May 11, 2021 - 4:02pm
“We are so proud of him and so proud of the choice that he has made”.
Yesterday Matthew and Klara told This Morning about Stormy, their transgender-identified child who decided that she was a boy at two-years-old.
'We love him so much. We're so proud of him and the choice that he's made.'
At the age of two, Stormy told his family, 'I'm not a girl, I think I'm a boy'. We speak to his parents, Matthew and Klara, who hope that their story helps raise awareness for other families. pic.twitter.com/AiVR2HhNlX
— This Morning (@thismorning) May 10, 2021
Viewers were told that what the child has decided should be celebrated. As a transgender adult, I beg to differ.
Stormy is still only four years old. Children of that age believe in all sorts of fantasies. Sometimes we correct them, sometimes we humour them — Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy come to mind. But by the same token, we should not be cheering them on as their parents bring them up in a fantasy world where children can be whatever the sex they decide to be. Or, more frighteningly perhaps, the sex that their parents decide for them.
While nobody will be proposing physical treatment on a child so young, letting your daughter believe that she is actually a boy from such a young age will only complicate things down the road. By affirming the child as the other sex, they are set inexorably on a course that will lead to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and possibly surgery. That is the real danger.
Presenter Holly Willoughby appeared to be spellbound, but missed the point spectacularly: “as a society we tend to want to put people into a girl or a boy box … it makes us feel comfortable.”
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SubscribeGoodness. Am I a bad parent? When my 4 year old told me, with total conviction, that they were a fire engine, I laughed and made siren noises with them. Clearly what I should have done is have them spray painted red from head to toe and then down the tattoo parlour to get ‘Fire Emergency’ inked permanently on their forehead…
We jest, but if we continue down this path ‘being a fire engine’ may end up being a protected characteristic.
Reminds me of of a tale from back in the day when my mum worked as a teacher in a ‘Bad Lads’ school i.e. kids excluded from regular schooling. One of the lads wanted PSYCHO tattooed on his forehead, & got his mate to do it with Indian ink & a needle.
Sadly, his pal was dyslexic, & I imagine the conversation in years to come:
“Grandad, what does PHISCO mean?”
Yes you are a bad parent. We are now in the post-enlightenment world-the world of magic , where you can be whatever you want to be & mum & dad ( or the state) should spend hundreds thousands pounds making this happen . We are also in the age of superficial appearances-so the princess is good because she is beautiful , wheras Richard 111 is bad because of his shoulder. In the Shakespeare play Henry Tudor is portrayed as the dashing young man , wheras if you look at their portraits , Henry & Richard were about the same age & quite similar in appearance. In the age of enlightenment true love conquers ie Jane Eyre still loves Mr Rochester , almost because of his terrible injuries. Nowadays she would be told to take him to a plastic surgeon. This superficial transformation world is actually state-sanctioned-I doubt if parents are told of the hours of grueling surgery ( that can go badly wrong) which leaves their child with a partially functioning body.
Understood, but why ‘they’ and ‘their’. Is the child’s sex a secret, or is there more than one of them?
Thank you for being such a voice of reason. If one dares to voice an opposing opinion in a case such as this on social media, one gets hounded as a transphobe. Most are not transphobic, we just want an opinion on e.g. children and sports. This hounding is polarizing people even further.
Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy, is the name for this sort of thing.
In ten years’ time (max) the lawsuits will be something horrendous, but nothing will bring back the health and fertility of the people, now children, who are being manipulated and conned in this mind-boggling way.
“The real culprits, though, are not these parents or Holly Willoughby, but the snake-oil salesmen who have sold this lie to society.”
The real culprits are most definitely the parents.
The real culprits, though, are these parents and Holly Willoughby, and the snake-oil salesmen who have sold this lie to society
I agree; we need to stop letting parents off the hook. Even if they have only good intentions (which I doubt), parenting isn’t about doing everything your child wants. If my parents had followed my whims at the age of three or four they would have let me eat nothing but chocolate biscuits. Yes, that would have made me happy in the moment, but would (obviously) not have been good for my long-term health. Where did anyone get this idiotic idea that the “choices” of children this young should be “respected”? They barely even understand at that age what a “choice” is (ask any teacher who, like me, has waited while a four-year-old struggled to decide which colour crayon to pick), and certainly don’t yet have the cognitive development needed to consider long-term consequences of serious life-altering choices.
Having a “transgender” child opens the door to minority status and the consequent social status for the parents. Probably they are white, male and female and can’t fake an alternative. But they can make their child anything they want. Sickening but unfortunately more common than would hope.
No, the real culprits are the parents who appear to want the 15 minutes of fame, curtesy of their child.
Also it seems to be a further development of that favourite adult game when parent’s split up of using their child as a punchbag. There are various cases, one that gets discussed is the James/Luna one where mum seems to want son to be a girl to upset dad. The child lives full-time with their mother so is controlled by her but is able to revert to being James when with their father.Fathers ( & it does seem to be mainly fathers) have been stopped from seeing the child if they won’t call them by their new name or refuse to pay for surgery which they disagree with. Quillette has a few articles on this topic.
It’s child abuse, pure and simple. End of.
It’s a total disaster when it comes to parenting and a really damaging precedent when it comes to wider society.
Naturally your view will be decried as anti-trans or hate speech by some. But the people doing that aren’t capable of understanding why a 4 year old ‘transitioning’ is a bad idea, so perhaps their grasp (or lack of) on reality should disqualify them from being listened to in the first place.
Frankly I don’t give a damn if people wish to throw names at me and call me anti-trans. Just a few short years ago this lunacy would have been called what it is and anyone declaring that ‘gender is fluid’ would’ve correctly either been mocked or put into a mental institute. This is child abuse and is the height of wickedness in my oh so conservative olf fashioned ‘boys are boys and girls are girls’ opinion. I saw a real quick money making opportunity a few years ago when I read with incredulity that ‘parents are confused about gender’. I would only charge a reasonable fee to advise them in about ten seconds or less what gender their child is. For young minds that don’t understand themselves at all this is pure poison, encouraging kids to think that they are something they are not and then the ‘transitioning’ malpractice that ensues, frankly for me there should be a lot of these snake oil salesmen (oops, salespeople) being struck off medical lists and heading to gaol.
It definitely seems to have become a trendy thing to have a “transgender child” these days. Interestingly, it’s nearly always white parents and kids; maybe it’s the parents’ way of atoning for their guilt at having selfishly chosen to propagate their own genes and bring another white child into the world, rather than adopting a “child of colour”. Although Hollywood actress Charlize Theron did adopt a little boy from Africa whom she has since turned into a “girl”.
Meantime every single one of the trillions of chromosomes making up this child is male or female. All the surgery or drugs in the world do not change this fact.
Let alone the criminality of making decisions like this for someone who is many years short of adulthood.
JP Sears, who does a parody news report has one on Biden’s Transgender policy which allows children to get hormone blockers and surgery without their parents consent, says he believes the procedures should even be allowed without the Child’s consent, to be really progressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxudQgoG4-c (JP is a vegan ‘Lifestyle Guru’ in real life who also has issues with the more extreme Liberal policies, including the covid response, and is fun to watch.)
I discovered JPSears on YouTube two or three years ago. I agree with you. He is a top class satirist, and very much under-appreciated.
Plus one. Funny and always on the money.
The real question is how we stop the march of unreason, how we rescue the pursuit of truth.
The trans war is just one instance of the unhinged abandonment of reason in favour of anthropocentric assertion, in so far as it takes the form of degenerate egoism.
People now talk about ‘their’ truth instead of ‘the’ truth. A purist might insist that is merely an acknowledgment of the conditional nature of cognition, but in reality it is nothing more than an unwillingness to make the effort to seek the objective truth (it is the effort that counts more than success). Furthermore it represents a moral cowardice, because the truth is sometimes so uncomfortable we prefer to retreat into unsupported belief.
Everywhere there is the ebb and flow of competing narrative, and all the while truth drowns.
Thank you very much Debbie, as always a voice of reason in these discussions; if every trans person were as measured and logical in their argument we wouldn’t have the ugly polarization we see today, and which I fear will get much nastier on both sides.
I am not blaming the author, I am blaming whoever wrote the headline for this awful we.
We is a sneaky device to make you think you are part of a group that you may neither belong to nor want to belong to. The Guardian is a great user of we in that way. Not one of its better habits, so I do not think it should be done here (rather than we not should do it here.)
Well said. If I want to read The Guardian, I’ll do so myself, thanks.
I think the idea is because This Morning is such a mainstream programme they are sharing with their viewers what they consider is an accepted attitude in today’s society.Some viewers might even want this for their child as a way of ‘keeping up with the Jones’
I do think you are right. There was a comedian, many moons ago, who made a joke – ‘I’ve got 3 kids, one of each’. Now it can be said ‘I’ve got over 100 kids, one of each’
Throughout primary, my son had long hair and always wore the princess dress in the dressing up box at school. Our reaction, ‘meh’ shoulder shrug, he will either grow out of it or he won’t. He did, he is now at secondary and has happily fallen into absolute ‘boy-zone’, not that we would have worried if he hadn’t. The point is, we just didn’t make a fuss and let him run with it, he just liked shiny, colourful things, now he doesn’t and there is an end to it.
These idiots are playing a dangerous game believing that their child is deciding his next 80 years at the age of 4, when most 4 year olds just like to try things out that look fun.
The kindly light of reason shines from everything you write. Please don’t give up.
In these ‘enlightened’ times,logically, trans people must surely face the accusation of having committed ‘gender appropriation’.
Encouraging a 4 year old to start transitioning is grotesque. The people who push this want to undermine the whole of western civilisation. They have been brainwashed by left wing education into believing that nothing good comes from having a rigid, organised society and that all systems are oppressive. They believe that deconstructing everything will free us and somehow that will lead us closer to utopia.
I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory but I really do believe this is what underlies a lot of the trans movement.
The people who push this belong to a very well-organised lobby group, funded by billionaires, which operates worldwide. There are huge profits to be made by the medical industry; drugs for life, surgery to transition and yet more surgery for those wishing to de-transition.
And yet further surgery to deal with complications ensuing from the initial surgery.
Who calls their child Stormy anyway. That is reason enough to have her taken in to care
Yes, I agree with every word. Well said. Again.
In the unlikely event that the child really does have gender dysphoria, why is that distress supposed to be a cause for celebration?
To be content in one’s own skin is what should be wished for everyone.
the kid four. Four. Is every tomboy to now be subject to medical experimentation? Is every young male who prefers dolls to sports to be slated for surgical intervention?
How can anyone (let alone a 2 year old) possibly know what it’s like to be another sex or gender and presume it will suit them better? How?
Munchhausen’s by different means. Why “celebrate” it? Because there are no governors on these sorts of activist ideas. They purposely come with no limits; the only pushback is when some rational person dares to say “wait a minute; this is a four year old.”
Stormy was apparently born with female genitals and that alone makes Stormy a girl. Welcome to our brave new world, where reality is just another construct.
It is a celebration of imbecility
‘We” are not celebrating. Anyone with half a brain is holding their head in their hands and weeping for what THEY are attempting to promote.
Four year olds often don’t even know for sure what species they are. My daughter’s best (human) friend at that age self-identified as a pony.
Quite horrifying. A choice (a four-year old) has made?
I fear for the choices this poor child will now make as a teenager; on a bridge perhaps one day, a balcony somewhere, the bathroom maybe.
Sad, uncomfortable…that really doesn’t cover it. This is a disgrace, and it’s heartrending.
Incidentally I am not a bigot. I fully support the right of an adult to make such choices as they wish about their own body, including gender. That the adults around this child have delegated responsibility to the child for a decision of this magnitude is utterly contemptible.
It’s a weirdo cult of free will and materialism.
Tell me, are we happy yet?
The parents have been manipulated by the TG activists whose aim is to upset children with their gender identity nonsense, confuse society generally (aided by their critical partners on race who are bent on destroying our history) so that the time will come when in the confusion these neo-Marxists will launch their bid to create for us the sort of totalitarian regime they are so clearly already foreshadowing.
And then watch the bodies of the means of their take-over mount up. Do these useful idiots really think there is a place for them in a Marxist state? The last thing they will want around are ‘activists’.
The parents should be charged with child abuse and social services should step in.
All I can do is shake my head, it is beyond words.
This is child abuse.
Do they give this 4-year old the option to drink alcohol at home? Allow their child to choose to smoke?
It is straightforward and simple – abuse.
Bravo!
Must admit I’ve not given much thought to the issue of four year olds wanting to change their gender identity. Is Stormy really being ‘forced into a trans box’? In what way?
‘we should not be cheering them on as their parents bring them up in a fantasy world where children can be whatever the sex they decide to be.’
The parents were quite explicit (in the clip – I haven’t seen the whole interview) that there is a difference between sex and gender and they were talking about gender so I’m not sure about the above statement. Aren’t they just talking about bringing up the kid in a gender neutral way? I imagine it’s perfectly possible Stormy will change their mind and some stage.
You could rephrase the headline ‘Why aren’t we forcing this child to behave like our concept of how a girl should behave?’
The crucial question is – is any harm being done to the child? I’m not convinced it is by this article.
Chemically altering hormones, cutting off health body parts, infertility, massively increased risk of cancer … Where’s the harm? There’s no point really in trying to reason with someone so willfully obtuse.
Encouraging delusion as well.
That road leads to one of two places. Either the sex change Andrew Harvey describes, or a lifetime of living in a body you feel you do not belong in. If it has to be it has to be, but surely the child is better off on a road where she feels in harmony with the body she was born with, and the parents would de better to gently nudge her in that direction. Why not just give her any toys and clothes she wants, say she can play in any way she wants, and when she is old enough give her ‘Famous Five’ and hold up George as a role model?
Maybe. I don’t know the child and I don’t know the circumstances. Hence my point about harm. Andrew Harvey seemed to be commenting on something else entirely.
No. He was talking about hormone treatment and surgery that are not being considered for this child.
Yet.
Of course, harm is being done. The planet is full of tomboys who grew up to either be straight women or lesbians, just as the planet is full of young males who grew up to be gay men. The harm is medical experimentation on children who, instead of growing up to be whatever they’ll be, are manipulated by adults into life-changing acts. If the child reaches adulthood and wants to transition, then fine; that’s an adult decision to make, not a case for grownups to indulge the whims of four year olds.
It’s been found that socially transitioning a young person leads to their gender dysphoria (this discomfort) lasting longer (a Zucker 2020 paper reports this, also in an earlier paper by Steensma and others). That is, treating this child this way is likely to prolong the mental mismatch with biological reality.
Otherwise, about 80% of young kids who feel this mismatch (often very strongly, I’m not dismissing their discomfort or confidence in their feelings) grow out of it at puberty. Others heal through counseling.
As far as telling a kid that they are really in the wrong body: the “Dutch Protocol” studies in fact said that you need to make sure the kids know what their biological reality is. You can check deVries and Cohen-Kettenis, 2012. They detail how you have to correct the child if they are confused about whether they are a boy or a girl. These are the ones who did the studies with the most aggressive medical interventions for young people (we do not know the long term outcomes of these 55 children yet), which everyone quotes when they give puberty blockers, etc.