How do you support other siblings when a teen decides they are trans

They're in stark contrast to some of the tone deaf comments from those showing no sign of empathy or concern for the futures of young people caught up in all this - just the cold mantras of trans allegiances and alienation.

This.

That's it I'm quitting Mumsnet. I don't want to read this shit day in day out. It's so fucking depressing.

The whole trans phenomenon is a fucking tragedy. Why we put up with this shit is beyond me. A man does not become a woman by wearing a frilly dress and talking like John Inman FFS. Get over it. You were born a man and you will die a man.

Honestly the human race has gone down the shitter.

Thank you so much to the OP, parents, siblings and others who have shared such powerful posts detailing the chaos this can cause in families. There are so many moving and powerful posts.

They're in stark contrast to some of the tone deaf comments from those showing no sign of empathy or concern for the futures of young people caught up in all this - just the cold mantras of trans allegiances and alienation.

<<head tilt>> so you think your definitions of "looking female" and "brought up female" are the scientific definitions. 😂😂😂😂😂😂 No. I'll stick with what the developmental biologists say thanks.

Yes I am saying that that is the definition of sex that should matter to us socially, not what biologists explain is how this has happened. And since this person will have a female birth certificate and a female identity throughout their life my definition is the relevant one.

Gamete production potential" is a nonsense. So you want to say a women with total androgen insensitivity who looks female and is brought up as female is in fact a man because of some half-baked dogmatic biological statement and the fact that they have non-fertile intra-abdominal testes that are never going to produce gametes because their genetically defined physiology doesn't allow it? And all because you have a scientific dogma that human sex must be defined by "gamete production potential" and not by morphology and physiology.

That is really a religious statement, not a scientific one.

<<head tilt>> so you think your definitions of "looking female" and "brought up female" are the scientific definitions. 😂😂😂😂😂😂 No. I'll stick with what the developmental biologists say thanks.

"Gamete production potential" is a nonsense. So you want to say a women with total androgen insensitivity who looks female and is brought up as female is in fact a man because of some half-baked dogmatic biological statement and the fact that they have non-fertile intra-abdominal testes that are never going to produce gametes because their genetically defined physiology doesn't allow it? And all because you have a scientific dogma that human sex must be defined by "gamete production potential" and not by morphology and physiology.

That is really a religious statement, not a scientific one.

Acceptable collateral damage I'm guessing. Actually just the start of it.

It makes my heart feel heavy to read how the underpinning ideology here completely ignores, actually bans, discussion of how this affects families and their loss. I think Red described it as a grenade. That grief is absolutely real.

Those who believe wholeheartedly that we should accept without questioning, an individual declaring they are trans, how does this shutting down sit with you?

OP I would be very very careful if you need to get any counselling for any of your children.

We were made to feel like we had no right to be anything other than elated when our close friend transitioned. There was no allowance for the grief we were struggling with that comes with it.

There are only two sexes defined, but some people don't fit very well into either category, and the measure we have used socially for millennia is sex at birth. This very rarely has to be revised for medical reasons. We don't need to be getting arbitrary definitions according to chromosomes, or other biological tests. The only time tests are at all important is investigating infertility and defining eligibility for elite sports. Otherwise we let intersex people stay in the sex category they are borne in. Socially it is binary, but biologically there are is a continuum and no one biological feature is paramount. I see no reason to whip up hysteria about athletes who have always lived as female but turn out to be intersex, with hysteria about sex being binary and them having somehow cheated. Ok some are ineligible for women's sports according to somewhat arbitrary rules (as of course are all males calling themselves females!) but we have known how to recognise males and females for most social purposes throughout history. Sex is binary is used by some as a pseudo-scientific slogan. All we need to say is that people are born and brought up as males or females, and while they might want to change that for some social purposes they can't be allowed to for all. But among a small but vulnerable minority sex is scientifically a continuum. That doesn't mean we can't rigidly allocate it for social purposes.

If you say sex is binary according to biology then you need a single test to define it, and there isn't one that always gives the right answer.

No this is the pseudo scientific claptrap. You are mistaking secondary sex characteristics for sex. You cannot plot sex as a continuum on a graph. It is binary.

And we do have a "single test". It's about gamete production potential.

Stop spreading pseudo scientific misinformation please.

I think it's important to differentiate individual trans people from the underpinning ideology though. To me, people like OP's son are victims of the ideology themselves, until they start recruiting others or being hateful to non-believers.

Yes and I think the "community" pushes them to do those things. And then they get validation and reassurance from it.

Sorry, @ColinTheGenderMinotaur, cross-posted with you, didn't mean to nick most of your ideas! You put it rather better than me as well.

"Living as a woman" is not a concept that much troubles trans people nowadays as far as I can see, not in the way that 1960s-style transsexual people understood it.

In my experience, transwomen don't think of themselves as "living as a woman", they think that they actually are women and, crucially, that they always were but just didn't realise it. That is why they think they're entitled to lay claim to the female experience.

The exaggerated female appearance, whether Dick Emery style or blow-up doll style, isn't to do with wanting to "live as a woman" imo so much as to act as a provocation to actual women, who are then positioned as the hostile enemy in the victimhood narrative. (Notice how the victims are then men.)

I think it's important to differentiate individual trans people from the underpinning ideology though. To me, people like OP's son are victims of the ideology themselves, until they start recruiting others or being hateful to non-believers.

Feminism isn't "intersectional" if sex isn't one of the axes of oppression.

The thing is, the people who are invested in the current day phenomenon of Trans Ideology (aka Transgenderism-as-Political-Identity as opposed to the previous narrative of Transsexualism as a psychological diagnosis made by a HCP) are not interested in what (to use the language of the ideology) ‘cis girls’ wear and definitely do not care what middle aged mums wear.

Trans Ideology says that OPs son was born with a female gender identity and that means he has always been just as much of a girl/woman/female as OP and her DDs are.

Consequently this means that OPs son knows just as much about being a girl, including dressing in ‘girls’ clothes, as they do (even though his fashion inspirations are likely cartoon girls from Japanese anime books, other males who identify as women and the accessory selection page of a video game).
He likely doesn’t want to go shopping in Primark or Superdrug with mum and sisters and learn how to blend in with actual girls/young women because the group he considers himself a part of consists of other males his age who identify as girls and they buy thigh high socks and pleated skirts from Amazon.
In his world he can even be a woman without ever doing anything to look like a woman at all, because transition can consist entirely of asking (coercing? demanding?) the people around him to call him Enid (she/her) while playing video games as a female character.

I’m not saying that pre 2010s style transsexualism is unproblematic btw, just that the current day trans phenomenon is probably quite different to what most people imagine it to be, it’s far more akin to a subculture of it’s own than actually wanting to look the opposite sex in a convincing manner due to debilitating, long term Gender distress/Dysphoria.

I don’t know OPs son, of course, but I do have 6 years worth of association with other parents of teens who experience transition ideation. The same stuff comes up over and over. It’s essentially applied Queer Theory, destroy all boundaries by ‘queering’ definitions.

Offering to give a male-who-identifies as a woman a make over is considered patronising , it’s ‘forcing a cisheteronormative appearance’ and ‘denying a trans woman’s right to bodily autonomy’ and is the action of an obvious ‘Bigot’.

We have the narrative of 'you didn't accept me you evil bigot' and the threat of suicide to hold over family members and prevent honest and rational conversations.

It's not ok. And that really is a massive part of the problem.

In the OPs case this is effectively held over younger children by an adult. (Noting that autism is genetic so he may not be the only family member who is ND).

Families need to be able to have the type of difficult conversation that you might not have with others precisely because of the impact on everyone in terms of their own identity and their own sense of self and wellbeing.

A family where you constantly walk on eggshells and someone goes BOOM if you use the name you have been accustomed to using your entire existence for your elder siblings, is not a healthy family. A family were another member demands the correct pronouns or else, is not a healthy family. And this isn't just about the trans person.

This thread is not about DSDs*, which are sex-specific, so that anyone with a DSD is still either male or female. Sex is binary (DSDs prove this - see previous sentence) and is immutable. You can't change sex. You cannot 'feel like a woman' if you are a man. I am a woman, I have no idea what it feels like to be one inside my head, I just know how it feels to be me.

*intersex is a term much disliked by those who have DSDs.

They can be a man in a dress then.

And use male facilities and have male services.

This is such a shame, as ASD children are particularly prone to it. I hope you can pressure him over time.

Because 'living like a woman's has no definition other than sexist stereotypes and because, as you point out you can't change sex, he can only ever live as a male pretending to be his interpretation of what a woman is.

It's meaningless gibberish we are expected to believe but has no actual rational or explainable definition based in any form of scientific merit or testable characteristic.

Women who have certain jobs and wear certain clothes aren't 'living as men' now are they?!

Thank you to @SophiaCohle and @TransSister for sharing some of your own personal experiences too. Perhaps you have shared them before using different usernames (I certainly have!) but you have both given me new insight today.

And thanks to @MumOfYoungTransAdult and @Branleuse and @GatherlyGal whose names I do recognise but whose contributions to this particular thread are invaluable for both understanding a fuller story than the one depicted in popular media or given in EDI training sessions.

Why is it sexist? We raise children to be what we hope will be the best version of themselves, not our version of who they should be. If he wants to explore this route, he needs to be able to talk about it, Mum clearly doesn't understand so she wants to talk about it as its all new to her but the family can be supportive.

@RedToothBrush & @Chersfrozenface- it might be the current womans fashion to dress like the Kardashians or Cardy B - its not my style, I find my own, in the same way that trans do. I don't want to be a Goth, Emo or Steampunk, it doesn't mean they can't express their style how they want. It also took me a while to experiment with makeup etc, its a learning curve and one her son has only just embarked upon - patience and support is what is called for.