Asklemmy

Despite what you just said, not letting the kid express themselves and have a safe space to do it is literally child abuse.

Having to pitch the option and make a safe space for a child to express themselves as gay or fem or masc or whatever gender is literally the job of the parent. If you take that away and force the child to hide themselves from you, you're stunting them.

Most children, as long as you allow them the space, generally have a pretty good idea of what they are and want. Also keep in mind, a lot of sexuality and gender and expression is not permanent and they can change at any time. Especially puberty blockers, those are LITERALLY designed to be non-destructive since the wrong puberty can be destructive and all blockers do is temporarily pause that. As soon as you take the kid off blockers, they'll go through puberty like normal. It happens literally all the time and it's fine. Puberty blockers were designed for precocious puberty -meaning a kid starts getting puberty WAYYY earlier than they should, making their life difficult for a number of social, medical, other reasons.

The more you push on kids to not express themselves or be "different", the less they're likely to feel safe to do so and find themselves and basically end up a self hating, closeted asshole. Let people explore and experiment safely. As a parent, it's literally your job to provide a safe, healthy environment for your child to grow and learn about themselves and the world. Shutting down exploration of self always causes often irreparable psychological and physical damage...And that extends to whether they like boys, girls, a mix, nobody, something in-between, or even if they change their minds over and over - or, in the case of gender, how they see themselves and how they want to express that, that's okay!

Unlike you, we aren't saying to make the decision about who they are for the kid, but to allow them space and safety to explore it on their own, without shame or prejudice, in a way that isn't going to hurt them, to the best of our abilities.

Because of far right politics and far right disinformation everywhere, though, that freedom to seek peace, self acceptance, and true happiness in life is hampered and confused and, sadly, emotionally charged. So, even as parents, we must do the best we can to provide for our children in the best ways we can, and not oppress them unless it's dangerous for them.

Let kids be silly, let them explore in safety, let kids be kids. Don't tell them who they are, let them figure that out for themselves.