Peak trans (n.): The epiphany experienced by many formerly supportive “allies” upon realizing that the transgender phenomenon is not what we once thought it was.
I have reached this peak so many times I now wear a mental oxygen mask so that I may continue to scale its dizzying heights. But this little news item in the UK Daily Mail had me gasping for breath nevertheless.
Children as young as three-years-old should be taught about transgender issues using story books about penguins, MPs have been told. A charity which works with transgender children say the number of youngsters wanting to change gender is ‘increasingly rapidly’. The organisation wants nursery and infant school children to read the Penguin Land stories, which introduce young children to gender identity issues.
Because, you see, the British school system has so far been doing it all wrong.
The Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES) has accused the Department for Education of failing to take the lead on the issue.
[Update: Please see this informative comment by atranswidow for more in-depth information about GIRES.]
Sexing baby birds is hard. But sexing humans used to be so easy anyone could do it–even Mum or Dad! Not anymore.
Notice the emphasis on “love you just the same” in both of these pages from the storybook. Of course, 3-year-olds need to know they are loved by their parents. The implication is that parents who don’t fall in line with their preschooler’s claim to be the opposite sex don’t love their child. Notice also that there is no attempt to support parents who might celebrate their child being “gender nonconforming.” No, this is about assigning the child as a boy or a girl according to the offspring’s childish convictions.
The family’s only job is to “listen” to the child. Otherwise, they are “wrong.” The child needn’t “listen” to the doubts, guidance, or advice of the parents.
And there is only one way to have a happy ending to this story…
Of course, this is a children’s book so we can’t be emotionally blackmailing Mum and Dad by including a picture showing the grim alternate family event that will likely occur (hint: everyone will be wearing black and there will be no balloons) should they NOT change Polly’s name to Tom. But you can be sure GIRES and other “charities for transgender children” will deliver that message to parents one way or the other. Won’t be too difficult with the lapdog media ever ready to comply.
In evidence to the Common’s Women and Equalities Committee, it said: ‘The numbers of very young children transitioning in primary school are increasing rapidly, so information and reassurance needs to be given at the earliest stage… A report earlier this year stated that the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, the UK’s only centre specialising in gender issues in under 18s, has seen a four-fold increase in referrals in the last six years. In 2014-15, 47 children referred to the unit were aged five or younger and two of the children were three years old.
But the Mail won’t be looking into exactly WHY there has been this rapid increase in children “transitioning,” now will it? Especially since “news” stories exactly like this very one might be helping to fuel this four-fold increase in parents seeking “treatment” for their “transgender” kids?
Funny, isn’t it, how the pediatric medical literature from bygone days isn’t simply overflowing with accounts of young children desperate–desperate!!– to transition to the opposite sex, just waiting for modern science to catch up with all these melancholy preschoolers. Back in the 1970s, those poor “transgender children” had to assuage their dysphoric misery by playing with unisex Legos:
Isn’t it great that today we’ve got it sorted: proper pink and blue Legos so the little ones can make it clear to Mum and Dad exactly which gender they actually are!
Daily Mail, the heavy gendering of modern day toys couldn’t have anything at all to do with this trans kid trend, could it? Of course not. As a GIRES representative admonishes us,
‘Our statutory guidance is clear that young people, whatever their developing sexuality, need to feel that sex and relationships education is relevant to them and sensitive to their needs.
So 3-year-olds need to be concerned about their “developing sexuality” and “sex and relationships.” Got it. When my kid was 3, she would have been a lot more worried about the well-being of her imaginary and gender-fluid dog and cat friends, but I guess times have changed.
In its evidence, GIRES also urged the DfE to press for schools and exam boards to co-operate in registering children ‘in the name that accords with their gender identity’. It added: ‘Schools should be advised that requesting a GRC [gender recognition certificate], as some do, is entirely inappropriate.’
So if little Jimmy comes to kindergarten insisting he’s Janie, and Polly is now Tommy, the authorities must change these children’s school registration papers to the gender these kids proclaim they are.
Can you say “indoctrination”?
We now have “charities” working with “transgender children” instructing legislators in a major Western democracy to toe the transgender line. What could possibly go wrong?
Now I have truly seen it all. And the little preschoolers who say they’re the opposite sex will be applauded for their “bravery,” while any doubting parents will be considered transphobic or, at best, woefully out of step.
Sometimes I think the only explanation for what has happened in the last decade is a poisoned water supply. How else to explain the utter extinction of critical thought amongst parents, medical professionals, journalists, and now, apparently, legislatures and school systems worldwide?
Not long ago, I took a relatively benign view of what is known as “social transition,” which is exactly what GIRES is pushing. My main bailiwick was medical transition: hormones and surgeries. What’s the harm in using a child’s “preferred pronouns?” What’s wrong with agreeing with a preteen insisting they are actually the opposite sex? Little children insisting they are the opposite sex should be validated–even on official school documents. Why not? In fact, if we take this far enough (as trans activists now have), we can all agree that medical transition isn’t even necessary. A penis can be female. A man can get pregnant. Voila! No surgeon or endocrinologist needed.
But I no longer take comfort in the notion that everything short of medical transition is an acceptable compromise. Such thinking has led (to take but one of many examples) to a teenage boy, only recently deciding he is a girl, to insist he be allowed to use the girls’ locker room, even while flouncing around in a dress and no underwear so that his penis is clearly visible. “Lila” Perry has become a media cause celebre, while over 200 of his female classmates, who have, after all, known him for years, are denounced as bigots. This same warped thinking has led to a feminist event at the University of Auckland, NZ being shut down because it was to include a lighthearted cupcake exhibition which dared to celebrate female genitalia.
How can anyone with a working brain not see this for what it is? The dots are so easy to connect. The increasingly gendered stereotyping of kids’ toys and activities; the societal collusion in childhood magical thinking; the redefinition of biological reality, in which a girl can have a penis or a boy a vagina; the denial of sexual dimorphism, possibly leading eventually to major repeated surgeries, lifelong treatment with opposite sex hormones that were never meant for that body; and frequently, sterility. It’s a conveyor belt started up in toddlerhood, leading inexorably to enrichment of medical providers, families wrenched apart, and the McCarthyite silencing and shaming of anyone who disagrees.
There is nothing revolutionary, cutting edge, or “progressive” about any of this. The truly brave and open-minded position a parent could take in 2015 is a loving but firm stand: No, you are not the opposite sex. No, your penis is not female. But you can dress however you like, you can grow up to pursue any job you like, and there is no such thing as boy or girl clothing or pursuits. If you feel like or long to be the opposite sex, it just means that you are a wonderful and unusual example of the sex you actually are. I celebrate you in all your uniqueness, and together we will show the world just how expansive the definition of a boy or girl truly can be.
That is true gender fluidity. That is true gender expansion. And in today’s upside down world, that is good parenting.
Sadly, such reasonable parenting is not only not supported anymore. It is on the point of being outlawed, particularly in leftist circles. Make no mistake, what we have is a gathering storm, with no end in sight. The incredibly successful co-optation of the LGB movement to unquestioningly accept the inclusion of T has resulted in liberals and progressives disowning their own common sense and ability to think and act critically.
The transgender phenomenon is a peculiar mix of anti- and pro-science aspects. On the one hand, it heavily embraces advances in plastic surgery and pharmaceutical interventions, piggybacking on the extreme body modifications that are increasingly the norm in Western societies. Trans activists and “gender specialists,” lacking rigorous research to support their claims, cherry pick brain studies to prove there is such a thing as male or female brain, and that it is therefore the “wrong” body that must be modified to match a brain that has convinced itself it has a specific “gender.”
On the anti-science hand, trans activists and specialists eschew the most basic and long-settled scientific realities, as well as more contemporary discoveries. Feelings and “personal identity” trump any evidence to the contrary. Insights from decades of biology and genetics are ignored, as are the more recent findings in neuroscience and adolescent brain development. Amongst biologists, sexual dimorphism is not a controversial concept in regards to any other member of the animal kingdom. But according to transition promoters, humans should be granted an exception, based purely on professed feelings and ideas.
Similarly, the now well understood late-maturation of human executive function is ignored by the transgender movement. In recognition of the fact that young people are ill equipped to make major decisions or handle dangerous situations, driver education and licensing requirements for teenage drivers have been tightened. The drinking age was increased to 21 in the United States some 30 years ago. For all other feelings or convictions fervently held by young people, mental health professionals serving teens understand that adolescents change their minds, often more than once. They are impulsive. They are unaware of future consequences. And psychologists who take care of younger, primary school children? In any other arena apart from “gender identity,” psychologists recognize that fantasy and reality are blurred in the mental life of young kids. This aspect of child development is as well understood as gravity, or the fact that the Earth is round and revolves around the sun.
Lifelong neuroplasticity–the ability of the human brain to dramatically change in response to experience and circumstances–is one of the most groundbreaking discoveries of the 20th century. But this insight is shunted aside in the rush to legitimize childhood transgenderism. Multiple, replicated fMRI and behavioral studies have shown that the brain rewires in response to experience and repeated activity. And the inherent plasticity of a young brain has actually been understood for many decades. It’s why young brains recover from trauma more quickly and more completely.
How can anyone think that a little child, toying with identity, insisting that they are the opposite sex, subsequently obliged and coddled in this delusion, then “socially transitioned” for 10 years, will not be changed and in fact molded by that experience? How can anyone think such a child would then blithely drop the puberty blockers and revert back to their natal sex? “Social transition” is not some sort of benign trying-it-out period. The entire society–the family, the school, the doctor–in fact, all the adults in the life of a child (who in earlier times would’ve been looking for guidance from those adults, not the other way around) have conditioned that child.
How insane is it that it has become politically incorrect and even illegal in some places to simply encourage a child to accept and embrace the actual biological sex that they are? Why has it become forbidden to guide a child to realize they might be an exceptional and unusual example of their biological sex? To celebrate that; to encourage it. And further, to bravely help a society that has locked itself into gender stereotypes to also accept and celebrate such variations from the norm?
The claim that transgenderism is about breaking gender stereotypes is the most Orwellian, the most insidious, co-optation that has been accomplished by transgender proponents. Not only have they successfully shut down critical thought by convincing the public that the transgender trend is equivalent to the gay and lesbian liberation movement. (Never mind that being sexually attracted to the same sex does not entail divorcing oneself from biological reality.) Using such terms as “gender fluid” and “genderqueer,” they have falsely assumed the mantle of the open-minded, of those who are expanding gender roles. True gender fluidity is a child or a teen or an adult living and looking the way they feel comfortable, denying the labels, denying the stereotypes, refusing to accept restrictions on what a woman or man can be.
The way things are going, a parent who encourages such actual gender fluidity, without facilitating social or medical transition, may soon risk having their child taken away by authorities in the not-too-distant future.
The only way–the only way a change will take place is for parents and other adults to speak out before it’s too late. This juggernaut is moving quickly.
As a society–and more specifically, as people who purport to believe in human liberation and progress–we have lost our way. It is incumbent upon those of us who have come to this realization to speak out in whatever way we can. It will not be the first time in human history that a medical or cultural trend has been fully embraced, later to be discarded.
Those in the transgender community who insist that critics like me are on the wrong side of history have it exactly backwards. A social trend that results in the sterilization of children, in the tightening of gender-restrictive stereotypes, in the alienation of children from their families, is not the stuff of progress. It is a deeply regressive phenomenon that is going to require all hands on deck to reverse.
Just because humans can’t tell male/female penguins apart, doesn’t mean penguins cant tell each other apart. The negative part about this book is that it implies on one page that parents are not trust worthy, and children need to trust strangers. Driving a wedge between children and parents is a pedophile tactic, it was mentioned in a thread on G_C.
[if it is ok to post,]
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gender_Critical/comments/3lvpb5/book_about_penguins_who_believe_theyre_really_a/
This is such a crucial point. The media is only interested in castigating “unsupportive” parents and other family members. There is ZERO coverage of the incredibly destructive effect of (as you point out) the alienation of children from the people who love them most–their parents. Of course, there are exceptions–actually abusive parents–but these activists are taking aim at loving parents who have not bought into their agenda. It is insidious. And it is only gaining strength. We truly do need all hands on deck if we have any hope of slowing down the steamroller that will potentially destroy many families. Not to mention rob children of their childhoods and set them up for a lifetime of dangerous medical interventions.
>rob children of their childhoods
Exactly, even the kids who may end up being transed aside, I do not want my future children (when very small) to even hear the word gender! I want them to be kids and know that they can be themselves, however their little selves naturally turn out to be. When they’re older, whether boy or girl, I will gently educate them about the stereotypes e.g that they see on tv, or with their peers. Same with race, I will point things out when they’re old enough to understand, but it’d be like going up to preschoolers and emphatically telling them that little Suzy’s WHITE and Tommy over here is BLACK. You all have to notice this and think about what it means about Suzy and Tommy as a person. And you all have to identify deep down in your soul as a skin color. Their innocent minds haven’t experienced these social diseases of adults yet, just let them be.
>actually abusive parents
Abusive parents like the misogynistic homophobes that tell little gender non conforming lesbians and gay boys that they’re such monsters they can’t even possibly exist in their own skin as they are? Oh wait, those are the loving, enlightened parents. I keep getting em mixed up.
Kinda OT, kinda not: The right-wing Federalist blog has an article up by Nicole Russell titled, “The Real Reason Transgenders Are Du Jour.”
Russell looks at why such a tiny minority is having such an out-sized effect on mainstream discourse and action. The UK push for preschool propaganda discussed above is an excellent example of how great that influence has become over a relatively short time. To Russell, the reason for the influence is the left, in particular, Hollywood elites.
While that’s a piece of bread The Federalist never stops buttering, the Caitlyn and Jazz brigades march out of exactly that power center and transactivists are skilled at using that power center: Lila Perry went from being a Survivor show reject to being a View interviewee in a matter of weeks, not because Missouri school policy conflicts fascinate news network execs but because industry insiders touted ratings bait to infotainment execs.
Russell’s article also discusses some of the downstream effects on the really young kids whose questioning phase gets snatched up by cause-y adults. She gives Debra Soh a nod in the process.
Thanks. Once again, it’s the right wing doing the critiquing and dare I say it–thinking. Yoo hoo, “progressive” compatriots. You get to think too. It’s not that hard, really. Just put on that thinking cap and, you know. THINK. Then join us on “the right side of history.”
There’s another post about trans on the Federalist, that was really good. I kept waiting for some weird Federalist rightwinginess to come into it and it didn’t. And the authors referred to biological sex as, using Kant’s phrase, ‘a thing in itself’. Satisfying. Dang, I just looked for it and I can’t find it. It had two authors who were both part of the theater world in NYC.
This gender stuff is enough to make a chicken laugh, if we don’t cry first.
It’s good to laugh at it, to maintain sanity. Theatre of the absurd. But then, you realize it’s deadly serious…so we have to get to work.
I know. 🙁
Reblogged this on Stop Trans Chauvinism.
I have been keeping an eye on GIRES in the UK for a while now. I think of them as the UK Office of Gender Misinformation. The problem is that at ministerial level legislation regarding trans issues has been passed down to civil servants and then down to ”charities”, like GIRES, who purport to
be impartial purveyors of knowledge on trans issues, Any one who remembers the UK satirical TV series from the early eighties, ”Yes Minister”, will know what I mean.
Far from Impartial and balanced they have an agenda to push and push it they do at all levels. Their website has recently been updated, and the penguin booklet is a repugnant example of their manipulative methods. Their message is that trans people have the wrong brain in the wrong body. If you question that, or are not sure, you can take their online Transgender Awareness Training e-learning course. http://www.gires.org.uk/elearning/new/player.html It has plenty of examples of discrimination and bullying in the workplace and suicide statistics. You can test your awareness of ”trans issues” by taking the questionnaires before moving from one module to another.
Elsewhere on their web site they have ”useful” information about autogynephilia in that they quote Moser’s ”study” which proves that women have autogynephilia too……. ”it has been postulated that gender dysphoria is associated with self eroticism in trans women. Moser’s article below demonstrates that their autogynephilic experiences are no different from those of other women.”
No further information is apparently needed as this is proof that late transitioning men are just the same as women.
Elsewhere advice to ”trans parents” dealing with child custody refers to ”hostile and uncomprehending mothers”. I guess I’m one of them as I refused to indoctrinate my kids as per Gires approved doctrine and dogma.
No one in ”the powers that be” is querying anything when it is so easy to ask a ”trans charity” for all the relevant statistics and suggestions to implement for changes to be made at policy level.
So who are the people behind GIRES UK? Bernard and Terry Reed set up GIRES as a charity in 1997 after helping their ”trans daughter” with a sex discrimination case. They didn’t stop there however. By 2010 they had both received OBEs. The Gires 2013 accounts list Bernard as treasurer and Terry as secretary. With them, in 2013, was also Celia Macleod as Chair; formerly Colin Bone; a father of 2 children, who spent £50,000 on private treatment to change gender/sex.
Richard Curtis BSc, MB, BS, Dip BA, a trustee in 2013, helped write ”A Guide To Lower Surgery for Trans Men” http://www.teni.ie/attachments/11dd8235-ec9b-40b8-9532-a183b0ce926e.PDF.
All of these people are on a mission to have the general public believe that gender identity is a thing with which we are born and is hard-wired into our brains from birth, that feelings of gender non-conformity can be assisted by medical treatment with hormones and surgery and that family members who do not embrace this are hostile bigots.
I do not condone bullying or discrimination against individuals for any reason, but the insidious tactics of shaming and blaming that GIRES employ against any one who dares to question their rhetoric is simply manipulation and for want of a better word ”Orwellian” in it’s scope.
Thank you SO MUCH for this information. I was going to do some more investigation of GIRES but you did it for me. I am adding an update to my main blog post letting readers know to look at your comment. Depressing to say the least. It’s unbelievable that there is basically no real evidence that gender is innate (i.e. that there is such a thing as “born in the wrong body”) yet that is the foundation of the house of cards the entire transgender enterprise is built upon. It’s an absurdity in any case. The brain and body are a whole. A brain born in a (say) female body is FEMALE by definition. Perhaps it doesn’t fit the typical “female” profile. But given that it is an integrated whole with the rest of the female body, it is simply an unusual example. This is so basic, so simple, yet “they” still think the answer is extreme medical intervention. It’s one thing for adults to choose this treatment. Quite another to be justifying it for children.
I feel so bad for these parents of young children who are starting down this road so young. They have so many years ahead of them of utter anguish (unless they choose to go along with this insanity). My daughter is almost 18 and I’m so thankful that we have gotten this far without hormones or surgeries. I’m doing all I can to delay her “adult” decision to do any of that until several more years. I am so out of my mind with all of this that my head literally feels like it’s going to explode. Sometimes I just have to stop reading transgender news for a while to get back to my own sanity. I have totally reached “peak trans”, but I’m not sure what we can do since the media (except for right wing news) has practically made any questioning off limits. I feel gagged and tied and my daughter is holding the whip. Insanity! Sometimes I just want to leave civilization behind and go live in the forest with the animals.
I know this is not helping the cause to just complain, but honestly, I don’t know what can be done. I needed to let off some steam.
Dorothy, I’m so glad you’re here. Blogging is how I let off steam. I’ve often said that I want to just go live under a rock, away from all of this. But we are both here and our voices are important. Thank you for being here. Whatever our daughters end up deciding in the end, we make a difference just by showing we are not all marching in lockstep.
Agreed! We need to support each other during this horrible cultural gaslighting. To me, this is about so much more than the trans movement. It’s a test, to see where we stand, to see whose still devoted to their own senses.
This was an excellent post btw. Your voice is needed.
The media are constantly pushing, yes. But you gotta look at the comment sections of those reports. I have to say that it’s very clear that the majority of general public commenters are not drinking the koolaid, at ALL. The harder the push and the more egregious the claims (three year olds are trans now???) — the closer a lot of people who are outside the fishbowl get toward peak trans.
It was easier for people of good will to see trans folk as the oppressed minority when the rhetoric was not so strident. A teen boy with natal genitalia intact, pushing to be automatically accepted in the girls’ locker room? A bunch of midwives being asked to stop talking about women and their bodies in basic biological terms? That all flies fine in the digital bubble of cybersupport, but out in the real world, people are not buying it. “Live like you have to live, but don’t expect me to completely revamp my understanding of biology and my use of the English language in order for you to be OK” — that’s the sense I am getting of the general mood. Which is good.
I am right there with you, Dorothy. Some days I gain strength and hope, some days I panic, and some days I crawl under a rock and cry. I’m so grateful for 4thwave for creating and keeping up this site. I know it is a lot of work for her.
We’re in this together. All of us. Keep speaking up. If you see others floundering out there, send them over here. It ain’t over yet…
Hang in, Dorothy.
I’m going to post an update on my own situation in the About comments, if that’s OK, 4thwavenow?
Please do.
Thank you, thank you. Everything in your above post is on point. I too have a daughter (15) who firmly believes she is transgender and we started following the gender-therapist path until I literally was on the edge of nervous breakdown. In th midst of this, I found this website and it saved my sanity. We stopped therapy and said we didn’t support any medical intervention until she is 21. She was “heartbroken” but understanding. Now, I have to find a way to get this very intelligent girl to think about gender in the way we use to…as some e thing you just were, not a label you have to give yourself. I will find a way and I am open to all the will listen about the negative aspects of pro-trans propaganda. Call me a bigot…I have a daughter to save. I might not succeed, but this site has given me the strength to try.
Welcome CSM. Many who come here frequently will relate to the near-nervous breakdown you had. Hoping others in the cyber-wilderness will find us, too. Please let us know how things continue to go with your daughter.
Welcome, CSM. I’m right there with ya.
How sad that you had to stop therapy! Is it possible to find a therapist that’s “outside” of the transmedical industrial complex who you could trust to actually help your daughter deal with whatever is at the root of her struggle with this? It seems so obvious that for any young person going through this, therapy (honest therapy, not from a hormone shill) would be what they need most.
In several states it’s now ILLEGAL to offer therapy to sex-role-nonconforming minors that might introduce the notion that it could be possible to make peace with living in the body without transition. those laws passed because “T” was lumped in “GLB” in laws intended to ban ‘conversion therapy’ for gay minors. I live in one of those states. It is maddening that, in these states, by law (which I am convinced the legislators didn’t actually think through, with regard to “T”), there is no counseling for nonconforming kids that does not point to transition as the sole solution. I kid you not.
It would be nice if more people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual communities would wake up to the fact that “transition” actually amounts to anti-gay conversion therapy for kids who just cannot bear to see themselves as gay or lesbian. Puzzled, can you point us to the text of any of those laws? It would be interesting to see how they are worded. I know it’s true, but I hope there is something, ANYthing in the wording, that would allow a therapists to diagnose a kid as NOT “trans” and in need of therapy for other issues.
4thwave re your question below — can’t reply to your reply but here is the text of the most recently passed law, from the state of Illinois:
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/fulltext.asp?Name=099-0411
There is a lot of LGB and “homosexuality” discussion. the T concept does not show up until after a lot of discussion, in section 5:9 (sliding in as ‘gender expression,” quoting a 2012 APA position statement). This is where the “gender identity” discussion starts to appear. Then it goes back to LGB. then in section 5:13, “transgender” appears as a group that should be protected from “sexual orientation change efforts.” (Which is nuts, of course, because in a lot of cases pediatric transition IS a sexual orientation change effort. it’s just not billed that way.)
There is all this muddle of language regarding sexual orientation. Seriously — I really do feel the entire transgender discussion was folded into a bill that started out as something else.
Bottomline in the language, there is a total prohibition on “sexual orientation change efforts” or “conversion therapy” for minors (under 18), defined thus:
—–
“Sexual orientation change efforts” or “conversion
therapy” means any practices or treatments that seek to change
an individual’s sexual orientation, as defined by subsection
(o-1) of Section 1-103 of the Illinois Human Rights Act,
including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or
to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or
feelings towards individuals of the same sex. “Sexual
orientation change efforts” or “conversion therapy” does not
include counseling or mental health services that provide
acceptance, support, and understanding of a person without
seeking to change sexual orientation or mental health services
that facilitate a person’s coping, social support, and gender
identity exploration and development, including sexual
orientation neutral interventions to prevent or address
unlawful conduct or unsafe sexual practices, without seeking to
change sexual orientation.
———
The initial objective of the therapy, appears as if it would be pertinent, if looked at sideways at least. But … I think a lot of wary therapists are just going to adopt the simple route here, which is … give the kids what they say they want.
So it’s interesting that it’s about “gender expression.” Part of the muddle is that most of us here SUPPORT “gender nonconformity” (clothes, hair, interests, etc),
which could certainly almost be synonymous with “gender expression” or “gender identity exploration.” Interpreted strictly, “exploration” does not necessarily equal “transition.” The wording of a law is so important, so there is wiggle room, I’d say. But, as you point out, most therapists are just going to lump it all together and assume this means they cannot question in any way a kid who says they’re trans. Even if there are massive underlying issues that might have led to the kid claiming that. Further, the online contagion we have all written about here ad nauseum would seem to be untouchable.
CSM, glad you made it here. This site has been a sanity-saver for me as well. I wish you luck.
My daughter is quite intelligent too and it is hard for me to comprehend that she has fallen for the trans propaganda hook, line, and sinker. She feels entitled to choose her own gender and, like most adolescents, isn’t capable of seeing the long-term consequences of this choice. I keep hoping that as her brain matures, she will eventually realize and accept her biological reality.
This post is phenomenal! The Orwellian aspect, you nailed it. We need to not lose track of that. ‘Cultural gaslighting’ is a fantastic term! I remember another time not too long ago when there was a thing that was ridiculous and it was presented in the media as real and if you disagreed with it you were considered scum. And that thing was ‘recovered’ memories. Everyone believed those were real. Until the content of the ‘recovered’ memories turned into Satanic ritual abuse including murders of children. And that’s when the penny dropped. There were no missing children. And then the tide turned and it became OK to say this is garbage. What worked then was people not being too intimidated to question it.
We need a political organization that goes and lobbies the same legislatures that GIRES and things like it do. I can so easily imagine a slideshow type presentation to legislators explaining what autogynephilia is. And how completely differently they view the trans thing after seeing that. 😊
Speaking of gender, no wait I mean sex roles, this is a very nice post on Medium today https://medium.com/@davidegreenwald/against-masculinity-498339cb8f42 in which he describes in concrete terms the childhood and teen book and music rules for what counts as masculine enough. Very refreshing.
If you need a laugh to stay sane in the face of all this come over to PetuniaCatLand, have a look at my cartoons and I’ve got some humor posts I found and reblogged. 😊 Including this one https://petuniacat.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/the-caitlyn-effect/
My biggest concern about the non-medical aspects of transitioning is how the family dynamic works. We all know families where a child has “disappointed” family members by rejecting activities or hobbies that the rest of the family likes or expected the kid to enjoy. Who doesn’t know a family when there’s that *one kid* who doesn’t like sports or fishing or the like? I cannot imagine how hard it would be for a kid whose family has enthusiastically embraced the idea that little 4-year old Susie is actually Mike because she like to climb trees and wants to be called Mike to then break it to the family 5 or 10 years later that in fact she is Susie and not Mike after all.
While parents mean well (and most dutifully try to avoid it) they set and enforce a wide range of expectations that go beyond basic parenting.
Peak Trans cannot come fast enough.
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Great piece 4thwave, and atranswidow’s comments too. My worry is that we’ll not get to peak trans in any sort of enlightened way from so-called progressives, but as a horrible backlash from the right towards LGB and women for good measure. We’re seeing this start to build in the right-wing press now, and it’s being pushed along as well by MRAs who can’t contain their glee at finding “feminists” who support criminal trans males in the name of “social justice”.
It’s all very worrying, I agree, where this is heading. I don’t know what else we can do other than continue to gather and speak out as we are here–both online and in real life. The political stance many of us are taking is outside the left, outside the right…it’s a new place but it’s where we have to start. It’s frustrating that only the right wing, which I don’t agree with in so many ways, is taking the lead on this. But slowly, slowly…
But I also think it is a great teaching moment with conservatives. Let them fight the bathroom battle. They have the resources and energy and aren’t going to worry about being called hateful for it. We should try to educate conservatives about the distinction between sexual orientation and “identity” so that LGB isn’t drawn into the maw. I think most conservatives I know are very open to learning about the mental health aspects of TG.
I have gotten bolder for sure. Especially on-line, but I have been met with a lot of extreme reaction. For example, I made a comment that currently we can’t change a person’s sex. It’s just impossible. It was like a swarm of hornets came out of nowhere and attacked me for saying it. (This was Facebook). Best I could do was say I wasn’t discussing it further because it wasn’t the place for it. Clearly many of the attackers were MTF trans people based on their photos. They shrieked about me not supporting the “community”. How dare I not support the “community”. They told me I don’t understand biology. Uh huh. I think some of these people have some serious issues with rage. It’s quite bizarre.
It is very difficult when radfems and other gender-critical voices of reason are so sidelined. Radfems and lesbians have been talking about this for years, but we are a small and massively under-resourced group.
The lack of resources (ie ££, time, a media platform, influence) is in stark contrast to the wealthy and well connected MRAs, trans activists and their teen army that drive a lot of this.
Just look at GIRES, as you talk about in this post. They have grants, funding, a massively undue influence on social policy. Where is the gender critical equivalent ? Where is there even that sort of cash and attention for people who are the victims of the whole trans circus ?
endthwoo, it gets weirder. The therapist I first met (gender specialist) emphasized her “feministic approach”. I don’t really know what exactly that means, but I do find it baffling that her life’s work involves, in large part, helping men to become women (which we know is not possible, but ya know we can sorta fake it and pretend).
Maybe she thinks a mutilated man who attempts to imitate women is more palatable than a male with his parts intact.
People are a lot stranger than I thought. It feels like I’m going through some sort of existential crisis or something. If I didn’t start off crazy before learning about this, I’m definitely headed in that direction now.
I think holding the line on what “sex” means is of the greatest importance. I think we’d have the most support of the general public in this, as I think most people would understand we do need predictable biological terms. And that humans are not extra special snowflakes that need different biological terms from all the other animals that have ever existed. That connection to all other forms of animals needs to be emphasized, as everyone gets carried away with the rare disorders of sexual development, i.e. intersex.
I know that doesn’t help your daughter much right away, but it does allow us to ensure that female humans’ issues and needs can be made distinct. It gives us older female humans some space to show the younger ones all the variation we can have, and still have a term that exclusively refers to us. It gives us political space to be exclusive in a publicly-acceptable way since it’s based on biology. It allows us to maintain more accurate means of collecting data about humans (esp. crime stats). It gives us some space to support our younger sisters in becoming their whole mind&body selves while the knot of “gender” gets dealt with.
All the other gender stuff I’m afraid to discuss with others under my own name, but this is one I can argue vehemently, frequently, with the greatest confidence and fearlessness under any name I use including my real one.
What puzzled posted on September 25, 2015 about the Illinois legislation doesn’t seem that bad. Except it does use “gender identity” once. The whole trans mess involves confusing language but also people who just are confused. If we use gender to mean sex roles, and we all do, then a lesbian teen wearing a fedora and refusing to wear any femmy clothes is certainly involved in ‘gender exploration’. Because gender/sex roles is about superficial stuff like clothes. But those a-holes John Money and Robert Stoller invented this other idea of gender as some intrinsic immutable something inside of you (that alternates between being in your psychology and in your brain). it’s unclear if the legislation is actually buying in to that notion of “gender identity”, the one that can be, according to trans ideology, the wrong one for your body. And THEN equating that magical version of gender with sexual orientation. Which of course is completely unjustifiable. Sexual orientation actually for sure exists. Straight people have a sexual orientation too. But “gender identity” only seems to exist for the “gender dysphoric” and is part of a whole little model in transgender where you have this nonphysical thing that makes your body ‘wrong’ so that you need all that hideous treatments. So yeah, therapists especially if they don’t understand these distinctions, may very well as you both say believe their barred from talking to teenagers who say that there trans about what that even means.
I like how puzzled talks about “LGB language” and then the T coming into it later. Here’s a cartoon about that.
https://petuniacat.wordpress.com/2015/09/26/and-then-there-were-three/
Thoroughly enjoyed your post. I have come to many of the same conclusions myself.
Just want to ask about the video you posted with the high school student wearing the skirt (who wasn’t wearing underwear). Wondering where you found that. Admittedly I’m as skeptical as they get. LOL!
I’m feeling less frazzled these days about my situation. So glad I didn’t get sucked into the vortex. I do worry about the future, but at least I won’t be the one pulling the trigger. I keep talking to my son about considering the risks of drastic treatments and that there isn’t much evidence they work as well as claimed. I said you won’t get honest answers about that fact either. Hopefully he is smart enough to make a reasonable decision. I sure wish someone was working on some other treatment options.
The animated GIF came from a story on GenderTrender about Lila Perry and the school walkout. It was evidently pulled from a longer news video that has now been taken down by YouTube.
Here: https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/200-students-stage-walk-out-in-support-of-girls-rights/#comment-59499
The skirt ‘boner’ made me fear for the 14 year old girls that don’t want to see a semi-boner on an aroused guy guy almost 18, and over 6 feet tall invading their space while they are on their period. I would be unable to undress in front of him-let alone take a piss- [at that age], no offence intended-just a fact.
Yeah. And you have to wonder why over 200 of his female classmates actually picketed the school to try to prevent him using the girls’ locker and bathrooms. Also, he was first offered a private unisex bathroom to change and eliminate in–but he refused. What do his female classmates know about him that we don’t?
It’s the parents’ job to guide and teach their children. If it were anything but the trans issue, parents would be soundly criticized for failing to act like parents. Imagine the outcry if the parents of an anorexic teen catered to her delusions and allowed her to get liposuction surgery. And there have been parents of teens who have provided them with alcohol for their parties – and have been rightly condemned for doing so. It is understood in these sorts of instances that it’s NOT the loving thing to do to allow the kids to do whatever they want and that it’s bad parenting not to say “no” when necessary. Sometimes, the most loving thing a parent can do is to say no. The child might not see it that way at the time, but when they get older, they’ll understand that their parents were looking out for their best interests.
Back when I was a new mother in 1981, there was the philosophy of non-sexist child raising. It’s goal was to free children to be able to express their individual personalities and s without regard to stereotyped gender roles, because personality, interests, and personal style were not innately linkied to one’s sex. Thus kids were free to be themselves without regards to stereotypes. They could be themselves without changing themselves. It acknowledged that your life didn’t have to revolve around what sex you were. This was truly liberating, unlike the trans kids phenomenon, We need a return to the common sense of non-sexist c hild raising that respects a child’s bodily integrity and their unique personalities.
Thanks once again for an cogently written post.
I keep thinking about those stupid penguin stories. How weird would it be to say to one’s kid, “I don’t know what you are, but I’ll love you anyway?” Geesh thanks Mom and Dad. Sounds like someone is telling their kid they are some alien species .
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I don’t think this runaway train will stop until the adult children who were (let’s face it) forcibly transitioned — medically mutilated – sue the NHS, their parents, and whomever else colluded to put them onto the conveyor belt to gender reassignment. Money – in terms of six and seven figure settlements – for ruined lives is what will bring a dose of reality. Sadly I think it will be some time until that happens.