This intense focus on immediate needs

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

Returning to Jesse Singal’s Atlantic piece on children who say they are trans…

The current era of gender-identity awareness has undoubtedly made life easier for many young people who feel constricted by the sometimes-oppressive nature of gender expectations. A rich new language has taken root, granting kids who might have felt alone or excluded the words they need to describe their experiences.

I’m not sure about that – I’m not sure the new language is genuinely rich. Is it rich or is it impoverished to decide that if you don’t like lipstick and high heels then you are a boy? Is it rich to substitute the trans vocabulary for the feminist vocabulary? Is it better to find your True Gender or to conclude that gender is bullshit?

Singal notes that professional science-based organizations advise caution and deliberation when it comes to physical alterations for children and teenagers.

The American Psychological Association’s guidelines sound a similar note, explaining the benefits of hormones but also noting that “adolescents can become intensely focused on their immediate desires.” It goes on: “This intense focus on immediate needs may create challenges in assuring that adolescents are cognitively and emotionally able to make life-altering decisions.”

The leading professional organizations offer this guidance. But some clinicians are moving toward a faster process. And other resources, including those produced by major LGBTQ organizations, place the emphasis on acceptance rather than inquiry.

Acceptance, affirmation, celebration, all very much instead of and in opposition to inquiry. That should have sent up warning flags long ago.

Ignoring the diversity of these experiences and focusing only on those who were effectively “born in the wrong body” could cause harm. That is the argument of a small but vocal group of men and women who have transitioned, only to return to their assigned sex. Many of these so-called detransitioners argue that their dysphoria was caused not by a deep-seated mismatch between their gender identity and their body but rather by mental-health problems, trauma, societal misogyny, or some combination of these and other factors. They say they were nudged toward the physical interventions of hormones or surgery by peer pressure or by clinicians who overlooked other potential explanations for their distress.

Singal of course has been piled on for saying that. No inquiry allowed.

Comments

4 responses to “This intense focus on immediate needs”

  1. Skeletor Avatar
    Skeletor

    Acceptance, affirmation, celebration, all very much instead of and in opposition to inquiry. That should have sent up warning flags long ago.

    Don’t forget the religious rite of Confirmation:

    https://people.com/tv/jazz-jennings-on-track-gender-confirmation-surgery/

  2. John the Drunkard Avatar
    John the Drunkard

    ‘Acceptance’ in this example smacks of the demand to ‘believe the children’ in ‘Satanic Abuse’ cases. Back when children were ‘believed’ only after being coerced and threatened into delivering the desired reports.

  3. Lady Mondegreen Avatar
    Lady Mondegreen

    John the Drunkard, re coercion and “believing the children,” this post from the blog 4th Wave Now shares a clip from a talk by Johanna Olson-Kennedy, Medical Director of the country’s largest transgender youth clinic:

    https://4thwavenow.com/2017/07/23/i-just-gave-him-the-language-top-gender-doc-uses-pop-tart-analogy-to-persuade-8-year-old-girl-shes-really-a-boy/

    From 4th Wave’s transcript (I’ve removed the 4th Wave author’s commentary except for her descriptions of dramatic pauses and audience response, which I’ve bolded.)

    Olson-Kennedy is the Medical Director of the Center for Trans youth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the largest transgender youth clinic in the US. She delivered these remarks at the inaugural USPATH conference in Los Angeles this past February [2017], as part of a symposium entitled ‘OUTSIDE OF THE BINARY – CARE FOR NON-BINARY ADOLESCENTS AND YOUNG ADULTS.’

    The first four minutes of the audio are transcribed in this post. However, readers are strongly encouraged to listen to the whole clip themselves. Timestamps are in square brackets [].

    Olson-Kennedy starts with background on the case:

    “An 8-year-old kid comes into my practice, and this is the story with this kid: Assigned female at birth, 8 years old, was completely presenting male whatever that means—short haircut, boy’s clothes–but what was happening, is, this kid went to a very religious school and in the girls’ bathroom which is where this kid was going. People are like, “why is there a boy in the girl’s bathroom? That’s a real problem.” And so this kid was like, so that’s not super working for me, so I think that I wanna maybe enroll in school as a boy. This kid had come up with this entirely on their own.

    “When the kid came in, mom was like, “oh we don’t know what to do, so please help us” and so we started talking about it and what was interesting is that …you know some kids come in and they have great clarity and great articulation [sic] about their gender. They are just endorsing it, “this is who I am, and yes there’s gender confusion but it’s all of you who are confused,” so there are those kids. So this kid had not really organized or thought about all these different possibilities.’

    …”You know the mom had shared this whole history, and said, when the kid was 3, the kid said, “Could you stroll me back up to God so I can come back down as a boy” and the kid’s like,” Ah, I didn’t say that.” You know, 8-year-olds, [2:09] so I’m like, “I don’t think your mom made that up, that’s crazy.”

    … “So at one point, I said to the kid, “so do you think that you’re a girl or a boy? And this kid was like…I could just see, there was, like, this confusion on the kid’s face. Like, “actually I never really thought about that.” And so this kid said, “well, I’m a girl, ’cause I have this body”

    … “Right? This is how this kid had learned to talk about their gender…that it’s based on their body.

    “And I said, “oh, so …and I completely made this up on the spot, by the way, but …I said, “Do you ever eat pop tarts?” And the kid was like, oh, of course. And I said, “well you know how they come in that foil packet?” Yes. “Well, what if there was a strawberry pop tart in a foil packet, in a box that said ‘Cinnamon Pop Tarts.’? Is it a strawberry pop tart, or a cinnamon pop tart?”

    “The kid’s like, “Duh! A strawberry pop tart.” And I was like, “so…”

    “At this point [3:09], there is a staged pause and we hear the audience laugh loudly and knowingly.

    “And the kid turned to the mom and said, “I think I’m a boy and the girl’s covering me up.”

    Audible murmurs and “wows” from Olson-Kennedy’s rapt audience

    “So, I don’t think I made this kid a boy.”

    Again, a dramatic pause for appreciative laughter…

    “I don’t THINK so.’

    More laughter.

    A reader analyzed what happened there:

    In the cited transcript, the question Olson-Kennedy first asks – “so do you think you’re a boy or a girl?” – is leading. A leading question is defined as “a question that prompts or encourages the desired answer.” To ask the question “do you think you’re a boy or a girl” is to suggest that it is possible that either is an option. Olson-Kennedy tells us that the child provided a clear answer to the question that was based on the child’s knowledge of her own biology. However, Olson-Kennedy signaled to the child that she is not satisfied with this response. She did this by repeating the question using the pop tart metaphor rather than accepting the child’s answer. A repeated question carries with it the implication that the initial answer given was not satisfactory. We must assume that the child picked up that she had given the “wrong” answer by stating that she was a girl.

    Within the repeated question, Olson-Kennedy offers an alternative explanation for the child’s experience – couched in alluring, child-friendly image of sugary pop tarts. The child complies with Olson-Kennedy’s implied suggestion that she is in fact in the wrong body, and receives affirmation for this compliance in the form of breathless acclamations by both mother and the high-status doctor. By “providing the language,” Olson-Kennedy encouraged this child to conceptualize herself as having been “born in the wrong body,” complete with the imprimatur of a major medical center. The kid didn’t stand a chance

  4. Screechy Monkey Avatar
    Screechy Monkey

    Geez, Jezebel is trying really really hard to make Jesse Singal a journalist non grata. This latest article breathlessly reports that they’ve uncovered things Singal wrote on a private journalism group regarding his work on trans issues, and boy, you’ll be…

    … utterly unsurprised. I kept scrolling down, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Was Singal really a horrible transphobe, as I’ve been assured? Did he utter some of the nasty things we’ve seen quoted from “famous TERF quotes”? Or did he say something intemperate that could at least be construed that way? Nope, nope, and nope. He comes across as utterly ordinary and decent, as a journalist who’s trying to be fair in an area that doesn’t get a lot of good reporting, who is perhaps a little befuddled at the sheer vitriol that gets directed his way but is taking it all in stride.

    The entire article left me thinking more highly of Singal, and less of the Jezebel writer Harron Walker.

    I started to wonder if this was some sort of performance art piece or trollery — the groupthink was coming from inside the house all along! — but Jezebel (and Walker specifically) have been on this crusade for a while.

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