My son is a trans man AMA

[User444]

I have been interested in the AMA threads from trans people and thought it may be good to discuss from another perspective. I hope I won't be flamed for it. I have been a mumsnet member for many years since my now adult DC were much younger. I have name changed for this.

Has your son had any difficulties in establishing a relationship? Is he (sorry personal question) attracted to women? Is his career in a traditionally male dominated profession?

Most importantly is he happy?

Has it been difficult for him to have relationships?

What lead either of you to believe there were boy clothes/toys?

Are either of your children neurodiverse?

Are you at all worried by the fact that by transitioning fully he has made himself infertile?
Many women are adamant they don't want children when they are young, but people change, you are simply not the same person at 18 as you are at 36, say. Normally doctors will be very reluctant to sterilise people so young.
(Unless eggs were saved? Understand if this is all a bit personal and you don't want to answer. But for me, this is one of the most worrying things about such drastic surgical intervention so young, there's no going back, and I imagine it would be very painful to come to realise that actually you wanted children after all)

With regard to my DD being non-binary yes I do forget. She gets annoyed with me for not referring to her as "they". However I am not at all woke. I don't believe trans women are women. I do not agree with trans women who still have a penis accessing women's spaces. My DD dresses and looks feminine, which is why I struggle with remembering she feels non-binary. It wasn't a problem with my DS as he looked male and it seemed natural .My DD also has a very feminine name. My DD is 34 and my DS is 25. My DD is very outgoing vocal and gregarious. My DS is quiet with a small number of close friends. He keeps very much to himself but is funny and good company. He is well liked by his work colleagues, all but one of them are aware of his history. The one person at his work who knows his background is his closest friend from his schooldays. From the age of 14 to 20 he was involved with a trans youth group but grew out of that and has never had anything to do with Trans-activism. He simply wants to get on with his life and actually laughs at all the woke stuff. I too have never felt very female and most of my friends were male when I was younger. Mainly because I wasn't interested in make up, fashion and so on. I belonged to hiking clubs and preferred outdoor activities. I never felt as though my body was wrong though.

This sounds so very like the history of good friends of ours that I wondered if you were them with slight change of birth order details!

Are any of your family autistic? (I have a non-nosy reason for asking, and several of my own family are.)

Are you concerned at all about the perception that only ‘female’ people wear make up, like pink, and ‘girly’ hobbies?

I have short hair, can paint, decorate, fit skirting boards, plaster and manage basic car care and electrics. I don’t own anything pink, never wear make up, don’t own a pair of high heels. But I am unequivocally a woman, I gave birth to my child and breast fed.

To me gender and gender roles are a social construct that seek to keep me within tightly defined parameters that are acceptable to society (patriarchy). Do any of these issues concern you and make you question whether your child has been radicalised by trans politics into believing that not fitting into an artificial image of womanhood means that are in fact male?

I’m confused by your ideas about what are female/male interests. They don’t seem very mainstream. Were you yourself brought up in a very rigid family?

You seem to be listing and associating certain sex role stereotypes and activities to sex.

Do you think any part of your child's involvement in trans youth groups or social contagion played a part in their need to transition?

Your DD is a similar age to me- how long has she been 'non-binary' for?

I'm interested as this was not a thing at all amongst any of my friends growing up and not amongst any of my social group who are in their 30s.

I don't really have any questions but it's refreshing to see a positive trans thread on here.

DC 16 identifies as non-binary and has been in a relationship with a trans guy for two years. They have a beautiful relationship and I'm very happy for them.

Why did you only feel the need to have a wide range of toys because you were a childminder?

Wouldn’t you otherwise have had what you define as ‘gender neutral’ toys, aren’t all children’s toys just for all children?

I do all the DIY in our house & DH hasn’t a clue, our sex isn’t relevant to those skills.

How has he coped bodily taking testosterone and effectively completely changing his hormone levels. Does he feel well, was there a period of transition where he felt ill?

My son has been adamant that he doesn't want children. This was discussed at length during the mandatory counselling he had before hormone treatment and before surgery. He has lots of pets. In his mid teens he said he liked girls but later he found that he was interested in people for who they were, whatever their sex. He has a male partner now who he lives with. His partner guess he was trans early on as my son has a large skin graft on his forearm which is well known in thrans/gay communities as scarring from GRS. He did have several weeks off work following the biggest surgeries but they were spaces out over about 4 years. His first few surgeties were when he was in college and he managed to time them to coincide with holidays. As the surgeries were carried out in private hospitals (though mostly funded by the NHS) there were good options for timing them to be on convenient dates. This was also good with regard to the bigger operations as it meant I could book time off work to support him.

Thanks for starting this thread. I have 2 trans sons, one only told me recently. He's 14. Do you have any advice for him?

Do you genuinely believe your youngest child is now your son?

I have a transman niece.

Hi OP. Can I come back to the questions about male/ female role/ toys. You seem to have quite solid ideas about what these things are. Do you believe that men and women are different in ways not about their bodies? Do you think that if society did not hold such rigid views, your son would not have felt the need to transition?

Do you worry that people transitioning (everyone, not just your son), actually reinforces the very stereotypes that make people want to transition?

He was always doing boy stuff from an early age

Do you think that the people referring to things as "boy stuff" and "girl stuff" has contributed to this? Ie the gender stereotypes that you have reinforced on this thread as, for example, taekwondo being for boys? Your dc wanted to do taekwondo but couldn't because they're a girl, so therefore came to the conclusion that they must really be a boy. So i guess my question is, how much do you think rigid gender stereotypes played a part in your children being trans and non binary?

I'm very glad to hear your son is happy now.
Can I ask what specially made him feel that he was male? And do you think the support groups he attended reenforced that his feelings were a gender issue? As a teen I often felt that my body wasn't my own. Or that it wasn't even mine sometimes.....but I grew up well before gender issues or the trans debate entered the narrative so the feeling passed as I grew up and I was curious as to whether you think today's support group climate had an effect on your son.

@gegs73 he hasn't had any problems with testosterone. A lot of trans men start on Testogel then move on to injections but he hasn't done that, he has carried on with Testogel and has been using it for 9 years now. He says he doesn't want the skin/tissue problems that come with constantly injecting into a limited area of the body for the rest of his life. Also as the gel is applied daily it is more like natural hormones rather than the ups and downs of hormone levels which come with the injections. Fortunately he has been well throughout all of his transition. The only time he was I'll was a few months after his first genital surgery when his skin graft became infected and he was in hospital for 5 days on an IV antibiotic drip. He had 6 monthly check ups at the GP involving lots of blood tests, blood pressure etc but now it is an annual GP check up.
@LawnFever my DD had a wide range of toys and those were in use even after she outgrew them as she was 5 when I started child minding. I only mentioned the childminding as it sort of explained why I had a large range even after my children were older. I never really thought about whether toys were gender neutral or not. I just provided those which the children were interested in or enjoyed.

Only asking again because not sure if it's been missed, not to be rude!
Can you say any more about how he identified that he was a boy/man? This is the part I really struggle with - to me, "boy" etc literally only means you have a male body. Yet clearly for him it means a LOT more. Are you able to expand on that at all?

@Mama1980 he started attending the trans youth group quite a while after he came out to us as trans. In the early days he kept to his small circle of close friends who were accepting of him as he had started high school wearing boys uniform which elicited questions from his peers as to why he did so. He answered as he answered me when I asked why he wanted boy's uniform, that it was more comfortable. I could accept that as I myself like loose fitting clothes. Then he decided to have his long hair shorter, and even shorter until it was very short. Then he told me he wanted to transition. I don't believe the trans-youth group reinforced his feelings. He had made his feelings known quite strongly months before that. He joined because he wanted to meet others like himself. Both of my children are on the autistic spectrum. My DD has ADHD which is managed very well. My DS has mild autistic tendencies which mainly manifest in social difficulties. He is dyslexic as well , had problems with writing and spelling but great at maths, technical stuff and science.

OP it sounds too like the school had rigid gendered expectations too. I guess your son started high school a long time ago (14 years?). Did they use the language and idea of 'boys uniform'? That's not my experience of schools nowadays, there are just uniforms and you can wear what you like (may just be our local schools). How helpful or not was it to your son to have ideas about 'boys stuff' and 'girls stuff' all around him? What might have changed for kids nowadays given that we have broken down some of the gendered stereotypes (such as 'boys uniform')?

So was medically transitioned from age 14, starting privately? I guess you were pretty supportive.