How Social Media Shapes Views on Gender and Transition (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I think what has kind of misled children is the belief that if you are not a typical girl, if you like, you know, playing with trucks or, you know, boys who like dressing up, that that means, or that you have same-sex attraction, that means that you're trans. And actually, it's not like that, those are all normal variations. And I think children were being and young people were being given a narrative that it's not okay to be anything but absolutely typical of the other girls on Instagram.

[00:00:34] Speaker 2: It's interesting, you say misled there, and you mentioned Instagram and social media. Do you think then there's a generation that have been misled by social media?

[00:00:43] Speaker 1: I think they have had unrealistic images and expectations on social media, even, you know, a lack of realism about what transition would really mean and how hard it would be. Because for those young people who are going to grow up and never be comfortable in their body, a medical transition is the only way they're going to be able to live their life successfully and comfortably. But if that's not the path that you were intended to be on, it's a huge cost to go through, you know, quite intensive medical treatments and sometimes quite brutal surgeries, when actually, if you'd taken more time, that might not have been your pathway.