Adult daughter dating trans-identified male, struggling to navigate family concerns

I’ve been in the same situation (although in my instance my eldest daughter was dating a trans woman).

As parents surely the key thing is that our children are happy and that their partners are kind, sane and hopefully solvent. And in return, kindness is not a big ask.

You can make a thing of this and it sounds like you will but you stand a good chance of completely alienating your daughter and her boyfriend. And if your principles and opinions are really worth more than your relationship with your daughter, you go for it!

If they're honest most people don't really see trans identified people as their 'gender identity' they see their sex. That's why they're constantly getting 'misgendered'.

Basic respect does not mean you get to police other adults’ identities, relationships, or language until they fit your worldview. It means accepting that your daughter is an adult, her partner is a person, and neither of them exists for your approval.

And boundaries are not “I get to decide what everyone else’s relationship means.” Boundaries are about your own behaviour: what you will do, what you will not do, and what contact you will or won’t have. They are not a licence to control other people and call it self-respect.

You do not have to agree with everything in someone’s life to be civil to them. But if you repeatedly tell your daughter that her partner is unhealthy, delusional, a lie, a cult problem, or proof of social contagion, then the issue is not that other people “won’t respect your boundaries.” The issue is that you are being disrespectful and want freedom from the consequences.

And having read this whole thread, the sheer intensity of your anger about something you plainly do not understand, including terminology you still cannot get right, is far more revealing than you seem to realise. Pick a book from non-transphobic aisle, it won't bite you to learn a bit about what you hate so much.

You might learn something about the people you hate so much, and if you really believe this is “severe mental illness”, then compassion would seem a more obvious response than contempt that you are just showing with apparently even pride.

There is nothing healthy about being in a relationship with someone who wants to control everyone around them. This is a mentally ill and controlling person who is trying to cut her partner off from her family. If they were saying they are a man but respecting that her partner's family might not see her that way it would be different.

No-one would claim any other relationship in which the person was this controlling was healthy!

Obviously the person your DD is dating is actually female and nothing is going to ever make them actually male. But I don't see why that has to "rip the family apart" - your DD is in a same-sex relationship. So what? One of my child's closest friends has identified as the opposite sex for the last 5 years and I have managed to get through that 5 years without ever using a 3rd person pronoun about them whilst regularly supplying them with playstationing snacks & pizza etc. It's easy enough. You don't have to believe in the magic sex-change-miracle to be pleasant.

Edit in the light of your lastest update above - your DD does not get to control your beliefs - you can be perfectly kind and welcoming and supportive without lying. If your DD can't accept anything less than actual lies then that's a serious problem with her capacity for understanding boundaries and respect that she needs to learn to deal with.

I'm GC but don't really understand what the problem is. You don't have to believe her girlfriend is a man. As long as it's a healthy relationship I don't see the issue.

They met at a school for moderate learning disabilities- they both work but I would say that both are vulnerable - she has extra vulnerabilities. I felt that it was like a costume she was wearing to protect herself from something.

I agree about the identifying as disabled. My town has a popular music venue and when the acts aimed at the young emo audience play, suddenly there is a big queue of girls with blue hair and walking sticks. My daughter has a learning disability, epilepsy and autism, and I am heavily involved in the local disability community and I find it sad.

Good Point

Maybe it's more like your daughter has a new religious partner and your daughter insists you hold hands and say Grace and thanks to God at the table before the meal. This makes you uncomfortable as an Unbeliever.

I suppose you can do one of two things- say to your D how uncomfortable you feel lying about something you believe or don't believe and would she be willing to skip the Grace part (maybe the new partner could bypass it at your place) OR just go ahead and say it and see it as part of the compromises you will make for your D to be happy ?

To the people suggesting that the OP should compromise or lie to preserve her relationship with her daughter:

Do you think that retaining sex as a meaningful categorical variable is important and that gender ideology is pernicious? The OP does.

Do you think lying about important stuff is a good idea? - I don't and I don't think many people do (although opinions vary widely on what counts as important).

Do you regard people who lie and bend on matters of principle (to them, not you) as trustworthy and dependable?

If you were the OP’s daughter would you value your mother's insincere, emotionally coerced compliance with your demands about language as proof of love and loyalty or would you keep upping the ante, because by conceding on the original point of principle she has devalued her own currency?

I am gender critical but I honestly couldn't get worked up over this. What does it matter who your adult daughter has a relationship with? As long as they treat her well I don't think this is the drama you are making it into.

This is so difficult. I think @LadybirdsProcessing\s core point is really good, but I think you are really really going to have to focus on Not Going There too.

I am ND and I feel that you may also be too? Or perhaps just have similar traits in that you find the thought of not telling the truth at all times really hard to bear. It feels inauthentic, like 'not being yourself', and almost physically impossible - but you can teach yourself to do this and honestly, it starts to feel ok. It's not that you are lying - your daughter knows what you think - it's that you are choosing where to tell it. (TBH this has been good for me as a general skill haha)

If I were you I would be self-soothing/-controlling with the point that @VikingLady made:
"Id probably be NB if I was 14 now, just to take myself out of the whole mess."
Try and view it from this lofty historicist perspective. It doesn't change the sadness but it makes it less personal. This is not really young people's fault (with some reservations), and not DD's GF's fault. She's looking for a lifeboat - I think very few women would have their breasts removed unless things were very, very bad for them, even though you disagree intensely in terms of your diagnosis of what, exactly, the bad thing is.

To build on what @LadybirdsProcessing said - in every interaction I'd force myself to say something upbeat, positive, trusting or open. "LOVE your trousers GF" :That's a really good point GF." "What shall I watch next on TV, I've come to the end of my drama". "God, I'm so happy the weather has turned, I was honestly getting a bit depressed."

I have noticed that when there is some positive communication, the conflict necessarily becomes less dominant. One can feel it taking up less space/time, pushed out and down by the positive relational things. It's one of those annoying slightly CBT 'wellbeing' things that turns out to be less bullshit than the rest true. One's own mood is better and so is theirs and, crucially, it's another way to show that while you won't change - you haven't changed.

My other self-soothing mechanisms would be to remind myself at all times:
*DD hasn't been forced by the Kool Aid to change herself - she is a lesbian and she is going out with a woman, whatever she herself believes.
*By the same token, you know that the GF is a woman so forcefully think of her as a woman at all times. Don't engage with any thoughts of your own or conversations with the girlfriend that don't fit with that truth. Equally, don't allow her to bring up anything to do with Sex - you wouldn't talk about periods or whatever with your DD's girlfriend, don't talk about her moustache.
*If she were going out with someone non-trans who had odd views, you would also be having to bite your lip. You would. It would be horribly uncomfortable but you would force yourself to do so to avoid a crisis point. So dont' allow your justified sense of being socially/politically under fire as a SR to make this any more significant than if your DD's partner was, say, pro-Brexit or homophobic or conservative-religious.
*If you make this a Me or Them issue, you will have given Them what they want and you refuse, absolutely refuse to allow Them that power.
*The only thing that is permanent is Change.

I was at a funeral a few weeks ago and sat ar a table with a young trans man and her boyfriend ie a straight couple. This person was clearly female and in fact used the ladies. She revealed a few things over the next few hours which demonstrated that she has a huge trauma background. She seemed very vulnerable and her boyfriend was doing a lot of looking after her. I can't believe that anyone is taking her seriously.

Just use the they/them pronouns then

I’m raging at the moment as a young woman I know has travelled to Europe on her own for a radical mastectomy. It’s an evil, evil ideology, I understand your rage and fear for your DD.

I would suggest that you separate the cult/ideology from its victims.

Your DD’s new partner is a victim. Even if she campaigns enthusiastically, she’s a victim. Even if she encourages others with tales of how great her mastectomy was, she’s a victim. Culpable, but a victim.

Keep your campaigning and correctness in the campaigning sphere, and in your home welcome your DD’s new friend with concern for her wellbeing.

Don’t comment on it, the same way you wouldn’t comment on any other self harm or eating disorder.

I realise the pronouns thing is a problem, but you can get over that. Try and avoid pronouns, use her name, apologise when the other pronouns slip out- not because you’ve done something awful, but because it’s something that upsets her. Much like you’d generally avoid discussing the steak you had last night with a vegan,

It’s not the worst thing in the world to take into account what upsets people we are with.

But I feel for you- I will be biting my tongue with my young friend. But she is not the right person to express my issues with. Neither are your daughter and her trans identifying friend.

If you read the OP’s posts, it is the expectation of acting as if she, OP, believes someone can change sex by the daughter demanding that specific language is the only respectful behaviour from the OP.

It is not that OP will not 'accept her choice of partner'.

Equating transgenderism with a disability or heath condition is rather offensive to disabled or chronically ill people.

Your daughter has not "ripped your family apart"...

She is an adult who has chosen a partner she loves.

The relationship might last or it might not, but you need to avoid causing unnecessary drama or you will just push your daughter away.

You are perfectly entitled to your gender critical views but what you can't do is try to force your daughter to hold the same view or decide who she dates.

Yep. You need to decide what is more important to you. Your daughter or your beliefs.

That's the scary thing about all of this @BlueLegume, people of both sexes using male main character energy to destroy the value of actual women (by wanting to be one when they are not, or not wanting to be one when they are). And expecting the rest of us to just go along with it. So very, very sad.

As others have said, I think the only option is to concentrate on the person your daughter loves, try and ignore/rise above all the noise around them...it's a compromise for sure, but hopefully it'll be enough to keep your relationship intact.

I am angry at this movement that has no debate and actually uses that phrase as their mantra.

So don't let it win and take your daughter from you, OP.

There will be a way to navigate this where you get to keep her and she gets to know you are there for her no matter what, even if you fundamentally disagree.

Maybe take some time to rage and come to terms a bit. it's all so raw right now.

Keep raging here if you need to - just don't take it to her. No good will come from it at the moment.

We are all honestly trying to help.x.