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The number of children gender identity problems referred to the Tavistock Clinic in London is increasing. Interestingly, more girls than boys. It's also thought the wider availability of information and the effect of celebrity changers might be responsible for this phenomenon.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/05/children-seek...
Comments
here comes the religious right...
I can already hear the religious right belting out about how kids are being 'brainwashed' and that 'this didn't happen before'. It's far more likely however that the number of transgendered persons hasn't changed but the availability of information and the growing acceptance of us has. Thus parents are more willing to seek out advice and psychologists and the result makes it look like that there are a 'growing number' of transfolk. It's a bright future.
There are possibly several
There are possibly several new social, medical and even dietary elements that MIGHT be contributing to this phenomenon.
There is much more social freedom and openness these days and that is a good thing which leads to -
more children having the confidence to declare their feelings and convictions to their parents, doctors and teachers.
Also there are many more growth hormones and assorted other hormones including sex hormones to be found in agriculture. These inevitably find their way into the human food chain where they can possibly affect foetal development.
Not convinced of GID
I worry that the availability of the information might be driving this. It would help if being GBLTI did not carry such a social stigma and if the "faithful" were not such sadistic nutters. None of us is happy about having a body that does not match our gender. A little compassion from them would help.
I think that rejecting my gender may be more due to the fact that the males when I was a toddler were such evil bastards rather than anything else. Sure this is a rather extreme reaction. You'd have had to been there ...
In 50 years, we'll either be more compassionate and educated or Earth will be a burned out shell.
Gwen
Gender dysphoria and the media
Repression and self censorship have always been tactics to cope with disadvantageous aspects of our nature. In the UK it has been applied to not only gender but even more commonly to aspects of sexuality, religion, politics and class. There were in the short term at least advantages in suppressing our nature so that we could fit into the role of married with children and career for those that fit the role had a whole society to support them giving both monetary and status boosts.
Those that broke the mould tended to come from the very rich who could survive social disapproval ('as long as they didn't scare the horses') and those at the bottom who had the freedom of 'nothing left to lose'. What we have seen over recent decades is a combination of the breakdown in support for the family, the disappearance of long term careers, a need to constantly move to make a living and the evaporation of any sort of social status worth protecting. This in turn has led us to be less convincing in our insistence that we know what children should do to secure their future.
I suggest that this social disruption has led to our depending on the only form of continuity left us in the shape of our self-identity as experienced through our thoughts, feelings and actions so conclude that the transition of public figures is not the cause but a symptom of the mass of people moving toward enacting "To thine own self be true." - Hamlet, Shakespeare
Rhona McCloud
Agreed About "The Bottom" Bit !
I can personally support Rhona's observation about gender uncertainties being more likely among those at the very bottom of British society, due to those at the bottom having 'the freedom of nothing left to lose'.
Back in the years immediately after WW2, life in the UK was described as "Austere". We went into that war as the wealthiest and most powerful of nations, with our "glorious Empire upon which the sun never set" and we emerged as an exhausted, bankrupt, ruined, wreck.
Food Rationing for example continued for several years after the so-called Victory. In a few matters the postwar regime was making an effort to develop a more progressive and fairer society, but we were then, and still today are, a class-ridden society. A tiny example I can give to illustrate how it was: We were "Evacuees" - a family who had to be rehoused (in my case because a bomb fell on our home and I had to be dug out of the wreckage!), we were moved about all over the country during the war because my Daddy, an ex-career soldier who was now too ill to do anything more than a desk job managing the maintenance of underground hideaways in which our government could hide and fight back from in the event of an Invasion. Back then, the regional accents were very much stronger than they are now, and one was often picked on and bullied because one spoke differently - in one school I was beaten up because the kids thought I was German. I was extremely lucky in having an Uncle who taught me how to read when I was only 3 years old. I used public libraries wherever we were sent to, and managed to pass the "11 +" exam and so was sent to a Grammar School. My dreadful Cockney (East London) accent offended the staff and the upper middle class children, and I realised I would have to change mine. The most offensive thing was when a teacher called me out in front of the class one Monday morning, with "Come up here. child! Here are your Free School Meal Tickets. I don't know what it has come to, having riff-raff who cannot even pay for their own meals, in it." At that time my Daddy was in hospital, having his stomach and duodenum removed, due to years of stressful service in Germany, India and the UK, and my Mummy was cleaning the homes of rich people for a few shillings so she could feed my sister and I.
Inside I was cursing this idiot of a bully of a teacher, thinking things like "When the Revolution comes I will make sure they throw you in prison!", but reminding myself that I needed their teaching and learning how to speak 'posh' so I fought inside with myself not to lose my temper.
Clothes were rationed during and after the war, and I had several girl cousins whose underwear I was given to wear when they grew out of them. I was also put into frocks quite often as that stopped me being beaten up by boys. I looked more like a girl than a boy anyway - something I have had all my life and still have now.
Briar