Argument for gender neutral clothes is wearing thin

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.

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

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.”

padd b1975

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

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.

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

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;

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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?

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?

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 ?

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.

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 ?

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

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.

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_

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.