Argument for gender neutral clothes is wearing thin

Autonomous Cowherd · 28-08-2016 08:53AM

This whole transgendered children thing is getting way out of line. Of course children are gender fluid, of course young people are ambivalent about which gender they prefer, this is very natural and will settle in time to an authentic orientation. To give children hormones to hold back puberty is outrageous. To interfere to such an extent with a child's destiny. I find these parents raising very young kids as a gender other than the one they present with genitally as being loathsome attention seekers. Just eff off with yourself. My youngest son wore dresses by choice until he was 4 or 5, way back in the years when transgender was not even a word, and it never once crossed my mind to ''identify'' him as anything except my darling child. I swear I never once wondered about his ''gender identification''. Cheesus, just let the children be! All this political correctness is making my head spin.

Autonomous Cowherd · 28-08-2016 08:57AM

And I have no idea about the political ideology of this researcher, or any agendas being pushed so I may be misrepresenting, but a report recently published by Dr. Lawrence S Mayer reviews a huge amount of data and finds....

“There is little scientific evidence for the therapeutic value of interventions that delay puberty or modify the secondary sex characteristics of adolescents, although some children may have improved psychological well-being if they are encouraged and supported in their cross-gender identification.There is no evidence that all children who express gender-atypical thoughts or behavior should be encouraged to become transgender.”

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/preface-sexuality-and-gender

padd b1975 · 28-08-2016 09:21AM

The terms sissy and tomboy were more than adequate in my day.
Everyone knew or were told what they were and nobody really made much of a fuss either way.

But of course as fairy cakes inexplicably became cup cakes, over-analysis by insufferable label merchants who are unable to mind their own business kicked in and we're well on the way to totally and needlessly ****ing up a generation before they've even got out into the real world.

Well done everyone.

Shenshen · 28-08-2016 10:51AM

Burial. wrote: »

This just isn't true. Kids up until the late stages of primary school are fearful of the opposite sex in general. It's certainly improving but it's not like secondary school where boys and girls can't stay away from each other. It's easy to forget this as adults but boys and girls are quite shy and reserved around each other. Sharing a toilet would be a frightening experience for the majority. What's more is that when it comes to going to the toilet and what's more a lot of children are fearful of sharing a toilet with the same sex, especially in the lower classes.

Interesting - that's exactly the opposite to the way I remember my own childhood. I remember there being little to no difference between playing with boys or playing with girls while we were small, but distance and fear kicking in with puberty.
We never had gendered toilets in kindergarden, and I remember teachers in primary school telling us to go to the other toilet if all the stalls in our own were taken.

But then, that was the 70s in Germany. People seemed to be a bit more practical-minded and not as concerned about making sure boys and girls behaved the way society would expect them to.

2RockMountain · 28-08-2016 02:33PM

Autonomous Cowherd wrote: »

My youngest son wore dresses by choice until he was 4 or 5, way back in the years when transgender was not even a word, and it never once crossed my mind to ''identify'' him as anything except my darling child. I swear I never once wondered about his ''gender identification''. Cheesus, just let the children be! All this political correctness is making my head spin.

Do yourself a favour and watch this documentary, or any serious documentary on this issue;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRzE6cpZGVU

You might be able to find a better quality version of the documentary if you dig around a bit.

Here's some reaction to the broadcast;
http://www.irishexaminer.com/examviral/real-life/is-5-too-young-to-know-louis-therouxs-transgender-kids-has-boggled-minds-322404.html

This is not a 'dressing up' issue. It is in a slightly different league to the situation you described.

Irish Guitarist · 28-08-2016 02:54PM

I'm glad I'm not a child in this day and age. When I was two years old my favourite toy was a doll. When I was about ten I went through a phase of reading Care Bears comics (mainly because they were published by Marvel, the same company that published Transformers). If I did this now (and if my parents were complete idiots) I'd end up being carted off to have my knob lobbed off.

2RockMountain · 28-08-2016 02:57PM

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

I'm glad I'm not a child in this day and age. When I was two years old my favourite toy was a doll. When I was about ten I went through a phase of reading Care Bears comics (mainly because they were published by Marvel, the same company that published Transformers). If I did this now (and if my parents were complete idiots) I'd end up being carted off to have my knob lobbed off.

Are you aware of any cases where 'idiot' parents have made decisions like this?

darkpagandeath · 28-08-2016 02:57PM

Trousers are a modern invention anyway. Back to stocking/Leg wraps/kilts/smocks ?? And if people are going to argue on colour... That's Retar*ed

Arcade_Tryer · 28-08-2016 03:00PM

Uniforms are the problem here.

No need for them whatsoever in state funded schools.

The argument about some kids being able to afford nicer clothes causing other kids to cry is the only argument that has worn thin over the last decade or so.

darkpagandeath · 28-08-2016 03:01PM

2RockMountain wrote: »

Are you aware of any cases where 'idiot' parents have made decisions like this?

If you have gender neutral clothes toys etc, How will the child decide what Gender it is ?

johnty56 · 28-08-2016 03:02PM

I am currently having bits of toaster and old microwaves grafted onto my 5 year old as they have insisted on being identified as a robot for the last few weeks.

Which toilet should it use?

2RockMountain · 28-08-2016 03:03PM

darkpagandeath wrote: »

If you have gender neutral clothes toys etc, How will the child decide what Gender it is ?

Same as any other child. If I change your gender and toys, will you know what your gender is?

darkpagandeath · 28-08-2016 03:05PM

2RockMountain wrote: »

Same as any other child. If I change your gender and toys, will you know what your gender is?

We are told Gender is a social construct and genitalia does not mean Gender. So again how will they decide with no frame of reference ?

2RockMountain · 28-08-2016 03:07PM

darkpagandeath wrote: »

We are told Gender is a social construct and genitalia does not mean Gender. So again how will they decide with no frame of reference ?

I've no idea who told you what, and I'm not responsible for what others may have told you. But if you want to know what gender a child is, ask them. Listen to the kids that Louis Theroux met up telling him and their parents from very early ages that their gender does not match their body.

darkpagandeath · 28-08-2016 03:10PM

2RockMountain wrote: »

I've no idea who told you what, and I'm not responsible for what others may have told you. But if you want to know what gender a child is, ask them. Listen to the kids that Louis Theroux met up telling him and their parents from very early ages that their gender does not match their body.

Really, Who explained gender to the child ?

2RockMountain · 28-08-2016 03:25PM

darkpagandeath wrote: »

Really, Who explained gender to the child ?

Watch the documentary and you'll get it. I guess the kids picked it up from the world they live in, seeing parents, siblings and other people of different genders. They didn't live in a hermetically sealed container. And I'm not sure that any of them were the result of some kind of psychological test with 'gender neutral' everything. They're just ordinary kids in ordinary families, who managed to work out that their gender doesn't match their bodies.

Grayson · 28-08-2016 03:30PM

ceadaoin. wrote: »

The following page lists 11 studies of varying sizes which have all reached similar conclusions

http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html?m=1

The mom in that blog says herself that the signs her 3 year old child is transgender were

Maybe if gendered toys and clothes weren't so rigidly enforced there wouldn't be a record number of children seeking to transition

I haven't gone through each of the studies yet (I will). I've read three of them so far, they're quite interesting.
A few things have struck me so far.
The criteria used vary from study to study. For example the Zucker study uses the following criteria. You just have to meet one to be considered gender dysmorphic.
(1) identity statements,
(2) dress-up play/cross dressing,
(3) toy play,
(4) roles in fantasy play,
(5) peer relations,
(6) motoric and speech characteristics,
(7) involvement in rough-and-tumble play,
(8) statements about sexual anatomy.

It's not hard to see how this can't be used to determine who is gender dysmorphic.

There's a similar range of behaviours described in Zucker & Bradley (1995), Zucker & Cohen-Kettenis (2008) and Cohen-Kettenis & Pfäfflin, (2003).

There are flawed methodologies in a lot of these studies. And studies like Singh are meta studies. They use the previous work as the basis of their own work. Singh especially states in his intro that he's against realignment at a younger age because he believes it will reinforce false perceptions. Now he may be right but he's working on the assumption that there are false perceptions. He even states later that societal pressures (bullying etc) can cause a child to deny any desire to be a different gender in public and even when being interviewed for the study but that they express different feelings when in therapy.

Either way nothing I've read has changed my mind that realignment at a younger age, after a long period of study and therapy, is a bad thing.

Autonomous Cowherd · 28-08-2016 04:29PM

2RockMountain wrote: »

Listen to the kids that Louis Theroux met up telling him and their parents from very early ages that their gender does not match their body.

I will watch the documentary you have linked when my gigabytes recover from a recent youtube binge

Thank you for the link.

My take is that people have felt gender fluid from the year dot, some more so than others. I do not perceive this (at the moment) as necessarily requiring radical surgical intervention which some studies have shown to be ineffective at changing psychological discomfort, and certainly I do not support hormones pre-puberty, as gender identification is too unstable early in life.
It is a cultural problem more than anything, a problem of comfortable acceptance in society of difference. Several cultures have accommodated people who live as third sex or intersex or such like for centuries, without the need for any kind of gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia a or radical physical adjustment.
All operations carry serious risks and the remodeling of genitalia must pose problems. I do not understand why the surgery option is kept front and centre. To me, it is far deeper than this. But especially with respect to children, the body adjustment option via hormones seems to me to be rash and extreme.

My understanding of humanity is that at a profound level we all carry male and female energies within us, one of which generally dominates, though this may alternate, and we just happen to have sex organs that generally match our predominant gender identification. Or not. In either case why be too worried? Love and Sex are possible without surgical adjustment. Living as a happy social being is possible without radical surgery.
Making gender identification so focused on body above all else in these times seems to me to be an extension of the body obsessiveness of modern culture. It parallels a wider societal obsession with psychological happiness being dependent upon physical appearance.
IMO, the issue of living, however one prefers, begins and ends with how one thinks and feels, not with how one appears.
Okay fine for adults to make a choice for reassignment, if they feel it necessary to support them, but I do not think children should be encouraged in this way. Rather all children should be encouraged to feel confident however they appear.
Perhaps the transgender movement could move beyond this body dysphoria focus, which seems very limited and unduly hyped in my view, and explore how humans can comfortably feel female or male-identified regardless of physical presentation. The deeper work of being essentially happy during a brief life as a human being, in other words.

_Kaiser_ · 29-08-2016 11:53AM

Irish Guitarist wrote: »

I'm glad I'm not a child in this day and age. When I was two years old my favourite toy was a doll. When I was about ten I went through a phase of reading Care Bears comics (mainly because they were published by Marvel, the same company that published Transformers). If I did this now (and if my parents were complete idiots) I'd end up being carted off to have my knob lobbed off.

I have a 4 year old boy myself and I genuinely worry about what he's going to face in school over the next decade if threads like this (and the many more Americanised "right on" topics that fill this forum these days) are any indication - not because he's "gender fluid" or whatever PC nonsense is in vogue at the moment, but because he'll be told (directly or or otherwise) that everything he currently accepts as normal and natural isn't in fact the case and he must embrace and advocate that diversity.

Projecting adult-oriented concepts and agendas onto young children who haven't the capability to fully process it is wrong and something I will never support.

When he inevitably comes to me about it I'll probably just tell him the same thing I'll be telling him about religion (something he won't be doing if I have any say in it

) - that some people feel/believe different things and that's perfectly fine as long as they don't force it on you or pressure you to change who you are. Never be afraid to question things and make your own mind up, even if it might be unpopular at the time.

Autonomous Cowherd · 29-08-2016 12:11PM

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

I

Projecting adult-oriented concepts and agendas onto young children who haven't the capability to fully process it is wrong and something I will never support.

I watched the Louis Theroux documentary. It was informative but did not fundamentally change my point of view. I watched a few other better ones, addressing the transgender children issue from a POV other than an American one - those docs were better. It is persuasive in many ways to see children speak so clearly...
BUT...
and following in the spirit of Kaiser's quote...
in those documentaries I also saw a great degree of extremely early sexualisation of children, never mind their gender issues. The especially young boy who identifies as Camille in Theroux's documentary rocking out to a pop song with extremely suggestive sexual moves gave me a strong impression of a child who had been influenced by the hyper-sexual world that is now ubiquitous in children's lives. I think this is an issue that should be addressed.
I saw a fair amount of children being influenced by information they had picked up from Google. As we know google is self-selecting as an information source, generally reinforcing cognitive dissonance.
I also saw a fair amount of mother's with borderline Munchausen's by proxy in the documentaries, and emasculated fathers, and attention starved children. Not all, by no means, but it is there.
I also saw physicians, surgeons, psychiatrists, and social workers protecting a new lucrative corner of a market they are carving out. Yeah, I am cynical.

I learned that many transgender identifying children do not experience dysphoria about their genitals. They feel fine in general with their penis or vagina, they just wish to live as the opposite gender.
So overall I feel there is not as much need for surgical or hormonal intervention to be so front and centre of this movement....better to embrace people's differences in a more general way.

noaddedsugar · 29-08-2016 12:17PM

2RockMountain wrote: »

Watch the documentary and you'll get it. I guess the kids picked it up from the world they live in, seeing parents, siblings and other people of different genders. They didn't live in a hermetically sealed container. And I'm not sure that any of them were the result of some kind of psychological test with 'gender neutral' everything. They're just ordinary kids in ordinary families, who managed to work out that their gender doesn't match their bodies.

I watched that doc and thought it was dreadful the way boy =playing football girl = pretty dresses. I knew I was a girl because I like dresses, eh no you are a boy who appreciates how great it is to twirl around in a dress.

Your likes and dislikes, what you want to wear doesn't make you a boy or a girl. The kindest thing those parents could have done was explained that to their children, people like all different things and that is cool. Gender is a social construct that we should be working on dismantling not reinforcing it with guff like that.

All this focus on gender is really damaging, you just need to look at the rising numbers of medicated trans kids to see that. There is no need for gender neutral anything if we say wear what you want, play with what you want then by default everything is gender neutral and we can go back to having separate toilets, changing rooms, prisons etc based on sex not indeterminate feelings.

Atoms for Peace · 29-08-2016 12:35PM

"Wave goodbye to normality, say hello to sexual ambiguity!"

niamhstokes1 · 30-08-2016 12:46PM

Noooooooooo, we are not Americans. They can keep that weird ideology to themselves ... gross

Grayson · 30-08-2016 12:55PM

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

I have a 4 year old boy myself and I genuinely worry about what he's going to face in school over the next decade if threads like this (and the many more Americanised "right on" topics that fill this forum these days) are any indication - not because he's "gender fluid" or whatever PC nonsense is in vogue at the moment, but because he'll be told (directly or or otherwise) that everything he currently accepts as normal and natural isn't in fact the case and he must embrace and advocate that diversity.

Projecting adult-oriented concepts and agendas onto young children who haven't the capability to fully process it is wrong and something I will never support.

When he inevitably comes to me about it I'll probably just tell him the same thing I'll be telling him about religion (something he won't be doing if I have any say in it ) - that some people feel/believe different things and that's perfectly fine as long as they don't force it on you or pressure you to change who you are. Never be afraid to question things and make your own mind up, even if it might be unpopular at the time.

So if there's a kid that's different you'd be ok with the kid being bullied, being told he's weird or nor normal?

niamhstokes1 · 30-08-2016 01:00PM

We definitely should not entertain this, keep that stuff in America. Look at their society now.... do we really want to copy them??

Special Circumstances · 30-08-2016 01:17PM

Grayson wrote: »

So if there's a kid that's different you'd be ok with the kid being bullied, being told he's weird or nor normal?

That's such a leap you may as well have not quoted his post at all!

How Soon Is Now · 30-08-2016 01:38PM

Seems to be one of these kind of threads every few weeks.
Would love to see the topic dead and buried once and for all. So bloody pointless in the grand scheme of how the world works.

Grayson · 30-08-2016 02:36PM

Special Circumstances wrote: »

That's such a leap you may as well have not quoted his post at all!

It's not really. He has a little kid who is normal. I don't mean normal in a bad way or anything I just mean that if you took a photo of the kid, except for clothes etc he would look like a kid that went to school here 20, 30, or even 60 years ago. Pretty much me when I was a kid. Probably you too.

The poster said that the kid would be told to embrace and advocate diversity and that would be wrong. So lets look at what would be "right" then. If embracing diversity is wrong then it must be ok to be against it.

The fact is that, especially in schools, we should be embracing diversity. Kids should not be told that they are better than another kid. They shouldn't be told that another kid is strange or not normal. Kids should be allowed to be whoever they are without the judgement of their peers.

Special Circumstances · 30-08-2016 03:32PM

Grayson wrote: »

It's not really. He has a little kid who is normal. I don't mean normal in a bad way or anything I just mean that if you took a photo of the kid, except for clothes etc he would look like a kid that went to school here 20, 30, or even 60 years ago. Pretty much me when I was a kid. Probably you too.

The poster said that the kid would be told to embrace and advocate diversity and that would be wrong. So lets look at what would be "right" then. If embracing diversity is wrong then it must be ok to be against it.

The fact is that, especially in schools, we should be embracing diversity. Kids should not be told that they are better than another kid. They shouldn't be told that another kid is strange or not normal. Kids should be allowed to be whoever they are without the judgement of their peers.

I could just as easily say to you that if a kid is not comfortable with certain things, should THEY be bullied about that?

"Oh but you MUST accept XYZ"

The post that you said advocated bullying has pretty much the most common sense version of things as I see it.

Other people believe different things. That's okay as long as it isn't forced on you. (To be fair there's some ambiguity of where the line is here). If you don't believe in XYZ well that's probably (I mean there isn't much point choosing not to believe gravity) okay, as long as you don't force your views on others.

People seem to assume anyone disagreeing with them here is at the opposite extreme, we have the choice of treating/forcing every child gender ambiguous, or we do some kind of modern version of tieing left handed people's left hand behind their back or beating them so they write "normal".

The real world happens somewhere between those extremes IMHO.

Jimmy Garlic · 30-08-2016 03:51PM

As this insidious social engineering gains momentum I have no doubt the end product is going to be dysfunctional and depressed adults. Leave children be children, this gender bending rubbish would never cross their minds if it wasn't forced into their consciousness by fanatical social engineers.

Argument for gender neutral clothes is wearing thin

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