Update on the treatment of children who identify as transgender
The medical and leftist political establishments have been experimenting with the lives of children who identify as transgender, without knowing much about it at all. It seems ironic to me, on reading this article, that these radical treatments were offered – without adequate research – to vulnerable children, by the very same leftists who demanded that no drug, even those previously considered innocuous such as hydroxychloroquine, be given COVID patients without the drug being subjected to lengthy clinical trials first. And that was at a time when there wasn’t much else to offer COVID patients.
The article I just linked on the treatment of children makes shocking reading, even if you (like me) knew pretty much everything in it already. It’s still outrageous to read how these children and their parents have been exploited. The two doctors who contribute to the article are extremely prominent in the field of transgender surgery and are having serious second thoughts about early treatment (the two doctors happen to be transgender women, as well).
Here’s an excerpt:
Few, if any, other doctors acknowledge as much. The Mayo Clinic, for instance, does not note that permanent sexual dysfunction may be among puberty blockers’ risks. St. Louis Children’s Hospital doesn’t mention it, either. Oregon Health & Science University Children’s Hospital and University of California at San Francisco don’t. Nor was there any mention of sexual dysfunction in a recent New York Times story, “What Are Puberty Blockers?”
Jack Turban, the chief fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine, wrote, in 2018: “The only significant side effect is that the adolescent may fall behind on bone density.”
But lack of bone density is often just the start of the problem. Patients who take puberty blockers almost invariably wind up taking cross-sex hormones — and this combination tends to leave patients infertile and, as Bowers made clear, sexually dysfunctional.
This is a huge and growing problem, and it’s not going away. Due to politics and social media, the number of children identifying as transgender, especially girls identifying as boys, has grown by leaps and bounds. I’ve written several posts about this before, and in my opinion many health practitioners in the field (and I include many therapists here) are abusing these children and/or violating the Hippocratic oath. They are doing harm, and it has become verboten to point that out.
I hope that this article, which quotes two doctors whose previous bona fides in the field were probably impeccable, changes a few minds, although I’m experienced enough and cynical enough to realize that probably the opposite will occur and they and the information they are imparting will be rejected and shunned.
Does everyone forget a cliche from the late 1960s that generated the environmental movement?
“It’s not nice to mess with Mother Nature!”
It became a commercial and a commonly cited piece of wisdom from that neo-romantic movement associated with the Counter-Culture.
It reiterated Hippocrates wisdom “First, do no harm.” But did so by citing the authority of the ecological ethic, calling us to respect the natural world.
Now we’re completely free to trash Nature — no drugged out excuses needed. Complete madness.
I linked to the same article on another site and added this comment:
This is not sloppy, this is malpractice. I’ve met Dr Bowers. Great lady, too expensive for me to be able to use – though I do like her technique. But she is absolutely right about the puberty blocker issue on MtF transsexuals. One of the reasons I’m torn on the issue.
They are right that the medical community has destroyed it’s own authority on the issue – and I don’t know how they get it back if the expected blowback (detransitioners) happens over the next 5-10 yrs.
The Hippocratic Oath has been ignored for 7 decades, replaced by leftist politics.
Is it possible that a large number if messed up people is considered a plus, by the Left. Messed up people that they can then “advocate ” for, and be guaranteed their votes. Even though they are responsible for them being messed up, and the resulting misery?
Tracy Coyle:
Having received my own training during a time when the medical and therapy professions were far more cautious and gradual about transition, I was shocked the moment I heard that they’d dropped many of the stepped requirements to make sure the decisions weren’t precipitous and the result of other mental/emotional issues, and also when I learned that children were now being treated. These were immediate red flags. The speed with which caution was dropped was another red flag, and with an obviously political agenda.
I have been very very worried for a long time about we’re doing to our children in so many ways. This is one of them that’s extremely disturbing, and I believe it’s child abuse.
Neo:
I agree with the red flags…HUGE….
I still haven’t found anybody that can explain the physical basis of gender to me. Can you?
Ideologues who ignore or even deny reality’s feedback, act as an ideological cancer within a society. When allowed to infect young minds, they metastisize that ideological cancer throughout society.
Once sufficient metastization has occurred, only radical surgery can save the patient. The wider and deeper the metastization, the more radical must be the surgery.
One more indication of the differences between “liberals” and “conservatives.” “Liberals” tend to believe that all change is good. “Conservatives,” remembering how much Hitler and Lenin wanted to change things- and succeeded in changing them- take a more guarded view of change.
Ray, I am not a “professional”, but let me give it a shot.
We all have a concept of self. It has an internal aspect and an external aspect. How we perceive ourselves, and how others perceive us. It is based on the physical self – what we see in the mirror, and what others see when they look at us; and on the psychological self – the Id, the nucleolus of our thoughts and feelings of self and our place in the world.
This concept of self is present early, often just after the toddler stage. When there is this awareness and it seems to be in contradiction to the external, a child expresses it they only way they know how, to try to be happy. Doing the things and being the person they are. When that rings alarm bells in parents, eventually teachers, peers, the child experiences disapproval. How that manifests itself varies.
That is why ‘gender’ understanding happens both early, and gradually. For my mother, she knew by the time I was 5, even though I didn’t self acknowledge it for another year or two. I think for me the deep underlying conflicts started when my little sister was born and I got to see the physical differences (something I didn’t know anything about at 4 yrs old).
Gender is how we perceive our sexual (not as in procreative) self AND how the external world perceives us, expects us to be and our awareness of that. When you are congruent, the internal and external are matched, you don’t even notice it until YOU begin to see the differences between boys and girls…4-7 yrs old, and even then, you just slot into the correct places and society takes no notice except as to acknowledge you exist.
I can’t believe how our credentialed authorities have torched their reputations in political bonfires again and again.
Transgender children, climate change, renewable energy, nuclear power, electric vehicles, open borders, BLM riots, Covid treatments, the Wuhan Lab Leak theory, Critical Race Theory…
Two weeks ago “Scientific American” took the position that “‘JEDI’ Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.”
https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/scientific-american-is-getting-roasted-for-saying-the-term-jedi-is-problematic/
Have they gotten anything right?
I’m wondering what the word “woman” means to the trans person who says “I self-identify as a woman.”
A woman is a person with female chromosomes and anatomy? Makes sense to me but I don’t think that’s what they mean.
A woman is a person who self-identifies as a woman? Maybe, but “I self-identify as a person who self-identifies as a woman” seems meaninglessly self-referential to me.
A woman is someone who wears eye shadow, lipstick, and perfume? Is that what they think it means to be a woman?
BOF:
I can speak to my thoughts, but I do not share the trans-activist’s stupid refusal to acknowledge biology: I was born male, will die male (unless they figure a way to change my genes). That said, I present (I give all physical, emotional and psychological determinants) as a woman to society. I am treated as such. The vast number of different ways that manifests itself day to day is hard to put down on a list.
When I see myself in a mirror, when my neighbors see me outside, I’m a woman. You’d need to demand to see a chromosome test to make any other determination. Do you think that is appropriate to do for someone you just met? Or do you just treat the person as they present themselves?
When people say it is all in our heads, they’re right. Doesn’t make it less of an issue.
Tracy,
I said physical basis, like the physical basis of sex is chromosomes. You are telling me gender is all in your head, ie, imaginary.
I think there are going to be a lot of doctors, “ therapist” and maybe even parents getting their socks sued off of them in a few years when many of these kids get older, look back, and realize their bodies were permanently mutilated because the adults in their lives got caught up in a fad. Elements of this may be centuries old, but the technology has changed.
The left, especially white leftist, having largely thrown off religion, gets caught up in whatever “ crisis” or fad comes along.
I am waiting for the next fad to come along.
I am normally against medical lawsuits, but that one I will gladly cheer on.
One of my male cousins , who grew up in a conservative household, had some feminine tendencies when he was young. Still not exactly Mr. masculine. But he is married to a beautiful woman, seems happy, has 5 or 6 kids, I loose track, is a minister. I can only imagine if he would have been raised by modern “ progressives”. They would have turned him into a steer , slapped him in a dress, and pumped him full of female hormones. And congratulated themselves on their “ progress”.
We will all have things to answer for on Judgement Day.
But there is a special horror coming to those who do this to children.
This ruling by the UK’s High Court of Justice concerning pediatric ‘transitioning’ services, and the (feasible) ability of minors to give consent to those, provides a well grounded and focused summary of the relevant factors at play – https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Bell-v-Tavistock-Judgment.pdf
That was issued in response to the Kiera Bell case and resulted in a suspension of such treatments by the NHS. It has also informed policy revisions by several EU countries, resulting in either full bans or significantly enhanced oversight, as well as a general reappraisal of such practices internationally. I think if’s fair to say that promoters of these practices had misrepresented their risks and effects to both patients and the public at large.
I saw this Post earlier and hesitated to read it. This topic disturbs me greatly and I am often troubled when I think about it. I cannot perceive how there is not massive child abuse going on and, as Tracy writes, it is impossible for me to imagine how we do not have a tremendous number of severely damaged young adults 5, 10, 15 years from now.
I understand that for a small percentage the puberty blockers may, ultimately, be a welcome, lifetime treatment, but there have to be vast numbers of these now children who, later in life, will wish they had developed into adults as their genes are programmed.
I’ve heard gay men on podcasts dissecting comments they hear from parents who have their biologic sons on puberty blockers. The adult, gay men reflect that they said and did similar things as children because they are gay, not because they are trans and want to be women. And they are now very happy as adult, gay men. They predict that when the boys mature they will be lost.
And, statistically, simply looking at the age range and percentages of young girls who are identifying as boys it is hard not to extrapolate that some percentage of them, likely the vast majority, are caught up in mass hysteria, like the Salem witch trials or Beatlemania. Young girls seem very susceptible to intellectual manipulation into radical, sometimes harmful mania. Look at anorexia and other body dysmorphias. Maybe some of these young girls are truly trans, but we don’t put anorexic girls on diet pills on the basis of the image they imagine they see in a mirror.
God help us.
It is my understanding that the vast majority of children who experience gender dysphoria come to accept their biological identities when they go through puberty. For those few who do not, options can be evaluated once they are adults. Puberty blockers and trans-sex hormones are powerful drugs which have permanent effect. This should not be done to children.
Ray:
If something is in a person’s head it’s not necessarily imaginary, especially if we’re talking about self-image and self-identification. Being a woman or man is biologically determined but it includes concepts of self that are usually congruent with the biological but in some cases are not congruent. Psychological is not a synonym for imaginary.
@Scott the Badger:
“Is it possible that a large number if messed up people is considered a plus, by the Left. Messed up people that they can then “advocate ” for, and be guaranteed their votes. Even though they are responsible for them being messed up, and the resulting misery?”
Bingo. You’ve just independently rediscovered Bioleninism:
https://thewardenpost.net/bioleninism/
“One of the most interesting theories to come out of the Dissident Right is the theory of Biological Leninism, or Bioleninism, which describes the rise, nay, the inevitability of a coalition of the weird, inadequate, foreign and not-quite-fit-for-civilized-society as a unified voting bloc supporting those in power in a liberal democracy.
Developed by Spandrell (alias, Bloody Shovel) it takes the basic Leninist model of building a Party to rule the state out of the dregs of society, and shifts this to the realm of biology, wrong-think biology in particular, building the party out of people who are permanent losers within the social order. Naturally, this refers to the non-white, non-heterosexual, non-viable forms of life we’re forced to prostrate ourselves to as the living saints of the religion of diversity. This is for the very simple reason that those with zero status in a sane society stake their entire lives on accumulating social capital through the Party and will revert back to that position of zero status if the party ever loses power, thus ensuring their undying loyalty towards the party and undying enmity towards those who aren’t lacking in status – whether we’re talking about the ne’er do wells of old Russia or the degenerate and swarthy masses of the modern West. In other words, Bioleninism is a system through which the governing Globohomo powers ensure that those most problematic of peons – white, Christian, heterosexual men (and the women married to them) will always be outvoted (and therefore expropriated, disenfranchised and ultimately eliminated) by the aforementioned non-viable life forms.”
You “loose” track, as opposed to “tight” track, Jon Baker?
Sorry but it is most puzzling and maddening to me just how frequently that error is made and almost always the only spelling or grammatical error made in the post.
Long ago it seems, Dr. Paul McHugh persuaded administrators at Johns Hopkins to shut down John Money’s godawful clinic. His pithy assessment of ‘transitioning’ procedures: we do not give liposuction to anorectics.
That any such procedures are performed on anyone is an indictment of every ‘professional’ implicated. The lawyers, the social workers, the psychologists, the psychiatrists, the endocrinologists, the surgeons. Every last one is a criminal.
Rufus T. Firefly–
I suspect that a good many girls who want to “transition” have been molested as children (often by male relatives), and see a male gender identity as offering some kind of security from adult predators. On the other side of the coin: Jan Morris (born James Morris; served in the British Army in the last years of WWII, and was the journalist who accompanied Edmund Hillary’s 1953 Everest expedition) transitioned as an adult in 1964. He had already married and had five children by the time he became a transwoman. I read Morris’ book Conundrum, in which s/he did not try to explain why s/he transitioned, only stated, “I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl. I remember the moment well, and it is the earliest memory of my life.” What struck me, however, is the section of the book in which Morris recounts returning from gender reassignment surgery in Morocco in 1972, starting to live openly as a woman, and being shocked to discover how rude and condescending many men are to women. IOW, Morris no longer appeared as a man (army officer, at that) among men, and found that she felt vulnerable in a way that she never had before.
So while I don’t doubt that some girls in the current situation are being caught up in a kind of social contagion, I think there are others who are trying to protect themselves in an increasingly violent and predatory society by adopting a male identity.
I wonder how many TERFs consider that this is at least partly the result of driving machismo and the male perspective from public discourse? Not transgenderism, of course, which appears to be a real thing but the current hysterical promotion of it.
Mike
Art Deco:
Dr McHugh based his recommendations on the basis of ‘natural order’ rather than medical considerations and eventually his position was refuted. I’d rather not rely upon a Dr that uses their religious beliefs as a basis for the treatment of patients.
The difficulty of dealing with an openly hostile society, and worse, an openly hostile support system (family, friends, community) makes transition HELL, not because in itself it is bad, but because it opens you to so much hatred from others. Think the worse forms of bullying and have it be unrelenting in school/work, out in the community and amongst family – in the home.
Can you imagine the response if a war vet returned with no legs being called a retard, being shoved around because they are ‘slow’ moving, being called less of a man, being TOLD they were not worthy of even being called a man: people would be aghast at that behavior…but the bullying of trans kids is nothing less, and often much worse.
But the medical communities abdication of their responsibilities to treat the whole patient in the last decade is almost criminal…
“The adult, gay men reflect that they said and did similar things as children because they are gay, not because they are trans and want to be women. And they are now very happy as adult, gay men.”
Earlier this year, I really enjoyed reading The End of Gender by Debra Soh. It’s a good resource for the science behind gender, sexuality, and transgenderism. She mentions this particular point quite a few times – a lot of gender-nonconforming children come out as gay as adults. What’s interesting is nowadays it’s very politically incorrect to think that a gender-nonconforming person is gay. In fact it’s very PI to say that your gender expression has anything to do with your sexual orientation at all. But just as it becomes less acceptable to think a gender-nonconforming child might be gay, it is becoming more acceptable to assume they’re trans. Strange.
@PA+Cat:
Re Jan Morris… Yes.. yes… but which century are we living in right *now*?
“So while I don’t doubt that some girls in the current situation are being caught up in a kind of social contagion, I think there are others who are trying to protect themselves in an increasingly violent and predatory society by adopting a male identity.”
You’d have to be pretty woke to believe that men have some innate advantage in the job market, legal system, educational institutions, etc. Quite the opposite today. I’m looking forward to newly minted ‘males’ (they’re not) finding out to their shock and horror that that storied ‘Male Privilege’ doesn’t exist.
As for a response to predation… In a state of nature the obvious and only viable female response to a difficult environment is to find a strong male and get with the program. In a warped, twisted, sick end-stage civilization feasting upon its own stopped up entrails, I suppose one might be able to argue that some brainwashed hysterics might believe that becoming a ‘man’ will make them more secure or garner them more attention or more diversity points.
Tracy Coyle:
Thanks for your comments.
Could you say a few words about the internal experience which drover your transition? I don’t mean to trivialize, but my internal life doesn’t match my external life in many ways, but I accept it and soldier on.
Denis Leary had a routine about his disappointment when he realized he would never play starting centerfielder for the Boston Red Sox.
I assume you are talking about something more fundamental, but it’s beyond me to feel a disjunction so great that surgery seemed to be the solution.
With respect.
Zaphod:
We are talking about children and teenagers here, not grown women in the marriage market looking for mates. Girls or early teenagers who have been sexually abused (or abused in other ways) at the hands of men who are likely to have been relatives, family friends, or people in positions of trusts such as teachers. They are not looking for jobs and finding that females are favored, they are looking to negotiate their way through puberty and/or teen years and they are traumatized and terrified by being female. One solution appears to be to become men themselves, or at least teenage males. The “strong males” in their lives have been untrustworthy and even dangerous, and therefore they don’t try to “find a strong male and get with the program” – although as children and teens, “the program” ought not to be marriage or sex exchange for that protection. Therefore they try to become “strong males” themselves.
@Neo:
I think you’re talking about a (victims of male abuse) small fraction of the girls who are doing this. I think that there’s a huge dollop of mass hysteria (deliberate choice of word with some lovely archaic echoes) going on and that the weaker-minded are being swept up in it. I’d also posit that greater than 50% of the ‘body image’ jibes are coming from other females and not males. It’s pretty damn dangerous for a teenage male in the current year to push the envelope.
I’ll grant that there’s a possibility that some abused females who would in the past have engaged in cutting themselves or becoming anorexics or developing other tells might now be jumping on the Newest Available Thing.
But to think for a moment that the female to male trans nuttiness is largely or even significantly male abuse driven? Bridge in Brooklyn anyone?
Dr McHugh based his recommendations on the basis of ‘natural order’ rather than medical considerations and eventually his position was refuted.
Actually, he based his recommendation on before and after studies of Dr. Money’s patients, but natural order should be good enough. No clue why you fancy that’s something distinct from ‘medical considerations’.
Can you imagine the response if a war vet returned with no legs being called a retard, being shoved around because they are ‘slow’ moving, being called less of a man, being TOLD they were not worthy of even being called a man: people would be aghast at that behavior…but the bullying of trans kids is nothing less, and often much worse.
You’re attempted analogy is irrelevant to the discussion.
Take your red herrings and shove it.
So we are to believe the sudden increase in female to “ male” transgenders is because of child abuse so they can be “ strong males”?
Strange how there is also a huge increase in male to “ female” transgenders, at the very same time!
This is a fad sweeping thru the post Christian West. A sick, dying civilization that hates itself and seeks its own destruction. A civilization that seeks to import and replace itself with another hostile, ancient enemy from the middle east, whose ideas are against everything the west claims to believe in. A civilization that teaches its children that every other civilization is superior to its own. A civilization that puts ideas in kids heads. That asks little girls, if maybe they are really boys, and vice versa.
It is just an extension and a symptom of the death of the west.
We must give up our fossil fuels while China surges ahead. We must give up our borders and our flag. We must give up our fathers religious systems and our political system of limited government for a religion of the state above all. Our kids must give up their very bodies, in the womb, and if they survive that, their bodies must be sacrificed to mental sickness.
What struck me, however, is the section of the book in which Morris recounts returning from gender reassignment surgery in Morocco in 1972, starting to live openly as a woman, and being shocked to discover how rude and condescending many men are to women
Non ci credo.
So we are to believe the sudden increase in female to “ male” transgenders is because of child abuse so they can be “ strong males”?
jon baker:
I don’t believe anyone is making that point. The claimed possibility is that *some* young women/girls who have been raped, incested or otherwise abused by men *may* go the trans route because of such experiences.
It seems plausible, though I wouldn’t know. I have known lesbians who were abused when young and found their way into lesbianism because it felt safer.
Zaphod:
As usual, you’re creating a stawman and knocking it down, one of your favorite pastimes.
I have never said that the increase in female-to-male trans adolescents is driven by abuse. I have written many posts on the subject in which I explain it is mostly driven by social media and contagion effect. But these are not random people, and some subsection of the group consists of girls who have been abused and are running away from a female identity they believe makes them vulnerable and in fact has made them vulnerable.
When I responded to you regarding sexual abuse and female-to-male trans teens, you had written a comment in which you were responding to this statement from commenter “PA Cat” which you specifically quoted:
So the topic was the “others” who are trying to protect themselves. We never discussed what percentage of the whole they are, but I have seen data indicating it’s a significant part of the whole (and some of these people who are now regretting their transition tell their stories on YouTube).
You had written, of these “others” who have been abused:
So when I was discussing why an abused teen might want to become a strong male rather than turning to a strong male, I was responding to your own comments on the group of trans teens who have been abused, whatever their number.
Tracy Coyle,
“When I see myself in a mirror, when my neighbors see me outside, I’m a woman.”
I accept that you see yourself as a woman trapped within a male body.
I don’t doubt that they pretend to you, to see you as a woman and some pretend to themselves as well.
I accept that you’ve elevated subjective reality over objective reality.
In principle, how is that different from someone who thinks they’re Napoleon? That’s their subjective reality. By definition, sanity is inseparable from congruence with objective reality. The greater the congruence, the more sane we see the person to be.
Which BTW is why we on the right have become persuaded that most on the left are increasingly bereft of sanity. They’re literally in defiance of objective reality, insisting that their subjective reality is the sum total of any meaningful reality.
At base, aren’t you insisting that your only meaningful reality is your subjective perception of yourself? How could you not, since you see yourself as a woman, when you look in the mirror?
“You’d need to demand to see a chromosome test to make any other determination.”
Really? Are you a particularly petite male? Look at the latest Playboy cover (it’s all over the internet) and witness even a petite male trying to ‘present’ as female.
“Do you think that is appropriate to do for someone you just met? Or do you just treat the person as they present themselves?”
They are reacting to you, as you ‘present’. Which is as someone whose mind is clearly in conflict with their biological reality. That they may treat you as a woman does not mean that they aren’t aware of you being a male who is dressing themselves as a woman. Just as you cannot escape the inner/outer conflict, neither can they escape seeing it.
Whether they can articulate it or not, that’s the basis of what they sense, which motivates their conscious/unconscious emotional reaction. An entirely reasonable reaction to someone insisting that they are what objective reality demonstrates them not to be.
Tragically, a transgender person’s subjective mental reality is in conflict with their objective biological reality. Pretending that not to be prima facie evidence of mind/body dysfunction changes it not in the least.
“When people say it is all in our heads, they’re right. Doesn’t make it less of an issue.”
That’s a given and I suspect the answer to that issue is to accept that objective reality has to be the bottom line in life. As elevating the subjective over the objective is a formula for disconnection from reality.
That however, in your case doesn’t preclude embracing, what has to be a unique perspective that may provide otherwise unattainable insights for a male into the mindset of a woman.
Which is however, not equivalent to being a woman.
To be something, it cannot ‘not be’ that something.
Neo: kudos for calm intelligent moderation of a complex multi-voiced debate of an extremely touchy —tragic— subject. I learn a lot here, certainly from you but also from the commenters. You make them bring their best game. Thanks, all.
I see the trans fixation as just another manifestation of the Democrat need for victims. Most of their claim to elective office is that only they will protect the victimized. Only they can understand and “feel their pain”. It also allows them to demonize traditional religious adherents and appeal to young people who often are undergoing a re-evaluation of their religious upbringing.
There were heroic things done by the freedom riders etc. but that level of victimization no longer exists. New victims must be found or manufactured.
Unhappy teen agers are always available, it is part of growing up. Tell them they need to transition to be happy, and an endless new supply of victims will elect Democrats to protect them forever.
Anyone who disagrees is a deplorable knuckle dragging theocrat.
It is unfortunate that “modern” medicine has in so many fields prioritised self image and esteem over objective fact when the two conflict. It does nothing in the end except decrease the actual effectiveness of treatment.
It used to be generally believed that childhood trauma at the right (wrong) instant caused a child to redirect their life inward, resulting in autism. Nowadays we realise it is more complicated than that, but the theory that “pivot points” in human development due to traumatic experiences are an acknowledged mechanism for personality disorders, other dysphorias, etc.
I think society should acknowledge that a) the issue with transgenders is almost always “in their head”, and b) as a result, persons suffering from gender dysphoria from early childhood into adulthood are, to a large degree, “made that way” and therefore should be treated sympathetically by society, with at least some public tolerance.
*Should* be, not must be.
Honey Vs, vinegar
The its not nice to fool Mother Nature came from a margarine commercial.
The whole concept of gender is weird.
Yes, biology does impact certain behavioral inclinations – boys more likely to be rambunctious and play with trucks and toy weapons, Girls more drawn to dolls. And that continues into adulthood in various ways.
But we are talking overlapping curves of behavioral inclinations which form the basis of stereotypes that I guess are “gender norms”…
But growing up in the 80s and early 90s (and hearing the same from those growing up in the 70s), the whole zeitgeist was who-cares-about-the-norms-let-people-be-themselves. Guy wants to put on a dress and makeup to cross dress…. Go for it. Rosie the riveter is more butch than Johnny… so what? It didn’t actually change their sex… a man and a woman could “present” however the hell they would like to, notwithstanding the median and mean.
Now, instead of gender just being a euphemism for “sex” (to avoid saying that word in front of kids), somehow the presentation is now more important than biology, which is garbage. Just because you are a furry and want to present as a cat doesn’t make you a feline, as a opposed to a human.
Instead, they’ve tried to “biologize” something that is ultimately just psychological / behavioral. That is not just wrong, it’s dangerous.
I have a cousin who pursued gender transitioning for her son. He was a nice little boy growing up. A little quirky. My cousin would constantly tell us he was gifted, so gifted,that school bored him and thus his grades were very poor and he had few friends. When her son got to middle school, my cousin became very excited about the transgender craze. The hormone treatments and therapy ensued. The son did not finish high school. He worked a series of minimum wage jobs during Covid and managed to be fired from all of them. Now my cousin is pursuing some sort of psychiatric disability for him/her.
My cousin is a PhD and accomplished. Her husband seems disengaged.
I think my cousin could not accept that her child was not found to be special by the world and so she grasped a pathway suddenly in Vogue to make him special.
I don’t think it is just teachers and school counselors and therapists who harm these kids. I think sometimes parents play a significant role.
Plainly put, many parents think transgendering will look good on college applications and give their kids an advantage.
I guess I’m cynical. I do love my cousin.
I see the issue of trans kids as one of responsibility.
It is a parent’s job to take care of children, to teach them, to help them grow, and above all to keep them safe. A big part of that is assuming responsibilities that the child is not yet ready for. We don’t send our kids out to be family breadwinners unless there is absolutely no choice. We don’t burden them with difficult decisions until they are ready to handle them.
To tell a child that he or she can change gender, when they have no concept of what this means or the long-term repercussions of such a decision, is not freedom. It is reckless abrogation of parental responsibility, bordering on child abuse. It is taking a decision that ought to be made by parents — if it is to be made at all — and handing it to the child, who is ill-equipped to handle both the decision and the responsibility. This is a cop-out for the parent, and is brutally unfair to the child.
I have six kids, three of them still at home. If one of my kids wanted to dress as the opposite gender, we’d talk about it in depth, and I’d support them. But I would not agree to any irreversible gender-reassignment procedures — no surgery, no hormonal treatments — while they are still children. When they are adults, they can make such decisions for themselves, and I will support them then.
“But dad, I really want to be a girl!”
“I know, son. And last year you wanted to be a ferret. It’s all you talked about, remember? Let’s wait.”
I have a cousin who pursued gender transitioning for her son.
In a sane world, the local child protective would have seen to it he was placed with foster parents.
I guess I’m cynical. I do love my cousin.
I’m fond of my cousins too. They’ve made it easier for me by not injuring their children.
Jeanne,
No question some of this is a sort-of Munchausen Syndrome exacerbated, encouraged or even initiated by parents.
Daniel Schwartz:
What often happens to parents is that the child threatens suicide if he or she doesn’t get medical treatment, and the doctors and therapists tell the parent that medical treatment is the only way to prevent that. There are even websites that advise children to claim to be suicidal in order to get their way. And of course sometimes they really are suicidal. Plus, at a certain age they don’t need parental consent.
Daniel Schwartz,
Not an issue I had to face with any of my children, but I believe my wife and I would have handled it as you outline, had it come up.
For me, personally, I’ve always found the most success with facing the world as honestly and realistically as I am able; similar Geoffrey Britain’s comment on this post. I have no idea what it is like to feel like one is a man trapped in a woman’s body, or vice versa, but there were many times when I was maturing and developing that I wished my body was something different than it was. There was a period when I truly loved playing basketball and wanted to do it day and night. But my height stopped at 6′ so I threw myself into football and track instead. I enjoyed both sports, but especially loved running the 400 meters in track. I trained like mad but eventually learned things like my leg bone lengths, although perfectly fine, were not in the freakishly small percentage of men who become Olympic athletes.
Was I supposed to be an NBA star or world class 400 meter runner? For awhile my brain sure thought I was. Should I have had surgery or taken growth hormone to try to account for shortcomings in my DNA in those areas?
I’ve always leaned towards, “no.” Do my best to understand who and what I am and find a way to fit in within those parameters. However, if I had been born with a large, visible birthmark on my face would I seek cosmetic surgery to eliminate it? Yes.
Again, I don’t know what it’s like to experience gender dysphoria, so I don’t know if it’s anything like my discoveries that what my brain was telling me I was vis a vis athletics, and the differences in what my physical make up actually is, is anything comparable, but it seems prudent that the first course of action should always be to try to navigate life without extraordinary medical intervention and exhaust those means before going under the knife.
(Several times my inner Groucho typed a crude aside based on the phrase, “a man trapped in a woman’s body” in the above comment, but I was able to delete it to avoid being insensitive on such a thoughtful discussion. 🙂 )
neo @ 11:38am,
I can personally attest that the new medical requirement that all Pediatricians isolate children from their parents and ask them if they have had any suicidal thoughts as part of routine health visits can cause TREMENDOUS harm.
I understand the impetus, but what teen wouldn’t honestly answer “yes?” Being a teen-ager is often depressing.
I think the idea of abuse spuring the sudden FTM movement isn’t entirely wrong. The abuse or power imbalance doesn’t have to be real to have a psychological impact.
Young girls are inundated with messaging about the patriarchy, and power imbalances. Social conditioning has many young girls displaying the symptoms of ptsd without actually having been abused (my knowledge of this is anecdotal, but I believe it would be born out by studies). The definitions of things like sexual assault have become fluid, made so by people that want to larp as revolutionaries. Young girls get this reinforced by social media, to the point they believe the “1 in 4” shtick. Puberty adds some further instability, and it’s a recipe for a girl to hate what is happening to her, especially if she sees boys her age getting taller and stronger than her.
Some of the more interesting stories to come out of the recent transgender movement are the realizations of these young women that they were wrong in their perception of the male experience. They had been conditioned to believe men had it easier, only to find reality didn’t match the pamphlet.
Ralphy,
I agree with your observance that those factors may exacerbate or contribute to the trend with young girls.
Huxley:
I recognize (and did so early) that my body was ‘perfectly normal male’. But it was wrong. When puberty hit, I cried for weeks. Just another ‘proof’ that I was male…that was the way I was supposed to be. Understand for me, for anyone, gender identity is not something that is ‘conscious’ every minute, or hour, or even day. For 99.5% of people, there is little or no thought about it. You just fall into similar groups of behaviors ‘naturally’. But for some of us, when our innate preference is jarringly wrong, WE get confused, and we end up getting called on it (bullying…). At this happens REALLY EARLY and OFTEN. Once we get out into our social groups, we realize ‘were in the wrong group’. Often this is when a child is introduced to a social environment (daycare or school).
One example I use: Males seem to be drawn to compete against other males across a broad spectrum of activities. Females seem to be more oriented towards cooperation. This difference appears to be innate. Individually, if a person has a competition/cooperation orientation, understanding the opposite preference CAN happen, can even be imposed using behavioral therapies, but the innate preference IS there. NO such innate preference is 100% focused on one sex or the other. There is a spectrum with two foci.
When I was young, I was being drawn into competitions ALL THE TIME. I couldn’t understand why boys were constantly pushing me into them.
I KNEW I was wrong. I was faced with decisions I was making wrong.
My experience was not unique. I was praying to wake up like I should be. I pleaded, I begged, I promised anything. It wasn’t EVERY night…but I’d wrap myself as tightly as I could in my blankets like a cocoon, hoping to be like a butterfly in the morning (hey…I was young!). By the time I was 7 I had been beaten up half a dozen times by boys demanding I compete against them.
7th and 8th grade were nightmares of bullying. I didn’t get it. But I learned to fight back. To survive.
You can’t understand. WE don’t understand. It takes us YEARS to be able to articulate what is going on in our heads. We feel betrayed. By society. By our families. By our BODY. I had to undergo psychological testing and therapy before I could begin the medical part of my transition. These were ‘objective’ analyses of me. For me, this was 1986-87. Society was NOT accepting. There was no internet.
Geoffrey Britain:
A common refrain, and it was useful for a time, but I never used it. I was female, my body didn’t agree. Call it a genetic defect. My family has several: we carry the gene(s) for limb-girdle muscular dystrophy. We have osteo-genesis imperfecta – brittle bone disease. Not hard to think I have one another one…
You seem to think there is a conscious effort by people to ‘acquiesce to my delusion’. People see what is in front of them. I acknowledge that biologically I am male and will die that way. No delusion here. I’d ALMOST accuse you of condescension…
We all have our perceptions of reality. When we agree and can prove it, we call it objective reality. But there is a lot of our experience that we DON’T agree upon, and we can’t prove. Calling it subjective reality acknowledges that inability but it doesn’t make it less real, just less provable to an independent observer.
We know people have emotions. And we know people respond to events differently. We can’t PROVE the emotions as correct or incorrect. We all have thoughts. We can’t prove they are correct or incorrect. We can’t even prove they exist, other than we see an external expression of them.
I have spent decades evaluating myself against ‘objective’ reality. You don’t understand, have no experience with gender issues – you are applying your perception, limited as it is, to me as an objective reality. Because we can’t prove something NOW, doesn’t mean we will be unable to in the future.
We can measure many things, but what is really going on in our heads, our understandings, our emotions, our thoughts, tend to be beyond that – except as they are expressed outwardly.
I had a spinal cord injury in 2014. It took two YEARS before they could measure it. Prior to that, they only had my ‘feeling’ that something was wrong.
That is why it is called gender identity disorder. Incongruence.
Yep. I’ve seen the world from two very different perspectives. But you do what others have done: male vs woman (or female vs man). For most of our history, we have used them interchangeably. But, and this is where you and I (and others) disagree. Biological sex and gender identity are DIFFERENT. 99.5% of the time, they are congruent and interchangeable. But .5% of the time, they are not congruent. Just because the population is small, and abnormal, doesn’t make it SOLELY in our heads and therefore dismissible as ‘delusional’.
Tracy Coyle:
Thanks for getting back to me. You’re brave.
Sounds like something I can’t understand other than to grasp that it’s not something for me to understand beyond that there is a genuine mystery here.
I was a big fan of Walter Carlos, the “Switched-on Bach” synthesizer pioneer. Now I’m a fan of Wendy Carlos. I was taken aback by Carlos’s transition, but I’m still floored by his/her work and realized I had to take the transgender idea seriously.
Seems like a huge lawsuit waiting to happen. How does one give informed consent when one is not informed?
Tracy Coyle,
Thank you for your candor and sharing your personal story.
What often happens to parents is that the child threatens suicide if he or she doesn’t get medical treatment, and the doctors and therapists tell the parent that medical treatment is the only way to prevent that.
Another reason the doctors and therapists belong in prison.
Neo said “Psychological is not a synonym for imaginary.” Please tell me where to find the ego, id and superego.
Ray:
The word “psychological” encompasses a great great GREAT deal more than Freudian theory. Ego, Id, and Superego are Freudian terms in line with Freudian theory. Freudian theory is not and never was all of “psychology” even in the theory’s heyday. The terms are part of a particular theory known as psychoanalytic theory, and for many decades that theory has been out of favor anyway.
What’s more, even among the theory’s adherents, those things are concepts which do not amount to structures in the brain. Concepts are not imaginary, they are mental shortcuts to understanding something and they may or may not be useful in that endeavor. The world of thought is full of concepts that are not material things in the real world that you can point to. That does not make concepts “imaginary.”
But surely you already know this.
Oh, and if you’re actually interested in trying to learn more about the terms as they appear in Freudian theory, read up:
Do you think such things are imaginary?
Geoffrey Britain:
I believe that you are making the same error that people who say “I can always tell when a man is wearing a hairpiece” make. In other words, because some – or perhaps even most – hairpieces are obvious and fairly easily discernible, they think that in noticing them they’ve noticed all hairpieces. But they are neglecting the fact that if a hairpiece is very good it could be undetectable, and those are they very ones they will miss.
So it is with trans people. You notice some, of course. But some look indistinguishable from those born into that sex. I have met such people, and the only way I could tell is because they are upfront about being trans. Otherwise I would not have known – and I’m not fooling myself.
So when you write to Tracy Coyle that “I accept that you see yourself as a woman trapped within a male body. I don’t doubt that they pretend to you, to see you as a woman and some pretend to themselves as well,” you are making the assumption that many if not most people are pretending to perceive her as a woman. I don’t know; I’ve never met her. But perhaps if you were to meet her, even you would perceive her as a woman and not be pretending to perceive her as a woman at all.
You also ask, “In principle, how is that different from someone who thinks they’re Napoleon?” The answer is obvious: in the Napoleon case, no one other than the deluded person thinks he or she is Napoleon. There is no possibility of such a perception and it is impossible for anyone to be Napoleon other than Napoleon, who is dead.
In your discussion of the Playboy cover, you write: “Look at the latest Playboy cover (it’s all over the internet) and witness even a petite male trying to ‘present’ as female.” If you mean this cover – well, that is not a trans woman, it is a gay man. It is a person identifying as a man but who is dressed in a woman’s outfit. Surely you know the difference between a trans woman and a gay man, right?
There are plenty of trans women models, though, who were born as biological men and have transitioned. They look like models – and most of them look like female models, who are after all an unusual subset of womanhood, taller and thinner and sleeker than most women. I’ve seen YouTube videos of trans people who appear indistinguishable on the outside from people born in those sexes (I cannot attest to the way they look naked, but we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about how they are perceived by neighbors and people they meet on the street when fully dressed, and whether those people perceive them as they wish to be perceived).
Neo,
when I was in college I became very intrested in Freud and read most of his words. But anyway, I noticed that nobody andwered the question. what is the physical basis of gender.
LOL. Well, maybe not many people can pass themselves off as Napoleon or Julius Caesar, but then they are not considered by an expectant public to appear as saviors, prophets, or eternal gurus.
And plenty of folks have convinced numerous followers that they are the reincarnation of Baba Somebody, “the Cosmic Christ” , or take your pick of the most recent cult center and spaceship.
We all expect to see women every day. Some expect to see a prophet of sage, at some point or another. No one expects Napoleon! [Don’t say it! Don’t say it guys! No matter how big a Python fan you were, Don’t say it!]
Anyway, plenty of people pass themselves off as someone they are not, while knowing full well that they are not, because it brings them some perceived gain or advantage. They might even come to half believe it themselves.
Ray:
Do people have a soul? Where is it physically located?
I said:
A sense of ‘self’, the “I am” is not centered in a specific biological place – unless you consider the brain to be the ‘whole’ rather than a sum of the parts.