My 13 year old daughter has socially transitioned and likes being referred to as he/him.
She grew up with no gender dysphoria, and high self confidence. There were no signs this was coming. The day after her PSHE day in year 7, she told me she thought she was really a boy because she liked Thomas the Tank Engine when she was small and now, even after demonstrating to her from the evidence of her own life how she has grown up female, liking a range of things, and reminding her that girls are allowed to like a whole range of things, wear a whole range of clothes and have a whole range of hair styles she says she feels like being a girl and a feminist is too hard, that she isn’t strong in that way and that being identified as a boy makes her happier.
The problem for me is that the whole of popular culture and public institutions have subscribed to an affirmation only approach, and that I am alone in being a grown up adult who, knowing my daughter well, can clearly see that she is mistaken in her beliefs. It is like the integrity of parents and responsible adults has completely gone out of the window.
She is identified at Scouts as male, at her out of school drama group as male. She is otherwise a very rational and logical person, she also has ASD. What I dread is that she has put herself in to a corner from which she cannot then retreat. We have forgotten that teenagers don’t always make wise decisions about their lives, we have forgotten that teenagers need objective and factual education and support. In addition to this, she has experienced “trans phobic” questioning and comments from other girls who were previously friends, and this has in fact cemented her commitment to identifying in this way.
The whole culture of acceptance and openness, has backfired. Children need to be given the space to be children, and to be educated with facts not ideology unless a balanced view is presented, as it is with religious teaching. I worry for the future of all the teenage girls like my daughter who are entrenched in hating their bodies. If a teenager was anorexic, they would be supported and gently challenged to recover, facts would be given about their bodies and education about being healthy.
I feel this is very similar and whilst I have no doubt there are some people who have ideas of being trans that persist, and that we need not to shame or exclude them, these people do not present a healthy, well integrated self confident and happy mindset. They are not role models for children, they are people who have suffered huge amounts of internal conflict and distress, and who have lifelong battles for self acceptance.
Children can’t be born in the wrong body, this ideology is an assault on the bodies of children like my daughter who has a perfectly wonderful and healthy body with which there is nothing wrong at all.