Being 'held hostage' by "trans" teenage kids

[TryingToGetOrganised2]

In my day, we were goths and emos.

Nowadays, it's gender expression. Don't get me wrong, I am 100% behind the kids that truly feel they were born in the wrong body, but oh for goodness sake, it's not half the flipping population?!

There are a lot of kids who really have gender dysphoria, who I really feel for and support. However, I'm so fed up of being told I'm a transphobe, because I dare question and gently encourage soemone to unpick where their feelings come from. (Read: my own 17 year old son, who is autistic and doesn't know where he fits in the world)

The main military operation is my 16 year old daughter, who is, on the whole, a wonderful human whom I adore. She's just so far down this road of 'you can be anything you want, sod biology' that anyone who asks a question, is shot down and cut off, for having a (possibly) more rounded, adult perspective. She can't see further than her own underdeveloped frontal lobe, and it's driving me insane.

Of course, I'm presenting, gentle, measured, acceptance mum (which, of course - I truly am, if that's who you truly are!) But I feel like she's pushing my son into a lifestyle because he's questioned who he is. Am I being unreasonable to feel frustrated? Or should I suck it up and encourage my boy to be a girl, even though I don't really think it's what he actually wants?

Please be gentle. I've got 3 kids with autism and adhd, amd, having both myself, it's the blind leading the blind. I'm exhausted and just need a bit of support in either direction.

This is a tough situation OP. I would agree with others that your should take your daughter aside and point out that it is harmful to influence her brother’s decisions (and I am not suggesting it is intentional).

Unfortunately, it is not just adolescents that are at risk here, but those who are making decisions as legal adults who have been influenced to make these permanent changes to bodies, who are late teens and early twenties. Sadly, there is no magic cut off point at 18.

Have you read up much about it ? Bayswater support group may be a good source of support.

https://www.bayswatersupport.org.uk

Trans by Helen Joyce is a good book for background. Genspect have some good information, although they seem to have ended up being seen to be supporting male adults who have a sexual fetish about seeing themselves as ‘women’. Still, there is some good interviews and they give detransitioners a voice.

This is true, but you didn’t have to get a double mastectomy or take drugs which give you osteoporosis to be a goth. And that’s before we get onto the sexism, internalised homophobia and self hatred that often drives it all.

Most teens cannot see further than their own ways of seeing the world.

Your 16 year old isn't an adult. She won't see things like an adult and most teens go through a phase of really annoying the adults around them because they think they know it all.

Honestly, I think puberty is a very difficult time for many teens - I know I absolutely HATED my body as a teenager and I really wanted to be male, largely because I grew up in the 80s and I wanted to be a footballer and I was constantly told that football was as for boys.

My children are older, but lots of their friends have considered the whole gender issue. Many changed their name, usually to something where you could not tell what gender the person was.

A few began dressing more ambiguously not in the sense of being obviously male and wearing a short dress but more having short haircuts and wearing dungarees etc.

A couple declared themselves non binary.

Honestly, for a teen who may be struggling with puberty and gender expectations, I think that supporting them with that - so encouraging them to take up their interests regardless of whether they are stereotypically girl or boy interests, accepting that bodies changing during puberty is scary for some teens and listening to their concerns - is a good line to take.

There's a very real danger that the gender critical line of "surgery won't fix your problems" (which is true) comes across as "your body is shit and so is society but you'll just have to put up with it!" Which really isn't the best message for a teen who is struggling to hear.

It's not about the daughter though. She's trying to convince her brother he's born in the wrong body. OP wants him to find himself without getting pushed in any direction.

It’s not one sibling’s place to push this for another.

Op I would be step in and have a conversation about not putting this onto her brother

You handled that really well

I've emphasised to my children that eg a boy liking dance doesn't = must be a girl. And, IMHO, the trans stuff is largely regressive regarding gender as it reinforces stereotypes

I would have defined as a boy when younger if I would have had access to all the trans propaganda. I climbed trees, wrestled, played football. Luckily my parents were progressive so never labeled any activity as gender specific; I was a strong, courageous, wild girl. And my brother was a sensitive, calm boy.
And I hated my body when it started to change and I would have liked to stay in a child's body: read a boy's body. It took me many years to feel confortable in my body and I'm just lucky to not have grown up today where I would probably be on hormones to stop my body from developping...

I agree that's it's the new subculture- the emergence of and ease to have a diagnosis of ROGD is something I think (hope) will be looked back on in horror- that adults blindly and in some cases proudly, supported mutilation and hormonal changes, some of which are permanent, on a group of children who shouldn't have been allowed to make such huge changes at a time that their hormones are changing naturally and they are trying to develop a sense of self away from their parents.

Am I being unreasonable to feel frustrated? Or should I suck it up and encourage my boy to be a girl, even though I don't really think it's what he actually wants?

Surely there’s a middle ground.

In what way is she doing it?

Is she supporting him and saying he can express himself however he wants?

Or is she trying to force her own ideas on him, even if it’s not what he wants?

Girls wanting to identify out of being female is nothing new. I told my mother I wanted to be a boy, at 13 and had a name picked out and everything.

What is new is people telling children they can be born in the wrong body and letting children think they can change sex, and that the world has any sort of responsibility to affirm anyone’s belief in how they identify themselves.

The trouble with this teen subculture is the irreversible medical interventions that go with it.

This isn’t a trans problem, this is a teenage brat problem. Teenagers have always thought they knew everything and their parents didn’t know much. The difference is that these days teenagers are given too much credence.

My daughter is now 20. I have been through this stage with her. And honestly, I am not sure I was particularly ‘gentle’. I wasn’t Awful or aggressive. But I was factual.

If she said I was straying in TERF behaviour she was corrected. If she wanted to share her ideology with the rest of the family she was welcomed to and she would listen other people’s points of view and listen respectfully like people listened to her. She could debate her point. But if she used the words transphobe or TERF she was expected

Engaging in debates and factual discussion, soon made her realise she didn’t know it all. She quickly realised that actually, her arguments didn’t really stack up and weren’t logical. And her realisation that she was a lesbian and then going through the damage the TRAs inflict on lesbians, drove the point home.

If you really explore TRA arguments, they contradict themselves and are not logical in the slightest.

I think if you see gender as very strictly defined, you are more likely to think you are trans. If you think being male or female includes pretty much every version of male and every version of female instead of having to conform to a gender stereotype then you are less likely to question your own gender.

Every teenager that I know who has questioned their identity has also been autistic. I don’t know why that is but it does seem to be very common.

I’d speak to your DD and make it clear that you won’t tolerate her interfering in her DB’s development whether she thinks she’s ‘being kind’ or not. Perhaps she thinks she’ll get cool points for having a trans sibling; perhaps she sees it as a way to assert her own differentness from you by forming an alliance with her brother; maybe she has ‘trans’ feeling herself and gets validation from pushing him to be ‘trans’? Whatever the reason, I think you need to explain to her that he needs space.

Personally, I’d also express incredulity at her old-fashionedness and tell her you’re surprised she thinks girls/boys have to wear girl/boy clothes and only do girl/boy things. That worked for a friend. She was ever so kind but said she was gobsmacked at the regressive ideas. She never criticised or made harsh comments, but somehow that little seed (how old-fashioned you are) grew quietly until one day her DC just shrugged off the whole ‘trans’ thing as stupid all by themselves.

I’d spend some time with her. She may be gaining some reflected attention from her brother’s confusion. Give her a bit more of her own- and use it to cement your position as ‘very interested but having lots of questions generated by a long lived experience’!

A trans identifying youngster I knew said that Keira Bell (detransitioner) had changed her mind but that they wouldn’t change their mind because they’d ‘known for ages now, thought about it carefully, it wasn’t just a fad’.
She was 16/17- ‘ages’ to her was 2 years. I have spent longer than that choosing wall paper.

Give her the opportunity to talk to you about why she thinks bro is trans. Be gently challenging that. Don’t do it in front of him, and suggest that she doesn’t either, so he has the best space to work out what he wants.

And that questioning your identity is a normal part of being teenaged.

You seem to have misunderstood the OP. She is concerned that the daughter I'd pushing her views onto her autistic brother who has questioned his own identity.

She must have got it from you.

The whole issue isn't something that has been of any relevance to my family. My eldest does have someone in their year as far as I can tell, they are a pretty ordinary kid and has settled into secondary well. Nobody seems to care but this is London.

This is the issue. Teens can be very focused on what is out there in the media and by friends - peer influence can be hard to break away from.

A voice of sweet reason isn't a bad thing, it's just making the listener look at the subject from a different perspective.

I've just stopped commenting. I don't think I am a transphobe, no fear or hatred. It's just a biological fact like sir Robert Winston says that you can't change sex.

Jordan Peterson under took research into these people and found them to lack verbal intelligence.

I gather they struggle with a combination of a totalitarian personality type and poor comprehension skills.

You can help your children develop.

https://www.verywellmind.com/verbal-linguistic-intelligence-8643191

I've never heard a good trans debate, yet. They all argue themselves into the ground and end up look a bit silly.

This stuck out to me as good advice. I would be pointing out to him that wearing heels and a dress doesn’t = woman for a starters if that’s the way he is going. It seems so so ironic to me to call people out for using ‘labels’ and claim to be totally label free and be able to express how you like, yet then do things that you believe put you firmly in the camp of another label and insist others address you by that label. don’t know if I’m articulating myself well here but I would try and beat them at their own game by forgetting all labels and seeing it all as just different activities for different people. Your DD needs to give more space to your son. I would try and reduce a family culture of we have ADHD or other diagnosis because this to me seems to encourage this labelling of everything. It doesn’t really matter who has what and it not relevant or necessary for people to be categorised in life - it’s just about living and reaching towards happiness and things you personally value and see as important.

Assuming your daughter is NT, I'd be tempted to speak very plainly to her.

"DD, I love you and your brother very much, and I love that you want to be kind and tolerant and accepting. But you're 16 years old, your brain is still developing, and you don't yet have the lived experience to understand all the ways in which men's and women's bodies are fundamentally different and the impact this has on our lives. If, at some point in the future, you decide you want to have children, and you go through the journey of trying to get pregnant, actually being pregnant, giving birth and raising a child, you will most likely see things differently. You'll find it far more difficult to accept the idea that the only difference between men and women is how they feel inside, and you will also feel a powerful urge to protect your children from anything that might cause them harm. Your brother is also young, his brain is also still developing, and he has autism. Many young people with transgender identities have autism, there's a very strong correlation. And many medical professionals now believe that children with autism may believe they are trans when they are in fact not trans, because they mistake the feelings they have of not quite fitting in for having been born in the wrong body. The consequences of this are significant. If a young person takes hormones and has surgery, this cannot be reversed. It means they'll never have a normal sex life or the chance to have children of their own. There are even detransitioned people who have had surgery in their 20s and 30s and regretted it. So transitioning is not a decision that should be taken lightly. Please leave your brother alone and stop encouraging him down this path. If that is the path he decides to take, when he's old enough to make that decision, so be it. But please lay off and stop pushing the trans stuff. Give your brother the space to discover who he is without any external pressure."

Why are grown adults on this thread using nonsensical phrases like ‘questioning their gender’? Do you not hear how ridiculous that is?

if you said ‘they’re questioning their sex’ or ‘they’re questioning if they like dressing in a traditionally masculine or feminine way’ the absurdity would be a lot clearer.