Admit it Rambler, you can barely remember 61 let alone 16 
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Sorry but canât see the relevance in that comment at all. 
what on earth has the brexit vote got to do with someone just emerging from childhood making a wrong decision about gender transition but hey hoâŚ
You canât cope with the implications of drink but you can have your body permanently surgically altered.
OK then.
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Scottish students usually start university around 17 and colleges at 16. Without trawling through all the committee hearings Iâm assuming this is to allow those presenting opposite to their assigned birth gender with the opportunity to have matching documentation at the same time as another life-change.
What I canât see in all this is whether there is appropriate therapy and support for these people. You are talking about very small numbers and inevitably they will feel isolated regardless of what decisions they are trying to make.
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Interesting debate.
A 16 year old with limited life experience versus a 35 year old influenced by social media or a 70 year old with a lifetime of reading the Daily Express.
Feels like a no win situation to me, and one tha needs 3 generations to fix.
WoweeâŚ
Cleverley this morning re ZahawiâŚ
What a load of shite.
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Just at the moment when your hormones are driving you crazy and you canât tell your arse from your elbow.
Utter.Fucking.Madness.
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Age is a tricky thing in terms of responsibility. For example between 16/17 you can have children (earlier even), join the army, start to drive, jet a job (even) and go to university. On the other extreme, once you start to get old, your mind and grasp of what is relevant to the âmainstreamâ world youâre leaving may start to go⌠how relevant are the voters at the two extremes? The 16/17 year olds have a whole life ahead of them. The 70-90 year olds have a life time of experience - navigating the path of who should have a say is trick to say the leastâŚ
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Or, a 35 year old who may use social media but isnât dumb enough to let it influence decisions, and a 70 year old whoâs never read the Daily Express in his life.
Yup, letâs go with the pubescent
Anecdotal evidence alert!
My daughter is 17, all her friends are 16/17. She is the only one in her friend group who isnât one of the following:
Gay
Lesbian
Bi
Pan
Gender non-comforming
Trans
Anyway, when you actually get down to it, not a single one of her friends who are identify as one of these, has actually ever kissed/shagged somebody of the opposite sex.
The âtransâ (born female) has long hair, fancies boys and often wears kilts (aka skirts).
The gender non-comforming (born male) occasionally wears black nail varnish and/or guy-liner. So essentially what we called a goth in my day, or an emo.
What Iâm getting at, and this isnât going to apply to everyone, is that none of these people actually have any experience to put these labels on themselves.
Iâd put money on less than two of them not conforming to their birth gender and being in a non-hetero relationship by the time theyâre in their 30s.
Let teens experiment as they always have, try new things, make mistakes. But letâs not let them make mistakes that involve life-changing surgery.
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I wonder how many of those would have these identifications if they hadnât been rammed down their throats from primary school. Every corridor in my schools has an LGBGT sign.
Damn you.
Do they deliver popcorn?
Isnât that the point of the gender recognition legislation? It specifically demedicalises it.
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With the best will in the world to do it without them, I think medical professionals are needed eventually
Had this conversation with an uber woke niece last night. Never knew what a terf was. Will expand later.
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I thought the whole point of this is that they no longer need a gender dysphoria diagnosis to get a gender recognition certificate. Thatâs what the WHO changed in 2017 and what Theresa May proposed until she fucked up her majority and had to rely on the DUP.
Now itâs perfectly possible that someone who changes their legal gender will have gender dysphoria and would like reassignment surgery but making it a prerequisite seems to be pushing people down a medical route that they may not be ready to take.
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But surely itâs about more than just having a certificate.
I wouldnât even begin to imagine what must be going through someoneâs mind who want to be the opposite sex to what they were born.
But if a biological man wants to be a woman, then surely at some point a surgeon will be needed?
Found this, complicated.
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The terminology does get a bit complex. There was a Bill Nye episode (on Netflix, I think) that tried to explain it in laymanâs terms.
I think the WHO recommendation was that gender identity should be demedicalised in a similar way to how sexuality was.
It is a different category, though, because someone who is homosexual just gets on with their life. They may have mental health requirements as a result of prejudice but generally they will find themselves in reasonable support groups. At least in liberal Western societies they will.
With gender identity there is more chance that the individual is genuinely distressed by their appearance. Even then, I suspect that there are people who identify as a trans-man, for example, who I would simply see as a âbutch lesbianâ (apologies if that isnât a politically correct term these days). I think the difference is that a butch woman is happy enough simply having a male hair and clothing style.
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Not entirely sure what hormones have to do with it as an argument against when itâs precisely often the one of the underlying reasons as to gender dysphoria. That wonât change with age.