Family labels every aspect of life as "for boys" or "for girls", fights with daughter about wearing bows. Then act very surprised when the girl wants to be a boy. • /r/Gender_Critical reddit.com

[–]repugnent said:

“Research has shown that children form a gender identity as young as 18 months to three years of age. It is widely agreed that at this point that gender, including gender as it is experienced by gender variant children, is solidified early on.”

Where are people getting this misinformation? FFS, this child is five. My mom works at preschool, and she told me not too long ago that she had to explain to a child that a teacher with short hair was in fact, a woman. Or what about the research showing that most children with gender dysphoria lose it after puberty? This is what disturbs me most about the phenomena. The research that has been done is very clear and yet is routinely ignored, even in mainstream news outlets.

I find these childhood transgender accounts disturbing. It’s one thing when adults decide to transition, but to pigeonhole a 5 year old and relegate them to a lifetime of hormones, surgery and infertility, one should expect caution. Instead it’s the exact opposite; Louis Theroux asked this of a psychologist in his recent documentary, and she responded more or less “it’s this or suicide.” And this mother seems downright giddy about having a trans child.

[–]generibusGrammatical Gender[S] said:

It seems to be one of those things that people just repeat over and over until everyone thinks it’s true. I have a four year old and he is NOT very clear on the differences between the sexes, yet alone some mysterious “gender identity”.

[–]DoubleXMarksTheSpot said:

My younger daughter refused to let me buy her a girl’s swimsuit, insisting on the trunk-like suit for boys, and a tank top sort of shirt on the top. She also wanted “boys’ skates,” and wanted to play ice hockey. She wore baggy clothes and even changed her name for a couple of years.

Go forward half a decade or so, and she’s into manicures, make-up and colouring her hair.

What did we do? Exactly nothing.

This media coverage is so damaging for some families, who feel that if they don’t do something about their child’s experimentation with their identities, they’ll kill themselves. There’s even a local politician who has introduced legislation she has dubbed “Leela’s Law,” that professes to ban conversion therapy for gays, lesbians and transgender kids, but basically targets this one clinic that has come under fire from activists for not promoting transgender identities at the expense of all other treatments for troubled kids in its care.

People are terrified their kids are going to die. I have spoken out against Leela’s Law on Facebook, and the first reaction I got was from the 16 year old daughter of a friend who said, “Kids are killing themselves from dysphoria every day. Don’t discount dysphoria.” (I replied that I feel children should be allowed to express themselves independent of the straightjacket of socially determined gender identities, and she agreed.)

I have slowly started to speak out against these misconceptions in RL (with a mostly positive response). There needs to be pushback in the mainstream media and not just in subreddits and radical feminist blogs.

[–]generibusGrammatical Gender[S] said:

“We tried to steer P’s choices of boy clothing to days when it would not be too problematic”

What on earth would be “problematic” about a girl wearing “boy clothes”? This is another family with extremely rigid gender roles.

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“Widely agreed”  that a child of 18 months has a set gender identity??

I have recently posted links to research studies that are even acknowledged by WPATH, the main organization focusing on transgender health, refuting the idea that toddlers have a set gender identity. Most (75% or more) “dysphoric” children outgrow their feelings of body dissociation and grow up to be gay or lesbian!

Why is the mainstream media falling in line with this garbage?

gender critical parenting trans parenting trans pressure GNC kids GNC teens trans teens trans kids
is my child transgender? communicatingwithkids.com
“In jumping straight to the assumption of the statistically most unlikely outcome that a child is transgender, aren’t we just reinforcing those gender stereotypes, and in fact doing exactly the same as the parent who forces a child to conform?”

A rare find: A parent who dares to question.

From one of the comments on the article:

“It also seems to me that any concerns that are voiced about this topic are dismissed as prejudice. Personally I think there’s a very real difference between believing that transgender people should live their lives without violence and discrimination, and believing that children who like the ‘wrong’ toys are candidates for drugs and surgery.”

gender critical parenting trans parenting gnc kids gnc teens gender nonconforming

No, you don’t “care” about my child

So I have figured out a few things vis-à-vis the few (and they have been few, so far) people who personally attack me, claiming they only do so because they ”care” about my child. By “attack” I mean character assassination, not respectful debate.

First, they believe without an iota of doubt that there is such a thing as a “male” or “female” brain. And one’s male or female brain absolutely must dictate what sort of body it is attached to. Second, they believe that even a toddler innately knows which brain they have. When that child says “I feel like a girl” or “I feel like a boy” that subjective experience is objective reality, and no one—no one—has the right to question it. Ever. The only viable option is to support their assertion with all that modern medicine and pharmaceutical products can supply. Even questioning this orthodoxy amounts to child abuse.

The people who vomit their bile on me believe a child’s self-professed gender is as hard-wired and as objectively indisputable as their left elbow. They fervently believe this even if said child is of the age where they are also saying they are –or they wish they were–a dog or a tractor or Spiderman or a princess. They don’t think gender is a social construction. They don’t believe life experiences might mold a child’s idea of gender. No, the gender cake was already baked while they were in the womb. So if a kid is referred to and treated as the opposite gender–by parents, teachers, doctors, psychologists–from the time they’re 2 years old, if they’re on puberty blockers, if they are indoctrinated that this means they are “transgender,” those years of experience won’t have ANY influence on whether they choose to medically transition later. No pressure at all! Case closed.

For all their supposed knowledge of neuroscience, they never seem to have read anything from the decades of research pertaining to pediatric brain development, the years of childhood make-believe, of confusion of fantasy with reality…the relatively new knowledge that the frontal lobes of the brain—judgment, decision-making, awareness of future consequence, impulse control, self monitoring–don’t develop until age 25. None of that has any bearing on the Gender is Set in Stone at Birth dogma.

And their ideology is as impervious as granite. It’s all nature, no nurture. To these people, 15 years of a girl being told she is actually a “he” couldn’t possibly influence a biological girl (oops, I mean, “assigned female at birth”) to move on to medical transition when she’s older, even if, actually, she’s a girl who would have grown up to be a lesbian (which is what statistics say usually happens) if she had just been left alone to figure it out on her own.

The transactivists are not interested in any research that could cast doubt on their hypothesis . They only want to cherry pick studies that claim there is a male or female brain. Even though THOSE studies have been disputed, and generally have a subject base consisting mostly of trans people who’ve already transitioned and been on hormones for years. And, of course, the conclusion they draw from those flawed studies is that the brain dictates the body it’s attached to, period. Hell, I even saw someone crowing about an article touting head transplants in the future for trans people. Cut off your “male” or “female” head and attach it to a donated body of the opposite sex! Problem solved.

I’ve mostly engaged in civil dialogue online. I came here in the first place because there aren’t many people raising the questions I am, from the perspective of a parent who cares enough to dig deeper, and I want that point of view to be heard. And I want other lefty parents like me to have a place to go where they aren’t dismissed as ogres and transphobes. Where they aren’t told that–simply by questioning, by expressing doubts–they are personally responsible for the suicides of troubled teenagers.

In my short time here, I’ve learned a ton about what it is really like to have gender/physical dysphoria, to have the intense desire to transition to the other sex. I respect that experience. I’ve talked with people who have medically transitioned, and I’ve adjusted my views based on things they tell me. I’ve been humbled; I’ve learned, and I’ve opened a few minds myself. I’m doing this in good faith, and most other people seem to be doing the same. Those of us who are running “serious” theme blogs have a purpose outside entertainment. We feel like we have something important to say. Disagreements I’ve had are generally respectful. I have zero interest in making enemies of people I don’t even know. I have better things to do with my time.

But, like anywhere else on the Internet, there are a few haters. Because I am running a blog which dares to question the trans orthodoxy, I occasionally get drive-by vitriol, usually from kids who are angry at their own parents. I get told I am a terrible mother, an abuser even, of my daughter (except they always say “son” based on the sparse personal information I’ve shared here, if they’ve even read that, which I doubt).  Apparently my “son” is exactly the same as all the other “sons” out there, despite the suddenness of all this, and how it only arose after a short time of binging on certain Internet snack bars .

They claim to “care” about my child, they are “scared” for her, they are “worried” for her; they automatically assume it’s “him” because remember—if anyone, anywhere simply says they might be trans, then that is the word of god from on high. It is sacrosanct.

I’m not naïve or stupid. I knew venturing onto Tumblr would be—let’s say, a rough and tumbl ride at times—and I’m not going to let myself be destroyed or derailed by the words of a hateful or unhinged stranger online. Haters gonna hate.

But I will say this to those few shit-throwers:

You don’t know me. You don’t know my family. You don’t know my daughter—hell, call her my son, I don’t care. You don’t have the slightest idea where we are in this process. You are clueless about what kind of parent I am. And most importantly: You do not “care” about my child. You don’t “worry” about her. You’re not “scared” for her. I’m the one who is doing that. Your feigned “caring” is just a way to lash out at someone who is daring to raise questions about a dogma you have imbibed, and it bothers you. You don’t want anyone upsetting your apple cart.

I’m not changing my Ask box policy. If you send me hate, you go straight to the trash bin. All you’ll get is the chance to briefly spew your cyber-bile onto a stranger. If that floats your boat, knock yourself out. But it won’t make me shut up. Most of all, don’t flatter yourself that you “care” about my child, so you might as well let go of that little self-aggrandizing delusion.

And to the ones who scream “Unfollow me!!!!” (which I invariably do): Did it ever occur to you that following a blog is sometimes a way to learn something new? Just something to consider.

gender critical parenting gnc kids gnc children trans pressure trans teens gnc teens gender nonconforming trans parenting
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.”

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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
Nymeses: Advice for Parents of Teen Girls and Girl-children who Think they are Trans nymeses.blogspot.no

Parenting advice from a detransitioned woman. 

“For me, I first really discovered F2T transition on the internet.  I made lots of trans friends through the internet.  I learned about F2T “passing guides” on the internet. I bought my first chest binder on the internet. I got lots of positive feedback loops from other transitioning adolescents on the internet (including them saying things like “your parents just don’t understand/don’t support you, you can sue them if they don’t give in” etc).  I saw my first dose of F2T pornography on the internet.  I found a doctor that I could go see to give me hormone treatment on the internet….

“In closing, this trend is going to have a devastating impact on today’s youth about 10 years down the road.  These things are not very well studied, and we are/were their guinea pigs.  Be a role model, be a mentor, but most of all, don’t be afraid to be a parent.  Don’t allow yourself to be bullied into this.  This is your child’s health that is being played with, and your child’s health is not a game - it is life or death.”

gender critical parenting trans parenting teen transition trans teens detransition ftm detransition

Anonymous asked:

About the responsibility of doctors and medical professionals. I saw a now 17-year old in the 'ftm' tag who had had both top surgery and hysto and was now preparing for lower surgery. Legal guardians aside, what kind of doctors perform mastectomy and hysterectomy on a physically healthy 16 year old?? The risks? The permanence? It's easy proclaiming you don't want kids as a teenager, when pregnancy is (mostly) a problem. It just saddened/angered me so.

From what I’ve seen and read, this is not at all uncommon. In fact, it seems it’s becoming so routine that the only question is which surgeon to choose. Most of the FTM blogs I’ve read through seem to assume that full transition is the ultimate goal; it’s only a matter of funding. If the parents of a teenager agree, there is nothing to stop the medical transition process for a minor.

There are definitely some young people who are looking for an alternative to medical transition, but what is on offer? Where are the voices of psychologists or doctors truly working on alternatives? I got a question in my inbox from someone asking for references to such alternatives, but we really need professionals with skill in working with dysphoria who can help. 

gender critical parenting trans teens teen transition alternatives to medical transtion trans parenting FTM alternatives to transition

radfem-momma:

Dear mothers who write to me,

mumtears:

4thwavenow:

twentythreetimes:

I feel bad for your situation. I hear what you’re saying when you tell me that you’re worried about your daughter and you don’t know what to do. I hear that you care and that you’re searching for answers.

I don’t really have anything more to offer you than what is already on my blog. I have my…

THANK YOU so much for writing this. You have really helped me learn and realize some things I was blind to. Of COURSE this would hurt. How could I not see that before?

I would like to delete the probably hurtful reblog you refer to in your eloquent post, but perhaps it’s best I leave it to serve as an example of what NOT to do as a gender-critical parent? I very much appreciate you taking the time to write this post.

The reason mothers like us reach out to you is because we are seriously worried about our young, confused, brainwashed, gender dysphoric daughters and we have difficulties finding resources for them which won’t continue to push them in this direction. We want our daughters to hear from BOTH sides, even though the one that reports ‘all positive’ ftm information is currently the loudest.  While we are sad that you went through this, we want our daughters to LEARN FROM your experiences (much like the Mayday TV show does re airplane crashes). You are amazing, courageous womyn who have been through and are going through a lot and sharing your stories is important.

Personally I had never heard of detransition until getting in radfem circles. Its a dirty word. Youtube trans people with hundreds of videos all seem to have one about detransition, and its like “that’s fine to destransition, but shut up now thanks you are no longer relevant” despite the shared bond of certain medical treatments and social experiences unique to trans identifying people. It seems to me like there is plenty left to discuss there.

I want detransitioners to be visible so that other people can quit pretending they don’t exist. Its not out of pity, its out of fairness. If people who are happy with transition get a voice then so should people that weren’t. Saying “transition doesn’t solve everything” doesn’t make a person a cautionary tale, it makes them a complex human being whose narrative might be important for others to hear. 

At the same time, I don’t think that having detransitioners lecture teens would do much good. I know what we all want when we want our kids to slow down and think about the implications of transition; we want them to be more mature. We want them to understand things that kids are by definition incapable of fully understanding. They can only grow up at their own pace unfortunately. A child robbed of growing at their own pace has been wronged. All we can do is share our reasons for saying “no”, which is that we worry deeply about being unable to reverse the decision if there is a need to. What our kids need to know is that if we say “yes” and something goes wrong it is our fault, not theirs, but they will still be the ones to live with the consequences. That’s not fair. My teen is not trying to transition but we have had the same conversation a lot of times about a variety of issues. Teens of every stripe want to do something permanent and ill advised. I personally got a tattoo (on my stomach, bc I was “never” having children….). I wish my mom had not agreed to do so, but I fortunately don’t regret it either. It is a part of my story, my history, and I am okay with it. I would still tell teens its probably better to wait until you are 18.

Also, I would love to focus on the doctors and therapists, but even they don’t make the standards that they are complying with. Groups like the APA and cosmetic surgery boards make the standards that physicians and therapists must comply with. If you diagnose someone with GID you don’t have a lot of non-transition options available without the risk of being reprimanded for straying outside of conventional treatment. 

I have turned my attention towards doctors in the past, because I have a healthy amount of disrespect for authority and don’t mind criticizing them when I have enough information. People just appeal to authority when I do so (”they are a dr and you aren’t, what do you know?”) so its a go nowhere conversation. 

“All we can do is share our reasons for saying “no”, which is that we worry deeply about being unable to reverse the decision if there is a need to.” 

It really is that simple. 

gender critical parenting trans parenting trans kids trans teens teen transition
twentythreetimes-deactivated201
Dear mothers who write to me, twentythreetimes.tumblr.com

twentythreetimes:

I feel bad for your situation. I hear what you’re saying when you tell me that you’re worried about your daughter and you don’t know what to do. I hear that you care and that you’re searching for answers.

I don’t really have anything more to offer you than what is already on my blog. I have my…

twentythreetimes THANK YOU so much for writing this. You have really helped me learn and realize some things I was blind to. Of COURSE this would hurt. How could I not see that before?

I would like to delete the probably hurtful reblog you refer to in your eloquent post, but perhaps it’s best I leave it to serve as an example of what NOT to do as a gender-critical parent? 

And you’ve made me think harder about how the light of scrutiny should shine squarely on the adults–the psychiatric-medical establishment–that encourages kids to transition in the first place. I just know that so many of them have drunk the Kool-Aid–and those who haven’t are afraid of rocking the boat. 

In a lot of ways, parents have simply abdicated responsibility, closed their eyes to the whole thing. The kids are having to figure everything out for themselves. There is also the idea that parents like me are just old fashioned and out-of-step and we should keep our noses out of it. 

One other thing: As you are probably well aware, young people tend to listen to each other–not the adults in their lives. One reason you are probably hearing from some worried parents is that they feel their kids might be willing to learn something from a peer that they would entirely blow off from a parent or other adult.

I very much appreciate you taking the time to write this post.  I know of several other parents who will find it helpful, too. I actually started this blog to attract other adults who would have an interest in challenging the dominant paradigm; but clearly, that must be done with tact and sensitivity.

twentythreetimes-deactivated201 gender critical parenting detransition I have a lot to learn trans parenting

Anonymous asked:

it honestly just sounds like you're only "gender critical" because your child came out as trans and you don't like that. you're no different than the racists who are "fine with black people" until their daughter starts dating one.

Learning about the dangers of  **medical transition**  (hormones and surgery) because someone I love started talking about it is called “education.” 

Someone becoming more racist when their child starts dating a black person is called “ignorance.”

Being critical of the dominant paradigm for treatment of dysphoria is not the same as disliking or rejecting a human being who chooses to have that treatment. 

The only reason I “don’t like that” is because of what I’ve learned. I never took the time to examine what was happening in psychiatry and medicine vis-a-vis transgender MEDICAL transition before my family was personally affected.

Life is like that sometimes.

gender critical parenting trans parenting teen transition
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