Thank you for taking the time to explain your position, Sophie, since it gives me a greater insight into why you and I are not on the same page.
I too fathered a child and she is one of the 3 best things in my life, the others were living with my soulmate for 46 years and the opportunity to live my life as Rowena.
My own childhood was one of abuse and neglect and I never wanted children and neither did my soulmate when we met and married because her father physically abused her mother. A decade later my spouse fell pregnant and we were in a financial position to raise a child and in our early 30’s. I did the exact opposite from the way I was raised and a large part of that is my innate maternal instinct. That same instinct would have enabled me to adopt a child and raise them as if they were my biological child. It would be interesting to discover how many other transpeople have the same maternal instinct.
We agree that children do not have the cognitive ability to make life altering decisions and must never be coerced into something of that nature. Worth noting that when I was a child I was coerced into being male even though I knew that I wasn’t. How is that coercion acceptable?
The medical specialists are well aware that children cannot make these decisions which is why they use puberty blockers as a means of “buying” trans children the years they need to mentally mature so that they can make an informed decision for themselves at age 18. At that point they can choose for themselves as to whether they want to be male or female and proceed from there. The only side effect of puberty blockers is additional adult height which is not a handicap. As someone who started puberty late at around 15 (was my body was trying to tell me something?) I am now 6’2″ which means that puberty “blocking” can occur naturally.
For the record these medications were developed to help preteen girls who start menstruating early. Puberty blockers have no known irreversible negative side effects however they do appear to reduce the incidence of teenage suicides among transpeople which is a positive side effect in my opinion.
Medical specialists agree that neither Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) nor Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) should be part of the treatment for children and there is a great deal of malicious disinformation being spread around that this is what is being done to children. Personally I oppose the use of HRT and SRS for those under 18 however there might be exceptional circumstances where those treatments could be appropriate. I am not a medical specialist and I do not have the right to impose my opinions on the private medical decisions that occur between a transperson, their parents and medical providers. That is up to them to choose the best course of treatment and no one else should be coercing them either way.
Your position, as I understand it, is based upon what it meant to you to be a biological parent and when is a transperson mature enough to enable them to make a choice as to what adult role suits them best?
My position is that all children, biological or adopted, should be raised with the unconditional love of their biological or adopted parents. That same love means enabling children to make the life choice that is best for themselves when they reach adulthood.
Coercion takes many forms and covers the spectrum of physical and mental abuse. Teaching a child how to tie their shoes is not the same thing as beating or mocking them because they lack the dexterity to do so themselves. I am opposed to all forms of coercion because it has negative side effects that can last a lifetime.
Kind regards, Rowena π©βπ¦³
