Shock Jocks advocate the abuse of transgendered children

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Is it possible to be transgendered, but gay?

Yeah. Hi. I'm Eugene.

Maximilia wrote:

Yes, actually. It's unnecessary because it's not required. I understand how it can help the process, and I would be supportive as much as I can, but it is an unnecessary treatment. It's not required for them to live or to maintain health.

The amount of authority you're presuming to have in these statements is staggering. How do you know what is required or not required? How do you know what any given transgendered individual needs to "live or maintain health"? I got through my adolescence without benefit of hormones. That doesn't mean another transgendered person will manifest their gender dysphoria in a way that enables them to do the same.

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An argument can be made on how it would help them mentally and
emotionally, but you can also get therapy. If they were seeing a
therapist and the therapist recommended it for their mental well-being,
then I would seriously consider allowing it.

You have never lived it. You will never live it. You have no experience in this regard. Therapy is not a panacea, especially not for an issue as painful and fraught as transgenderism. The way you seem to be positing it as some sort of "alternative" to hormones, except in special cases, is absurd.

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EDIT: Just saw Eugene's post. To respond, if my child wanted to live as the opposite gender, I'd let them. I'm all for them expressing themselves how they need to.

Oh, that's good.

Before addressing the rest of your remarks, I'd like to point out this one.

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(? which, if a child knows about that at a young age, "young" being
relative but I'm thinking below 11, that'd be kinda shocking to me
anyway)

Why is that shocking? My eight-year-old sister and her friends know all about transsexuality as a result of being around me, and they don't seem any worse off for it. Is there some reason children should be educated about some aspects of diversity but not others? Is it acceptable for children to know about homosexuality, bisexuality, and racial diversity, but somehow not that transgendered people get hormone treatments?

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If they insisted on the hormone therapy, especially at a young age (? which, if a child knows about that at a young age, "young" being relative but I'm thinking below 11, that'd be kinda shocking to me anyway), I would have them see a therapist.

Naturally. That would be the best thing for both you and your child.

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Why? Don't all transgendered people have to live for a year as the opposite sex before a clinic will do a sex change operation? I can't imagine how it'd be different for kids.

Of course we do.

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No, it's not necessary medication to me. Sorry.

Well, I must of course defer to your superior level of experience.

Seule wrote:

This is... only sort of related... but hey, there are people here who might know!

Is it possible to be transgendered, but gay? I mean, for example... a guy who knows that he is a girl on the inside... but who is still attracted to girls?

I was just wondering

Actually, gay to a transperson- at least from my experiences- is being attracted to the gender you present as. So a gay transman would be attracted to men, a gay transwoman would be attracted to women.

Honestly, though, sexual orientation and gender identity are totally different things that most of the time have no relation to one another.

SirDixonDongs wrote:

Seule wrote:

This is... only sort of related... but hey, there are people here who might know!

Is it possible to be transgendered, but gay? I mean, for example... a guy who knows that he is a girl on the inside... but who is still attracted to girls?

I was just wondering

Actually, gay to a transperson- at least from my experiences- is being attracted to the gender you present as. So a gay transman would be attracted to men, a gay transwoman would be attracted to women.

What Dixon said.

YAY I R SMRT LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

SirDixonDongs wrote:

Seule wrote:

This is... only sort of related... but hey, there are people here who might know!

Is it possible to be transgendered, but gay? I mean, for example... a guy who knows that he is a girl on the inside... but who is still attracted to girls?

I was just wondering

Actually, gay to a transperson- at least from my experiences- is being attracted to the gender you present as. So a gay transman would be attracted to men, a gay transwoman would be attracted to women.

Honestly, though, sexual orientation and gender identity are totally different things that most of the time have no relation to one another.

Holy shit Dixon, you're smarter than you let on sometimes.

*Jerks Dixon off moar*

More lip and tongue action, Darth, plz?

Maximilia wrote:

An argument can be made on how it would help them mentally and emotionally, but you can also get therapy. If they were seeing a therapist and the therapist recommended it for their mental well-being, then I would seriously consider allowing it.

This is 100% speculation, but I imagine you would have to have a therapist involved to get hormone treatment at all.

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I would just like to say this, in general, to everybody:

In this thread are mostly childless, cisgendered people speculating on a) how they would raise their children, b) what their children would be like, c) how they would react to something as fundamental as their son turning out to be a daughter. I think we should all keep that in mind in this discussion.

If and when we do have children we will find out that it won't be how we imagined it. And I hope that we will find we get to know this person, and we care about this person, and we will be able to tell whether our child has a fundamental problem or a flighty moment of wanting a tattoo.

I find it sad that people think children are these stupid brainless little things who don't know what's good for them and understand nothing. I would like to point out that:

Miss Prince wrote:

I had torture/humiliation fantasies starting when I was about six years old.

Trivia wrote:

I thought people's brains didn't work when they had sex and they were just like, mindless horny drones once they got turned on. I thought it was super sexy. That was in fourth grade.

Somehow I ended up with a bit of a mind control fetish. Wonder where that came from?

Miraba wrote:

Cross-species, abuse of power, bondage/other restriction of movement, protagonist-antagonist relationship... The details changed every so often, but those were the constants.

Delcat wrote:

The earliest active sexual fantasies I had were...creepy and bizarre. (...) I still have a preoccupation with technophilia

My point is, you go and read all these stories from people who basically discovered the direction of their sexuality in kindergarten, yet you can't imagine that a child can do that. WTH?

Hey, I never said that kids didn't know what they wanted. I did say that I wasn't sure how to know, as a parent, how serious they were.

I went and did a little reading on transgender children, and from the accounts it seems like it's a bit easier to tell than most people in this thread (myself included) were imagining: as stated before in this thread, wondering when their genitalia will change to that of their identified gender; constant persistence over a long period of time (like years) that they are not their birth gender; deep depression and antisocial behavior when forced to present as their birth gender...

Grumbles is right, though: most of us don't know what it's like to be transgender or even a parent, so our hypotheticals are pretty ridiculous and might even be insulting to someone who has been through these things. So we should probably listen to ARI and Eugene on this one.

...And should I be bothered that spellcheck doesn't recognize "transgender"? 'Cause that bothers me.

Just as a warning, I was replying to these as I was reading so apologies if some of the things contradict. As usual, feel free to point out and snarl regardless.

Melissa wrote:

It could be the child just finds they don't fit the narrow stereotypes of their gender. For instance, a little boy might be made fun of by other boys because he doesn't like sports and would rather paint. He might feel he'd be better off if he were a girl. If he was told it's OK not to like sports and lots of men are great artists, he might feel differently.

So are there 'true' and 'false' transgendered people then? As much as I'm always whining in my head about gender roles, I feel it's sort of connected. After all, if it's okay to act 'girly' while still being a boy, then what's the need to even identify as 'girl' and 'boy,' let alone feel far more comfortable identifying as and being in the body of the opposite? Are the only 'true' transgendered the type that are plainly only physically uncomfortable with the body they're in?

I get what you mean to say, that you have a worry that it may not be 'genuine' (and in light of reading Eugene's and Robots' post, I see it's definitely clearly experienced by the child), but even if it wasn't, why does it even matter? All children, and teenagers, and adults will go through stages of finding an identity. Like everything else, it's all a matter of trial and error more or less. What makes transgender more worrisome that you even need to bring up that a boy may go as far as thinking they would like to live life as a girl better? If a boy thinks that, and he decides he wants to try living as a girl, what's the problem? If it's really just an overstepped assessment of what is truly bothering him, then surely he'll figure it out after a while and work from there.

Sheba wrote:

How can they know what they want to be or are when they've had so little experience?

Aknowledging what out transgendered users have already said... What's wrong with letting a child explore and gain that experience even if they aren't absolutely convinced? Not saying that you let children to wander into the forest on their own, but there's no harm in taking one off the lead and letting them be who they are and do what they do.

AngryRobotsInc wrote:

How did you know at age 7 that you were the sex you are? I knew full well, in my earliest memories, that I WAS NOT a girl. I have always felt like a boy, and knew as far back as I can remember.

I have never felt like anything, I've merely felt like myself- I only knew how I was expected to act, and how much I could get away with doing what I felt most comfortable doing. In such a case, there needs to be exploring, so even if a child doesn't ultimately know deep inside at a young age, there still shouldn't be a problem with it, in my very liberal opinion.

DeeDee wrote:

It's not something a kid can choose.

Not quite fully on the subject at hand but still something I want to ask: Does that mean gender roles are not something we have choice in either?

Sheba wrote:

I dunno, it just seems weird to me to think that a little kid, that little, would know definitively that they don't want to be what they were born as.

Contrarily, I've been getting startled recently to find out that that's how so many people feel. It's news to me that any kid, that little, would know anything about themselves definitively. Perspective is a strange thing.

Eugene in response to Sheba wrote:

Also, I'm not sure if you realize how generally xenophobic and reductive the whole of your statement seemed.

Ah, that's definitely what was startling me slightly about the post, I think.

Miss Prince wrote:

Grumbles is right, though

Grumbles is always right. Always. And I always end up agreeing with her all the time.

FUCK ME that is so going in my sig.

Oh, too much to quote. ><

And also, I'm just repeating myself. I'm ignorant in these ways as I've never met or talked with a transgender person, and I'm doubly ignorant because I don't have children (nor ever will). All I can say is that as a parent, if I ever were one, I'd want to make sure my child was happy and healthy.

Side note: I've done some reading now online (hur hur, we all know how the intrawebs is also accurate and right, right?) but there's very little info on there about transgendered children. EDIT: Er, about what age children should undergo hormone therapy and so on, I mean.

I was under the impression that you'd start with the hormones when the body does, at the onset of puberty. I mean obviously a lot of people don't get hormones until much later, for various reasons, but I wouldn't introduce a hormone cocktail to a body that hasn't already started doing so.

Ya, grmblfjx. That makes sense to me, and I've just started delving, so I'm sure it's out there somewhere. Mostly, though, the articles talk about these kids harming themselves and attempting suicide when people don't understand and make fun of them. See, and that just pisses me off, especially reading about... lemme find it... Mormons claim transsexuals are sent by the devil and other such bullshit. Unless it breaks the law, NO ONE should be forced into acting or being a certain way.

I very much doubt that I was the only one here who resented the gender roles I was expected to assume. As a child I never wanted to play with dolls, fought like hell to avoid wearing a dress, and deeply resented any suggestion/order to behave like a "lady."

Never once, though, did I feel like I should have been a boy. I was female, I was het, and I didn't want to be treated like a delicate flower.

As it is now, I am a mother of a three year old, who seems pretty happy in boyhood, and who also enjoys plush toys and pastel colors, and the only reason I try to discourage him from picking pink things is my personal distaste for the color. If my little boy showed signs of preferring to be a she, however, I'd let him—and defend him from well-meaning grandparents who probably would not...as I've already done with my mother-in-law who has tried to keep him from using his left hand.

The only issue I would have with hormone therapy would be the cost. I haven't investigated it, but I'm almost positive my insurance wouldn't cover it.

myeerah wrote:

The only issue I would have with hormone therapy would be the cost. I haven't investigated it, but I'm almost positive my insurance wouldn't cover it.

That really depends on where you live. In the US, it generally isn't (along with a lot of other procedures), unless you have a doctor skilled at bending the truth (treating hormonal imbalance, risk of cancer-for hysterectomies, so on and so forth).

I've heard in places with socialized medicine, it's more common for at least hormonal treatments to be covered, but I don't know for certain.

myeerah wrote:

as I've already done with my mother-in-law who has tried to keep him from using his left hand.

What? Why?

VB wrote:

myeerah wrote:

as I've already done with my mother-in-law who has tried to keep him from using his left hand.

What? Why?

Pretty common in the older generation. The left side was often seen as bad in some way, for various reasons, and thus left handedness was seen as bad as well. My SO's dad was ambidextrous in a sense due to such things, as he used to get his hand smacked with a ruler in class, if he used his left hand. He could write and draw with his right hand, but he typically used his left for most other things.

There was a teacher in my school who insisted on giving children a pebble to hold in their left hand. :/:

IIRC, lefties are somewhat reversed in their brains as well, and forcing right-handedness on them screws with them.

AngryRobotsInc wrote:

VB wrote:

myeerah wrote:

as I've already done with my mother-in-law who has tried to keep him from using his left hand.

What? Why?

Pretty common in the older generation. The left side was often seen as bad in some way, for various reasons, and thus left handedness was seen as bad as well. My SO's dad was ambidextrous in a sense due to such things, as he used to get his hand smacked with a ruler in class, if he used his left hand. He could write and draw with his right hand, but he typically used his left for most other things.

"Dexter" is an old term for right and is also called the "masculine" side. Left is feminine and was called "sinister." I do not go off about "the patriarchy" very much, but the way that sinister as a feminine-left thing got changed into a sneaky-underhanded-bad thing is one of the more disturbing aspects of Western culture, I feel.

AngryRobotsInc wrote:

My SO's dad was ambidextrous in a sense due to such things, as he used to get his hand smacked with a ruler in class, if he used his left hand. He could write and draw with his right hand, but he typically used his left for most other things.

My father's the same. We've never asked him, but we strongly suspect that writing with his left hand was beaten out of him at school.

KelinciHutan wrote:

I do not go off about "the patriarchy" very much, but the way that sinister as a feminine-left thing got changed into a sneaky-underhanded-bad thing is one of the more disturbing aspects of Western culture, I feel.

Yes. Certainly no-one equated "feminine" with "sneaky/bad" until then.

Maximilia wrote:

Side note: I've done some reading now online (hur hur, we all know how the intrawebs is also accurate and right, right?) but there's very little info on there about transgendered children. EDIT: Er, about what age children should undergo hormone therapy and so on, I mean.

Well, they generally put the child on hormone blockers to prevent some really horrifying things from happening (puberty... aaaaagh!) , then once the child is old enough (which usually is 15 or so), the child decides whether to start hormone replacement therapy, or get off the hormone blockers and live as their birth gender. But I don't think it's very common, considering it's expensive, a lot of people have preconcieved notions about transsexual people, and it's also an alteration of the body's biological state. So naturally there'd be concern- not including the many social and cultural issues one has to deal with. It depends on the person.

Oh, and one only really needs a therapist in order to get a recommendation for hormone therapy. The rest just amounts to what a person is willing to do in order to wake up one day and have their mind matching their body. Just depends on the person and their priorities.

The thing about getting surgery/hormone treatment is the fact that it's permanent. You have to be absolutely, positively, 110% sure that this is what you want for yourself. There's a reason we don't let minors get tattoos or get married, and those aren't as permanent as gender reassignment.
I would suggest therapy for an adult considering this. Not to be talked out of it, just to make sure this is really the path they want to take.

Cyberwulf wrote:

KelinciHutan wrote:

I do not go off about "the patriarchy" very much, but the way that sinister as a feminine-left thing got changed into a sneaky-underhanded-bad thing is one of the more disturbing aspects of Western culture, I feel.

Yes. Certainly no-one equated "feminine" with "sneaky/bad" until then.

I really don't think that's what she meant.

Lefties represent! I surely can't be the only one here...?

Edit: And the thing about "hormone treatment is permanent" -- puberty is also permanent (as permanent as hormone therapy, anyway). Doing nothing has as many potential consequences as starting hormone therapy.

Maximilia wrote:

Yes, actually. It's unnecessary because it's not required. I understand how it can help the process, and I would be supportive as much as I can, but it is an unnecessary treatment. It's not required for them to live or to maintain health.

As has already been mentioned, it's not uncommon for transgendered children to be miserable, sometimes to the point of depression and suicidal thoughts. If hormones are what it would take for some of these kids to not be at risk of ending their own lives, then yes, I do see that as necessary. Therapy, in a best case scenario, might help kids understand what's going on and that there's nothing wrong with them, but it's not going to take care of the main issue.

Seule wrote:

Is it possible to be transgendered, but gay? I mean, for example... a guy who knows that he is a girl on the inside... but who is still attracted to girls?

Think of it this way: if sexuality and gender went totally hand-in-hand, there probably wouldn't be any gay people, period.

Verandering wrote:

DeeDee wrote:

It's not something a kid can choose.

Not quite fully on the subject at hand but still something I want to ask: Does that mean gender roles are not something we have choice in either?

Well, I see gender roles as being something that's entirely societal. Actual gender, I think, is something more inborn. Gender roles tend to change. For instance, it used to be that women were expected to wear skirts and dresses, and women who didn't might be considered masculine. Today, in a lot of cultures, a woman isn't necessarily viewed as any less feminine if she wears pants. A woman who wears jeans is just as much a woman as a woman who wears dresses. And depending on the culture, she might be seen as just as feminine.

So, yeah, you can choose how much you adhere to gender roles.

I see actual gender as being part of your identity, and no, I don't think you can really choose that too much, any more than you can choose your sexuality. I think it's easy to take for granted when you're cisgendered, because things match up okay and you're not even aware of it, necessarily.

For as long as I can remember, I've liked being androgynous to varying extents. When I was six, I liked to pretend I was a boy, and thought it was great that I could go shirtless since I hadn't grown breasts yet. I like to wear men's clothes. I hate the thought of having feminine hair. I'm unhappy with the size of my breasts, and if I could have any power in the world, I would probably choose to be able to switch my sex at will.

But I have always felt pretty much okay in my femininity. I wouldn't be too sad to see my breasts go, I don't think, but I don't really mind their presence. I'm not that upset when people call my ma'am. Sometimes, I like being a woman.

So, yes, I am very aware of my gender identity.

Nihilist wrote:

Well, they generally put the child on hormone blockers to prevent some really horrifying things from happening (puberty... aaaaagh!) , then once the child is old enough (which usually is 15 or so), the child decides whether to start hormone replacement therapy, or get off the hormone blockers and live as their birth gender.

So, hormone blocking can be reversed if, for some reason, a child decides to go ahead with puberty? I've not something I really have a good understanding of.

I don't have any trouble believing that people are capable of being aware of their gender and sexuality at young ages. I was aware of my sexual interests at a fairly young age, perhaps to the point of being a little precocious, so not much shocks me. And gender is such an innate thing that affects people longer and earlier than sex does, that it seems natural to me that it's come into play very early. Not to mention, everything I've studied when it comes to psychology verifies that.

But the scariest thing about being a parent, I think, would be being in a position to make decisions like that on behalf of the child. As a parent, there are so many things that you have to do or decide that can completely affect your child's life, and that's scary.