Interesting observations from teachers on lockdown impact on girls with gender dysphoria
DISCUSSION Submitted June 29, 2020, 6:39 a.m. by boo23booI’ve seen some discussions on other platforms and wondered if there was any wider experience of it that anyone would like to share?
Anecdotally, one teacher has noticed that out of the 9 girls in her yr9 160 student cohort who were identifying as Trans Boys, over lockdown, 8 have now desisted. Other teachers/parents/caregivers have given their view and experience of the same phenomenon. Lockdown appears to be resulting in considerable change for those girls once identifying as Trans. We’ve often talked about these instances being within social clusters or having a contagion effect and what might be causing the much higher prevalence of young trans identifying girls.
Does anyone have any experience of what is happening right now with girls desisting that they would like to share? I’m really keen to understand this in more detail, and I appreciate anything that is happening right now is anecdotal.
Welcome to Reddit's most active feminist community! This is a women-centered, radical feminist subreddit to discuss gender from a critical, feminist perspective. If you’re new to gender critical feminism, please familiarize yourself with our FAQ and some of these resources.
Please follow the rules and consider if your submission is appropriate for this sub or if it should be posted to a sister subreddit. See our dictionary of common terms if you’re unfamiliar with lingo.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
Contagion among their peers, sure. Esp since schools are bending over backwards to accept what children are claiming--most of whom know little about sex and have no sexual experience whatsoever. These kids' fears about growing up are coming out in the open, fueled by social media, and they are using social site "knowledge" and propaganda and illiterate information about things they should be getting correct biological information about.
So if lockdown has resulted in these children being isolated from their affirming peer group, is it fair to assume that we should see a pattern in the statistics in the future where there is an increase in detransitioners and a higher drop out rate for those accessing gender identity clinics and not going on to a medical pathway?
I don't think it's going to be that easy, esp when schools are "affirming" others who continue to buy into trans propaganda. But I hope we do see some stats. Perhaps even teachers have wound down a bit at not having a classroom these days. There will always be a difference in having actual human contact and only contact on the internet, don't you think? We tend to be "kinder" to people in person which in some ways is self-protective. Much easier to get logical reasoning out into the open online when you can speak your mind anonymously and sometimes even w/o retribution, something women almost never get away with, however.
But it's not universal by any means online. I've been banned from World News because of it and because the mods over there simply don't like women expressing our own opinions.
And children can innocently think that because some kid is "different" because he (or she) is getting a lot of attention, and that it's perfectly fine to ignore the science of biological sex, esp when schools go along with it. After all, aren't schools the authorities on education?
I was triggered into rage this am when watching NBC News and saw exactly what trans are after when they showed a Pride parade and a mincing "transwoman" was carrying a "Trans Power" sign. Yes, this is what those men want--even more power over women in attempting tocancel us entirely. Why are they even seen in the same light as gay men, lesbians and bisexuals?
b/c they wedged their way in during a VERY long game to gain access to women's spaces. a local person here was interviewed for "pride" and when asked about pride he just started talking about himself. no mention of gay. why? b/c he isn't gay. he's just a man who says he is non binary / queer. these people are actively erasing gays and gay history (see the stonewall narrative).
The problem is most of these kids are not included in any studies. So, it's not like every girl who claims she's a transboy is being counted, especially if her parents are not on-board with transing a minor.
My daughter identified as trans for over three years, but her father and I were definitely opposed to accessing medical treatment as an option. She was definitely not included in any research and when she reidentified as female, that wasn't noted anywhere.
And, even kids who ARE counted within research studies, the ones who detransition or reidentify are among the kind of amazingly large numbers of people who are lost to research and no reason is given for it. Are they dead? Did they move and can't be found? You see it with seemingly every study of kids in these cohorts -- it goes from a fairly small number anyway (understandably) to an even smaller number and the only study I've seen about transidentifying kids which accounted for close to every person who started the study is the Steensma study.
The other related situation is that endos and therapists think that there's not really any such thing as desistance because they aren't having lots of patients come in and tell them that this is their experience. And, there's so many reasons why this would happen, not the least of which is medical and mental health professionals are PUSHING this stuff and it appears that when patients DO start to question or start to view their distress through a lens other than gender identity, professionals are resistant to that. Also, would you want to continue to deal with someone who you know is still telling kids that they're the opposite sex when you've been sucked in and are trying to heal and rebuild your life?
All of this is an enormous mess and until the professionals start seriously being self-reflective about their own part in it, there won't really be any way to truly help these kids who do really require help -- just not being told that they're wrong and need to change their bodies.
Yeah. I read a detrans story of a woman who felt betrayed and angry at her therapist for never questioning why she felt like she did or exploring her trauma history. I can imagine that's pretty common, but physically confronting the "expert" you feel betrayed by is not a thing most people struggling with mental health issues have the nerve to do.
My mother’s best friend’s daughter was trans for a few years. Thankfully, her parents aren’t woke and while they used her preferred name to the best of their ability, they refused to pretend that she wasn’t a girl and would not let her medically transition until she was 18. Apparently, her entire friend group came out as trans at around the same time.
Over the course of lockdown, all of her friends desisted one by one. Maybe they would have desisted anyway as they’re all around the age where teenage phases typically end (17/18), but a couple of months away from toxic peer pressure couldn’t have hurt either. My mother’s friend’s daughter told her parents last week that she didn’t think she was trans anymore. Thank god none of her friends had made anything more than a social transition.
Being trans is the new emo phase.
It really is...but unfortunately, emo phases didn't involve hormones, surgery, and supported a total disconnect from reality.
I thought of myself as a "scene" kid back in the day. ...And I looked back on it as cringey years after. But I'm actually thankful I had that and not...whatever hell is happening now.
I don't have direct experience but the social distancing and time spent inside have cut the leering right down and no being stroked in queues or dry humped on a busy train.
I think girls trying to identify out if that would have had a natural break from it.
Thanks for the screen shot, I wasn’t sure if it was against the rules to mention other forums.
The girls I know view being trans makes you extra quirky and cool, so it's promoted. Also when girls develop breasts and dislike that, they're told it's because they're trans, not because it's a massive change to their body and it's perfectly normal to dislike it at first. Everyone is so militant about anyone who disagrees they end up brainwashing each other. It's awful.
Right? When I was a teen all the girls wanted breast implants. Wanting forbidden body mods as a teen is NORMAL.
I was horrified at entering puberty. But that was because men started looking at me as a woman when as far I was concerned I was only a young girl who should be viewed as such. Puberty is the time when girls become sexual objects in society and you can’t blame many girls for looking at developing breasts with dismay. To say that the answer is to identify as a boy allows society’s sexism and hebephilia to remain untouched and unchallenged.
Exactly. I remember walking home with two of my friends who are late bloomers. I started developing breast at 10. We were walking home and this creepy guy brought his car window down and called out to me with this unsettling smile. A few years later I was walking home from school (I have school uniform so he knew I was way too young for a middle-aged man to even be interested) a man who worked for a building company catcalled me. I pretended to get a text message and secretly took a photo of him, the number plate and the company (their phone number included). I got home and my dad was pissed. He called them several times and they just said they'd tell him off.
This is interesting and parents seeking solutions should really get the info. Not locking down, but breaking ties with the internet and friend group for awhile seems to help.
I don’t want to get into specifics because I’m also an educator, but I work with student data integrity and I’ve changed “gender” classifications for MANY students over the past months. MANY.
That is really interesting to hear, thank you.
continuing without specifics, has that mostly been to or from trans identification in the past few months?
All were revisions back to birth certificate verified sex.
Please, please, please write an op-ed and pass it along to someone else for publication if you are afraid speaking publicly could negatively impact your career.
It is a minefield—but I am attempting to navigate this option currently.
This may seem off base but in the former Soviet Union messages from so-called subversive elements were often passed through a network of 5-10 people just to obfuscate the origin thereof. Ditto with the Dutch/French resistance during WWII.
They already have stats on suicide contagion, I can't believe this is shrugged off. Makes me sick.
read littman's paper, it describes the same phenomena
Recently I read a really cool article about people with phobias that prevented them from going outside. It seems those people excel in times of hardship or when catastrophes happen. Not being forced into social situations all the time where people have to wear a mask lets them find themselves, maybe.
I remember when I was 11-12 I discoverd the LGBT community on the internet, and I started to think alot about being trans. It passed after 14. Now when I think back, I was into the idea of not being a girl, not that of being a boy. I didnt't like the way I was treated and being a boy seemed easier. Maybe this is something.. A little earlier than that age was when I started to understand my sexualisation and it made me very uncomfortable, so I acted as boy-ish as possible. The idea that I could transform into a boy and escape girlhood seemed amazing to me
When I was in school (I'm only 6 years out), the contagion bug was being LGB. 8 or so kids (in my year group alone) from the same social circle, came out as lesbian/gay within months of each other. Having a look through Facebook recently, all but 1 is actually in an LGB relationship now (a gay man).
5 have had kids and are in heterosexual relationships, and the other two I don't have as friends, so I wouldn't know.
Being LGB doesn't put you on a path to a lifetime of medicalization and irreversible body modification or impose a belief system on all around you who are at great social pressure to "affirm" you.
I didn't say it does. I merely shared my experience of witnessing a group of people all identify under the same banner in a short space of time.
That’s interesting to me because I would have guessed that the increased amount of time spent indoors would make the gender craze worse.
I think a lot of what is happening with tween and teen girls is less suicidal contagion (although there's some of that) and more of conversion disorder.
The thing about that is it is KNOWN to be a disorder common to teen girls and, frankly, it certainly seems to be generated by girls who are struggling and convert that into a physical-seeming illness/disease/disorder so as to be taken seriously. I think in the case of trans identity, it's now recognized and listened to and is UNQUESTIONED, so it's a go-to catchall for any number of non-medical struggles -- abuse, trauma, minority sexuality, plenty of mental health issues, autism, plain old suggestibility. I think this is why it's caught on -- puberty is always a struggle and painful, even for the most normal of girls, and complaints surrounding pubertal changes and issues are dismissed or glossed over.
Online behaviors only heighten this and, of course, navigating in-person friendships and teen girl behaviors is ALWAYS a steep learning curve. When you take those variables out, SURPRISE!, you ease a lot of struggles for lots of girls. You leave space to think about other things and do other things and discuss situations and feelings and connect more with the people in your house.
Absolutely nailed it.
This should be its own post
We tend to focus on the negative effects of lockdown but there are quite a few people with and without mental health problems who are thriving at the moment, for a variety of reasons.
My daughter is a lesbian, and she's pretty fucking excited to not be subjected to grown men on the city bus every day. Her school is disproportionally trans and gay so wonder how her tif classmates are doing.
I'm seriously SO glad that I grew up before transing children became a trend - I, like most girls dreaded getting my period for the first time and I even trained myself even harder in sports, and starved myself to try and keep it at bay - I also wore sports bras that were too small to hide my breasts when they started growing. I absolutely had some kind of version of "gender dysphoria" - but seriously who doesn't when you're going through puberty and everything about you starts to change so rapidly?
My niece took herself off lupron after lockdown started.
Oh wow, how is she doing now?
Fascinating. For US reference, I looked it up and Year 9 is ages 13 and 14, so our 8th grade.
Is there any research or literature on how to parent a child through this “phase” in a way that helps them accept their natural body, and find a healthy happy expression of self that doesn’t require extreme body modification/lifelong medicalization? I don’t have kids yet, but want to, and I’m already thinking about how to handle this - seems inevitable at this point. I think it must be a delicate dance to not alienate them and push them farther away.