Lily Maynard

Trans-identified kids & the media – what makes a child transgender?

There is a format to these stories and it is always the same. There is almost always a picture of a child in a pink tutu – either to show how much the garment was loved, or how much it was hated. Journalists have a formula when they write these stories and it always, always concerns stereotypes.

We are told that this boy-child ‘in a Hello Kitty T-shirt, clutching a doll – looks like any seven-year-old girl.’

We are told that this girl-child ‘ has a history of ‘shunning dresses and dolls and behaving entirely like a little boy’

We are never actually told what defines a little boy or a little girl for the obvious reason that no behaviour or preference defines a boy or a girl child. It’s all about biology.

So transitioning kids seems to be based entirely on gender stereotypes. And of course it is – because there is absolutely nothing else that it could be based on! Once we look at ‘brave transgender child’ articles from this perspective, they become more than slightly horrifying.

This 9 year old girl child has been told that her ‘very existence is controversial and that he needs to be erased… Max knows what’s at stake.” Max is a social justice warrior and spent her summer in what her own mother described as a ‘political pissing contest’. When she became overwhelmed, a well-composed photo became another publicity stunt.

This 7 year old boy child uses female pronouns and calls himself non-binary. Mum says, ‘She considers herself very lucky to be a boy-girl because she gets to be the best of everything.’

This pre-school boy-child‘s parents worry that his teacher’s view ‘of a sweet little girl” will be “somehow tainted when they learn she was born into a boy’s body.”

In fact these stereotypes occur over and over again in too many articles to mention. Each quote below concerns a different child and is from a different article.

EDIT: there were ten of each originally, but one had ended up in the wrong section.

Nine reasons why a boy must be a girl

He was interested in dolls and girly dressing-up clothes…

He chose a Disney princess nightie and skipped around the house in it, laughing,

He loved his older sister’s dresses, the high heels, and the sparkly accessories.

She had been dressing up and watching shows that are generally reserved for young girls from a very young age.

asking her dad to paint her nails and dancing in a sparkly dress

she ‘started to demand skirts, dresses, and pink and purple outfits’ at 18 months old

He wanted only a mermaid outfit for his 6^th birthday. He had no interest in sports

Draws pictures of princesses and pop singers. She wears dresses and rides a pink bike

He preferred playing with My Little Pony and taking tap dance lessons.

Eleven reasons why a girl must be a boy

Hadn’t every pink or purple outfit ended up in the Goodwill bag, unworn?

She hated the cartoon princess film Frozen and watched ET instead,

he refuses every t-shirt in his drawer that has pink anywhere on it, or cap sleeves, or flowers. He puts on jeans and a plain white t-shirt.

She was throwing tantrums at the sight of frocks and frilly necklines and would drag her mother to the dinosaur T-shirts

Does not own a dress… wears khaki pants and a tie to church.

she didn’t want me to style her hair with pretty braids or curls

picking out cars, trucks, and dinosaurs over dolls or anything pink or sequined.

she insisted on wearing a suit and tie for her school picture, and begged me to let her be on the boys basketball team.

She played with boys toys, wore boyish clothes, played with boys etc

She wanted to wear boys clothes and pretty much refused to wear girls clothes

it was so apparent how ‘ungirly’ he was. The friends’ teen daughter was the epitome of girliness; nails, hair, makeup etc. but he was none of it.

I know that every story is complex and every child is different. It’s precisely because every child is different that we need to stop this deception. The same story is told, over and over again. Apart from a rejection of stereotypes and the child’s own insistence of “I’m a boy” or “I’m a girl” there is no reasoning behind the reality of the transgender child.

These stories are the tales of confused kids rejecting stereotypes. Kids convinced that they are the problem and that they need fixing. Yet instead of trying to find ways to help them reconcile with their bodies, we’re cheering as we set them off down a path of beguilement, off-label puberty blockers, lifelong hormone treatment and possibly surgery.

Journalists, you have a huge responsibility in how you report on these stories of gender non-conforming children. Please stop quoting dangerous made-up statistics: “40-50-60% of transgender children kill themselves!” and obvious lies about pink and blue brains and being ‘born in the wrong body.‘. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that GNC children who aren’t transitioned will kill themselves. Basic independent research (ie ten minutes spent with Google) exposes the suicide statistic for what it is. You could start here. There are no historical references to transgender children.Why do you think that might be?

Please, stop following the ‘brave transgender child’ format and start asking some serious questions about how our culture promotes gender stereotypes and the pressure on young people to conform to them. Someone needs to blow the lid of this pot.

Welcome to Transtopia

Hi. You’ve reached Lily Maynard’s blog. Welcome.

If you’re a first time visitor, please start here.

In late 2015, my teenage daughter Jessie declared she was transgender and the experience tugged us into a rabbit hole of Orwellian double-speak and general insanity. I read so much during that time and it was such a vast learning curve that I felt compelled to bring all the threads together in an article. I was especially struck by the exponential surge in the number of teenage girls who were ‘identifying’ as boys, usually young lesbians and usually after lengthy sessions on social media.

After Jessie desisted, I wanted to share what I’d read as well as what I’d learned and eventually I finished writing an article which contained over 100 links. Jessie added a short postscript of her own and I was delighted when 4thwavenow published it in December 2016 under the title ‘A Mum’s Voyage Through Transtopia – a tale of love and desistance’.

I’ve since re-published the article here on my own blog.

Before you ask me any questions; before you critcise or praise my stance on transitioning kids, or the appropriation of womanhood by men, please read that. It’s where it all began.

After Jessie re-realised she was a girl and things settled down at home, I expected to put my time in Transtopia behind me and move on. Instead I became more fascinated- and angry- with the culture of misogyny and homophobia which underlies transgender theory.

For without stereotypes there can be no ‘brave transgender children’. Without the dolls and the pink tutus, a love of glitter, a gentle nature and a will to dance, what could possibly make girls of the little boys of ‘My Transgender Summer Camp’? What other than her love of Batman, karate and jumping around could make that short-haired, fierce little girl into a boy trapped in a female body? A feeling? How does a boy feel? How does a girl feel?

Without sexism, there can be no transgenderism. Without the idea that there is a ‘right’ or a ‘wrong’ way to be a boy or a girl there would be no need to beguile and medicate these kids in an attempt to make them ‘fit in’. Our current culture of blind affirmation is not doing anyone any favours. It is nothing short of abusive to tell a child that they are ‘wrong’, that they have been ‘born in the wrong body’ or that medication and surgery can make them into the opposite sex. Affirming a trans-identified child- and many of these kids are LGB, autistic, have suffered trauma, abuse or loss, or have co-existing mental health issues- is to set them down a path to becoming a life-long medical patient.

This first step down this pathway begins with agreeing with a confused girl that she is a boy. 21st century kids who undergo social transition young frequently progress to puberty blockers. Children given puberty blockers almost always go one to take cross sex hormones. This combination leaves a child sterile and without sexual function.

What would have happened if I had affirmed my child when she told me she was a boy?

I would have called her by her new name and ‘he/him’ pronouns.

This would have told her that I believed she was not a girl, that I thought she had been ‘born wrong’ and needed fixing in order to be her ‘authentic’ self. It would also have affirmed her delusion, every day.

I would have paid for her to see a private therapist.

Most private therapists will tell you trans-identified children become suicidal if not transitioned. The reality is, there is no data to support the idea that they are more at risk than any other child being seen under child mental health services.

I would have accessed my child cross-sex hormones.

Don’t believe those who tell you about lengthy waiting lists. If you are broke and follow the NHS route, yes. If you’ve got a couple of hundred quid spare, you can get hormones for your child quickly and easily. Gender GP is just one of the services that has prescribed testosterone for girls as young as twelve. Before we jump to blame the parents, consider: is it any wonder parents resort to this when they’ve been told their child may kill themselves otherwise?

Girls on testosterone often develop acne and male pattern baldness. They grow beards. The beards, baldness and deepened voice are irreversible. They are also at higher risk of heart attack and other diseased and illnesses. Most doctors recommend a hysterectomy within 5 years of being on testosterone.

Top surgery would be next.

Why wouldn’t it be? By this point everyone would have been using my child’s new name and pronouns. Everyone would be agreeing with her that she was a boy. She would probably be using a binder, with all the health risks that entails. It would seem like natural progression to have an elective double mastectomy. In the USA, girls as young as 13 have undergone this procedure.

She might have chosen to go on to have phalloplasty, where the skin of the arm is stripped to form a tube of flesh that’s attached between the legs. As you can imagine, a lot can go wrong with this procedure.

And there we would have it.

My dysphoric child would have been left dependent on drugs and the affirmation of others to maintain this illusion for the rest of her life. And you know what? She could still never be a man.

In what world is this progressive?

You can read mine & Jessie’s story here with a post-script by my daughter.