10 year old to launch first "drag club" for kids

[Zaap]

News flash: kids think about gender and sex before they are ready. And they look at pornography, other people's parts, masturbate, and even have sex at times where they're not really sure what these things are, what they mean for the world, and least of all what they mean for themselves.

This is so far removed from this actual situation its absurd. Being curious about sex and learning anotomy and sexual education properly from parents is a world apart from dressing a toddler in provacative adult fantasy roles (as the creepy parents here give away that they did with their telltale 'since he was a toddler' BS backstory.')

The problem here is some people want to ignore key details here and put all sorts of made up shit into this. No, no one sane is buying that toddlers make such decisions. No, I don't buy there's any legit 'coming out' or being LGBT at 10 years old when its clear your parents have been using you for some vicarious weirdness of theirs since a very early age.

The details of the actual story go against the made-up bullshit that people are wanting to kneejerk and add into this.

Again... I don't know why anyone who's LGBT thinks muddying that with all sorts of weird pageant parent psychoness involving young children helps anything. There's plenty of people who think that gay= peodophile etc when of course it has nothing at all to do with that. Not sure why anyone gay thinks weird child expoitation that's really parents being creeps helps them any.

 

[hal2kilo]

Hey that's cool. I wonder what the are using for blowers.

 

[interchange]

The problem here is some people want to ignore key details here and put all sorts of made up shit into this. No, no one sane is buying that toddlers make such decisions. No, I don't buy there's any legit 'coming out' or being LGBT at 10 years old when its clear your parents have been using you for some vicarious weirdness of theirs since a very early age.

This is dead wrong. That statement doesn't come from training or literature. That stuff says the same thing, but I would be hesitant to believe it for the same line of thinking you profess being how I was taught.

But it's wrong. 100% unequivocally wrong. I know because my niece is such a person. When she was ~4 years old she started actively pulling bows out of her hair, throwing tantrums when people would try to put a dress on her, and was obsessed with pirates. She would steal her mom's makeup to draw a beard on her face. And this was no vicarious weirdness on the part of her parents. They were deeply ashamed, tried to hide it from their community and, though thankfully loving and eventually flexible enough to help her navigate things, went to bed praying to God every night that their little girl would just wake up wanting to be a girl. It didn't happen, and it wasn't anything that they did. She is a wonderful person. Her gender identity differences are not a secret, but she doesn't really talk about them spontaneously either. She hasn't gone out and said she was a boy and to call her something different than her given name or gender pronoun. Maybe she wants that, maybe she doesn't. We're going to let her decide.

 

[realibrad]

This is dead wrong. That statement doesn't come from training or literature. That stuff says the same thing, but I would be hesitant to believe it for the same line of thinking you profess being how I was taught.

But it's wrong. 100% unequivocally wrong. I know because my niece is such a person. When she was ~4 years old she started actively pulling bows out of her hair, throwing tantrums when people would try to put a dress on her, and was obsessed with pirates. She would steal her mom's makeup to draw a beard on her face. And this was no vicarious weirdness on the part of her parents. They were deeply ashamed, tried to hide it from their community and, though thankfully loving and eventually flexible enough to help her navigate things, went to bed praying to God every night that their little girl would just wake up wanting to be a girl. It didn't happen, and it wasn't anything that they did. She is a wonderful person. Her gender identity differences are not a secret, but she doesn't really talk about them spontaneously either. She hasn't gone out and said she was a boy and to call her something different than her given name or gender pronoun. Maybe she wants that, maybe she doesn't. We're going to let her decide.

Question about that. Could it be more of a thing that her liking pirates and pirates being male she tries to copy them? I remember lots of kids at that age saying they wanted to be a flower, or a cat, or a firetruck because they liked the abstraction while obviously not understanding the situation fully. You obviously know more of the situation, but I often wonder this. My Girlfriend said when she was very young she wanted to be a flower and her sisters wanted to be "puppies". The adults though it was cute and not a threat to their ideas so they left it and they grew out of it, but I can see some parents rejecting that and it driving a rebellious kid latching onto that.

 

[interchange]

Question about that. Could it be more of a thing that her liking pirates and pirates being male she tries to copy them? I remember lots of kids at that age saying they wanted to be a flower, or a cat, or a firetruck because they liked the abstraction while obviously not understanding the situation fully. You obviously know more of the situation, but I often wonder this. My Girlfriend said when she was very young she wanted to be a flower and her sisters wanted to be "puppies". The adults though it was cute and not a threat to their ideas so they left it and they grew out of it, but I can see some parents rejecting that and it driving a rebellious kid latching onto that.

Who the hell knows? I think the answer is probably no. And I only talked about some of the differences she exhibited earlier on. But gender expression differences are expressed very early in some people regardless of environment. Certainly an environment where parents actively fight a behavior or actively encourage a behavior affects a person's behavior and conflicts surrounding gender. I'm not sure that any of it actually affects a person's innate leaning toward one or the other. Although my sister/family are relatively more conservative and experienced the shame and fought against things, they were also significantly more accepting of her as an individual and adaptable when they learned that it wasn't just a phase or unusual interest in pirates. In no way do I think they caused her to be different. They simply influenced her expression of that difference.

 

[realibrad]

Who the hell knows? I think the answer is probably no. And I only talked about some of the differences she exhibited earlier on. But gender expression differences are expressed very early in some people regardless of environment. Certainly an environment where parents actively fight a behavior or actively encourage a behavior affects a person's behavior and conflicts surrounding gender. I'm not sure that any of it actually affects a person's innate leaning toward one or the other. Although my sister/family are relatively more conservative and experienced the shame and fought against things, they were also significantly more accepting of her as an individual and adaptable when they learned that it wasn't just a phase or unusual interest in pirates. In no way do I think they caused her to be different. They simply influenced her expression of that difference.

I know biology plays a big role, and I expect to start having kids in the next year to two so I'm trying to learn as much as I can. I tend to be very assertive when giving my opinions yet I also want to give my kids as much room to explore as possible. If you and I are still active on this forum, expect lots more questions like these .

 

[Paladin3]

I find this about as equally and mildly offensive as the TV show Toddlers and Tiaras. It's parents dressing their kid up provocatively for attention. It really has nothing to do with LGBTQ rights or is in anyway the parents championing their child's right to choose their own gender identity. He surely wasn't old enough to make that decision for himself when he started dressing up as a toddler or wearing dresses at age six.

I also question if he knew what he was doing when he performed with Ru Paul at the the New York Gay Pride Parade in 2015 at the age or 7 or 8. And now at 10 his parents want to make him the face of a makeup and clothing line, which his online "club for drag kids" is building a fan base for.

This is about $$$ not bulling prevention, suicide awareness or LGBTQ rights. The kid, gay, trans or otherwise, is a child actor and his shtick is being a mini drag queen. It looks like he is having fun with it but I hope they are saving money for his college.

 

[Paladin3]

I know biology plays a big role, and I expect to start having kids in the next year to two so I'm trying to learn as much as I can. I tend to be very assertive when giving my opinions yet I also want to give my kids as much room to explore as possible. If you and I are still active on this forum, expect lots more questions like these .

Your kids will be who they are going to be and you can't control things like their sexuality and gender identity. You can give them good lessons in what it right and wrong, but even then they will still make up their own minds. This is good because we want to grow them into strong, capable adults who can take care of themselves and just maybe go on to make the world a better place.

IMHO, the most important thing you teach them is to love themselves so they are equipped to love others and be loved in return.

 

[realibrad]

Your kids will be who they are going to be and you can't control things like their sexuality and gender identity. You can give them good lessons in what it right and wrong, but even then they will still make up their own minds. This is good because we want to grow them into strong, capable adults who can take care of themselves and just maybe go on to make the world a better place.

IMHO, the most important thing you teach them is to love themselves so they are equipped to love others and be loved in return.

Hmm, I don't know if I would take such an absolute stance. I think some of their identity stems from nurture and not just nature. I mean, look at children that are raised in a violent sexist home, and then see how that effects them on average. I think what the kid is raised around can have an influence on him. Personally I don't care about sexuality and gender identity beyond what makes them happy, but I also think that there are influences from both nature and nurture.

 

[Paladin3]

Hmm, I don't know if I would take such an absolute stance. I think some of their identity stems from nurture and not just nature. I mean, look at children that are raised in a violent sexist home, and then see how that effects them on average. I think what the kid is raised around can have an influence on him. Personally I don't care about sexuality and gender identity beyond what makes them happy, but I also think that there are influences from both nature and nurture.

From what I've read it is both nature and nurture, but I tend to lean towards nature having far more influence unless there is some abuse in the home that basically produces a broken child. Nothing in a "normal" upbringing is going to turn a person gay or straight, IMHO. Both my gay son and lesbian daughter have told me they just grew up that way and it's always seemed normal to be attracted to members of the same sex. I don't think my parenting had anything to do with it other than raising them to be strong and loving enough to put up with a bit of hate from ignorant people.

 

[realibrad]

From what I've read it is both nature and nurture, but I tend to lean towards nature having far more influence unless there is some abuse in the home that basically produces a broken child. Nothing in a "normal" upbringing is going to turn a person gay or straight, IMHO. Both my gay son and lesbian daughter have told me they just grew up that way and it's always seemed normal to be attracted to members of the same sex. I don't think my parenting had anything to do with it other than raising them to be strong and loving enough to put up with a bit of hate from ignorant people.

Oh nature for sure has an impact and is probably the majority one. There is a reason the more males you have, the more likely to have a gay son and that son is likely to be the youngest one. The problem with that is many are trying to say other things about identity are culture and not biological. So they fight against the idea that you may be born a way because they want to believe they have total agency on who they are.

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

goddammit, the first rule of drag club is you don't talk about drag club... now we gotta find a new pizza shop basement. motherfu....

 

[Zaap]

This is dead wrong. That statement doesn't come from training or literature. That stuff says the same thing, but I would be hesitant to believe it for the same line of thinking you profess being how I was taught.

But it's wrong. 100% unequivocally wrong. I know because my niece is such a person. When she was ~4 years old she started actively pulling bows out of her hair, throwing tantrums when people would try to put a dress on her, and was obsessed with pirates. She would steal her mom's makeup to draw a beard on her face. And this was no vicarious weirdness on the part of her parents. They were deeply ashamed, tried to hide it from their community and, though thankfully loving and eventually flexible enough to help her navigate things, went to bed praying to God every night that their little girl would just wake up wanting to be a girl. It didn't happen, and it wasn't anything that they did. She is a wonderful person. Her gender identity differences are not a secret, but she doesn't really talk about them spontaneously either. She hasn't gone out and said she was a boy and to call her something different than her given name or gender pronoun. Maybe she wants that, maybe she doesn't. We're going to let her decide.

This is silly, and again you're projecting things into this story that isn't there.

Liking and not liking pirates? Really? Bows? Those are stupid examples that have nothing to do with a person being gay or straight. Litterally childish examples.

If her parents took a girl's interest in pirates to mean she needs to put on a show dressed as some sort of adult fantasy object in front of a crowd of their creepy friends, declared that she 'came out' and belonged to the LGBT community at preschool age and that she was gay since being a toddler, then you'd have near the same situation.


Once again, people are injecting stupidity into this that ignore the actual details of this story.

Turn off your knee from jerking and switch your brain on.

 

[Zaap]

I find this about as equally and mildly offensive as the TV show Toddlers and Tiaras. It's parents dressing their kid up provocatively for attention. It really has nothing to do with LGBTQ rights or is in anyway the parents championing their child's right to choose their own gender identity. He surely wasn't old enough to make that decision for himself when he started dressing up as a toddler or wearing dresses at age six.

I also question if he knew what he was doing when he performed with Ru Paul at the the New York Gay Pride Parade in 2015 at the age or 7 or 8. And now at 10 his parents want to make him the face of a makeup and clothing line, which his online "club for drag kids" is building a fan base for.

This is about $$$ not bulling prevention, suicide awareness or LGBTQ rights. The kid, gay, trans or otherwise, is a child actor and his shtick is being a mini drag queen. It looks like he is having fun with it but I hope they are saving money for his college.

Exactly. Rare to see common sense expressed here anymore, but refreshing when it is.

 

[bshole]

Hmm, I don't know if I would take such an absolute stance. I think some of their identity stems from nurture and not just nature. I mean, look at children that are raised in a violent sexist home, and then see how that effects them on average. I think what the kid is raised around can have an influence on him. Personally I don't care about sexuality and gender identity beyond what makes them happy, but I also think that there are influences from both nature and nurture.

There is some rather strong evidence of a biological component. In general the people who care passionately about whether it is nurture or nature are fundamentalist Christians. It makes it harder to condemn gays if the party responsible for their homosexuality is God. This is another area where they will deny what the science says. Think about that for a second. They will deny science if it discredits the basis on which they hate a segment of society. How sad is that?

D.F. Swaab conducted the next noteworthy experiment in 1990. This experiment became the first to document a physiological difference in the anatomical structure of a gay man’s brain. Swaab found in his post-mortem examination of homosexual males’ brains that a portion of the hypothalamus of the brain was structurally different than a heterosexual brain. The hypothalamus is the portion of the human brain directly related to sexual drive and function. In the homosexual brains examined, a small portion of the hypothalamus, termed the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), was found to be twice the size of its heterosexual counterpart [2].

At the same time, another scientist, Laura S. Allen made a similar discovery in the hypothalamus as well. She found that the anterior commissure (AC) of the hypothalamus was also significantly larger in the homosexual subjects than that of the heterosexuals [2]. Both Swaab’s and Allen’s results became a standing ground for the biological argument on homosexuality. The very fact that the AC and the SCN are not involved in the regulation of sexual behavior makes it highly unlikely that the size differences results from differences in sexual behavior. Rather the size differences came prenatally during sexual differentiation. The size and shape of the human brain is determined biologically and is impacted minutely, if at all by behavior of any kind.

Another line of testing done to support the biological perspective are neuroendocrine studies. The neuroendocrine viewpoint’s basic hypothesis is that sexual orientation is determined by the early levels (probably prenatal) of androgen on relevant neural structures [7]. If highly exposed to these androgens, the fetus will become masculinized, or attracted to females. This research was conducted on rats at Stanford. The adult female rats that received male-typical levels of androgens sufficiently early in development exhibited male symptoms of attraction. The same was true in the reverse when applied to the male subjects. The female exposed to high levels of the hormone exhibited high levels of aggression and sexual drive toward other females, eventually trying to mount the other females in an act of reproduction. In the males, the subject who received deficient levels of androgen became submissive in matters of sexual drive and reproduction and were willing to receive the sexual act of the other male rat [7].

https://allpsych.com/journal/homosexuality/

 

[interchange]

This is silly, and again you're projecting things into this story that isn't there.

Liking and not liking pirates? Really? Bows? Those are stupid examples that have nothing to do with a person being gay or straight. Litterally childish examples.

If her parents took a girl's interest in pirates to mean she needs to put on a show dressed as some sort of adult fantasy object in front of a crowd of their creepy friends, declared that she 'came out' and belonged to the LGBT community at preschool age and that she was gay since being a toddler, then you'd have near the same situation.


Once again, people are injecting stupidity into this that ignore the actual details of this story.

Turn off your knee from jerking and switch your brain on.

I'm going to put you on ignore for a while, for no other reason than we are taking about gender identity and not sexual orientation and you are calling me the idiot.

 

[Paladin3]

My gay son is 100% guy. He manages a gym, keeps himself in shape and dresses neat, but you'd never know until you talked with him that he was gay.

My gay daughter hates dresses and doesn't "doll" herself up to the same level many women do. For prom she will probably wear some kind of pant suit or slacks and a tux shirt with suspenders. She'll be looking very feminine for sure, but I can count the number of times she's worn a dress on my fingers. An observant person might speculate she is gay, but it's not obvious. She has lots of guys in high school who don't know that hit on her. She's still 100% woman and identifies as a woman. She just likes girls.

Every person is an individual.