SIL who is in her early 20s has declared that she is a member of the trans community

[onthefencesitter]

Should we expect her to want to do the surgeries; or is that not necessarily the case?

She has aspergers and spends all her time online. Lives with mum and relies primarily on her family for social contact. She is DH's younger sister and there has never been any signs of gender dysphoria. Just for my wedding this year, she wore a lovely evening dress and she bought that dress herself, no one ever asked her to! I think if its just the pronouns and the name and talking about trans rights/bathrooms (she already has short hair and likes wearing t shirts and jeans purchased from the guys department but lots of women do this; i don't see anything unwomanly about this), its not really anything to worry about. But I would be very concerned if medical interventions are the natural next step...

Buy her some aftershave for Christmas and see what she says.

Bluntly, it doesn't really matter if you would be very concerned or not, she is an adult and so can do as she pleases. It might be worth getting in touch with some friends and families groups in this area to get information and support from to help you, your husband and your sister in law....

Could you try to interest her in other things, such as hobbies or activities that might take her mind off things? She needs to broaden her friendships and not spend so much time online.

Sounds like she's been groomed online, google 'social contagion'. It's a shame but hopefully it's something that won't lead her to life altering surgical mutilations. I'm not sure what you can really do to help her, just be supportive as far as you are able I guess without causing yourself too much cognitive dissonance.

If you look at the statistics of the trans community, a huge amount of them are on the ASD spectrum. Not a lot of research into why, and I have my own opinions on the matter but I also don't think social media helps at all.
There is little you can do about it, and she may well choose not to go the whole way, many don't. If it goes down that road I would be speaking to the professionals if your allowed. In the meantime, I would be tempted to be supportive and keep lines of communication open and honest.

Trans ideology is sweeping through the online autistic community. I see lots of posts in autism groups about gender identity. It appeals to a certain mindset of person who likes categorising things in a fairly detached and abstract way. (I'm also autistic but hate being put into a box so look on with alarm and dismay).

Most people don't take hormones and surgeries. If she's an adult and it's not harming her or anyone else then probably not much you can do other than encourage her into other interests.

Stonewall have gone completely nuts about trans toddlers in the last 24 hours so hopefully this is the beginning of the end of them and this craze will fade away again.

A huge number of autistic people identify as trans, I was in an autistic women's group a few weeks ago and out of 8 people there was one trans man and one woman who said she had recently realised she was not a woman.

The trans community is a huge umbrella these days, it also covers non binary people (i.e. people who say they are neither male or female) to people who take hormones and surgery. Hopefully, she will just identify as non binary and not want to take hormones or have surgery.

@IdisagreeMrHochhauser what has happened with Stonewall and trans toddlers? I’ve googled but haven’t found anything (I’m not on Twitter). It’s awful what that organisation has turned into, but at least their name is apt.

A big problem is she earns her income from writing online on an online platform which is subscription based. It's not a lot of money, but it's a lot of money to her (plus she doesn't have any fixed costs). It's kinda like being an influencer I suppose; you end up spending a lot of time online and you need to in order to maintain the number of subscribers. Her audience skews young which may be where she gets the ideas from.

I'd be concerned & seek advice about supporting her whilst avoiding pushing her further down this road.

They posted this on all their social media channels. They're getting a lot of pushback. The 'research' they refer to is a trans man who has identified their toddler child's trans identity because they pulled clips out of their hair.

Please write to your local political representatives and maybe the Charity Commission to complain about this. Stonewall are now a dangerous organisation.