That Atlantic article was a great and nuanced response.
I’d read the Andrea Long Chu piece first and my immediate thought was - as the parent of an autistic 11 year old who desperately wants a mastectomy and androgen therapy - I’d be just as alarmed if they wanted breast enlargement, a butt lift, liposuction or lip augmentation - or if I had a cis male child who wanted penis enlargement or wanted to take steroids to develop muscle mass.
I think that’s the biggest flaw in Chu’s argument - if you are going to remove the barriers of psychological assessment and say children have absolute autonomy over bodily surgery, why should that right only apply to trans children?
That cis children are influenced by media standards of beauty but trans children are immune to outside influence?
And the point about teenage girls not liking being teenage girls really isn’t the argument for early transition Chu thinks it is, but it’s a great argument for feminism.
Great article in the Atlantic, Helen but one small point..Back in 1998, as a CAMHS clinician, I attended an event in Leeds where a child and adolescent psychotherapist from the Tavistock and Portman children and adolescent GIDS clinic, explained that 9 out of the 10 patients, receiving high quality and long term psychoanalytic psychotherapy had come to terms with being gay. The vanishing small number of patients who went on to medically transition had at least had time to reflect.
Andrea Long Chu's written work as a whole shows a person who likes to set fire to things just get a reaction. When Chu wrote a pyromaniac book and the world so rudely just kept on going as before, the New York Magazine piece (into which the author threw every flammable scrap within reach willy-nilly without even pretending to make much sense) was an inevitable next step. A deft pen and some background knowledge does not wisdom make, but it does guarantee publication for some types of extremists. I'd imagine the magazine couldn't resist warming its hands at such an attention-getting bonfire.
Re: people putting their children on the TikTok stage - there is an excellent novel "Les enfants sont rois" by Delphine de Vigan (in French) which tells the story of a mother who promotes her two children Sammy and Kimmy on social networks, notably on YouTube via the Happy Récré channel, where they are followed by millions of subscribers. Learn more at https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_enfants_sont_rois and clamour for it to be translated into English!
That Atlantic article was a great and nuanced response.
I’d read the Andrea Long Chu piece first and my immediate thought was - as the parent of an autistic 11 year old who desperately wants a mastectomy and androgen therapy - I’d be just as alarmed if they wanted breast enlargement, a butt lift, liposuction or lip augmentation - or if I had a cis male child who wanted penis enlargement or wanted to take steroids to develop muscle mass.
I think that’s the biggest flaw in Chu’s argument - if you are going to remove the barriers of psychological assessment and say children have absolute autonomy over bodily surgery, why should that right only apply to trans children?
That cis children are influenced by media standards of beauty but trans children are immune to outside influence?
And the point about teenage girls not liking being teenage girls really isn’t the argument for early transition Chu thinks it is, but it’s a great argument for feminism.
Ichinono is worth a look on Google Streetview: https://maps.app.goo.gl/G134q5Fjgb32PGmA8?g_st=ic
The Google bot has carefully blurred out the faces of the dolls. The town featured in an episode of James May in Japan on Amazon.
Great article in the Atlantic, Helen but one small point..Back in 1998, as a CAMHS clinician, I attended an event in Leeds where a child and adolescent psychotherapist from the Tavistock and Portman children and adolescent GIDS clinic, explained that 9 out of the 10 patients, receiving high quality and long term psychoanalytic psychotherapy had come to terms with being gay. The vanishing small number of patients who went on to medically transition had at least had time to reflect.
Andrea Long Chu's written work as a whole shows a person who likes to set fire to things just get a reaction. When Chu wrote a pyromaniac book and the world so rudely just kept on going as before, the New York Magazine piece (into which the author threw every flammable scrap within reach willy-nilly without even pretending to make much sense) was an inevitable next step. A deft pen and some background knowledge does not wisdom make, but it does guarantee publication for some types of extremists. I'd imagine the magazine couldn't resist warming its hands at such an attention-getting bonfire.
Can't wait for your new series!
Re: people putting their children on the TikTok stage - there is an excellent novel "Les enfants sont rois" by Delphine de Vigan (in French) which tells the story of a mother who promotes her two children Sammy and Kimmy on social networks, notably on YouTube via the Happy Récré channel, where they are followed by millions of subscribers. Learn more at https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_enfants_sont_rois and clamour for it to be translated into English!
That Cosmo story is something else, those parents are sociopaths