My carrot son and Rosie daughter

If only we could accept that people are people, some like one thing some like another. Stop putting people into boxes, just accept them as they as they are. Maybe some would feel less pressured to jump to one side of the fence or the other, why do we have to be so bloody rigid? I worry that people are feeling they're misgendered simply because they don't fit some artificial stereotype.

I was a tomboy - climbed trees and only ever wanted to play boys games with them at school. I had forts and soldiers, desperately wanted to be a cowboy at one stage.

I still prefer the company of men and feel entirely different in male company than I do with females. Far more comfortable in fact.

But I have never, ever felt like a boy, or aspired to be a man.
I regard myself as entirely heterosexual - and feminine is how I feel.

Perhaps I was male in another life ?

Why can we not accept that a female mind can be found in a male body and vice versa and treat this as perfectly normal and let each individual express it as they will

MOnica quite so. I once did an online quiz which concluded my brain was 70% male. I never wanted to be a boy, though Jo March in Little Women was my literary heroine and I tried to emulate her.

Another thing which is driving transgenderism is pressure on lesbians from some in the LBGTQ community to accept that ‘some women (ie trans women) have penises’ & lesbians should want to have sex with trans women.

If they only want to have sex with biological women, the way round it is to become a transgender man.
www.feministcurrent.com/2017/07/08/lesbianism-attack-though-not-usual-suspects/

gillybob thats hilarious bless you.. my son would only say "caw caw" like a bird for months then we moved on to "mow mow" as in short version of miaow. He had a friend called Paco and Paco was his thumb tucked under his fingers to make a mouth shape that would talk for him....ah children

Interesting thread.
One DS asked to be called Michael when he was about 5 or 6 because his real name was a bit unusual then and he wanted to conform. It lasted for a whole weekend.
Our DC have all conformed but plenty of their friends are either gay or trans. I say plenty- I know a handful. Each time they came out I felt a bit sad which is very un pc of me but it's true. My close friends' youngest became a he and her/his parents found it hard at first and now there's talk of surgery.

I might add that through out my childhood I wished I was a boy. I found my interests and activities fitted in far better with boys than it did with girls who generally considered me 'odd'. Even at university a close friend (female) criticised me for acting and thinking like a man.

However I am very glad I was never in a position to know about being transgender, because I am not. I am throughly and completely physically female, but just seem instinctively to think differently from many women. High on rational reactions, low on emotional reactions.

I absolutely agree with you that gender stereotyping is driving the transgender movement. Why can we not accept that a female mind can be found in a male body and vice versa and treat this as perfectly normal and let each individual express it as they will.

I confess that the subject causing most confusion in my family at the present is how DGC have turned out to be totally naturally gender stereotypes, given that they come from a family and social group where that type of upbringing is completely alien and they, and their friends most certainly have not been brought up with gender stereotypes or mixed much with children that have.

We have searched the family tree on all sides for several generations to find a football or even sports mad boy, without success. To be fair, neither child is conformist, each is confidently themselves and I cannot see DGD ever feeling she has to give way to, or not compete with a boy in any field. She confidently holds her place in the top maths group at secondary school as she did at primary school.

MOnica I think gender stereotyping is actually far worse now than it was when we were bringing up our children.
My children and my friends’ children were allowed to play with whatever toys they liked and wear what they liked.
I think that the increase in gender stereotyping is actually encouraging more children to think they are transgender, because they don’t see themselves fitting into those stereotypes.

DD has always clearly identified as a girl and loved her dolls, but she was the one that wanted to be an engine driver, had the electric train set and has always been interested in science and engineering and is just completing an OU degree in Science and technology and works in an engineering research centre. He brother has always been a gentle and caring person, thoughtful and concerned about others, with no interest in sports, cars, DIY and other 'manly' pursuits

So what is this about gender sterotyping?

However DD did not want to be 6. She wanted to stay at being 5 forever and forever - and to a certain extent she has.

Dora I think it depends on how you interpret ‘raising as a girl’.
As Ms Theron ‘introduced the child as a boy’ when she first adopted them, I think we can safely assume the child has a penis.

It’s one thing to allow a small boy to play with toys that have traditionally been thought of as girls’ toys, or wear dresses from time to time, and generally humour their imagination.
But it’s quite another to allow a male child to continue to believe that in fact, rather than imagination, that he is female.

Children of 3 cannot possibly appreciate the social aspects of gender, and the difference between sex and gender, and it is ridiculous to pretend that they can. If the child was 13, it might be a different matter.

I can’t help suspecting that Charlize Theron is using this child to signal to the world her own views on the transgender debate.

I think Charlize Theron is allowing her child to be his/her self, there is no sense of indoctrination. There’s a difference between being a tomboy and genuinely believing you are the opposite from your birth sex, or dressing up as a princess and believing you are really female. Gender is not that clear cut, and surely what she is doing is nurturing her child and allowing them to be what they want to be. If we had a child or grandchild in the same situation, wouldn’t we all act in the same way?

I don't recall my children having any fancies/fantasies but I shall never forget my brother being a bus when he was about 5 or 6. Walks with him were stop start affairs as he stopped at imaginary bus stops and we all had to wait behind him until he rang the bell to move off again...

I'm still a bit mystified as to how you raise a child as a girl... does she really mean 'indoctrinate it into behaviours the media and advertisers think are feminine'?

One of my son's asked me in all seriousness when he would grow a mane. We had a variety of special friends, including one who lived on their finger and one called Middle.

I can remember that feeling of turning into something such as the wind or a horse as a child. Occasionly it returns.

Obviously something/someone we needed at the time gillybob, I too remember Willy quite clearly

Yes I know Sara65 I have posted about her on GN before and no one in the family has a clue where it came from. In my mind I can still “see and hear her” to this very day .

Mrs Kershaw sounds an unusual choice of imaginary friend, I think my friend Willy was loosely based on Willy from the Woodentops! I left him in the greengrocers once, and I made such a dreadful fuss, we had to go back into town to get him!

My two kept badgering me to call them by different names when they were little and refused to answer to their given names. So one day I called them by their new names. They were delighted at first, but by late afternoon they had seriously had enough and were pleading with me to call them by their real names again. They never asked to change their names again.

My 4 year old granddaughter is, by turns, a cat, a dog, a horse, or a unicorn. When she's being a cat or dog she wants to eat her food on the floor in a bowl, only using her mouth. To her intense annoyance, her mum doesn't allow it

Do you know, I’d forgotten that, from age five to seven my daughter was a dog!

Grandson 1.

My DGD 1 has an older sister. He liked nothing better than to wear her pink fluffy jumper when he went out with his mum. When he started school he was somewhat disappointed that he had to wear trousers at school and not a skirt.
He's 10 now and wouldn't dream of wearing his sister's clothes.
It's all part of childhood and growing up.

That post has no connection whatsoever to the message in the OP.

My 13 year old GS has only just recently decided to change his online name from 'John' to a shortened version of his actual name.No idea where the 'John' came from.

My DGD2 was a horse for a few months at about 3-3.5. She galloped everywhere and neighed rather well. She rides like the wind nowerdays but she is definitely a normal girl.

I was a very lonely child and had an imaginary friend called Mrs Kershaw . I talked to her constantly and saved spaces for her next to me. I would scream if someone sat on her. I can still picture her with her white fluffy hair, pearls and handbag.

More mainstream ordinary family life with all of our lot, from 2y to 86y.
❤️

I was a tomboy and preferred climbing trees to playing with dolls and refused to wear a dress. If anyone had asked me I’d have said I wanted to be a boy. Puberty ended that phase and I was more than happy to be a girl. These days I’d be off to the transgender clinic to be reassigned. Children change and parents shouldn’t give in to their child’s every demand. A three year old isn’t able to make life long decisions.