I’m a feminist with a trans son AMA

[Fraida]

I’m a long-standing member of MN (since 2006 when my eldest child was born) but have named changed more recently!

So I have a 14 year old who is FTM trans person and two other younger children. My son came out officially as trans earlier this year but has been exploring his gender identity since he was about eight. This has been an interesting journey for us all as DH and I have always prided ourselves on allowing all of our children to be individuals and trying to help them not get sucked into cultural norms from a gender perspective I.e. a saying in our house is there is no such thing as boys things and girls things just things Like what you like and don’t get bogged down by what society might expect of you. For a while my middle child - a boy - had the longest hair in the house and loves horse riding both things typically associated with girls, for example.

With DS1 coming out as male I have had to rethink and relearn many of my own beliefs about gender and the whole transitioning process as Ill gladly admit I did have preconceived ideas and concerns about, for example, any gender specialists going down the route of affirmation rather than assessment as well as concerns about medication being offered too quickly. However in our experience so far this hasn’t been the case and there seems to be many more barriers and much more in the way of caution than I anticipated.

I will say however that the overwhelming negative impact on his mental health has been devastating for us all to watch with a number of suicide attempts (not uncommon) and chronic anxiety, to say the least. I do feel that whatever your views are on gender health care for children it cannot be right that psychological support and help is not more widespread and readily available.

Anyways I’m being brave because I fundamentally believe that dialogue is important and active listening in order to truly hear what opposing views are is really important in such a sensitive area. So here I am, happy to debate and answer questions but please don’t insult me as I am a sensitive human at the end of the computer

Op sorry to ask but I wondered if there has been a lot of trauma in your family? I work with young people: all of the young women (aged 16,17) who identify very strongly as being male (to the point of demanding 'wrong' pronouns being triggering, etc) are autistic, but also have sadly experienced deep personal / family trauma.

Re: pronouns. It is so against my conviction thats it is wrong for girls to be encouraged down the path that leads to chest-binding, mastectomy, then more harmful surgery, I can't bring myself to call a girl 'he.' I feel controlled, and also part of the problem if I go along with their delusion. Especially knowing about the combination of ASD plus trauma.

I just spotted this screenshot of a Times article (or possible comment) on twitter and I thought of this thread.

june2007 The need to 'pass' seems to be strong in people with dysphoria from what I have seen and read, compared to those who have no intention of trying to pass and are using trans as a way to exert control over others (language, spaces etc)

IW on Big Brother was eye opening. When I had only seen photos of IW, I would have said they could pass. Having seen the very male, aggressive behaviour on Big Brother there is no doubt that IW is male. And therein lies the problem I think for many people who are trans (male to feminine especially). In a still image, it is far easier to pass than in real life - the way people move and behave, regardless of their height and build tells us an awful lot about what sex thay are.

op - without sounding judgy you may benefit from stepping away from the issue for a bit as you do seem quite indoctrinated by genderist ideology and that won't help your child.

Several things jump out to me, your use of the term trans and anti trans, you state in an earlier post that you Stonewall are representative of all the LGBT community. You would have to have been under a rock to not notice that isn't happening, at all. This belief in biological origin, the searching for it...

When you apply Occam's razor the most likely scenario is that you have a lesbian daughter. I think less watching of documentaries and more moving away from the issue, for both of you.

Thank you for the recent messages, I will reply and discuss today and then I will step away from the thread as this has taken up far more time than I ever intended it to - with the weekend coming up I want to spend time with my family.

I didn’t think it would get to the number of messages it has so thank you for engaging and like I said previously for on the whole being respectful. It’s good to have these discussions, nothing can change otherwise and I think there needs to be more dialogue between opposing views.

@Charley50

Op sorry to ask but I wondered if there has been a lot of trauma in your family? I work with young people: all of the young women (aged 16,17) who identify very strongly as being male (to the point of demanding 'wrong' pronouns being triggering, etc) are autistic, but also have sadly experienced deep personal / family trauma.

Re: pronouns. It is so against my conviction thats it is wrong for girls to be encouraged down the path that leads to chest-binding, mastectomy, then more harmful surgery, I can't bring myself to call a girl 'he.' I feel controlled, and also part of the problem if I go along with their delusion. Especially knowing about the combination of ASD plus trauma.

Before I go on the school run I thought I’d quickly respond to this question. No we are fortunate enough to have never experienced any trauma in our family. I am aware that there is a proven link between trauma and identity issues with many detransitioners flagging the trauma experienced in childhood. Not surprisingly there is a link between BPD and gender identity which is why this is explored (certainly where we are anyway) although that diagnosis takes years to confirm.

The trauma link is why the gender psychologist wants to look at early experiences and look for traumatic events.

@NancyDrawed

june2007 The need to 'pass' seems to be strong in people with dysphoria from what I have seen and read, compared to those who have no intention of trying to pass and are using trans as a way to exert control over others (language, spaces etc)

IW on Big Brother was eye opening. When I had only seen photos of IW, I would have said they could pass. Having seen the very male, aggressive behaviour on Big Brother there is no doubt that IW is male. And therein lies the problem I think for many people who are trans (male to feminine especially). In a still image, it is far easier to pass than in real life - the way people move and behave, regardless of their height and build tells us an awful lot about what sex thay are.

We are programmed to tell men and women apart - it has been shown that babies can do this at four months old. It is not based on make up or clothes but on things you can’t change - like gait, face, voice. And as you point out, transwomen retain their male behaviour (and male rates of offending) and all their male social conditioning. Their behaviour and entitlement is a huge give-away.

I'm very sad to say OP that a rare of long term follow up study of trans people, also conducted in Sweden, found that following sex reassignment trans people 'have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population

When stonewall looked at those incredibly high SH and suicidal stats, did they define pre or post transition?

Logically, if it is a genuine case of being born in the wrong body, then once they are living as the appropriate gender those figures should drop, and drop even further once completely transitioned.

The swedish figures above suggest transition isn’t the simple “cure” that pro-trans lobbyists seem to think.

Which again comes back to the whole issue being more about mental health issues than any actual born in the wrong body pink brain/blue brain “science”.

A link between trauma and identity issues? Yes.

A link between BPD and (gender) identity issues? Yes.

Not separate issues. Two separate descriptions of the same issue.

Traumatic experiences affect the ability to form stable, comfortable, emotionally and psychologically healthy adult identities.

"BPD" is what they call you when you never got enough help early on and everything subsequent has compounded the issue and they're throwing up their hands in despair at the impossibility of fixing you. Unstable and insecure identities causing social interaction and communication dysfunction are a key feature.

The label's going out of fashion because 'personality disorder' is loaded with so many negative connotations that it's actively harmful to encourage a traumatised person to identify as BPD.

These days we don't call the results of years of unaddressed trauma "borderline personality disorder" - we've found new language with more empathetic associations that works for now. We say this person is suffering from complex-ptsd, because ptsd widely gets more compassionate treatment.

But the language is moving on. Nowadays, those experiences resulting in those clusters of internal and external behaviour patterns are categorised as "probably just trans" because that's the language most likely to trigger a compassionate response right now.

Sorry if that sounded a bit soap-boxy. The lack of a quick fix frustrates me too.

tyro that was such a helpful post.

To me that demonstrates the problem with taking the fact trans people exist, and then trying to retrofit that fact into children.

I would always assume an adult transsexual (using that term to mean specifically people with dysphoria, more likely to have genital surgery etc) has trauma in their childhood. Interviews nearly always highlight deeply homophobic and sexist attitudes from caregivers; often overt cruelty.

But looking at children - still developing, still often in their formative environments - you would surely think that the source of the trauma might still be there and that it would be imperative to try and work on that.

Why does the existence of trans adults mean I have to be OK with my child being trans? I am working very hard to avoid my child being trans. I am working on the "trauma" - in his case that society & peers can have negative attitudes to difference.

If I am a bigot for trying to help my child grow up healthy and happy in his own skin am I also a bigot for accepting antenatal screening for my babies in utero? After all I work with people with disabilities, have fought for their rights at times etc.

@midgebabe

It's not about teaching your child it's ok to be different. I mean, so far there is nothing different about your child is there? Beyond the era they are going up in which affects how people interpret what they see in the child

It's about teaching your child that there is nothing unusual in what they are and who they want to be. That they are just fine as they are. That just because other people want to limit them does not mean they have to accept those limits.

Haven’t RTFT yet still working through, but wanted to say YES!!!! To this post.

It’s very easy for the message “its ok to be different” to be interpreted as “you are different and that’s ok (with me)” - in doing this with a young girl, you’re literally telling the child she’s not like the other girls - a misogynistic trope many of us have had to fight internal battles against as we mature.

Anyway back to reading :-)

Sorry wrong chat!!

PS. I’ve refreshed and regrouped and am back in the room! Apologies... the safeguarding/ Reddit criticisms really stung and reminded me of the hanging incident post cyber bullying.

That must have been so devastating and frightening.

My DC are adults and just missed being the smartphone generation. They had internet access but it was so much easier to control when it was all via a few networked PCs. It must be so stressful being a parent of a teen now - you are responsible for their safety and wellbeing, yet you are powerless against whatever the internet throws at them - abuse, grooming, porn, extremism ... and as the web has grown, so have all those dangers.

People being horrible to your child online is not the only danger. You also need to be wary of people who are being very kind, accepting and validating.

Ben (GNC Centric) has talked a lot about this:

You say He barely posts on Instagram now and tends to communicate with friends via messaging apps now which is a huge relief.

Are these RL friends or online friends? Do you know who they are?

I'm not criticising your parenting, I'm alerting you to a danger. I'm a few pages behind so this may all already have been said.

We’ve been at crisis point possibly 8-12 points this year alone which is why I say I don’t have the time to think on a macro level.

There are different ways of thinking about this on a macro level.

One of the macro level issues is the wholescale assault on the rights of women and girls from the TRA insistence that TWAW. I understand that you don't have time to think about that. Your focus is on your child and as your child is female, those issues are not so immediately relevant.

However there are other macro level issues that need your attention because they are directly relevant to the health and wellbeing of your child.

There is something new going on here.

In no previous generation have we had large numbers of teenage girls identifying as boys. Ten years ago the number of girls referred to GIDS was close to zero. You can't afford to not think about what our culture is doing to girls, especially autistic girls, lesbian girls, girls living with trauma, girls with MH issues. You can't afford not to think about why so many of our daughters find it so impossible to be female in our society today.

Or the awareness and language around being transgender is more widespread and thus people transition earlier now rather than waiting til being middle aged or older because they have the words to describe what they are experiencing?

The people who transition in middle age or old age are almost exclusively male. Do you know anybody your own age or older who is female and is now identifying as a man? If there were loads of female people who identified as male, yet had never had the courage to do anything about it before, then the menopause would be an obvious point to transition, but it doesn't happen. Middle aged women come out as lesbians, not as men.

Middle age transition is overwhelmingly a male thing and middle aged transitioners don't generally want to do anything to their own bodies that would affect their ability to enjoy sex. Nevertheless, many of them would call you a bigot if you expressed caution around medical treatment for your child.

This is the macro level stuff you can't afford not to think about.

Fantastic post Lang.