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

I haven’t had chance to RTFT yet but my experience of ASD ppl (including my own DS although he is a tween not teen) is that I think it unlikely he’s doing it for ‘attention’ or as a joke in the way that an NT person might. While he may well be enjoying the feeling of ‘fitting in’ (however superficial that is in reality) many of the ND people I know just don’t understand or seek the validation of others giving them attention. Similarly, they just wouldn’t ‘get’ this being a joke. It’s not how their brain works. Though he is of course vulnerable to being used by others for this in a way others may not be. I think it’s fairly common for ASD young people to be emotionally immature compared to their peers so maybe thinking more like his 17 year old sister than a young adult living away from home.

I was going to mention "love bombing" earlier but got sidetracked. That's why I asked the OP about his circle of friends and if she knew them.

I completely agree with every word of this, and can I say what a relief it is to read posts from someone who totally gets it.

Some transwomen dress exactly as you describe, jeans and a hoody, no make-up etc. Maybe you just don’t notice them?

Like many men, then. And therefore clocked as men.

There is no way to ‘live as a woman’ other than actually being female. What do you think living as a woman entails?

Are women who drive lorries and drink pints ‘living as men’?

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.

It was me who tagged you into the thread because I knew you had a perspective that could really help OP understand the psychological experience of being the sister to a gender transitioning male.

I’m sorry your time was wasted - I have found so many of your posts to be uniquely insightful in the years since this came to my own family’s doorstep - I was just getting to the bit where you talked about the disruption that occurs to everyone else’s identity, eg the Eldest Daughter with a Big Brother has her own family identity and personal history overwritten by the brother’s transition - now she is supposed to agree that she has always been the Second Daughter to an Elder Sister, which just isn’t true. Being able to be open and factual and state reality, (in OPs DDs’ case that would be something like, ‘I had an elder brother who started identifying as my sister after he left the family home’) is so important to retaining one’s own sense of self.

I know my exDH really struggled with being forced from ‘Dad-of-Daughter’ to ‘Father-of-Son’, especially as his daughter had always been quite gender conforming in terms of hobbies and appearance. If she’d been a lifelong tomboy he wouldn’t have had quite such a difficult time adjusting to the All-New Boy Persona (which he sadly found respite from at the bottom of a wine glass, hence the exDH phrasing). He felt like all his fond memories of the daughter he’d raised must’ve been false memories, even though he had the photos (and the social media captions) that proved these events had actually happened.

While I don’t want to use up any more of your time maybe it would be worth collating up some of your posts and making a blog site that we could link to in future?
Or perhaps submitting a guest essay to Children of Transitioners or Trans Widows Voices?

I am acutely aware that the sibling experIence is missing from both the pre referral-boom literature and the current discourse, which is a massive oversight (although I suspect there are a lot of sibling observation reports quietly filed away in the basements of the pioneering Paediatric Gender Clinics like the Tavi and the Dutch Clinic).

If, as I suspect, the spiked trend in younger adolescent females wanting to transition is largely over but a new trend in older adolescent and very-recently-adult males identifying as trans is now in swing, there will be an accompanying trend of sisters-with-brothers (and brothers-with-brothers, but this is the feminist board!) who are forced to deal with the family disruption that comes as a package when a relative announces a previously unmentioned gender identity.

It’s a whole additional way for Trans Ideology to negatively affect adolescent girls and young adult women and it needs to spoken about, siblings can’t be pushed into the shadows forever.

Those of us who are, or justifiably believe ourselves to be, fertile females have a right not to fear rape and impregnation when using the loo, changing rooms, dormitories, etc. Hell, those of us who know for sure that we can't get pregnant have the right not to fear rape. The presence of any male, regardless of his intentions, causes us to feel that fear.

It's not about people being trans. It's about the perceived rape threat that all men pose because of the actions of some of them. The man identifying as trans doesn't alter the threat that women will perceive him as.

but he can live as a woman if he so wishes.

No, he can't. He's not ever going to experience life as a woman, only as a male identifying as one. Being a "trans woman" is simply another way to be a man.

Is that really going to harm anyone???

Yes.

These are such important points. Thank you for continuing to post @RedToothBrush. I didn't see your first post and wish I had.

I just wanted to add also, mainly for OP's benefit, to be wary of posters who, doubtless in a desire to be helpful, are suggesting she encourage her other children to 'call out' their brother on his belief that he's a woman. Whatever stance you want to take on transitioning generally, the fact is that when there is an actual trans person in the family, instead of a hypothetical trans person in someone else's family, the spectre of estrangement is always there, just out of view but hanging over you like a threat. As parents, that's a nettle you have to grasp eventually, either boldly or by default, because as RTB says, your existence is a constant reminder of what used to be and, actually, on some level always will be. With my son, it's quite clear in retrospect that he was determined to find something to estrange himself from us over, whatever we said or didn't say (not that that makes it any easier). But that's quite a trip to lay on children. Imagine what guilt OP's son's siblings will have to live with if they speak bluntly and candidly, and that is the last they see or hear of him.

Since the idea that not being affirmative risks your trans family member suiciding has been largely debunked, the ever-present threat of estrangement has been the key weapon the TRA community has harnessed to drive mainstream acceptance of its ideology. We often read on the Relationships board about the "script" that cheating DHs use but there's a trans "script" too, with a flow chart that mostly ends up with NC in 72 point bold. Along the way, it mostly focuses on divide-and-conquer behaviour as far as I can see, so OP might expect individual siblings to be co-opted one by one and asked to keep secrets from their parents, or the parents from each other, or sometimes extended family will get roped in. The resulting network of secrets and lies is a large part of the grenade that rips through the family in my experience, though ymmv. So I think its really important that the rest of the family keeps talking about this, as currently you all seem to be on the same page and that will be a protective factor going forwards.

MN deleted because I used the cult word.

The trouble is the ideology behaves in a cultlike manner, often telling young people to disassociate with their families and because they provide a better glitter family.

There is plenty of evidence of this happening online and in real life trans communities.

The OP is potentially dealing with a son in this situation surrounded by people reinforcing the idea that his family struggling to deal with things are bigotted. It sets up a situation where many trans identifying people are primed before families even know, to be on the defensive and almost go seeking to test their family.

Every transgression or mistake therefore blows up out of proportion because of this cultlike behaviour.

It makes it harder for parents to counter and to have a rational approach. They can't compete with this cultlike behaviour.

As I say the degree of militancy the OP encounters with her son is highly relevant to how she deals with it.

The OP can't 'save' her son from this if that's how he's gone. He's made a decision to believe and you can't counter belief with rational.

It is important we do tackle and talk about the cultlike nature of this even though MN and the monitors don't want us to, because that's the experience that families are facing...

You mean PAIS and CAIS?

If the Mullerian duct has developed and the Wolffian duct atrophied, then we are talking about someone who may be genetically male but is going to have a cervix and most of the other biological female stuff, just without periods, and for most purposes should be regarded as female. They can't make women pregnant and will need some gynaecological care, such as cervical screening.

Whether CAIS and PAIS people should be deemed female for sports, I'll defer to sports governing bodies.

What CAIS and PAIS people definitely aren't, and the OP's DS is, is unambiguously a fertile male who wants to LARP as a female. So let's not pretend that androgen insensitivity syndromes have anything to do with the OP and her DS.

"Is it harmful to live as the opposite sex" is a good question.
Does it mean "everyone has to pretend they are female and treat them exactly as you would a female" (yes, harmful - apart from safe spaces, there are medical risks)
Does it mean "everyone has to change their definition of woman to mean "male or female with an undefined collection of traits or feelings"" then yes, that's harmful.
If you treat people differently based on their sex, when their sex is entirely irrelevant, then yes that's harmful.

Maybe its because they are just men dressed in a neutral way rather than men dressed as a ridiculous parody of a woman?

Yes it does harm others.

That's kinda the problem.

This is a pile of sexist gibbish.

Define "living as a woman".

If he feels he wants to face life as a woman and its not just confusion, then he needs to be supported and not alienated. He can never biologically be a woman but he can live as a woman if he so wishes. Is that really going to harm anyone??? He needs support for the sake of his mental health, he needs to be able to talk about his feelings without judgement and he needs proper guidance. Patience and compassion is needed now.

This is a man who is 19. He's autistic and very vulnerable.

But that doesn't give him licence to impose his beliefs on others. The OP only has a limited amount she can influence him. He can make choices and is free to remove himself from the situation if he doesn't like it. The other kids are too young to do that.

They are entitled to their WORIADS beliefs. They do not have to use pronouns and names they are uncomfortable with and that shouldn't be enforced or punished (including with emotional blackmail or manipulation). They conversely can't take the piss nor be abusive about their brother's identity.

And given the situation the OP finds herself in, that should really be the house ground rules and boundaries to balance all of those in the house.

The other kids are allowed to be upset about this. It's a huge thing. It has an impact in a way that being gay does not. (I think we have established these impacts enough with sport and crime and rape crisis centres by this point). Their brother is not the same person they've always been - the whole point is a declaration of being trans is a request to be treated differently. Otherwise what's the actual fucking point of transition?!

It clearly hits a nerve doesn't it.

The narrative that it families that don't do enough and reject their trans family member is one which underpins the victimhood.

The fact that advice being given out by trans charities a few years ago, said that trans people frequently reject their family because they remind them of the past and may seek to lash out at family due to unresolved anger and frustration as part of the reality of never being able to change sex isn't so palatable.

Neither is the fact the Beaumont Society did a survey amongst their own members which found abnormally high levels of psychological distress in the wives of men who transitioned. This is a group who are focused on supporting trans people not partners. The families of those who transition are silent because of stigma, because they feel guilty, because they worry about judgement and being shamed, because they are struggling with their own psychological needs (hey let's not forget high rates of autism amongst trans people and what that also might mean for their family members cos hey genetics). But we aren't allowed to talk about the impact on families.

We also aren't allowed to talk about identity formation and identity being multi faceted and relational and family identity being one of the most important to people, particularly children.

And we are supposed to ignore the militancy and the cultlike behaviour imposed on others in these demands placed on families.

Yeah. Let's all play happy families and pretend we are all ok when we really really aren't.

I'm sorry your post got deleted. I would have loved to read it. So much for freedom of speech. I agree, it seems the narrative is always on the trans person and no one else in family, society, anywhere is allowed to have any feelings themselves. Even on this post OP asks how to help siblings and majority of answers are how to react to the trans person.

Indeed it is not relevant to the OP's problem. It is relevant to the faith-based statement by PP I was replying to that "sex is always binary". It smacks of intolerance and ignorance. I am not aiming to support the trans movement, just to stop people misusing science to support dogmatic social views when it doesn't.

How is it intolerant and ignorant? There are only two sexes, male and female, there are only two gametes. Sex IS binary. That's not a faith based statement. It is reality.

I suggest you read the below and stop suggesting sex isn't binary.

https://dsdfamilies.org/application/files/9116/3519/2768/July20211_schools.pdf

Avoid resources that refer to "intersex" as a third sex category. This is inaccurate and stigmatising and could be very distressing for children with DSD. It is also not inline with schools' responsibility to teach UK equality law accurately to pupils.

My 51 year old brother has spent the last 18 months becoming his apparently authentic trans woman self. He says he has always felt like this.
As a sibling I struggle with this having been the butt of his sexist banter for all of those years. And witness to the casual hetrosexual sex plus two long term hetro relationships.
I do find his recent announcement as Emperor's new clothes. He's had mental health issues, problems with addiction since teens. Never tackled with sensible lifestyle choices just lurching from quick fix to medication to self medicating. The whooping doses of off the record HRT are just a continuation of this. It hass made him happier but it's riddled with anxiety, and he regularly still goes on weekend drinking benders
My mum has narcissistic traits, this is all confusing, but also a rich seam of attention grabbing. I would have kept it more low key to ease a path back.
I have decided my boundaries are that although I am always pleased to hear about his life, I can not be part of his current journey/special interest in the same way that I wasn't part of his football/fruit salad/motorcycle maintenance world. It's not my thing. So I won't be shopping or affirming his new journey. My mother has taken a different approach.
At the last meeting with my teens he referred to unnecessarily and off topic to sanitary protection. So from now on, I'm not letting him anywhere near my kids, I suspect as an older man he has been quick to devour the stranger corners of trans on the internet. I won't be a part of that and I worry that younger people are approaching from a different angle and yet caught under the same umbrella.

I really feel for all the families of trans people, so hard to know how to approach this.

This

I'm surprised you didn't have a discussion about why he had chosen that look.
Now is the time for open and honest conversation