Anonymous wrote:The governor of Mississippi wants to protect kids from woke ideas, but seems unbothered by the abysmal maternal and neonatal mortality rates in his state. Go figure.
The governor of California wants to give kids the right to have body parts cut off, but seems unbothered by the abysmal homelessness, housing crisis, piss poor educational system, gang violence, sky-high crime, illegal immigration crisis, drug abuse, and collapsing public health system in his state. Go figure.
The state of California won’t be performing any trans care, they’re just not passing laws to stop doctors from treating patients.
Mississippi won’t expand Medicaid, and a much higher percentage of their residents are low income. They pay very little of the state Medicaid as it currently stands. They’d pay an even smaller percentage of the expansion, but refuse, despite their current crisis.
So, when you can pretend to care about women and babies dying, I’ll find your claim of caring about trans kids to be more believable.
I couldn’t care less what you believe. Your movement is dying and the reason why most of America is “silent” about this (which trans activists are always whining about) because we agree with those who are taking you down.
Taking me down? Nah. I’m not an activist. I’m not trans. I’m pointing out the fallacy of your “but the children!!” argument.
It was when it happened the third time in a week that I started to really wonder. The parent would be telling me about their teenager, about their mental anguish, suicidal thoughts and self harm, and then they’d drop something in, so casually that I’d almost think I’d missed it, ‘Oh, and he’s a transboy (or girl), transitioned when he (or she) was five (or six or seven), but that’s all fine’. And with that, I knew I’d been warned off. Nothing to see here.
I’m a psychologist, my job is to explore, to look for meaning. I work with families and young people. I try to understand why people behave and feel the way they do and to share that understanding. I ask uncomfortable questions sometimes, particularly of parents, about how everyone’s behaviour in the family is inter-related and how children can sometimes show the distress for the whole family. Usually I’m curious about any big change in a child’s life. I’d ask, so how did that happen? What was going on about that time? How was that decision made?
Not with this though. I can’t really ask about their gender identity for fear of being seen as transphobic, and of being accused of practicing conversion therapy. I’m meant to celebrate their trans identity, use the preferred pronouns and definitely not ask any questions at all about what this might mean. I know what is expected of me.
These children’s stories started years before, and I know that because I saw some of it happening on Facebook. Distant Facebook friends would say things like “We’ve known for a while this day was coming. But today we took the plunge. The barber cut Joanna’s hair and we have thrown out her old clothes. We welcome Joseph to our family!’ accompanied by a picture of a beaming 4-year-old with short hair wearing a Spiderman t-shirt. So easy to do for a four-year-old. Cut or grow their hair and no one will know the difference, and anyone who raised any concerns would be told that it’s ‘Fully reversible, it’s just clothes and pronouns! No one is medically transitioning children! Stop the moral panic!’
So now Joanna is Joseph, and they live their childhood. Everyone is told to call them ‘he’ and they shop in the boy’s section of the supermarket clothes aisle. They play football and their mother posts muddy pictures captioned ‘Boy through and through!’ to be met with a stream of comments about what a great parent they are and how lucky Joseph is and how much of a boy he is. If Joseph likes dolls or hangs out with the girls or even likes to wear dresses that’s just him breaking gender stereotypes or showing his sensitive side. Joseph spends his childhood being affirmed as a boy every hour of his life. Anyone who has any qualms keeps quiet, because they know that they will be blocked and cast out immediately.
Except that Joseph is a boy with a secret. Before transition, Joanna was a girl who sometimes wanted to be a boy, and this was out in the open, everyone could talk about it. Now Joseph is treated as a boy, but there’s something different about him and lots of people don’t know this. He knows it, his parents know it, but people aren’t allowed to mention it or ask him how he feels about it. If they do, they’re transphobic.
Joseph has a choice and neither of his options are good. Either he pretends there’s nothing different even though he can see there is in the boys’ toilet every day, or he gets increasingly distressed about the fact that everyone is telling him he is a boy, he lives in the world as a boy – but he doesn’t actually have the body of a boy. Usually this is too much for him to deal with and so he blocks it out. He disconnects from his body.
Joseph is in a really difficult position. The different facts in his life don’t add up. The adults in his life are telling him that he is a boy, but he can see that he doesn’t have the body of other boys. He will often completely refuse to talk about this. This is interpreted as a sign of his gender dysphoria – he won’t even look at or acknowledge his genitals. His parents will say that they can’t mention it, as he’ll get so upset.
Sometimes his parents will tell him stories about how when he grows up he will be able to have surgery and acquire a penis, and because he is a child he believes them utterly, and dreams of the day that he will no longer have to deal with the dissonance between what his family and friends tell him that he is, and the body he knows he has. The dissonance that was set up by his social transition.
Social transition is a strategy with an expiry date. It’s a short-term strategy with long term consequences. It works so easily for young children – pre-puberty it truly is impossible to tell for many whether they are male or female. The young child who is transitioned is treated by everyone as the opposite sex, and because they are small, they believe that this is how things are. Everyone is happy and the social transition provides short term relief all round. Child is happy, parents are happy, we all celebrate. But in the long term, it creates a problem which is not reversible. Puberty is going to arrive, and the child who has been socially transitioned is put in an impossible situation. They’ve been told all their life they ARE a boy (and that anyone who says they aren’t is transphobic), but their body knows otherwise.
A childhood is not reversible. What we grow up being told in our childhood matters for our whole lives. It forms part of how we understand ourselves and our place in the world. A child who grows up being told they are a boy whilst knowing they are a girl will only have that experience. They can’t go back and do it again.
Joseph grows up and for several happy years there are no apparent problems. His parents get heavily involved in the trans community and feel very connected and affirmed in their decision. Joseph loves his short hair and football boots. He’s ‘one of the gang’. Then he gets to age 10, and his breasts start to grow.
He’s spent the last six years being told he is a boy. There has been no preparation at all in his childhood for the fact of his biological femaleness. No identifying with female role models, no conversations about what puberty means for girls. That has been something to be denied and ignored, or not talked about at all. And now his breasts start to grow.
This is a tender and vulnerable time for all young girls, but for those who have been told they are boys it can be devastating. Social transition has worked for Joseph due to the fact that pre-pubescent boys are very similar to pre-pubescent girls, but now things are going to change. Joseph’s distress becomes intense. They hate their bodies, they hate themselves, they can’t bear the idea of periods and curves. They start to talk about self-harm, of cutting themselves, because they just can’t bear how strong their feelings are.
Of course they can’t. They were set up for this, right from that day when they were proudly taken to the barber to have a ‘boy’s cut’. Social transition works so well in the short term, but in the long term there is no way it won’t cause worse distress. Because a childhood isn’t reversible, and this child has spent theirs being told they are of the opposite sex. The time they could have had getting used to their biological reality, they have spent hiding it. They could have been learning that they can express themselves in any way that they want, whether they are female or male – but instead they have been learning to deny the biological reality of their body.
Now of course, the distress Joseph feels is seen as gender dysphoria rearing its head again. ‘We were right’ the parents say to each other, ‘Look at how distressed he is about puberty, imagine if we’d been dealing with this for the last six years’. Now is when the suicidal thoughts start, because the child is faced with an unbelievable reality – they cannot simply go on being treated as a boy, when they have the body of a girl. Their parents can no longer make everything alright. Of course they are upset. Of course they feel intense distress. Of course they are desperate for puberty blockers. They want to go back to how things were. They have been sold a lie and so has everyone around them.
What’s the alternative? Parents tell me their child was adamant, there was just no other choice. They had to transition them, otherwise….what?
Transitioning is an adult solution, and it’s an explanation our generation has found for children who defy stereotypes. The child behaves in a certain way and adults say ‘trans’ and act accordingly. Adults feel relieved because they feel they’ve found the solution – and they are scared of what might happen to their child as they grow older, because they’ve been told that the consequences of not transitioning a child are disaster. Usually suicide.
There really is little evidence for this.
There is, to my knowledge, no research which looks at outcomes for children who are supported to express themselves however they want, but whilst still being referred to by their biological sex. We had several children like this in my primary school. One of them played football, hung out with the boys and even wore a boy’s swimming costume for school swimming. I was confused. I went home that day and told my mother that Emma can be a boy’s name too.
Later I discovered that Emma was in fact a girl who looked like a boy, deliberately. She and I become good friends. She was supported to express herself however she wanted, but no one transitioned her. She navigated puberty much like the rest of us. She’s a mother now, and works as a tree surgeon.
I think of Emma when I see these distressed teenagers, and I wonder what our generation has forgotten that our parents knew. For they held onto reality for us, when we were too young to know the difference.
So I tell parents to take their children’s gender distress seriously, but also lightly. Take their desires to cut their hair, to wear Spiderman t-shirts and to play football seriously, but hold for them your knowledge that this doesn’t make them a boy. They don’t know that. Young children think that the external stuff IS what makes a girl or boy. They don’t know any different.
We do. We need to hold that space for them. The space where they can do anything they want, be anything they want – but not change their sex or fly to Mars, because neither of those is actually possible. We can imagine it, fantasise about it, but we need to hold that space for them. Because they don’t know.
There’s an alternative universe where Joanna’s parents cut her hair and bought her a Spiderman shirt, but didn’t post it on Facebook. Where they told Joanna that of course they can call her Jo if she wants, she can play football all she wants, and she’ll always be their daughter because we can’t change sex. That’s a world where Joanna’s parents let her be herself without bringing in adult explanations such as, ‘You’re trans’, and let her grow up and discover the reality of her female body. A body which is hard to live in, and which most women wish wasn’t so messy and inconvenient at some point – but which is her birth right, and which is the only body she will ever have. In this universe, Joanna’s mother and sister tell her about puberty, because no one has to deny her female biology. No one tells her that she needs drugs to stop her going through the ‘wrong puberty’.
When Jo reaches puberty she’s not overjoyed about the changes, just as many girls aren’t. She doesn’t like her new breasts much and she really isn’t impressed with periods. But she doesn’t feel that this developing body is deeply at odds with the person she is, because she’s spent her childhood knowing that she is a girl, and that she can express herself however she wants. She doesn’t feel she must get rid of the indicators of femaleness, in order to continue the illusion that everyone had created around Joseph. She hasn’t been disconnected from the reality of herself as female.
Social transition isn’t reversible, because what we tell our children for years can’t be reversed. When we disconnect them from their biological sex, we set up patterns of denial and secrets. We set them up to hate their bodies at puberty, to beg for blockers and binders, because for years we told them they could change sex, and they believed us. They are desperate to go back to the years when no one knew any different, but that time will never come again. Time is not reversible.
They don’t know any different. They think that could go on for ever, that they will wake up one day transformed into a male body. They live in a world of fantasy and magic. We know better. We owe it to them to hold that space.
We need to tell them that they can dream of being everything they want to be, express themselves however they want, but we know they can’t change their sex. We have to tell them this, even if they find it distressing. We need to be able to hold that distress and listen, whilst holding onto reality. For our only other option is to betray our children’s trust in us, and the consequences of that will be lifelong.
There are some kernels of truth here about not forcing gender ideas on children, but on the whole this is a lot of crap. I wonder if these so-called shrinks ever actually listen to the people they treat. Many are forced into rigid gender roles that correspond directly to their sex and are traumatized by the experience. Plenty of 50-year old trans women and men came of age when there was no such thing as trans people. They got to live full lives as their biological sex and it never got easier, never got better. Apparently these people don’t exist.
Reality is what you think it is. Some people live in a reality where a so-called omniscient God is watching them from above, and despite being all powerful, really wants their daughters to wear a dress and be submissive, and if they don’t, then they should cast them out on the street.
From where I’m sitting, there’s plenty of mental illness in these two scenarios, but it’s not from the person who knows their mind and own feelings.
No. Reality is what is. What you or I or anyone else thinks about it is irrelevant
So is there a God or not? Because let’s face it, a lot of this anti-trans hate is being driven by people that firmly believe in Him, and what He wants, and how He wants man and women to live here on Earth and in which clothes and according to pronouns He devoutly ordained, so we can fulfill His mission that man be dominant, and woman be helpmeet, and that we can all live forever in His Grace in Heaven. So sayeth those that are professed by His Spirit, and hear His Voice.
So tell me again about reality and who’s got a grip on it and who maybe needs a check.
Yes of course there is God, made real (as in, reality, your favorite word) in the person of Christ Jesus. But that is not what we are discussing on this thread so I will not further engage.
See, I think people like you are absolutely mentally ill and delusional. This is fairy tale thinking and absurd. I don’t care if you want to believe this crap but keep it out of other peoples business and our laws. That isn’t too much to ask.
See, I think people like you are absolutely mentally ill and delusional. You keep "this crap" about transgenderism out of other people's business and our laws That isn't too much to ask.
See it doesn't work when you tell people to keep their business out of yours when you are the one who is a busybody trying to control how someone presents themselves. You are the problem. Authoritarian control freak.
Precious, you can "present" yourself any way you want. Just don't expect me or anyone else to play along.
You’re responding to more than one person … but this is great news!!!!! You’re saying people can present however they want!!! Well isn’t that special. It’s great they have your permission now, so what exactly is your problem? You don’t have to play along. Don’t have to be transgender and guess what. You don’t even have to support a child, friend, coworker, anyone! Isn’t this fabulous news?? All you have to do - literally, I can’t stress this enough - is nothing. Can you at least do that?
No, it's a ridiculous irrelevance. Viagra is for adults, or did you not know that?
Different gender-affirming medical care is appropriate at different stages of life. It is never appropriate for politicians—whether or not they understand that they are huffing QAnon glue—to decide what medical care is appropriate at what stage.
As you can see from this thread and others abortion and trans stuff gets the right all riled up and angry. And gets them out to vote.
Now that abortion is up to the states, the GOP has to find another issue that will make the base super angry, and seem to have settled on either trans stuff or Hispanic non documented immigrants.
I predict "trans children" will be the winner, as to not alienate conservative Hispanic voters.
Most people with a brain don't care. If the Catholic Church can molest children for decades, and no conservative stopped them, and republicans want to put kids back in meat packing plants, it's not like they really care about the kids.
Anonymous wrote:So here's some good news that I just read on-line and if it's true, it's great and very encouraging.
Apparently, the entire staff (doctors) in the adolescent medicine department at Dell Children's Hospital in Austin, TX have been fired. The entire department has been shut down, because the AG (Paxton) was ready to sue them for performing sexual mutilation surgery on minors.
I will try to find other verification of this news to confirm.
Thank heavens. I hope they’re put on trial as a warning to the rest of the gender industry’s amoral Mengeles.
Well the most this is doing is delaying these patient's health care until they turn 18.
You're delusional if you think that means they will not continue their transitioning once they are of legal age.
Oh, does that thought make your mad? Or delighted that you've prolonged their agony? Probably some of both.
80% of kids with gender dysphoria desist after puberty
So yeah, there’s a big benefit to waiting until 18 for medical intervention.
The Steensma 2011 Study
The often quoted 80% statistic originates from the Desisting and persisting gender dysphoria after childhood study by Steensma et al in 2011, and to say it is deeply flawed would be an understatement.
While this particular study did indeed include some transgender young people, it had huge problems with definitions, methodology & follow up.
The key problems are:
Including participants who had been “diagnosed” using differing criteria from DSM* IV & V - mixing up young people who had dysphoria, those that had only socially transitioned and those who were non conforming. (*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)
Treating those different participants as though they were all the same.
Counting participants who could not be contacted during follow up as having “desisted”
Counting participants who did not have dysphoria differently at the start and end of the study
DP.
I will note that you did not cite a source for your post. So I will.
So, you are using a site called "Claires Trans Talks" to refute a scientific study? Do you think that "Claire" may be just a tad biased when it comes to this subject? From the website:
Our founder Claire “came out” as transgender in 2016, after a lifetime of suppressing then hesitantly exploring her identity.
Coming out at work, Claire had the opportunity to start delivering talks on Transgender Awareness as part of the Equality & Diversity modules of several courses, which revealed the depth of misunderstanding, and the many misconceptions people had about transgender people.
This, coupled with some less than positive experiences gave her the idea for a social enterprise to increase knowledge and acceptance of transgender people in society. And so “Claire’s Trans Talks” was formed in 2018, aiming to deliver transgender awareness training, resources and advice to organisations & businesses.
Anonymous wrote:So here's some good news that I just read on-line and if it's true, it's great and very encouraging.
Apparently, the entire staff (doctors) in the adolescent medicine department at Dell Children's Hospital in Austin, TX have been fired. The entire department has been shut down, because the AG (Paxton) was ready to sue them for performing sexual mutilation surgery on minors.
I will try to find other verification of this news to confirm.
Thank heavens. I hope they’re put on trial as a warning to the rest of the gender industry’s amoral Mengeles.
Well the most this is doing is delaying these patient's health care until they turn 18.
You're delusional if you think that means they will not continue their transitioning once they are of legal age.
Oh, does that thought make your mad? Or delighted that you've prolonged their agony? Probably some of both.
80% of kids with gender dysphoria desist after puberty
So yeah, there’s a big benefit to waiting until 18 for medical intervention.
The Steensma 2011 Study
The often quoted 80% statistic originates from the Desisting and persisting gender dysphoria after childhood study by Steensma et al in 2011, and to say it is deeply flawed would be an understatement.
While this particular study did indeed include some transgender young people, it had huge problems with definitions, methodology & follow up.
The key problems are:
Including participants who had been “diagnosed” using differing criteria from DSM* IV & V - mixing up young people who had dysphoria, those that had only socially transitioned and those who were non conforming. (*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)
Treating those different participants as though they were all the same.
Counting participants who could not be contacted during follow up as having “desisted”
Counting participants who did not have dysphoria differently at the start and end of the study
DP.
I will note that you did not cite a source for your post. So I will.
So, you are using a site called "Claires Trans Talks" to refute a scientific study? Do you think that "Claire" may be just a tad biased when it comes to this subject? From the website:
Our founder Claire “came out” as transgender in 2016, after a lifetime of suppressing then hesitantly exploring her identity.
Coming out at work, Claire had the opportunity to start delivering talks on Transgender Awareness as part of the Equality & Diversity modules of several courses, which revealed the depth of misunderstanding, and the many misconceptions people had about transgender people.
This, coupled with some less than positive experiences gave her the idea for a social enterprise to increase knowledge and acceptance of transgender people in society. And so “Claire’s Trans Talks” was formed in 2018, aiming to deliver transgender awareness training, resources and advice to organisations & businesses.
Anonymous wrote:So here's some good news that I just read on-line and if it's true, it's great and very encouraging.
Apparently, the entire staff (doctors) in the adolescent medicine department at Dell Children's Hospital in Austin, TX have been fired. The entire department has been shut down, because the AG (Paxton) was ready to sue them for performing sexual mutilation surgery on minors.
I will try to find other verification of this news to confirm.
Thank heavens. I hope they’re put on trial as a warning to the rest of the gender industry’s amoral Mengeles.
Well the most this is doing is delaying these patient's health care until they turn 18.
You're delusional if you think that means they will not continue their transitioning once they are of legal age.
Oh, does that thought make your mad? Or delighted that you've prolonged their agony? Probably some of both.
80% of kids with gender dysphoria desist after puberty
So yeah, there’s a big benefit to waiting until 18 for medical intervention.
The Steensma 2011 Study
The often quoted 80% statistic originates from the Desisting and persisting gender dysphoria after childhood study by Steensma et al in 2011, and to say it is deeply flawed would be an understatement.
While this particular study did indeed include some transgender young people, it had huge problems with definitions, methodology & follow up.
The key problems are:
Including participants who had been “diagnosed” using differing criteria from DSM* IV & V - mixing up young people who had dysphoria, those that had only socially transitioned and those who were non conforming. (*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)
Treating those different participants as though they were all the same.
Counting participants who could not be contacted during follow up as having “desisted”
Counting participants who did not have dysphoria differently at the start and end of the study
DP.
I will note that you did not cite a source for your post. So I will.
So, you are using a site called "Claires Trans Talks" to refute a scientific study? Do you think that "Claire" may be just a tad biased when it comes to this subject? From the website:
Our founder Claire “came out” as transgender in 2016, after a lifetime of suppressing then hesitantly exploring her identity.
Coming out at work, Claire had the opportunity to start delivering talks on Transgender Awareness as part of the Equality & Diversity modules of several courses, which revealed the depth of misunderstanding, and the many misconceptions people had about transgender people.
This, coupled with some less than positive experiences gave her the idea for a social enterprise to increase knowledge and acceptance of transgender people in society. And so “Claire’s Trans Talks” was formed in 2018, aiming to deliver transgender awareness training, resources and advice to organisations & businesses.
I'm sorry but if you count people that cannot be contacted for follow up because they moved as desistance, then your study is bunk.
No, it's a ridiculous irrelevance. Viagra is for adults, or did you not know that?
Different gender-affirming medical care is appropriate at different stages of life. It is never appropriate for politicians—whether or not they understand that they are huffing QAnon glue—to decide what medical care is appropriate at what stage.
So, you advocate that surgical castration and sterilization is appropriate for minor children. Do I have that correct?
No, it's a ridiculous irrelevance. Viagra is for adults, or did you not know that?
Different gender-affirming medical care is appropriate at different stages of life. It is never appropriate for politicians—whether or not they understand that they are huffing QAnon glue—to decide what medical care is appropriate at what stage.
So, you advocate that surgical castration and sterilization is appropriate for minor children. Do I have that correct?
You know not all gender affirming care is surgical, right? That’s a small piece of the puzzle, and you folks are acting like trans 6 year olds are all getting sex reassignment surgery. If you could just deal in reality, this would be an easier conversation for everyone.
No, it's a ridiculous irrelevance. Viagra is for adults, or did you not know that?
Different gender-affirming medical care is appropriate at different stages of life. It is never appropriate for politicians—whether or not they understand that they are huffing QAnon glue—to decide what medical care is appropriate at what stage.
So, you advocate that surgical castration and sterilization is appropriate for minor children. Do I have that correct?
You know not all gender affirming care is surgical, right? That’s a small piece of the puzzle, and you folks are acting like trans 6 year olds are all getting sex reassignment surgery. If you could just deal in reality, this would be an easier conversation for everyone.
Of course you are absolutely right. Let me rephrase that:
So, you advocate that puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, which cause sterilization and castration when administered to pre- pubescents, are appropriate for minor children. Do I have that correct?
No, it's a ridiculous irrelevance. Viagra is for adults, or did you not know that?
Different gender-affirming medical care is appropriate at different stages of life. It is never appropriate for politicians—whether or not they understand that they are huffing QAnon glue—to decide what medical care is appropriate at what stage.
So, you advocate that surgical castration and sterilization is appropriate for minor children. Do I have that correct?
You know not all gender affirming care is surgical, right? That’s a small piece of the puzzle, and you folks are acting like trans 6 year olds are all getting sex reassignment surgery. If you could just deal in reality, this would be an easier conversation for everyone.
So that ANY minors are being subjected to this is fine with you, as long as it’s not widespread? Is that what you’re saying? Just trying to understand your weak, twisted morals.
Forum Index
»
Political Discussion
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}