Boys should be free to wear tutus and tiaras, says Church of England

Its ridiculous. Tiaras are for girls and not for boys. I don't see why a boy would want to wear one. I remember back when I was at primary school (8 years ago now) if a guy wore girl clothes they wouldn't hear the end of it. Even the teachers would join in with the banter.

I guess boys can't be feminine or have free will?
Also, I didn't necessarily understand how it's going to hurt someone if the whole message it about normalizing feminine behaviour in boys.

How? I turned up to my after school club to pick up my 4 year-old son. He and his mate were playing mum's and dads. Both were dressed in Princess Dresses (they have a massive box of dress up) and each had their respective prams and dolls.

Are you suggesting I should have taken them to one side, given them a firm talking to along the lines of "Boys don't do things like that. A man's job in this world is to work down t'pit whilst mother does all the cooking, cleaning and women's work."?

It made me smile. I love my son very much just the way he is and if he wants to be a princess when he is older, I will fully support him in that ambition. What business is it of anyone else to dictate how my son should act.

There is a general backlash against promoting what one might describe as alternative lifestyles, yet there is no similar backlash against promoting traditional masculine feminine roles. That would be where men are not permitted to display emotion and women must be seen to be weak and submissive.

Why can't we just promote the idea that all lifestyles that don't impact on others are acceptable and of equal value?

I'm not aware of any Church of England teaching that would've ever said the opposite. Bit weird they're making headlines for stating the obvious. Will it help bullying? **** if I know, you wouldn't guess that was the aim


Sorry, who's getting hurt by it exactly? It's not like they've condemned anybody for choosing to still follow the stereotypical route if they so please.

Whose lives are being hurt by this?

General reply to all of you asking 'why?'

my objections are to do with how this relates to transgender children. And how I see this fueling the rise in acceptance and specifically medical intervention in young kids:


Specific replies:












See my first spoilered reply





See my first spoilered reply

And how I see this fueling the rise in acceptance and specifically medical intervention in young kids:

The outcomes and statistics for young boys and men are dire at the moment, they are under performing at all levels of education, and the mental health statistics and suicide rates are damming. You may relate this to boys just needing to be more in touch with their emotion - but I would suggest that this is a historically illiterate viewpoint. Boys historically have performed very well, and gone on to become men who built large parts of the modern world. They did not require being able to cry or being more feminine to do this, they require the specific benefits that come from more male personality traits. A lack of agreeableness, a generally high level of competitiveness, a willingness to fight for and defend what seems right. We do not need a generation of boys with normalized feminine behavior - we need to develop a system of education that helps promote the positive strengths of male behavior within boys.

This is frankly untrue. The body of evidence at present is that transitioning improves mental health and quality of life in transgender individuals:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2265.2009.03625.x/abstract
http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/25690443
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23553588_Long-term_Assessment_of_the_Physical_Mental_and_Sexual_Health_among_Transsexual_Women

Don't conflate transitioning not being 100% effective in treating dysphoria with it not helping at all (as you are claiming), the latter is provably false. Transitioning at present is not perfect, no, but it does improve mental health and wellbeing.




Again false. Promoting heavy, "traditional" masculinity is not conducive to reducing mental health issues and suicide rates. You talk historically as if it was fine until men were told they could be something else, but the gap in suicide rates between men and women have been seen back to the 19th century (If you can find a copy, look at Le Suicide by Emile Durkheim) - as far back as there is research, suicide has appeared to be a predominately male phenomenon; and that predates the move to modern acceptance of feminine behaviour in men.

If you want a discussion grounded in evidence/sources/studies, then that's not something I can give you properly at the moment.

I'm inbetween masters courses right now, so I don't have access to the full articles you mentioned, or to articles/evidence I would need to give you to justify my own positions. It would end up looking entirely one sided and be pretty pointless.

I did initially try to do that though, and write out a long reply, but reading it back - I don't think it serves any purpose as without anything backing it, its unlikely to convince you, after you have already brought your own evidence to the debate.

I would say though, that I do take some major issues with the studies you have posted above. Most notably that they are all severly out of date. Even the second one, whilst published recently only covers individuals who transitioned more then a decade ago.

Given the rapid change in how our society deals with gender, and the currently ongoing and exponential increase in young people being provided with gender care, I do not think that focusing on those who transitioned more then a decade ago, when only the most extreme, able, and determined could get to the point of hormone therapy(who are exclusively who all of your studies focus on), is very useful for determining weather the much larger, wider, and more circumstantially and mentally diverse pool of under-18s today who are being sent in this direction will benefit from it.

For reference of the expansion within under 18s - http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-35532491

An increase in referrals is not reason to suspect that treatment is no longer effective.
Yes, long term studies will never be assessing the cutting edge of treatment at the time of publication, but the data they generate is no less valid for it.

In most cases I would agree about your point regarding an increase.

My hesitance in this case is because of how rapidly gender identity has changed. I mean, without full access to the studies I cant comment fully on the participants backgrounds, but I would assume them to be 18+ at the time of transitioning, and their transition was near complete around a decade ago.

A decade ago the views of gender were very different - the narratives of it being a spectrum, of gender queer, non-binary, a myriad of pronouns, were certainly not wide spread at all, if they had even been conceived of. let alone the idea that there is no such thing as gender, even the idea that gender exists as purely a social construct was not widely accepted. 10 years ago, T wasn't even part of LGB...

So its why I have a bit of a hard time accepting results from studies conducted on people who transitioned at a time when what gender meant to those transitioning was substantially different from what it is today. For example back then It was highly likely that it was a man or a women, who simply believed that they were in the wrong body, and that a change would solve it. Now you have 16 year olds going to doctors and claiming to have a gender that changes fluidly day by day, whilst they experience dyshporia and other mental conditions. I don't view the situations as the same.

Where I think I will always branch off is that I believe transgender treatment to not be of universal assistance to trans individuals, and on average I do not think it has an overall positive impact, because for every case of an individual that is pushed in this direction that is helped, I see other cases of individuals who have deep deep regrets and pain caused by the treatment they were led to believe would help them. Therefor I make the claim as above that on average, transgender treatment does not help transgender individuals (defined as someone who suffers gender dyshporia), and should only be prescribed and promoted under the most careful and extreme of cases, and certianly not to anyone under 18 (or 16, I could see a case being made for girls especially here)

See my first spoilered reply

Fair enough, I was expecting you to go down the typical argument about increased diagnosis of relatively modern phenomena (e.g. autism, ADHD) and the idea that the diagnosis is just being thrown around willy nilly, to which the counter response would be that diagnosis criteria (in terms of the DSM) have remained fairly static. As far as I'm aware typical treatment for non-binary identities though is not to fully transition, so you're on to a different question.



We can, yes



And we disagree here - You are placing your experience front and centre, fair enough, but judging as a whole, the current body of research done on transitioning as a treatment shows it to be effective in helping individuals with gender dysphoria - I'd be reticent to then say it shouldn't be practised except in the most extreme of cases. Yes, it's not 100% effective (no treatment ever is), no, it's not without it's flaws and risks (again, no treatment is), but on the whole it currently stands as being overall beneficial. Until the body of evidence shifts against that, I won't.

I'll leave Stiff Little Fingers to deal with the scientific side, but even if we accept your claim as true, it's a non-sequitur - "Hormone therapy is too risky, therefore any kind of child breaking of traditional gender binaries is bad."