Vorpal wrote:thelawnet wrote:Hmm, well I think that the figure is estimated around 0.5%? So not that rare, that would be several hundred thousand people. And there is a big move to encourage children to identify as transgender, so the figures may grow in future.
Do you have some evidence for this? The other place I've encountered someone saying this (on mumsnet) had no evidence, and when I questioned her, she offered some wacky conspiracy theory about the Trans 'agenda'.
This is simply a recognition that not everyone fits the male/female binary. I think it's good that children are being taught this. If it results in more identifying as Trans, well, I hope that also means that fewer struggle through life feeling that something is wrong, and not ever knowing what it is, or worse, end up with mental and behvioural disorders, or commit suicide. Because that is what has happened to a disproportionate number of Trans people in the past.
It's still binary, it's just that people are being told that if they don't 'feel like a girl', then they 'might be a boy'. Not fitting a female or male gender stereotype is not a bad thing, but this is more about enforcing rigid stereotypes than it is dispelling them..
It's clearly something that's being heavily promoted, as there is masses of stuff on social media, Youtube, etc., and where 'transgender children' were unheard of a decade or so ago, it's now quite common, and the numbers of children being treated by transgender clinics has increased exponentially. https://www.theage.com.au/national/vict ... zwahn.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/0 ... uadrupled/
Clearly when you have for example Youtube channels with large numbers of subscribers
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXX0iC ... GW4gKEhHdA
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHSIA2 ... UX4Sl8OrcA
by young people, for young people, then that content is going to influence young people. Simply put 10 years ago there were zero children getting double mastectomies for gender identity, zero teenagers on puberty blocking hormones, zero teenagers taking cross-sex steroids, and so on, whereas now it's visible, and it has emerged from zero. The first case in the UK was not done by the NHS, but overseas in Boston & Thailand, https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/ ... -birthday/ and the parent of the child in question now runs a lobby group promoting the same course of action under the NHS.
My opinion is that transgender identity is comorbid with conditions such as depression and other things which may lead to suicide, and we certainly can't conclude that changing gender will solve these people's issues. I believe that there are those who have changed gender perhaps later in life, particularly on the male-to-female side, who regret that their appearance is obviously and irreversibly male, and there is some projection in this regard that 'I wish I had transitioned as a child' into encouraging the medicalisation of children, and also moreover promoting/normalising plastic surgery etc. as a medical solution to an issue of gender identity.
There are quite a few men who have changed gender after having children, in some cases almost immediately afterwards, so gender identity issues are in their cases delayed to fulfil a biological desire to reproduce. In the case of children subject to treatments that will render them infertile it's difficult to see how there can be consent for that, as I suspect that there are certain evolutionary factors in that our desire to produce children is something that manifests itself as an adult, and not when we are ourselves children and have no interest in our future fertility but are instead dealing with teenage angst, etc.