Our daughter has recently expressed a desire to officially present herself as a male at school. She would like to 'try out' life as a male, and thinks that she might find life easier as such. She says been pondering the concept for some time, but that this interest comes and goes. The only thing I have been able to come up with to try and put a name to her feelings is gender fluidity.
We are a very open minded family...about as open minded as we can get I would think. We are a same sex couple. Our daughter has always had two moms (I am new to the family, but there was another mama before me). My partner spent most of her youth in the closet, and has a first-hand understanding of the confusion, shame, and everything else that comes with knowing that you are not the same as everyone else. Our problem is that we don't actually believe that our daughter has gender issues.
She is extremely emotional, very dramatic, and highly prone to obsessions. She has a boyfriend. She has always been very feminine and very attracted to boys. She has gone through phases where she has fallen in love with cartoon characters, wanted to marry video game characters, and even become anime characters. At any given moment she can be absolutely passionately involved in her current infatuation, and yet she might change her focus so fast she gives us whiplash. She loves to draw, and for the past year she has often drawn herself as a male character (usually in animal form). She also often draws her boyfriend and other friends as their opposite gender. She has a friend at school who is transgender, and she often comments on how cute he is...
So my concern is this... Is she truly in conflict in regards to her gender, or is she entertaining a romantic notion about recent social trends? We want to be supportive, but we are not convinced that this is not an avenue of escape for her typical adolescent discontent with herself and her looks. She has not been depressed or fighting with self-acceptance. She does not seem troubled by her mother's refusal to accept her suggestion. Her mother is upset that her misappropriation of the transgender/gender fluid issue belittles the trials and hardship that people experience when they are truly dealing with gender issues.
I am not sure how to proceed...