Well I've just lost my daughter due to the Supreme Court ruling. s

[Lucelady]

So as not to drip feed she's a Ftm trans person and a universty student.
I've just been called a TERF, JKR supporter and transphobic. We've had four years of peace and understanding with her not wanting any surgery or hormones. She listened to the ruling last week and we chatted it through. The last few days she's been glued to the Internet and her phone. Now it's all changed and her 'friends' have called for action. What that action is I've no idea.
She's stormed out.

I'm so sorry, OP.
I hope she sees sense.

Totally agree. What will be will be. I think they do need a lot of support these days to navigate through it all.

A son is not a daughter or vice versa.

If my daughter told me she was trans I'd respect her choices about names and pronouns.

But I don't know how my tongue could form the words "my son." How could I speak an untruth like that about the person I love most in the world?

She sounds extremely confused. Get her a good therapist.
Pity you didn't nip this nonsense in the bud when it started. Attention seeking behaviour!

It isn’t as simple as you make it sound. I personally find it very difficult not to make mistakes and it is impossible to communicate normally when you are constantly aware that your language is being policed and that the consequences of an error can be huge

For now, I'd steer clear as much as possible but if she calms down perhaps you could ask her a couple of questions to make her think.

If for any reason she went to prison, would she want to be in a male prison. Because if we create new definitions, she becomes a man for all of them and there'd be no opting out. Clarity has to happen, even if you don't agree with this particular clarity.

What if she can't conceive naturally? She wouldn't be entitled to female IVF treatment.

Does she use female facilities now? I'd assume so. That isn't going to change.

Perhaps frame it more around the ability to challenge bad faith actors e.g Isla Bryson than the need to erase people. Presumably she does agree that he isn't proper trans (they were quick to disown) but he was able to force 17 years old girls on a college beauty course to be semi naked around him and when they questioned it they were the ones told not to be prejudiced.

But I don't think you'll get any sense for a while so go back to talking about the weather.

I have been alone over Easter and it has been very easy to fall down the rabbit holes.

The TRA's have been incoherent a lot of the time and are both very young and are not media trained and as a result the central media have really been struggling to present both sides fairly where everyone is heard. When Sal Grover lost her case in Australia, she was able present herself in a way that could be understood.

It made me think of the young girl in the White Lotus s3 when she actually goes to the temple and she hates it, but she is so sad about all the suffering in the world. She doesn't know what to think.

Thank you all for your advice. Lots to think about. It's been really useful.

She's just come back home.

You should love and support your child. Honesty from the start and for now would help. I wouldn't lie to my child because I put my children's mental health first. They would always come first.

What rot. It's not loving to indulge delusions. It's. Ot loving to pretend your daughter is your son. It's not loving tu affirm every half-baked whim they settle in while they treat you like dirt.
Be a parent, not an empty vacuous mirror.

Love and support yes.

But not pander to, as many of this generation think we should.

And a torrent of abuse from her is totally unacceptable and she can now have the privilege of pissing off and finding somewhere else to live until she grows the hell up and starts respecting you.

The best thing you can probably do for her right now is get her out into normality.

Some of the very measured responses here have reminded me of how it was in COVID times. If you stayed at home doom scrolling the outside world was terrifying.

But if you went out for a walk it stopped being so. She's maybe at that stage in her echo chamber. Like everything has changed but in reality the world keeps turning.

What does she like? Can you go out for cake, look at some lambs. Anything that reconnects her with the (more normal) world.

Too true.

Hopefully it will get better.

Oh no 😟 I’m sorry you’re dealing with this .
It sounds like they’re being swept up in the media / social media frenzy , they’re young and looking to be offended / argue with encouragement from those around them ( other students)

That’s so difficult. No advice really.

Sending love, OP.

What does her father say?

Hi,

Please might I respectfully post - with some fear on how my words will be taken, and how both my existence and actions will be perceived - to try and explain that the Supreme Court ruling could have had an horrendously, overwhelmingly, desperately, crushingly, devastingly-destructive impact on their life.

I transitioned to female ~four years ago, and came here to try and understand alternative views, how others are coping. The pain in this thread has pushed me to post, to try and offer support.

I know this is not about me. I’m only posting to try and offer my lived experience as a window to try understand your child’s suffering. It may not reflect their feelings, there is no expectation you find this helpful.

To try and explain, my conscious side knows and understands everything. My subconscious side acts like a selfish four year old. I cannot negotiate with it, and the Lord Jesus Christ alone knows how I have tried. When I can hide as a female, I can be happy. When I can’t, my subconscious takes control and tries to hurt me. My conscious side has to fight back. It’s hard.

This is not connected to my physical form. It’s connected to how my subconscious perceives my physical form, which is informed by a reflection from how others perceive me.

By defining me as irrevocably one way, or the other, nearly all hope has been removed. In fact, the only thing I have to live for is the hope that the supreme court’s decision cannot be enforced (for example: I now have a female birth certificate, forcing trans-men to use a female toilet feels as though it would attract protest, forcing me to use a third toilet feels as though it would ‘out’ me which doesn’t feel moral).

I’m truly sorry that I can’t say how best to reach out to your child. I feel their pain and, as a parent, yours too. Without making assumptions, it was nice to get a text from my (70y.o.) mum saying her love for me was unconditional, and she was always here for me no matter, whatever or however.

I truly hope you can support them. At a risk of creating upset, I’d also caution that the views being expressed on this board are quite polar.

With true respect.

@TooScaredToBeIdentified

I accept this is your view but to live in society you have to be able to manage your "subconscious 4 year old". Everyone has one and part of being an adult is that you make sure that you manage your problems, so they don't affect anyone else.

At no point in your post have you demonstrated that you have not understood the low-level fear that women experience when they are alone in a room with a male, especially if they are removing their clothes.

This is the precise reason that the TG movement loses support amongst the general population, by putting their "emotional 4-year-old" over the needs of other people in the population. Gay rights, and previously Trans-rights did not require anyone else's rights and freedoms to be curtailed.

This is such an important issue to women they went to the Supreme Court, that is how much they care about protecting their spaces.

Good luck to you.

The Supreme Court ruling means all kinds of things have got to be looked at again. Like will a gender recognition certificate mean anything now that the word sex and the word gender mean two different things.
But surely the day-to-day lives of individual people who feel they are going to be affected won’t change at all

You’re right…a choice I made because this thread is not about me, and I’m trying to avoid talking about suicide.

@pollymere OP has explained herself RE pronouns/name etc. You seem very pressed about this. For my part were DS to announce he's a girl in 10 years time I'd still refer to him as my son, because I don't believe in lying about something as fundamental as the sex you were born as.

The supreme court only stated what we all, including you, know to be true. Woman means adult human female, and men can never be that.
You have not transitioned to female. Your life will not change with this judgement. All is as it was, except we've all said the obvious out loud and the court has enshrined it

Me too

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5317853-how-do-i-handle-this?

I don't know why you're confused, there loafs of people who consider themselves trans who are exactly like this and as others have said this is the problem with self ID because basically I'm whatever I say I am, it's a nonsense.

OP is your daughter on the spectrum?