Are we assuming too many children are trans?

Who is “we”?

I am sure there are some – in my grandson’s middle school I am aware of one trans (female to male) but I imagine there are others.

There’s no way to guess how many there are in any school or suburb – most people don’t advertise it and how else would I know?

My opinion is that identity is a changing, evolving thing. Activists should let nature take its will at its own pace.

Plausible. We may be confusing really young people with all of the attention that this gets now. I think a lot of young people who believe they are trans end up just being gay when they mature a little more and probably would have regrets about transitioning too young. Children are suggestible and activists are often unintentionally too aggressive. Young people are also very susceptible to social contagion and may want to participate if people close to them are transitioning. IMO what the UK is suggesting is wise.

Yes, I think they are too gung ho. The politicians in the US are using this as a wedge issue, and it is only a very small amount of people in the country who are trans, but it “feels” like trans people are everywhere in huge numbers.

I think promoting awareness and understanding is good, and necessary, but it’s just too far in my opinion. too in your face.

Being disruptive is a method for change society, but I think maybe it is counterproductive in some ways.

I’ve recently seen ads for HIV drugs that have gay men kissing, trans men, gay men who are over wearing sparkle and very feminine, and honestly it is over the top. I don’t like to see a whole bunch of PDA with hetero couples, why would I want to with any couples? I say this about TV shows too. Keep in mind I spent my teens and 20;s going to gay clubs, some of which had naked men on mini stages above the crowd dancing and plenty of drag queens.

There are cases of young people who think they want to be the other sex, and then if and when they change their mind they feel they can’t. This is my biggest worry. To be supportive of young people who feel they are in the wrong body, but at the same time make sure they know it is ok to change their mind without sounding like you are disappointed with their current feelings and choices.

Possibly. I like a nice, circumspect policy proposal like that. Aware, but conservative. Seems appropriate.

In my opinion, the trans people I’ve known and dated shared a feature of being kind of rigid about gender norms and roles. It seemed to me like when I was coming up, trans was a unique, difficult path for those who felt strongly about it. Everyone else who was unsure about their gender or sexuality just experimented with their presentation and relationships, within the context of their assigned gender. We were rewriting the rules of gender, and that seemed good enough. Today, it seems like that path just isn’t good enough anymore, and the “correct” thing to cure your teenage ennui is consider changing your gender.

I do notice one similarity to today in that many people, in a show of misguided compassion, praise and encourage trangenderism, as they once did homosexuality, as a brave and immutable expression of one’s true self. Forget that people, especially young people, make many decisions for reasons they only vaguely understand, the societal oppression against trans folk has created something of a protectionist orthodoxy around trans issues.

I remember reading an article a long while back, about how being gay in Iran was illegal, but changing your legal gender via surgery was state-sponsored, so many gay people were living as the other gender, simply because it was the only way the state allowed them to marry who they loved. This sickened me at the time, and made me worry if growing religious intolerance in the West would ever lean in that direction.

I like the idea of expanding definitions of gender norms, and with that comes toys. Maybe it’s getting better, but toys are still being thought of as boy and girl toys – Barbies and trucks for example.

@Smashley Very interesting answer. I agree with so much of what you wrote.

I do notice one similarity to today in that many people, in a show of misguided compassion, praise and encourage trangenderism, as they once did homosexuality, as a brave and immutable expression of one’s true self. Forget that people, especially young people, make many decisions for reasons they only vaguely understand, the societal oppression against trans folk has created something of a protectionist orthodoxy around trans issues.

Excellent point. And I think the word “decision” here is key. There is no “decision” to be made when you’re homosexual other than telling people and if it turns out not to be true, oh well, I guess some might think you’re “wishy-washy”, but that’s small potatoes compared to having your body permanently changed. There are definitely some LGB people frustrated with the way the T is treated the same as the other three when they’re not really the same; there’s a good reason for grouping them together and I’m not advocating for an intra-community feud (there’s plenty of that, don’t worry), but that grouping is more about solidarity. Practically, they are quite different. Coming out as gay is simply a statement of preference; coming out as trans is the first step in a process that potentially can’t be reversed. They can’t be treated as the same.

After a while to reflect, I just thought I should add a thing.. and that’s that this new consciousness of trans people and trans issues can often make us conflate a lot of things we shouldn’t necessarily. Not all identified trans kids are getting surgery or taking meds, not all trans kids would meet your definition of trans, not all wrong choices are wrong at the time,

Yes, some few young children are becoming allowed to take medications and live as the gender of their choice. This can affect their development, but it is a far cry from the surgeries I think people fear when they talk about decisions that can’t be reversed, and has been show improve mental health outcomes for children experiencing gender dysphoria. Surgeries do occur in post pubescent young people, but I’m not seeing an epidemic of post surgery regret out there.

Yes, it seems like a lot of teens are trans. Occasional surveys throw out eye popping numbers about how many teens “identified” as trans, but I think more commonly teens are falling under the newly powerful panoply of “queer”. Whether that’s gender-fluid, non-binary, gender-queer, pansexual, gender-fucker, many of these labels are just like the gay or bisexual labels teens adopted a couple decades ago. They may or may not have been predictive of future identities, but they served us well, either socially, emotionally, or both.

A lot of the uneasiness, it seems, is in the idea that kids will hurt themselves before they know what they are doing and why. In my time, it was similar. Literal pearl-clutchers softly reminding us there was so much to understand about life, and we would never get the chance if we died of AIDS or were murdered by a hater, or murdered by a lover. The teenage years are wild because you have so much autonomy, new access to consequences, and only a child’s life experience to navigate it all. Just like it’s supposed to be.

Teens used to pierce their noses with sewing needles and give each other stick and poke tattoos while sniffing white-out. Before that they were drinking and driving and “no means yessing” all over town. Before that they were just young adults going to war, getting married, working in factories, having children and developing substance abuse problems. If all this swirling gender craziness is helping their social and emotional health, as long as the doctors are being good doctors, I’m totally ok with not really getting it.

@Smashley Really appreciating this response.