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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Former Trans Child of Gender Critical Parents (very long). *Trigger warning - descriptions of self harm and suicide* - Title edited by MNHQ

541 replies

pop91 · 26/03/2022 22:33

Hi,

To start I wanna say I'm writing this post in good faith to provide the viewpoint of a Trans person with Gender Critical parents but I know this is the internet and this will probably just be trolled to death but here goes.

I had a pretty regular 'happy' family setup, and apparently first told my parents of my identity at just 5yrs old but the first I remember is at 8yrs old when I refused to go by my 'very gendered' birth name but my parents insisted on using it especially publicly.

My parents were never particularly strict on gender roles in the home - my sister would wear my dad's glasses and jacket and stomp around with his briefcase in hand and my brother had an emo phase with heels and mascara to match and apart from some grumbling from my father it was never the biggest issue in our house.

Sexuality was different though even though my father would class himself as a pragmatic centrist, barring a socialist university phase, and my mother a card-carrying progressive New Labour type whose Best Friend was the most flamboyant gay man and an Aunt who lived with her 'friend' until she passed. There was an uncomfortableness with sexuality where both my parents would call it a lifestyle choice and opposed gay marriage - cut to three years ago when my older brother came out as bisexual and last month the youngest sister as a lesbian Grin but rest assured the other 3 siblings remain firmly 'normal.'

Back to me and by 12 I had started puberty and was experiencing debilitating gender dysphoria - I would look into the mirror and see nothing that matched my brain. I would continue to feel this way until the bullying and dysphoria got so bad that one night I climbed into my bathtub with a kitchen knife hoping I could change my body to fit my brain somehow I managed not to perform self-surgery in my bathtub.

A couple of months later I came clean to my parents, I wasn't expecting a big hug but I wasn't expecting what came next. They ignored it as if I had told them what I wanted for dinner, they decided they didn't hear what I had said at all.

Over the next year, the internet became my friend as I found ways to affirm my gender by doing hidden things at first and then slowly more outward things. I came out to my siblings and although they found it confusing my oldest brother and sister were a godsend who I wouldn't have survived without, They helped me pick out a new haircut and new clothes and we came up with a new name.

I came out in school and sure there was bullying but I was feeling so Euphoric that it almost didn't matter. When the teachers found out they informed my parents and that's when everything changed! My parents sat me down and said I was just confused. They threw out my new clothes, anything that I used to affirm my gender, even my shoes and magazines then they took my bedroom door off and took away my laptop and phone and forced my older siblings to refer to me by my birth name, my older brother and sister stopped supporting me and I lost my only family support and anything that was helping me.

Eventually, when they realised everything they had done hadn't worked and I still felt the same way, they decided to try both religious and non-religious conversion therapy which left permanent scarring to my mental health and I frequently have nightmares about it.

At 15 I had my first suicide attempt and my parents forced me to lie and say it was due just to bullying at school but that wasn't true it was the dysphoria and conversion therapy that was killing me.

From 15 to 17 I had multiple suicide attempts and after the third one, my parents finally allowed me to stop the conversion therapy but still forcibly live as my 'biological' sex.

Eventually, I managed to get to a great University and at 18 I socially transitioned and by 20 I had started hormones. I now have a job that provides me financial stability and have an amazing partner, with 2 children from a prior relationship that I now consider like my own. We are also now having a baby very soon.

My mother now describes herself as Gender Critical and frequently posts online about how she will be unable to see her grandchildren because of her views, which is true as I will not allow my parents to see either my child or stepchildren.

My parents continue to refuse to acknowledge my identity and pronouns. The last time we talked, she said she believes I am just gay, which neither makes sense considering my partner's gender nor the fact she also has a terrible relationship with my lesbian sister and bisexual brother who also rarely allows his child to visit my mum, due to her comments about their sexualities.

I finally have the support back of all my siblings and we do frequently gather without my parents. I hope one day my parents change their minds but honestly I don't hold much hope and I don't know if I could forgive what they did to me.

A lot of online trans activists wish trans children for Gender Criticals but I don't, it wasn't very nice at all. If you're going to ask if I think kids should transition, the answer is I don't know as I didn't transition as a child and a social transition helped plenty for me.

Well that's it I think, just the perspective and experience of a trans person with Gender Critical parents, feel free to ask any reasonable questions or respectful questions. Smile

OP posts:
PickAChew · 26/03/2022 23:41

I would say "nice story bro" but my eyes genuinely glazed over. At best I wondered if you were confusing dickish behaviour with gender critical.

EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 26/03/2022 23:41

Red mascara? Is there such a thing? Doesn't it just make you look like you have galloping conjunctivitis?

I swift Google shows it exists and that you're correct in your apprehension (conjunctivitis).

AssignedBlobbyAtBirth · 26/03/2022 23:40

I am a female who doesn't identify as a woman. I don't know any women who identify as women. We are women because we were born female
What does that make us in your categories?

PonyPatter44 · 26/03/2022 23:37

Red mascara? Is there such a thing? Doesn't it just make you look like you have galloping conjunctivitis?

Regardless, I am glad you are happy now. Your parents sound like common or garden homophobes, to treat all of their gay or NB children so poorly. Surely people who actually were gender-critical would reject stereotypes like clothes and hair cuts.

I wonder if someone in the family didn't really know what GC meant, and assumed it was some sort of shorthand for "religious right"

TheAbbotOfUnreason · 26/03/2022 23:37

I mean black heels black mascara or red heels red mascara.

I admit makeup doesn't come natural to me so I know very little.

Obviously.

WTF is “red heels red mascara”?

sacredfeminina · 26/03/2022 23:37

OP, do you think someone can be transrace.if someone hates their skin colour, feels alienated and has gone to great lengths to change it because they 'feel' a different race, Is that acceptable?

RoaringtoLangClegintheDark · 26/03/2022 23:35

Well I’m sorry but I got to the end of that and I still don’t know what the point of it was. Is it another biologically male person expecting us to all be service humans again? Don’t these people understand the point of a Feminism board at all?

And I am really quite disconsolate that once again the “definition” of woman is no such thing.

pops, dear, if you have to use the word you’re supposed to be defining as part of the “definition”, then you’ve failed.

What we’re looking for is the thing that all women have in common. We think it’s being adult human females, which excludes you. You clearly think it’s something else but what is it?

What is it that you have in common with me and every other woman on the planet but no men?

sacredfeminina · 26/03/2022 23:35

Whoops twice posted, thought it didnt come through.

WorkingItOutAsIGo · 26/03/2022 23:35

Interesting story. American perspective so laws very different? Parents not gender critical according to UK definition but abusive and homophobic. So glad you are in a happier place now and good luck x

sacredfeminina · 26/03/2022 23:33

Firstly Men are in 99% of cases an adult human male who identifies as men and secondly in 1% of cases either a Man is an Adult Trans Man who identifies as a man or anyone who falls towards the Man end of the gender spectrum and identifies as a Man.

Is it only the identifying as a man, which makes this group 'men'. If so, what about all the biological males who do not identify as anything, but simply get on with their lives in the body they were born in? What are they called?

ScrollingLeaves · 26/03/2022 23:33

Would you answer the questions about defining woman and man the same way if the questions were, ‘What is a female?’ And ‘What is a male?’

pop91 · 26/03/2022 23:31

@Fellforitagain

Matching heels and mascara, that's a new one on me?
I mean black heels black mascara or red heels red mascara.

I admit makeup doesn't come natural to me so I know very little.

OP posts:
sacredfeminina · 26/03/2022 23:30

^
Firstly Men are in 99% of cases an adult human male who identifies as men and secondly in 1% of cases either a Man is an Adult Trans Man who identifies as a man or anyone who falls towards the Man end of the gender spectrum and identifies as a Man.^

What about the adult human males who do not 'identify' as anything. Who just simply live in their bodies. Are they men? Or do you have to identify as a man in order to be male?

Sandinmyhooves · 26/03/2022 23:30

As GC women, we know that our sex is fixed. We’ve been reminded of it our entire lives and oppressed on that basis. We own that. Gender however is all systemic thinly misogyny born of men. It serves men well to have us gendered since the tropes of our gender are by their very nature subordinating and immobilising. We do not identify with that. This does not make us men. It makes us women who understand our sex. How could any men understand any of that when your idea of womanhood is so steeped in your male socialisation and entitlement?

pop91 · 26/03/2022 23:29

@334bu

Thanks for sharing and good luck to you.
Thank You! Smile
OP posts:
pop91 · 26/03/2022 23:28

@PrelateChuckles

Parental relationships can be incredibly hard, as you will see from many threads on MN! Best of luck. Do you think your mother is actually gender-critical, i.e. does she think sex stereotypes are largely harmful?

but still forcibly live as my 'biological' sex.

I have to admit I have no idea what this means. Sorry. You don't 'live as a sex'. You are it, and you live as you like.

@PrelateChuckles

Thank You for wishing me luck.

And my mother always described herself as a feminist and worked in a male-dominated area and never discouraged exploration until my issues.

I don't think 'sex stereotypes' was a phrase she's used until recently and definitely not when we were younger.

OP posts:
OutsideVoice · 26/03/2022 23:28

I don’t believe in gender, so respectfully reject your definitions.

oliviastwisted · 26/03/2022 23:28

Good for you OP. Your parents sound absolutely shit. Sorry.

I’m gender critical my teenage DD and all of her friends are massively experimenting with gender. I joked to her that the are in the Matrix because they have all chosen to my ear computer sounding nicknames rather than male/female names as quite a few are NB and now they call themselves the matrix as a group.

I couldn’t be prouder of her as a mother and I will always support her whatever she decides. I do caution her about the clashes between extreme gender ideology and womens rights and the perils of medical transition because there simply is no magic wand to achieve a full transition - however if she needed to medically transition to alleviate dysphoria I would totally respect that- but I use pronouns for her and her friends as she asks me, hers change on and off, I encourage her to present how she is comfortable very gender neutrally etc

I can have GC views and mother my child as she is and she is absolutely perfect as she is as a gender non confirming child.

Your parents should have parented the child they had. You did not deserve those experiences. It sounds very traumatic.

PrelateChuckles · 26/03/2022 23:26

I don't understand why someone who's been thinking about gender quite intensely their whole life can't say what they mean by 'woman' or 'man'?

It's usually the people that have only given it superficial thought that come up with the 'a man is a man' nonsense.
Come on OP, you're university educated. You must know "an X is an X" doesn't explain what an X is.

EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 26/03/2022 23:25

@Sandinmyhooves

If your parents associated clothing etc with your biological sex, they were not gender critical. To be GC is to assume complete freedom of behaviour and presentation regardless of sex.
Agreed. There are some fundamental misunderstandings here, not least of which that clothing/hair etc. is more indicative of an acceptance of/conformance to gender stereotypes rather than an overall critical approach to them.
IcakethereforeIam · 26/03/2022 23:24

I'm not fussed if it's genuine or not. Can sum it up as internet stranger claimed to have miserable childhood, seems to be okay now. Few minutes reading of somewhat purple prose. I don't feel challenged, if it's trolling they must try harder. Even the answer to the woman question...yawn!
But, troll or not, genuine or not, good luck to you.

pop91 · 26/03/2022 23:23

@Lowhum

What is a man?
though I don't suppose this is a good-faith question of what is a man is will give the definition I find most appropriate:

Firstly Men are in 99% of cases an adult human male who identifies as men and secondly in 1% of cases either a Man is an Adult Trans Man who identifies as a man or anyone who falls towards the Man end of the gender spectrum and identifies as a Man.

OP posts:
Thelnebriati · 26/03/2022 23:22

I'm sorry about what you were put through by your abusive parents, but they are not gender critical (or Socialist for that matter). IDK any socialists or feminists who would use conversion therapy, religious or otherwise.
When we say 'gender critical' we don't mean 'gender is essential'. We mean 'we criticise gender'
Gender critical is a new term. Its never been needed in the past, feminism is gender critical by default.

Sandinmyhooves · 26/03/2022 23:22

If it’s not just clothes and haircuts, why do so many (an overwhelming majority) only define via clothes and haircuts?

Sandinmyhooves · 26/03/2022 23:21

If you have to use the word you’re defining in your definition, you’re not defining it.