Liking trucks is not the same as a trans identity
Dr Helen Webberley on Triggernometry: the trans debate, with Konstantin Kisin, Triggernometry
If a child rejects stereotypically gendered toys or clothes, that is what people mean when they talk about a trans child. A girl who likes trucks, or a boy who wants long hair, is being called transgender, and that is the confusion at the heart of this debate.
What I was drawing out there is a distinction that gets collapsed constantly, and it matters enormously. A child who likes trucks is a child who likes trucks. A child who wears their hair long is a child who wears their hair long. Neither of those things is a gender identity claim. What trans children are actually saying is something categorically different: not "I prefer this toy" but "everyone has got me wrong." That is not a preference. It is a persistent, insistent, consistent statement about who they are. When a child looks at you and says "I am a girl, Mummy, why does nobody believe me?", that is not about what is in the toy box. Conflating the two does not protect gender-nonconforming children. It erases trans ones.
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