Anyone else grew up in the 80s and in playtime at school dress up with a wig and what not and pretended to be a girl?
Earlier for me as I'm older, but yes. Children act out roles. It's part of determining who you are and/or it's just playing. On the same line,
many people cross
gender lines without pretending to be a different
sex. That's extremely common, especially in childhood, even in societies with pretty strong gendered roles. The rather cringeworthy song "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen" comes to mind. That was written in 1961 but reflects social norms from the late 1940s and 1950s (since the character in the song was born in 1945). Or my sister, who was into playing with cars and climbing trees and suchlike.
Crazy now that the very same thing is identified as a child exploring their gender identity, I bet you 99% of those kids do not have a clue what their gender identity is and are just enjoying playing games.
Yes, because they haven't yet been wholly indoctrinated into gendered roles and sexist stereotyping. They're allowed more freedom to be a person rather than a role...for a while.
Kids believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny FFS, they will believe and go along with whatever an adult tells them.
Which is why any well organised ideology seeking power targets children. The saying "Give me a child until he is 7 and I will give you the man" is attributed in various forms to various people, but it's well known because it contains a lot of truth. Dawkins is quite right to describe it as "sinister", too. It's brainwashing.
I have no issue with transgender/gay people or whatever, just let them develop and explore that as it happens naturally, and support them when it does happen when they actually know what is happening.
I very much have an issue with deliberately obfuscating the difference between sex and gender, though, and
that's a big issue here. There's a hell of a difference between transgender and transexual.
I also very much have an issue with gender roles, sexist stereotyping and all that. That's also a big issue here because trans activism is pretty much entirely based on those things in a very extreme way. In a way it's an internally consistent conclusion to the currently very fashionable belief that a person's sex defines them in every way, that it's their identity. If a person's sex is their identity, the thing that determines what they do, say, think and feel, then it does follow that what a person does, says, thinks and feels determines their sex. This is why I get some amusement out of the conflict between TRAs and WRAs/feminists - feminists created this utterly sexist idea and made it dominant in order to gain power and promote sexism. It's definitely funny to see them being beaten at the sordid political game they created, using their own tactics against them.