What Does An 11 Year-Old Fully Understand?

Most parents know that young children can often repeat terms that they have picked up online or elsewhere, without fully understanding the import of the words they are using. This has become an issue within the ongoing debate on “gender affirming care”. That is, if say a pre-pubescent 11 year-old child reports that they are “trans”, one possible response is to affirm whatever the child is reporting about their own sexuality. Conversely, I had written a previous article arguing that because 11 year-olds can be suggestible, merely using words like “trans” or “gay” does not demonstrate that children at that age can “fully understand” everything about their own sexuality and what that will become.

Chesh and Maanyaa are two people who disagreed with my perspective. They published two videos (each more than 4 hours long) in which they considered the case of a specific 11 year-old boy being prescribed a pharmacological treatment pathway aimed at gender transition. Their videos are here and here. The authors talked through my article about that case and disagreed with almost all of it. They also disagreed with several follow-up tweets I had written on the same subject. Here is one of our Twitter exchanges about that 11 year-old boy, where Chesh disagreed with my perspective:

My view was that when gender dysphoric 11 year-old children say they are “trans”, even the most careful clinicians are unable to distinguish which children will be fully committing to retaining a lifelong transgender identity, and which children aren’t fully understanding what they are saying. Incidentally, one of the conclusions from the Cass Review was that the leading clinicians themselves accept that they are unable to make these distinctions. Since the majority of 11 year-old gender dysphoric children see their distress desist naturally during puberty, an affirmation model that puts a large proportion of such children on a pharmacological treatment pathway, will result in the unnecessary sterilisation of vulnerable children. As described by the Cass Report, this is an appalling medical scandal.

During the two 4-hour videos, Chesh discussed the relevant Twitter exchange at length. Chesh and Maanyaa were both incredulous at my position, and instead argued for precisely the opposite position. After reading out my tweet, and while pointing at my tweet on-screen, Chesh laughed at the idea that an 11 year-old might not “fully understand” their own sexuality. She argued that not affirming whatever an 11 year-old might say about their sexuality, was equivalent to forcing a different sexuality onto the child.

The last part of the argument offered by Chesh in the short video clip above, is a position that I consider to be especially dangerous. As part of an effort to debunk my view than pre-pubescent 11 year-old children do not “fully understand” their own sexuality, Chesh stated that “children can and will express sexual interest or start to explore that, or start to get those feelings, before puberty starts”. The idea that pre-pubescent 11 year-old children “will express sexual interest” of a kind that demonstrates they do indeed “fully understand” their own sexuality, is an unsupported proposition. Moreover, those who have previously promoted such ideas have rightly earned our greatest suspicion.

However, Chesh subsequently gained some support for her position from “Luke the Bearded Heretic”, an anonymous Twitter user who it seems has a MSc in Psychology and has studied “advanced developmental psychology”. Some context here is necessary, which is illustrated in the Twitter thread illustrated below. This is an anonymous account that even after the publication of the final Cass Report, failed to see how treating gender dysphoria in 11 year-olds using drugs that can cause infertility, could be any more “problematic” than prescribing contraceptives.

When the Roman Catholic Church was responsible for the abuse of children, many bishops shamefully sought to minimise what was done to the victims in order to preserve a religious ideology. Now, many of those who were most critical of the bishops are also seeking to minimise harms caused to children, in order to preserve a different ideology. Quite obviously, the unnecessary sterilisation of many vulnerable children who would otherwise see their dysphoria desist naturally, is much more onerous than prescribing contraceptives.

Moreover, this anonymous account also seemed to believe that “experts” have identified that the Cass Report left out “large data sets”. That idea was among the more pathetic lies told about the Cass Report by the worst idealogues. It has been debunked many times. Notwithstanding the idealogical criticism of the Cass Report though, this person deserves the benefit of the doubt in relation to the exchange illustrated below.

It seems that the kind of “sexual interest” that this MSc in Psychology feels that 11 year-olds might express, is limited to distinguishing which of their peers they might feel attraction towards. Of course, that would exclude considerations about all the varieties of physical intimacy they might prefer, and would therefore indicate that those children do not yet “fully understand” all aspects of their sexuality. If that is what this anonymous correspondent actually meant here, then I would fully agree with their view. However, this would also mean that this self-declared expert in “advanced developmental psychology”, would be agreeing with my original tweet and disagreeing with Chesh. That seems weird since the same person was consistently supporting the position described by Chesh while vehemently disagreeing with my view.

Consequently, I’ll be happy to provide some clarity here. I have asked my apparently highly qualified anonymous correspondent to clarify his position. From the video clip above, Chesh clearly disagrees with my statement that a pre-pubescent 11 year-old child cannot “fully understand” their own sexuality. She demonstrably believes that position to be hilariously laugh-out-loud wrong. At the time of writing, “Luke the Bearded Heretic” seems to have taken the same side of this argument as Chesh. However, if he ever clarifies whether he thinks that a pre-pubescent 11 year-old child can “fully understand” their own sexuality, then I’ll reproduce his position here.

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UPDATE:

I have received five separate objections from “Luke the Bearded Heretic” about areas where he believes that the language in the article above is misleading. I don’t accept his views on any of these points, but nevertheless for transparency I have included his commentary on each point below. Readers can make up their own minds on whether his commentary does indeed describe misleading aspects of my article or otherwise. I believe that he has tried to use yellow to highlight the language that I wrote, and green to highlight his own commentary.

Objection 1

Objection 2

Objection 3

Objection 4

Objection 5

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