Transing the kids

[daveio]

These people go off about transing kids. They say "well my kid thinks they're Optimus Prime". But no. That's not it at all. But you're actually closer than you think.

It's not about forcing a child to be trans, just like it's not about forcing a kid to be Optimus Prime. It's about letting them explore that as a part of their identity, and see what sticks. Chances are they don't think they're a giant robot for very long. But things that are plausible - they can take longer to process.

You know what most kids who are allowed and supported in exploration of their gender turn out to be? Cis. But wouldn't you rather that your kid got the chance to try to figure it out for themselves? What harm is really done by calling them by their chosen pronouns - until they change them, or they don't?

The answer is none. Cis kids will eventually decide that they're cis. Trans kids won't, and that's the point at which you know that you can start thinking about how to take them through the process - a process from which they can walk it back at any time.

Nobody is doing surgery on kids. Hell, most ADULTS have to wait years and years before they can get permission from multiple mental health authorities to control their own body. Puberty blockers, too, are very rare. But they are also entirely reversible when you stop taking them. Which the child, teen, adult can choose to do at any time.

Trans people are not a threat to you.

Comments

[khaosinkinema]

I recently watched a video on "The Science of Being Transgender" by Powered By Rainbows, and it was really good and interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr8RbY8uB_0. ^^ They explained how the various forms of transitions can work (so that people who don't know can understand better), there are also several studies they are presenting, and a lot more.

I have known three people close to me in my life who didn't identify with their sex assigned at birth. I feel bad for all of them, not because they are trans, but because their parents were, let's say, not very happy about that. So much so that one of them broke off all contact to his family, while the other's family seems to have adapted over a long, looong time frame in which they learned they wouldn't get any grandchildren from them. Another person lost his mom quite early on (She died of cancer.), but the family (his mom, as well as his mom's parents) was always very re-assuring and wanted to see him happy. I can understand the person who went no-contact with his family though. He is happier this way, and he still has a support system, just without these toxic people who tried to see him as their own, and tried to force him to behave and dress differently from his own gender identity.

Someone's gender identity is not up to me to decide. Nor is the latter the job of anybody in the outside world. As long as the person is happy, that's it, that's the entire goal. And there are so many harmful, hateful narratives in this world about trans people.

What really bothers me (I am not sure whether this is still at work like that over here, because the only one I am still in touch with who actually lives in Germany did not go through this...) is that there are people who are supposed to ask certain questions to anybody who wants to officially change certain things (name, gender, etc.) about their ID and so on, and these questions are really, really complicated. (I think they changed that last year, though.) Like, how many sex partners one has had, which positions they are fond of, whether they are hetero (as in, if their gender identity is female, are they into men, for example), gay, bisexual, etc., why they are wearing (no) make-up, why they look the way they do, what colour their underwear is, whether they "just do not like the criteria assigned to e. g. being a man" (Like, "You surely just don't like the colour blue, eh?"), whether they are into paraphilias, etc. I mean, they were downright inhumane. If you answered any of these questions the wrong way, they would not allow for you to proceed with the changes.

I looked up how this works right now; they do not need these questionnaire answers anymore (luckily!). You actually can go to the place that also hands out birth certificates or helps people get married, and simply ask for the change, but three months before going there, you have to announce you will go there for that purpose in three months.

[heartonsnow]

Hello! I have wanted to do a post like this for ages, I just cannot word it right. I have alway seen gender as a spectrum, not one or another.

[daveio]

Occasionally I get a word-on and write stuff like this. Always incredibly pleased to hear when someone finds it useful :)

[heartonsnow]

Yes, I find the subject interesting but difficult to navigate!

[daveio]

For what it’s worth, I am often in a position to be able to answer questions on gender, and questions posed in good faith (including questions with offensive content as long as it’s accidental) are perfectly acceptable to me.

[lassarina]

I agree with this.

I also think that certain self interested powerful entities have gone "oh the world is terrible and not what you were promised? It's certainly not because we've been siphoning the goods for ourselves and crushing you, it's those damned trans people things weren't bad when they didn't exist weren't visible to you! It's their fault!" and it's just so very frustrating that people don't see through that (which is, of course, a function of said entities' gutting of public education systems....) This is of course through a US lens, but I imagine it's not so different in other places.

[laudanum]

Something I saw during the Before Times™️ on twitter, was an ally (sadly I can't be specific cos I didn't screenshot it 😭) responding to a TERF who was insisting very insistently, that trans and nonbinary kids are just going through a phase and will grow out it.

Their response was not to say no fuck off, it was in fact to say, "okay so let them go through the phase?" If it doesn't stick then that's fine, if it does, that's also fine. Kids go through so many phases, and if they wanna experiment with their identify to figure out where they're comfortable, then why wouldn't we let them?

It drives me fucking nuts that TERFS think we want to immediately operate on kids and give them hormones. Of course we fucking don't! 😖