the law as it stands on sex - part 3

A poem, seen on Twitter.

twitter.com/i/status/1518184843447840768

Iam64

If the Gods/Tavi unit had started from the usual holistic assessment, rather than the ‘I’m a boy really’ starting point, the body of knowledge would be stronger.

Yes, I think this is crucial. It's not that I think we shouldn't listen to children - recent abuse scandals have shown how important it is that we take them seriously - but that we dig deeper into what they mean, rather than what they say (specially the little ones).

'It's just a feeling' is simply not good enough. Surely there are people able to explore that further, to determine what it is that they are feeling, as well as what they have in common, and the significance of those things?

I think we also need to get rid of the 'report' culture that has people running to authority to silence anyone who expresses an opinion that conflicts with the self-appointed arbiters of what is 'allowed' to be said. Whether that is children who use it as a way to bully others, teachers and academics buying into the idea that it is 'kind' to pander to children, or Stonewall and its supporters persecuting people by getting them sacked or otherwise silenced for speaking out, it needs to be stopped. A lot of is is bullying, pure and simple, and in places like universities, where it is widespread, there should be free speech about anything and everything that can be defended.

It does look as though the No Debate crowd are losing credibility now, which is great news. As with any authoritarian group, though, I suspect they won't go quietly, so it's important that anyone with a more liberal outlook doesn't take their eyes off the ball.

snowberryZ

This is interesting.
It's good to know that a lot of teachers are uneasy about things and don't want to pander to this nonsense but can't speak out for fear of being fired.
This is why we oldies have more power than we realise.
They can't threaten to fire us if we say what we think.

"I’m a teacher in a secondary school. I’d like to assure you all that the vast majority of us can see what is happening. My hope is that, as it becomes a ‘Year 7’ thing, it will become uncool and the older children will distance themselves from it, and find new ways of expressing themselves."

I really hope it is true that it will be a year 7 thing.
The problem facing some girls starting KS3, is not just coping with puberty, but bullying by those girls who either seized the opportunity to start or have been sucked into the power of being trans.
Bullying-e.g. ensuring punishment by reporting girls for using the wrong pronouns in a school where all pupils wear school uniform-skirts or trousers. Or refusing to be sucked into the gang or for not having sufficient ‘victim points’.

In the interests of being inclusive this is allowed to go on.

Why did these girls not apply to a mixed or a boys’ school both of which are available at no great distance?

If the Gods/Tavi unit had started from the usual holistic assessment, rather than the ‘I’m a boy really’ starting point, the body of knowledge would be stronger.

Yes Iam, we need to listen and talk to them about what's troubling them and also remember that they are children and what they 'believe' today may not be what they 'believe' later on.

We need to listen and take what children say seriously but that’s different than ‘believing’ everything a child or young people says.

I'm not disputing the report of the teacher, but we really need more verifiable and objective studies, to see how widespread the issue is, and whether those numbers hold true across the country.

It's interesting that lockdown seems to have triggered some of this in the school in the article. The more of that sort of link (whether correlation or causation) we have, the more the possible reasons can be investigated.

I've hear children say 'when I'm a boy/girl too, Rosie. In fact one of my nephews used to say 'when I was a monkey' after learning about evolution at school .

Thanks doodle, your post puts it well
I don’t wish to minimise the distress of the adolescents at the school referred to. I recall outbreaks of self harm in certain years and in residential care placements. Invariably they followed a pattern triggered by one or two individuals. Fortunately they didn’t persist

The above quote was from a teacher on MN
www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4536483-nearly-one-in-every-15-pupils-at-a-leading-secondary-school-identify-as-trans-or-non-binary-with-majority-declaring-their-gender-change-after-lockdown-last-summer

This is interesting.
It's good to know that a lot of teachers are uneasy about things and don't want to pander to this nonsense but can't speak out for fear of being fired.
This is why we oldies have more power than we realise.
They can't threaten to fire us if we say what we think.

"I’m a teacher in a secondary school. I’d like to assure you all that the vast majority of us can see what is happening. My hope is that, as it becomes a ‘Year 7’ thing, it will become uncool and the older children will distance themselves from it, and find new ways of expressing themselves."

Great post Doodledog

There does have to be a reason for the increasing numbers of children and adolescents affected. I don't buy the 'there were always this number but now they're free to express themselves' line. If that were true where are all the middle age and older women who always knew they were boys and men? I wonder if that's why some TRAs try to insist that butch lesbians should 'be true' to themselves and transition .............to increase the numbers?

I knew a little girl who had older brothers and around the age of 2 to 3 said "when I'm a boy" ....she thought that children all became boys as they grew older. She'd have been transitioned in a heartbeat by some these days, but is a happily married mum of two as an adult.

I certainly wouldn't even suggest under wear to flatten their body or hormonal treatment. Support their choice of gender neutral clothes which there's an ample supply of, perhaps use their preferred name at home but not expect their school to do the same.

It would be a huge decision, possibly the biggest one of their lives so for me it would be important to stress how long the process will take, with or without surgical intervention when they're older.

They need to take time to ensure this is what they really want and those who love them will need time to understand and come to terms with their decision. It isn't an instant 'fix', it cannot happen 'over night' and IMO it's very important that that is stressed.

I honestly don't know what I would do if I were a parent and a child of, say, 14 told me they wanted to change gender. I would absolutely want to support them to do anything to make them happy, and it would be my role as a parent to advocate for them and help them to navigate what would obviously be a difficult situation.

On the other hand, I like to think that I would have picked up on signs that things were going wrong long before they were 14. I have no direct experience, so this may be mistaken, but I assume you don't go to bed a happy, well-adjusted child, and get up knowing you are in the wrong body? There must be a build up of some kind, and I hope I'd have spotted their unhappiness and been able to intervene at an earlier stage.

I wouldn't know where to start to get therapy that wouldn't push them further down a road of 'transition at all costs', though, and would be wary of going too far the other way and making their unhappiness worse. I really think that there should be a lot more open discussion and help for parents in this position - and not the sort that is tied to clinics and pharma companies who profit from transitions.

If I had a 4 year old who insisted he was a girl (or she was a boy), again I'd be wary of getting things wrong, but I'd be more inclined to try to jolly them along. My nephew insisted that he was Hercules for a while, and we all just went along with it until he grew out of it and got cross when we didn't use his real name.

What I would really like to know is why this is happening in such large numbers now, when it didn't in the past? I can understand that a lot of things weren't understood before, and that 'awkward' or 'difficult' things were often brushed under the carpet, so eg dyslexics were assumed to have low IQ; but what were all these children assumed to be up until the last few years? Surely they would have presented with differences of some sort, and those differences would be noticeable?

I can think of one or two boys who were probably hiding the fact that they were gay when I was at school, and no girls, although there will have been significantly more of both sexes, and none presented as such at the age of 5. I can think of no children at any stage who insisted they were of the other sex, though. A few girls thought they were more like boys, because they liked climbing trees, but a more arbitrary metric is difficult to think of. That is a perfect example of why gender norms should never determine the sex that someone 'is inside', surely? Girls wanting to be treated like the boys were, at a time when boys often did no chores, were given more freedom, played better games with more interesting toys is understandable, but not indicative of a deeper meaning. So where were all the dysphorics then? What happened to the teenage boys who 'just knew' they were girls and not gay boys? Why didn't lots of reception class children come to school in clothing considered gender inappropriate (or suffer anguish if not allowed to do so)? I would really be interested to understand the shift, if it is not being driven by nefarious forces, probably with profit as their motive.

Let them be children exactly DL. They should be playing with their friends and their toys, enjoying their childhood while they can, not wearing underwear to flatten their bodies.

What are these parents thinking? It does make you wonder if this is because these parents did have a child of one sex, but want a child of another. It's like a script of a bad and very frightening horror film, and what makes it really scary is that this is actually happening.

Mollygo

DL, with clothes being so unisex; even our school uniform does not specify who can wear what, I can’t help but think this gender choice at 4 is a bit Münchausen by proxy.
Interestingly, the parents who wanted their son to be acknowledged as a girl all the way through primary, chose to enter him for the Boys’ Grammar entrance exam. He didn’t get in, but I don’t know what he identifies as now, because they moved out of our area soon after.

I think it's just so harmful to be flattening breasts and genitals while children are still growing.

Let them be children.

Young children cannot possibly know about and make that choice, so it's parents obviously saying they had a child of one sex, but want a child of another.

How must that make a child feel? ?

DL, with clothes being so unisex; even our school uniform does not specify who can wear what, I can’t help but think this gender choice at 4 is a bit Münchausen by proxy.
Interestingly, the parents who wanted their son to be acknowledged as a girl all the way through primary, chose to enter him for the Boys’ Grammar entrance exam. He didn’t get in, but I don’t know what he identifies as now, because they moved out of our area soon after.

Some posters here were asking "What's funny?"
Well, apparently transwoman Grace Lavery is, in his recently published book about his penis :

"Parts of the book are unwittingly hilarious. Lavery writes about the ‘panic’ over trans women (ie, blokes) using women’s toilets, with gender-critical types pushing the bigoted idea that trans women are ‘erotically fixated on the idea of women urinating’. Then, literally in the next paragraph, he says: ‘[But] going to the bathroom is kind of sexy? At least, I have occasionally found it to be so.’ My man, this is why they don’t want you in their loos."

www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/23/how-the-trans-ideology-dehumanises-women/

Lavery, recently interviewed on Woman's Hour btw, is clearly not one of those timorous transwomen who are hugely upset by their male anatomy.

Mollygo

DL
Well, and here's today's piece of lunacy. Underpants, for little boys (as young as 4 years old) to flatten their genitals, assisting on their road to "authentic, self determining identity"...Ye Gods. ?

A follow-on from the binders being supplied via Lush for flattening girls breasts, regardless of the harm it can do.

Sex shows, binders, genitalia flatteners? There are some seriously sick people around.

It does feel as though there is some sort of mission creep, to remove children from their "childhood", and treat them as adults.

A four year old cannot possibly decide he wants to be a different gender, and, frankly no four year old should even be thinking about it, let alone being part of any discussion.

Worrying. ?

DL
Well, and here's today's piece of lunacy. Underpants, for little boys (as young as 4 years old) to flatten their genitals, assisting on their road to "authentic, self determining identity"...Ye Gods. ?

A follow-on from the binders being supplied via Lush for flattening girls breasts, regardless of the harm it can do.

Sex shows, binders, genitalia flatteners? There are some seriously sick people around.

FarNorth, thanks for the link to the interview with the female prisoner. What can be done to stop the nonsense where men can self ID and serve their sentence in a women’s prison? It’s no surprise that sex offenders, men with a propensity to abuse women are prevalent in this category. I expect to be roundly condemned for reaching that conclusion as I haven’t seen any research. I base it on years of experience.

Someone earlier asked if tube Tavi Gids unit had kept figures of children given hormone, surgeryand other treatments who later wanted to revert to their original sex. No such figures have been kept.

"[Dr Shiban Ahmed] said that could destroy the chances of fatherhood for boys who later changed their minds about becoming female."

Boys who are far too young to decide that, in the first place.

This isn't being led by children but by adults who must be seriously disturbed.

I don’t want to be in hospital next to a man or use public toilets shared by men, If you have a penis use the make facilities if you’ve a womb use the female ones. The thought of desperate women in a refuge having males in there is frightening, their rights and those of their children come first after the battering and cruelty they and their families have endured. I’m sorry their rights come first. Just where has all the common sense gone? The minority have to fit in with the masses, not the other may round. To talk about children being bisexual and trans is unbelievable just what planet are they on, in my opinion it’s child abuse and perversion, does untold damage.

They are children, let them be that.

"If someone wants to live quietly (or noisily for that matter!) and be accepted amongst groups of women, all they need to do is not go into a line of work that involves intimate examinations, not compete against women in sport, and be sensitive about where they undress"

I think that is a good summary really!

Well, and here's today's piece of lunacy. Underpants, for little boys (as young as 4 years old) to flatten their genitals, assisting on their road to "authentic, self determining identity"...Ye Gods. ?

Doctors have advised flattening the genitals of small children could cause permanent physical damage to boys.

Baroness Nicholson has commented this could be illegal, and a form of child abuse.

"Under a dedicated ‘Kids’ section on its website, the company says: ‘Carmen Liu Kids is here for trans girls and non-binary children in their journey. We are the world’s first company (you heard!) to listen to the children that need us.

Each product is here to provide children with the stepping stones to finding themselves, in a supportive, validating experience.’

It adds: ‘We are here to provide gender expression products for trans girls and non-binary children in aim [sic] of finding their true, authentic self.’

But Tory peer Baroness Nicholson said: ‘I am truly horrified. The makers, sellers and distributors of these items are breaking the Children’s Act and are heavily abusing the NHS health criteria for children."

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10746809/Transgender-designer-accused-child-abuse-selling-pants-flatten-genitals-boys.html

That's so shocking, yet in some ways no surprise We thought females were at last gaining a meaningful equality in many areas, then we're brought back to earth that no, we still don't count as full humans. And what hurts even more? That other females support the people that are enforcing this madness....... the 'it'll never happen to me or mine, so I'll shut my eyes and mind to the injustice and brutality of it' brigade. Sometimes I feel so ashamed of my sex class then I remember the courage of women like Allison Bailey, Kathleen Stock, Kiera Bell, J K Rowling, Rosie Duffield etc etc and I have hope again.