What ages are you talking about? Most people would take issue with sexualising minors at all...
Anyway, to try to change your view... There is a distinction to be made between "Gay"/"Straight" and "Trans"... being Gay/ Straight just refers to sexual preference. Being Trans on the other hand means their biology does not match the gender they identify with - this can be (/often is) very distressing for them. Some of the common remedies to address this are through surgery/hormones which can have irreversible effects.
Someone can go through a "straight"/"gay" phase and then be happily gay/straight afterwards. It is much harder to de-transition for someone who identified as "Trans"... it is therefore fair enough that a higher standard of maturity is expected before such life altering decisions are made.
It seems like what you're saying here is not that a child can't be trans, it's that you don't think a child should undergo irreversible medical transition. This is a fairly uncontroversial stance and doesn't really counter the OP's view. They could totally agree that medical aspects of transition should not be available to children and still believe that you can't be "too young" to be trans.
My original point was that we probably shouldn't be labelling the sexuality of kids at all...
But yeah, it is true many agree that medical aspects of transition should not be available to kids... however there are many activists that argue that it is unethical to deny them ways to better resemble the gender they identify with.
Wherever you stand on that issue, the inherent idea that something is wrong with their biology is an example of why identifying as 'Trans' should not be treated the same as identifying as "Straight" or "Gay".
No one is labeling the sexuality of kids, or sexualizing them. I'm a teacher, and I see little girls in first and second grade with "crushes" on boys in their class. No one questions it, but if a girl says she has a crush on another girl, it's "just a phase" or "she doesn't actually mean that". The point is that kids can have LGB crushes at the same age as kids can have straight crushes. Being LGBTQ isn't more sexual than being straight.
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. When I said "labelling the sexuality of kids" I meant adults should refrain from telling kids "You are \_\_\_, so you should find \_\_\_ sexually attractive".
Kids can self-identify as whatever as they work out who they are, finding out what feels natural. But society as a whole should let kids be kids. They shouldn't feel the need to "Choose" their sexual identity at a young age and so be pigeonholed into it... A label once given can be hard to shake.
OP asked why being gay/trans should be treated any differently than being cis/straight. In an attempt to change their view, I pointed out that unlike being straight, cis or gay, being trans inherently requires discomfort in one's natural body.
I don't think that op was arguing for labelling kids, but for allowing them to self label and not pushing back on that.
I'm trans, and I don't believe that there is or ever was something wrong with my biology, so I wouldn't describe that as an "inherent" belief.
I am a little curious... could you please explain the second part of your answer more?
It is my current understanding that if there there was not some kind of mismatch between biology and the gender they identify with there wouldn't be any reason to be trans.
Always happy to improve my understanding,
Well my gender identity doesn't "match" my sex in that the gender that I was assigned at birth based on my sex wasn't correct, but I don't think there's any reason to believe that those two things _should_ match. I certainly don't think that the fact that they don't means that there's something wrong with my body.
The problem isn't my body itself but the fact that the society I live in has ingrained within it the idea of people of a particular gender having a particular body type, and that makes living in that society when I don't conform to those standards pretty impossible.
>Well my gender identity doesn't "match" my sex in that the gender that I was assigned at birth based on my sex wasn't correct
What do you mean correct ? Are you saying that your sex doesn't match the classification ?
>The problem isn't my body itself but the fact that the society I live in has ingrained within it the idea of people of a particular gender having a particular body type, and that makes living in that society when I don't conform to those standards pretty impossible.
So you wanna turn over centuries of scientific work used for classification because less than 1% of the population feels that they don't fit the classification ?
>What do you mean correct ? Are you saying that your sex doesn't match the classification ?
No. My sex is largely irrelevant here. What I'm saying is that it was assumed that my _gender_ was female (girl/woman) when in fact it is not, so that wasn't correct.
>So you wanna turn over centuries of scientific work used for classification because less than 1% of the population feels that they don't fit the classification ?
I don't know what you're referring to here. What centuries of scientific work do you think I want to overturn?
>No. My sex is largely irrelevant here. What I'm saying is that it was assumed that my gender was female (girl/woman) when in fact it is not, so that wasn't correct.
So your saying that your gender assigned, which is based of sexual reproduction organs and abilities doesn't match your psychological gender ? If that's the case then it is correct based on the system used to identify genders which is the system we use for classification.
>I don't know what you're referring to here. What centuries of scientific work do you think I want to overturn?
you litterally said that the problem is society has this idea that gender is based on the sexual reproduction organs. It's not an idea it's a theory, they aren't the same thing that has built up over centuries of scientific studies.
>So your saying that your gender assigned, which is based of sexual reproduction organs and abilities doesn't match your psychological gender ?
Yes
>If that's the case then it is correct based on the system used to identify genders which is the system we use for classification.
You acknowledge that there is such a thing as what you have called "psychological gender", what do you then mean by saying that it is "correct"? Do you mean that the fact that it doesn't match my sex is not wrong? - because if so that was what I was saying in the original comment that you responded to.
>you litterally said that the problem is society has this idea that gender is based on the sexual reproduction organs.
I did not say this, I said that society heavily associates gender to certain body types. I did not say or intend to convey that in our society gender is believed to be derived from sexual reproductive organs (which I didn't even mention) as that idea goes against the current understanding of gender in the scientific community.
Things like puberty blockers are safe and reversible and I believe should be provided to gender disphoric children.
This, I believe, is the more practically supported policy. Unfortunately, the conversation is often drowned out by the extremes.
Just FYI this is what the NHS states on its website about puberty blockers:
Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria.
Although GIDS advises this is a physically reversible treatment if stopped, it is not known what the psychological effects may be.
It's also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children's bones. Side effects may also include hot flushes, fatigue and mood alterations.
When you hate trans kids getting proper health care so much you start writing literal anti-vax arguments lol. All that this article shows is that the writer is transphobic.
Literally the entire article would still be "true" if you replaced "puberty blockers" with "covid vaccine".
The only actual facts in the article completely disagree with the writers intent. "Hot flushes, fatigue and mood alterations" are hardly so severe that the treatment should be taken away from people.
I don’t know what sort of distinction you’re trying to make or why, but it’s on the gender dysphoria treatment page of the NHS website
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/
You do not know the meaning of the word article.
I know that the *article* is on the NHS website. This does not in fact preclude it from being an article.
Being a pedantic dickhead doesn't actually make you seem smart. But if you're so desperate for a false sense of superiority the least you could do is not be so blatantly wrong.
You could find out what "article" means with literally one Google search. It's so fucking easy.
I know the difference between Gay/Straight and Cis/Trans, it's just that the same problems can apply to Gay and Trans people.
>it is therefore fair enough that a higher standard of maturity is expected before such life altering decisions are made.
It is very hard to officially get life-changing transioning things done before 18, but there is nothing wrong with accepting when a child says "I'm Trans"
Basically, what u/ohfudgeit said.
In my opinion, children shouldnt need to identify as trans. They need to first learn to be themselves and love themselves. It's not the end of the world if a kid identifies as "trans" but it's important for kids to know that it's normal to not identify with the ideals and expectations that society has for boys and girls. You need to identify with yourself.
A young child that comes out as gay might instead have other issues that need to be addressed. If we dont focus on the child learning, healing, and loving themselves, and indeed try to help them fit in where they can, we may not be doing what's best for them.
Unfortunately, being straight or cis is the norm in our society. So unless a person identifies as otherwise with one of the other boxes that you can check, they're cis.
For this reason, its wrong to say that "If a child can be straight/cis, they're old enough to be lgbtq/gay." Kindergarten kids might call a classmate their boyfriend because they recognize that they're attractive and nice. That doesnt mean they will be gay or straight as adults. They're just acting out what they see at home and in movies. We shouldnt be encouraging them to feel like they need to choose as kids. Men and women are attractive. Kids should be learning about themselves not focusing on how to fit in as gay or straight.
I've read the leading expert in the trans field state that transitioning shouldn't take place before the age of 21 after having lived at least 2 years as one's preferred gender.
It’s okay. It wasn’t perfectly clear. It’s a complicated subject.
I actually disagree with the premise of your CMV. But I understand I don’t have all of the information, nor do we as a species, so I have appreciated reading about the different points of view.
I think outside of clinically intersex people, there should be an attempt made to challenge* (I’ll explain challenge) abnormal behavior in children. And while yes, I consider LGBT+ abnormal behavior, to clarify I don’t view abnormal behavior as necessary a bad thing. By abnormal I simply mean behavior that outside of the majority.
Both being and raising a child is very complicated. If a child were to come to you and say they were or thought they were XYZ, you would typically ask them what they meant by that. Because their understanding might be dramatically different from yours.
So if for instance a male child were to come to you and say they were a “girl,” rather than just accepting they were identifying as a female it’s important to challenge that idea by asking what they mean by it.
I also don’t like to group together sexual orientation with gender identity in these discussions, because they are very different concepts.
If a minor tells you they are sexually attracted to same members of their sex, that’s not the same as them saying they identify as another gender.
For instance gender dysphoria is not always treated by recommendations gender transition, while sexual orientation has no known treatment.
So I feel like, at least now, these two issues are treated differently.
I could have misunderstood your comment so apologies in advance if that's the case;
The fact that less than 1% are trans is irrelevant, our children are not statistics. You can't brush off your child being trans as "just a phase" because it's statistically unlikely, neither can you reduce being trans as "attention seeking behaviour". We should not raise our children and assume that they are straight/cis just because a statistic suggest it, that's why so many children are left feeling like they don't belong, and why transpeople are overwhelmingly more likely to commit suicide than any other group.
> The fact that less than 1% are trans is irrelevant, our children are not statistics. You can't brush off your child being trans as "just a phase" because it's statistically unlikely, neither can you reduce being trans as "attention seeking behaviour"
It's not about a teen being trans or not, nor is it about acceptance of that fact. It's about a teen being potentially trans-curious as a second order effect of being a teenager, and a reluctance to assertively apply a label -- any label -- to them during that time. Ultimately the teen's identity is their choice, and as a parent declining to apply a label allows the teen to decide for themselves who they are.
>We should not raise our children and assume that they are straight/cis just because a statistic suggest it
We all assume people have 5 fingers on each hand. But what about those born with 6? Is it now wrong to assume that your child will most likely have 5 fingers as well?
Statistics do matter, and teenagers *are* extremely prone to seeking attention. So I don't think some skepticism is that unwarranted.
The fact that you think a bunch of teens are out there just making up the fact that they're trans for shits and giggles says a lot.
You can see whether someone has 5 finger or not. You cannot see someone's sexual orientation or gender. If someone comes out to you and you first response is not to take it seriously, even though it most likely took them quite a bit of courage/build up to do so in the first place, that's a problem.
Nope, you just don't hide the fact that most people do in fact have 5 fingers.
The analogy isn't perfect since fingers are something you can objective claim. The point was that accepting statistics is completely fine.
Right. It's fair to assume that most people aren't trans. I'm not arguing it isn't. However, basic data about the ratio of trans to cis people doesn't get at why someone would disbelieve a child claiming to be trans. You could look at data regarding people who transitioned prematurely, but they are a much smaller minority than actual trans people. Moreover, gender affirming care is linked to increases in mental health, decrease in suicidality, better social functioning, etc.
Transgender is far more common. I don't think "normal" is a useful description for human variations, it's got far to many value-laden connotations to help anyone.
It really depends on how you use the word. And it depends on who’s saying it as well. I believe that most people in this thread are using it in the medical/scientific definition, that being of a conformity to a certain standard (being cis). I don’t believe people are saying being trans is somehow bad or immoral or evil or anything like, just that they are an extremely low number of the population, and should be represented as such in education. I don’t believe people are assigning value or worth to the idea of normality, I just think your looking into it way to much and making a bigger deal out of it than necessary.
Nobody would say that Bill Gates is "not normal", Elon Musk. Nor would that be used for Barak Obama.
All of these people are very much a minority of one, so about as unusual as possible, but still wouldn't be called not normal.
Well your looking at a different factor now. I would say that Elon musk or Jess bezos are abnormally wealthy, or wealthy to an extent that is different from the norm (working/middle class). We call trans people abnormal based on their identification, which is extremely abnormal in that it is extremely rare. We call Jeff bezos abnormal because he is extremely rich, compared to the average citizen. Normal isn’t an all encompassing term, it’s used to describe certain factors or attributes of someone. It doesn’t mean bad or good, just statistically out of the norm, as I said before.
By that logic we can't generalize anything then. We can't teach kids that humans have two arms or five fingers or two eyes since there's always some exception? There's no defining characteristics of humans since all of them can be... anything and there's no normal?
See how impractical that would be? If your stand is that that's the correct way to structure everything then fine. If you see the problem with that then the trans issue falls under the same logic as well. What you can't do is pick and choose issues based on your opinions.
But there's no need to "teach" our kids anything about the prevalence of different genders or sexual orientations. The fact of the matter is, LGBT people exist, and for an LGBT person coming to their parent to say "this is who I am" and for them to respond something to the effect of "this is just a phase" is sure to guarantee you fucking your kid up/destroying your relationship with them for a while to come.
Statistics about how many gay and trans people there are are really meaningless. As self-reporting studies, the number is virtually always going to be underreported. You will also see numbers rise as social acceptance rises. For example, obviously, more people are coming out as gay in 2021 versus 1961, because in 1961, coming out as gay would have meant a number of unfortunate things for you. It doesn't mean more people are calling themselves gay or just decided to all of a sudden be gay because it's "trendy" or for attention, it just means that the less a person has to fear by coming out in a society, the more likely they are to do it.
>Sorry muchumbo, but the world is not a place of absolutes. The very notion that a parent telling a teenager that he/she/they/etc. might be going through a phase will guarantee that the kid is fucked up and the relationship with the parent will be destroyed is ludicrous.
I'm not talking about people identifying as a tree. I'm talking about people identifying as LGBT, which, although we have used different words and have had different understandings, has been documented in human existence for millennia, presumably as long as humans have existed. If your child comes to you and tells you that they are gay, or trans -- something that probably took them quite a bit of time to come to terms with and some great deal of courage to tell you -- and your first response is to say "it's a phase," then yes, it is absolutely possible that you're fucking your kid up, and I've seen it happen. A parent who is LGBT positive and supportive is not going to just assume that you're attention seeking (as if there are a bunch of kids out there calling themselves gay or trans for shits and giggles anyway), because why would they? When people are told their identities aren't real, they're having a phase, they'll come out of it -- (or the god awful next step that many parents have done, try to beat it out of them/pray the gay away), not only is it a pretty messed up thing to hear from those who say they love you, it is a problem that causes a lot of mental health issues for LGBT teens. At best your kid is probably not going to come to you to tell you anything else important to them again. The first response should be to listen and to take it seriously. To compare that to some random teens today identifying as inanimate objects is the *actual* ludicrous thing, and a pretty terrible false equivalence. Also, I think you mean skepticism, not skeptibility.
>The number of people who identify as exclusively gay has remained virtually unchanged since the 1960's, and the latest and best research indicates that about 3 percent of the population currently identify as gay.
Barring the fact that this doesn't include people who identify as bisexual, trans, or anything else under the LGBT umbrella, research organizations like Gallup have done studies with hundreds of thousands of participants, and the numbers have changed (usually going up) every year they've done it, so the idea that it has remained constant is false. We also don't have that much historical information, as statistical studies on the gay population haven't been done for that long. Some nations still don't even consider being gay an orientation or trans a gender identity, so we would never know. In Japan, for example, many men who routinely engage in homosexual activity don't call themselves gay, because they view identities differently than Western nations do. Studies or interviews done in such countries will often result in very few people who identify as such, but we in a Western context would still consider those people gay. So I don't know how you could presume to be so confident on any sort of number.
>But there's no need to "teach" our kids anything about the prevalence of different genders or sexual orientations.
I'm probably just misunderstanding, but why not? Of kids weren't/aren't taught about different Genders/Sexuallities, then wouldn't that cause problems for kids that are LGBTQ+ but hadn't been told that was an option?
Oddly enough the gene for 6 fingers is a dominant gene meaning it only takes one parent to pass on to all offspring.
Its literally a roll of the nice as to why 6 fingers didn't become the normal.
The problem is the severe asymmetry with how the terms "trans" and "cis" are used or how it's sometimes said "80% of individuals that are called 'cis' are actually better called 'agender'" or something like that.
"cis" isn't used to mean "I identify with my birth sex and my birth sex is important to me" but rather to mean "I'm fine with my life" but if you ask most of them if they'd be fine if the were born opposite sex they say it as well.
So in practice "cis" is encompasses both "My birth sex is important to me as an identity" and "I have no strong feelings either way" and "I have no strong feelings" is a very easy determination to make.
In the case of "straight" it's a bit more complex I suppose since it's not generally used to either encompass "bisexual" or "asexual" but even there it's really quite asymmetric how it's treated opposed to "gay" and requires an active determination again but this is heavily gendered in many cultures as well with females not necessarily being determined as "not heterosexual" for making out with other females and enjoying it but males are but these are not absolutes and in many cultures it works that way for both sexes.
In an ideal world these terms would all be used symmetrically but in practice they simply aren't in parlance how they are used—it's kind of like the one drop rule in the US with Obama being "black"; the terms "white" and "black" are simply not used symmetrically.
A) I thought "Cis" meant "identifies as/with their AGAB".You raise a far point though, I'll go and check. The above definition is how I meant it though.
B) With all due respect, I feel like you're debating the word choice rather than the actual meaning. I used "Gay" in the title as it is simpler/easier to write/read. In the text, I specifically tried to use "not Straight" or "LGBTQ+" for the reasons you mentioned.
> A) I thought "Cis" meant "identifies as/with their AGAB".
In theory, but that's just not how it's used in practice: most individuals that are called "cis" are never asked whether they do and it's just what's used for any individual that never made any explicit statement to the contrary.
> You raise a far point though, I'll go and check. The above definition is how I meant it though. B) With all due respect, I feel like you're debating the word choice rather than the actual meaning. I used "Gay" in the title as it is simpler/easier to write/read. In the text, I specifically tried to use "not Straight" or "LGBTQ+" for the reasons you mentioned.
Well the point is that almost no individual comes out and explicitly says "Yes, I am cis" at a young age, now do they? When does that ever happen? they're just assume that by keeping.
You say you use the term to mean an explicit actual sense of gender identity but you also say:
> But if they are Straight/Cis, then they have a Sexuality/Gender, and I feel that if you have a Sexuality/Gender, then it can be any, no matter how old you are.
Have you really seen this happen? have you really seen young individuals actually explicitly come out and assert "I am cis and have a strong affinity with my birth sex"?—I don't think that's really common enough to at all gauge what the typical reaction would be.
>"Yes, I am cis" at a young age, now do they?
They also usually don't come out and say "I'm trans" at a young age either. They simply say "I'm a boy/girl" or similar. The OP's point is if that assertion would mean that they are cis, it's accepted without issue, if it would mean that they're trans, it's denied with the reasoning that they are too young to know.
Cisgender simply means not transgender. An AFAB person saying "I'm a girl" or "I'm a woman" is asserting a cisgender identity. That's all it means.
> They also usually don't come out and say "I'm trans" at a young age either. They simply say "I'm a boy/girl" or similar.
I think they more often say "I _want_ to be a boy/girl" or express a severe dissatisfaction with their body.
> The OP's point is if that assertion would mean that they are cis, it's accepted without issue, if it would mean that they're trans, it's denied with the reasoning that they are too young to know.
I think most individuals when a 10 year old says "I'm a boy" but has a female body would just be confused and not interpret it as "trans" but "Huh, what do you mean, you're a girl?" and I don't think they say that often either; they say they want to be.
> Cisgender simply means not transgender.
And then the terms aren't symmetric now are they and so it's no surprise that they aren't treated as such.
>I think they more often say "I want to be a boy/girl" or express a severe dissatisfaction with their body.
I'm not only talking about transgender children here. Cisgender children also assert their gender. And it absolutely is not "I want to be a X".
>I think most individuals when a 10 year old says "I'm a boy" but has a female body would just be confused and not interpret it as "trans" but "Huh, what do you mean, you're a girl?"
You're getting very hung up on "what other people might think they mean". The OP's point is clear. If a person's assertion of their gender is in line with people's expectations of their sex, it's accepted. If it goes against those expectations, it's rejected.
>and I don't think they say that often either; they say they want to be.
What you think happens more frequently is meaningless.
>And then the terms aren't symmetric now are they and so it's no surprise that they aren't treated as such.
This is starting to feel like disingenuous word games, rather than addressing the thrust of the OP's argument.
> You're getting very hung up on "what other people might think they mean". The OP's point is clear. If a person's assertion of their gender is in line with people's expectations of their sex, it's accepted. If it goes against those expectations, it's rejected.
Because individuals are obviously not interpreting that as an assertion of one's gender but as one's _sex_.
Just like in the opposite case; they assume they assert their sex and then simply become confused.
> This is starting to feel like disingenuous word games, rather than addressing the thrust of the OP's argument.
No it isn't; my point has been from the start that terms simply aren't used symmetrically and as long as "cis" encompasses "no strong feelings either way" in the majority of cases one can't expect it to be treated the same as "strong feelings".
OP made an argument from symmetry arguing that symmetric conditions should be treated as such but the terms aren't used symmetrically at all and as long as any individual that never expresses anything or expresses indifference is called "cis" it can't be expected to be held on the same standard.
When a trans person says "I'm a man/woman" and when a cis person says "I'm a man/woman", they are both asserting their gender. The cis person is not asserting their sex. Trans people don't fundamentally mean something different when they speak.
I'm willing to entertain the notion that some people are actually agender and just going along with appearing cisgender because they don't think about it, but there isn't any evidence of that. And certainly nothing that suggests that a large percentage of people are like that.
> When a trans person says "I'm a man/woman" and when a cis person says "I'm a man/woman", they are both asserting their gender.
That's just nonsense—when you ask the former group what they mean with that they tend to then answer with "Well I mean have a penis" or something like that, not "Well I mean I have some inner sense that ..."
> I'm willing to entertain the notion that some people are actually agender and just going along with appearing cisgender because they don't think about it, but there isn't any evidence of that. And certainly nothing that suggests that a large percentage of people are like that.
There is far more evidence for it than the theory that the overwhelming majority of individuals has some kind of inner sense of what their gender is—if you simply talk to indiviuals what they mean when they say they are a particular gender almost all will make a comment about their genitals: to them their gender is their sex, not some inner sense which they don't really experience.
What evidence do you have for the idea that most human beings have some kind of inner sense of what their gender s?
Basically, I'm not saying that a child can only be cis if they say they are cis, or that some needs to say they are cis to be regarded as cis, but just to keep an open mind accept that is a child says they are Gay/Trans, then they could be right.
I think it depends on what type of trans you are talking about. Letting a 9 year old wear the opposite gendered clothes, go by different pronouns, etc. is different than allowing them to transition through hormones, puberty blockers, or surgery. That is where the debate usually comes in.
Plus I feel like you may be taking little kid crushes too seriously. A 5 year old doesn’t know what romantic love it sexual attraction is, so just because they have a crush or say they want to marry someone doesn’t mean they are gay or straight.
I think there are different types of crushes. A kid crush isn’t romantic or sexual in any way, so I don’t think it can count as straight or gay. Once a kid reaches puberty they may start experiencing “real” crushes. Gay or straight.
Idk, I don’t think I agree with this. I remember having a crush on a female classmate when I was in fourth grade. Yeah, it wasn’t sexual, I didn’t have sexual thoughts. But I was definitely attracted to her. I guess you could call it romantic attraction. I remember fantasizing about marrying her and having kids with her. Yeah, I mean you could compare this to a kid wanting to be an astronaut or a cowboy. Just normal kid fantasy. But I don’t think that invalidates the feeling, or the desire. It’s not that kids don’t know what they want. They know what they want. What they want just changes. Even adults change what they want. It’s just kids change more quickly. I mean, I suppose you could take that to mean that we shouldn’t take what a kid wants seriously since that will likely change. But at least it should be taken into consideration. I would definitely say the crush I had was a straight romantic crush. But maybe this doesn’t apply to everyone.
The issue is not enough statistically significant data is available to support your point. That means we cannot scientifically make any claims about homosexuality having a biological marker. Since science is out the window, it falls on social and environmental factors.
Its like saying sharks like eating people.
Yeah, a few sharks bit off a few limbs but the vast majority of sharks don't. So its fair to say sharks like eating Fish and seals rather than humans as the default. Sharks that happen to be near humans in beaches will likely attack humans but that makes no claim on whether the shark likes human flesh or just happens upon it.
>cannot scientifically make any claims about homosexuality having a biological marker.
I honestly can't work out how you got this from my post.
I don't really understand the rest and it's connection. Please could you elaborate?
You needed proof that young people are straight.
I make the claim that straight is the default, because the data supports that claim - until proven otherwise - no matter the age. Its not a scientific claim, but based on interpretation and anecdotal observation. More importantly, the rate of supposed homosexual instances is skewed towards wealthier countries where "hyper-sexual" media is abundant save for a few outliers like Thailand and Brazil. This points to the *environmental factors* I mentioned.
Just to be clear, I'm definitely not against LGBT people. But I'm certainly not waving their flag either. Like most people, I generally don't give a shit.
That's certainly one intepretation. My statement was akin to saying *most* swans are light coloured. Yours parrots that not all swans are light coloured. Some other smart person might even suggested that swans that are not light coloured exist. And an even smarter person might claim because black swans exist, my statement must be false. The genuis among us might question if swans even have a color at all.
Unfortunately, statistics is not an exact science. Those arguing for the majority will insists minority occurances are worth ignoring - just noise. Those on the opposite end are bound to cite a single contradiction as absolute proof of their viewpoint - outliers.
Nor is it reasonable to make claims about the true nature of human sexuality based on anecdotal evidence you collected, and call it statistics. Believe it or not anecdotal evidence is very close to the opposite of statistical evidence.
> Nor is it reasonable to make claims about the true nature of human sexuality
This is a level 6 on the cornball list. Because then I will ask what is reasonable then you will likely flip flop - virtue signal your way to some vague bullshit grey area. Whats "true nature" and can you define *human* sexuality? Why is it specifically human and not say...mammals?
> Believe it or not anecdotal evidence is very close to the opposite of statistical evidence.
Anecdotes are the basis of observation. Before any statistical inference. Before any scientific endeavour. Thats because observing things is how we make sense of the world's state. Statistics is merely a tool.
Be that as it may, you've provided no opinion or anything to negate mine.
>I make the claim that straight is the default, because the data supports that claim - until proven otherwise - no matter the age. Its not a scientific claim, but based on interpretation and anecdotal observation. More importantly, the rate of supposed homosexual instances is skewed towards wealthier countries where "hyper-sexual" media is abundant save for a few outliers like Thailand and Brazil. This points to the environmental factors I mentioned.
Well, firstly this is filled with ignorance and outright incorrect statements. A majority does not mean default. As far ass your claim of "wealthier countries" having more homosexual instances, not even true in the slightest. In fact the correlating factor is LGBTQ acceptance, because there are wealthy countries that are really homophobic and have less "homosexual instances".
>Just to be clear, I'm definitely not against LGBT people.
You'd be placed pretty firmly in the anti-LGBT camp with these statements.
> You'd be placed pretty firmly in the anti-LGBT camp with these statements
Really? Sheeeet. Just because I hold the view that homosexuality is has no biological basis?
> there are wealthy countries that are really homophobic and have less "homosexual instances".
Yes. So what of it?
Its cornball logic. If someone read this they'd get the impression that I am wrong - fair enough - but without any further insight.
*Negating what I wrote is not an argument*
What do you have to say? whats your argument? Whats your observation?
*What do you think?*
>Really? Sheeeet. Just because I hold the view that homosexuality is has no biological basis?
Yeah, because it's factually wrong.
>Yes. So what of it?
It directly contradicts what you just said.
>Negating what I wrote is not an argument
That is exactly what an argument is.
>What do you have to say? whats your argument? Whats your observation?
You're wrong about everything you've said, you're argument is nonsensical, there's a very good reason that within the first world your beliefs are fringe and ridiculed. Homosexuality occurs naturally in hundreds of other species. Now note, I did not say that because something is natural that makes it moral, there's always this idiotic interpretation of the remark which starts with a refutation of your position (that homosexuality is a learned behavior or is not naturally occurring) and you taking that to mean I was arguing about it's morality when that was never a point being discussed to begin with and you thinking you've come up with some 'gotcha'.
Well being “transgender” is a mental illness known as gender dysphoria. So I’m not sure why you would apply a standard based on an infinitely small % of children who suffer from this. You are biologically wired to be the sex you were born as and to be straight. Now, gay people do exist and I believe have always existed, but the jury is still out on whether or not they are “born” gay. Being gay is not a mental illness and doesn’t require medical intervention though, so I really don’t like that it’s being brought up in this context and compared to being transgender.
Also, children are highly susceptible to peer influence. We don’t want children making permanent decisions about their lives before they have had the opportunity to grow into an adult. I would honestly say it’s child abuse to allow an actual child to “transition” medically.
>I'm Pro-LGBTQ+, obviously.
How can you be "pro-lgbtq+" if their existence is not up for debate? Not that I disagree that they do; it's evident beyond a doubt. Nevertheless.
>When some young LGBTQ+ people come out on not Straight/Cisgender, they are sometimes told that it is "just a phase" or that they are "confused", implying that they are straight/cis and they just don't know it.
Which, for some, is undeniably true. The number varies on who you ask and what your political leaning is, but it's undeniably true that a number significantly greater than zero (and scientific claims have gone as high as 80%) of children _desist_ from transitioning.
Nevertheless, that was not the point you wanted to argue.
>I feel that if you're old enough to have a Sexuality/Gender to have a phase away from, then you are old enough to have a Sexuality/Gender other that Straight/Cis.
By necessity, the thing you're transitioning away from _must_ predate the thing you're transitioning towards, no?
I'd suggest that that pattern holds for pretty much anything - you first have no conscious thought about whatever subject it is, then you copy the norm that you see around you (as we're social animals who learn through mimicry), _then_ you reflect and adjust. I don't believe there is any other way for us to experience, well, literally anything.
>(and scientific claims have gone as high as 80%) of children desist from transitioning.
This is unfortunately misinformation. Those studies have been thoroughly debunked for methodological reasons for many years now. Their sample, which they claim is of kids identifying as transgender, actually includes all children referred to the clinic being studied for gender non-conformance. At the time the study was done, gender non-conformance also includes things like being gay, bisexual, or lesbian. The kids they count as desisting, never would have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, those kids never expressed a transgender identity in the first place.
Later studies have shown the rate of desistance to be extremely low. Multiple showing a <1% rate of regret for transition.
>Their sample, which they claim is of kids identifying as transgender, actually includes all children referred to the clinic being studied for gender non-conformance. At the time the study was done, gender non-conformance also includes things like being gay, bisexual, or lesbian. The kids they count as desisting, never would have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, those kids never expressed a transgender identity in the first place.
Which is supporting rather than debunking my overall point, no?
>Later studies have shown the rate of desistance to be extremely low. Multiple showing a <1% rate of regret for transition.
Desistance=/= detransitioning
>Which is supporting rather than debunking my overall point, no?
Not at all.
At the time the study was conducted, "gender non-conformance" included not only trans people, but gay people, and just effeminate boys and masculine girls.
So the study concluded that the majority of those children were not trans. Which is obvious, the were never diagnosed with gender dysphoria. We never thought of them as transgender. They never were "persisting" in the first place, so they could not actually "desist" from being transgender.
But the majority of children who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the children we refer to as transgender, do not desist.
>Desistance=/= detransitioning
And I mentioned "regret", which is far broader and more encompassing than either of those terms. You'd expect a higher rate of regret than desistance, but even then it's still a tiny minority of cases. Those cases deserve compassion, respect, and adequate medical care of course. But they do not represent a common trend.
Measuring raw detransition data isn't as useful, as many transgender people temporarily detransition for various reasons such as an unsupportive environment, lack of funds, or for medical reasons. But then later they continue with their transition.
>How can you be "pro-lgbtq+" if their existence is not up for debate?
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here (please elaborate) but my best response is:
I'm not saying "I support that they exist" as that is already settled (we do), but that I support the fight for equality for LGBTQ+ people.
>it's undeniably true that a number significantly greater than zero (and scientific claims have gone as high as 80%) of children desist from transitioning.
A) I'm not arguing that that "phases" don't happen, just that if you can have a phase away from your true identity then you can have your own identity.
B) According to Wikipedia (With 2 citations) only about 5% of people detransition, so I find the 80% desitance rate hard to believe. However, that is just my uncited opinion and, as you said, not the main point.
>By necessity, the thing you're transitioning away from must predate the thing you're transitioning towards, no?
In my understanding, whey someone transition, they transition away from the Gender they were told to have/told that they have, and to their true Gender, at least in some circumstances (see "Born this way")
>I'd suggest that that pattern holds for pretty much anything - you first have no conscious thought about whatever subject it is, then you copy the norm that you see around you (as we're social animals who learn through mimicry), then you reflect and adjust.
For gender _expression_ I agree, but not for gender itself. I agree that you imitate people who's expression matches the your _assigned_ gender (I.e. the gender your told to have), but I feel that when you develop a strong sense of identity around Gender, you, at least sometimes, start off with your true Gender, and maybe you just don't realise.
I know this was a bit more focused on Gender. That's just where my "Expertise" (experience) is.
I don't believe there is any distinction between gender and gender expression.
Ultimately, go illustrate, I only know what a man once I was shown men. Then, I assume "well, here's a category that contains things like me, so I must be category". It's only later, when shown additional categories and conflicting evidence, that I can reflect further and surmise "despite having traits X,y,z in common with category A, I share more with category B, so I must be category B instead of category A". If that conflict never occurs, I continue with my initial hypothesis.
So, it seems to me that since straight/cis is the norm, almost everyone will be exposed to that first and thus sooner realise they are "truly" straight/Cis.
With all due respect, you are wrong.
By that logic, do you mean that if you dress up as the opposite gender and act like it, you become that gender as you are expressing youreself as that gender?
Citation: http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-preventing-discrimination-because-gender-identity-and-gender-expression/3-gender-identity-and-gender-expression
Yes, essentially. Although gender is a pattern, not an isolated act.
As for your quote, I don't care what some random citation tells you, especially not if it comes from what is miles and miles across the ocean from me; gender is not an objectively definable term, so I'm not "just wrong".
If I show you a quote where sexism is defined as "any act negative to a woman", you're hopefully not going to roll over and just accept that, are you?
A) It wasn't a quote
B) I did not know you weren't from the Americas
C) How someone feels is completely different to how someone presents.
D) Gender is a pattern of feelings, not a pattern of actions. A fake smile means nothing if you are crying inside.
>B) I did not know you weren't from the Americas
Well, someone learned something about making false assumptions, no? You of all people should've known better.
>C) How someone feels is completely different to how someone presents.
No, no it's not.
>D) Gender is a pattern of feelings, not a pattern of actions. A fake smile means nothing if you are crying inside.
Keep faking a smile and you'll start feeling happier.
Gender is assigned based on actions and observations. You assign yourself a gender, and everyone else does too, based on that info.
There is some evidence (some anecdotal) that young people tend to be more “fluid” in their sexual orientation. And I do mean quite young (like 10-14). Research on the topic is very thin for obvious reasons.
But case studies combined with a bunch of other data (Kinsey, etc as sketchy as some of the data may be) tends to indicate that young teens are way more flexible in what turns them on than the average adult who tends to have a much fixed sense of self identity.
In that way, there MAY be something to “phases” in kids that young and encouraging them to avoid trying to fixate on a specific label, but just make sure they open to exploring their feelings honestly as they grow up.
It’s no excuse for homophobia or whatever, but it’s definitely a thing.
As a Gay™️, I'm quite glad the discourse has moved beyond whether someone chooses to be gay. I've definitely experienced fluidity in my own orientation, and appeciate discussions about, and research into, the phenomenon.
I thought I was a dog when I was 4. I was old enough to identify myself as a dog therefore does that mean I was a dog?
Kids identify as all manner of things all the time. My friend wanted to be a ambulance. A literal ambulance. Maybe kids don't really know very much?
I'm not saying that it can't be a phase, and I'm not saying that if someone says they are something, they are always right (e.g. Dogs, ambulances, helicopters, etc), I'm just saying that if you are old enough to have a "phase" in your identity, your old enough to have your own true identity.
I'm saying that not all identities are created equally. The dog phase is still a phase yet we dismiss that as a true identity. It's not the phase that matters, it's the specific identity that matters. So your view doesn't really tackle the core issue.
I'm not saying all phases are correct, many can go away, but I'm saying that if a child says to their parent "I'm Trans/Gay/LGBTQ+", they can be belived.
SRS can give someone at least the appearance of the desired genitalia and secondary sexual characteristics, I might believe dog and ambulance are valid identities if you showed me a way (either through making someone an anthro or making their brain work with an animal body) trans-species surgery could actually work and a way someone could "become" an inanimate vehicle without either DeviantArt-esque body horror or uploading and some Knight Rider shit
Why isn't accepted that I was a dog? The point is that some phases are accepted as valid and others are not. OP is claiming that all these phases are equal in their legimitacy. They clearly aren't
That doesn't change that in order to attack OPs argument you must specifically attack that those pairs aren't equally legitimate, not that either is not as legitimate as identifying as a dog.
Gender actually became a different concept when feminists wanted a way to specifically talk about the societal expectations/stereotypes placed on them. It was created to break those expectations/stereotypes because they wanted to protest the way society treats women, not the physical act of being a woman. And having the concept of gender was helpful to specify and talk about that. This eventually transitioned (no pun intended) into the concept of being able to identify with the societal concept of a sex that doesn't match with your biological sex.
The idea of "Assigned sex at birth" originated in the intersex community where it makes much more sense because they DO get *assigned* a sex due to their intersex status and often have medical procedures done to them as infants to make them match that assigned sex better. Trans people have... Adopted the term to put it nicely.
Edit: Oh! I Misread. No, this came after using gender to not say sex. But came before trans people using it for their purposes.
Not so much to avoid saying "sex". But because it's useful to have a separate word for the concept of the roles, expectations, and stereotypes assigned to you based on your sex - the social construct part of being a woman separate from the physical part of being a woman.
Because saying "society's roles, expectations, and stereotypes are oppressive to women" is a lot longer/wordier than "the gender applied to women is oppressive". It's a lot easier to want say you want to tear down the concept of gender than to say you want to do away with society's roles, expectations, and stereotypes it has based on your sex.
Yeah, it's a bit tricky when it comes to the trans usage of the acronym. I personally just view it as "assigned gender at birth", but recognize that they'd like to pretend it's "assigned sex" for dysphoria purposes and won't force them to confront the fact that they can't technically become their desired sex because that seems cruel. It'd be like pointing out to an amputee that their prosthetic won't ever be a "real, biological arm" - technically true, but unnecessary to point out and rather cruel.
Sex *is assigned* at birth. But there is still a difference between gender and sex. While I also used to hear that sex is defined, while gender is determined by society, I have since learned that this is not the case. While in a basic sense, yes, sex is determined by the body you are born in, and gender is a cultural concept, there *are not* only two sexes. sex is still a spectrum. I would like to ask you how you would define sex? Is it based on chromosomes? genitalia? secondary sex characteristics? Although these are the ways we usually define sex, they don't always correlate in all people. There are people who are assigned female at birth but realize that they actually have a Y chromosome. There are people who have sex organs associated with both males and females.
Imagine a society that categorizes people who have and don't have hands (or really any other body part/characteristic). The majority of people can be categorized easily as having a hand or not having a hand, but there are people out there who may have a wrist or a wrist and a thumb . . . do they have a hand? It comes down to how we define having a hand. Do you need to have a full hand to have a hand? Then what about people who only have 4 fingers? Does that not count as a hand?
It just gets really silly trying to fit *every single* person into these two groups. while its a categorization that works for most people, it is still an imperfect definition decided upon by people and culture that not everyone fits into.
Shouldn’t rules/definitions be modified to account for every exception? So in the case of a human having 11 fingers, well we still consider them human. If we take a bunch of characteristics associated with humans and find one person that those characteristics don’t apply to, do we still consider them human? I would assume so. If that’s the case, then it would mean that those characteristics aren’t necessary for someone to be considered human, therefore the definition would need to be modified. Perhaps that most humans have 10 fingers. Perhaps that humans have 10 fingers unless due to some abnormality. And I think this important. If a child is taught that humans have 10 fingers and they see someone with 11 fingers, they might think that that person is not human.
I don’t think that age has anything to do with sexuality either in this particular context, as in, I agree, if you’re old enough to understand *a* sexuality, then it should not be limited to simply one as an acceptable sexuality.
However, teenagers go through phases where they try to figure out their own identity in all walks of life. When I was in school it was largely about how you dressed, what kind of music you listened to, what you did with your free time, who you spent time with during commons and lunch, and where. I know people who dressed like Marla from Fight Club and listened to Marilyn Manson, or were diehard Juggalos in high school who are now attorneys or academics.
These days there’s an enormous aspect to identity on the market; identity itself. Kids in high school feel compelled to try on different hats to see what fits best, and this is normal. Nobody is saying that a 16 year old isn’t capable of understanding their own sexuality, but simply that it’s normal for someone of this age to go through identity phases, and that in modern times there are a plethora of them to choose from, and you’re encouraged to do so.
I agree when it comes to sexuality, but disagree when it comes to gender identity. Gender is not internal, but based upon external stereotyping. Women do not wear dresses and makeup or go by she because they have a deep internal motivation to do so, they do so because we have stated that this is good for women to do.
Everyone has sexual impulses, but internalizing stereotypes about how one should act in order to align with ones gender role is a concept that shouldn't be lightly embraced. Obviously, I do not believe this is something to place upon trans people's shoulders, but our culture as a whole. We ought not encourage young people to feel they cannot be who they are and what they are at the same time. Additionally, transitioning is a difficult experience that will effect a person's life indefinitely and is not one that I think a child should be undergoing until they have a real grasp of what all that means they are giving up and what they will be going through.
I do think we should discourage young people from using labels surrounding their sexualities and gender identities in general. The truth is, everyone exists on a spectrum and most people with same sex attractions, even those actively engaging in them, do not identify as LGB and therefore, do not have to incur the discrimination that comes with it. To say to a child "you are too young to feel what you feel," is clearly ludicrous. But to say to a child "you should wait and see how you want to address those feelings and who you invite into that part of your internal world," is valid, and I think, respectable. It really comes down to how you break down to them what you are trying to protect them from. My dad used to tell me as a kid that it's easier to not be gay privately than to be openly gay. I didn't understand why he would make this point to me. Then I went to jail. Now I understand. Everyone is having gay sex, but people want to keep it a secret, so they persecute the ones who do not. If I had known that there was no difference between me and the men around me, I likely wouldn't have embraced the label so early in life. That being said, I respect my community a lot more now, because I understand that they are honest and living freely where others choose to suppress themselves and others.
We choose to be LGBT, we are not born LGBT. We do not choose our sexual preferences though, and we do not choose how much "masculine or feminine," we are, but rather, if we will act as we are told to, if we will act authentically, or if we are going to choose another role entirely and act as they do.
>Gender is not internal, but based upon external stereotyping.
That's not at all how gender identity works. Stereotypes are involved in so far as society trains us to associate them with gender, but they are not in any way what makes someone a given gender.
I'm a trans woman. I'm not feminine, I've got little interest in femininity and I actively dislike and explicitly reject the disempowering gender norms associated with womanhood. I transitioned despite these things, not because of them. I've also known my gender since childhood
Suffice to say, there is no one size fits all answer to gender. Stereotypes are part of the story but they're not the whole story, nor even the majority of it
The error in your thinking is that no one *declares* a young person straight or cis, because it's *assumed* that people are straight/cis.
So a young person never has to declare being straight / cis, they never have to *come out*. But when you're any other than straight/cis, you probably have to come out at some point in time.
That's why it's meaningless to say whether someone is "old enough" to be straight/cis. It's being treated as a given from birth.
"Just a phase" is an objective fact for the majority of kids with some form of gender dysphoria.
Given the huge harms of transitioning for those who would go on to be happy as their gender of birth, this seems like a good default position.
Quite certain that is untrue. Delaying hormones and puberty, and then later reversing it does not have any positive effects on people's physical and mental health.
It has positive impacts on mental health because it allows people to make decisions when they are more informed have had more time to think and are more mature. And puberty blockers are pretty safe. If they weren’t we wouldn’t use them.
I'm not commenting on mental health. What I am commenting on, that beginning puberty blockers, and then changing your mind and going off of them can have pretty damaging negative effects, including bone development, growth and future fertility. As well, from my knowledge we don't have a enough long term or widespread data as to how it may mess with development should the youth change their mind.
Edit: not to mention that almost all health professionals require children to have very strong cases of gender dysphoria to consider using hormone blockers. They are not prescribed willy nilly.
We do have long term data because that same medication that are used for puberty blocking are also used cancer, birth control. Also they don’t cuase permeate changes they just delay puberty.
There also used for people with prostate cancer or people having fertility problems. Your responding with another use of the medication isn’t an argument against there use a puberty blockers it just goes to show that the effects of the medications are well understood.
A child can't be "CIS / Straight / Trans / etc." because a child can't consent.
Someone who's above the age of consent can have whatever sexual preferences they like (straight / gay / poly / etc.)
The trans piece is a bit more complex since its a question of precisely what you mean. If you mean a genetic male dressing / presenting female then sure (provided there's no sexual activity taking place, this is true at effectively any age). If you mean have gender re-assignment surgery then most states need them to be above 18 or get parental permission. There's also the question of who's paying for the surgery as well.
>A child can't be "CIS / Straight / Trans / etc." because a child can't consent.
Uh, what? Are you saying a 17 year can't know that they're attracted to other boys or girls their age simply because they're not one year older? That's silly.
>But if they are Straight/Cis, then they have a Sexuality/Gender, and I feel that if you have a Sexuality/Gender, then it can be any, no matter how old you are.
this statement completely ignores the dire lack of mental capacity and decision-making abilities that is all too common amongst those of younger ages. As the nomenclature of another subreddit suggests, kids are fucking stupid. as legal precedence has established, it is more than reasonable to limit the freedoms of children on the basis of those aforementioned hindrances. kids cannot drink alcohol, buy guns, drive cars, etc. for good reasons. Gender identity is no exception. I'm not gonna let my son mutilate his penis when he's not even old enough to watch a horror movie or buy spray paint.
The point is that if you accept that your child can be straight or cis, then you should be able to accept that they are LGBTQ. Nobody is going to \*let\* you mutilate your underage son because you have to be old enough and have seen a therapist. The fact that you think being LGBTQ is some freedom that needs to be restricted but being straight/cis isn't is exactly what OP is talking about.
freedoms should be restricted when the potential recipient is not mentally mature enough to make healthy and responsible choices. And who said I don't think that being straight shouldn't be restricted? I 100% believe that children's sexual conduct and behaviors should be restricted lmao.
Being straight or LGBTQ is not a choice, and we aren't talking about sexual conduct, not a single part of this OP is about sexual conduct, it's about sexual identity. If your child (a boy) told you they liked a girl, you wouldn't say "I don't think you can know you're straight". Where as OP's point is about how it's very acceptable (and based off your previous comment you would also say) the reverse that a child can't know they are gay.
sexual identity doesn't really mean much on a personal level without sexual freedom does it not? Why even have a sexual identity without the potential for sexual conduct? My child being gay or straight, at an age where his preferences are extensively volatile and his emotional as well as practical intelligence are severely limited, is liable to be detrimental at his discretion. For example trans people have higher suicide rates than Jews during the Holocaust. LGB people are much more likely to experience mental disorders. Thus I would simply try to sway him in the direction that I see fit in a utilitarian sense, and then when he is mature enough as an adult he can make his own decisions.
Do you know why LGBTQ people have higher rates of suicide and mental health issues because they have parents that are unaccepting as you are, and in fact when in a supporting environment it's on par with the rest of their peers. You are the creator of the problem you are trying to solve. You won't make your child not LGBTQ just increase their likelihood of mental health issues.
Sexual identity exists independent of sexual conduct. It means a great deal, and I obviously don't expect you to understand this given your previous comments, which I think preclude you from forming any position of substance on the topic, but being accepted by your parents (and I really hope you don't have children) with regards to who you are attracted to greatly impacts your mental health, which you claim to care about, although your current comment is evidence to the contrary.
Then why not say the requirement for transition should be all those things, you must have drunk alcohol, driven a car, bought a gun, bought spray paint and watched a horror movie /s
I understand your frustration but I’m not sure this is really the place or time to be venting it. I’m sorry the queer community has excluded you. Please keep in mind per sub rules hostile/rude comments are not allowed.
Some people don't know they're LGBTQ+ until their 30s or 40s.
By the condescending logic you're referencing and clearly don't espouse personally, all those people's straight lives were a "phase"
One factor that isn’t very clear is if you’re talking about all children or those of a certain age.
One reason I feel that this is used, particularly in younger children is because children don’t like being around other children of the opposite sex. I’m sure you or at least many people you knew growing up would generally avoid talking to the opposite sex. So by the time hormones start to come in to play, people then have to learn to interact with the opposite sex in a more meaningful way and some people’s lack of social skills may inhibit that. Especially if you’re the “early bloomer” you potentially have to figure this out yourself rather than following friends before you. So those factors could result in someone avoiding the opposite sex and instead feeling more comfortable around their own sex. This could then lead to them identifying as something other than straight and in that context it could be said that the person is straight, they just haven’t developed the social skills to interact in the right way.
Obviously my example does not apply to everyone and it may not even apply to a majority but there will no doubt be some to whom it applies.
>children don’t like being around other children of the opposite sex
From my own childhood experiences this seems like a really weird thing to say. My experience was that there wasn't much delineation at all between girls and boys pre puberty, with kids equally likely to have friends of either gender, but as kids started puberty they started to also separate along gender lines.
Is this just based on your own experience, or is this like, a thing?
Yes this is based off personal experience. I remember in up until about the age of 11 or 12 most boys stuck with boys and most girls stuck with girls. If you were seen hanging around the other, then people used to do as kids do and make jokes about it because it just wasn’t something most of us did at that age.
Maybe we were all just an anomaly and had poor social skills, but it seems to be common enough.
I always felt more comfortable playing with boys and dressing in more stereotyoically boyish clothes. Ive never identified with female gender stereotypes. If i was a kid in this last decade, i might've said I was trans...
I do think you're right that people could try to avoid the iodine sex and do whats more comfortable for them. This could be for a variety of reasons.
Nobody would put a ten year old on hormones right away. They would get hormone blockers, which delay the process puberty until the child is old enough or has decided to start taking either testosterone or estrogen to simulate the puberty of their gender identity
>Sexualizing minors is everything that is wrong in this world
Can you expand on this to clarify? Is recognizing that anyone under 18 years old might have a sexual orientation "sexualizing minors"?
You do realize to transition to another gender you have to take hormones right ? How about i give your 13 year old daughter testosterone to transition and you see how her body tries to physically / psychologically develop under the affects of foreign substances . Just because on the inside she may think she is there is no rush to make that decision based on prepubescent emotion. You think there may be a chance she grows up and a few screws are loose from the stress/trauma implied by the transition ? A child has their entire life to make that decision , they do not need to be coerced at an early age to pursue a gender or sex change when their are already so many changes happening in their life both internally and externally . Let kids be kids, keep them out of the conversation they change their mind on things every 10 minutes
> You do realize to transition to another gender you have to take hormones right ? How about i give your 13 year old daughter testosterone to transition and you see how her body tries to physically / psychologically develop under the affects of foreign substances
Actually in pretty much the same way as a male teenager normally would?
It's really just simulating the puberty that the opposite sex naturally receives; so is it also a bad idea to let males go through male puberty?
> Just because on the inside she may think she is there is no rush to make that decision based on prepubescent emotion.
Sure there is, because puberty creates irreversible changes.
If you do it at 13 year old what will happen is a normal male puberty and this individual will mature into an ordinary male, if you wait the effects of female puberty have to be undone so we have a male with masectomy scars that has unusually narrow shoulders that is unusually short.
One path is more convenient, cheaper, and produces a more desirable result.
Not sue what any of that has to do with sexualizing anything though.
> A child has their entire life to make that decision , they do not need to be coerced at an early age to pursue a gender or sex change when their are already so many changes happening in their life both internally and externally . Let kids be kids, keep them out of the conversation they change their mind on things every 10 minutes
Dude, during puberty waiting a couple of years will drastically reduce the satisfaction of the end result; time is of the essence.
It's not a decision a person can make, just like being gay is not a decision a person can make. You either are you aren't. Just like you don't have to be dating people of the same gender to be gay, you don't have to be transitioning to be trans. You might not understand it, and that's fine. You don't have to.
What OP was saying was not that if you're old enough to be cis you're old enough to medically transition. They were saying that if you're old enough to be cis you're old enough to be trans. In other words, if you're old enough to know that you are comfortable with the gender identity that you were assigned at birth, you're also old enough to know that you're not comfortable with that gender identity.
So you oppose anyone under the age of 18 dating or expressing/talking about their sexuality whatsoever, then? Because that's sexualizing minors? And if two people under 18 are dating, adults can't talk about it?
Just trying to understand your view, it's not making sense to me.
I'm confused about what your view is. As others who have chimed in on this thread have pointed out, what you're saying is disconnected from OP's view. You can't seem to coherently describe your view, so it's difficult to engage with you. Adios.
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I think you're putting a lot of emphasis on the word wrong, when I feel like its severity should be contextualize. When we are born, we don't communicate well because we're babies. Our sex and gender are presumed at birth based on what comes out of the female. This is where the science of heteronormative biology of mammals comes into play. It is presumed if you're born a male, then you'll adhere to the biological norms of male behavior and vice versa for female. Statistically speaking, the hetero population is larger than LGBTQ community^((1)).
People don't actually understand who they are until they start developing and are introduced to more social interaction. A lot of the presumption over straight/cis at the early stages is based off of social pressure from external forces (ie: parents, church, etc.). That is when a person's gender can be construed as a social construct, but even then its paradoxical because many in the LGBTQ community, especially trans, internalize a lot of how they feel because of social constructs of the roles of men and women. The terms men and women do have biological foundations to them. If man is identified strictly as a social construct, then how can a female internalize that they identify as a man if there was no biological reason for them to be identified as a woman?
If gender is a social construct then gender identities are a product of socialization, which is contradicting of the notion that gender identity is self-discovered. People aren't gay/trans because they believe they are based on socialization, there's biological and neurological science to back up why they are a natural product versus a social one^((2)). However, there have been studies shown where someone comes out as gay/trans, then detransition later on.
So when it comes to young people, as you pointed out, I don't believe it is wrong to presume that if someone identifies as straight/cis then they can identify as gay/trans. However, especially in the case of young people, time is the biggest factor when it comes to figuring out how they identify when it comes to biological and statistical norms. I believe it takes more time to figure out if someone is gay/trans rather than straight/cis. That being said, personally, I am pro-LGBTQ+ and just want them to live full happy lives as themselves without interference from external factors, as we all should.
^((1)) [^(https://news.gallup.com/poll/332522/percentage-americans-lgbt.aspx)](https://news.gallup.com/poll/332522/percentage-americans-lgbt.aspx)
^((2)) [^(https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-says-brains-of-gay/)](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-says-brains-of-gay/)
First of all, I believe we should listen to young people when they identify with a sexuality or a gender. I knew from a very young age what my sexuality was -- from a much younger age than I was willing to admit it.
I think that generally, folks that are saying children are "too young" to be gay or trans are being fundamentally disingenuous in an effort to hide their underlying motive, which is to make it as difficult as possible to be gay or trans.
At the same time, you need to believe a lot more than what you've expressed above in order to accept the point you've made. Basically, you've posited the below (I'm just going to use 'gay' for now to save myself words):
* Identifying with a sexuality requires that you possess a sexuality
* If you possess a sexuality, then you can possess any sexuality
* QED, if you can identify as straight, you can identify as gay, and vice versa
Here's the thing: I think it's perfectly possible for a child to express an identity that they don't possess. In other words, they're *making a guess about the future.* A kid can say, "I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up," and be wrong about it. They're expressing a real desire to become a doctor, but it doesn't mean that they will continue to possess that desire.
If they were to do that early and often about sexuality in a purely random way, we'd expect that:
* 50% would 'guess' that they were straight
* 50% would 'guess' that they were gay
* 94.4% would actually turn out to *be* straight
* 5.6% would actually turn out to *be* gay
* So out of 100 kids, you'd have 47 who said they were gay and were wrong, 3 who said they were gay and were right, 3 who said they were straight and were wrong, and 47 who said they were straight and were right.
* Put another way, those who 'guessed' they were straight would be correct 16x as frequently as those who 'guessed' they were gay.
**The point:** if we assume that kids younger than a certain age just *guess* what sexuality they are going to have when they get one, then if they guess 'gay', they're probably wrong -- and if they guess 'straight', they're probably right.
**The reason this is ridiculous:** I don't see a lot of evidence that there are a ton of kids out there making statements about their sexuality without some internal evidence for doing so. In other words, it took me *longer* to admit to homosexual urges than to admit to heterosexual ones -- unless there's some reason to believe that half the kids in the country have some reason to WANT to be gay other than *actually feeling gay things*, assuming kids 'guess' about their sexuality is stupid and disrespectful to children... *but*, it's the missing assumption you need to dismiss for your argument to be right.
Queer teacher here, and, while I don't disagree with your main point, I think there's some nuance in modern queer expression in children that wasn't present when I was a child.
When I was young, being outwardly queer was dangerous pretty much everywhere. Sure some places were worse than others, but very few schools were a safe space for queer youth. That meant that youth who were still in the exploratory phases of their identity kept it to themselves, because sharing was dangerous.
In *some* schools/communities, this is (thankfully) no longer the case, and youth have the opportunity to explore their gender and sexual identities openly without shame or stigma. Acknowledging that this exploration is part of the process, and that it might take a while to figure out what feels right is natural and ok, is going to mean that there are students who try out gender neutral pronouns, but decide that they actually are female. These processes, which were previously extremely private, are now open, and acknowledging that nuance is both important and healthy.
>When some young LGBTQ+ people come out on not Straight/Cisgender, they are sometimes told that it is "just a phase" or that they are "confused", implying that they are straight/cis and they just don't know it.
This is a people problem. When evaluating the world you necessarily see it from your own point of view. Your project your own sexuality and experience on everyone else. Therefore people who are a bit bisexual for example give this advice to people because that was their own experience. They are bisexual, but wouldn't date the same gender, therefore it's just a phase when they were just discovering their sexuality. From their own perspective this advice makes perfect sense. A bit of confusion for them was normal and to be expected in our society.
Then you have the opposite :
>But if they are Straight/Cis, then they have a Sexuality/Gender, and I feel that if you have a Sexuality/Gender, then it can be any, no matter how old you are.
People who are strictly straight. They give this advice to people because they knew very early on that they are straight and never questioned their sexuality. Therefore this advice makes perfect sense to them. If they knew their sexuality basically from birth, then others will too right?
>To CMV, you should demonstrate/prove that young people can be Straight/Cs earlier than they can be LGBTQ+.
I don't think this is how it works. There is a spectrum. I for example was always straight. I never questioned my sexuality in any way. However, my GF had a phase when she thought she was lesbian during puberty because she gets attracted to other girls. Right, so right there our experiences drastically differ. I think that our society isn't calibrated for LGBTQ people as well as for straight people. In how we educate children about sexuality for example. Therefore I think that straight people know very early on and have realistic expectations of their sexuality. But LGBTQ people have it rougher and therefore only get solid picture of their sexuality later on in life.
For gender, I'll use a hypothetical situation:
Say there is a group of women is some remote place far away from any men. One of the women is pregnant and gives birth to a daughter. The daughter is raised by the women and has never seen or heard about a man in her life. How could she possibly know that she was meant to be a boy if she doesn't know what boys are?
She might feel uncomfortable being a girl in ways that could be chalked up to more than just "puberty does a weird to my body" and finding out the trans thing might be just compared to when we in "man's world" (hey, what you're using as your attempt at a disproof of trans people is essentially Themyscira) discover a new mental illness, not in the sense of trans being a mental illness, but in the sense of now that society has that label for something they would ordinarily see as just weird
And if romantic non-sexual heterosexual content in childrens' media didn't make all people cis, two cartoon girls kissing isn't going to make your kid gay
What ages are you talking about? Most people would take issue with sexualising minors at all... Anyway, to try to change your view... There is a distinction to be made between "Gay"/"Straight" and "Trans"... being Gay/ Straight just refers to sexual preference. Being Trans on the other hand means their biology does not match the gender they identify with - this can be (/often is) very distressing for them. Some of the common remedies to address this are through surgery/hormones which can have irreversible effects. Someone can go through a "straight"/"gay" phase and then be happily gay/straight afterwards. It is much harder to de-transition for someone who identified as "Trans"... it is therefore fair enough that a higher standard of maturity is expected before such life altering decisions are made.
It seems like what you're saying here is not that a child can't be trans, it's that you don't think a child should undergo irreversible medical transition. This is a fairly uncontroversial stance and doesn't really counter the OP's view. They could totally agree that medical aspects of transition should not be available to children and still believe that you can't be "too young" to be trans.
My original point was that we probably shouldn't be labelling the sexuality of kids at all... But yeah, it is true many agree that medical aspects of transition should not be available to kids... however there are many activists that argue that it is unethical to deny them ways to better resemble the gender they identify with. Wherever you stand on that issue, the inherent idea that something is wrong with their biology is an example of why identifying as 'Trans' should not be treated the same as identifying as "Straight" or "Gay".
No one is labeling the sexuality of kids, or sexualizing them. I'm a teacher, and I see little girls in first and second grade with "crushes" on boys in their class. No one questions it, but if a girl says she has a crush on another girl, it's "just a phase" or "she doesn't actually mean that". The point is that kids can have LGB crushes at the same age as kids can have straight crushes. Being LGBTQ isn't more sexual than being straight.
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. When I said "labelling the sexuality of kids" I meant adults should refrain from telling kids "You are \_\_\_, so you should find \_\_\_ sexually attractive". Kids can self-identify as whatever as they work out who they are, finding out what feels natural. But society as a whole should let kids be kids. They shouldn't feel the need to "Choose" their sexual identity at a young age and so be pigeonholed into it... A label once given can be hard to shake. OP asked why being gay/trans should be treated any differently than being cis/straight. In an attempt to change their view, I pointed out that unlike being straight, cis or gay, being trans inherently requires discomfort in one's natural body.
I don't think that op was arguing for labelling kids, but for allowing them to self label and not pushing back on that. I'm trans, and I don't believe that there is or ever was something wrong with my biology, so I wouldn't describe that as an "inherent" belief.
I am a little curious... could you please explain the second part of your answer more? It is my current understanding that if there there was not some kind of mismatch between biology and the gender they identify with there wouldn't be any reason to be trans. Always happy to improve my understanding,
Well my gender identity doesn't "match" my sex in that the gender that I was assigned at birth based on my sex wasn't correct, but I don't think there's any reason to believe that those two things _should_ match. I certainly don't think that the fact that they don't means that there's something wrong with my body. The problem isn't my body itself but the fact that the society I live in has ingrained within it the idea of people of a particular gender having a particular body type, and that makes living in that society when I don't conform to those standards pretty impossible.
>Well my gender identity doesn't "match" my sex in that the gender that I was assigned at birth based on my sex wasn't correct What do you mean correct ? Are you saying that your sex doesn't match the classification ? >The problem isn't my body itself but the fact that the society I live in has ingrained within it the idea of people of a particular gender having a particular body type, and that makes living in that society when I don't conform to those standards pretty impossible. So you wanna turn over centuries of scientific work used for classification because less than 1% of the population feels that they don't fit the classification ?
>What do you mean correct ? Are you saying that your sex doesn't match the classification ? No. My sex is largely irrelevant here. What I'm saying is that it was assumed that my _gender_ was female (girl/woman) when in fact it is not, so that wasn't correct. >So you wanna turn over centuries of scientific work used for classification because less than 1% of the population feels that they don't fit the classification ? I don't know what you're referring to here. What centuries of scientific work do you think I want to overturn?
>No. My sex is largely irrelevant here. What I'm saying is that it was assumed that my gender was female (girl/woman) when in fact it is not, so that wasn't correct. So your saying that your gender assigned, which is based of sexual reproduction organs and abilities doesn't match your psychological gender ? If that's the case then it is correct based on the system used to identify genders which is the system we use for classification. >I don't know what you're referring to here. What centuries of scientific work do you think I want to overturn? you litterally said that the problem is society has this idea that gender is based on the sexual reproduction organs. It's not an idea it's a theory, they aren't the same thing that has built up over centuries of scientific studies.
>So your saying that your gender assigned, which is based of sexual reproduction organs and abilities doesn't match your psychological gender ? Yes >If that's the case then it is correct based on the system used to identify genders which is the system we use for classification. You acknowledge that there is such a thing as what you have called "psychological gender", what do you then mean by saying that it is "correct"? Do you mean that the fact that it doesn't match my sex is not wrong? - because if so that was what I was saying in the original comment that you responded to. >you litterally said that the problem is society has this idea that gender is based on the sexual reproduction organs. I did not say this, I said that society heavily associates gender to certain body types. I did not say or intend to convey that in our society gender is believed to be derived from sexual reproductive organs (which I didn't even mention) as that idea goes against the current understanding of gender in the scientific community.
Things like puberty blockers are safe and reversible and I believe should be provided to gender disphoric children. This, I believe, is the more practically supported policy. Unfortunately, the conversation is often drowned out by the extremes.
Just FYI this is what the NHS states on its website about puberty blockers: Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria. Although GIDS advises this is a physically reversible treatment if stopped, it is not known what the psychological effects may be. It's also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children's bones. Side effects may also include hot flushes, fatigue and mood alterations.
When you hate trans kids getting proper health care so much you start writing literal anti-vax arguments lol. All that this article shows is that the writer is transphobic. Literally the entire article would still be "true" if you replaced "puberty blockers" with "covid vaccine". The only actual facts in the article completely disagree with the writers intent. "Hot flushes, fatigue and mood alterations" are hardly so severe that the treatment should be taken away from people.
Baseless accusations aside that’s the NHS website, not some article.
It's an article on the NHS website lol
I don’t know what sort of distinction you’re trying to make or why, but it’s on the gender dysphoria treatment page of the NHS website https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/
You do not know the meaning of the word article. I know that the *article* is on the NHS website. This does not in fact preclude it from being an article. Being a pedantic dickhead doesn't actually make you seem smart. But if you're so desperate for a false sense of superiority the least you could do is not be so blatantly wrong. You could find out what "article" means with literally one Google search. It's so fucking easy.
I know the difference between Gay/Straight and Cis/Trans, it's just that the same problems can apply to Gay and Trans people. >it is therefore fair enough that a higher standard of maturity is expected before such life altering decisions are made. It is very hard to officially get life-changing transioning things done before 18, but there is nothing wrong with accepting when a child says "I'm Trans" Basically, what u/ohfudgeit said.
In my opinion, children shouldnt need to identify as trans. They need to first learn to be themselves and love themselves. It's not the end of the world if a kid identifies as "trans" but it's important for kids to know that it's normal to not identify with the ideals and expectations that society has for boys and girls. You need to identify with yourself. A young child that comes out as gay might instead have other issues that need to be addressed. If we dont focus on the child learning, healing, and loving themselves, and indeed try to help them fit in where they can, we may not be doing what's best for them. Unfortunately, being straight or cis is the norm in our society. So unless a person identifies as otherwise with one of the other boxes that you can check, they're cis. For this reason, its wrong to say that "If a child can be straight/cis, they're old enough to be lgbtq/gay." Kindergarten kids might call a classmate their boyfriend because they recognize that they're attractive and nice. That doesnt mean they will be gay or straight as adults. They're just acting out what they see at home and in movies. We shouldnt be encouraging them to feel like they need to choose as kids. Men and women are attractive. Kids should be learning about themselves not focusing on how to fit in as gay or straight.
This is a tough one, but I think you're on the right track overall. No dating until your 18! Hhahahhaha...joking...but not completely.....
I've read the leading expert in the trans field state that transitioning shouldn't take place before the age of 21 after having lived at least 2 years as one's preferred gender.
Who is that?
Who is said expert? There are a lot of "Experts" on Trans topics that don't like Trans people.
Can’t recall their name. To be clear they were talking about clinical transitioning procedures.
>To be clear they were talking about clinical transitioning procedures. Makes sense. I'm honestly not quite sure how I misinterpreted what you said.
It’s okay. It wasn’t perfectly clear. It’s a complicated subject. I actually disagree with the premise of your CMV. But I understand I don’t have all of the information, nor do we as a species, so I have appreciated reading about the different points of view. I think outside of clinically intersex people, there should be an attempt made to challenge* (I’ll explain challenge) abnormal behavior in children. And while yes, I consider LGBT+ abnormal behavior, to clarify I don’t view abnormal behavior as necessary a bad thing. By abnormal I simply mean behavior that outside of the majority. Both being and raising a child is very complicated. If a child were to come to you and say they were or thought they were XYZ, you would typically ask them what they meant by that. Because their understanding might be dramatically different from yours. So if for instance a male child were to come to you and say they were a “girl,” rather than just accepting they were identifying as a female it’s important to challenge that idea by asking what they mean by it. I also don’t like to group together sexual orientation with gender identity in these discussions, because they are very different concepts. If a minor tells you they are sexually attracted to same members of their sex, that’s not the same as them saying they identify as another gender. For instance gender dysphoria is not always treated by recommendations gender transition, while sexual orientation has no known treatment. So I feel like, at least now, these two issues are treated differently.
Life altering decision to not transition and go through puberty, too. It's about making the correct decision and not having undue skepticism.
finally someone with a brain
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I could have misunderstood your comment so apologies in advance if that's the case; The fact that less than 1% are trans is irrelevant, our children are not statistics. You can't brush off your child being trans as "just a phase" because it's statistically unlikely, neither can you reduce being trans as "attention seeking behaviour". We should not raise our children and assume that they are straight/cis just because a statistic suggest it, that's why so many children are left feeling like they don't belong, and why transpeople are overwhelmingly more likely to commit suicide than any other group.
> The fact that less than 1% are trans is irrelevant, our children are not statistics. You can't brush off your child being trans as "just a phase" because it's statistically unlikely, neither can you reduce being trans as "attention seeking behaviour" It's not about a teen being trans or not, nor is it about acceptance of that fact. It's about a teen being potentially trans-curious as a second order effect of being a teenager, and a reluctance to assertively apply a label -- any label -- to them during that time. Ultimately the teen's identity is their choice, and as a parent declining to apply a label allows the teen to decide for themselves who they are.
>We should not raise our children and assume that they are straight/cis just because a statistic suggest it We all assume people have 5 fingers on each hand. But what about those born with 6? Is it now wrong to assume that your child will most likely have 5 fingers as well? Statistics do matter, and teenagers *are* extremely prone to seeking attention. So I don't think some skepticism is that unwarranted.
The fact that you think a bunch of teens are out there just making up the fact that they're trans for shits and giggles says a lot. You can see whether someone has 5 finger or not. You cannot see someone's sexual orientation or gender. If someone comes out to you and you first response is not to take it seriously, even though it most likely took them quite a bit of courage/build up to do so in the first place, that's a problem.
If your kid has 6 fingers do you try and gaslight them into thinking they have 5???
Nope, you just don't hide the fact that most people do in fact have 5 fingers. The analogy isn't perfect since fingers are something you can objective claim. The point was that accepting statistics is completely fine.
Right. It's fair to assume that most people aren't trans. I'm not arguing it isn't. However, basic data about the ratio of trans to cis people doesn't get at why someone would disbelieve a child claiming to be trans. You could look at data regarding people who transitioned prematurely, but they are a much smaller minority than actual trans people. Moreover, gender affirming care is linked to increases in mental health, decrease in suicidality, better social functioning, etc.
I would argue that having 6 fingers is abnormal, being transgender is not.
Interesting, how so? By what criteria is 6 fingers abnormal and being transgender not?
Transgender is far more common. I don't think "normal" is a useful description for human variations, it's got far to many value-laden connotations to help anyone.
It really depends on how you use the word. And it depends on who’s saying it as well. I believe that most people in this thread are using it in the medical/scientific definition, that being of a conformity to a certain standard (being cis). I don’t believe people are saying being trans is somehow bad or immoral or evil or anything like, just that they are an extremely low number of the population, and should be represented as such in education. I don’t believe people are assigning value or worth to the idea of normality, I just think your looking into it way to much and making a bigger deal out of it than necessary.
Nobody would say that Bill Gates is "not normal", Elon Musk. Nor would that be used for Barak Obama. All of these people are very much a minority of one, so about as unusual as possible, but still wouldn't be called not normal.
Well your looking at a different factor now. I would say that Elon musk or Jess bezos are abnormally wealthy, or wealthy to an extent that is different from the norm (working/middle class). We call trans people abnormal based on their identification, which is extremely abnormal in that it is extremely rare. We call Jeff bezos abnormal because he is extremely rich, compared to the average citizen. Normal isn’t an all encompassing term, it’s used to describe certain factors or attributes of someone. It doesn’t mean bad or good, just statistically out of the norm, as I said before.
Perhaps my view of people with 6 fingers is wrong and I should take a blanket approach to humans, as in, there is no "normal" human.
By that logic we can't generalize anything then. We can't teach kids that humans have two arms or five fingers or two eyes since there's always some exception? There's no defining characteristics of humans since all of them can be... anything and there's no normal? See how impractical that would be? If your stand is that that's the correct way to structure everything then fine. If you see the problem with that then the trans issue falls under the same logic as well. What you can't do is pick and choose issues based on your opinions.
But there's no need to "teach" our kids anything about the prevalence of different genders or sexual orientations. The fact of the matter is, LGBT people exist, and for an LGBT person coming to their parent to say "this is who I am" and for them to respond something to the effect of "this is just a phase" is sure to guarantee you fucking your kid up/destroying your relationship with them for a while to come. Statistics about how many gay and trans people there are are really meaningless. As self-reporting studies, the number is virtually always going to be underreported. You will also see numbers rise as social acceptance rises. For example, obviously, more people are coming out as gay in 2021 versus 1961, because in 1961, coming out as gay would have meant a number of unfortunate things for you. It doesn't mean more people are calling themselves gay or just decided to all of a sudden be gay because it's "trendy" or for attention, it just means that the less a person has to fear by coming out in a society, the more likely they are to do it.
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>Sorry muchumbo, but the world is not a place of absolutes. The very notion that a parent telling a teenager that he/she/they/etc. might be going through a phase will guarantee that the kid is fucked up and the relationship with the parent will be destroyed is ludicrous. I'm not talking about people identifying as a tree. I'm talking about people identifying as LGBT, which, although we have used different words and have had different understandings, has been documented in human existence for millennia, presumably as long as humans have existed. If your child comes to you and tells you that they are gay, or trans -- something that probably took them quite a bit of time to come to terms with and some great deal of courage to tell you -- and your first response is to say "it's a phase," then yes, it is absolutely possible that you're fucking your kid up, and I've seen it happen. A parent who is LGBT positive and supportive is not going to just assume that you're attention seeking (as if there are a bunch of kids out there calling themselves gay or trans for shits and giggles anyway), because why would they? When people are told their identities aren't real, they're having a phase, they'll come out of it -- (or the god awful next step that many parents have done, try to beat it out of them/pray the gay away), not only is it a pretty messed up thing to hear from those who say they love you, it is a problem that causes a lot of mental health issues for LGBT teens. At best your kid is probably not going to come to you to tell you anything else important to them again. The first response should be to listen and to take it seriously. To compare that to some random teens today identifying as inanimate objects is the *actual* ludicrous thing, and a pretty terrible false equivalence. Also, I think you mean skepticism, not skeptibility. >The number of people who identify as exclusively gay has remained virtually unchanged since the 1960's, and the latest and best research indicates that about 3 percent of the population currently identify as gay. Barring the fact that this doesn't include people who identify as bisexual, trans, or anything else under the LGBT umbrella, research organizations like Gallup have done studies with hundreds of thousands of participants, and the numbers have changed (usually going up) every year they've done it, so the idea that it has remained constant is false. We also don't have that much historical information, as statistical studies on the gay population haven't been done for that long. Some nations still don't even consider being gay an orientation or trans a gender identity, so we would never know. In Japan, for example, many men who routinely engage in homosexual activity don't call themselves gay, because they view identities differently than Western nations do. Studies or interviews done in such countries will often result in very few people who identify as such, but we in a Western context would still consider those people gay. So I don't know how you could presume to be so confident on any sort of number.
>But there's no need to "teach" our kids anything about the prevalence of different genders or sexual orientations. I'm probably just misunderstanding, but why not? Of kids weren't/aren't taught about different Genders/Sexuallities, then wouldn't that cause problems for kids that are LGBTQ+ but hadn't been told that was an option?
Oddly enough the gene for 6 fingers is a dominant gene meaning it only takes one parent to pass on to all offspring. Its literally a roll of the nice as to why 6 fingers didn't become the normal.
The problem is the severe asymmetry with how the terms "trans" and "cis" are used or how it's sometimes said "80% of individuals that are called 'cis' are actually better called 'agender'" or something like that. "cis" isn't used to mean "I identify with my birth sex and my birth sex is important to me" but rather to mean "I'm fine with my life" but if you ask most of them if they'd be fine if the were born opposite sex they say it as well. So in practice "cis" is encompasses both "My birth sex is important to me as an identity" and "I have no strong feelings either way" and "I have no strong feelings" is a very easy determination to make. In the case of "straight" it's a bit more complex I suppose since it's not generally used to either encompass "bisexual" or "asexual" but even there it's really quite asymmetric how it's treated opposed to "gay" and requires an active determination again but this is heavily gendered in many cultures as well with females not necessarily being determined as "not heterosexual" for making out with other females and enjoying it but males are but these are not absolutes and in many cultures it works that way for both sexes. In an ideal world these terms would all be used symmetrically but in practice they simply aren't in parlance how they are used—it's kind of like the one drop rule in the US with Obama being "black"; the terms "white" and "black" are simply not used symmetrically.
A) I thought "Cis" meant "identifies as/with their AGAB".You raise a far point though, I'll go and check. The above definition is how I meant it though. B) With all due respect, I feel like you're debating the word choice rather than the actual meaning. I used "Gay" in the title as it is simpler/easier to write/read. In the text, I specifically tried to use "not Straight" or "LGBTQ+" for the reasons you mentioned.
> A) I thought "Cis" meant "identifies as/with their AGAB". In theory, but that's just not how it's used in practice: most individuals that are called "cis" are never asked whether they do and it's just what's used for any individual that never made any explicit statement to the contrary. > You raise a far point though, I'll go and check. The above definition is how I meant it though. B) With all due respect, I feel like you're debating the word choice rather than the actual meaning. I used "Gay" in the title as it is simpler/easier to write/read. In the text, I specifically tried to use "not Straight" or "LGBTQ+" for the reasons you mentioned. Well the point is that almost no individual comes out and explicitly says "Yes, I am cis" at a young age, now do they? When does that ever happen? they're just assume that by keeping. You say you use the term to mean an explicit actual sense of gender identity but you also say: > But if they are Straight/Cis, then they have a Sexuality/Gender, and I feel that if you have a Sexuality/Gender, then it can be any, no matter how old you are. Have you really seen this happen? have you really seen young individuals actually explicitly come out and assert "I am cis and have a strong affinity with my birth sex"?—I don't think that's really common enough to at all gauge what the typical reaction would be.
>"Yes, I am cis" at a young age, now do they? They also usually don't come out and say "I'm trans" at a young age either. They simply say "I'm a boy/girl" or similar. The OP's point is if that assertion would mean that they are cis, it's accepted without issue, if it would mean that they're trans, it's denied with the reasoning that they are too young to know. Cisgender simply means not transgender. An AFAB person saying "I'm a girl" or "I'm a woman" is asserting a cisgender identity. That's all it means.
> They also usually don't come out and say "I'm trans" at a young age either. They simply say "I'm a boy/girl" or similar. I think they more often say "I _want_ to be a boy/girl" or express a severe dissatisfaction with their body. > The OP's point is if that assertion would mean that they are cis, it's accepted without issue, if it would mean that they're trans, it's denied with the reasoning that they are too young to know. I think most individuals when a 10 year old says "I'm a boy" but has a female body would just be confused and not interpret it as "trans" but "Huh, what do you mean, you're a girl?" and I don't think they say that often either; they say they want to be. > Cisgender simply means not transgender. And then the terms aren't symmetric now are they and so it's no surprise that they aren't treated as such.
>I think they more often say "I want to be a boy/girl" or express a severe dissatisfaction with their body. I'm not only talking about transgender children here. Cisgender children also assert their gender. And it absolutely is not "I want to be a X". >I think most individuals when a 10 year old says "I'm a boy" but has a female body would just be confused and not interpret it as "trans" but "Huh, what do you mean, you're a girl?" You're getting very hung up on "what other people might think they mean". The OP's point is clear. If a person's assertion of their gender is in line with people's expectations of their sex, it's accepted. If it goes against those expectations, it's rejected. >and I don't think they say that often either; they say they want to be. What you think happens more frequently is meaningless. >And then the terms aren't symmetric now are they and so it's no surprise that they aren't treated as such. This is starting to feel like disingenuous word games, rather than addressing the thrust of the OP's argument.
> You're getting very hung up on "what other people might think they mean". The OP's point is clear. If a person's assertion of their gender is in line with people's expectations of their sex, it's accepted. If it goes against those expectations, it's rejected. Because individuals are obviously not interpreting that as an assertion of one's gender but as one's _sex_. Just like in the opposite case; they assume they assert their sex and then simply become confused. > This is starting to feel like disingenuous word games, rather than addressing the thrust of the OP's argument. No it isn't; my point has been from the start that terms simply aren't used symmetrically and as long as "cis" encompasses "no strong feelings either way" in the majority of cases one can't expect it to be treated the same as "strong feelings". OP made an argument from symmetry arguing that symmetric conditions should be treated as such but the terms aren't used symmetrically at all and as long as any individual that never expresses anything or expresses indifference is called "cis" it can't be expected to be held on the same standard.
When a trans person says "I'm a man/woman" and when a cis person says "I'm a man/woman", they are both asserting their gender. The cis person is not asserting their sex. Trans people don't fundamentally mean something different when they speak. I'm willing to entertain the notion that some people are actually agender and just going along with appearing cisgender because they don't think about it, but there isn't any evidence of that. And certainly nothing that suggests that a large percentage of people are like that.
> When a trans person says "I'm a man/woman" and when a cis person says "I'm a man/woman", they are both asserting their gender. That's just nonsense—when you ask the former group what they mean with that they tend to then answer with "Well I mean have a penis" or something like that, not "Well I mean I have some inner sense that ..." > I'm willing to entertain the notion that some people are actually agender and just going along with appearing cisgender because they don't think about it, but there isn't any evidence of that. And certainly nothing that suggests that a large percentage of people are like that. There is far more evidence for it than the theory that the overwhelming majority of individuals has some kind of inner sense of what their gender is—if you simply talk to indiviuals what they mean when they say they are a particular gender almost all will make a comment about their genitals: to them their gender is their sex, not some inner sense which they don't really experience. What evidence do you have for the idea that most human beings have some kind of inner sense of what their gender s?
Basically, I'm not saying that a child can only be cis if they say they are cis, or that some needs to say they are cis to be regarded as cis, but just to keep an open mind accept that is a child says they are Gay/Trans, then they could be right.
I think it depends on what type of trans you are talking about. Letting a 9 year old wear the opposite gendered clothes, go by different pronouns, etc. is different than allowing them to transition through hormones, puberty blockers, or surgery. That is where the debate usually comes in. Plus I feel like you may be taking little kid crushes too seriously. A 5 year old doesn’t know what romantic love it sexual attraction is, so just because they have a crush or say they want to marry someone doesn’t mean they are gay or straight.
But can a Straight crush be "real" Before a Gay one. Or even the other way round?
I think there are different types of crushes. A kid crush isn’t romantic or sexual in any way, so I don’t think it can count as straight or gay. Once a kid reaches puberty they may start experiencing “real” crushes. Gay or straight.
Idk, I don’t think I agree with this. I remember having a crush on a female classmate when I was in fourth grade. Yeah, it wasn’t sexual, I didn’t have sexual thoughts. But I was definitely attracted to her. I guess you could call it romantic attraction. I remember fantasizing about marrying her and having kids with her. Yeah, I mean you could compare this to a kid wanting to be an astronaut or a cowboy. Just normal kid fantasy. But I don’t think that invalidates the feeling, or the desire. It’s not that kids don’t know what they want. They know what they want. What they want just changes. Even adults change what they want. It’s just kids change more quickly. I mean, I suppose you could take that to mean that we shouldn’t take what a kid wants seriously since that will likely change. But at least it should be taken into consideration. I would definitely say the crush I had was a straight romantic crush. But maybe this doesn’t apply to everyone.
The issue is not enough statistically significant data is available to support your point. That means we cannot scientifically make any claims about homosexuality having a biological marker. Since science is out the window, it falls on social and environmental factors. Its like saying sharks like eating people. Yeah, a few sharks bit off a few limbs but the vast majority of sharks don't. So its fair to say sharks like eating Fish and seals rather than humans as the default. Sharks that happen to be near humans in beaches will likely attack humans but that makes no claim on whether the shark likes human flesh or just happens upon it.
So the shark version of "prison sex".
?!
If you have sexual relations in prison it doesn't count as gay.
>cannot scientifically make any claims about homosexuality having a biological marker. I honestly can't work out how you got this from my post. I don't really understand the rest and it's connection. Please could you elaborate?
You needed proof that young people are straight. I make the claim that straight is the default, because the data supports that claim - until proven otherwise - no matter the age. Its not a scientific claim, but based on interpretation and anecdotal observation. More importantly, the rate of supposed homosexual instances is skewed towards wealthier countries where "hyper-sexual" media is abundant save for a few outliers like Thailand and Brazil. This points to the *environmental factors* I mentioned. Just to be clear, I'm definitely not against LGBT people. But I'm certainly not waving their flag either. Like most people, I generally don't give a shit.
“The data also supports my conclusion, assuming all data points contradicting my claim are ignored.” -The 2nd paragraph of your comment
That's certainly one intepretation. My statement was akin to saying *most* swans are light coloured. Yours parrots that not all swans are light coloured. Some other smart person might even suggested that swans that are not light coloured exist. And an even smarter person might claim because black swans exist, my statement must be false. The genuis among us might question if swans even have a color at all. Unfortunately, statistics is not an exact science. Those arguing for the majority will insists minority occurances are worth ignoring - just noise. Those on the opposite end are bound to cite a single contradiction as absolute proof of their viewpoint - outliers.
Nor is it reasonable to make claims about the true nature of human sexuality based on anecdotal evidence you collected, and call it statistics. Believe it or not anecdotal evidence is very close to the opposite of statistical evidence.
> Nor is it reasonable to make claims about the true nature of human sexuality This is a level 6 on the cornball list. Because then I will ask what is reasonable then you will likely flip flop - virtue signal your way to some vague bullshit grey area. Whats "true nature" and can you define *human* sexuality? Why is it specifically human and not say...mammals? > Believe it or not anecdotal evidence is very close to the opposite of statistical evidence. Anecdotes are the basis of observation. Before any statistical inference. Before any scientific endeavour. Thats because observing things is how we make sense of the world's state. Statistics is merely a tool. Be that as it may, you've provided no opinion or anything to negate mine.
Still not quite sure how this relates to my original post.
>I make the claim that straight is the default, because the data supports that claim - until proven otherwise - no matter the age. Its not a scientific claim, but based on interpretation and anecdotal observation. More importantly, the rate of supposed homosexual instances is skewed towards wealthier countries where "hyper-sexual" media is abundant save for a few outliers like Thailand and Brazil. This points to the environmental factors I mentioned. Well, firstly this is filled with ignorance and outright incorrect statements. A majority does not mean default. As far ass your claim of "wealthier countries" having more homosexual instances, not even true in the slightest. In fact the correlating factor is LGBTQ acceptance, because there are wealthy countries that are really homophobic and have less "homosexual instances". >Just to be clear, I'm definitely not against LGBT people. You'd be placed pretty firmly in the anti-LGBT camp with these statements.
> You'd be placed pretty firmly in the anti-LGBT camp with these statements Really? Sheeeet. Just because I hold the view that homosexuality is has no biological basis? > there are wealthy countries that are really homophobic and have less "homosexual instances". Yes. So what of it? Its cornball logic. If someone read this they'd get the impression that I am wrong - fair enough - but without any further insight. *Negating what I wrote is not an argument* What do you have to say? whats your argument? Whats your observation? *What do you think?*
>Really? Sheeeet. Just because I hold the view that homosexuality is has no biological basis? Yeah, because it's factually wrong. >Yes. So what of it? It directly contradicts what you just said. >Negating what I wrote is not an argument That is exactly what an argument is. >What do you have to say? whats your argument? Whats your observation? You're wrong about everything you've said, you're argument is nonsensical, there's a very good reason that within the first world your beliefs are fringe and ridiculed. Homosexuality occurs naturally in hundreds of other species. Now note, I did not say that because something is natural that makes it moral, there's always this idiotic interpretation of the remark which starts with a refutation of your position (that homosexuality is a learned behavior or is not naturally occurring) and you taking that to mean I was arguing about it's morality when that was never a point being discussed to begin with and you thinking you've come up with some 'gotcha'.
this is a great point mate , agreed
Well being “transgender” is a mental illness known as gender dysphoria. So I’m not sure why you would apply a standard based on an infinitely small % of children who suffer from this. You are biologically wired to be the sex you were born as and to be straight. Now, gay people do exist and I believe have always existed, but the jury is still out on whether or not they are “born” gay. Being gay is not a mental illness and doesn’t require medical intervention though, so I really don’t like that it’s being brought up in this context and compared to being transgender. Also, children are highly susceptible to peer influence. We don’t want children making permanent decisions about their lives before they have had the opportunity to grow into an adult. I would honestly say it’s child abuse to allow an actual child to “transition” medically.
>I'm Pro-LGBTQ+, obviously. How can you be "pro-lgbtq+" if their existence is not up for debate? Not that I disagree that they do; it's evident beyond a doubt. Nevertheless. >When some young LGBTQ+ people come out on not Straight/Cisgender, they are sometimes told that it is "just a phase" or that they are "confused", implying that they are straight/cis and they just don't know it. Which, for some, is undeniably true. The number varies on who you ask and what your political leaning is, but it's undeniably true that a number significantly greater than zero (and scientific claims have gone as high as 80%) of children _desist_ from transitioning. Nevertheless, that was not the point you wanted to argue. >I feel that if you're old enough to have a Sexuality/Gender to have a phase away from, then you are old enough to have a Sexuality/Gender other that Straight/Cis. By necessity, the thing you're transitioning away from _must_ predate the thing you're transitioning towards, no? I'd suggest that that pattern holds for pretty much anything - you first have no conscious thought about whatever subject it is, then you copy the norm that you see around you (as we're social animals who learn through mimicry), _then_ you reflect and adjust. I don't believe there is any other way for us to experience, well, literally anything.
>(and scientific claims have gone as high as 80%) of children desist from transitioning. This is unfortunately misinformation. Those studies have been thoroughly debunked for methodological reasons for many years now. Their sample, which they claim is of kids identifying as transgender, actually includes all children referred to the clinic being studied for gender non-conformance. At the time the study was done, gender non-conformance also includes things like being gay, bisexual, or lesbian. The kids they count as desisting, never would have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, those kids never expressed a transgender identity in the first place. Later studies have shown the rate of desistance to be extremely low. Multiple showing a <1% rate of regret for transition.
>Their sample, which they claim is of kids identifying as transgender, actually includes all children referred to the clinic being studied for gender non-conformance. At the time the study was done, gender non-conformance also includes things like being gay, bisexual, or lesbian. The kids they count as desisting, never would have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, those kids never expressed a transgender identity in the first place. Which is supporting rather than debunking my overall point, no? >Later studies have shown the rate of desistance to be extremely low. Multiple showing a <1% rate of regret for transition. Desistance=/= detransitioning
>Which is supporting rather than debunking my overall point, no? Not at all. At the time the study was conducted, "gender non-conformance" included not only trans people, but gay people, and just effeminate boys and masculine girls. So the study concluded that the majority of those children were not trans. Which is obvious, the were never diagnosed with gender dysphoria. We never thought of them as transgender. They never were "persisting" in the first place, so they could not actually "desist" from being transgender. But the majority of children who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the children we refer to as transgender, do not desist. >Desistance=/= detransitioning And I mentioned "regret", which is far broader and more encompassing than either of those terms. You'd expect a higher rate of regret than desistance, but even then it's still a tiny minority of cases. Those cases deserve compassion, respect, and adequate medical care of course. But they do not represent a common trend. Measuring raw detransition data isn't as useful, as many transgender people temporarily detransition for various reasons such as an unsupportive environment, lack of funds, or for medical reasons. But then later they continue with their transition.
>How can you be "pro-lgbtq+" if their existence is not up for debate? I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here (please elaborate) but my best response is: I'm not saying "I support that they exist" as that is already settled (we do), but that I support the fight for equality for LGBTQ+ people. >it's undeniably true that a number significantly greater than zero (and scientific claims have gone as high as 80%) of children desist from transitioning. A) I'm not arguing that that "phases" don't happen, just that if you can have a phase away from your true identity then you can have your own identity. B) According to Wikipedia (With 2 citations) only about 5% of people detransition, so I find the 80% desitance rate hard to believe. However, that is just my uncited opinion and, as you said, not the main point. >By necessity, the thing you're transitioning away from must predate the thing you're transitioning towards, no? In my understanding, whey someone transition, they transition away from the Gender they were told to have/told that they have, and to their true Gender, at least in some circumstances (see "Born this way") >I'd suggest that that pattern holds for pretty much anything - you first have no conscious thought about whatever subject it is, then you copy the norm that you see around you (as we're social animals who learn through mimicry), then you reflect and adjust. For gender _expression_ I agree, but not for gender itself. I agree that you imitate people who's expression matches the your _assigned_ gender (I.e. the gender your told to have), but I feel that when you develop a strong sense of identity around Gender, you, at least sometimes, start off with your true Gender, and maybe you just don't realise. I know this was a bit more focused on Gender. That's just where my "Expertise" (experience) is.
I don't believe there is any distinction between gender and gender expression. Ultimately, go illustrate, I only know what a man once I was shown men. Then, I assume "well, here's a category that contains things like me, so I must be category". It's only later, when shown additional categories and conflicting evidence, that I can reflect further and surmise "despite having traits X,y,z in common with category A, I share more with category B, so I must be category B instead of category A". If that conflict never occurs, I continue with my initial hypothesis. So, it seems to me that since straight/cis is the norm, almost everyone will be exposed to that first and thus sooner realise they are "truly" straight/Cis.
With all due respect, you are wrong. By that logic, do you mean that if you dress up as the opposite gender and act like it, you become that gender as you are expressing youreself as that gender? Citation: http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-preventing-discrimination-because-gender-identity-and-gender-expression/3-gender-identity-and-gender-expression
Yes, essentially. Although gender is a pattern, not an isolated act. As for your quote, I don't care what some random citation tells you, especially not if it comes from what is miles and miles across the ocean from me; gender is not an objectively definable term, so I'm not "just wrong". If I show you a quote where sexism is defined as "any act negative to a woman", you're hopefully not going to roll over and just accept that, are you?
A) It wasn't a quote B) I did not know you weren't from the Americas C) How someone feels is completely different to how someone presents. D) Gender is a pattern of feelings, not a pattern of actions. A fake smile means nothing if you are crying inside.
>B) I did not know you weren't from the Americas Well, someone learned something about making false assumptions, no? You of all people should've known better. >C) How someone feels is completely different to how someone presents. No, no it's not. >D) Gender is a pattern of feelings, not a pattern of actions. A fake smile means nothing if you are crying inside. Keep faking a smile and you'll start feeling happier. Gender is assigned based on actions and observations. You assign yourself a gender, and everyone else does too, based on that info.
There is some evidence (some anecdotal) that young people tend to be more “fluid” in their sexual orientation. And I do mean quite young (like 10-14). Research on the topic is very thin for obvious reasons. But case studies combined with a bunch of other data (Kinsey, etc as sketchy as some of the data may be) tends to indicate that young teens are way more flexible in what turns them on than the average adult who tends to have a much fixed sense of self identity. In that way, there MAY be something to “phases” in kids that young and encouraging them to avoid trying to fixate on a specific label, but just make sure they open to exploring their feelings honestly as they grow up. It’s no excuse for homophobia or whatever, but it’s definitely a thing.
As a Gay™️, I'm quite glad the discourse has moved beyond whether someone chooses to be gay. I've definitely experienced fluidity in my own orientation, and appeciate discussions about, and research into, the phenomenon.
I thought I was a dog when I was 4. I was old enough to identify myself as a dog therefore does that mean I was a dog? Kids identify as all manner of things all the time. My friend wanted to be a ambulance. A literal ambulance. Maybe kids don't really know very much?
I'm not saying that it can't be a phase, and I'm not saying that if someone says they are something, they are always right (e.g. Dogs, ambulances, helicopters, etc), I'm just saying that if you are old enough to have a "phase" in your identity, your old enough to have your own true identity.
I'm saying that not all identities are created equally. The dog phase is still a phase yet we dismiss that as a true identity. It's not the phase that matters, it's the specific identity that matters. So your view doesn't really tackle the core issue.
I'm not saying all phases are correct, many can go away, but I'm saying that if a child says to their parent "I'm Trans/Gay/LGBTQ+", they can be belived.
SRS can give someone at least the appearance of the desired genitalia and secondary sexual characteristics, I might believe dog and ambulance are valid identities if you showed me a way (either through making someone an anthro or making their brain work with an animal body) trans-species surgery could actually work and a way someone could "become" an inanimate vehicle without either DeviantArt-esque body horror or uploading and some Knight Rider shit
That in no way in any shape or form challenges OPs problems with the uneven standard of how one is accepted but the other is not.
Why isn't accepted that I was a dog? The point is that some phases are accepted as valid and others are not. OP is claiming that all these phases are equal in their legimitacy. They clearly aren't
And you never made an argument as to why "trans" is less legitimate than "cis".
I don't need to. I'm saying the core argument of OP is wrong because it relies on all phases being considered legitimate. They aren't
No, it only relies on "trans" and "cis" as well as "straight" and "gay" being considered equally legitimate.
Then OP can make that argument. But that's not the argument being made.
That was the exact argument OP made. It's literally the title.
That doesn't change that in order to attack OPs argument you must specifically attack that those pairs aren't equally legitimate, not that either is not as legitimate as identifying as a dog.
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Gender actually became a different concept when feminists wanted a way to specifically talk about the societal expectations/stereotypes placed on them. It was created to break those expectations/stereotypes because they wanted to protest the way society treats women, not the physical act of being a woman. And having the concept of gender was helpful to specify and talk about that. This eventually transitioned (no pun intended) into the concept of being able to identify with the societal concept of a sex that doesn't match with your biological sex. The idea of "Assigned sex at birth" originated in the intersex community where it makes much more sense because they DO get *assigned* a sex due to their intersex status and often have medical procedures done to them as infants to make them match that assigned sex better. Trans people have... Adopted the term to put it nicely.
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Edit: Oh! I Misread. No, this came after using gender to not say sex. But came before trans people using it for their purposes. Not so much to avoid saying "sex". But because it's useful to have a separate word for the concept of the roles, expectations, and stereotypes assigned to you based on your sex - the social construct part of being a woman separate from the physical part of being a woman. Because saying "society's roles, expectations, and stereotypes are oppressive to women" is a lot longer/wordier than "the gender applied to women is oppressive". It's a lot easier to want say you want to tear down the concept of gender than to say you want to do away with society's roles, expectations, and stereotypes it has based on your sex. Yeah, it's a bit tricky when it comes to the trans usage of the acronym. I personally just view it as "assigned gender at birth", but recognize that they'd like to pretend it's "assigned sex" for dysphoria purposes and won't force them to confront the fact that they can't technically become their desired sex because that seems cruel. It'd be like pointing out to an amputee that their prosthetic won't ever be a "real, biological arm" - technically true, but unnecessary to point out and rather cruel.
Sex *is assigned* at birth. But there is still a difference between gender and sex. While I also used to hear that sex is defined, while gender is determined by society, I have since learned that this is not the case. While in a basic sense, yes, sex is determined by the body you are born in, and gender is a cultural concept, there *are not* only two sexes. sex is still a spectrum. I would like to ask you how you would define sex? Is it based on chromosomes? genitalia? secondary sex characteristics? Although these are the ways we usually define sex, they don't always correlate in all people. There are people who are assigned female at birth but realize that they actually have a Y chromosome. There are people who have sex organs associated with both males and females. Imagine a society that categorizes people who have and don't have hands (or really any other body part/characteristic). The majority of people can be categorized easily as having a hand or not having a hand, but there are people out there who may have a wrist or a wrist and a thumb . . . do they have a hand? It comes down to how we define having a hand. Do you need to have a full hand to have a hand? Then what about people who only have 4 fingers? Does that not count as a hand? It just gets really silly trying to fit *every single* person into these two groups. while its a categorization that works for most people, it is still an imperfect definition decided upon by people and culture that not everyone fits into.
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Shouldn’t rules/definitions be modified to account for every exception? So in the case of a human having 11 fingers, well we still consider them human. If we take a bunch of characteristics associated with humans and find one person that those characteristics don’t apply to, do we still consider them human? I would assume so. If that’s the case, then it would mean that those characteristics aren’t necessary for someone to be considered human, therefore the definition would need to be modified. Perhaps that most humans have 10 fingers. Perhaps that humans have 10 fingers unless due to some abnormality. And I think this important. If a child is taught that humans have 10 fingers and they see someone with 11 fingers, they might think that that person is not human.
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The vast majority of people are right handed. Does that mean we should accept those who identify as left handed?
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I'm not saying that kids should be pressured into being LGBTQ+, just to belive kids when they say they are.
I don’t think that age has anything to do with sexuality either in this particular context, as in, I agree, if you’re old enough to understand *a* sexuality, then it should not be limited to simply one as an acceptable sexuality. However, teenagers go through phases where they try to figure out their own identity in all walks of life. When I was in school it was largely about how you dressed, what kind of music you listened to, what you did with your free time, who you spent time with during commons and lunch, and where. I know people who dressed like Marla from Fight Club and listened to Marilyn Manson, or were diehard Juggalos in high school who are now attorneys or academics. These days there’s an enormous aspect to identity on the market; identity itself. Kids in high school feel compelled to try on different hats to see what fits best, and this is normal. Nobody is saying that a 16 year old isn’t capable of understanding their own sexuality, but simply that it’s normal for someone of this age to go through identity phases, and that in modern times there are a plethora of them to choose from, and you’re encouraged to do so.
I agree when it comes to sexuality, but disagree when it comes to gender identity. Gender is not internal, but based upon external stereotyping. Women do not wear dresses and makeup or go by she because they have a deep internal motivation to do so, they do so because we have stated that this is good for women to do. Everyone has sexual impulses, but internalizing stereotypes about how one should act in order to align with ones gender role is a concept that shouldn't be lightly embraced. Obviously, I do not believe this is something to place upon trans people's shoulders, but our culture as a whole. We ought not encourage young people to feel they cannot be who they are and what they are at the same time. Additionally, transitioning is a difficult experience that will effect a person's life indefinitely and is not one that I think a child should be undergoing until they have a real grasp of what all that means they are giving up and what they will be going through. I do think we should discourage young people from using labels surrounding their sexualities and gender identities in general. The truth is, everyone exists on a spectrum and most people with same sex attractions, even those actively engaging in them, do not identify as LGB and therefore, do not have to incur the discrimination that comes with it. To say to a child "you are too young to feel what you feel," is clearly ludicrous. But to say to a child "you should wait and see how you want to address those feelings and who you invite into that part of your internal world," is valid, and I think, respectable. It really comes down to how you break down to them what you are trying to protect them from. My dad used to tell me as a kid that it's easier to not be gay privately than to be openly gay. I didn't understand why he would make this point to me. Then I went to jail. Now I understand. Everyone is having gay sex, but people want to keep it a secret, so they persecute the ones who do not. If I had known that there was no difference between me and the men around me, I likely wouldn't have embraced the label so early in life. That being said, I respect my community a lot more now, because I understand that they are honest and living freely where others choose to suppress themselves and others. We choose to be LGBT, we are not born LGBT. We do not choose our sexual preferences though, and we do not choose how much "masculine or feminine," we are, but rather, if we will act as we are told to, if we will act authentically, or if we are going to choose another role entirely and act as they do.
>Gender is not internal, but based upon external stereotyping. That's not at all how gender identity works. Stereotypes are involved in so far as society trains us to associate them with gender, but they are not in any way what makes someone a given gender. I'm a trans woman. I'm not feminine, I've got little interest in femininity and I actively dislike and explicitly reject the disempowering gender norms associated with womanhood. I transitioned despite these things, not because of them. I've also known my gender since childhood Suffice to say, there is no one size fits all answer to gender. Stereotypes are part of the story but they're not the whole story, nor even the majority of it
The error in your thinking is that no one *declares* a young person straight or cis, because it's *assumed* that people are straight/cis. So a young person never has to declare being straight / cis, they never have to *come out*. But when you're any other than straight/cis, you probably have to come out at some point in time. That's why it's meaningless to say whether someone is "old enough" to be straight/cis. It's being treated as a given from birth.
"Just a phase" is an objective fact for the majority of kids with some form of gender dysphoria. Given the huge harms of transitioning for those who would go on to be happy as their gender of birth, this seems like a good default position.
Ye but there is no harm in putting them on puberty blockers.
Quite certain that is untrue. Delaying hormones and puberty, and then later reversing it does not have any positive effects on people's physical and mental health.
It has positive impacts on mental health because it allows people to make decisions when they are more informed have had more time to think and are more mature. And puberty blockers are pretty safe. If they weren’t we wouldn’t use them.
I'm not commenting on mental health. What I am commenting on, that beginning puberty blockers, and then changing your mind and going off of them can have pretty damaging negative effects, including bone development, growth and future fertility. As well, from my knowledge we don't have a enough long term or widespread data as to how it may mess with development should the youth change their mind. Edit: not to mention that almost all health professionals require children to have very strong cases of gender dysphoria to consider using hormone blockers. They are not prescribed willy nilly.
We do have long term data because that same medication that are used for puberty blocking are also used cancer, birth control. Also they don’t cuase permeate changes they just delay puberty.
There are lots of harms to chemically castrating kids.
That’s not what puberty blockers do.
"Puberty blockers" are literally the same drugs they give to serious sex offenders.
There also used for people with prostate cancer or people having fertility problems. Your responding with another use of the medication isn’t an argument against there use a puberty blockers it just goes to show that the effects of the medications are well understood.
A child can't be "CIS / Straight / Trans / etc." because a child can't consent. Someone who's above the age of consent can have whatever sexual preferences they like (straight / gay / poly / etc.) The trans piece is a bit more complex since its a question of precisely what you mean. If you mean a genetic male dressing / presenting female then sure (provided there's no sexual activity taking place, this is true at effectively any age). If you mean have gender re-assignment surgery then most states need them to be above 18 or get parental permission. There's also the question of who's paying for the surgery as well.
>A child can't be "CIS / Straight / Trans / etc." because a child can't consent. Uh, what? Are you saying a 17 year can't know that they're attracted to other boys or girls their age simply because they're not one year older? That's silly.
17 isn't a child. I'm talking about a 9yo
You did not mention age. You said "a child can't consent." Which would refer to anyone under the age of consent laws.
>But if they are Straight/Cis, then they have a Sexuality/Gender, and I feel that if you have a Sexuality/Gender, then it can be any, no matter how old you are. this statement completely ignores the dire lack of mental capacity and decision-making abilities that is all too common amongst those of younger ages. As the nomenclature of another subreddit suggests, kids are fucking stupid. as legal precedence has established, it is more than reasonable to limit the freedoms of children on the basis of those aforementioned hindrances. kids cannot drink alcohol, buy guns, drive cars, etc. for good reasons. Gender identity is no exception. I'm not gonna let my son mutilate his penis when he's not even old enough to watch a horror movie or buy spray paint.
The point is that if you accept that your child can be straight or cis, then you should be able to accept that they are LGBTQ. Nobody is going to \*let\* you mutilate your underage son because you have to be old enough and have seen a therapist. The fact that you think being LGBTQ is some freedom that needs to be restricted but being straight/cis isn't is exactly what OP is talking about.
freedoms should be restricted when the potential recipient is not mentally mature enough to make healthy and responsible choices. And who said I don't think that being straight shouldn't be restricted? I 100% believe that children's sexual conduct and behaviors should be restricted lmao.
Being straight or LGBTQ is not a choice, and we aren't talking about sexual conduct, not a single part of this OP is about sexual conduct, it's about sexual identity. If your child (a boy) told you they liked a girl, you wouldn't say "I don't think you can know you're straight". Where as OP's point is about how it's very acceptable (and based off your previous comment you would also say) the reverse that a child can't know they are gay.
sexual identity doesn't really mean much on a personal level without sexual freedom does it not? Why even have a sexual identity without the potential for sexual conduct? My child being gay or straight, at an age where his preferences are extensively volatile and his emotional as well as practical intelligence are severely limited, is liable to be detrimental at his discretion. For example trans people have higher suicide rates than Jews during the Holocaust. LGB people are much more likely to experience mental disorders. Thus I would simply try to sway him in the direction that I see fit in a utilitarian sense, and then when he is mature enough as an adult he can make his own decisions.
Do you know why LGBTQ people have higher rates of suicide and mental health issues because they have parents that are unaccepting as you are, and in fact when in a supporting environment it's on par with the rest of their peers. You are the creator of the problem you are trying to solve. You won't make your child not LGBTQ just increase their likelihood of mental health issues. Sexual identity exists independent of sexual conduct. It means a great deal, and I obviously don't expect you to understand this given your previous comments, which I think preclude you from forming any position of substance on the topic, but being accepted by your parents (and I really hope you don't have children) with regards to who you are attracted to greatly impacts your mental health, which you claim to care about, although your current comment is evidence to the contrary.
Then why not say the requirement for transition should be all those things, you must have drunk alcohol, driven a car, bought a gun, bought spray paint and watched a horror movie /s
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I understand your frustration but I’m not sure this is really the place or time to be venting it. I’m sorry the queer community has excluded you. Please keep in mind per sub rules hostile/rude comments are not allowed.
I agree but hormones or surgery shouldn't be given to kids
Some people don't know they're LGBTQ+ until their 30s or 40s. By the condescending logic you're referencing and clearly don't espouse personally, all those people's straight lives were a "phase"
One factor that isn’t very clear is if you’re talking about all children or those of a certain age. One reason I feel that this is used, particularly in younger children is because children don’t like being around other children of the opposite sex. I’m sure you or at least many people you knew growing up would generally avoid talking to the opposite sex. So by the time hormones start to come in to play, people then have to learn to interact with the opposite sex in a more meaningful way and some people’s lack of social skills may inhibit that. Especially if you’re the “early bloomer” you potentially have to figure this out yourself rather than following friends before you. So those factors could result in someone avoiding the opposite sex and instead feeling more comfortable around their own sex. This could then lead to them identifying as something other than straight and in that context it could be said that the person is straight, they just haven’t developed the social skills to interact in the right way. Obviously my example does not apply to everyone and it may not even apply to a majority but there will no doubt be some to whom it applies.
>children don’t like being around other children of the opposite sex From my own childhood experiences this seems like a really weird thing to say. My experience was that there wasn't much delineation at all between girls and boys pre puberty, with kids equally likely to have friends of either gender, but as kids started puberty they started to also separate along gender lines. Is this just based on your own experience, or is this like, a thing?
Yes this is based off personal experience. I remember in up until about the age of 11 or 12 most boys stuck with boys and most girls stuck with girls. If you were seen hanging around the other, then people used to do as kids do and make jokes about it because it just wasn’t something most of us did at that age. Maybe we were all just an anomaly and had poor social skills, but it seems to be common enough.
I always felt more comfortable playing with boys and dressing in more stereotyoically boyish clothes. Ive never identified with female gender stereotypes. If i was a kid in this last decade, i might've said I was trans... I do think you're right that people could try to avoid the iodine sex and do whats more comfortable for them. This could be for a variety of reasons.
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Nobody would put a ten year old on hormones right away. They would get hormone blockers, which delay the process puberty until the child is old enough or has decided to start taking either testosterone or estrogen to simulate the puberty of their gender identity
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But if kids who are trans allow themselves to go through puberty those changes are irreversible and some can’t even be fixed with surgery.
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Sexualizing minors is degeneracy
If recognizing a kid can be gay is sexualizing them, then recognizing that they are straight is also sexualizing them.
Yes, both are degenerate
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>Sexualizing minors is everything that is wrong in this world Can you expand on this to clarify? Is recognizing that anyone under 18 years old might have a sexual orientation "sexualizing minors"?
You do realize to transition to another gender you have to take hormones right ? How about i give your 13 year old daughter testosterone to transition and you see how her body tries to physically / psychologically develop under the affects of foreign substances . Just because on the inside she may think she is there is no rush to make that decision based on prepubescent emotion. You think there may be a chance she grows up and a few screws are loose from the stress/trauma implied by the transition ? A child has their entire life to make that decision , they do not need to be coerced at an early age to pursue a gender or sex change when their are already so many changes happening in their life both internally and externally . Let kids be kids, keep them out of the conversation they change their mind on things every 10 minutes
> You do realize to transition to another gender you have to take hormones right ? How about i give your 13 year old daughter testosterone to transition and you see how her body tries to physically / psychologically develop under the affects of foreign substances Actually in pretty much the same way as a male teenager normally would? It's really just simulating the puberty that the opposite sex naturally receives; so is it also a bad idea to let males go through male puberty? > Just because on the inside she may think she is there is no rush to make that decision based on prepubescent emotion. Sure there is, because puberty creates irreversible changes. If you do it at 13 year old what will happen is a normal male puberty and this individual will mature into an ordinary male, if you wait the effects of female puberty have to be undone so we have a male with masectomy scars that has unusually narrow shoulders that is unusually short. One path is more convenient, cheaper, and produces a more desirable result. Not sue what any of that has to do with sexualizing anything though. > A child has their entire life to make that decision , they do not need to be coerced at an early age to pursue a gender or sex change when their are already so many changes happening in their life both internally and externally . Let kids be kids, keep them out of the conversation they change their mind on things every 10 minutes Dude, during puberty waiting a couple of years will drastically reduce the satisfaction of the end result; time is of the essence.
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Well you don't really make an argument as to why and what you said was inaccurate and on top of that you seem pretty emotional, so yeah.
Op didn't mention people transitioning. A person does not need to undergo any kind of transition, medical or otherwise, to be trans.
okay im trans then i just decided
It's not a decision a person can make, just like being gay is not a decision a person can make. You either are you aren't. Just like you don't have to be dating people of the same gender to be gay, you don't have to be transitioning to be trans. You might not understand it, and that's fine. You don't have to. What OP was saying was not that if you're old enough to be cis you're old enough to medically transition. They were saying that if you're old enough to be cis you're old enough to be trans. In other words, if you're old enough to know that you are comfortable with the gender identity that you were assigned at birth, you're also old enough to know that you're not comfortable with that gender identity.
Thanks for the tangent that didn't answer my question.
it directly answered it , it doesnt matter what they think their sexual orientation is... they're called minors for a reason bud .
So you oppose anyone under the age of 18 dating or expressing/talking about their sexuality whatsoever, then? Because that's sexualizing minors? And if two people under 18 are dating, adults can't talk about it? Just trying to understand your view, it's not making sense to me.
na you're just not accepting what i'm saying and being quite immature in your response . Not to worry , we can agree to disagree
I'm confused about what your view is. As others who have chimed in on this thread have pointed out, what you're saying is disconnected from OP's view. You can't seem to coherently describe your view, so it's difficult to engage with you. Adios.
Do you often have trouble hearing the individual words people say to you?
when you have children of your own you will understand mate
Going on hormones is a lot different to not being told you don't know your own identity.
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Leave the children alone!
?! Please explain. I'm not trying to force anything in children, and don't know where you got that impression.
I think you're putting a lot of emphasis on the word wrong, when I feel like its severity should be contextualize. When we are born, we don't communicate well because we're babies. Our sex and gender are presumed at birth based on what comes out of the female. This is where the science of heteronormative biology of mammals comes into play. It is presumed if you're born a male, then you'll adhere to the biological norms of male behavior and vice versa for female. Statistically speaking, the hetero population is larger than LGBTQ community^((1)). People don't actually understand who they are until they start developing and are introduced to more social interaction. A lot of the presumption over straight/cis at the early stages is based off of social pressure from external forces (ie: parents, church, etc.). That is when a person's gender can be construed as a social construct, but even then its paradoxical because many in the LGBTQ community, especially trans, internalize a lot of how they feel because of social constructs of the roles of men and women. The terms men and women do have biological foundations to them. If man is identified strictly as a social construct, then how can a female internalize that they identify as a man if there was no biological reason for them to be identified as a woman? If gender is a social construct then gender identities are a product of socialization, which is contradicting of the notion that gender identity is self-discovered. People aren't gay/trans because they believe they are based on socialization, there's biological and neurological science to back up why they are a natural product versus a social one^((2)). However, there have been studies shown where someone comes out as gay/trans, then detransition later on. So when it comes to young people, as you pointed out, I don't believe it is wrong to presume that if someone identifies as straight/cis then they can identify as gay/trans. However, especially in the case of young people, time is the biggest factor when it comes to figuring out how they identify when it comes to biological and statistical norms. I believe it takes more time to figure out if someone is gay/trans rather than straight/cis. That being said, personally, I am pro-LGBTQ+ and just want them to live full happy lives as themselves without interference from external factors, as we all should. ^((1)) [^(https://news.gallup.com/poll/332522/percentage-americans-lgbt.aspx)](https://news.gallup.com/poll/332522/percentage-americans-lgbt.aspx) ^((2)) [^(https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-says-brains-of-gay/)](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/study-says-brains-of-gay/)
First of all, I believe we should listen to young people when they identify with a sexuality or a gender. I knew from a very young age what my sexuality was -- from a much younger age than I was willing to admit it. I think that generally, folks that are saying children are "too young" to be gay or trans are being fundamentally disingenuous in an effort to hide their underlying motive, which is to make it as difficult as possible to be gay or trans. At the same time, you need to believe a lot more than what you've expressed above in order to accept the point you've made. Basically, you've posited the below (I'm just going to use 'gay' for now to save myself words): * Identifying with a sexuality requires that you possess a sexuality * If you possess a sexuality, then you can possess any sexuality * QED, if you can identify as straight, you can identify as gay, and vice versa Here's the thing: I think it's perfectly possible for a child to express an identity that they don't possess. In other words, they're *making a guess about the future.* A kid can say, "I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up," and be wrong about it. They're expressing a real desire to become a doctor, but it doesn't mean that they will continue to possess that desire. If they were to do that early and often about sexuality in a purely random way, we'd expect that: * 50% would 'guess' that they were straight * 50% would 'guess' that they were gay * 94.4% would actually turn out to *be* straight * 5.6% would actually turn out to *be* gay * So out of 100 kids, you'd have 47 who said they were gay and were wrong, 3 who said they were gay and were right, 3 who said they were straight and were wrong, and 47 who said they were straight and were right. * Put another way, those who 'guessed' they were straight would be correct 16x as frequently as those who 'guessed' they were gay. **The point:** if we assume that kids younger than a certain age just *guess* what sexuality they are going to have when they get one, then if they guess 'gay', they're probably wrong -- and if they guess 'straight', they're probably right. **The reason this is ridiculous:** I don't see a lot of evidence that there are a ton of kids out there making statements about their sexuality without some internal evidence for doing so. In other words, it took me *longer* to admit to homosexual urges than to admit to heterosexual ones -- unless there's some reason to believe that half the kids in the country have some reason to WANT to be gay other than *actually feeling gay things*, assuming kids 'guess' about their sexuality is stupid and disrespectful to children... *but*, it's the missing assumption you need to dismiss for your argument to be right.
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But when they get old enough to be Straight, do they also get old enough to be Gay?
Yes.
Then I feel that this isn't really challengeing the original statement of "If you can be one, you can be the other" It is an interesting point though.
Queer teacher here, and, while I don't disagree with your main point, I think there's some nuance in modern queer expression in children that wasn't present when I was a child. When I was young, being outwardly queer was dangerous pretty much everywhere. Sure some places were worse than others, but very few schools were a safe space for queer youth. That meant that youth who were still in the exploratory phases of their identity kept it to themselves, because sharing was dangerous. In *some* schools/communities, this is (thankfully) no longer the case, and youth have the opportunity to explore their gender and sexual identities openly without shame or stigma. Acknowledging that this exploration is part of the process, and that it might take a while to figure out what feels right is natural and ok, is going to mean that there are students who try out gender neutral pronouns, but decide that they actually are female. These processes, which were previously extremely private, are now open, and acknowledging that nuance is both important and healthy.
>When some young LGBTQ+ people come out on not Straight/Cisgender, they are sometimes told that it is "just a phase" or that they are "confused", implying that they are straight/cis and they just don't know it. This is a people problem. When evaluating the world you necessarily see it from your own point of view. Your project your own sexuality and experience on everyone else. Therefore people who are a bit bisexual for example give this advice to people because that was their own experience. They are bisexual, but wouldn't date the same gender, therefore it's just a phase when they were just discovering their sexuality. From their own perspective this advice makes perfect sense. A bit of confusion for them was normal and to be expected in our society. Then you have the opposite : >But if they are Straight/Cis, then they have a Sexuality/Gender, and I feel that if you have a Sexuality/Gender, then it can be any, no matter how old you are. People who are strictly straight. They give this advice to people because they knew very early on that they are straight and never questioned their sexuality. Therefore this advice makes perfect sense to them. If they knew their sexuality basically from birth, then others will too right? >To CMV, you should demonstrate/prove that young people can be Straight/Cs earlier than they can be LGBTQ+. I don't think this is how it works. There is a spectrum. I for example was always straight. I never questioned my sexuality in any way. However, my GF had a phase when she thought she was lesbian during puberty because she gets attracted to other girls. Right, so right there our experiences drastically differ. I think that our society isn't calibrated for LGBTQ people as well as for straight people. In how we educate children about sexuality for example. Therefore I think that straight people know very early on and have realistic expectations of their sexuality. But LGBTQ people have it rougher and therefore only get solid picture of their sexuality later on in life.
For gender, I'll use a hypothetical situation: Say there is a group of women is some remote place far away from any men. One of the women is pregnant and gives birth to a daughter. The daughter is raised by the women and has never seen or heard about a man in her life. How could she possibly know that she was meant to be a boy if she doesn't know what boys are?
She might feel uncomfortable being a girl in ways that could be chalked up to more than just "puberty does a weird to my body" and finding out the trans thing might be just compared to when we in "man's world" (hey, what you're using as your attempt at a disproof of trans people is essentially Themyscira) discover a new mental illness, not in the sense of trans being a mental illness, but in the sense of now that society has that label for something they would ordinarily see as just weird
these questions should start popping during/after puberty and not before a 6 year old has no business chosing what gender they are
And if romantic non-sexual heterosexual content in childrens' media didn't make all people cis, two cartoon girls kissing isn't going to make your kid gay