“…gender dysphoria in childhood does not inevitably continue into adulthood, and only 6 to 23 percent of boys and 12 to 27 percent of girls treated in gender clinics showed persistence of their gender dysphoria into adulthood.”
Cognitive-professional dissonance: So tell me again WHY little kids are being put on puberty blockers and called by their “preferred pronouns”? Trans until proven otherwise, despite the odds?
I have scoured the Internet several times, hunting for parents and “helping” professionals outside the religious rightwing who question the dominant trans paradigm, particularly as it pertains to the medical “transition” of children and teenagers. There are a few trans/gender-critical comments on articles and blogs, and a few gender critical blogs (that I’ve linked to in other posts), but otherwise it’s pretty much an intellectual desert.
But there is one psychotherapist who has been brave enough to question. The link is one of the posts on her blog, all of which are worth reading.
“Things I think right at this moment and I’m sure I’m forgetting something:
..That there is peer pressure to transition. That young people coming of age today come out into the queer community and not necessarily the gay, lesbian or bisexual communities. People have complained about a movie that a group of young people made about GLBT issues saying there was too much in it that was trans. That is looking at youth through a very old lens. We need new glasses. Young people today come out into the queer community which has trans youth. They also come out into a world where people explore body modification in a way that did not exist previously. They can pierce and tattoo and so taking the leap to sculpting with medical technology isn’t much of a hop.
…Another component is that as a society we have medicalized so many problems. This DSM included grief. We have social problems that we have individualized and taken out of the social context.
We don’t resist as a group anymore. We take medication.
…We constantly compare gender to the gay liberation movement. Unlike being gay or lesbian, there really are other issues that can look like gender dysphoria and people who talk with friends or read on the internet about how to present to us to get what they believe they need are doing the best they can to fix something that is terribly wrong inside them but we all have to do a better job.”
(x)
“I think she (Shiloh) is fascinating, the choices she is making. And I would never be the kind of parent to force somebody to be something they are not. I think that is just bad parenting… Children should be allowed to express themselves in whatever way they wish without anybody judging them because it is an important part of their growth. Society always has something to learn when it comes to the way we judge each other, label each other. We have far to go.” (x)
Shiloh, we feel, has Montenegro style,” she said. “It’s how people dress there.She likes tracksuits, she likes [regular] suits. She likes to dress like a boy.She wants to be a boy. So we had to cut her hair. She likes to wear boys’ everything. She thinks she’s one of the brothers.” (x)#STOPACCUSINGPEOPLEOFTRANSPHOBIA2K15
#STOPMISGENDERINGSHILOHJOLIEPITT2K15
"She wants to be a boy” she is literally misgendering her child that has made it clear that they “want” to be a boy.
Okay, I totally see your point but like….. it’s a lot of work to eradicate problematic language from your life. Everyone slips up. Everyone fucks up. It takes constant effort. She might not be as educated on transphobic language or the importance of language, or even transphobia politically. I think her attitude is amazing and supportive and loving and she is still new to this. I think she will learn as she goes. Nobody is perfect and it’s her first experience with having a trans child and you can really tell that she is trying. I’m sure once Shiloh says she wants to be called ‘he’ Angelina will make effort to change her pronoun use, but for all we know Shiloh may not have gender dysmorphia and is perfectly fine with being referred to as ‘she’.
Listen, I’m tired of this. Shiloh is just gender non-conforming. She just doesn’t like the gender that has been forcefully imposed on her, as it is instilled by force on every girl from birth. She does not conform to this gender hierarchy, which isn’t a spectrum, it’s a hierarchy of oppression, you know it, we all know it. That doesn’t make her trans at all. It doesn’t make anyone trans. Just gender non-conforming, just being themselves, and it’s totally okay. For everyone’s sake, now a girl cannot like to play football, wear short-hair, suits without being a boy? What the hell is wrong with you people? You are just recycling gender again. This is harming the youth. This is harming you and everyone around you and, deep down all your nice messages and politically correct language, hides a very important piece of the gender hierarchy which puts men on top and women down, and you’re just reinforcing that. Please, stop. Stop this. Of course if everyone she sees like her are boys, she will maybe think she’s wrong and she’s a boy, don’t you see it?
You disgusting, delusional freaks need to shut the fuck up. She was TWO when she said she wanted to be called John because she LOVED PETER PAN.
YOU’RE USING A LITTLE GIRL TO FULFILL YOUR AGENDA YOU PIECES OF SHIT.
YOU THINK THAT A GIRL MUST BE A BOY ON THE INSIDE IF SHE ISN’T FEMININE. YOU’RE NOT BREAKING GENDER ROLES, YOU’RE REINFORCING THEM.
when i was a child i used to pretend i was a boy and got everyone to call me Pyro (from the x men), my sister got everyone to call her Martin instead of her real name. it wasn’t because we actually wanted to be boys, but because we grew up doing things that were typically considered boy things. we used to get teased a lot for not wearing dresses, or like pink, and for playing sports and being quite rough. we were told we were like boys and were called ‘tomboys’. stop saying that girls who are gender non-conforming must want to be boys, let them be children, and let them be little girls who enjoy things without being told they must actually be male. if you had’ve told me when i was a child that i was a boy i would have been very angry with you, it happened to me a lot and luckily i grew up with the mindset that i can do whatever boys do, and still be a girl
Number of Tumblr blogs tagged #trans parenting:
Number of Tumblr blogs tagged #trans parenting that are even mildly critical of the dominant trans paradigm:
A typical Tumblr post under the tag #trans parenting
it makes me so fucking angry when i see people like my friends with parents completely unsupportive of them being trans. i honestly don’t think parents should be trusted to make those kinds of decisions and they shouldn’t be allowed to have control. most parents deal with trans children in the worst ways possible and it’s sickening.
it might have negative health effects but i will totally advocate for other people self medicating when their parents aren’t accepting. at the point where nothing can be done to convince parents, you have to take things into your own hands. especially when dysphoria is too much to live with
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It might have negative health effects, but who cares?
*Note: I deliberately do not link directly to blogs with comments like these because I don’t want to drive traffic there AND I am not trying to start a personal catfight with anyone. My goal is to raise awareness. The posts are easily found via a Tumblr search.
Those of you who have been following me for awhile know where I’m coming from as a gender-critical parent. I recently took a tour of trans parenting Tumblr blogs, and they’re full of what you might expect. A very small sampler:
“Parents please please please talk to your children about gender identity.
please teach children that there are more than two genders and that gender is not what genitals you have”“What my kindergartener taught me about gender”
“A mom and her 3-year-old explore gender”
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And of course, there is plenty of hate for parents who aren’t toeing the line.
The general theme is: Kids ALWAYS know best. Defer to your child and their self-defined gender identity, with no questions asked, no matter how young your child is.
I’ve recently heard from three gender-critical parents of teen girls who want to transition, or who already have. All three are discouraged. They feel like they’ve stumbled into an upside-down reality where they are told to ignore their instincts and doubts and enter the brave new world their children have created.
If there is to be a change in the dominant paradigm, parents are going to have to be involved. They’ll have to find a way to buck the trend. It won’t be easy, and they’ll need support.
I can’t imagine how traumatic this must be for the parents. They need to remember that questioning your parents, your gender and everything else is a normal developmental stage. And if your kids don’t hate you at some point you’re probably doing parenting wrong.
I would think about some of the crazy shit I wanted to do when I was that age and how fucked up my life would’ve been had my parents actually let me. This is a learning stage for kids and we have to let them learn and grow, but we also have to keep them from doing stuff that will have PERMANENT consequences.
And what is different now from when we were growing up–completely different–is that parents have basically zero societal or professional (psychologists or MD) support for even raising tentative questions. I went through 50+ blogs this morning, There was only one teen girl who stopped to consider whether her parents might have a point. Every other post consisted of jeers and ridicule at the transphobic, ignorant moms and dads who dare to put the brakes on even **medical transition**.
Here is an excerpt from the one post I found that even hinted that mom might have a point. And of course, in response to this agonized post, the strangers on the Internet convince her that they are the experts. They know. Her mother’s words should be disregarded
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“But secretly I’m scared she’s right. What if I am making all this up? Yeah yeah, who would choose this right? But what if I did? What if I’m so “confused by everything” as my mom said that I’ve convinced myself Im trans?
It doesn’t seem right. I know what I feel, but she just gets in my head. This is so much harder than anyone tells you. How do you even get through these conversations and stick to your guns? I don’t know if she’s right and I’m confused or Im right and she’s manipulative. I love my mom, but I hate that she does this to me. I asked her to just support me through this and all she could say was that “I support you in everything else you do, but this is weird and it goes against everything about who you are. You don’t like to take Advil but you’ll pump yourself full of hormones. You’re terrified of surgery, but you’ll go through with getting rid of something that is a part of you. It’s not you.”
I don’t know what to do. Im so lost.
Those of you who have been following me for awhile know where I’m coming from as a gender-critical parent. I recently took a tour of trans parenting Tumblr blogs, and they’re full of what you might expect. A very small sampler:
“Parents please please please talk to your children about gender identity.
please teach children that there are more than two genders and that gender is not what genitals you have”
“What my kindergartener taught me about gender”
“A mom and her 3-year-old explore gender”
*******************************************
And of course, there is plenty of hate for parents who aren’t toeing the line.
The general theme is: Kids ALWAYS know best. Defer to your child and their self-defined gender identity, with no questions asked, no matter how young your child is.
I’ve recently heard from three gender-critical parents of teen girls who want to transition, or who already have. All three are discouraged. They feel like they’ve stumbled into an upside-down reality where they are told to ignore their instincts and doubts and enter the brave new world their children have created.
If there is to be a change in the dominant paradigm, parents are going to have to be involved. They’ll have to find a way to buck the trend. It won’t be easy, and they’ll need support.
And I imagine there are analogous giveaways of testosterone to teen girls whose parents aren’t bankrolling their “transition” to FTM.
Transgenderreality.com is providing a really important service. Please let parents of gender nonconforming kids know about this site.
“Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.” - Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Failing to immediately fund your kid’s transition isn’t refusing to love your kid. I honest to fuck don’t know why anyone would take a suicide note as gospel- they are by definition written in a state of extreme emotional distress. The parents said they never heard the name Leelah and their kid seriously brought it up one time.
Of course no responsibility is leveled at online communities that make suicide seem like the only logical alternative to immediate transition. It was also pretty clear that Alcorn feared being an ugly woman a lot more than waiting to transition. Fuck that misogynist nonsense.
this isn’t about whether or not transitioning should be funded by parents, this about the fact that Leelah’s parents forcibly admitted her to conversion therapy, which is barbaric and basically child abuse. sympathy for the lost life of an LGBT child does not mean there’s a personal attack on you.
Alcorn’s exact claim was that they were taken to christian therapists. They included an ambiguous statement about self acceptance said by one of the therapists (AGAIN, in their SUICIDE note, without any other context). Conversion therapy is not telling someone to accept themselves. It usually involves aversion therapy, which aims to pair negative stimuli with images that the patient finds to be ideal. There can be the opposite, where patients are encouraged to think of something specific before achieving orgasm during masturbation. There is also gender training where people are told not to accept themselves and to actively change to better fir their “role”. From all outward appearances Alcorn was counseled that transitioning would not solve all their problems, and since it was not currently an option (due to finances, according to the parents) embracing an attitude of self-acceptance would likely be beneficial. The statement they relayed has nothing to do with actual conversion “therapy”.
I’ve seen christian therapists, and they have explicitly told me it is unethical and a violation of their license to attempt to change the sexual preferences. The APA has multiple statements to this effect, and (being an american organization) it is safe to assume a large christian presence in the APA.
Abusive, hateful parents do not take their kid to counseling when they are sad, btw. They don’t give a fuck. People harassing the alcorns don’t know what abuse is. They think misgendering is violence.
“Of course no responsibility is leveled at online communities that make suicide seem like the only logical alternative to immediate transition.”
A few people who follow this blog expressed surprise that young women who are “transitioning” would choose—and readily receive from surgeons—complete hysterectomies. Making a permanent decision to not have children at such a young age seems…hasty.
While I had viewed 10 or so YouTubes from FTMs…
You are a shockingly awful parent and had I been left alone to face someone like you I would be dead. I sincerely hope that your child grows to become a wonderful man and that the pain it brings you is no less than the joy a good life brings him.
Not acquiescing to the immediate, abrupt demands of a teenage girl for hormones and major surgery may be “shockingly awful” parenting to you, but it ’s what I call love. And I wouldn’t “sincerely” wish a lifetime of pain on anyone, let alone someone’s mother I’d never met, but it takes all kinds, I guess.
Gender critical parents who care enough to inform themselves aren’t the enemy. A society and psychiatric establishment that tells girls they are actually men if they don’t conform to gender stereotypes would be a more appropriate target for your drive-by Internet ire.
