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Concerned Parent's avatar

I am a parent who has not denied the possibility of my son being autogynephilic. There are many paths to sexual deviations. However, I do not understand how girls can have RODG but boys are excluded ; even after your in depth explanation and studying the phenomenon for two years. There also seems to be a cohort of girls encouraging their boyfriends/ sexual partners into " becoming women". They love to paint their "new girlfriends" nails, do their hair and pick out clothes,go shopping with them. Many consider themselves in a lesbian relationship. The " lesbian " label is still applied even if the partner still has a penis. Many of these girls love big breasts and penises on the same body. I feel my son was encouraged greatly by such a female after many major adverse life events and not wanting to be "alone".

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Puzzle Therapy's avatar

I don't have a problem with the reality that some typically masculine, presumably heterosexual adolescent boys with no history of gender nonconformity who suddenly announce their desire to be a woman actually have AGP. I completely agree that many in the gender critical camps are demonizing these young men in a terrible way and making it even harder for them to understand their situation. Of course AGP needs to be better researched and understood. I also don't have any personal stake in the issue with boys. However, I am extremely concerned to see the same kind of rigid, it's either this or that and there can't be any other explanations, parents don't know their child and are in denial assertions that so closely mirror the narratives of the affirmation-only, there's only one to understand the gender dysphoric child camp that took over therapy and medicine and got us into this mess. It is an extraordinary claim to say that EVERY non-homosexual boy who says he wants to transition MUST be AGP, no other explanations possible, no other possible pathways to this distress. This is like saying there are multiple causes for depression and anxiety if you are female, but only two if you're male and only one if you're a straight male - and to make this type of claim with such certainty when the sudden increase in numbers and the conditions under which it is happening are so new and have no quality research to base it on. Cass's statements about the lack of research and data to be drawing hard conclusions on applies here too. Maybe we will find out one day that in fact 75, 80, 85% of straight adolescent males wanting to transition are AGP. But that still leaves a significant number of young men who need therapists and doctors able to look at their individual cases with nuance and open minds to understand why they are feeling this distress and how best to treat it. OCD, borderline personality disorder with its core feature of shifting and unstable identity, trauma, extreme depression and the desire to do anything to start cover as a new person, autistic perseveration and concrete and black and white thinking, and other complex mental health and life conditions that don't for neatly into a DSM box - boys can't experience any of those?

It is so disappointing and deeply concerning to see the same kind of rigid thinking explaining the causes gender dysphoria come to "this side" and see it presented as why we would want to come to the LGBT Coalition.

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