I have not seen convincing evidence that parenting can alter gender identity. That is, I've never seen evidence that parenting can induce big-D Dysphoria (as opposed to gender-atypical behavior) in a neurologically-typical child.

Conversely, real-world attempts to raise kids as the opposite of their natal gender have consistently failed (e.g., David Reimer, who was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision but transitioned back after puberty).

I just want to pose these two against each other for a bit.

What's the probability that the recent impassioned rise in ideologically-motivated "gender neutral parenting", which as far as I can tell simply manifests as an attempt to push opposite-gender toys, behaviours and so on onto the child, produces the feeling of unease that later gets the child referred to the gender clinic by going against their actual gender identity?

Because gender neutral parenting seems like a colossal clusterfuck to me, in that:

A; I believe that many of the people who do it are doing it for woke points and not because it's in the interests of the child, and many of them have a "desired outcome" of having a gender non-conforming child.

B; In conjunction with the above, "failure" (as in not being adequately gender neutral and pushing the child into their same gender role) and "success but not getting the result you want" (being adequately gender neutral but a male child choosing to be male anyway, as they will 99%+ of the time) look exactly the same and are pretty indistinguishable, leading parents who actively desire a GNC child to assume they've failed and push opposite-gender things on the child harder and harder.

Basically if anywhere south of 99% of "gender neutral parented" children end up not being GNC it's a pretty clear indication that there's some room for pushing from parents there... and from there, given the political climate, I'm not uncomfortable saying that those signs can be (mis-)interpreted as needing to start funneling the child down the trans pipeline.

The thing around future-gay children getting shoved down that pipeline is pretty alarming too, since if I was born today I'd probably be one of them.

I absolutely used to reject any notion of being a man. I hated when anyone would call me "young man" or similar. I had long hair and painted my nails. I even literally said "I don't want to be a man" a lot.

But all this was just my faulty definition of what a "man" is. To me, back then, "man" meant unshaven, beer gut having, lager-swilling, football-watching, stained white vest-wearing, eating crisps on the sofa in your underwear and scratching your arse. Homer Simpson, Onslow, Jim Royle. To someone who idolised David Bowie and his style, this was offensively repulsive and I was determined to never be a "man".

But, of course, David Bowie was a man. So are lots of stylish and outrageously fashionable and even somewhat feminine people. The problem was with me all along, and when I learned to let go of that definition and accept that I get to define what being a man is, I felt a lot better.

And so, to circle back, when I see Extremely Online trans advocates like the egg_irl lot shouting that any stereotypically female behaviour or preferences are proof positive that you need to be shoved down the trans pipeline with nary a second thought, I get angry because that could've been me. Those types of trans crusaders reinforce every gender stereotype they claim to want to break down. They decide to transition and immediately plump for, say, the girliest clothes, names, mannerisms, and everything else. Which just leads back to more kids developing faulty definitions like I did and going through the same thing, only now with a chorus crowd of people wanting to change their gender for them.

At the same time the Absolute Gender Neutrality At Any Cost brigade also annoy me, because certain traits DO cluster in certain populations. But they're not EXCLUSIVE to them, nor are they mandatory to be part of those populations. I don't understand why it's not okay to acknowledge "a high percentage of men will X, Y, Z" while also saying "but it's fine if you don't, there's no wrong way to be a man, this is just an observed trend".

That kind of meandered a lot but there's not many spaces where I can express this kind of thing and not get shouted down to oblivion -- which is also part of the problem.