Source This was the headline on the radio on my way to work this morning.. I personally believe this whole thing about gender dysphoria to be completely nonsense, especially dealing with children who haven't even reached puberty or had their first day in school yet. Gender identity disorder is, imo, a mental illness, and we're treating these people (mostly children) like they have already figured out who there are. You don't learn who you are until puberty is put into hindsight, and I think it's disgusting that we let adults mutilate children because the child has been brainwashed and questioned about what they biologically are. Ben Shapiro put it great when he said something along the lines of 'my grandfather was bi-polar who thought the radio was talking to him.. they didn't say "yes, the radio is talking to you", they put him in a hospital and on meds so he could live a better life'. What I'm really asking is what your opinions are on gender identity disorder, is it legitimate or is it a mental illness? Interested on perspectives from the left and the right, but the left most intrigues me. This is a topic we'll be faced with over the the next couple of years and with the power of the LGBT will probably be legitimised more and more, as we watch it seep down into our children's lives.This really boils my blood. It's one of the main reasons I've distanced myself from the left. Fair enough LGB marriage equality but transgenders is a different category and I hate how the LGBTIABC are getting to our children.
This kind of thing absolutely disgusts me. This (*)(*)(*)(*) needs to stop immediately. If this is how the country is going to "progress" with liberals in power, then I hope they burn in hell. Kids should not be involved in this kind of crap.
It's definitely a mental illness, and a severe one at that. Funny enough, I'm also bipolar, and it is definitely not something to be embraced. There are some advantages, or at least advantages that are biologically connected, but it's a pretty bad thing for the most part. When my moods shift rapidly for no apparent reason, I know better than to think that it is perfectly fine. A person who thinks they need to chop off their penis is probably mentally ill.
What questions could they possibly ask as 4 year old child to discover if he has 'gender dysphoria'? "Do you like playing with dolls or with trucks?" "Dora the Explorer or Ben 10?". "Pink or blue?" Honestly whatever methods they use has to be so far gone from any real science. There's no way children even have ideas about gender or sexuality at such a young age, and who are we to tell them that they're not just queer? Let the grow up and figure it out themselves. Growing up is confusing enough as it is, and that's what helps you figure out who you are, but this is completely degenerate trying to confuse children even more with their bias, 'progressive' and false views on identity. I secretly loved watching Buffy lol wasn't the coolest (*)(*)(*)(*) to do when I was growing up, but I wasn't gay she was hot. My mates would've thought it was homo af though.
The left is on a dangerous path by legitimising mental illnesses. Paedophilia will be the next mental illness we must accept, or else labelled as a bigot.
I don’t think the question of whether it is a mental illness or not is really relevant. That’s largely a sematic difference and remains open to question across the field in general. It seems clear to be that the term illness is being used by some to intentionally present the image of it being automatically bad and needing fixing without having to rationalise or explain that conclusion. Just because something is an illness doesn’t mean it is possible or best to simply seek to “fix” it and certainly not best to “fix” it by simply telling the patient they’re wrong until they (pretend to) get “better”. If someone is blind, we don’t force them to act as if they can see. Certainly we see if their sight can be clinical improved but if not we acknowledge the situation and make resources available to make their lives as full and free as possible. I don’t think the simple question of “too young” is valid either. This can be a very wide and diverse area and each individual situation will be best served with individual responses. What those responses are and at what age they’re made with legitimately vary too. I certainly don’t think we’re in a position to make any definitive judgement on individual cases like this, especially based on the limited (and potentially misleading) information in the press. There is definitely an argument against lumping transgender and gender dysphoric individuals along with homosexuals given that they are very different situations but that works both ways. Just as the supporters need to differentiate and recognise the differences, so too the opponents shouldn’t take their objections to one and simply apply the same opinions and attitudes to the other. That will of course be much easier if those objections are based on consider facts and understanding rather than generic dislike and discrimination.
So you're saying that it is ok to perform a sex change on a 4 year old child? Who really has no idea what is going on, and is likely tremendously influenced by their parents? Age is not an issue for you? Even though we restrict children from having sex, buying smokes or alcohol, or going to clubs and strip-clubs? Should we view all of those things circumstantially also and allow children to do all these things because maturity is a 'wide and diverse' area? LOL I can't imagine any scenario where this would be ok with a child, even up to say 14-16 years of age. One of my best friends growing up was a chick who was a tomboy, was bi throughout her adolescence, and is now straight woman. Imagine if people said to her "are you sure you're not a boy in a girl's body"? who actually thought that girls get stuck in the wrong body and vice versa; she often said she was more like a boy than a girl, and still is lol, but she never thought of having a sex-change../anecdotal evidence
I have a hard time with that assumption because I know a family with a young girl who identifies male. The girl is in her early teens now but we have known her since she was around 8 years old. Its hard to explain it but she always seemed more boyish than girlish, and not in the way I normally picture as tomboyish, but in a purely masculine sense. She was never dressed as a boy when younger and her parents let her hair grow long. She is and has always been attractive, she is not overweight or disfigured in any way. She is vibrant in attitude, happy and rough and tumble, she is not repressed or subdued in any way. She is completely healthy and normal, she just acts like a boy. Despite her long hair and wearing skirts I did not know she was a girl (I thought they might be kilts) until I asked my wife about it, and that was when we first met the family, so she was very young. The thing is behaviors are linked to sex in ways no one completely understands right now, and an individual who decides their natural behavior makes them more comfortable as the opposite sex might have a mental problem and might not. If a person has repressed their natural behavior in order to appear normal their whole life and suddenly decides to change sex it will appear pretty crazy. (Which seems like a good argument for letting them explore this part of their nature at a younger age without judging them for it.) When it comes to young children I'd say there is no way to know judging from outside. I concede that there could be a situation where parents try to force their child into the opposite sex role, but I have never seen it.
I concede your points, but I feel like we are in uncharted territory that is potentially more dangerous than it is beneficial. It sets dangerous precedents and has the potential to substantially alter culture, or is reflective of it, at the very least. It just bothers me. I admit that I cannot present a strong logical argument against it, at least not a very good one, but I am going to trust my intuition on this one. This is one of those areas where fuzzy logic prevents a solid analysis, and I am going to err on the side of caution. We don't need to confuse masculinity and femininity any more than we already have. I think those traditional constructs are good things, and I don't want to see that ancient norm steam-rolled like everything else.
No and nor is anyone else. Nothing in the article you linked even implied anything about “performing a sex change” or any other clinical intervention at all. I can’t actually think of any clinical intervention that would be even possible until puberty and the very earliest. There obviously should be restrictions on legal, safety and medical ethics grounds and those are already in place in Western nations (in general if not specifically referencing gender identity in children). Within that scope though, it’s down to the parents (and the children themselves as they become able), medical professionals, social care agencies to assess and deal with each individual case in the best way for that individual. Age is one relevant factor, though it should be more about psychological and physical maturity at various stages in their lives than simplistic chronological cut-offs. Why would they if she didn’t raise it herself? You need to be aware that gender identity disorder is quite different from “being a tomboy” and has literally nothing to do with sexual orientation. If anything you’re creating more risk of confusion on that basis by misunderstanding and/or misrepresenting the facts and conflating multiple different elements. General public ignorance remains one of the major problems in this area.
A semantic difference? If you honestly believe that someone can look to a four year old for indications of 'gender dysphoria', the only relevant semantics that can be reached is that you are out of your mind.
Much too young at that age.Waiting until adult is better for everyone as children change as they grow.
The semantics comment was exclusively about whether we’re talking about a mental illness or not. It was the least important part of my post. I didn’t address the entirely separate question of whether gender dysphoria can be accurately diagnosed in a four-year old. I’m not a psychological professional (and nor, I’m sure, are you) but I don’t think it’s’ beyond the realms of possibility. My core point remains that we’re not in a position to, and nor should we try to, second-guess specific cases on the back of limited (and potentially false) information. More generalised points of psychology, healthcare, ethics, law and practicality are different but they generally boil down to opinion and are still largely based on limited information and often blatant misunderstandings.
Some of the problem may be with judging this from a distance and trying to make judgements for individuals based on what we think of as normal. In smaller settings, where people know each other, drastically different judgements are commonly made. A town of 5000 or less might be able to accept the mayor occasionally wearing a dress for instance, because they know him as a person and can accept his differentness. But if pictures come out of that town and hit the media everyone in the world will jump to conclusions and make snap stereotypical judgements about the town and the mayor. Should the vast majority of people outside the town be able to enforce their view of normal on that small town? I don't think so. I'm not saying that we should force every mayor to occasionally wear a dress though. Thats what the argument against differentness seems like to me, that by allowing individuals to be different we are somehow forcing everyone to be different. Tolerance of differences that were once considered open game for everyone to make fun of is a societal change, but it doesn't have to be a culture destroying one.
Gender transitioning is something that should not occur until all the hormone shifts from puberty have ended. You should have to be at least 20 before you start the process.
It's the soup du jour, the cause celebre. It's the trendy thing to do. Progressives just can't wait to clam they have a gender dysphoric child in order to show the world just how wonderfully progressive they are..
I agree with you. It would be best to let local norms prevail if possible, but in this age of mass media, every little thing has broader implications, not to mention the fact that our media pushes a decidedly liberal point of view on people. None of these things would even be issues if the media wasn't the cesspool it currently is.
What part of 'Transitioning their gender' doesn't mean a sex-change to you? What they will be doing to this poor child is giving them hormone blockers and increased hormones of the opposite sex. They may retain their genitalia (for now) but they will otherwise grow up to be the opposite sex to what they were born with. This is outright child abuse and there is no justification for it. The fact that you (and anyone else) want to justify it shows that we need to be living under separate laws because I (and many others who agree) don't want to live around people like you or the hell you wish to create. This is more than just opinions; it's a huge line in the sand equivalent to communism vs capitalism where those who believe in biology and mental health will be on one side, and those who don't believe in anything but somehow believe everything on the other. Age is an extremely relevant factor, and using age restrictions has kept society on a just path. All your other excuses about phycological and physical maturity and anything else you come up with will grow to be used to support paedophilia. Children are still 'humans in training' and we don't consider them able to make grown-up decisions until later ages, otherwise there would be no such thing as juvi because a criminal's a criminal, right? We don't let children travel on planes alone under 5 and yet you think we should let them make alarmingly big life decisions before that.. even full-blown adults are confused about this idea and yet it's somehow ok to let a minor make it? No, it's really not, imo. This is where the liberal media is most dangerous. Just by planting these thoughts that you may be stuck in the wrong body will result in this so-called gender dysphoria. Men can live happy lives being really feminine [and will most likely turn out gay] and women can live really happy lives being masculine [also may turn out gay]. I grew up around a lot of girls who could compete with the girlier blokes in typically 'male' areas like sport and physical bullying, and instead of force-feeding them nonsense about being stuck in the wrong body we need to just accept that women can be more masculine than feminine and men are more feminine than masculine. We don't need to mutilate their bodies and hormones for the sake of some sick social experiment based on far-left theories on who you 'feel' like.
What do you mean she 'identifies male'? How long since you've known her has she done this? Dressing like a boy sounds tomboy. I knew girls who were feminine af but wore men's clothes for various reasons. What else did she do that you describe as 'purely masculine'?
Transitioning can mean different things for different people and can be a very long process regardless. There is absolutely nothing in this article indicating any clinical intervention for this child. As I pointed out, there would be no point doing so before the onset of puberty at the very earliest so they’ll be a long way from any such decisions. No. My reference to the children being involved in the decision making was about as they get older. At four, parents make all such decisions on their children’s behalf, within the context of relevant legal structures. You can’t object to those principles in a specific case just because you disagree with their decision. Again, there is zero connection between gender-identity and sexual orientation so there is no valid reasons to keep bringing the latter up. It’s also not as simple as having more masculine or feminine characteristics. Men can be feminine and women masculine without being transgender and transgender people can (and often do) have the usual physical characteristics of their birth sex. Gender identity is more complex and runs deeper than these surface elements. There are identified physiological differences in people with gender dysphoria so the idea that it can be simply created by environmental factors alone seems flawed. I don’t deny that it would be very easy to create confusion in the mind of a young child in this manner but this is equally true of a child with gender dysphoria being forced to pretend it doesn’t exist. I don’t see a family getting to the point reported, with the direct involvement of relevant professionals, simple of the basis of unsupported indoctrination. One thing that should be clear here is that there are no easy “right” answers in these circumstances and what the parents and children involved most need is understanding and support, not insults and blind condemnation.
It's just the left using their own children as political tools. They do this all the time, whether it's some ghetto chick with fifteen kids demanding the government pay for her rent and food, or a lesbian who managed to get knocked up one drunken evening and then using that poor kid's genitalia to advance her lesbianic man-hating agenda. It's what they do, and they don't care if they are messing with the lives of children.
