “I cat, Mummy” while my mum was trying to wash the dishes. 

 What happened to me, as Totes Male as I am? I grew up into a fucking lesbian. With, granted, some dodgy fetishes. But a lesbian nonetheless and a woman. 

 I shudder to think of the courses of treatment I would be put on nowadays and what I would be told I was. To which “gender identity clinic” my worried parents would take me and which puberty blockers I’d be put on until I realised my true identity as a trans man.

“ This process allows the young person to continue to explore and make sense of their identity before committing to a full transition and life as a transgender adult.”

 Because that is the obvious end point. Fuck, how sinister is that?

gnc kids gender nonconforming children puberty blockers
"Few resources for parents raising gender nonconforming kids"--ya think? cctv-america.com

While this is an encouraging piece in a daily sea of  “My child is transgender!!” media portrayals, a couple of things jump out: 

 8-year-old CJ Duran plays with dolls, wears skirts, and adores the color pink. While CJ loves playing with girly toys and wearing heeled sandals…he identifies himself as gender non-conformist, meaning that he still prefers masculine pronouns and is not transgender, but simply prefers the societally-defined “feminine” things in life.

It’s great that at least one 8 year old who plays with the wrong toys isn’t being called trans, but notice the wording–it’s all about how he, age 8, identifies himself. Did he really say he is gender non-conformist, not transgender? If so, where did he even get this language? And, just wondering:  given that he is smack-dab in the middle of the childhood period when make-believe play and fantasy are prominent, would it also have been newsworthy if he “identified himself” as a puppy, a ballet dancer, or a turtle?

When CJ first decided that he preferred “girly stuff” over “boy stuff”, his mother, Lori, went online to do some research. When she realized that there were very few resources for parents who were learning to raise gender-nonconforming children, she was inspired to start her own blog, Raising my Rainbow.

Kudos to Lori for bucking the trend, because what is unspoken (but glaringly obvious) here is that there are PLENTY of resources for parents raising transgender kids! And in looking at her Twitter feed and blog, she herself appears to accept the notion that lots of kids are, in fact, transgender, and not just gender nonconforming. Still, she celebrates her son who enjoys colorful wigs, jewelry,  and skirts.

I keep asking myself how we got here; that after the gains of feminism in the mid-late 20th century, parents and kids even have to use a term like “gender nonconforming” just to justify a little person being themselves.

The question is begged: What is the “differential diagnosis” between a gender nonconforming child vs. a transgender child? Answer, I guess, is in the first paragraph: whatever the (in this case, 8-year-old) child says s/he is–s/he is. This is a perfect example of the logical fallacy in the transgender trend sweeping the world: despite years of research showing that 75-95% of gender dysphoric kids grow out of it, if this 8-year-old had said, “I’m transgender,” this would have been a very different article…and Lori would be writing a very different blog.

Shout out to two great subReddits where I find many of these links. This article is a rare jewel in the daily onslaught of “transition is the answer” news stories being published around the world (which these two curators collect).

http://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Gender_Critical/

why must we reinvent the wheel gender nonconforming children gnc kids trans kids trans parenting gender critical parenting
"Just tell her to shut the fuck up" transgenderreality.com
One of the ways in which cultlike behavior is especially striking in the online trans community is the way they encourage people to cut off contact with friends and family that do not agree with 10…

See, this is why I’m doing this blog: I’m not going to shut the fuck up, and I want other parents like me to know they’re not alone. I’m not abandoning my critical thinking, nor my basic sense of protection for my child, just because the Tumblr and subReddit gender police tell parents like me we’re “abusers” just for raising concerns and having conversations with our kids! Since when did parenting become nothing but a great big rubber stamp on everything a kid wants?

Some excerpts below from this important post from the always-enlightening transgenderreality. It shows imperfect (of course!) but concerned parents trying to engage with their kids about monumental life decisions. 

**************************

The first time I ever tried to openly and honestly talk to my mother about dysphoria, she told me: All women feel that way. No woman ever wants to be a woman. But we are, and we can’t escape it

And that messed me up way more than any insult ever could because it made me truly and genuinely question if I was doing this for the right reasons or if she was right and transition was just an escape.

I still don’t have an answer.

I cope by reminding myself that my mother is a poisonous influence on my life,  and that any doubt or fear I feel about transition after talking to her are as natural as feeling nauseated after drinking spoiled milk.“

********

“A young FtM who wants to have her breasts removed posts screenshots of text messages from her mother. The mother is asking her to reconsider such drastic changes to her body. These text messages are labeled “cruel”, “hateful”, “bullying”, and “toxic”.

“the poster’s father is concerned about his son’s motivation for starting hormone therapy. A commenter jumps right in, advising him to bring up suicide as a bargaining chip for unquestioning acceptance. Note that the poster’s father was not cutting him off, not throwing him out, he was even driving him to his doctor’s appointments!

                                              *******

Read the whole thing. It’s full of screenshots from Tumblr and Reddit exposing just what’s happening to questioning youth on the Internet.  The tip of a huge iceberg is starting to emerge.

Most of my Tumblr followers are young women. Few of them have kids of their own, and they may even be having struggles with their own parents (who doesn’t?)–but they get this. But as we all know, the Internet is mostly made up of lurkers: lots of readers, very few writers/posters.

I’m shouting out to all you lurkers: Look at this information. Spread it as far and widely as you can.

gender critical parenting trans parenting teen transition transgender cult behavior gnc kids gnc children gender nonconforming children transition pressure

Neuroplasticity: the gaping logic hole in the transgender house of cards

One of the key discoveries of neuroscience in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is the extraordinary malleability of the human brain throughout the life span.  Neuroplasticity—the ability of even an adult brain to change firing patterns and regenerate neurons in response to experience—is yet another aspect of settled human knowledge that is being ignored in the rush to diagnose children and adolescents as transgender and in need of medical intervention.

But you don’t even need the latest findings in neuroscience to poke a giant hole in transactivist logic. Long before scientists established that adult brains are so malleable, it has been known that kids’ brains are far more neuroplastic than those of adults. It’s why a child can recover near total function after a brain injury or stroke in a way an adult cannot. It’s why kids become fluent in multiple languages with no “foreign” accent. Their brains have to be plastic–how else could they learn and change throughout childhood?

Those involved in transgender activism and pediatric treatment—who say they have science on their side—have a standard line about puberty blockers, the use of “preferred pronouns,”  and all the rest of the childhood gender dysphoria dogma: “It won’t harm the child.  Only the truly transgendered will choose medical transition after puberty. The rest (the majority) will choose their natal sex.” (Of course there are no published studies on this, although there is plenty of data showing that most gender dysphoric kids grow up to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual if simply left alone by “gender specialists” and scared parents.)

But the assertion that pediatric gender therapists and MDs are doing no harm (like the rest of the flimsy rationalizations they use) flies in the face of basic, settled neuroscience.

Because of neuroplasticity, those kids who have been “identified as” transgender and treated as the opposite sex throughout childhood will be influenced and molded by that experience (as they are molded by all the other experiences they have). In effect, they will learn the idea that their bodies “don’t match” their gender via their childhood experiences. Unlike any other transient childhood fantasy (e.g., that they are actually Batman), they will be repeatedly validated in the idea that biological reality–their actual bodies–is mistaken, and must eventually be changed to match their subjective feelings. What they think, even how their brains are wired, will be influenced by what they are told, and how they are treated by everyone around them. What would happen if a child with body integrity identity disorder (BIID) was repeatedly validated in the idea that (say) their left leg was “wrong” and should eventually be amputated?

Every other field of science has taken neuroplasticity into account in decisions about best treatment. For the current treatments for gender dysphoric kids to make any sense at all, you have to believe that the brain is fixed, unchangeable from birth, and completely impervious to life experience. In other words—the exact opposite of what reams of brain research and clinical experience have taught us in the last several decades.

This antiquated notion of a static brain creates such a huge logical hole in the pediatric transgender rationale, the entire flimsy edifice should eventually collapse if scientists and clinicians ever get the courage to base their treatments and recommendations on actual evidence and science.

                                         *******

Postscript: Think I’m wrong? I’d love to see some researchers step up to do a longitudinal study comparing two groups of adults who were: (1.) Dysphoric kids who were sent to gender therapists and called by their preferred pronouns, given puberty blockers, and otherwise validated in their idea that they are “trapped in the wrong body”  and (2.) Dysphoric kids who were supported for just being themselves, regardless of gender stereotypes, as the sex and in the bodies they were born with, with no messaging or validation from “specialists” or parents that they are the opposite sex. How many remain dysphoric as adults and move on to medical transition after childhood?

Who’s recruiting? (Hint: no one.) Time to get started!

gnc kids gnc teens trans kids trans teens gender critical neuroplasticity transgender gender dysphoria neuroscience transgender research transgender guinea pigs gender nonconforming teens gender nonconforming children
President Obama, how is this not anti-gay "conversion therapy"? ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

“In a study of pre-pubertal male and female children with gender dysphoria followed-up approximately 10 years later, only 27 percent of children with gender dysphoria remained gender dysphoric at follow-up [10]. Of those individuals who no longer expressed gender dysphoria at follow-up, a significant portion (all female and half the male participants) expressed a non-heterosexual sexual orientation [9]. Thus, gender concerns in neurotypical children prior to puberty may represent a developmental process related to both gender and sexuality for many individuals. 

…Facilitating an exploration of sexuality seems especially pertinent given recent findings that most children with gender-related concerns eventually identify with their natal gender following puberty and frequently adopt homosexual or bisexual identities [19]. It is possible that individuals with ASD may experience similar trajectories in their gender narratives, but potentially follow a different timeline than normally developing individuals owing to reduced social interaction and fewer opportunities to explore their sexual identity.”

***************************************

While this article is specifically about autism and gender identity, it cites multiple research studies that confirm, once again, that MOST children who question their gender in childhood end up as gay or bisexual if left alone. Also, socially immature/isolated kids, or kids with ASD, probably need even longer to figure out who they are, which makes a good argument that dysphoric adolescents and even young adults with social anxiety or other similar issues should not start medical transition, as they too often do.

On April 8, 2015 the New York Times reported that President Obama has called for an “end to conversion therapy for gay and transgender youth.”

Somebody explain to me, please: If most children–especially girls–resolve gender dysphoria and grow up to be non-heterosexual adults (and study after study corroborates this finding), how is childhood “gender reassignment” not proactive conversion therapy to prevent adult homosexuality? 

Given these findings, why do doctors, psychologists–and increasingly, compliant parents–assign gender non-conforming children as trans until proven otherwise?

And can it even be “proven otherwise” if they spend their entire childhoods  being told, and treated as if, they are actually the opposite sex?

Your thoughts, President Obama?

gender nonconforming children gender nonconforming kids trans kids trans children homophobia gender critical parenting trans parenting lgb children lgbt children lgbt kids lgb kids gay children gay kids gnc kids gnc girls gnc teens autism transgender social anxiety transgender gender dysphoria GID child GID teen GID FTM dysphoria conversion therapy
roslynholcomb-deactivated201803
Thought I was trans for for 12 years... • /r/TwoXChromosomes np.reddit.com

roslynholcomb:

roslynholcomb:

4thwavenow:

roslynholcomb:

4thwavenow:

Of course, life is easier for males - there’s no getting around that. Being a woman is like playing on “hard” mode. It sometimes sucks. But it doesn’t have to suck to the point of constantly (emphasis on constantly) wishing you were born otherwise.

Tomboys, unite.

I read these notes especially the kids talking about their parents and it sounds like something out of another century. It’s incredible to me that with all these fabulous female athletes around that parents are still telling their kids that being a female jock is “masculine.” Or that no guy will like them. It’s crazy because I remember my sister being a phenomenal athlete back in the 70s and it was no big deal. The softball team she was on was even called The Tomboys. Yeah, we had to wear froufrou dresses, but that was only for Easter or Christmas. The rest of the time we wore what all the kids wore; jeans and t-shirts. My niece who grew up in the 80s was a terrific athlete as well. Played on the boy’s basketball team, and no one made a thing of it except that she was small and everyone was afraid she’d get hurt. 

So what in the holy hell has happened in the past few decades that we now have folk talking like it’s the 1950s again? (Not even the fifties because my aunt was a “yardman” back then because the pay was better than being a maid and she preferred to be outside, and no one called her a man, though she wore overalls every day and was a butch lesbian.) Is this some kind of backlash against feminism? Because it’s depressing as all hell to read these posts where a girl thinks because she likes science and jeans that she’s somehow not a girl. People have personalities. I didn’t like dolls either. My mama loved them, but never said we had to be boys because we didn’t. Something has gone terribly awry here and it’s just sad to read about.  

Every day I wonder how we went so far backwards in terms of women’s liberation. If you’d told me in 1985 that this is where things would be 30 years later, I wouldn’t have believed it.

The scary thing is, it happened to quickly. While women were being distracted by all manner of fuckery our daughters have been left to fend for themselves. And yeah, here there be dragons. 

I guess it’s sort of like “hipster racism.” We had a generation of parents who believed that being “colorblind” was the way to deal with racism. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. You have to openly address differences and explain to your children why treating people differently because of them is wrong. If parents simply accepted their sons who want to wear nail polish and daughters who want to play baseball as they are there would be no “dysphoria,” because it seems in all these cases thus far the so-called gender norms are being policed by their own parents. 

When my son was about a year and a half old he asked for a baby doll we saw in the discount bin at a big box store. It only cost $5 so I got it for him. He loved that doll and though I thought his dad might have problems with it, he was like “how else is he going to learn how to be a dad?” And that was that. He also had a tea set and loved to have tea parties. He played sports and other people often comment that he’s “all boy,” (yeah, that’s annoying) yet he can sing all the songs from Frozen and berated me for calling it a “girl movie,” (I know, bad feminists, but dammit I can only listen to those damned songs for so long.) 

In other words, it would seem to me that maybe dysphoria, at least in these very young kids could be very much an issue with parents and parenting. It’s typical at these ages to rebel and reject parental norms. If parents are very focused on gender norms, it may well be possible that dysphoria is informed by that. Sounds to me that if these posts are valid, rather than treating the kids with drugs and surgery, we might want to do some type of treatment with the parents instead. 

roslynholcomb-deactivated201803 gender critical parenting trans parenting trans teens trans kids trans pressure detransition trans children gender nonconforming children

Anonymous asked:

I know of a situation where a kid in foster care is identifying as trans at the age of 12-14. The problem is that finding a placement is really hard - as they are making the other children question themselves when they were happy beforehand. The other children are getting very upset at suggestions that their gender non-conforming is wrong/ they have to be trans. Hence placement is really, really hard. Do you know many resources for trans kids to understand gender better and not trans everyone?

There is something seriously wrong here. Instead of kids being supported—and supporting each other—for being who they are, the kids are being pressured by ANOTHER kid into identifying themselves as trans. 

Anyone reading this have a suggestion for resources as Anon asked for? It does seem that “trans” has now become a verb, as in, “Stop trans’ing me!” 

gender critical trans kids trans pressure pressure to transition GNC children gender nonconforming kids gender nonconforming children gender critical parenting