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

My question to you is: what does your child mean by dysphoria?

Echoing this one. In this current climate, "dysphoria" is a go-to phrase for all sorts of distress. But teenage distress is common. Actual gender dysphoria is not. It seems to me that we're encouraging misdiagnosis of gender dysphoria.

Here's a great recent thread by a detransitioner:

twitter.com/AlexAlicit/status/1328079116151754757

Thread on why I believe "dysphoria" is overused and has lost its original meaning. That when most people use it, it's nothing more then an excuse or a way to escape actually describing the distress.

For some people this is not the case though, but it certainly is for most.

My stance has not changed on this, when a newly questioning or detrans person question comes to me for advice for dealing with their dysphoria, I tell them the best step to take is to stop using the word. Figure out what you were failing to describe and relied on that word for.

I find the word "dysphoria" to be a crutch, an excuse if you will. It gets used to describe any little or large discomfort that an individual wants to avoid navigating to, it can even become such an awful crutch that it worsens the impact of the original problem through obsession

Of course gender dysphoria is not one thing, as per Blanchard & Bailey. Despite that there is a clear push to view the adult male and juvenile female conditions as "the same thing".

And it's not young females who benefit from that.

I’m sorry you and your child are having a tough time. I only wish there was as much emphasis on inclusion and kindness for those with autism as with gender dysphoria. I have friends and family with autism. They explain to me how they see the world around them, how challenging they find the work and how challenging it is to gain access to mental health services to support Asd. I can see how a child dealing with the double whammy of autism and puberty together coupled with the exceptional logical thinking skills of many with Asd could lead them to believe that the difference they feel and anxiety it causes result from gender dysohoria not Autism.I’d be interested how much of the medical help Your child is getting is Asd focused or is it focused on dyphoria? It seems we are in the early days of understanding autism in girls which can manifest very differently to boys. If your child has developed special interests then, depending on the interest, focusing on that might help them focus away from the dysphoria. It was certainly key to my friend whose interest in music led her to participate in a strong community which is welcoming of difference. We are older though, at a time when teenagers had distinct musical subcultures all with distinctive dress and identities to choose from such as punk, metal, goth New romantic, two tone etc. I suspect this helped a lot of kids find their group, navigate puberty snd find a way to “fit in”. Unfortunately kids and teenagers today seem to be force fed a homogenous commercial culture of bland Muzak, rigid fashion styles, vapid pornified stereotypical roles for girls ehich can only be a major source of distress for a girl with autism.

In what way are your beliefs about gender now different? Do you now believe there are such things as boys things and girls things?!

Also don't you think your child's mental health is really what needs addressing here, with gender as a bit of a red herring? What are you doing to help them with that specifically?

Is your child same sex attracted? If so what kind of reaction did they have from peers and family?

And i totally agree with @Eowynthewarrior.

Firstly, I wish you and your family well - this must be an upsetting and confusing time all round.

I profoundly dislike the way that suicide stats are used by some organisations to force a point. It is a way to try to shut down debate as it is a taboo subject.

Thank you for the link to the Stonewall stats that you supplied upthread - I clicked on the link to look closer at those shocking suicide stats and got 404 page not found, so at this point I can't accept that they are accurate. I know that Mermaids have used similar in the past and it turned out that they had been creative with their data use and that of the large sample size that they claimed, only a very small cohort was included regarding suicide ideation to get the headline shock figure.

Anyone feeling suicidal needs help with their mental health regaring that specific problem, not gender reassignment. And I agree with a poster upthread that the data needs breaking down. Data by age / sex / pre or post transition / detransition and the links to suicide ideation would be more meaningful. I know that I may sound harsh, but in order to understand and support those going through a period of gender incongruence, more information is needed. But is also hard to gather if trans people refuse to be counted as trans (2021 census is a case in point!)

Ok just to address the point on my authenticity and membership of mumsnet! I’ve been here since 2006 and had possible one or two name changes a year one of which was Siscaza, so feel free to search for any posts under that name. Plenty more names I can share with you but that would derail the point of this thread.

If you think I’m trolling then use the report button but otherwise it’s unhelpful and derails the point of this thread which is to encourage healthy debate.

@Fraida, thank you for posting and explaining your situation.
I am not going to comment about trans issues. It is outside my immediate experience. But I wanted to empathise and highlight the wider issues of psychological care for children in the UK, which I think often get missed in this discussion. It is easy to insist that trans children should go through a prolonged period of therapy and explorative work. I am here to tell you that this is not really available to ANYONE on the NHS. My son has been through the child mental health service (CAHMS) and it is a broken service. It is not fit for purpose and let's children down left right and centre. My son is not trans but has had many mental health difficulties including suicidal feelings and undiagnosed ASD and ADHD. None of this was enough to qualify for help from CAHMS. I begged for help and could only get referred for a parenting course. Second time around two years later we did get seen after a waiting list of many months and went round and round in circles being assessed but never offered solutions or therapy. I made a complaint which slightly reduced the time until the ASD diagnosis was made and then we were discharged from the service. In the end we went private as OP has done. Most people cannot afford this.

I hope this doesn't come across as a rant. I can feel my anger rising just remembering it all. We were asking for proper help for around four years with no real outcome, all the while with school placements failing. I could go on but do not want to derail about me.

My point is that when we talk about gender care for young people in the UK there is a much wider discussion to be had about inadequate mental health care across the board. I know many people in the same boat and have yet to meet anyone who has something good to say about CAHMS. At least in my local authority, they are inadequate.

You constantly refer to your female child as male, your child is not male and never can be. At most they can present in a masculine way, take medication for life with serious side effects, and have extreme cosmetic surgery with an 80-90% complication rate which leaves severe scaring. None of this will make them male. If you were wanting to be truly supportive then isn’t the first thing you should do is to be truthful to them? Unless they can accept this then transitioning is always going to be a failure for them. At some point they will realise you have been lying to them and that living your life as if you were a man is not the same as being one?

@Aesopfable

OP obviously it is incredibly concerning that your child is suicidal. You also state Stonewalls dubious figures. Trans teenagers will be repeatedly reading figures like this and statements such as “do you want a live son or dead daughter”. Do you think that this may make depressed children feel that this is something they ought to feel if they are trans?

In addition, if you have read around this subject then you will be aware that transitioning does not solve mental health difficulties but rather results in dramatically increased rates of suicide. Therefore, do you think transitioning is the most appropriate path for a teen who is already suicidal?

Nope I don’t think medical transitioning is appropriate for a suicidal teen and my experience so far (plus advice from professionals both gender specialists and generalist CAMHS) is that this is not a route that can or should be travelled whilst experiencing suicidal ideation or significant self harm.

Medical transition is not a magic bullet and expectations have to be managed accordingly. Those that cope best with transition are those that are well supported by local services , it isn’t a cure in itself for suicidal ideation and can indeed potentially make it worse.

I would say that attitudes towards trans people ie. bullying, social isolation etc can - as in non trans people - lead to serious depression which itself can lead to thoughts of suicide.

[quote Cakeytea]@Fraida, thank you for posting and explaining your situation.
I am not going to comment about trans issues. It is outside my immediate experience. But I wanted to empathise and highlight the wider issues of psychological care for children in the UK, which I think often get missed in this discussion. It is easy to insist that trans children should go through a prolonged period of therapy and explorative work. I am here to tell you that this is not really available to ANYONE on the NHS. My son has been through the child mental health service (CAHMS) and it is a broken service. It is not fit for purpose and let's children down left right and centre. My son is not trans but has had many mental health difficulties including suicidal feelings and undiagnosed ASD and ADHD. None of this was enough to qualify for help from CAHMS. I begged for help and could only get referred for a parenting course. Second time around two years later we did get seen after a waiting list of many months and went round and round in circles being assessed but never offered solutions or therapy. I made a complaint which slightly reduced the time until the ASD diagnosis was made and then we were discharged from the service. In the end we went private as OP has done. Most people cannot afford this.

I hope this doesn't come across as a rant. I can feel my anger rising just remembering it all. We were asking for proper help for around four years with no real outcome, all the while with school placements failing. I could go on but do not want to derail about me.

My point is that when we talk about gender care for young people in the UK there is a much wider discussion to be had about inadequate mental health care across the board. I know many people in the same boat and have yet to meet anyone who has something good to say about CAHMS. At least in my local authority, they are inadequate.[/quote]
Totally agree with you, we feel failed on all accounts by CAMHS. The lack of investment in mental health services for children (and adults) is disgraceful and quite frankly negligent. DH and I often ask who CAMHS actually help because if they don’t help our child who has attempted to take their own life then what are they there for!?

DS is currently on the urgent waiting list for a specific type of DBT that helps with reducing thoughts of self harm and suicide - the waiting list is six months long which is not really acceptable in a crisis situation.

@Aesopfable

You constantly refer to your female child as male, your child is not male and never can be. At most they can present in a masculine way, take medication for life with serious side effects, and have extreme cosmetic surgery with an 80-90% complication rate which leaves severe scaring. None of this will make them male. If you were wanting to be truly supportive then isn’t the first thing you should do is to be truthful to them? Unless they can accept this then transitioning is always going to be a failure for them. At some point they will realise you have been lying to them and that living your life as if you were a man is not the same as being one?

It’s an assumption that we haven’t been... we have and actually the very point you raise he raised himself in the meeting we had with the psychologist yesterday. He said that he knows he will never have XY chromosomes and that if he has phalloplasty it won’t be the same as a real penis.

Thanks for your calm commentary OP.

The thing that leaps out at me is that you know your child has gender Dysphoria. That much is clear. They have consistently said this since a very early age. I understand that (though have never experienced it). That intense feeling of certainty that the body is wrong is a fact. What is not a fact is that the body is wrong. Your child will never be a man and there is no such thing as a boy born in a girl’s body. Your child is female and with intense gender Dysphoria. I don’t get why we elide this feeling with a biological fact.

The elbow thing is relevant I think. My aunt had her leg amputated and had terrible phantom limb pains that caused huge distress. Also her leg would get very cold and putting a blanket over it helped - even though it wasn’t there. The pain was a fact. But it wasn’t a fact that her leg was giving her pain. Alleviating the pain and cold (with the blanket) is basically what your child is doing. Which is good. It helps them feel more comfortable in their own body and that’s fine. But it doesn’t mean they are literally the other sex. And yet we seem to collude in their disordered thinking and tell them that it does. So my question is, why can’t your child do all the things they need to do to feel comfortable (including maybe surgery when they are older although that must cause you some sadness) but still live with the truth that they are female ?

Oh and yes the Stonewall stats are utterly unreliable.

Cross posted with you. Sorry.

It’s the easy slide from gender Dysphoria to ‘born in the wrong body’ that worries me.

@RuffleCrow

In what way are your beliefs about gender now different? Do you now believe there are such things as boys things and girls things?!

Also don't you think your child's mental health is really what needs addressing here, with gender as a bit of a red herring? What are you doing to help them with that specifically?

Is your child same sex attracted? If so what kind of reaction did they have from peers and family?

On your point about mental health yes absolutely I do think his mental health needs addressing. He has been with CAMHS all year in order to help specifically with the the suicidal ideation, impacts of bullying, ASD and self harm. He is currently on the waiting list for a very specific type of DBT for people with a high need for control and fixed thinking I.e. those with ASD. This has good success rate for those who are experiencing suicidal thoughts and self harm.

Your second question about being same sex attracted - yes he he is attracted to girls and came out as lesbian about two years ago. The reaction was that of acceptance across both peer group and family. He’s never ever been bullied or ridiculed for being a lesbian however he has been severely bullied for being trans.

Our experience is that (and it is our experience only, I understand that other lesbians may not have been so lucky) being a lesbian is far more acceptable than identifying as trans. Anecdotally there seems to be more understanding about sexuality than gender.

He has often said that he wishes he could just be a gay woman as life would be much easier for him, more straightforward and he wouldn’t be the target of such vitriol.

@Fraida. Yes I have had the same conversations with my OH. Who do they help?!! As you say it is negligent and should be a national scandal but they wear you down until all the fight has gone out of you [confused

I wanted to highlight it in this thread as I think many posters here get angry about children with gender dysphoria not getting exploratory therapy as if this is totally an ideological choice. I don't think it always is. I think more often than not it is a structural issue about mental health services in general that doesn't get discussed.

There is a brain function which helps us navigate our own bodies so that we know where our elbow is without looking at it. I had the oddest sensation after my C Section of sitting up and seeing something in front of me that I couldn’t recognise - it was pink and unfamiliar and a bit revolting. It was my own leg - they had propped it up and I was looking at my own knee and I couldn’t make sense of it. It absolutely wasn’t mine. I strongly suspect gender Dysphoria works like this.

@Eowynthewarrior

I’m sorry you and your child are having a tough time. I only wish there was as much emphasis on inclusion and kindness for those with autism as with gender dysphoria. I have friends and family with autism. They explain to me how they see the world around them, how challenging they find the work and how challenging it is to gain access to mental health services to support Asd. I can see how a child dealing with the double whammy of autism and puberty together coupled with the exceptional logical thinking skills of many with Asd could lead them to believe that the difference they feel and anxiety it causes result from gender dysohoria not Autism.I’d be interested how much of the medical help Your child is getting is Asd focused or is it focused on dyphoria? It seems we are in the early days of understanding autism in girls which can manifest very differently to boys. If your child has developed special interests then, depending on the interest, focusing on that might help them focus away from the dysphoria. It was certainly key to my friend whose interest in music led her to participate in a strong community which is welcoming of difference. We are older though, at a time when teenagers had distinct musical subcultures all with distinctive dress and identities to choose from such as punk, metal, goth New romantic, two tone etc. I suspect this helped a lot of kids find their group, navigate puberty snd find a way to “fit in”. Unfortunately kids and teenagers today seem to be force fed a homogenous commercial culture of bland Muzak, rigid fashion styles, vapid pornified stereotypical roles for girls ehich can only be a major source of distress for a girl with autism.

Again I would agree with you wholeheartedly, I think there is a lack of kindness for those with ASD. My son has been bullied every year since he was in reception (now in year ten), he has chronic social anxiety as a result (CAMHS are working on this).

I would say that the vast majority of the mental health support he is currently receiving is ASD focussed, it is easier to get help for this than gender dysphoria (which really is saying something as mental health support is woeful).

He does have special interests and is very involved in these which is good, we encourage broad interests as it helps to connect with other likeminded individuals. He collects vinyls and cassettes - music from the 90s generally! - and his social circle is very much centred around this love of punk type music. I agree that all teens need a ‘tribe’ in order to navigate puberty and to feel a sense of belonging which is important for good mental health.

@NecessaryScene1

My question to you is: what does your child mean by dysphoria?

Echoing this one. In this current climate, "dysphoria" is a go-to phrase for all sorts of distress. But teenage distress is common. Actual gender dysphoria is not. It seems to me that we're encouraging misdiagnosis of gender dysphoria.

Here's a great recent thread by a detransitioner:

twitter.com/AlexAlicit/status/1328079116151754757

Thread on why I believe "dysphoria" is overused and has lost its original meaning. That when most people use it, it's nothing more then an excuse or a way to escape actually describing the distress.

For some people this is not the case though, but it certainly is for most.

My stance has not changed on this, when a newly questioning or detrans person question comes to me for advice for dealing with their dysphoria, I tell them the best step to take is to stop using the word. Figure out what you were failing to describe and relied on that word for.

I find the word "dysphoria" to be a crutch, an excuse if you will. It gets used to describe any little or large discomfort that an individual wants to avoid navigating to, it can even become such an awful crutch that it worsens the impact of the original problem through obsession

Of course gender dysphoria is not one thing, as per Blanchard & Bailey. Despite that there is a clear push to view the adult male and juvenile female conditions as "the same thing".

And it's not young females who benefit from that.

I’ll have a look at this later - thank you.

I agree that gender dysphoria points to a distress that needs looking at whether it is gender related or some other ‘discomfort’. I think it would be negligent as a parent to blindly walk down the path to transition and a lifetime of medical intervention without properly unpacking and shining a light on whatever issues are uncovered.

[quote Delphinium20]@Fraida
Thank you for posting. I have a godson who is trans and we fear his lack of sexual experience isn't allowing him to understand what he'll lose out on if he continues on hormones and surgery. You wrote the below on sex and I have a follow up question below:

Absolutely, we have discussed it already. He is very bright and reads a lot which is helpful, we are also a very open and transparent family so won’t be sugar coating anything!

Intellectual understanding of sexual experiences and ACTUAL sexual experiences are very different. No way did I understand true joy and satisfaction in sex until I was well into my early 20s. I don't think late blooming sexuality is unusual, especially for women. Do you worry your child will miss out on the vital human experience of sexual pleasure and sexual intimacy?[/quote]
I felt very sad to read about his friends, who you describe as “awesome” and accepting of your child.

Who wouldn’t want that, when their previous experience was of bullying and feeling like they didn’t fit in? Imagine worrying that if you were to change your mind about transitioning, those awesome friends could disappear and the bullying could start again?

Sorry, didn’t mean to quote the post there.

he has phalloplasty it won’t be the same as a real penis.

Have they been told just how minuscule the success rate for phalloplasty is? And how the complications that arise from the operations are life threatening in some cases?

And that they then have to be repeated throughout their life (I only just learned this myself).

@wellthatsunusual

I desperately wanted to be a boy too. I would estimate that I cried more or less every day from the age of about 11 to 21 because I hated my breasts so much. I remember slashing my chest with a knife when I was about 14 as I had been visiting an elderly relative and had a sudden realisation that she had breasts too and therefore they would never go away. I think on some level I had thought that eventually I wouldn't have to worry about them any more. I only stopped crying once I had breast reduction surgery.

It was news to me as an adult to discover that not all women hated their breasts. I thought hating your female body was just part of what it was to be female. I'm in my mid 40s and still hate them, still dread seeing myself in the bathroom mirror.

I am horrified by the idea that if I were a teenager now, I might be put on a pathway to lifelong infertility.

@wellthatsunusual I’m really sorry to hear about your experiences. It would be really helpful for me to understand what the issue is behind your hatred for your breasts?

You don’t have to answer but it would be insightful?

fullfact.org/health/young-trans-people/

Some analysis of the stonewall survey. And unless they compare all the data with children who don't identify as trans, it doesn't mean much. FWIW, I thought about suicide a lot as a teenager and several of my friends were hospitalised after suicide attempts. Not trans.

I'm surprised any self-proclaimed feminist is taking stonewall data at face value tbh.

Here's some more which you may reject as biased: www.transgendertrend.com/the-suicide-myth/

And finally, you may want to ask yourself who benefits from misrepresenting suicide stats among trans identifying young people? What might be their motive behind it?

One thing is for sure - it's not the young people themselves or their parents.