My DS wants to be a girl

[UndertheCedartree]

Not a situation I imagined being in. But he has wanted to be a girl for 4 years now. He's 17 and autistic.

OP my daughter did this for years. She's also autistic.

Now she has gone through puberty she doesn't say it any more. She also has started wearing more typically 'girly clothes' having worn only boys ones for many years.

I suspect he's just experimenting with ideas. Being 'trans' is cool right now, there is a lot of influence in college from what my eldest tells me.

It starts at a young age, have zero gender expectations as a parent. Anything goes for boys or girls, pink, blue, fairies, dinosaurs, pushchairs, dolls, football, hobbies, clothes, everything is for everyone. Address any gender crap that comes from other family, friends, school, tv. Monitor their internet use. Express gc views, talk to them about how harmful this ideology is. Teach them to question and think critically.

I can see that my chid may have been vulnerable to all this gender crap but we made sure from early on that it didn’t have a chance to brainwash her.

Will do, thanks

Oh, really? It does seem like that to me that he is experimenting.

That is exactly how I have brought him up.

And there was noone that was more surprised than me when he said he wanted to be a girl considering I'd brought him up to know boys can do anything girls can!

He can never be a girl, that’s biology for you. What does he think being a girl would provide him with that he can’t have now. The answer to that would shape my response.

Clothes, wear what you like.
Hair, do what you like.
Periods, impossible
Having girls that are friends, no problem, go and make friends.
Dating boys, no problem but you’re gay or bi.
Hormones, he needs therapy
A different body, therapy to help him accept his body but he’s mentally ill if he wants to remove healthy body parts.

You need to get to what’s behind it, what does being a girl provide him with that being a boy can’t?

It's almost 400 pages long. This is NHS England's response, it will give you a good idea about the Report's content. https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/npc-crg/gender-dysphoria-clinical-programme/implementing-advice-from-the-cass-review/

I wasn’t talking about your son, I was responding to a poster who had missed the point of someone else’s post.

Well someone/some thing has got him thinking this way. You need to keep talking. Also he needs to realise that autistic people can often feel like they don’t fit anywhere and the answer will not be found in being a girl. Autistic girls often feel they don’t belong either.

It is not hyperbolic to detail a woman’s experiences. No wonder so many women are worried about what it means to be a woman is being eroded if even other women fail to support them.

I would not support him dressing in women's clothes or pretending to be female.

I would pay to have him see the best therapist available privately to help him understand that he is suffering with a mental health problem not a gender problem.

Meh. Clothes are clothes. We’ve made them gendered. If we hadn’t then a boy wanting to wear a dress wouldn’t feel like that meant he was a girl. He’d just be a boy who liked dresses, nothing special or controversial. Our strongly gendered clothing, toys, hobbies, hair styles etc are part of the problem. Nothing should be gendered. Some things like having a penis/vagina/periods are biological fact, things being segregated by sex are important for safety and fairness the rest doesn’t matter.

I'm aware of biology, thanks.

It's not clothes - he wears what he likes (very neutral)
It's not hair - he has always had long hair
Periods - I'm pretty sure he doesn't want periods!
Girls as friends - his BF is a girl (not that I think no problem, go make friends is a particularly sensitive answer to give an autistic teen.)
Dating boys - not that he has expressed but unlikely given how accepted being gay is
Hormones - well he already has hormones!
A different body - he's not expressed this. He seems happy and healthy not mentally unwell.

I don't want to make a massive deal of it or push to get 'what's behind it'. I expect it's just being a teenager.

You may regret not addressing it if it suddenly ramps up.

Teenagers with healthy thinking do not want to be the opposite sex.

I will keep talking. And yes, we've had those discussions. It does seem quite common for autistic teens to experience this. His 2 female friends who were identifying as boys were autistic. I don't know what has happened with them. There was another girl we know who was autistic and began identifying as a boy who is happy to identify as a girl again now.

If a woman was expressing her experience and looking for support of course I'd support them.

But that was just a rant about all the extremes of what can happen to a woman and how this meant my DS couldn't be a woman. I'd never said he could be a woman in the first place. It was a hyperbolic reaction, imo.

It's not that I'm not addressing it, but there's not much to address. I want him to feel comfortable talking to me. If I make a big deal of it, he just won't speak to me about it. And I doubt it will ramp up as I expect it would have done already if it was going to. And I certainly don't think pushing him to 'get to the bottom of it' will lead to any 'healthier thinking.' I actually think his thinking is pretty healthy in that although he has this feeling he knows that biologically it isn't possible and he also thinks women and girls should have safe spaces.

You are not addressing it. But you can't seem to see that?

In what way do you think I should address it?

I’m a bit confused why you started an AMA then, as you now seem to be saying there’s not much to it. 🙃

I've got a lot out of this thread. And I've answered people's questions. Sorry if you didn't get the replies you were looking for. I can only be honest.

Screen shots? Of what?! Never heard of that.

AMA is to hear people's experiences. Not sure what else you were expecting?!