As a consequence, have a person’s kids taken away? Or should there be any consequences?
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I’m straightforward and don’t want to give any ‘fluff’ So I don’t know how else to ask this question without it sounding rage baity.
This isn’t a gotcha or trap to argue with anyone I feel and believe I can learn something of value from people I disagree with. It is interesting to know why you disagree and what reasons make you feel x y and z about things.
I’m here to listen, not judge or throw around name calling or fight with you. You feel the way you do for whatever reason, and I want to know a little more about why you do and that is it.
I would like for everyone to feel confident voicing how they feel about this question. I don’t care if I disagree with you. Fighting with you is not how I’d like to spend my evening. I’m sure you don’t either.
I might ask follow ups like, “Why is it that you feel that way?” Or “can you tell me a little bit more” so I can understand your point of view better. And that’s it.
If that feels too much or you don’t want to. Totally fine. Just ignore my comment to you.
Thanks for your time.
That’s one hell of a question. I’m a cis-gendered gay man who has been active in LGBT rights since the days of ACT UP, for context.
My honest feeling is that it should be evaluated on a case by case basis. I think that it can be a sign of abuse - trans children face incredible rates of physical and emotional abuse, and there are clusters of behavior that can be used to identify them. This would be what I’d call an indicator.
I think that parents should be supporting their children with regard to their gender identity and sexuality. I think it is vital to the mental wellbeing of the child, and non-support can have consequences that last for years and decades including things like changing how their brains are wired, which changes their probability of self-harm, substance abuse, and so on. These are very real, clinical outcomes.
However, removing a child from a home also has very real consequences. The foster care system is also quite challenging for children and can also be associated with long lasting clinical outcomes. It might not improve the child’s life to remove them, even if their home life is sub-optimal.
So my proposal is that the situation be investigated by appropriately trained personnel. If there are additional aspects of emotional or physical abuse, then they’d have to make a very difficult call. Otherwise, I think something like family counseling would be preferred.
Has anyone done studies on time sequencing of this? I think many on the right fear that gender dysphoria could be a result of abuse, and not a naturally-occurring thing, and therefore a poor signal on which to make life decisions.
I have never heard of a study of child abuse resulting in a child having a trans identity. Child sexual abuse can have an effect on sexuality going forward, but that’s different than gender identity.
Generally the abuse associated with LGBT kids is coming from a parent who thinks that the abuse can alter their identity. Gender identity formation can start as early as during fetal development.
Another important factor to consider is that, like the concept of race, these categories are social constructs. They are different in different societies, and even within a society they change over time. A man who had sex with other men or both men and women was not considered gay in the 1930s, as long as they were male presenting. They would be considered libidinous and socially conservative people would look down their noses at them, but those people did the same to women who smoked cigarettes and went to jazz clubs. There’s an old saying that runs “Fish don’t know what water is.” It means that when we’re completely immersed in a culture, we think that what we’ve been taught and have absorbed are accurate and objective descriptions of reality.
But in any case and to answer your question - no, I am not aware of any studies that found that reverse causality. Kids know their genders at a very young age. It is a combination of neurological formations which began development during gestation and interactions with cultural artifacts.
In our current society, girls wear dresses and play with Barbies and take ballet, while boys wear sneakers and play sports and like trucks. Each of these things have culturally defined semiotic content - there’s layers of symbolic meaning. How they resonate with a person will depend on that person’s biology.
The abusive behaviors - especially the most problematic ones - come from socially conservative, often religious households. They correlate with a preference for traditional social roles for men and women, misogyny, and a phobic approach to change. Can you think of how a right wing abusive environment leads to the development of a trans identity? Is there a hypothesis there? The data actually indicates the opposite - as social approval grows, the number of people identifying as LGBT goes up. If it was intolerance and abuse causing the formation of an LGBT identity, we’d expect it to be highest in the most conservative times and places.
Thank you for your reply.
Dumb question. But since this is a very specific topic, can you explain more about what abuse from family towards their transgender children looks like?
Sounds like a no brainer. Abuse is Abuse. But maybe family members are doing things they don’t consider to be Abusive. That’s not excusing Abuse in this scenario.
Let me provide an example.
Some people think taking your kid or spouse to those Christian ‘make you not gay anymore’ camps, isnt Abusive.
I think doing something like that is not helpful. Only speaking of children and not adults, but I can see how that is Abusive.
I’m going to be talking about abuse here, just as a warning for anyone reading this.
I absolutely believe conversion therapy is abusive. I’d like to answer this followup in two parts.
First, I think that conversion therapy should be illegal. I believe that the companies and organizations hosting those services should be shut down and that the people operating them should be investigated and prosecuted if their practices constitute defined definitions of abuse, such as physical punishment, forced isolation, and so on. The organizations sponsoring them should be fined and dissolved. That’s going after one end of the problem.
The second one is looking at the parents. It doesn’t matter whether they think it’s abusive or not, any more than a man who beats his wife because she deserves it thinks he’s just giving her discipline. It’s abuse.
However, this is another one of those indicators I was talking about. It’s part of a pattern of behaviors, but again I think we’d need more information on the parents’ conduct to their kid to establish whether removing them from the home would result in an improvement in their life going forward. It’s not like we have a clone army of Jonathan van Nesses to rehome these poor kids with.
Abuses that I’ve seen LGBT kids suffer under include withholding of food, physical abuse, and what amounts to forced incarceration. I’ve spoken to kids who have had their clothes physically torn from their bodies, resulting in injury. One of the most common ones you see is children being thrown out onto the streets. I think that under those circumstances, the state should be empowered to act. That doesn’t necessarily mean taking the child from their parents, but it might. There’s also things like court mandated counseling and required followup visits from child services. Any intervention has to be proportional to the facts of the given case.
Thanks a lot for expanding on all that. Yea I don’t agree with conversion camps. like at all if your kid feels a certain type of way, they just do. Some people may be disappointed that their kid comes out as this or that.
But it is what it is. It might not be what you want as a parent but that is not for you to decide.
I mean, if knew someone considering conversion therapy? I’d have a sit down with them. Because I don’t agree with that either.
Anyway, thank you for going into more detail ! Have a good one