Help, DS feels like a girl, confused

Please please please make sure that your son is being safe online and not accessing anything related to anime or any forums where this could be discussed.

Both of my boys have been huge fans of anime, from a young age. I thought it was just all Pokémon and comics etc but there is a very dark side to it called hentai. Even the simplest of manga romance often celebrates the (beautiful, young school age) girls innocence, reticence and weakness and the man's insistence at having her. This leads onto Russification and all manner of horror. Within 2-3 years of liking manga my eldest son who is ASD came out as trans. I spent 3-4 years on suicide watch after refusing to adore him to transition but fully accepting and encouraging the long brightly died hair, make up, whatever clothes he wanted etc. He is now 21 and so over being trans it's unreal. He is a gay man.

Just as that all finished my youngest son started on with it all . Both my boys are very gentle, polite, helpful sorts that struggled in the playground etc. My youngest, now 17 , bangs on about how he is a really a girl called Xxx and im dehumanising him by refusing to use it. I simply point out that his real name is a unisex name and his Nick name is a female name, always has been. I've bought the hideous stripe thigh high socks, crop tops, choker necklaces etc and told him I'll dye his hair too. I fully embrace them being gender non conforming but they are Boys.

Anyway. I thought I was doing my best, I really did. Then the police came through my door at 8am one weekend because somebody had shared some illegal images from my address on line. My eldest son admitted it right away. It was Hentai porn. He didn't know that it was illegal. It was just cartoon tentacle porn to him and apparently hilarious. The girl in it was wearing a skirt, shirt and tie and so was a caring school girl. He was arrested, every online connectable device from my home was seized and he was prosecuted. My daughter had to go and live with my sister for two weeks as SS demanded him a rush to her and I had to send him to live with his dad so my daughter could come home. My life has been absolutely destroyed by anime and transgenderism and they are very deeply interlinked. Hopefully suicide can post a link with more information because I can't even bare to Google it after the 6 years of sheer hell that I've been through.

Mumsnet really isn't the best place to get advice on this issue. There are a lot of people on here who are transphobic.

I would recommend talking first to your son (as you already have) and second to the GP. There will be counselling and support available for him to help him work things out.

It doesn't mean he is transitioning or even thinking about it - but he's obviously questioning ideas about gender and just needs a safe space to talk this through with a neutral adult who is not his parent.

Children pick up lots and lots of messages about the world and various trends online, then pass their findings on to their friends, who in turn pass them on to their friends and siblings. Limit time online, and understand that so-called child-friendly content can be shockingly partisan. Keep strict controls on what can be accessed and monitor closely what is being absorbed.

Challenge those life-limiting stereotypes! And don't let your DD influence him too much, she's more immersed in the current teaching than he is, being older, but current teaching is being challenged and removed from schools bit by bit.

Your Dd is 14, so par for the course for her to think she knows more than you.
She doesn't. 😊
Your Ds is only 12 and I would try to keep the focus on him. Try to get him to to talk about stereotypes and what "feeling like a girl" means (and keep him offline).
This ideology is so scary. To think that a child could end up on a lifetime of medication based on such unscientific teaching.
So, to answer your question, no you are not thinking about this all wrong.

Your DS does not “feel like a girl”, as he is male and therefore can have no knowledge of what “a girl” feels.
What he means is, he feels like what he assumes girls feel. This is likely to be a set of sexist stereotypes, and probably means he is uncomfortable with the toxic masculinity of his male peers.
Perhaps they have been viewing pornography, and he is repulsed by the violence and hate depicted as normal for men. Or perhaps he is gay, and assumes his feelings of desire for men mean he must really be “a girl”.
You really need a discussion whenever he is ready, but in the meantime make sure you create an atmosphere at home where you make it clear you are accepting of homosexuality, and contemptuous of sex role stereotypes.
Adolescence is a confusing and difficult time when children are changing rapidly and becoming their adult selves. You can play a big role in helping DS accept himself as he is, gay or straight, in the body he has.

I don't think you are wrong It's heartbreaking to know that one's child is unhappy and perfectly normal to wish they would become content with themselves - preferably without a lifelong medical regime or intervention.

Unfortunately the current cultural climate means that many vocal people will consider this stance "transphobic", but they are also people who haven't raised your child nor even know your child well.

My kids all think I'm transphobic because I'm pro-women's & children's rights and safeguarding. They don't yet have the experience or perspective to see how transgender rights (as argued by some and as they understand it) will undermine the safety of women and children. It doesn't matter that they think this of me, because they also know that I love and support them, we are allowed different opinions and to disagree.

Oh, and you'll never get an answer to "what feeling like a girl or boy is" because IMO there isn't an answer. We are the sum of our biology and social conditioning - why some people think we should further embrace social conditioning by enforcing and following sexist stereotypes (gender roles) is inexplicable to me.

I think the best way to find out what this means is not to ask us, but to ask your DS what he thinks it means. What has he been told or read? What does feeling like a girl mean to him? For example, he may just feel that he is more sensitive than the stereotype he holds of what a man should be like. Just explore his feelings and thoughts in a completely loving and non judgemental way. He might be trans, he might be gay, he may be straight - but none of those matter. It’s helping him work out what he thinks and why that is what you need to do. And it may help to tell him you don’t know what feeling like a girl is.

Am I thinking about this all wrong?

No, you're thinking about it as a parent, an adult with more knowledge and experience of the world than your children.