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Really interesting and important historical context setting for the fraught and troubling debate about trans issues when it comes to children. Great journalism. Can’t wait for the next installment.

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Aug 13, 2023Liked by Julie Szego

Wow - As Suzanne Moore reflected last year and the father of psychiatry firmly believed - it all goes back to Mother. We mean well but sometimes we really X things up for our children. Good psychiatrists know all this.

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So true, Jazz. It's always the mother!! (The thought keeps me up at night...)

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I lived there for 12 months in 1976, not for the reason you are researching. It was a good place with great staff and I am sure ultimately . a lot of us, myself included

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Aug 13, 2023Liked by Julie Szego

I guess when children were raised by a village we were less likely to fixate on one or two ‘ways of being’. Interesting. We have a blended family. My two children don’t question their gender because we always allowed them to play and dress however they wanted. My step son we didn’t get care for until he was around 11. It’s he that has fallen for it. He never once had issues being a boy - but after spending a great deal of time online during covid he started ‘being female’. I can tell he doesn’t have much of an informed opinion about what actually means because he sure as hell acts like a man when asserting stuff.

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Alison, I’m stretching my synapses to remember undergrad developmental psychology. I think although Freud, Bowlby and Piaget all theorised post the agrarian revolution their theories about the primacy of the mother baby dyad may hold true for causes of paediatric gender Dysphoria, particularly in its traditional form in a male child. I imagine for blended families where Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is present the grooming iPhone is a key culprit not a homophobic mum.

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Oh absolutely - his father is an IT whizz so he could see where our children play on the internet to some degree. His indoctrination was by girls - in anime fan culture sites mainly. Unfortunately we live in the country, covid meant no travel and he was over 18.

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And we aren’t homophobic at all. The only homophobic joke ever said in the home was a joking laugh about how his dad was so attractive to gay guys. Which he was - until old age weathered him.

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Oh puh-leaze, give mothers a break for a while :) After a full century of mother-hating and misogyny under the influence of Freud's sick mind, it's way time we get over this.

My mother still asks me (I'm 52 FFS) if she's been a bad mother. Well, she probably wasn't perfect (who is?). But my father was a depressive failure of a drunkard, who neglected me for years at a time and died of cirrhosis at 52. Who do you think harmed my self-image most?

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Poppet. I am a mother and certainly not suffering from internalised misogyny. Sure, Freud had some projection about phallic envy. Any mother will tell you her well attached little boys grieve as part of individuation when he realised he will never be a mother. .Of course both things are true, And I’m sorry to hear about your father. Fact is for the first 36 months Mother is the sun and the moon, baby’s first love. I embrace the power and crippling responsibility of this as a mother of three. Perhaps focus on the reading which outlines the male children at the Perth Hospital who all had disordered relationships with their… Mother.

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I'm simply amicably advising you not to burden your mind more than necessary :)

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Aug 13, 2023Liked by Julie Szego

This is just the sort of historical investigation that's missing from the polarised discussion of this topic. Thanks, Julie, for your efforts.

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Sex mimics exist in nature. Kids can want to mimic the opposite sex for any number of reasons. So can adults. Parents come with their own agendas. There have always been multiple things going on here, not one single thing.

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When I was 8 I had a good friend (Julie) and we played the well-known game of "mummy and daddy" with the dolls, the Barbie pink car and stuffed animals. But at time, we switched roles because maybe I wanted to play with the toy kitchen, or maybe she wanted to drive around the apartment with the Barbie car, and I played the mommy and she played daddy, and that was no more significant than switching roles playing a "cops and thieves" or an "Indians and cowboys" game.

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That is kids learning to identify themselves in other people. It's necessary to become an empathetic person.

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Thanks Julie very helpfull

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What's most troubling in "gender affirmative care" nowadays is how deeply homophobic it often is. "My son, you're attracted to boys? you like skirts? You must be a girl!" Or you maybe gay and like Scottish culture, who knows, uh?

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When are you doing the installment on "Hold My Beer Syndrome (HMBS) And Its Impact On Sex Reassignment Surgery"?

What is Aussie for the American idiom Hold My Beer, anyway?

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Julie, I am entering this conversation from a different perspective. Can you contact me directly?Here is my first contributions..

I am concerned about the excessive attacks on people who have opinions and concerns and are being cancelled as a result

https://karlreed.substack.com/p/war-against-intolerance-and-censorship

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Good on you Karl. I’ll be in touch.

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