How young is too young...Follow

That'll go nice with AshOnMyTomato's bloodle oodle oodle.

I said that a transgender identity *can* be forced upon someone. Just as any other gender identity can.

You use an interestingly vague turn of phrase though. It's like you know that I'm not saying that "all" transgenders have their identity forced upon them, but you want to suggest it anyway. Funny.



Why do some people assume that when someone makes an argument like the one I'm making that it's motivated by some kind of fear? And how many times do I have to mention societal norms before you'll realize that we're not talking about roles *I* have chosen (arbitrarily or otherwise).




Sure. My point, which seems to have sailed over some people's head is that we need to be incredibly careful when making decisions about gender identity at a young age and doubly so if we're encouraging (intentionally or not) gender identity which is outside the societal norms. As I stated earlier, I don't make those norms, but they exist. Anyone who acts outside those norms *will* suffer negative consequences. Not because I'm a meanie, or I hate them or anything. Don't shoot the damn messenger. I'm simply pointing out that those norms exist for a reason, and that those outside them will find their lives more difficult purely as a result.


Given that default negative involved with any form of transgender alignment, if our objective is to ensure our children suffer the least harm, it makes sense to encourage them to conform with those societal norms as much as possible. The harm done to a transgender from that is minimal next to the harm they'll suffer just from being transgender anyway (no matter what their parents encourage or discourage). But the harm from a kid who might have passed through the whole thing as a phase and moved on if he'd been encouraged to but wasn't is vastly greater.


Those aren't my rules. I didn't make them up. But they are the reality of the society we live in. We can sit here and dream about a perfect world in which to live, but someone has to be the realist to point out that it's probably a good idea to do everything you can to discourage your male children from wearing dresses. Not because in a perfect world there's anything wrong with that, but because in the very real and imperfect world we actually live in, he'll likely be much better off as a result. Again, I don't make the damn rules.

You were just born that way.

Since there seems to be a lot of confusion about when gender identity is formed, I thought I'd share that the medical community considers core identity to be formed at around 2-3 years of age, and it is usually fully established by age 5. That's not to say that children know exactly who and what they are at that age, but I think they have a lot better idea of what they want for their bodies than some people are giving them credit for. It's by no means a simple problem, but I think it's reasonable for a child to be able to make a decision like that at the age of 10, and I give credit to any parent who would support them.

gbaji? Your completely clueless. Read better and if you need to actually research it! Better yet listen to the
TG that posts here! I'm telling you again for the last time. I always knew something was wrong. I was trapped in the wrong body. It was there as far back as I can remember. TG's are wired wrong for their gender. Female brain in a male body. Its a proven fact. No matter how much one visits a psychiatrist or therapist to deal with it and be a man it never ever goes away. I can surely say that at age 3 I was a girl and knew it. I really wish that my parents had stopped trying to make me a boy and then a man and had let me change into what I needed to be when I was a young child.

ITT: A lot of people who don't understand anything about sex (the physical trait, not the fun passtime/baby making process) and gender talking about it and confusing themselves into a state where they understand even less.

Sup OoT, another TG poster bargin' up in your thread here to lay down some explanifying. I've still got a very clear memory of my childhood, since I'm only 20, so I think I may be able to clear some stuff up for you guys.

Gender Identity is easiest to explain by describing it as the brain's version of a *****/******. It's something hardwired into your physical make up from before you're even born, and is a static, unchanging variable in a person's core self. Basically, the most accurate way for someone not in the field of sex/gender studies, and/or someone who is not trans, to think of how being trans works, is like a form of intersex (hermaphroditic) birth defect, but rather than developing intersex characteristics in the genitalia, as one would typically assume, they are split between the external sexual characteristics, and the internal ones.

to be more blunt; rather than developing some degree of both a ***** and a ******, a trans individual develops externally "normal" genitalia of one sex, but at the same time develops internally as the other sex.

To everyone questioning the validity of knowing your gender at a young age, I'll posit that like tailmon and myself, there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of trans people who can and do regularly attest to the fact that, yes, they have felt this way since they were only 3-4 years old. In fact, I used to have some quick links to studies done that supported this, but I can't find them atm. In fact, even among the transpeople who don't expressly state that they knew for certain when they were young, there are many who can clearly remember a distinct feeling of something being very wrong with their body. This perfectly describes the feeling of those who do say they knew, it's just that in the case of those who don't, they simply lacked a proper way of identifying what they felt. To explain more in depth and in a less convoluted, vague manner, I'll just give my own personal version

My earliest memories are of me when I was three. I can go back through every childhood memory, all the way back, and I'll find the same, powerful feeling of something being "different" or "wrong". It's hard to describe this feeling in a way that allows people who aren't trans to understand it, though, which is what causes a lot of the confusion and doubt. For myself, I never had a name for what I felt. I knew I liked doing girl things, playing in a way girls played, watching "girl" shows on tv, etc. It's not just as simple as playing with dolls over trucks, because there are plenty of transgirls who identify as tomboys. I was raised catholic, though, and in the midwest. The idea of "maybe I'm supposed to be a girl" itself didn't cross my mind until I was 12, at which point I had my retroactive ************ epiphany and realized I was trans, though I still didn't find the name for what I was until several months later. As I matured and went through gradeschool, middle school, and high school, the feeling of what I was interested in matured with me, but never strayed from the "female" line of thought. Not just "feminine", or "girly", but straight up female. The core of the feeling of "wrongness" that I, and basically every other transperson, feel, never changed, and feels the same now, at 20, as it did when I was 3.

To try and explain how it feels, the only real example I can give that even comes close would be this; Have you ever had a significant amount of hair cut off? For ladies (and some guys), going from long, long hair, like, down past your shoulderblades, to having hair up near your ears. For guys, something like going from shaggy hair to a 1/8 buzz cut, or even a completely shaven head. When you suddenly had that much hair missing, it felt... weird, right? You were consciously aware of your head more than normal because your hair felt completely different, especially right after you got it cut. If you can picture what I'm getting at, that's about 1% of the intensity. For me, it wasn't as bad as a young kid. I would say that hair feeling was about 10% of how strongly the "wrongness" felt up until around when I hit puberty. Once you hit puberty, when you're trans, it's kind of like someone set forcefed you downers, because you know your body is already wrong, but it's only going to get worse.

To the people posting here about how there is no way a kid can know that young (I love you gaxey, but you're so wrong on this it's painful), I'll simply give you three things;

First: the number of people who transition, but stop halfway through because they changed their minds and decided they aren't trans is about 1%. 99% of the people who stop halfway through transition do so because of financial issues, or because of significant family or peer pressure to stop.

Second: Prior to puberty, there is absolutely no need for chemical treatments of a child who identifies as trans. Little boys and girls develop fairly androgynously most of the way, and typically, the first step for hormonal treatment is near, or at, the onset of puberty, where the child is given hormone-blockers to prevent puberty from causing irreversible changes. It's not typically until 11 or 12 that the "do we just delay puberty, or do we give our child the full hormone treatment" debate actually takes place. If a child has openly and continuously expressed cross-gender identification for several years prior to that point, there is very, very, very, very, very little chance they'll suddenly change their mind now (as in: I've never heard of a single case that was handled properly where the child identified as trans and then regretted their choice later on)

Third: Would you ever be willing to gamble with your child's life through the rule of four? Explanation: The rule of four is something pointed out by a trans-crisis hotline and that has since been backed up by a rather shocking study; it states that 3 in 4 transpeople will seriously consider commiting suicide, 2 in 4 will attempt suicide, and 1 in 4 will succeed in ending their own life. I've been researching gender and sexuality since I was 15, and I've spoken with hundreds of trans individuals, and my experiences, while obviously not empirical, also gives the rule of four serious credence in my mind. In the hundreds of trans people I've spoken with in the last 5 years, 12 said they never once considered suicide. Twelve. out of Hundreds. Interestingly, all twelve were people who had started transitioning (not chemically) before puberty, and started hormones at some point between 12 and 18.

as a final comment, for people who think that the gender identity of a young child can be influenced by how the child is raised, I'll ask that you look for and read As Nature Made Him: The Boy who was Raised as a Girl, by John Colapinto. It tells the story of David Reimer, who was, as an infant, the victim of a botched circumcision, which lead to his parents being coached into raising him as a girl. A Naturally born XY male child, raised as a girl.

if you want the tl;dr: it didn't work. It failed. Badly.

For transkids, NOT allowing them to be themselves is effectively the same as what David Reimer was forced to endure.

I intentionally didn't do more than skim your posts before I replied initially, gbaji, because I knew how I would want to react, and didn't want to do that.

So instead, I'll tell you how you sound right now.

You know those people who talk about being able to "Pray the gay away"? I don't know, or care, if you are one, but that is exactly what you sound like.

Gbaji, If I could magically make myself male again. I'd pass with no regrets. Now If I could magically make the Female wiring problems go away? Hum.....No. I would rather have magically made me a female. I'd have been much happier as one and things that I've been through would have never happened. If I went back to being Male and wired as I am? I'd have either killed myself or maybe one of my former bosses. You have this inner problem with depression and even rage because your not right.

I'd rather have people ask even if its non politically correct rather than endure Ignorant hateful people that have no idea what I've had to go through.

I haven't read all of this because quite frankly, I don't give a ****. That being said though, from what I've read of gbaji's posts and the replies he's received (and yes, I realize by not reading everything he's said, I may have missed the whopper in it), it seems to me that you guys are doing your typical damn the majority, cater to the minority crap.

I won't be reading your replies in depth enough to be corrected if I'm wrong, because you guys(Tailmon and Iddigory-I can't take Jinte seriously in the first place) are as equally biased when you discuss something as gbaji is, which makes reading your dribble pointless, hence why I haven't read the thread in depth.

Could you repeat that? I couldn't read it through your bias.

You get me, Ugly. <3

Gbaji is arguing that the therapy is dangerous, because non-trans children might end up undergoing it and be subsequently damaged. But we have no good reason to assume either of these case will be true in any significant way.

Yet he's comfortable using those baseless assumptions to completely reject the entire therapy, which consists of meetings with a psychologist and optional hormone treatments, and incriminate the parents for attempting to help their child.

It's nothing but his own bigotry. He paints the parents as being idiots who pressured their son into become a daughter because he went through a dress-wearing phase. It's fundamentally unfair, ignorant, and completely unsupported by the information we have access to.