Exploring the impact of Transgenderism on girls

[Anrakyr]

It’s not unusual for young women to feel a great deal of pressure in their growing up years. Because they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Have sex and you’re a slut. Don’t have sexual and you’re a prude. Enjoy traditional gender roles and you’re repressed and in denial. Be a tomboy and then you’re held up to ridiculous high standards of beauty.

On that I agree 100%.

There’s a pressure on pre-pubescent kids about dating (look how many children’s slice-of-life cartoons feature a love interest. For a seven or eight-year-old character!). At an age where they should be focusing on homo-social bonding.

One of my favorite cartoons (yeah I still watch them, judge me ) Gravity Falls has a 12 yr old boy interested in a 15 yr old girl. While it’s not the largest age gap and one could argue that it’s not or shouldn’t be a deal breaker the show cultivates the idea that Wendy (the girl) likes the boy (Dipper) but ultimate prefers her own age group. The mid-series climax ends with Dipper accepting just because he wants something doesn’t mean he should and they settle into a platonic state.

Long story short while I agree with you there are amazing shows that thankfully break from this norm you mention.

By the by if you happen to have kids age 12 there is a book you can buy online that’s a copy of one of the plot devices in the show. It acts as a puzzle book to go along with the show. I got the set for my nephew and he spent all summer last year with it. Really great feel-good show with all the right childlike elements without being patronizing. (maybe I should make a detailed thread on this show. Catholic types always are hungry for good media for their kids. As an Ex catholic I am aware of what you types look for. Hmmm)

But I digress.

Furthermore, a lot of kids are being raised by the internet. A lot of kids have smartphones in fourth grade and younger!

I don’t know if I agree on this point. While the flood of propaganda is strong so too is the ability to seek out gems of truth. We as a society constantly pushed for out kids to research (granted responsibly) now they have access to the WWW, a library greater than that of legends.

Yes, knowledge will always be a double edge sword that’s why its important to talk to our kids frequently.

Critical thinking and logic are not taught in schools. For that matter, history and the classics aren’t taught in schools, so a kid looks around their chaotic world with no sense of how we got here.

I was homeschooled so I see this argument and I feel ya but I’m also autistic which my mother was not equipt to deal with and was shall we say very uncharitable when she encountered roadblocks.

I’d like to think a parent can supplement public school with their own knowledge but not everyone can or should homeschool. It’s complicated and I don’t see an easy solution.

Part 1

 

[Anrakyr]

I’ll stop here. But it’s not surprising that so many kids are going off the rails in so many ways.

Some kids, don’t let media fool you. I’ll give you an example; the Tide Pod Challenge. Now I’m just going to tell you straight up what happens when you try and eat one according to Tide. The Chemicals will instantly in your mouth begin to dissolve the flesh in your mouth rendering shallowing near impossible as the fleshy slush accumulates. If you swallowed you’d likely choke on the whole mess long before it cleared your larynx.

The only people who survived this process are the ones who immediately spat them out. Ergo the videos of people eating and swallowing them on camera are usually faked. People who arrange candies in such a way for instance to fool the audience.

Now while this example seems to derail the topic (and I thank you for bearing with me this far) That’s not my intention. Often what we perceive as an epidemic is often not. While in regards to the topic of easy Access Transgenderism (which I totally denounce) I don’t think it’s so bad.

Out of all the so-called Tide pod incidents, there were only six deaths out of all the USA.

Point is while it’s regrettable even a single case of missed medicine or tide pods resulting in lives ruined there are still 300 million Americans who knew better.

I’m not trying to downplay the problem but I also wouldn’t lose sleep over it either.

 

[Crocus]

From my own observation, I thing ROGD in girls comes from the same root as cutting and anorexia. A girl hits a road bump on the way to growing up, and her inner turmoil expresses itself in these self-destructive behaviors.
There’s a bit of self-punishment in it, a bit of avoidance of growing up, a great deal of fear, a wish to distance herself from herself (which she hates).

I agree with this as speaking to the phenomenon of ROGD (which is something other than true gender dysphoria, a different subject).

I have seen it in a close relative who continues to struggle/cope with social and mental issues.

She had anger issues, had cut herself in the past, had difficulty fitting in as early as kindergarten.
She went to a support group headed by a sexual diversity activist. Soon after, identified as trans, for about a year and a half, before reversing.

 

[joyfulandactive]

Thank you Beryllos. I could understand many readers having a life completely untouched by transgenderism except to read about in the news. I was one of those individuals. What has happened, especially in the last decade is an explosion of interest in this issue to the point that it is affecting many different areas of life in ways not obviously apparent.

To clarify my point of view, I am a woman because of my XX chromosomes. I am biologically female, I have a womb and have given birth to 3 children and 1 birthed into heaven. I breastfed those kids for years. What I have in common with all other women is my biology, whether they choose or are able to have children or not.

What I don’t have in common with other women is my nationality, religion, politics, job or profession, taste in clothes, music etc.etc. I don’t believe it’s what I wear, my hairstyle, or what I think that makes me female.

I thought this POV was fairly uncontroversial but do you know in some circles (including those in a academia and government) that holding this belief is considered transphobic? That many people believe being a woman can be reduced to a “feeling” or a “sense” or an identity that does not include an objective, scientific reality?

If this is all new to you and you think that I am exaggerating, sadly there is a lot of hard evidence that this is very much the case.

So young women (I am focusing on them as they are the subject on this thread) are encouraged to believe that if they like activities boys enjoy, if they want to wear their hair short and wear pants and aren’t interested in makeup they are literally male?

I believe this is very much a Catholic issue because objective reality and science is being denied which is extremely dangerous in its consequences not just for these vulnerable teens but for all of us. Reality is being redefined, even legally and in social policy.

What appears to be an issue affecting a relatively small group of people directly has enormous repercussions for us all if the ideology behind it is left unquestioned.

This is not to say in any way that we should not continue to give our love and appropriate support to those who are suffering directly from Body Dysmorphia.

 

[Anrakyr]

This is not to say in any way that we should not continue to give our love and appropriate support to those who are suffering directly from Body Dysmorphia.

Honest question though, where do you draw the line between body dysmorphia and someone who should get surgery to correct their appearance?

So young women (I am focusing on them as they are the subject on this thread) are encouraged to believe that if they like activities boys enjoy if they want to wear their hair short and wear pants and aren’t interested in makeup they are literally male?

I don’t think it that, more than people finding what equates them to the effects of life being women. Say aunty flow for instance and find their experiences radically not align to the general consensus around them.

Like for instance, some women’s periods are pointedly painful to the threshold of outright near hospitalization. Not that it’s an excuse to transition to a avoid this ill but when your parts or your body or the general feel of the skin you are in feels wrong, one wonders if they lost the genetic lottery and ended up with bits they shouldn’t have.

 

[DisorientingSneeze]

It is a human tragedy that Catholics should discuss and endeavor with charity to counteract.

Beautifully said.

 

[joyfulandactive]

I think you are conflating a few different issues here.

A) Medical issues where a person needs surgery for relief of symptoms (such as heavy periods).

B) Individuals that have rare chromosomal conditions - sometimes called intersex. In the past medical testing and science was not developed enough regarding these conditions, so surgery might be performed as you mentioned in your example earlier. Nowadays when a rare medical chromosomal condition is evident at birth testing can be done which identifies the condition and doctors and parents can make appropriate decisions for their baby’s future health. Nowadays due to the growth in understanding of these conditions most decisions regarding the patient’s bodily appearance will be postponed as long as medically possible and if possible until the individual has gained physical and social maturity so that they can make the decisions regarding their own body. Obviously each case will be unique and individual. Again these are objective biological conditions which we have evidence of.

C) Elective plastic surgery that adults chose of their own free will.

D) Children, teens and young adults being encouraged by doctors, counselors and parents to take hormones and possibly have surgery which can have permanent life long effects and changes, such as infertility for a diagnosis: trans, which could possibly change. See the four young woman as examples at the beginnings of this thread. Blocking natural puberty and then giving teens cross-hormones of the opposite sex means that this individual can NEVER go through their natural puberty in the future. You are blocking their opportunity to reclaim their born biological sex if you go to a certain point of the medical route. This is very different from a grown adult freely choosing surgery with full information of their own free will. These medical treatments are very dangerous because they have never been tested on children and teens. We have no idea of the longterm effects on the body and mind of these medical processes on children and teens.

 

[Anrakyr]

Nowadays when a rare medical chromosomal condition is evident at birth testing can be done which identifies the condition and doctors and parents can make appropriate decisions for their baby’s future health. Nowadays due to the growth in understanding of these conditions most decisions regarding the patient’s bodily appearance will be postponed as long as medically possible and if possible until the individual has gained physical and social maturity so that they can make the decisions regarding their own body.

That’s of course assumes its caught. There was a case not long ago where someone developed testicles inside even as ‘he’ physically looked female outside his body.

We have no way of knowing and I’m afraid we shoe horn people who are in distress into general roles their body is fighting them on instead of giving them the fair once over they deserve.

Again I stress this :I know transgenderism has created a fad, I see that I denounce it. No one should be flipping back and forth just cause.

 

[joyfulandactive]

As I mentioned in my post “if evident at birth” as that it the type of condition you described previously. Some conditions won’t be known about until the child doesn’t enter puberty, for example, and testing shows they have a chromosomal condition. Some are never known about until the person dies.

I think your examples only go to show that if we just let people express themselves how they want, without heavily gendering certain behaviours as male or female, a lot of distress could be alleviated, not always, but the point is that these decisions regarding bodily changes for those identified as trans should be made by the individual as an adult. Even 18 is considered very young as the brain develops until we are 25.