Teen declared they were trans and now says they can't be in contact with us

So you responded to my post about what a ‘girly shopping trip’ entails with an irrelevant post about toilets and not shopping without making either point clear?

Your son might be a victim but if he claims he is a woman then he is also responsible to helping to destroy women’s rights. If it is only self confidence stopping him invading women’s spaces then he not what I would call a sweet person. You can be both a victim and an abuser.

He is obviously going through some kind of breakdown/episode and needs counselling. I think the majority of this whole trance thing has a route in mental health problems.

I would contact the uni on invoice your concerns.

Then I would contact him and discuss the fact that you are paying for everything, and if he truly wants to cut you off, it also means financially as well. I think we beat around the bush far too much with our children and put up with ridiculous behaviour. Personally I would be annoyed at the entitlement of expecting you to pay for everything while obviously abusing your nature as a good supportive parent.

The conversation about clothing is reminding me of when I worked in a department store as a student in 1996-98. One day, a man came in, dressed as a caricature of a woman, and he looked so miserable and uncomfortable. He was wearing a short tight minidress and wonky bright-red lipstick. He went to the lingerie department to get fitted for a bra. Back then, the NHS would only start gender reassignment treatment if the person had lived as the opposite sex for two years. I think you had to provide proof that you had been living that way, but I can't remember how. Perhaps people from their lives vouching in writing that they were living as a woman, I'm not sure. I don't know what the rules are today. Anyway, the woman in Lingerie helped him, and he came back with a box of chocolates for her.

When I was 12, in 1986, I went to the local ice rink a lot, and a young man used to skate. He was called Stephanie. I just accepted it as a child.

My point is that trans women existed long before any lobby, so I'm not sure it's the lobby encouraging them. Maybe it's just freeing them to express their real selves.

Anyway, if OP's son does want to express his feminine identity by wearing female clothes, I hope he gets some advice and ends up looking better than that poor uncomfortable person in the dept store all those years ago.

No, I am talking about unisex facilities , specifically toilets. Most recently at a motorway services. My young person would not dream of shopping for women's clothing in a store, for fear of making people uncomfortable, and because they lack the self confidence required. They don't wear lingerie.

As I already said, my young person is a victim of this ideology. I loathe the ideology. My young person is the same vulnerable gentle sweet person they always were.

Go for the ideology and the cheerleaders and I will shake you by the hand.

Start assuming that every vulnerable individual caught up in this - an ideology that, after all, they have been taught since childhood in schools and on media is factual, inclusive and kind - is a pervert or deliberately intent on riding roughshod over women's boundaries as their main aim? Then you become the thing you hate - an ideologically driven black and white thinker who has lost all sight of nuance.

It Is not others, it is themselves. They have a fantasy of what a women is in their head that they are acting out.

I suppose transwomen like to wear clothes that are obviously female, in the hope that you will see them as female. The transwoman I know best wears dresses or skirts and girly shoes maybe 90% of the time, unlike the vast majority of women that I know, who just wear dresses for special occasions.

"Here's a perfectly nice hoody on this website. Crack on"

He (and by the sounds of things your son) have reduced women to a set of fantasies in his head. That is enough for me to judge him by. That alone is misogynistic and sexist and is causing untold harm to women. And you talk of unisex changing rooms - do you mean like those in John Lewis and M&S next to the women’s lingerie which have been changed from female to unisex under pressure from gender lobbyists?

In which case he can buy them himself and ask his new best friends for style advice.

I don’t think you will find many ‘trans women’ keep their masculine names because that is sort of the point. There was that ( male) MP who claimed to be ‘working towards beings trans’ ( cue the entire HOC congratulating him/ them/ her) but they continued to wear a suit and tie and use the ( masculine) name they were elected by, so I think we can say that that ‘work’ didn’t have a propitious outcome.

Kalalily

My understanding is that the medical profession is split down the middle on this and currently the NHS does not consider gender dysphoria a mental illness - unlike body dysmorphia for example 🙄

Dysphoria is the opposite of euphoria so a state of unhappiness as opposed to extreme happiness

Being unhappy is not a physical illness that needs invasive surgery. It is a mental illness

It doesn't help even if the op did buy into it. The best thing she can do is not get involved. He's an adult not a child. Buying clothes and makeup will not change how he feels.

No, don't reward his obnoxious behaviour. He can buy his own body wash.

Well, I am very feminine and I like makeup and feminine-type clothes, as is the same for a very large amount of women. Why the hate for anything feminine? Feminine isn't bad. I am exactly "like other girls" and proud of it.

It's extremely common for males transitioning to females to express their transition by wearing makeup, heels, skirts and dresses, bras with breast forms, etc.

Fine, if OP doesn't want to do that because it's not right for her, seeing as she doesn't shop, doesn't wear makeup or anything feminine, but I can't know that through a screen, and she did say he came home wearing some makeup. And neither do I think that buying womanly stuff is the "only" thing that marks the transition, as a PP said.

Helping him with his new look was just a suggestion as a way to show him acceptance, since the "That's nice, dear" approach has driven him away.

Best of luck with it all, OP.

@NDSceptic

My young person continues to use male facilities when no unisex facility is available. There's no need to make these blanket assumptions. When you start judging people en mass as a category that is when you have become prejudiced. Like if you judge all men on the actions of a few or start talking about Muslims or Jews or Black people or whatever minority group.

Judge individuals. That's fair.

💪❤️

I've been thinking lots about this thread.

There are quite a few parents on it now, including many of boys who are identifying as girls.

A PP mentioned that perhaps there is a hidden uptick in ~19 year old, autistic boys (some of whom are off at uni) who experience an ROGD-style realisation that they are trans. I mentioned too on a previous comment that I think an emerging, testosterone-driven libido combined with autism could add extra confusion. Others have commented that autism can delay the emergence of sexual feelings.

But the big difference with boys who identify as girls is that there is the added issue of the discussion around the statistically-recognised danger that biological males pose to women. The majority of this board focuses on this latter issue as it's main point - and rightly so. But to me, this thread is focusing on the vulnerability of an autistic young adult male first and foremost, whilst also keeping the societal level of risk in mind.

There's a chapter in Dr Az's book Detrans where a mum of a male who identifies as female says that she's experienced a lot of dismissive messages which simply frame her young adult child as a risk to women. Yes, it's still true but it's really not the only issue at play here. When you look at the mobs of angry TRAs at the LWS events, I wonder how many are autistic males, who've had their confusion weaponised by those who have contributed to their journey into believing that the world is against them. I'm certainly not absolving them. By 18 they are legally adults, autism or not. I'm hoping that there will be more medical research specifically into males with ROGD and autism. Helping them navigate adolesence with cognitive processing strategies under Speech and Language Therapy provision (this provision is already part of EHCPs) could make a difference for both individuals and society.

OP, it sounds like you're doing an incredible job both as a mum and in keeping your head in a healthy place on the wider societal issue. I hope you get completely splattered with mud on your next run in the most womanly way possible.

Good spot. Grim.

I really feel for all the mothers and young sisters who are being mocked, disrespected AND asked to facilitate the trampling of other women's boundaries in the name of 'support'.

Presumably this shop trip would also entail supporting him using female changing rooms and coercing shop female assistants into participating in his fantasy?

So many wise and insightful posts that counter the occasional tone deaf "uncritically affirm and go on a girly shopping trip" narrative

Parents unfortunately are having to navigate all this with young people having been gaslit into believing that sex change is a viable life alternative that'll bring them happiness. Sadly precisely the opposite will be the fate for the majority where it's not a passing phase.

I really feel for you, op. I know you don't want to do anything that increases the alienation, but your son is being a twat.
I wouldn't be funding anything that facilitates his behaviour.

I think it just goes to show the facile surface skimming understanding that people have of this phenomenon that buying him a lipstick is seen as something you should do to help your relationship. If all that he needs is a lip gloss and some “girly” clothes to become a woman then why do we need puberty blockers and brutal surgery’s passed onto these young people? I think you are doing a great job navigating all of this.

I'm guessing that anything less than fawning "oh that's wonderful" would be taken as unsupportive.

The only thing I can think is keeping in contact through letters and periodically asking the university to check they are okay if you get no response.

Maybe address the issue more directly, say you were sorry that your actions were interpreted as unsupportive and you'd like to learn how to be supportive. Anything essentially to keep communication going/restarted. He's basically in a cult and you need the same tactics to extract him. Possibly just open support through uni, he will probably desist naturally once in the world of work. As did most of the alternative types I knew at uni.

Absolutely, most of the women I know live in jeans and hoodies, certainly the young adults. Yet my autistic ROGD adolescent wears corsets even in the most inappropriate circumstances. When we try to engage in a conversation about what is appropriate, I’m told that I don’t understand - which I don’t.