To be cross that DD didn’t tell me her boyfriend was trans?

[WearyandBleary]

DD who is 16 has just had a horrible breakup with her boyfriend of 2 years. In the course of this crying etc she told me he was trans I e born a girl.

Now I don’t mind whatever but I’m so embarrassed that I had loads of heart to hearts with her about sex and contraception and she never said a thing!!! I feel like an idiot. She can’t understand why it matters. (?!?)

AIBU to be cross? I thought we had a good relationship and she was always honest with me. I feel like a chump!

@WearyandBleary I bet you wish you never started this thread. What an incredibly toxic and nastily transphobic place Mumsnet can be at times!! Quite why the PPs feel that it should be yours or your DDs concern that her ex (with the support of their parents) too medication bewilders me! If you’ve not stuck around to read anymore snide comments I wouldn’t blame you in the least!

If it makes you feel better, I didn’t have a clue my DD1 was gay till about a year into her relationship and after numerous sleepovers she would never had if I’d picked up on it. We can be close to our children without knowing all and quite naturally they will want privacy over certain things until they feel confident discussing them. DD1’s girlfriend is gender fluid (biologically male but with a preference for presenting as a female). Even when everything is all out in the open, don’t beat yourself up about any slip ups! You sound a genuinely caring and good Mum, please take no notice of the complete nonsense in quite a few of these comments. Best wishes!

I can understand how you feel OP. I would feel the same in your position.

That should read ‘took medication’ not ‘too medication’

Plenty of kids use dodgy online sites to get blockers and 'T' as they laughingly call it. It isn't hard.

I’m surprised by how this thread has turned

What this other child takes or doesn’t take is none of OPs business. It isn’t her kid.

I don’t agree with children being on blockers or anything that isn’t properly prescribed for actual medical problems, but at the end of the day, it’s not my kid.

"I didn't let him sleep over as I didn't want her to get pregnant."
These words are now all obviously irreverent. However please do not think that not allowing it under your roof means it doesn't happen. My friend was not allowed her bf to stay and nor was she at his. She still got pregnant though at 17. If they want to do it I guarantee they'll find somewhere.

She probably didn't mention it to you as to them it's not a big deal which it isnt. Also please don't be embarrassed about having the talk with her.
You didn't know the circumstances, did you.

I didn’t have a clue my DD1 was gay till about a year into her relationship and after numerous sleepovers she would never had if I’d picked up on it...DD1’s girlfriend is gender fluid (biologically male but with a preference for presenting as a female)

My boyfriend in the sixth form had long hair and wore nail polish.
Didn't make me gay or him female

@Chitlin - no I didn’t know DD1 at 15/16 was gay and her biologically female friend was in fact her girlfriend.

Ten years down the line, her current girlfriend is gender fluid. DD1 has dated both men and women, pretty sure she’s LGBT. And if her current girlfriend wants to present mainly as a woman then who the f*ck are you (or anyone else) to say they have the right to be treated as a female?

Jesus should not type when annoyed, that should have said who are you to say they don’t have the right to be treated as a female!

@Chitlin

I didn’t have a clue my DD1 was gay till about a year into her relationship and after numerous sleepovers she would never had if I’d picked up on it...DD1’s girlfriend is gender fluid (biologically male but with a preference for presenting as a female)

My boyfriend in the sixth form had long hair and wore nail polish.
Didn't make me gay or him female

This. Everyone’s so desperate for everything to be labelled these days. When I was a teenager, people generally wore what they wanted to wear without the need for all these declarations of identity and sexuality.

OP, I can understand why you feel slightly hurt that your DD didn't tell you (I'd feel the same way, simply because I think that DD and I are very close), but as they've broken up, it's no longer relevant anyway.

Really @TheOnlyLivingBoyInNewCross? I think the younger generation are quite the opposite and want the freedom to be who they want to be identity wise without a label they don’t identify with being stuck on them. Our generation (and I’m assuming with the Carter name you’re mine) struggle a lot more and want to box people up.

Everything you said to her is relevant. You were not discriminating, unknowingly, but you weren't.

The same rules should apply for all her sexual relationships otherwise you are discriminating. If you don't want her partners to stay over then that's how it is.

You've inadvertently done the right thing. Don't tell her and spoil your street cred!

If he's transitioned then in your daughters eyes he's male. That's all she needed you to know.

I think you’ll find Bowie et al were doing “gender fluidity” a long time before today’s youth were mere twinkles in their parents eyes.

If anything the generations that grew up with Bowie and the like, particularly those who were young in the 80s, are far more accepting today’s generation - they had the confidence to say “I’m a man who likes make up/wearing dresses” rather than “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body”.

Interesting.

I suppose it's normal to be upset when a dc doesn't share information of the kind you assumed they would- you question what they think of you, why they didn't feel they could/ should share it, whether you are as close as you want to be, etc. So I'm sure I would be a bit wobbly lipped and reassessing whether our relationship was as good as I believed.

@CaveMum I've thought the same - DD's (15) generation seem to think this is all new to their "geriatric" parents - but Bowie, Boy George, etc. were before even my time!

@SluggishSnail

And OPs daughter is NOT a lesbian. She was attracted to a male person.

Eh? Sexuality is about sex, not gender. You can identify as much as you like, you’re still a certain sex and that means OP’s daughter was in a homosexual relationship. Which would make no difference to me, fwiw, but it is a fact.

It could be an issue where there is a girlfriend who turns out to be trans and the risk of pregnancy is overlooked (by children amd/or parents).

Sex matters.

didn’t have a clue my DD1 was gay till about a year into her relationship and after numerous sleepovers she would never had if I’d picked up on it...DD1’s girlfriend is gender fluid (biologically male but with a preference for presenting as a female)

Is your DD biologically female and if so, how is she gay if she is sleeping with a biologically male person?

Us oldies have lost that battle because the younger generation see it very differently. It’s not a hill I’m going to die on. This.

@AmICrazyorWhat2 & @CaveMum, I’ll think you’ll find that David Bowie’s playing with gender fluidity was little more than clever marketing..or at least that’s what he’s said umpteen times since. And Boy George felt he had to label himself ‘Boy’ and talk about how he preferred a cup of tea to having sex to de-sexualise himself. Hardly out and proud! If you’d mentioned an even older generation and say Vita Sackville West taking on a male identity while holidaying with Violet Trefusis, you’d have had more of a point..but even then she’d only do this while abroad and away from known eyes. This generation of gender fluid people (from the various I know of my daughters friends) appear to be more confident in their own skins and moving between identities. However much lipstick & blusher Simon le Bon and John Taylor wore, there was no pretence of being not straight or in anyway ambiguous.

'DDs (15) generation seem to think this is all new to their "geriatric" parents - but Bowie, Boy George, etc. were before even my time!

I don't know any young people who think this is 'all new'- they just recognise that responses and approaches to the subject are very different. What's "new" is the way we think and talk about it. Just as no one who was a teenager in the 1960s was so deluded as to think their generation had invented sex- they were just very aware that their generation had a new approach to sex outside the confines of marriage.

I didn’t have a clue my DD1 was gay till about a year into her relationship and after numerous sleepovers she would never had if I’d picked up on it...DD1’s girlfriend is gender fluid (biologically male but with a preference for presenting as a female)

Your daughter is not in a lesbian relationship if she is in a relationship with someone who has a male body and a penis. That is clearly heterosexual sex they are having, based on physical heterosexual attraction. It's homoSEXuality and heteroSEXuality.

I like to think, when my daughter was less upset about the immediate break up, I would be able to say, “and I found out that he couldn’t have got you pregnant anyway - I hope you weren’t laughing behind my back!” and we’d both laugh... and that would be that.

She might not have told you because she didn’t want you to actively disapprove, or unintentionally behave differently. She might have seen telling you as her not accepting this as a perfectly normal (if minority) relationship. Perhaps it was a sort of political statement - I should have to tell anyone. And maybe - though I don’t think as a society we’re there yet - it didn’t cross her mind, as it wasn’t a big deal.

I mean... it’s amazing... can you imagine when we were young, a girl just dating a transgender person, openly, at that age, with no bullying? (assuming none, as it sounds like it was never a secret thing)

I don’t think she dud anything wrong. I would be embarrassed and hurt (a little) myself - but I hope nothing I wouldn’t get over and laugh about the next day.