Are teenagers who claim to be trans just acting out?

Great Debates
1

From

I disagree. I would like examples of what you see as attention seeking or getting away with misbehavior.

I’m far from the most read up on the current youth perspective on sexuality and sexual identity. But I do know a few teens who have identified differently, either trans or non-binary. I haven’t had extensive conversations with them, but I’m aware of their chosen identity and don’t oppose or invalidate them.

But what I have run across on this topic is a very different perspective on sexual identity than what I think us older folk tend to think.

They seem much more open to explore the idea of not being limited in identity. They are less wedded to the concept of being male or being female, and are more open to framing the experience as male and female parts of themselves.

My sister has proposed an idea to me that has resonance. Feminists started the ball rolling by trying to break gender roles, to redefine what a woman could do or how she could behave. Baby boomers wanted to break gender stereotypes, so they tried to break from the concepts of girls get pink and dolls while boys get blue and action figures. Girls get tea party sets and Barbies while boys get sports equipment and toy guns.

So gen x and especially millennials grew up with less defined gender roles and less focus on how to act male and act female.

This attitude took the next logical step with our children. Without guidelines, without strict roles for each gender, there weren’t the same drivers for most people to feel a particular gender. Instead, adolescents began to frame their experiences in terms of how society talks about different traits and behaviors through the lens that those traits are gendered, whereas they are not.

This makes their generation much more open to different social identities, much more tolerant of someone who changes identity. It’s a natural thing to them, something that some people do, not a freaky thing that means something is wrong with them that older people tend to perceive.

So they cast themselves based on their desires.

If there is a flaw, I say it is in setting the genders and then describing self based job those imposed categories rather than saying that the descriptions of what it means to be in those categories are wrong, and that the categories are broader in terms of his you can act or think.

For example, and emotional guy who tends to cry might identify as more feminine in those moments based on feedback like “man up” or “boys don’t cry”, when the real issue is the forced constraint that men are a particular way.
“Tom-boys” have long been a category for girls that mostly is a neutral descriptor now.

But if you give up the stereotype categories, then what is left of gender identity?

Some feeling of self. Same way sexual orientation is a feeling of self. But if there’s nothing to frame that feeling into one or other category, then do those categories matter any more?

2

As with any behavior, I am sure there are some, but probably not as many as that poster thought. I also think it is that many young people are impressionable and think too much of the benefits of the opposite gender while downplaying their own. I remember being asked, at age 7, if boys ever wished they were girls. At the time, I actually thought “Yes, I kind of wish I were a girl” but didn’t say it out loud - the reason being that I had noticed that girls my age were usually treated nicer and better than boys.

Also, I suspect that in a chips-are-down, push-comes-to-shove situation, people will likely default to whatever their actual biology is. Someone who was born with the body and appearance of a woman (AFAB) may claim to be non-female, but if the person finds themself in a war zone or some place where the risk and danger to women is particularly high, they will find that they are a woman whether they like it or not. Someone with female biology may claim to be non-binary, but the unpleasantness of menstruation, physical disadvantages, etc. will hammer the point home that while gender may be a belief held in the head, the body has a very real and physical final say in the matter.

3

One of my favorite podcasts recently did an episode on why people have the misapprehension that so-called trans kids are just doing it for attention or because they’re infuenced by social media. Sadly, that episode has now been moved to the paid-subscriber-only episodes, although you can listen free if you sign up and then cancel after listening.

The podcast is called “If Books Could Kill”, and the two erudite hosts go through different pop culture books, with cites as to why they’re mistaken. Most of the episodes are free.

The episode I’m bringing up is called The New York Times War on Trans Kids. Going from memory, they talk about how the NYT printed an op-ed about how a lot of so-called trans kids are just copying social media and aren’t really trans. This piece has been used to propagate the notion all across the internet. The podcast points out that the op-ed is taken from an activist whose only references come from her own website from disgruntled parents who are sure that their transgender kids aren’t really trans, and it’s all the fault of peer pressure and social media.

Free debunk, which goes into the same detail:

So-called “social contagion” is not real and it does not make people trans.

Proponents of bans on gender-affirming care often cite “social contagion theory,” which claims that teens spread trans identity to each other. Social contagion and its equally fictitious cousin, “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” originated with a single flawed study that recruited participants from anti-trans websites. No trans youth were actually studied for this research. Instead, the lead researcher relied on parents’ observations about their children, and used them to “generate interpretations and conclusions about clinical conditions like gender dysphoria.” Its findings have never been replicated and solid research has since refuted them.

A 2nd podcast with one of the fellows from the above podcast and a different co-host, Maintenance Phase, recently did a couple of episodes about so-called “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria”, debunking the same notion that teens are suddenly becoming trans because of social influences.

Why can’t people believe that when their kid comes out as trans and the parent had no idea they were that way, it doesn’t mean the kid is mistaken?

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4

So you’re saying that because you thought that girls were treated nicer than boys when you were 7 years old, you think that teens act out being transgender because they think boys or girls are treated nicer? Did you think that you wanted to transition to a girl at age 16 because of how they were treated? If not, why not?

5

Doubtless it happens to some nonzero degree. But I’m not too worried about the degree to which it happens, because the natural consequence is the appropriate one. If a teenager tells everyone “I identify as female”, then the result will be that everyone will start calling them “she”, and so on. At which point one of two things will happen: Either the person really genuinely does identify as female, and they’ll be validated, or they’ll discover that they’re bothered by everyone calling them female, and realize that there’s more to their gender identity than just trying to get some imagined advantages.

Now, certainly, there can be some level of factual confusion with children, especially younger children. When he was about five years old, for instance, my nephew would tell people that he wanted to be a girl. Why? Because he constantly saw his two older sisters (2 and 5 years older than him) getting to do things that he didn’t get to do, and he mistakenly attributed that to them being girls, rather than to them being older. But that sort of confusion is going to be gone long before one’s teen years.

Certainly the body has a very real say in the matter. Why is that say the final one?

6

I have a kid who graduated HS 2017. There were a handful of kids in her class who came out as trans. My daughter strongly advocated for them, some had parental support a couple others did not. By 2018/19 they all stopped transitioning. Some came out as gay or bisexual. So what to say about that other than it was experimentation.

7

I think there is an element in society who really find trans people “icky” and want them to go away or want an argument to marginalize them.

So, to them, if the majority (all?)of people who are trans are “mistaken” or “deluded by social media” or “following a trend” or “mentally ill” or some combination of the above them they don’t really exist.

The reality is we’ve always had a certain number of people AMAB living as women, and AFAB living as men, and a number of people whose biology actually isn’t clearly one or the other or somehow not in the statistical norm who have to find their way in the world.

This is nothing new. The only real question is whether or not the society such an individual lives in is accepting of that sort of thing or not. Some are, even to the point of accepting someone is of their identified sex and not the one presumed at birth. Others are not, to the point such people are killed as if they were crawling horrors.

I know that I don’t want my society to be one of the latter ones.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if it’s a lot of people or a few - they are all people and all equally entitled to the same dignity and courtesy the rest of us get.

8

I would be quite disappointed if a large percentage of young people did NOT reject the many arbitrary gender stereotypes bequeathed to them by earlier generations.

My guess, entirely unencumbered by any real aquaintance with any facts, is that the number of otherwise unremarkable young people who genuinely feel that they have been born with the wrong configuration of genitals is very small. Of the order of less than1% small. But even if it were several percent, that would still be a smaller percentage of the population than the miscellaneous groups of freaks, weirdos and crazies that feel and say really bizzare shit that makes no sense whatsoever and has no reasonable basis in the reality which the rest of us recognise.

Thus, the answer to the OP’s question is going to be very, very sensitive to the definitions adopted for ‘claim’, ‘trans’ and ‘acting out’.

Nevertheless, I will confidently assert that some teenagers who claim to be trans ARE acting out. And that some are not. Does this resolve the question?

9

As I understand it, a real trans-girl wouldn’t answer yes to that question, she would think, “I am a girl, why does everyone (including my body?) keep sung saying I’m a boy?”

From this article about a local family here in Texas

3 years old self-defining as a boy.

The other story I heard that I think was Adam Briggle (but can’t find online) was getting ready for a big event, when Max asked if his dad would love him if he wore the dress. That was when Adam realized he was hurting his child by refusing to acknowledge the child’s identity. IIRC.

Here’s an article about a 2023 documentary about trans kids featuring this teenage boy.

10

There may be some similarity to how teens will identify with certain groups–such as punk, goth, emo, vamp, metalhead, preppy, etc. For some of those kids, it’s just a phase. They move on after a while and just laugh at how they looked in yearbook pictures. For other kids, they have that lifestyle even as adults. Some of the emo teens will grow out of the phase, others will retain their emo-ness as adults. It seems like transgender would have some of those same aspects. For some teens, it’s just a momentary kind of self identification that they grow out of. For others, it’s an innate characteristic of themselves. They aren’t making a temporary connection to a group. They are making a natural expression of who they are at an innate level.

11

I might suggest that “exploration” is a more accurate word to use.

From what I’ve seen, from children of friends and relatives, is that, in their tweens or teens, these kids realize that they feel like societal expectations for their birth gender, and/or heterosexual attraction, don’t fit with how they feel about their identities.

And, so, they may spend some time exploring “am I non-binary? Am I transgender? Am I gay?,” to try to figure out exactly what their identities actually are. IMO, it’s not entirely unlike teens who, for a period of time, identify with particular teen subcultures (e.g., goths, jocks, etc.) They’re trying on roles and types of identities, trying to figure out what actually meshes with who they really are inside. (Edit: I see that @Filmore said much the same while I was writing.)

And, from what I’ve seen in my own experiences, some kids who identify as non-binary or transgender for a time when they are in high school eventually decide, “no, that’s not me.” They aren’t “acting out,” they’re trying to figure out who they are, and it takes that time of exploration to get to a decision.

Is there some non-zero number of teens who are saying “I’m transgender,” not because they actually think they are, but because they think it’s cool, or to get attention, or to rebel against their parents, or society as a whole? I have no doubt that there are, but I don’t believe that it’s the primary reason why some teenagers say or feel “I’m transgender.”

12

Y’know, the reverse of that interests me.

Let’s say that someone insists — loudly and often — that some of the so-called trans kids are just doing it because they’re influenced by media or want positive attention; what follows?

Will that same person readily grant, in turn, that some kids who claim not to be trans (a) truly are trans, but (b) are just playing along for positive attention in the context of media messaging?

13

Observation of people I know.

One person I knew as a girl from age 13 went through a long natural personal growth during teenage years. First it was getting a short fauxhawk. Then announcing being gay, and getting caught with a girlfriend. About the time of graduating high school, I was in the process of moving, so wasn’t in frequent contact. But hurricane Harvey hit, and I went to visit Houston friends, and ended up at their house to assist with cleanup one day.

I found out that former student of mine was transitioning and identifying male. That revelation wasn’t a complete surprise, though did take a mental adjustment.

But what concerned me was the younger sibling I had also known as a girl but who also now identified as male. I was informed by the mom, and I was nothing but supportive and accepting. I was told there was a therapist involved so it wasn’t just accept the kid wants to be a boy without scrutiny, but a process to ensure the identity change was real.

But I couldn’t help having private concerns that the younger sibling’s change was a reaction to the older sibling and perhaps not a real personal identity issue. But I didn’t have anything else to offer but my acceptance and positivity.

I have since lost contact by being relocated and not really being good at keeping up with my past life, so I don’t know how things have worked out.

14

I think that the issue is that, until extremely recently, our society has viewed gender identity as being purely a binary thing: you are either male, or you are female, and your “plumbing” at birth determines which you are. Plus, those two gender definitions also come with a metric ton of societal expectations of those genders (e.g., boys don’t cry, boys are competitive, girls are nurturing, etc.)

What we’re now seeing is that, not unlike sexual orientation, human gender identity may be more of a continuum. Most people are strongly polar: either they are definitely male in gender identity, or definitely female, and that identity is congruent with their assigned-at-birth gender. But, even if that’s true of 99% of people, it doesn’t fit people who don’t perfectly identify with either gender, or for whom their internal gender identity doesn’t match with their plumbing.

15

Of course not. “People are naturally cis so nobody is pretending just for the benefits.” Except they wouldn’t say cis.

Of course the “play along to get along” were originally the trans folk.

16

My own opinion is that teenagers are now able, in some cases, to safely explore what sex and gender are for them. They could not, before, not without extreme repercussions – peer shunning, kicked on to the streets by their parents, re-education camps etc., to being beaten to death. There are still repercussions but they are not as inevitable or (mostly) as violent.

Adulthood generally brings a solidification. Sometimes a persona is discarded. So?

I do question why the motivation or impetus for young peoples’ exploration is somehow so contemptible. Any teenager is buffeted by many random influences. A guy who gave me a copy of the Tao Te Ching when I was sixteen irrevocably changed my life. Everyone has stuff like that. Social media means that likeminded people can support each other. At least, ideally.

17

While I think many boomers worked to provide women and girls with greater opportunities for education and employment, I don’t believe they worked very hard to break a whole lot of gender norms. I’m Gen X, and as a wee lad when I went to K-Mart, Kaybee Toys, or Toys R Us, the toys were strictly segregated by sex. As a six year old boy, I knew exactly what part of the toy store I should be in and which part I should stay away from. I knew exactly what kind of clothes I could wear, what kind of shows I could watch, and kind of comics I could read. If I showed up to school in 5th grade wearing a Robotech t-shirt that would have been fine. Wearing a Rainbow Brite shirt would have resulted in ridicule and continued behavior would have left me ostracized.

I’m not trying to say Boomers are or were terrible people. But like most generations that came before them, they did their part to enforce gender norms. They might not have done it the same way their parents did it, but they did it.

18

I know one trans teenager (actually, she must be 20 now), and there is a lot of medication involved, surgery, getting your sex changed on official paperwork, so I am not so quick to believe it is so easy or safe or trivial or random.

19

My take is that being trans is like being homosexual–in one particular way. And being nonbinary is like being bi- or pan-, in one particular way. And being agender is like being asexual or aromantic, one particular way.

It’s not something you choose. It’s something you are already. Exploring gender is not choosing. It’s discovering.

There is a much greater freedom to explore now, so you will have kids trying things out. But it’s not “for attention.” It’s for identity. Teens notoriously are trying to figure out who they are.

Now sure, like with bi people in the past, society could force you to act straight. Just like someone who AFAB but a bit male might just ignore that part. And if they were agender, they might just go along with whatever gender they were assigned a birth, just like asexual people would often still get married to the opposite sex.

And they might have dealt with gender differently, like a trans woman only being a woman only in private. Doing drag, wearing frilly panties, etc. Though a lot just got depressed and anxious without ever knowing why. And some didn’t survive that.

And that last part is why it makes sense to allow this exploration, and not demonize it as some sort of “acting out.” And the first part is why there is no harm in letting it happen. It’s not like they’ll turn trans because they explored the idea.

I didn’t. I was just a sensitive kid who liked hanging out with girls more.

20

I recall those days. I know there were a lot of articles that floated around discussing gender norming. But the toy marketing was heavily gender driven, and still is to some degree.

Maybe I’m overestimating how much the ideas about gender norms were discussed. I’m sure a lot is the commercialization aspect. Also, I think, is that it was the ground floor of the concept and took a while to gain traction.

Maybe the toys aspect is a weak part of the argument. It’s possible the shift in attitude is a little later, not gen x so much as millennials. Maybe the impetus had more to do with broadening ideas on sexual orientation leading to more acceptance of diversity in expression. As I said this isn’t a peer reviewed paper, just observations and interpretations.