Note: 4thWaveNow frequently features posts (like this one) that focus, often unflatteringly, on the activists and providers involved in pediatric transition. These people aren’t ogres who intend to bring harm to the young people and families under their care and influence. They undoubtedly sincerely believe they are doing the right thing. The purpose here, as ever, is not to demonize, but to shed light on the potential and actual damage done by the practice and ideology of “gender affirmation.” Harms done not only to children and their families, but to the decades of progress achieved by the women’s and LGB liberation movements.
A well known subscriber to the “gender affirmative” approach to trans-identified children is Diane Ehrensaft, PhD., a clinical and developmental psychologist. Dr. Ehrensaft, author of The Gender Creative Child, plays a powerful role in the burgeoning field of pediatric transgenderism. She is director and chief psychologist for the University of California-San Francisco children’s hospital gender clinic, and is also an associate professor of pediatrics at UCSF. She sits on the Board of Directors of Gender Spectrum, a San Francisco Bay area organization which is heavily involved in matters pertaining to trans-identified children and youth.
In February, Dr. Ehrensaft, along with other pediatric transition specialists, including Joel Baum, MS (senior director of professional development and family services at Gender Spectrum), presented at a conference and continuing education event in Santa Cruz, California. The all-day event, attended by over 400 people, was recorded and video is available here. (Hat tip: GenderTrender, which covered part of Ehrensaft’s presentation here.)
The 5.5-hour video is well worth watching in its entirety for anyone interested in the current state of “gender affirmative” therapy. This post will touch on only a few highlights from the conference. There is much, much more. (Numbers in square brackets give approximate hour:minute time stamps for each video excerpt.)
Dr. Ehrensaft [1:31] tells the audience that “gender affirmation” differs from the more cautious approach of learning to “live in your own skin” provided by Dr. Ken Zucker in Toronto. Zucker’s clinic was shut down by trans activists a few months ago—reported by Ehrensaft with obvious glee and to the applause of her audience. Gender affirmation also parts company with the “watchful waiting” protocol pioneered by clinician-researchers in the well known Amsterdam gender identity clinic founded by Peggy Cohen-Kettenis. The Dutch have repeatedly counseled caution in social transition and early intervention for gender dysphoric children, given the high rate of desistance and the fact that early social transition has made it more difficult for some young people to change their minds later—and might even increase the likelihood that a child will persist in a trans identity.
Ehrensaft labels “gender affirmative” therapy as “listen and act,” i.e., essentially follow the child’s lead in whether or not to proceed with early interventions like social transition and puberty blockers. According to Ehrensaft, this boils down to whether the child says they ARE (vs. “want to be”) the opposite sex, and how “persistent, insistent, and consistent” they are in asserting their cross-sex identification and gender “expression.”
Ehrensaft denies that gender-affirmative therapists simply “rubber stamp” a child’s gender identity, yet despite her protestations to the contrary, she constantly reifies the idea that gender identity is innate and recognizable even in pre-verbal babies and toddlers (more on that later in the post).
To be fair, in her presentation Ehrensaft does acknowledge the replicated research showing that a large majority of gender dysphoric kids will grow out of it. Yet she strongly believes that she and others like her can reliably distinguish between the “apples” who are truly transgender and the “oranges” who are only exploring.
Even if you believe there is such a thing as a truly transgender child, what is the justification—the evidence— for her hubris, her certainty that she and others like her who peddle the “gender affirmative” approach can predict which children might be happy, decades later, as sterilized, surgically and chemically altered adults? There really isn’t any. Even so, at one point, she claims science is on her side, pointing (without directly citing it) to “research” out of the University of Washington that proves—gender-defiant children really, really, really mean it when they say they prefer the clothes, toys, and lifestyle more typical of the opposite sex.
Let’s take a closer look at the “insistent, consistent, persistent” mantra—droned incessantly by gender experts, with this conference being no exception. While Ehrensaft and Baum take great pains to say they support and even celebrate gender “nonconformity,” when the young trans-identified people (present at the event and on video) talk about their experiences and how they “know” they are trans, we hear the same rationale we always do: they eschew sex-stereotyped behaviors and appearance.
How does Ehrensaft directly instruct us in what it means to be “consistent, persistent, and insistent”? She plays a video clip of a young FtoM who has this to say about why s/he is and has always been trans: [47:00]
We [trans kids] don’t know about much but we know about gender. We know that girls are the ones supposed to be in skirts and dresses and guys in jeans and fight all the time…I think what should have been a sign to my parents was um…I was a quiet child. I didn’t fuss or anything. But whenever my mom would try to dress me up and put lipstick on me and get me all pretty for pictures I would throw a tantrum, I would scream … that should have definitely been a big sign to her that I was not trying to fit into the girl role… The most feminine thing I did as a child was paint my nails—black.
There is knowing laughter from the audience at this last point—as if choosing black (instead of pink or purple?) fingernail polish were a sure sign that this child was, in fact, a boy. A child who was, yes, persistent, consistent, INSISTENT…that she didn’t want to act like a stereotypical girl in a dress wearing lipstick.
If Ehrensaft could respond here, I imagine she might say something like, “oh but it’s more than gender expression!” If it’s more than that, why is the one video excerpt provided to teach us about who is really trans all about stereotypes? Could it be that conforming to stereotypes is the very basis of the definition of a “trans child”?
We hear from another trans-identified teen during the panel discussion, Jordan, a 17-year-old FtoM. We also hear from Jordan’s mom, Heidi, who leads a local support group for trans-identified youth and their families.
Heidi—who at several points mentions her strong church affiliation–talks about some of the childhood experiences that convinced her that her daughter was actually her son, including this [4:37]:
When Jordan was about 2 it became clear to me that Jordan liked boy things—you know trucks, video games, violence…when he was about between 2 and 4 I noticed he would rip off the pretty little dresses I would put on him. Would go screaming through the house and would not leave the house until he had on his brother’s big, holey T-shirts. I just thought he was a tomboy and that it was a phase. He was driving me nuts but it was a phase. During this time I worked for a very large church… We are Christians… We were told by everyone around us to make that kid wear a dress.
Another kid screaming in a dress.
Mom tried to force her kid to wear dresses: check. The kid liked trucks: check. A girl not wanting to wear dresses is ”a phase”: check. Mom didn’t like this (it drove her nuts): check. Mom was involved with a church, whose members wanted her to “make” her child wear a dress.
Could this stuff be any more obvious?
Jordan seems to agree that an aversion to wearing dresses is a key sign of one’s innate gender identity [4:44].
My mom put me in a dress at Easter. [But I] went to church in dirty jeans and a big T-shirt. That was kind of a big signal.
A big signal of what? That Jordan didn’t like dresses, preferred to wear jeans? What is this obsession with dresses that we see in each and every media story about girls who are “really boys?” When did we step into this time machine, returning to the turn of the 20th century? Even Katherine Hepburn wore pants and eschewed dresses in the 1940s.
Then there’s this from Heidi [4:40]:
[During the elementary school years] I was [putting up] posters of really strong women. You know, like the singer Pink? Oh, this is a real kick-ass girl, you can be like her… when he had a crush on her. It was things like that.
Things like… not wanting a lesbian daughter? This conference took place in 2016, in the San Francisco Bay Area–for decades considered one of the most gay-friendly places in the USA, and the audience tittered at this revelation of Jordan’s same-sex attraction—as if that were a sign Jordan was actually a boy!
Mom goes on to describe how Jordan was diagnosed with a whole “plethora” of mental health issues, from ADD to bipolar to mood disorders, and concludes that it was being trans that was the root of all these other problems; once Jordan transitioned, everything else cleared up: the self hatred, the self harm, the unhappiness.
This is an increasingly common refrain, and in fact, Ehrensaft at several points in her presentation asserts that “gender is the cure” for an array of other mental health issues. What we don’t see, from Ehrensaft or anyone else, is actual evidence that allowing children to “transition” results in improvements in mental health over the long haul. What we are beginning to see in accounts from some people who have detransitioned is that transition essentially put their other issues on hold for a while—only to re-arise when the initial transition exhilaration began to dissipate.
We have evidence from several studies that gender dysphoria often co-presents with other mental health issues. Ehrensaft and others like her are now turning such research on its head, positing that the cause of comorbid mental health problems is a child being somehow thwarted in their gender identity.
Returning to the conference, although Jordan’s “gender expression” is not assumed to be the real reason for transition, it is telling that, as always, it is examples of how a person does or does not conform to sex-stereotyped behaviors that are presented as the evidence for being transgender.
And that goes even for babies, according to Ehrensaft. During the audience Q&A, a man asks how one might tell if a pre-verbal one or two-year-old is transgender. Ehrensaft’s answer, delivered with a knowing and confident smile [Clip for this excerpt is here, starting at approx. 2:05-2:06 in main video]:
[Preverbal children] are very action oriented. This is where mirroring is really important. And listening to actions. So let me give you an example.
I have a colleague who is transgender. There is a video of him as a toddler–he was assigned female at birth–tearing barrettes out of then-her hair. And throwing them on the ground. And sobbing. That’s a gender message.
Ehrensaft miming a significant “gender message:” a toddler ripping barrettes out of her hair
Ehrensaft is a developmental psychologist, and the only reason she can think of that a 2-year-old girl might detest the feel of barrettes in her hair is that the child is really a boy?
Again, I imagine Ehrensaft’s retort: Oh, that was just one thing–there were lots of other signs. Then why does Ehrensaft use this as a seminal example when responding to a question from the audience? And according to Ehrensaft, if the child (consistently, insistently, and persistently?) tore the barrettes from her hair “not once, but twice, three times,” that is the clincher.
Ehrensaft elaborates:
Sometimes kids between 1 and 2, with beginning language, will say, “I BOY!” when you say “girl.” That’s an early verbal message! And sometimes there’s a tendency to say “Well, honey, no you’re a girl because little girls have vaginas, and you have a vagina so you’re a girl…Then when they get a little older [the child] says, “Did you not listen to me? I said I’m a boy with a vagina!”
Believers in gender identity accuse gender skeptics like me of “reducing people to their genitals.” But here we have a developmental psychologist saying in so many words that the only thing that makes a girl a girl….is her vagina. I don’t know about the other parents reading this, but I can say my response to my two-year-old in that scenario would not have been a reference to (one aspect of) her genitals.
What else does Ehrensaft advise for parents who are so concerned about their baby’s “gender identity”?
They can show you about what they want to play with…and if they feel uncomfortable about how you are responding to them and their gender… if you’re misgendering them. So you look for those kinds of actions….like tearing a skirt off. …There was one on that Barbara Walters special, this child wore the little onesie with the snap-ups between the legs. And at age one would unsnap them to make a dress, so the dress would flow. This is a child who was assigned male. That’s a communication, a pre-verbal communication about gender.
Ehrensaft then counsels parents not to try to squelch non-sex-stereotyped behaviors (good advice), but ruins it with a faith-based assertion of innate gender identity:
And children will know [they are transgender] by the second year of life…they probably know before that but that’s pre-pre verbal.
Not to put too fine a point on it but…this is a PhD. developmental psychologist talking here. What is her evidence base for saying babies “know” their gender identity?
…Especially since, at other points in her presentation, Ehrensaft acknowledges that gender identity can be fluid.
So which is it? A baby innately “knows” their gender identity, or it’s mutable? To be logically consistent, Ehrensaft ought to also say that some infants are born (innately) “gender fluid”—an assertion that would be much closer to the truth, given the fact of lifelong neuroplasticity. I wonder when the NIH will fund a study to determine which babies are born “binary” and which “genderqueer”?
What if gender-fluid children transition but change their minds? No harm done, according to Ehrensaft. She breezily asserts [1:50] that there is “no data” that it harms kids to switch back and forth between identities, as long as we “support” them in their “journey”—presumably even if that journey takes them down the road to hormones and surgeries which will alter them forever. She even touts “nonbinary transition” [3:57] as if it is something to be celebrated when youth who define themselves as “agender,” “nonbinary,” or any of the other “genders” (better known as “personalities”) might choose irreversible medical interventions.
Is Ehrensaft aware of cases like this? Would she just chalk it up to this detransitioned woman being “gender fluid” instead of “binary” and the permanent damage done to her body just part of her “gender journey” for which we have “no evidence” of any harm?
My double mastectomy was severely traumatizing. I paid a guy, a guy who does this every day for cash, to drug me to sleep and cut away healthy tissue. I did this because I believed it would heal all of the emotional issues I was blaming on my female body. It didn’t work. Now I’m still all fucked up and I’m missing body parts, too.
Ehrensaft also thinks social media has “been a godsend” [2:08] and a “tremendous boon” for young people to find others like them, with the only real ill effect being the online bullying of trans-identified kids. To be fair, she does throw a bone later to the fact that some kids presenting to clinics may be using a “script” and it’s important to look deeper to see whether it’s “their script”—which is something; although if Ehrensaft was trained in child/adolescent developmental psychology, her cheerleading for nothing but the positive effects of social media is stunning. Has she never heard about online “communities” of teen anorexics and cutters?
Now to touch upon one final topic covered by Ehrensaft and others in the conference: permanent sterilization caused by prepubescent hormone treatment. This “side effect” is rarely mentioned in the countless media stories celebrating trans kids. One usually has to hunt for obscure literature references to find any mention. But during the conference, several providers do acknowledge—repeatedly–that puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones always result in permanent infertility. They do so at least three times in the conference: [3:53], [4:18], and [5:06].
During the closing panel discussion, Ehrensaft and Baum devote several minutes to the topic of sterilizing trans kids—but explain it away with a twofer: By equating it to treatments for children with life-threatening cancers, and by stating that parents reluctant to sterilize their 11-year-olds are only concerned because they selfishly want grandchildren.
Actually, it’s a three-fer, because Ehrensaft and Baum manage to squeeze in the usual emotional blackmail: children who have to go through their natal puberty might commit suicide. [5:06].
Ehrensaft:
Another thing that’s a show-stopper around [parents] giving consent is the fertility issue. That if the child goes directly from puberty blockers to cross- sex hormones they are pretty much forfeiting their fertility and won’t be able to have a genetically related child.
There’s a lot of parents who have dreams of becoming grandparents. It’s very hard for them not to imagine those genetically related grandchildren. So we have to work with parents around, these aren’t your dreams. [she laughs]. You have to focus on your child’s dreams. What they want.
Let’s be very clear here: Ehrensaft laughingly implies that parents concerned about their child’s human right to choose or not to choose to reproduce, a decision heretofore seen as inalienable and reserved for mature adults, are really only concerned about future grandchildren, not the bodily integrity or cognitive wherewithal of their prepubescent child. These egocentric parents are denying their children “their dreams.” These thoughtless parents need to be “worked with” by gender specialists.
And that’s not all: Ehrensaft goes on to shame these recalcitrant parents with the implication that puberty-blocked, 11-year-old trans tweens are more socially responsible than their clueless parents:
And what I will say about many of the youth who want puberty blockers is: I have never met such an altruistic group of kids around adoption! Never! “I will adopt because there are so many children who need good homes.” And I think that’s both heartfelt but also they’re trying to tell us the most important thing to me right now is being able to have every opportunity to have my gender affirmation be as complete as possible. Anything else is secondary.
Do we need a PhD in developmental psychology to tell us this? You bet an 11-year-old thinks anything but what they want RIGHT NOW is secondary. I want it, and I want it right now: the motto of youth, of children who are a decade or more away from full development of their reasoning, judgment, and awareness of future consequences.
But wait—perhaps there’s hope. Asks Ehrensaft:
The question is, can an 11-year-old, 12-year-old at that level of development, be really thinking and know what they want at age 30 around infertility?
Can they? Might it be ok to wait and allow this child to mature to adulthood before making such momentous decisions?
The answer to that is: We don’t think twice about instituting treatments for cancers for children that will compromise their fertility. We don’t say, we’re not going to give them the treatment for cancer because it’s going to compromise their fertility.
So here we have a woman who is directly responsible for sterilizing 11 and 12 year old children equating simply waiting–allowing a child to grow up to make their own decisions—with denying cancer treatment. And of course, we know what’s coming next: Transition or suicide.
For some of the youth, having the gender affirmation interventions is as life-saving as the oncology services for children who have cancer.
And they must have these interventions right now!
I wonder: Do Ehrensaft or any of the others here, so very certain of their moral superiority, ever lie awake at night wondering whether these children in their care could just as easily be supported in waiting?
Joel Baum instructs parents to transition their kids–or else.
Joel Baum, head of education for Gender Spectrum doubles down [5:09] to deliver the coup–de–grâce to any parents who might still be hesitating:
I’ll just add one thing here. When we’re working with families, what is the leverage point for that family?…The fact of the matter is at the end of the day, it is their decision and we just hope they’re going to make an informed decision. Just make sure you have all the information you need. Which includes:
Here comes the punchline—the ultimate “leverage point”:
You can either have grandchildren or not have a kid anymore because they’ve ended the relationship with you or in some cases because they’ve chosen a more dangerous path for themselves.
Here, I’ll just let one of my lovely, unpublished commenters translate Joel Baum’s so-very-subtle veiled threat into plain language:
You are a horrible mother and you are abusing your son. You’re the reason trans people kill themselves. I hope one day he escapes from you and your transphobic abuse and never has to see you again.
Never mind that my daughter desisted from trans identity; never mind that our family remains intact despite my “transphobic abuse” i.e., refusal to pay for hormones and top surgery. And never mind, Joel Baum, that there is no evidence that troubled youth will desist from self harm if their parents are terrified into paying for irreversible medical interventions.
At this juncture, let me repeat what I’ve said many times before: A concern about sterilizing children is not a statement about whether a person ought to reproduce or not. It’s about respecting the right of children to mature to adulthood to make the decision for themselves. It’s a basic moral tenet, respected in every other area of human rights law: you don’t sterilize children.
And this, too: There is no evidence, historical or otherwise, that a child prevented from medically transitioning will kill themselves before making their own medical decisions as an adult. That activist-clinicians feel justified in holding this threat over the heads of loving parents—and that journalists, politicians, and pediatric specialists who should know better abet them in wielding this weapon—is deeply shameful and should be exposed to the intense, disinfecting light of public scrutiny as long as necessary; until the purveyors of this immoral strategy are finally forced to answer the difficult questions they have been avoiding for the better part of a decade.
This conference is worth studying for anyone who wants to fully understand how a formerly rare diagnosis, with medical treatment only available for legal adults, has morphed into a pediatric specialty area where doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists wave away the sterilization, drugging, and permanent medical alteration of children with nary a peep of dissent. And they do it by shamelessly scaring the bejesus out of everyone, by shaming parents into believing that unless they permanently sterilize little Judy or Billy at age 11, unless they agree to irreversible medical interventions for their teenager, they will be colluding in their child’s demise.
Watch the entire 5-hour presentation, even if you have to do it over several sessions. What you’ll be observing is how key movers and shakers on the cutting edge of pediatric transition in the United States are moving inexorably forward. Understand their tactics. Understand their ideology.
Because despite its steady progress so far, the “gender affirmative” pediatric transition juggernaut is only beginning to pick up speed.
[Meanwhile, if you haven’t already, be sure to read this post by a therapist who is skeptical of the “identity model” for trans-identified youth.]
This is terrifying. The way it’s inculcating itself into mainstream paediatric care and no one is questioning it.
Worse it’s being supported by the LGB community that should be looking out for the interests of LGB kids.
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gendercriticaldad: Worse it’s being supported by the LGB community that should be looking out for the interests of LGB kids.
In Britain it is being supported by Mermaids, Gires and Gendered Intelligence, none of which can be called part of ‘the LGB community’ (assuming such a thing even exists).
Stonewall did not extend its remit to include campaigning for ‘Trans’ people until February 2015; before then it was an LGB organisation only. Nowadays Stonewall seems to be relying on Gendered Intelligence to tell it what line to take with children on transgenderism.
Something to note about Stonewall: it is not a membership organisation. It is a pressure group. It is not answerable in any way to the people for whom it claims to speak. And by the same token, it does not receive membership fees. Meanwhile, the money has to keep rolling in from somewhere to pay the salaries of those full-time career campaigners.
Stonewall receives significant amounts of money in Government grants for things like research and training. I suspect that one reason Stonewall embraced the ‘T’ at that point was because they were looking for a new cause after the gay marriage law was passed. Meanwhile the Cameron government was also looking for a new ‘liberal’ cause and (probably partly under pressure from the Lib Dems, then in coalition) was gravitating towards ‘transgender rights’ (as subsequently evidenced by the inquiry into Transgender Equality conducted by the Women and Equalities Committee in Parliament).
Moving away from Stonewall and into the real worlds of ordinary lesbian and gay people in Britain: anecdotally, I’d say support for the ‘T’, such as it was, is eroding, and the transing of children is one of the things that people find really disturbing.
Many of the more outspoken critics of transgenderism, and the transing of children in particular, are lesbians. There are good reasons for this. I look back on the child I once was — a bloody-minded little tomboy with a strong masculine identification — and I recognise that if I were growing up now, I would be very very lucky to resist the social pressures to ‘identify as transgender’. I know there are many other lesbians who feel much the same way.
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There lies a chunk of the cause-
Activists who are recieving paychecks looking for the next cause because, er, paychecks. I was wondering what happened to the professional gay marriage campaigners post victory.
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Thank you for this article and for this blog. I am an outsider witnessing this phenomenon in a neighboring family in my community. Nothing I can say could deter the mother of her deeply hurting child from going forward with hormone blockers, because as she reasons, not doing so would harm the child. It is disturbing, upsetting, mind-boggling, and frankly smacks of Munchausen by proxy, all with the shiny approval and encouragement from “medical professionals.” Your blog posts are an informative, thoughtful and thorough salve in an otherwise supremely impotent and frustrating situation that is so much more vast than I knew. You are a welcome port in a storm.
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Really? There’s just no other reason a toddler would throw a tantrum? There is just some basic child development issues these presenters are missing.
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A toddler is basically like an (untrained) chimpanzee or a puppy. Put an article of clothing or some accessory on any of these creatures, and the toddler, chimp or puppy is going to find a way to remove it. Hats, sunglasses, pants, skirts, diapers, a Band-Aid, whatever. Yes, even snaps on a onesie will be unsnapped in an attempt to either take the item off, or in a toddler’s case, just figure out how snaps work. It is just ridiculous to say a toddler is transgender because they pull barrettes out of their hair.
And I won’t even go into kids with sensory issues not liking the feeling of clothing or accessories on their bodies. Interestingly enough, kids on the autism spectrum are prone to sensory issues, and kids on the spectrum are also prone to report gender identify issues. Hmmmm…
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I remember how as a little girl, my mother would get upset and frustrated that my baby sister would always tear off the pretty bonnets put on her before being taken out in her pram. Fast forward a few years and my baby sister was a typical girlie girl.
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We are dealing with a very serious matter here, and if something is not done soon, we are going to be in deep waters. This agenda has taken a strong hold on society. The public needs to know the truth about this agenda, the lack of objective findings, testing and research on the topic. They have to look at history, where no such history of trans children committing suicide, no trans children noted to have existed in psychiatric practices, and now all of a sudden we are seeing this out of nowhere?
They need to see the adults who even after transition are still unhappy and dealing with health and worse mental issues that they started with. They need to look at the long-term effects of synthetic hormones and blockers. God had a plan for us, and we are spitting in Gods face by changing who we are. I know not everyone believes in God, but it was God that answered my prayers with my husband Paul, who struggled with this affliction, and finally was set free to be who he was born to be a man. As many of you know, I tried to de-transition last year, but he would not have it, so I was patient and I knew that he would come to his sensed, and thanks to God he did. This society is Godless and this is why we are seeing the constant perversion of it.
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I’m just trying to imagine how the sterilisation of 11 year olds would play out if it was a cultural practice associated with an ethnic minority? We’re not too supportive of e.g. Female genital mutilation – explained as a means to a better marriage and avoiding troubling feelings. Yet this medication and later surgery of the young in the US and increasingly the U.K. is horrendous.
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It would be called eugenics – and I wonder why no one is applying that term here since so many of these gender non-conforming kids grow up to be gay/lesbian?
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We actually talked about this last year on our show, Eugenics in the trans community https://youtu.be/_7UtJ9dD-Os?list=PLBIC9YugmzUlLVWEzL0h9NPHuIcHnWz5s
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It sounds hysterical but maybe the eugenics story is the word we need to spread to get people to notice?
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The general public is not aware that these children are being sterilized. On TV, the nice gender doc says puberty blockers are reversible, the kids take them only to “buy time” before they decide if they really want to transition. Since the TV journalists never challenge these doctors or bring any objective research to the table, the public is left in the dark.
But I have noticed from reading the comments under any article about trans kids, most people are against transitioning children. I’m not talking about right-wing haters here, I’m talking about people whose comments make them sound like ordinary Americans or Brits. I’m talking about people who are supportive of trans rights. They think it’s OK for adults to transition. But NOT kids.
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The trans cult seems to get scarier all the time. What sane person would turn their child into a lifelong medical patient, complete with sterilization, for a reason as silly and superficial as not liking barrettes or wanting to wear jeans? These people have absolutely nothing to base a “gender identity” on other than a vague feeling of not conforming to cultural ideas about men and women that are not true and were never true. I want to scream and cry when I hear about a mother teaching her obviously lesbian daughter that she is really a boy. This is an organized, comprehensive campaign of gas-lighting and homophobic abuse. Lesbians have always cried and screamed when a parent tried to make them wear a dress. The solution is simply to let her wear pants, not to give her a lifetime of synthetic hormones to make her look and sound like a man. Have these parents not seen what the average woman wears every day? Most women, regardless of sexual orientation, like to wear pants.
These “gender therapists” are a well-funded, Conservative, bigoted, homophobic, conversion therapy machine attempting to destroy an entire generation of lesbians and gays, and they have painted themselves as “progressive.” Thank goodness for 4thWaveNow and all the parents here who aren’t buying it, and who are supporting their kids in valuing themselves as they are.
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I disagree that the (gender) “therapists” are homophobic conservatives; rather, I think that some of them bought into the hype that they’re a part of this new, exciting, cutting-edge “treatment” and are “helping” people. Such feelings are common and intoxicating. You may recall various times throughout history and fairly recently about how certain technologies and medicines/drugs were over-hyped and how its creators/inventors/pioneers were going to “change the world” for the better. Linus Pauling’s Vitamin C debacle comes to mind. Linus Pauling is actually a perfect example, because while he contributed much to medicine and was correct on many things, he also became convinced that he couldn’t be drastically wrong on something in his own field. I think that many of these gender “therapists” see themselves as pioneers, like Pauling, and because they have a scientific background that they can’t possibly be wrong. Obviously, it’s not just that that happens psychologically, but I think you can get the gist.
For other therapists, however, I have no doubt that they see these troubled kids as walking paychecks.
On the conservatives infiltrating the medical community part, I think that at least a few of them would’ve accidentally slipped up or someone else discovering them would’ve happened by now. It’s not that easy to keep a conspiracy going, even with boatloads of money–at least, in my opinion.
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I am horrified. Simply horrified. We should not sterilize children. Regardless of whether or not that child decides they want children of their own when they grow up, there are real health concerns with not having the right hormone levels. Women who go through premature menopause are more likely to have osteoporosis. That’s the one I can think of off the top of my head. Do we even KNOW what the health risks are for children who take puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones so they don’t go through natural puberty? (In addition to sterilization, of course.)
I guess this means that if an 18-year-old girl decides she never wants to have children (and is NOT trans), she should be able to waltz into her doctor’s office and set up an appointment for a complete hysterectomy, no questions asked. What? Doctors won’t do that? How about just taking the uterus? No? Why not? Because someone who is 18 could change her mind about having children, and there are health risks to this surgery. The doctors aren’t willing to take the risk of getting sued. But hey, 11-year-olds are well equipped to make decisions of this magnitude, so they shouldn’t be questioned. They know exactly what they will want for the rest of their lives. I guess all of us parents can take our preteens and teens to the tattoo parlor! You want that tattoo, let’s get that taken care of right away. After all, my dear preteen, you know what’s best. Maybe I should have listened to my three-year-old when she told me she wanted to be a dog when she grew up.
I guess we should also have no problem with sterilizing the mentally handicapped. Is it okay to let a 30-year-old woman who has the mental capacity of an 11-year-old make such a decision completely on her own? Would it be viewed as abusive to sterilize this woman, who doesn’t fully understand the impact of this decision? I guess so, because the 11-year-old mind is fully capable of making adult decisions.
I wish these people who claim children can make these decisions would ask themselves a few questions. What age is a good age for a child to be left home alone over night? Would you leave your 5-year-old home alone for the day while you go to work? Why not? After all, at 5 they are capable of deciding who they want to be for the rest of their lives. Surely they have the critical thinking skills to make wise choices and take care of themselves all day. Right?
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Preach it. The plethora of logical inconsistencies in all of this boggles the mind. Does the cognitive dissonance ever break through for these people? Maybe in the wee hours of the morning?
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I think the cognitive dissonance is what pushes them over into fanaticism. They hit a point where they can question what they’re claiming, and have to disagree with their peers who are becoming an important part of their professional life. Or they can take on the mentality of a conspiracy theorist where there are a hero and the whole wide world is against them. Then they can feel good instead of bad. And they opt for the fanatical/hero/everyone else is wrong way of thinking. Of course that’s just speculation.
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Great insight.
How can was help unravel this?
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“I guess we should also have no problem with sterilizing the mentally handicapped.”
The practice of sterilizing proto-homosexual and other sex-role defiant children was directly preceded by the ‘Growth Attenuation’ practice of pediatric endocrinologists. This started in the 70’s with giving estrogen bursts to girls who were taller than average, in order to close their bone plates and halt their growth. The medical rationale was that tall women transgress social norms of height for females. This was touched on by Bronwyn Winter in the IQ2 debate here:
https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2016/04/09/iq2-debate-society-must-recognise-trans-peoples-gender-identities/
Attenuated Growth expanded in the 1990’s with suppression of growth in disabled children, often accompanied with surgical removal (in girls) of reproductive organs and even nipple excision. The medical rationale for growth suppression was that disabled children would be more easily transferred/moved by carers as adults if they were smaller. Ease of transfer would purportedly result in increased quality of life. Medical rationale for removal of female sex characteristics was reduction of sexual abuse by males. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/magazine/should-parents-of-severely-disabled-children-be-allowed-to-stop-their-growth.html?_r=0
Attenuation of reproductive growth in children who exhibit proto-homosexual or other sex-role transgressive characteristics is a direct expansion of this movement in pediatric endocrinology.
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Well said.
I have a daughter who, while not trans, was implacably opposed to the whole idea of motherhood from a very young age. I kept hoping she would outgrow it, but throughout her teen years she only grew more violently anti-motherhood. When she got married, she wanted to be sterilized so that she wouldn’t have to worry about pregnancy, and she was LIVID when she was unable to find a doctor who would do a tubal ligation on a healthy childless 20-year-old woman. Well, she and her husband tried to be careful, but a few years into their marriage, they had a little surprise… and today they are the proud, loving parents of a happy, healthy, adorable little boy who exists only because his mother was unable to find a doctor who was willing to sterilize her back when she was a newlywed.
This is just one of the reasons I find it horrifying that so many people are so cavalier about causing permanent sterility in children and teenagers. If I were prone to conspiracy theories, I’d suspect that Zero Population Growth had a hand in this current mania.
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“…there are real health concerns with not having the right hormone levels.”
Holy crap. You’re more right than you realize. Children, teens, and young adults who take high amounts of sex hormone drugs for years may be inadvertently feeding breast or prostate cancer and may not even notice it until it’s too late. This gets worse when “doctors” don’t check the patients’ (or their families’) medical history. Even worse, there’s the perpetual myth that “men don’t get breast cancer” and that cancer screening for trans patients his hardly ever brought up, at least in the common media.
And it’s not just cancer or osteoporosis. Suppressed immune function and increases of autoimmune disorders, as well as other bone problems like TMD and jaw degeneration are very real and very serious possibilities. I *hope* that none of those difficult-to-treat issues arise in the trans population, but I think it will not only happen, it will be severe and other unforeseen and equally bad medical issues will arise.
It’s really, truly awful that some trans kids will have to suffer dire health consequences just to get people to open their eyes.
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I have a cousin who has 2 children and is 27. She wanted to get sterilized because she doesn’t want in more kids and is already on welfare and can’t possibly afford another one. She almost died when she had her second child too. Yet, doctors won’t let her, a grown woman just get her tubes tied. She’s not trying to get a hysterectomy or anything like that. She just wants her tubes tied so she doesn’t have more children she can’t afford to take care of.
Of course, if her boyfriend, who is the same age as her wanted a vasectomy doctors would give him one. Because, since my cousin is a woman, clearly she must have more babies because that’s what women are for, even if she can’t afford them and might actually die if she goes through a third pregnancy. (Yeah, I don’t like her boyfriend.)
However, teens and children can apparently decide to be sterile at a young age, complete with medically unnecessary hysterectomies. That is totally medically necessary and life-saving but my cousin just getting her tubes tied to prevent another pregnancy that could kill her or at least drive her even further into poverty is not okay.
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Tell her to fight. I had 3 children in 2 pregnancies and told I had an over 40% chance of further multiple births. They suggested implants, fed me all sorts of ridiculous scenarios in which I might want more children, and even in the end gave me a sterilization that is technically reversible, but I fought and got the sterilization. Tell her to not take ‘no’ for an answer, she knows whats best for her.
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@juno
Thank you.
Will do. I’m not sure how much she will listen to me. While I love my cousin dearly, the truth is she can be kind of a doormat. Of course, I also think her boyfriend is no good for her since he stays at home all day since he doesn’t want to work. Here’s the thing, the stay at home parent deal only works when one of the parents makes a reasonable amount of money. My cousin doesn’t.
But, I will see her for the holidays and talk to her about it. Maybe she will find an ethical enough doctor to sterilize her. Actually I could ask my family doctor about it. He was pretty accepting when I told him that I was a lesbian and didn’t want babies.
And again, it just baffles me that adult women can’t easily choose to be sterilized, unless they are doing a gender-reassignment surgery. And then they can do that before they’re old enough to vote.
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Puberty blockers are poison. I suggest that we never call Lupron and other GnRH inhibitors “puberty blockers”. We should call them cancer chemotherapy agents. In the late 70’s, that’s what they were. And they were good. By blocking signaling between the hypothalymus and pituitary they made many prostate cancers operable. They were almost as effective for a few types of uterine tumors.
Lupron is a wonder drug for a few types of cancers. It is poison otherwise. GnRh inhibitors suppress the release of FSH. FSH is primarily known as a hormone that controls ovulation, but it governs puberty in both sexes and regulates testicular and prostate function in males. FSH also regulates sexual desire, so a boy or girl on cancer chemotherapy agents might never experience their largely innate sexual desires.
It’s pretty clear the fellow liberals I used to hang out with are homophobes. How can they not see that transitioning children is a more severe form of conversion therapy than conservatives ever imagined?
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I have been on Lupron twice in my life, each time for three months prior to surgery. My gynecologist told me that Lupron should not be used for more than 6 months in a person’s lifetime. In addition to the physical menopausal symptoms, it made me completely crazy. I was a basket case, and very difficult to be around. I have to wonder how a child is supposed to handle the emotional changes, when normal puberty is pretty damn hard.
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OMG, if Lupron causes negative emotional symptoms then that would help cement the kids in the idea that there’s some serious psychological thing wrong with them. Holy crap this is a nightmare.
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On the TV show “I am Jazz,” I believe it was season two episode two, Jazz talks about being suicidally depressed. Jazz has a puberty blocker implant and is also on cross sex hormones. Jazz I believe just turned 15 and has been on blockers + estrogen for at least a year so he is definitely sterilized, and obviously experiencing a lot of issues possibly due in part to the hormones. In fact, the hormonal contribution to Jazz’s depression was discussed on the show when we see Jazz and mom at a doctor’s appointment. But the doctor said the problem was that testosterone was “breaking through: so they needed to implant a new puberty blocker. Naturally there was no questioning or doubt about the wisdom of infusing all of these hormones into a young adolescent biological boy’s body, vs. allowing the body to do what it was naturally trying to do–go through puberty.
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One thing I really don’t understand is why nobody who is considering putting his/her kid on Lupron ever seems to talk to the big demographic of people who have substantial experience with Lupron… men with advanced prostate cancer.
This was my husband, four years ago. I am incredibly thankful that Lupron was available, it almost certainly contributed to saving his life, but my goodness the costs. It is a horrible drug. The side-effects are really crushing – the fatigue, the bone pains, the loss of muscle mass and strength, the emotional instability, the depression, the nausea and so many others. There is such a thing as “post-Lupron syndrome” and my husband still suffers from it.
His experience with Lupron was one of the first things that made me trans-skeptical. I could just never figure out how something that made my poor husband so, so ill, could possibly be advisable for youngsters. Particularly – and not to supply way too much information but – he is no teenager. It must be that a teenager or young adult has a much higher level of testosterone to suppress in the first place, and thus that the dosage and side-effects will be even more marked.
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For the record, this was my experience as an adult. I have no idea if kids who have not yet gone through puberty would be on the same rollercoaster. However, I was only warned about the physical symptoms prior to starting Lupron. I had no idea that I would experience an emotional nightmare. I was so upset when I found out I had to do a second 3-month course before a second surgery. At the time (about 20 years ago), it cost about $500 per shot, and my insurance didn’t cover it.
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I saw that episode of “I Am Jazz” as well as some others from this past season. Jazz is so often held up as a model transkid whose parents are doing everything “right.” But what I saw last season was a depressed teenager who has few friends, eats lunch alone in the school bathroom, still hates her body, and is experiencing side effects from all the medications she is on. In one scene, she was making herself hyperventilate in the car. There also appears to be resentment from her older brothers because their mom pays little attention to them. (Kinda made me wonder if this might be at the root of why toddler Jazz wanted to be a girl in the first place? Two-year-olds aren’t capable of making adult decisions, but they are certainly capable of figuring out which kids in the family get the most attention from Mom and how to crank up certain behavior to make sure Mom notices them, too.)
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I can’t watch that show because I can’t stand seeing the kid suffer. I am really sad for Jazz and other kids who are told that the only way to survive is to spend the rest of their lives fighting nature with medications and surgeries. I hope Jazz is able to find peace as she grows up.
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Sounds like you had a good gynecologist. Tell people that Lupron and other GnRH drugs directly affect the brain and that you had bad effects beyond having your estrogen levels reduced. Let them know that the drug you had under dire circumstances at substantial risk is the same drug as the magical “puberty blockers”.
The hypothalamus-pituiatary signaling system is wiped out by Lupron. Bone ends harden unevenly, and height in both sexes is shorter. Prostates don’t adapt to lengthening urethras, and deficient uteruses can’t attach well to their ligaments.
Lupron was hell for you as an adult, it devastates pubescent bodies.
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I will definitely watch this. After reading Gallus’ post on this the other day, I was reading an Ohio Federal District court’s decision (from 9/26/16) to allow an 11 y/o boy to use the girl’s bathroom and saw that the judge frequently quotes Dr. Ehrensaft to justify the decision. In fact, she seems to be the sole source of expert scientific evidence used for this decision. Here is one of her quotes used: “Based on her experience working with transgender children, Dr. Ehrensaft believes that “it would be psychologically damaging for a transgender child to be forced to use a separate restroom and repeatedly referred to by her birth name and male pronouns…” And, “Social transition” involves “changes that bring the child’s outer appearance and lived experience into alignment with the child’s core gender,” including “changes in clothing, name, pronouns, and hairstyle.” I know these quotes are boring old gender ideology, but to hear them used in the context of a preliminary injunction that will have a very real impact on every kid in that school district is shocking. Thanks a lot, Judge Gender Angel.
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Dr. Ehrensaft has become quite well-known for her work with trans-identifying children, and, as a result, there will be judges like this that take her opinions as settled science.
But there isn’t a medical consensus on the gender affirmative model. No one knows what the future holds for kids who have been socially transitioned, puberty blocked, and then given cross-sex hormones. That is why there is a current study (funded by the NIH). Here is a quote about the lack of evidence for medical treatment:
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2015/08/131301/first-us-study-transgender-youth-funded-nih
“There is a remarkable increase in transgender youth seeking medical services all across the country,” said Stephen Rosenthal, MD, co-investigator on the study and medical director of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center (CAGC) at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco. “Yet, there is a real lack of long-term data to effectively and safely guide the clinical care of these youth. This study should address that need.”
I find it appalling that Dr. Ehrensaft is promoting a treatment protocol for children that has “a real lack of long-term data.” From the presentation she gave, she doesn’t appear to have any doubt that her approach is correct. But 4thwavenow, with relative ease, has poked significant holes in her logic.
I do hope that the public will become aware of the shaky foundation upon which the treatment of gender dysphoric children lies. And I hope that more people start questioning the so-called experts in this field. I agree with 4thwavenow that Dr. Ehrensaft likely believes she is doing no harm, and actually thinks she is saving their lives, but more people need to challenge her and other professionals like her.
But, unfortunately, besides the relatively rare blogger, there aren’t many asking the right questions. Most people assume Dr. Ehrensaft knows what she is talking about. She, and other professionals like her, are influential. And they are convincing not only parents, but pediatricians, therapists, teachers, legislators and judges to believe that it is best for children to be treated as the opposite sex–from using the “correct” pronouns and bathrooms/locker rooms to using off-label drugs with unknown risks on still-growing children.
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I agree that this sounds like Munchausen by proxy! I can’t believe a University of California would ratify this horrendous dangerous anti-scientific garbage! I think it’s telling that Ehrensaft’s son was described by her as “gender creative”, and has become a gay man. Not a Transgender woman. Does she tell her clients and followers this? Does she explain how she determined that her son was an orange and not an apple? Did she give him Lupron and estrogen when he was a child? What makes me doubt it?
The contempt shown for parents is astounding. I’ve only seen a glimpse of that before in a plastic surgery program where a woman plastic surgeon was encouraging a 25 y.o. to get a full body lift over her.mother’s reluctance (and the mother”s money). The doctor said “remember mom it’s her life and her decision, not yours.” I remember thinking “that mother is thinking of her daughter. You’re thinking of your fees”.
I can’t understand how medical doctors can get away with this. What does it even mean to be an M.D. any more if it’s professionally acceptable to prescribe unnecessary harmful drugs and surgery to physically healthy children?
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What is particularly upsetting about the connection to UCSF is that this is a medical school and a research institution.
Which gets straight to the problem here:
Where is the research? Where are the studies, the data?
My 19-year-old daughter, sadly, got on testosterone at a New York City clinic that never asked for her pediatric medical records. Those records would have revealed a history of anxiety, and a genetic predisposition to blood clots.
They never asked to see her medical records – this is now my acid test. What doctor doesn’t want to know a patient’s history?
This is negligence. The only reason it’s not malpractice is because my daughter hasn’t had a stroke yet.
And, doubly sadly, the clinic’s disinterest in my daughter’s history plays right into her agenda – allowing her to deny that she has a history of anxiety and clear episodes of depression.
Again, what doctor has no interest in a patient’s history?
And why is it so horribly politically incorrect to ask this question?
How can I ask that question more neutrally? Any ideas?
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How about you ask those questions on a lawyer’s letterhead?
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Take legal action immediately! It will take a lot of time to compile evidence and demonstrate the scientific plausibility why her injections/trans treatments are dangerous. You may even be able to claim medical malpractice now, as your daughter’s mental illness became worse and trans treatments are often touted to make all the negative feelings with “being the wrong sex” subside.
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Look at Michael Jackson. He would most likely be alive today if his doctors had done less enabling and more gatekeeping. (Yes, I said it!) Or what about Joan Rivers? Or Prince? All three of these celebrities are DEAD because of doctors who gave them what they wanted, risks and consequences be damned.
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It’s shocking but not surprising that she’s at UCSF. Louann Brizendine, of “The Female Brain” fame, is also on the faculty there. The last decade or so has been a good one for neurosexists seeking grant money, and I’m sure that’s played a role in UCSF’s hiring/retention decisions. The entire UC system also happens to be in deep financial trouble right now, and if Ehrensaft’s good for the bottom line, it’s unlikely the higher-ups at UCSF are going to want to think too deeply about the moral issues involved in transing kids. At least not until the class action lawsuits start rolling in, and some medical ethicist finally has the courage to come out and call this what it is: an anti-gay eugenics program masquerading as something progressive.
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The trans trend just keeps getting more and more horrifying. I remember when kids were just allowed to be kids, and not 100% rigidly adhering to a checklist of sexist stereotypes wasn’t considered reason to force the child to pretend to be the opposite sex. Looking at alleged transkids who’ve been in the news reveals their parents really are going from checklists of sexist stereotypes.
No one ever told my best friend and I we were really boys because we weren’t girly-girls bathed in pink, makeup, Little Bo Peep dresses, Barbies, perfume, and giant hairbows. The effeminate gay guys within about 10 years of my age whom I know also weren’t told they had to be girls just because they didn’t adopt some ridiculous macho he-man role.
My best friend from childhood has become somewhat less gender-noncomforming as she’s gotten older, and her son is likewise rather GNC. He loves, e.g., sparkly things, doing his nails, and unicorns. For his fourth birthday, I got him a birthday card from the “girl” section, with a unicorn and glitter, and which didn’t have the word “girl” anywhere on the actual card. My friend said he absolutely loved the card, and thought I was awesome for getting him that card. As he’s gotten older, he’s not quite as GNC as he was before, though my friend has said she’s not assuming anything. If he someday comes to her and her husband to announce he’s gay, she’ll be cool with that, but for now, she’s letting him just be a normal kid who likes different things.
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I worry about people who define their gender by whether they like wearing lipstick. That’s just incredibly superficial.
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Robert Smith of the Cure has been wearing lipstick since the late 1970s. #Stillaboy
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I think it is easy to fall into the trap that people intend no harm with their actions. People’s brains convince themselves that what they are doing is for someone else’s good, and this applies to everyone from clueless medical personnel to out-and-out sociopaths. Two male nurses have told me that doctors WANT patients to be diabetic — it is an endless source of income (female nurses are socialized to think the best of doctors much of the time). No, their conscious brains are not saying, “I want this person to be diabetic,” but their ACTIONS — their ignorance about preventing and treating diabetes — say something entirely different from what their mouths would tell you.
I have gotten to the stage in life where I don’t care what someone’s intentions are — that drunk driver did not purposely set out to kill those people. I care what their ACTIONS are and how their ACTIONS affect others. And all too often, if you look carefully enough, you will find money involved in the equation somewhere.
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Don’t disagree with any of your comment. I just think these people have convinced themselves that they are the ones helping these children. I don’t think they are sociopaths. I also hold out hope that at least some of them will start to wake up and start asking themselves some hard questions. Naïve of me, maybe.
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I don’t think they’ll change unless/until some REALLY BAD after-effects start to be documented in the “transkid” population. And that could take a while. Alas.
I think Ehrensaft and her ilk really do think that a biological basis for “transness” is going to be uncovered and that meanwhile the smart and compassionate course of action is just to let the kids/teens have what they so insistently/consistently/persistently say they want. She and others believe that gender really is innate and immutable vs. something shaped by societal conditioning, and that we’re bound to figure that out eventually. And meanwhile, isn’t great that we can offer this “life saving” treatment?
Often I wish this were TRUE, in fact, because as a parent, believing this would make my life so much easier. Finding a biological basis to my kid’s feelings would mean an end to the exhausting holding action and conflict and sailing against the sweet wind of “progressive” affirmation. It’d just let me say “sure, honey, obviously you have this thing, here’s the blood test that affirms it, let’s go fix you.” There are a lot of days I’d like to be able to do that. I’d like to be able to do that tomorrow.
But I can’t, in good conscience, do that.
Dr E and Olson/Olsen et al appear to think it’s ok to mistakenly trans some GNC kids in order to “save” the “true trans” from suffering and self harm. After all, if GNC is simply part of the trans umbrella, maybe getting mistakenly transed or being a nonconforming person who still identifies with your natal sex are equally OK outcomes. I honestly think they believe it doesn’t really matter one way or the other, and that both outcomes are equally good. Clearly they’ve brushed the sterility issue aside. (“They’re altruistic! They can adopt!” — which honestly shows a SHITTY understanding of the dynamics of adoption. Adoption is supposed to provide homes for kids who can’t find a home any other way. NOT just to provide kids for families who can’t make babies for whatever reason. Dr E has this paradigm exactly backwards. Her blithe comments about it really enrage me as adoptive parent, and make me even less inclined to take her seriously than I was before.)
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… Not to mention the fact that an 11-year-old with a puberty blocked brain has no clue whether they will want to adopt, be a biological parent, or forgo parenthood all together in a decade or two.
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It’ll eventually happen…at the latest, when the kids grow up and the lawsuits start.
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Has anyone thought of making a documentary about this? Gender critical feminism needs a movie like Blackfish to publicize what is happening.
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One of the answers to this has to be a concerted movement to send a message that gender stereotypes are not OK…and that little boys and girls can like trucks, dolls, or whatever and still be little boys or girls. This was what was taught in the 1970s but we have clearly regressed. Since when does liking “barrettes” make you female? This is stupidity on steroids. I am an adult woman who has not worn nailpolish since high school. I hate it. Don’t ever tell me I’m not a real woman because I don’t like nailpolish. I’ll smack you right upside the head! 😉
If you are a young woman reading this, who is confused because you think you may be a “male” because you like video games and prefer pants…then please stop and ask yourself who decided that video games and pants were inherently “male”? I love video games, I like pants, and gosh darnit, I’m good at math too. And I’m still a woman! STOP destroying yourself over stupid stereotypes!
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There’s no way to thank 4thwavenow enough for this analysis, and indeed for all the work you’re doing. There’s so much cause for despair these days—economic, environmental, political—and the transgender phenomenon appears to be part of yet another backlash against feminism. So enervating and ostensibly insurmountable, especially since so much of it is profoundly anti-intellectual, as well.
How to combat it? In the looming, case law-making legal battle, there will be the Ehrensafts and so many others with credentials asserting that “science” has already decided that gender is neurobiologically essential, that it has nothing to do with cultural sex roles, and so on. Those who disagree will be painted as uninformed, backwards bigots, regardless of the evidence they bring.
Orthodoxy is simply terrifying. Again, thanks for your work to overcome this juggernaut. Females, homosexuals and their allies, along with lovers of truth, need all the help they can get.
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Thank you for your kind and astute comments. We need our own “expert witnesses” in these legal battles. Professionals who will step forward and who aren’t just coming from a conservative religious standpoint. A lot of this is ultimately going to play out in the courts, and there is plenty of long-standing knowledge that directly contradicts the faith-based gender identity arguments. We just need someone in court to make them.
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“These people aren’t ogres who intend to bring harm to the young people and families under their care and influence.”
Eeeeehhh…
The result is still the same, no?
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I hated having barrettes in my hair. They pulled and itched and felt awful.
I’ve heard that autistic children are more likely to be labeled transgendered than non-autistic children. Reading these descriptions of mothers trying to force dresses and barrettes on little girls, I wonder about the role sensitivity to overstimulation plays in the diagnosis of autistic girls as transgender. There are special clothes marketed for autistic children and other highly sensitive children so that they don’t have to feel seams and itchy material and such, but if parents are completely determined to force their kids to wear specific clothing and unaware of the sensitivities they could end up misinterpretting what might just be a matter of physical comfort.
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I had similar thoughts when reading about young women/transmen who use binders. Many people on the autism spectrum find that wearing a pressure vest helps calm them down and soothe their anxiety. I was wondering if maybe binders are having the same effect on at least some gender dysphoric individuals? If so, a pressure vest might make a healthier alternative. At the very least, it’s worth a try.
Here is a link to one company that sells them, but there are many others. http://www.pressure-vest.com/
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Jens Lyon, what an interesting thought.
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Reblogged this on sketcher563.
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Video Dr. Ehrensaft’s barrettes/onesies segment of the conference (approximately two minutes) is here. Also added to main post.
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I was thinking a bit more about this last night… just mulling over the incredible stupidity of it to be honest. I don’t think there is a single parent reading this who doesn’t recall probably hundreds of instances of behavior just like that described above. Despite all of my trying, none of my children would wear the incredibly cute hats I found for them. (We used to call it “Put a Hat on that Baby Syndrome” – whenever I’d leave the house with the carriage, and a hat-less kid, somebody would be sure to speak up.) Kids kick off their shoes. Kids throw their mittens away. Kids unbutton or unsnap their clothes. Kids get stuck on wanting to wear a certain clothing article until it turns into a rag. Kids run around the house in their underpants and a cowboy hat if you let them, and would happily go to the mall that same way.
It’s so bizarre to me that the therapy profession now interprets the above as “gendered behavior,” and further assumes that babies and toddlers KNOW that it’s gendered behavior. How in God’s name does a 9 month old know that “girls wear barrettes” such that removal of said barrettes is a statement of anything?
And further…. the incredible presumption that Ms. Ehrensaft and her colleagues KNOW that babies KNOW what gendered behavior is and that they are reacting to it. What hubris, to think that they can successfully get inside a baby or a toddler’s head and know what that child is thinking when they engage in certain behaviors.
Can they please tell me, then, why my toddlers always wanted to eat cigarette butts off the playground? Every single one of my four kids did that, and it used to puzzle me no end. I mean if you are going to ascribe some hidden adult thought process and agenda to every action of a tiny child, why stop with barrettes?
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Reading this, here’s my question: where are the fathers? Why is it only mothers who talk about their apparently transgender children? I wonder if the modern cult of motherhood causes or exacerbates the issue. For so many mothers today, children are not just children, but are projects for the mother’s own self-fulfillment. The modern cult of motherhood encourages mothers to see children not as autonomous beings, but as mini versions of the mother and extensions of the mother’s ego. Mothers want to be their children’s best friends, instead of guardians. Mothers want to raise special snowflakes. Decades ago, no mother would be personally aggrieved if a child didn’t want to wear a frilly pink dress. She would simply get on with all the other work she had to do.
I wonder whether some mothers today, when her daughter won’t wear a frilly pink dress, feels a personal sense of rejection. The mother sees the daughter as an extension of herself, as simply a miniaturized version of herself. The daughter’s rejection becomes not a rejection of clothes, but a rejection of the mother herself. Faced with the possibility of a daughter who may be a tomboy, maybe gender-non-conforming, I wonder whether a mother would rather have a transgender son than a daughter who won’t be a miniaturized version of herself.
Conversely, I wonder whether this cult of motherhood can go the other way too. Some women these days dream of having daughters, of having “little girls,” precisely so they can dress them up and paint their nails and do “girly” stuff with them. If a mother then gets all boys, she may leap at the chance to have a little girl. Doesn’t the family in that Jazz show have several older boys? A boy who displays some stereotypically “girly” traits may be encouraged as transgender because the mother desperately wanted a girl.
Then, when it comes to transitioning, the modern cult of parenthood says that parents should be friends to their children, rather than disciplinary voices of adult perspective. Parents who take the “friend” view actively encourage every choice made by the child–no matter the possible consequences.
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Hi, this is not a comment on this post — just wanted to bring your attention to this study about testosterone alleviating social anxiety in women: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26402923. It occurs to me that “transition” may be an attempt at self-treatment.
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The dosage given in the study above was ‘a single dose of 0.5mg testosterone and a matched placebo, at two separate days.’
So what’s the daily dosage for the off-label, non-FDA-approved use of high levels of testosterone toward making women’s bodies become masculinised, as in ‘FTM transition’?:
‘The daily dosage of injected testosterone will depend on several factors, including your doctor’s recommendations and your height and weight. A 2006 memorandum published by the Tom Waddell Health Center Transgender Team in San Francisco indicates that a typical dose of injected testosterone enanthate or testosterone cypionate is between 100 and 400 mg and injected every two to four weeks. Testosterone propionate can be injected once or twice weekly in doses of 100 to 200 mg. A controlled clinical study reported in the “Journal of Sexual Medicine” in 2008 used a 1,000 mg weekly dose of injected testosterone over a period of 54 weeks.’
http://www.livestrong.com/article/508120-what-is-the-average-ftm-testosterone-injection/
Is it any wonder that some former FTMs refer to its use at these levels as ‘testosterone poisoning’?
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FYI:
New York Department of Health and Human Services proposes Medicaid coverage for genital surgery on minors. 45 day public response.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/new-york-medicaid-program-cover-transgender-youths-article-1.2819025
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So, most poor people can’t get basic dental care, but the taxpayers should be paying for major cosmetic surgery. Oy.
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Major cosmetic surgery on MINORS, nonetheless. When most pediatricians do not recommend major elective cosmetic surgery (nose jobs, breast implants/reductions, etc.) until a person has finished growing. When minors cannot get a tattoo. When an adult woman with severe endometriosis or fibroids can’t get approval for a hysterectomy.
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Notice it says this:
“But the state would not pay for procedures to reverse gender reassignment-related procedures.”
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A journalist is soliciting stories from parents that are “touched by this issue” and from health care providers “facing these decisions.” http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/transgender-kids-a-family-quest-a-medical-quandary/
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This blog is really well written.
But it is so disingenuous. Trying to reassemble all the sentences you cut and isolate and over-interpret separately, I find this Ehrensaft doctor very reasonable.
I don’t understand why you try to make her into a crazy SJW when she obviously is not.
She even cautions against internet influence and teenagers who might use a ‘script’.
You only base your opinion on your gender non-conforming daughter, for whom no doctor ever recommended medical transition, and who never even ever tried to live socially as a male teenager.
I also don’t understand why it is so horrible that children try living out as the opposite gender before hormones. They can revert back very simply if they realize they don’t mind living as their birth gender after all. Of course that requires listening abilities from the parents. Nobody will think they were ‘wrong’ to try something out, especially when it makes the children so happy (Yes, it does. There is an abundance of clinical evidence to say this, and it is not just the temporary thrill of change).
Anyway. Totally agree with you we should tell children that they can be happy in their birth body. But we shouldn’t force them to destroy their bodies with an unwanted puberty if they can’t deal with it. It might not the cancer, but it is pretty debilitating.
Also, there is a lot of research on the biological and neurological basis for gender identity. It is not just an hypothesis.
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I think you are mistaken about how easy it is to go back once kids socially transition if they decide it’s not right for them. It seems like the vast majority of these kids who socially transition have struggled socially in the past. They find a group of friends in other trans kids. When they start to desist, their trans friends abandon them. Other friends (if they had any) may not come back. They are afraid of being lonelier than ever. They are no longer part of the community. At least that’s the fear.
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That’s true for some teenagers, indeed. And it is sad people can be intolerant like that.
I had in mind the younger children (3-11) when I wrote that.
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That’s true for some teenagers, indeed. It’s sad people can be intolerant like that.
I was thinking of the younger children (3-11).
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If you’re looking for the social isolation TheMom talks about, go to YouTube and search for transition videos. And notice how many there are – kids saying, the waters fine, come on on!
And then you’ll notice how these kids disappear, and just stop posting. What happened there?
Very rarely do you see a De-transition video … Because those kids are out of the club.
I watched one detransition video – and 45 minutes into it, this poor girl said while she realized she was not a boy, but at least testosterone gave her the chance to find out who her friends were.
Let that sink in. At least she found out who her friends were.
When we stop requiring a mental health diagnosis – when we say kids only have to sign an informed consent form, when the doctors are not gatekeepers but advocate – this is what happens. Kids trying to figure out who their friends are try on trans.
It’s all fun and games until the health problems start – followed quickly bymy be lawsuits.
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Hi. Data point here which is the opposite of most of your points.
My daughter DID socially transition and it did not make her happier or better adjusted. In fact, it made her even MORE miserable and she had to be hospitalized multiple times. Her untreated mental illness is destroying her and our family. As mental illness does to many families.
Also, puberty is not a disease. It’s a natural stage of human development which matures the body and the brain. And there is very little serious research into the possible long-tern effects of inducing a cross-sex puberty in teenagers.
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“I also don’t understand why it is so horrible that children try living out as the opposite gender before hormones.”
So, how *does* one (try to) live out the opposite gender? That is, beyond superficial stereotypes that greatly vary among cultures, even in the USA?
“But we shouldn’t force them to destroy their bodies with an unwanted puberty if they can’t deal with it.”
That doesn’t make it okay to give children and teenagers unproven drugs with no long-term safety data. For every other disease, but especially with mental disorders, scientists conduct studies whether said treatments are safe and effective. There are stringent ethical requirements before study approval, and rightfully so. Parents become incensed at the mere possibility of a doctor pushing drugs adults use onto kids that might not or even don’t need. You may recall the controversy not too long ago about scientists and parents freaking out that the antidepressants prescribed for teens and children may not only not be beneficial, but also increase suicide risk. Some of these drugs were prescribed off-label. Parental concern and controversy was and is justified for antidepressants. Why is trans “treatment” magically excluded from this?
“Also, there is a lot of research on the biological and neurological basis for gender identity. It is not just an hypothesis.”
How methodologically sound are these studies? There is a lot of research fraud out there, and a lot of it doesn’t get caught until it’s too late. Andrew Wakefield published an awful study about vaccines causing autism, and the study wasn’t retracted until 12 years later, after most of the damage had already been done. Some studies never get pulled at all because they’re published in terrible and predatory journals.
Now, I’m not saying that all trans scientific journals or studies are terrible. Based on the several I’m keeping tabs on, a lot of them are methodologically flawed to the point of uselessness. Part of it is because several of them lack prior scientific plausibility. Many of them reek of confirmation bias. Another part is a money-making agenda, like how pharmaceutical companies like to warp their studies in favor of their patented drugs. Another part is lack of qualified researchers and journal editors. There are a few more reasons how and why a study or a scientific journal or even a field can remain garbage for a long time. The point is, there are way more bad studies than good and it’s not changing any time soon. I write this because it’s imperative to keep in mind when delving into any science and checking out the research. Knowing this could literally mean life-or-death, especially if the law gets into this.
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“Force them to destroy their bodies with an unwanted puberty”
Theo, puberty does not destroy one’s body.
Plenty of kids, especially girls, have a difficult time when their bodies undergo the changes of puberty. There is a wide variety of possible reasons for this discomfort and difficulty. These children need help and guidance in getting through this stage — not surgery or other extreme medical procedures. Remember, during puberty, the brain also undergoes important developmental changes. Because there are no studies on the effects of blockers on children’s brains, we really have no idea what sort of damage or developmental delays might occur in a child who never goes through puberty. Doctors even admit this, yet they keep signing kids up for medical transition.
Doctors are quickly and nonchalantly prescribing experimental treatments — for children — which should be used as last resorts. If children’s bodies end up destroyed, it will be due to these extreme medical interventions rather kids being allowed to go through natural their puberties drug-free and without unnecessary surgery.
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Yeah, doctors should absolutely be gatekeepers. Be I don’t see many people advocating for the contrary. If they exist, they should be fought against.
That being said, there will always be horror stories of crappy doctors. But that’s the case for any other medical condition. Even I have been victim to unscrupulous doctors. We should advocate for more responsibility and more education on this subject in the medical field. Not a blanket ban on children/teenager transition.
I am sorry. If you have gone to any biology class, you will know a transgender girl going through puberty risks going to be freakishly tall, have very large shoulders, a square jaw and prominent facial features, very deep voice, etc. Features that can’t ever be corrected later. Some end up androgynous, and that’s super for their transition. But that’s not even close to the majority.
The way I see it, a one-pill-a-day regimen will help you avoid every surgery later, and that’s pretty great. That’s really not ‘extreme’.
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Your post illustrates that this is all about “passing”. The Holy Grail is to convince the world that a trans person is no different from the opposite sex they are trying to emulate. There is a really fundamental question here. Why can’t young people choose the lifestyle, appearance, and activities more typical of the opposite sex without needing drastic medical treatments to essentially fool the world into thinking they are something they are not? There’s nothing freakish about a biological male being tall, having a square jaw and the other features you mentioned. It’s not a matter of “correcting” something that is wrong. What’s wrong is encouraging kids in thinking their perfectly healthy bodies need “correcting” by surgeons and endocrinologists; that the most important thing is how well they “pass”.
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Theo, I think there are many people advocating for NO gatekeeping. The gender clinics have little, if any, therapy for children/teens beyond how to deal with transition. If you’re at the gender clinic, you’re transitioning.
There are lots of people who have been victims of unscrupulous doctors for all different conditions. My job as a parent is to try to protect my child from those doctors. Any doctor who tells me that the only option for my child is to become a life-long medical patient and that there is something wrong with her healthy body is unscrupulous.
You mention all of the issues with passing that a male experiences if he goes through puberty. What I find difficult to understand is how we judge which is worse in the long run–not passing well, or spending a lifetime trying to fight nature. I can’t imagine a 10-year-old being able to make a well-informed decision about puberty blockers and hormones. They have no frame of reference. They know they are in pain and they want a solution now. They don’t understand that there are consequences to their actions that they will have to learn to live with for the rest of their lives. How will they feel after 20 years on hormones? Maybe they’ll be happy as can be, maybe they’ll be miserable with lots of health problems.
A “one-pill-a-day regimen” as you call it, is actually a very big deal. You make it sound like it’s so easy, with no ill effects. This is never a decision that should be taken lightly, and it should be made only as a last resort after a child has undergone extensive therapy. This decision has a huge impact on the rest of a child’s life. Every child deserves the adults in their lives to help them first try to find happiness in their healthy body before medical interventions happen.
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The mom, I would add this: We’re seeing detransitioners is people who were ACTUALLY ADULTS when they started on hormones. So, if we’re seeing people who are becoming unhappy (or, more likely, REMAINING unhappy) with the repercussions AS ADULTS, people who should have mature brains and be able to project into the future and grasp consequences and weight pros and cons, how are CHILDREN going to react when they start to realize that adults PUSHED THIS ON THEM?
A couple of weeks ago, there was an article (I should really start saving these things, I swear, but LIFE), which was very, very sympathetic (and, once you reach the end, actually EMPATHETIC) to transition. But the author made a very, very important point which is that all the people who push for transition are the minority of humans who PERSIST in dysphoria and don’t find other ways to cope or other coping mechanisms do not work. And, you know, maybe those people are not the ones who should be making up the protocol when they are the minority. Because the protocol should acknowledge that the majority of people of people DESIST.
And, again, we see this in the way we treat literally EVERY physical and mental illness. Doctors do not allow any of their other patients to self-diagnose and then just do what they request. Insurance companies almost always require less-invasive, less expensive treatment protocols to be tried FIRST, before they agree to look at expensive and serious interventions. A lot of testing may have to be done. I’ve mentioned before that I had observed my youngest daughter being unable to concentrate and we had school records showing that her teachers noticed it for her entire school career and I still had to pay for psychological testing and we had to gather all her medical and school records and essentially get her diagnosed, even though she suffers from the most common, most researched, most understood, most easily treated mental health issue for children, period — ADHD. Her sister told a therapist she felt she was trans and every other concern we had was immediately dropped.
Yes, that’s a single, personal story. But, it’s true and it’s not just MY story. This site has drawn many, many families who are being treated this way. It is a problem. Transitioning anyone who says they’re trans is NOT a solid medical policy.
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Because everyone wants to feel good in their own body.
The brain contains a body map, and a transgender in a male body just isn’t feeling well, because the right parts are not there, and/or not the right shape.
Plus being sexually attractive and having healthy sex life, while not being necessary to a happy life, is a real boost to mental health.
There are ‘closet’ transgenders who are fine living in their birth body, as a very feminine gay male, female impersonator, imagining they have a female parts, etc.. But others are not, especially if attracted the opposite sex and forced to live in the straight world.
The world is not very tolerant of gender non-conforming individuals, and while it is not a reason in a of itself, you have to take it into account as to why medical transition is important for many. Hopefully it changes soon.
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While I don’t doubt that some people feel uncomfortable in their bodies, there is no evidence that there is a “mismatch” between a body map in the brain of transgender people. I can understand that it’s a convenient metaphor, though. As always, the focus of this blog is children being transitioned. Adults will make their own decisions. And that’s what most of us are advocating for here: let kids grow up. The few who still want to “transition” as adults will be empowered to do so. For the kids, let’s empower them to be gender defiant if that’s what they want. It’s not empowering for children to encourage them to believe there’s something wrong with their bodies. It’s a good thing for a child who can to avoid medical and psychiatric intervention. It’s pretty unbelievable that it has become politically incorrect to say something that sensible.
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“…there is no evidence that there is a “mismatch” between a body map in the brain of transgender people.”
At least, no *convincing* evidence. There was a study that claimed that transgender patients have their brains more structurally similar to the sex they believe they are than in people who don’t share that belief (the control group). That directly contradicts recent scientific findings that distinctly “male” and “female” brains don’t exist. Considering how plastic/changeable the brain is and the various amount “parts” that interconnect, how could there be distinctly male and female brains?
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the brain doesn’t recognize the sex they were born with and “thinks” it’s of a different sex. That doesn’t justify cosmetic gender-change therapy, when some people believe that they “shouldn’t” have, say, an arm because it’s “foreign” and “doesn’t belong to them”. There’s some evidence that the brain doesn’t recognize the limb as “theirs”; that the neural map is missing a key component. Of course, most doctors won’t amputate a healthy limb because of a psychological disorder (though, the feeling of a “foreign” limb disappears once it’s gone).
It’s a huge ethical violation to perform an irreversible, dramatic procedure because of a patient’s feelings. The same is, and should be said more, of transgender surgeries. Instead of finding ways that can reduce the dysphoria or even correct the brain’s neural map if needed–which is the ethical way–“doctors” are violating major ethics by opting for the faddish, pseudo-scientific make-it-up-as-you-go-along trans surgeries. Thankfully, this site is bringing it up, but we’re definitely facing an uphill battle to get this vital information out to the public.
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I find it somewhat alarming that someone would say “being sexually attractive” is a reason to medicate children and teens.
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Theo, you have brought up being sexually attractive and having a healthy sex life. Kids who are too young to understand sexuality or sexual intercourse, or know what it means to be sexually attractive or have a healthy sex life, are being led down the transition path, told that they really are the opposite sex (usually because of their preference for the toys and clothes of the opposite sex). They are also told their bodies are “wrong” and that doctors can fix them. Kids believe what adults tell them.
Lo and behold, once they grow older, they learn that what has actually happened is their bodies have been medically altered to the point that their pool of potential dating and/or sexual partners has been whittled down to zero or not much more than zero, as Jazz Jennings is finding out. Hetero males are attracted to actual females, as are lesbians. Hetero girls are attracted to actual males, as are gay males. As Jazz is finding out, this leaves him lonely, with very few prospects. On the other hand, there are fetishistic creeps who would be very interested in a ladyboy like Jazz. Is this what any parent wants for their child? Is this what any adult wants for himself or herself?
Kids should be given a chance to grow up and figure out their sexuality before having their bodies, sex hormones levels and sexual organs meddled with. Statistics show many kids who wish to be the opposite sex will grow into homosexual adults. Homosexuals are typically a little slower to get involved in their first sexual relationship — for many, their sexuality and confidence in their sexuality blooms in their late teens or early twenties once they have gone to college or grown old enough to feel comfortable with the idea of going against the grain of hetero society to pursue a same-sex relationship.
Let’s give these kids a chance to grow up and mature sexually before tampering with their sex organs, their fertility and their bodies in general, not to mention their minds.
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Although trans activists are working very hard to convince people they are “transphobic” and “obsessed with genitals” if they actually have a sexual preference based on unaltered human bodies, as SkepticalMom points out, the dating pool for trans people is definitely reduced. The gender doctors and activists who are cheering for surgical and hormonal alterations on kids’ bodies leave out that inconvenient fact (as they leave out so many others). Meanwhile, we have “trans lesbians” like this bragging on Twitter about their sexual interest in young people. Is this the “dating pool” the Tumblr brigade envisions when they egg each other on to transition? (Given that many of these kids are “mentored” by older trans people, there may indeed be a strategy here). I’m sorry to post something so crude, but the truth is harsh. And “Zoe” is not alone.
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My God, 4thwave, this type of fetishistic creep is exactly what I was referring to, except it is so much worse and more blatant than I imagined. Disgusting. This man and others like him are wanting and waiting to prey on kids who have been chemically and surgically manufactured to fit to their sick desires. It’s horrifying.
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Trans kids who feel or are lost and abandoned often travel out to California, as they think they’ll be more accepted there. Some of those kids go to trans “safe houses”, which sometimes are run by predators… and pimps who force the teens into prostitution.
Investigation Discovery reported it, and yet the mainstream media didn’t or maybe even can’t?! What?!
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I wholeheartedly agree that there’s lots of fetishistic creeps, but I think too that honourable people who are attracted to others regardless of sex or body do exist, and, that these people aren’t so unusual, and aren’t always young people who aren’t ready for serious relationships yet.
Being a mature woman, I’ve had good friends who have identified or identify as bisexual, and, who have always said that they simply “don’t see gender”, or care about the sex of their partners.
What comes to mind to me as regards that, though, is that for a trans person to obtain a cherished signifcant other, or life partner, who has the above sort of orientation, doesn’t require attempts from them to change their appearance to that of the opposite sex, because, by definition, something outside of male or female sex, or even perhaps the body, attracts these people.
Sadly, I agree it’s rare for people to find transitioned people attractive, because naturally sexed bodies are what most people require for love, but, perhaps the above type of people are a worthy pool which aren’t smaller in numbers than gay or lesbian or bisexual – I mean, bisexual-as-in-attraction-to-both-male-and-female-bodies – people for transed people.
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And I honestly don’t think, at all, that it is “trans-phobic” for a parent to worry about their child’s being able to find a suitable life partner. As it is, if you have a lesbian or gay child, you do worry because the potential pool of partners is smaller. Gay and lesbian people will tell you this themselves! That sometimes they wish they had “more to choose from.” This isn’t phobic or hateful, it’s just reality. I know “all it takes is one,” but sometimes it’s really hard to find that “one.”
When the number of possible partners is narrowed so extremely far, as it is in the case of people who could possibly be attracted to and want to partner with a trans person, it is entirely understandable that a parent will worry. Hey, even a lot of trans people don’t seem to want to date other trans people! And no, we aren’t concerned about our children’s ability to find a partner because we’re “making a fetish out of grandchildren,” it’s because we know that deciding who to go through life with is possibly the most important decision a person can make. Nobody wants her child to have to settle, that’s for sure!
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I agree. I think all of us want our kids to find life partners who make them happy, if that’s what they choose to do. I have heard from both trans adults and detransitioned adults that as they go through transition, their circle of friends becomes smaller and they tend to isolate themselves more. I would imagine that this is especially true for people who are more socially awkward to begin with.
The reality is that people are attracted to who they are attracted to. We can’t force someone to want to date us, no matter how unfair we think it is. It also takes a special person who will sign up for spending their life with a permanent medical patient.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for parents to worry about their kid being alone or settling for someone just because they’re the only person they can find.
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For very feminine (or even closet transgender) gay male and trans girl, I think, the dating pool is reduced in the same way. Especially if you are attracted to the masculine type.
People will want to play with you but not date you, because being effeminate is considered shameful.
They are screwed either way.
Source: a gay guy (me).
But there are some open-minded person out there, not necessarily creeps, who happen to be attracted to gender-ambivalent individuals (not that not being attracted to gender-ambivalent individuals makes you a bigot in any way). I have heard of plenty of trans people with girlfriends or boyfriends.
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I agree that the dating pool is reduced, and you’re right that people want to play but not get serious. I think teens and young adults who are not ready for a sexual relationship are also more open to these pairings. However, I think for a lot of people that instinct takes over at some point and they want to be with someone who has not altered their body in this way.
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“…not that not being attracted to gender-ambivalent individuals makes you a bigot in any way.”
Yeah, except lots and lots of trans-identified individuals DO say that not being attracted to trans-identified people makes you a bigot. I have read several articles where transmen whine about their lack of a sex life and complain that gay men do not want to hook up with them. And it takes less than five minutes delving into trans issues before hearing about the cotton ceiling. And those people are ALWAYS labelled as bigots.
Don’t try to play us. We’re not newbies, here.
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“explain it away with a twofer: By equating it to treatments for children with life-threatening cancers…”
When I was a kid I was a little hypochondriac. If I read about something, or saw it on TV I was convinced I had all the symptoms. I had everything from malaria to German measles and yes, cancer I was sure of it! Can you all imagine applying the “accept your child’s truth, don’t question” here? When I told my mom I had cancer she would’ve said, “Well you know yourself, lets go get you some radiation and chemotherapy!” This woman is fearmongering and it’s going to have some devastating consequences. I look at poor Jazz Jennings and I wonder how life is going to be for her when she’s not cute anymore and the TV cameras are on the next kids TLC decides to exploit. Only unlike Honey BooBoo and the Gosslens, she’ll be physically damaged as well as mentally.
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“Would go screaming through the house and would not leave the house until he had on his brother’s big, holey T-shirts.”
As though as kids wouldn’t want to be like their brothers and sisters.
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