So is composing a list without using commas, but I got over it.
And you know this because…I referred to you by name? I used the word “you”? Please do tell your powers of divination.
Or, better yet, why don’t you tell me what I am thinking when I write this sentence. I’ll give you a hint: it’s directed personally at you.
(My emphasis)
My feeling has not changed. I often hear people complaining about being “uncomfortable” around those who live a different lifestyle also complain that our society is too eager to accommodate those unique lifestyles. From my perspective, they are being immature, since they want society to kowtow to their personal preferences while, in the same breadth, decrying a society that kowtows to personal preferences. As I originally said, if one (generic person) is going to decry “safe zones” as nonsense, then it remains nonsense for that (generic) person to demand that the bathroom be a “safe zone”.
So when you said “Grow the fuck up” you were not addressing that at me, you were addressing that at right wingers who are not present? :dubious:
I’m sure your feelings on this are unchangeable, they are set in stone.
I don’t really know what the deal is with safe zones but they are not like bathrooms. Liberals are the ones proposing a change to the status quo and their rationale seems to be that permissive bathroom rules will make transgendered people more comfortable and dismisses the fact that it makes a large minority of people (left and right) less comfortable.
In my opinion, this can be analyzed through the same anti-discrimination perspective as the Americans with Disabilities Act. When we balance the comfort of people whose suicide rates are off the charts because of how intolerable society makes life for them, I think we can all deal with the theoretical knowledge that 0.3% of the time, the chick in the stall next to you might in fact have been born a man.
With all this said, I am a bit concerned about a small but growing trend towards recognizing transgender pre-pubescent children in kindergarten and elementary school. IANA child psychologist but this seems like an awfully tender age to have particularly strong gender identities. At that age, ISTM that you just let them be kids and leave all the gender determination until after puberty.
Not for nothing but my daughter has had an incredibly strong sense of her gender identity since she was about 4 (she is 10 now). She completely rejected any suggestion that she partake in any activity that she had tagged as masculine in her mind. I thought it quite odd at the time as we had never been the kind of parents who made a big deal of gender related activities.
She watched Dora the Explorer, played house and restaurant, and loved her stuffed animals. She also watched Diego, played with frogs and bugs, went hiking and kayaking, and never really got into dolls.
When it came to things she had tagged as gender separated in her mind she absolutely refused to have anything to do with something that was “for boys”. Lego had to be Friends lego as that was for girls and anything else was for boys. She refused to even think about Nerf guns until they came out with the Rebelle Nerf line. Once she saw that she was all about the Nerf, but only the Rebelle stuff.
I know that anecdote doesn’t equal data but I truly believe that she would have been quite upset to have people insist that she act as if she was the opposite gender. Based on my experience with this little girl I have to laugh at the suggestion that young children don’t have a sense of their gender identity.
Maybe you should re-read the part I emphasized, and let people who actually are child psychologists and have studied the topic make those decisions. Your feelings about the best way to treat kids don’t carry much weight.
Once more, with emphasis: I was addressing the sentiment, not you the poster. Maybe if I had written, “people who think like that need to grow the fuck up”, it would have been more palatable to you. You claim that it was sarcasm; I claim I recognized that you were engaging in hyperbole, and are largely adopting a devil’s advocate…
You know what? Screw it. If it helps you move on with your life, I am sorry that you believed I was personally attacking you.
This I disagree with. Liberals are not proposing a change to the status quo. The status quo has been that people are entitled to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender. It’s only when some ignorant hatemongers realized that gender does not always neatly correspond to sex that the status quo became a problem, and we needed laws to ensure that people went into the bathroom that matches their apparent genitalia when they were born. The issue is not permissive bathroom use. The issue is people who don’t understand that whether someone is a boy or girl is not necessarily dictated by their anatomy.
Are you suggesting that pre-pubescent kids should not be assigned a gender at all? Before puberty, you are neither a boy or girl (Schrodinger’s kid)? Because the current situation is that people guess at the gender of a child, and just assume that their guess is correct, unless and until that child rebels from that label. Nobody I know leaves gender determination until after puberty.
Having read the articles linked above about the two differing psychological approaches, I have to ask what you mean by “just let them be kids”? If you have a child identified at birth as male who only wants to play with girls, wear dresses, and have pink ponies and princess dolls, is it “just letting them be a kid” to just let them engage in those behaviors? Or is it “just letting them be a kid” to require them to play with boys, wear pants and have trucks, even when you have to coerce them to do it, or forbid them to do the things they really want to do? I’m not saying that one approach or the other is the correct one, but it’s not as simple as “just let them be kids.”
More like the status quo was that nobody cared, or needed to care, that gender and sex could be different (except for transgender people, of course) so the status quo was that people were entitled to use the bathroom of their sex AND gender and the idea that we had to pick between the two didn’t come up.
Most of our dorms were sex segregated by floor (although with all the boyfriend/girlfriend sleepovers it didn’t matter all that much ), but some were more like coed suites with shared bathrooms. I lived in one Jr Year. No big deal. Of course, we’re talking about adults here, which can make a difference.
I realize it’s a non-stater, but I understand why it seems attractive to just dump the whole sex segregated bathrooms and make the problem go away.
I like it. You put a kid in a box and he/she has both genders at the same time until you force the issue by…taking him/her to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal and having to ask for either a “boy toy” or “girl toy.”
Gender is nothing but an appearance. If someone can say they are a woman but have a male body and we accept it, we certainly must accept it if someone says they are a woman but has a male appearance. We won’t know which sex OR gender they are in that case, so we can’t claim to care any more. The very idea of gender is already being challenged, and this will make it easier. I don’t think that’s a bad thing either, just observing.
Besides, gender segregation is “separate but equal” and we know that’s inherently unequal…
I need more context. What do you mean “what do I think?” I think quite a lot about transgender youth in counseling, mentoring, and helping their families.
I’ve posted in detail about this before but cannot find it. I’ll summarize - transgender children do not just come up one day to mom and dad and say “guess what, today I’m a boy/girl/neither/opossum.” We KNOW that young children can be confused about gender, or can be “trying a gender on for size” for a certain time. So the standard practice for pre-pubescent children is the following:
If the child continues to identify as a gender different than their birth sex consistently, persistently, and insistently (the three qualifiers), parents normally seek help from a psychologist or gender therapist.
The child will go through counseling over time where a determination is made as to how strong the gender identity is, if it’s influenced by external factors (parents, siblings, a desire to escape bullying, etc.), or if the child has a mental illness which is coincident with the gender dysphoria. This takes from 2-12 months, depending upon the situation and the history involved.
If the child continues with the three qualifiers, a decision is made to allow the child to live socially as their gender identity. Note that this does NOT mean hormones are given, nor is a legal name or gender change even discussed, nor is there any hint of surgery.
As years go by, if the child continues in their gender identity with the three qualifiers, when puberty approaches the decision MAY be made to put them on puberty blockers. This is done to prevent the body from proceeding down a path of femininzation or masculinization temporarily, in order to allow the child, parents, and counselors more time to decide what to do. In some cases, such as a child who has happily and consistently lived in their new gender role, a decision MAY be made to allow hormone therapy.
As time goes on the child on blockers is either taken off them and normal puberty allowed to proceed (happens a small fraction of the time), or they start hormone therapy.
At or after age 16, a legal name and gender change is recommended such that the child can enter college or the workforce under their new name and gender marker, and thus try to have a better chance at a normal life.
At or after age 18, THEN surgery can be considered. In the UK and some other countries, the age for this can be as low as 16.
There are outliers where parents were able to “doctor shop” and get surgery younger (just as you can read about 13-year-olds with breast augmentation or nose jobs). You can find just about anything if you Google. It’s not the practice of reputable doctors and psychologists, it’s not WPATH standards, it’s not AMA standards, etc.
This seems like a reasonable list for anyone, and it allows for the possibility that a child may be “mistaken” and not permanently transgender. Reading this list, I imagine that this protocol is often not followed, even in “enlightened” countries, either because doctors and parents aren’t aware of it or they reject transgenderism out of hand, and that’s unfortunate.
Una Persson, I am in awe of the way you respond to antagonistic questions on a personal topic with answers that are respectful, informative, and always aim to teach rather than berate. You inspire me to be a better person.
Una Persson’s post went into great detail about gender determination in the very young. Nobody rushes into anything.
If you really want to postpone gender determination, start a crusade against pink baby clothes for girls & blue for boys. Make all the clothing departments–even for the very young–offer only unisex outfits. Reorganize all the toy departments–why shouldn’t dolls & action figures be intermingled? Or should those toys even be allowed? Why not just sell abstract objects that teach hand-eye coordination instead of preparing kids for gender specific “roles?”
), but some were more like coed suites with shared bathrooms. I lived in one Jr Year. No big deal. Of course, we’re talking about adults here, which can make a difference.
