My first posts on this forum were in a thread about a lady who thought she was a man... who had apparently convinced her school-age little girl she was a little boy and was upset that the school wouldn't allow her to use the little boys bathroom. My stance on this was that the child should have been taken away from the mother the FIRST time anyone became aware that the mother was having this effect on the child. The conservatives here agreed with me. The liberals did not. Now there is a case of children being removed from a home because of nazi teachings and nazi names given to the children. My stance is still that the children should be taken away. This time the liberals agree with me and the conservatives do not. So what's the difference people? Seriously. Why is it OK with the liberals that transgender people teach little girls that they are little boys.. but it's not OK that white supremacists teach children to hate other races? Why is it OK with conservatives that white supremacists give their children names that will cause the child great hardship in life and teach their children to be like them.. but it's not OK that transgender parents teach their children to be like them? Am I seriously the only one here capable of looking at both of these situations and seeing some messed up parents that shouldn't be allowed indoctrinate children into their dysfunction? Am I the only one here really capable of putting the best interests of the children before my own political agenda?
In one case, parents are expressing an opinion. The worst thing that happens is that the kids join the Stormfront message boards and claim that Obama's birth certificate is forged. Whoop de doo. In the other case, the parent is an obvious nutcase telling an abject lie and pushing their kid into an extraordinarily confusing situation that could leave the kid seriously farked in the head for a very, very long time. Not remotely comparable.
Good topic. One, IMO, is basing a need for authoritarian state intervention on "what if's" and "maybe's" that the children may or may not encounter with their unique, perhaps offensive names.... Where "Abuse" is subjectively and arbitrarily determined by opinions of society and the state, with no precedent to support any actual negative results of the parents actions. The other seeks medical and state intervention to permit the direct, physical/hormonal/surgical alteration of a child who is unable to legally consent or really understand the lifelong implications....there are no "what if's" or "maybe's" to the end result of the parent(s), or the state's actions....
Again.. the names aren't the problem. They are the symptom of a much greater issue... total lack of concern for the welfare of the child from birth.. not just by being neglectful.. but by intentionally setting the child up for failure for the sake of making a political statement. Those children are intentionally robbed of any chance of normalcy from birth. If the parents like those names so much why not change their own names to Adolf Hitler and Arayn Nation rather than sticking that stigma on a newborn child?
If you really believe that is the worst thing that can happen to a child growing up with the name Adolf Hitler in New Jersey USA you are naive to the point of borderline retardation. How about no friends, no job, beat up every time he steps foot outside of his families protection. His parents don't care about any of that. If they did.. they would not have named him that. So long as there is no sex reassignment surgery you are fine with this situation then? It's OK that she has convinced her daughter she is a boy? Right? I mean the worst that can happen is that she dresses in flannel clothing.. right?
I would say the obvious difference is a family consisting of a man and a woman which produced a child in the natural way verses a civil union of two lesbians who adopted a child.
While I agree with you completely that the best interests of the children should always come first, I tend to be generally very reluctant to take a child away from their family for exactly that reason. The foster care system in the US is... Let's just say it could be better. Taking any child out of an established home and throwing them into the foster system is putting them at serious risk for all sorts of things - many of which also have very serious life long consequences. It's basically a roll of the dice, with the kid's future at stake. Therefore, as a general rule, my starting position is that a child should only be taken out of their home in really very serious situations. I also know very little about either of these cases. This is the first I've heard of the transgender case, and I've only seen headlines about the nazi case. So I'm going to have to reserve judgement about the particulars of both cases. Even if I'd read all the media coverage of these cases, I'd still have to reserve judgement. Family situations are usually complicated, and I think you really need someone on the ground, seeing things firsthand to get a real picture of what's going on. Even the best media accounts are going to give you an incomplete picture, at best. That's why we have things like judges and social workers and child advocates, even if the system doesn't always work as well as it should. I think that it's usually best to leave these sorts of decisions in particular cases up to the people who are on the scene, and we, as members of the voting public, should pay more attention to how the system overall works. On the question of gender identity, I would ask all of you to try to be a little less judgmental on the subject, and try to learn more about it before forming hard and fast opinions. I especially think it would be helpful if you tried to learn something about the stories and experiences of transgender people, preferably by talking to them. Now, I'm going to assume that those of you who have expressed a bad opinion of transgender people have very solid gender identities that have never been in any way questioned. If there's anyone here for whom that is not the case, I apologize in advance, and would encourage you to share your story if you're comfortable with that. That said, I would like to ask you to do a little thought experiment with me. It's just a thought experiment, I know it's an unrealistic scenario that would never happen, that's not the point. Imagine that you woke up one morning to find yourself in a body of the opposite gender. You remember your current life as your current gender, but everyone around you thinks that you have always been the opposite, and they all treat you as such. Just because your physical body had changed, would that make it easy for you to simply flip from one to the other as if a switch had been flipped in your head, or would it be difficult for you? Would you feel awkward with the social expectations placed on you? Would you feel uncomfortable with the sudden change in your body? Would you always feel like you're walking into the wrong public restroom? Trying to live like that would be really hard and stressful for you, wouldn't it? Transgender people are born feeling that way. Transgender traits tend to show up very early in childhood. Parents often try very hard to suppress those tendencies, to teach their child to be a "real" boy or girl. And they almost always fail. The feeling that your are stuck in the wrong body simply does not go away. Gender identity is not taught. You can no more teach a gender straight person to be transgender then you can teach a transgender person to be gender straight. It just doesn't work. And attempting to do so almost always results in the kid having very serious emotional problems. Take the story of David Reimer for example. He was born as a normal, healthy male, but due to an accident during circumcision, his penis was badly damaged, beyond surgical reconstruction. His parents consulted with experts, who told them that the best thing to do for their child was to have him surgically assigned as a female and to raise him as a girl, which they did. Despite their best efforts and continual care from the psychologist who originally recommended the procedure, David never really identified as female, and had severe emotional problems throughout his life, which eventually led to his suicide. You can read more background about his story at the wiki article here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer Now, for those who think that physical sex is always strictly male or strictly female, and never the twain should meet, there are, in fact, a variety of conditions that can cause intersex individuals - people whose physical anatomy is neither unambiguously male nor unambiguously female. And this is a lot more common then you probably think. Depending on the exact definition you use, somewhere around 1% - 0.1% of the population are intersex. This is comparable to the percent of the population with red hair - about 2% - 1%. There's actually a good chance that each of you has known an intersex person at some point, even if you weren't aware of it.
Good thread, but I wouldn't take the children away in either case. Like it or not, parents have a lot of freedom over what they can do with their kids. We may not approve of what they do as individuals, but we don't have the legal ability to do much about it unless physical abuse is involved.
Really I can't believe the two issues are even being compared to each other. One is a medical issue, and the doctors and mental health professionals involved are in agreement that the girls situation warrants puberty blockers. There is no evidence of abuse or neglect or that the child is being harmed (only a lot of ignorant and BS assumptions and opinions because some people don't like it). Maybe if the lesbians were to name their child fa**ot, or Bu###ucker, of Tranny there might be a similarity between the two situations.
Gender identity isn't a medical issue. It is a psychological issue treated with cosmetic surgery. We are talking about a cross-dressing mother who says her daughter "knew she was a boy at 18 months old". intentionally putting your own dysfunction off onto your child is not what loving parents do.
And psychology is a branch of which field of study? Hmmmmmmm? Oh, right, it's a branch of medicine. So "it's all in your head" means it's not a "real" medical problem, is that what you're saying? So then shouldn't soldiers with PTSD just be shoved back onto the front lines, and shot for cowardice if they don't perform their duties as expected because it's all in their heads? (That really happened during WWI, incidentally.) That sort of statement just makes you sound ignorant and bigoted.
Actually psychiatry is a branch of medicine. Psychology is not. It's psychological means it's not physiological.. and therefore not a medical issue. To be treated with counseling... psychotherapy.. not medication or medical intervention. Th next time you attempt to call someone ignorant.. get your facts straight first.. and the next time you attempt to define psychology for someone... make certain they aren't a psychotherapist.
If you're a psychotherapist, then may the gods help your patients, because you sure as heck won't. You also have absolutely no excuse whatsoever for dismissing something that's "just in your head" as not being a real medical concern. And frankly, whatever qualifications you may have should be revoked for saying such a thing. You're a menace to your patients, and a disgrace to mental health professionals everywhere. You also have absolutely no excuse whatsoever for pretending that there is a hard and fast distinction between the psychological and the physiological. In a great many, if not most, mental health issues, the psychological and the physiological interact in a very complex way. And there are plenty of cases in which the physiological mechanisms are either unclear or completely unknown. And yet, sometimes they're still treated with medication for the very simple reason that the medication seems to help, even if there's no clear reason why it works. Anyone with even a casual knowledge of the subject should be well aware of that. And it did not escape my notice that while you took exception to being called ignorant, you did not deny being bigoted.
I will let the powers that be know that "Kessy" on the message board said so... I'm sure they will take your opinion into consideration.. especially since you didn't know the difference between a MD and a PhD... The distinction between the two is one is the study of things that are physically wrong.. a science... and the other is the study of what non-physical thing may be driving this or that behavior choice... not a science.. but a philosophy... which is the Ph in PhD. One is treated with medical intervention and the other is treated with conversation. Ergo... while talking to a PhD may make a schizo "feel" nice.. it isn't going to do a (*)(*)(*)(*) thing for their problem. They need to see someone who is qualified to give them meds and deal with medical issues.. and a Phd isn't.. at ALL. The difference is hard.. it is fast.. even though some PhDs choose to pretend otherwise. Some PhDs don't like being reminded that they aren't "REAL Doctors".. but they aren't.. they don't study medicine.. which is why they can't write prescriptions. The fact that psychology and psychiatry are so different is the reason people who have never studied medicine can't write prescriptions for psychotropic medications (or Ibuprofen)... but people who have never studied psychology can. I don't deny being a unicorn. Doesn't mean I am.. just means I don't care if you believe I am or not.
The difference is that one case has First Amendment ramifications and the other does not. Under our First Amendment, parents are free to raise their children and teach them their own political ideas, no matter how offensive these ideas may be to government bureaucrats. There are no First Amendment protections for transgender parents to transfer their sickness to their children.
There is no legal ruling saying it is a sickness. that is only opinion. I am still on the side of removing the kids from both households btw.
LOL I take it back, you shouldn't have your qualifications revoked - you clearly don't have any to begin with. Did you seriously think you could get away with pretending to be a therapist while displaying such massive ignorance of all aspects of mental health? Honestly... Well I do at least have to give you credit for sheer chutzpah. Never the less, you are a liar, and a pretty bad one at that. Firstly, psychotherapists generally are not PhD's. Psychologists may have either a PhD or a PsyD, and counselors typically have between two years of graduate studies to a Master's degree. The most common qualifications for therapists are LCSW (licensed clinical social worker) and a National Certified Counselor, a title granted by the NBCC (National Board for Certified Counselors). Incidentally, since nurses, nurse practitioners, paramedics, and many other medical professionals also generally don't have MD's, does that mean what they do isn't "real" medicine either? Secondly, schizophrenia does not have a single known organic cause. While there are many known contributing factors, including genetics, use of certain drugs (both medical and recreational), early environment and development, and psychological and social factors, the causal mechanisms are still mysterious. Schizophrenia is a prime example of what I mentioned before, using drugs to treat a disorder not because we have any real idea why they help, but simply because they do. It's also a good example of the general principle that you generally get the best mental health outcomes from a combination of medication and talk therapy. Either by itself is almost always inferior to a combination, even with disorders that are clearly strongly physiological in nature, such as bipolar disorder. Given your apparent ignorance of even such basic information, claiming to be a psychotherapist, or even associated with the mental health profession in any way, is frankly laughable and pathetic.
