Son has just told us he is non binary

[Chipshopninja]

13 years old

Wants us to use they/them

He came out as Bi a a couple of years ago and I was fine with that but this has really hit me hard

I'm terrified that this is going to lead to hormones and surgery.

Don't know why I'm posting tbh but feeling crappy because I didn't handle it well. I cried.

I can't call him my son anymore

He's my only child

Has anyone else been through this?

Utterly predictable response.

The reason no earnest souls want to explain non-binary is because that would open their shaky belief system to critique. By pretending it's all above them/all too much for today, they can continue to act superior, like high priests with secret magical rites, but behind the altar it's just smoke and mirrors.

You can’t explain a non-binary identity, without referring to gender identity.

If someone doesn’t believe in gender, there’s no point beginning to explain, when the predictable response will be “well it can’t be that because everyone has a sex based identity and that’s male or female.”

I genuinely don’t believe, however that, we should be telling other people how to refer to or see themselves.

In the case of OP, if her child sees themselves as NB it would be completely out of line respond with “well you’re not.” You can’t just take away someone’s freedom of expression.

I genuinely don’t believe, however that, we should be telling other people how to refer to or see themselves

What? Never? So, I could see myself as 68 and insist the government pay me my pension? Or maybe I could see myself as a qualified brain surgeon and bring a discrimination case against any hospital that refused to employ me? Maybe I see myself as Elon Musk and so should be able to run up vast amounts of debt in ‘my’ name? Or maybe I see myself as disabled so should be allowed to claim extra benefits? Or perhaps I want to refer to myself as a ‘mother of 12’ so should be given a bloody huge council house?

There are limits to everything. Reality beckons. A child calling themselves NB is usually a child who doesn’t understand what it means. They’re also often children who will grow up to be gay or bi. We wouldn’t let them join a quasi-religious organisation that talked bollox - not because we want to limit their identity but to protect them from the bollox.

More than that, although we can call ourselves all kinds of stuff, we can’t insist others take part in our beliefs.

The point I was making is that I could tell you I’m a purple unicorn and it’d be none of your business, nor would it be up to you to persuade me otherwise.

The examples you listed there had benefits. With the level of rejection and often abuse that comes their way, I hardly think it’s the same as telling someone you identify as NB.

That child went to his mother with a vulnerability, I’d imagine it was nerve wracking. Telling them they’re talking shit is not only unnecessary, it’s cruel.

It would be my business if you wanted me to believe that you were a purple unicorn, call you a purple unicorn and tell your brothers and sisters thstvyour name is now Purple Sparkle Uni. It would be my business if you were my child and wanted to cut off bits of your body and hsve a horn attached to your forehead.

I don’t see a problem with calling people what they’d like to be called. It’s no skin off my nose what someone wants to be referred to as, I’d have to go some way to be bothered.

OP hasn’t mentioned anything about operations or changes, and whilst I agree that children shouldn’t be making irreversible changes to their body - once they’re over 18 that’s nobody’s business either.

Not really . This is what people say, so someone tries to explain, and the people demanding an explanation simply become angrier and angrier and start hurling more and more insults at your person.
Then they conclude by saying how stupid you are and how everything you said is so ridiculous (twisted/ sickening / dangerous / wicked - and that’s the thin edge of the wedge) that it’s just definitive proof of their original opinion.

This is what happens on every single thread about these issues .

So, yeh, hardly surprising if people have stopped trying to explain things is it.

I agree. If you told me you were a purple unicorn and that was the end of it, that would be fine. You criticise my examples as different because they give benefits and would have an effect on others, whereas you sitting there thinking you were a purple unicorn wouldn’t - well, gender identity ideology affect others too!

It seeks to promulgate a regressive belief system based on some extreme trans humanist crap; it seeks to put silly regressive stereotypes at the forefront of society again when we thought we’d got rid of them years ago; it seeks to change the sex-based meaning of man and woman; it seeks to take women’s rights, our single sex spaces, our sports, etc.

It’s completely different from thinking you’re a purple unicorn! It affects all of us.

Edited to add - I didn’t say the OP should tell their child they were talking shit! Look back at my first post in this thread. I said the OP should ask gentle questions and listen.

Oh come off it. We didn’t get rid of it to begin with.

I’m a 35 year old woman who doesn’t wear make up and lives in a “messy bun.” I can’t cook, and whilst I do clean - I hate it.

Society still thinks that’s not representative of “woman.”

Some women, still think that’s not representative of “woman.” The amount of women who say thinks like “it’s so brave to not wear make up, I could never, did you not want children of your own, etc etc.”

Because gender identities exist, separately to sex based fact, and we are still stereotyped off the back of that.

If the whole argument is based around sex being the only basis that we use to identify, and gender being totally dismissed - it’s nonsense from the off IMO.

ETA - perhaps you didn’t. But others have taken a fairly hard approach to how they’d respond, and I question how useful a hardline response would be.

So many things have improved in the area of sex and relationships - gay marriage in particular, more trans rights etc, but I am completely stymied by this 'non binary' thing. What on earth does it mean?
It might be a good thing to change pronouns and forms of address for all of us to be neutral, because much of the time it is irrelevant what the gender is of the person who has applied for a job or is arranging your mortgage or has jumped the queue or whatever, as is their marital status - the 'Mrs'/'Miss' distinction is antediluvian. But the idea that certain PEOPLE are non-binary is one I cannot comprehend at all.
I wonder what OP's son understands it to mean.

He says it means he doesn't feel like a boy and he doesn't feel like a girl. He feels somewhere in between

To me that means he is a boy with a very pronounced feminine side which we knew and are absolutely fine with.

But he isn't OK with that. He wants the pronouns.

Then you step in and reiterate that regardless of how he feels, he IS a boy and in our English language, the pronouns for boys is he/him/his etc.

In the same way that you’d point out that a child who really feels he’s a wombat, isn’t in fact a wombat but a human being.

Why does this stuff get indulged??

Feeling "feminine" isn't "feeling like a girl", though.

He's conflated two different things.

Ask him to spell out what he thinks a girl feels like. Even one thing. It will apply to both boys and girls and you can explain that.

Thanks for clarifying.
it’s sad that he already has such a fixed. Idea of what it means to be a boy or a girl. We all have a mix of traditionally masculine and feminine traits. He could express them both and still be ‘he’.

No dont don’t this.

Just support him OP. He’s not hurting anyone. Just let him be who he is and respect him.

Yes , support him to be what he is. A boy who feels feminine or who likes typically feminine things. Not a girl or a someone in between.

My thoughts exactly, stop allowing kids to indulge in this ridiculous trendy nonsense. They need to live in the real world, not some trendy fantasy!

He's still a child. Exploring and growing up. We know his Mum is supporting him and loving him. But like all parents she has to keep an eye on the bad faith actors online and in real life, who're gaslighting children, pushing falsehoods and fantasies that there's no such thing as sex or that sex change is possible.

We know that the most vulnerable children are making the most terrible decisions for their future as a result of this ideology - it's why the last and current government have both agreed to implement Cass and ban puberty blockers - that's how dangeous this ideology that sex is changeable has become for the young.

So all parents must now treat all this with caution. Getting the balance between not catastrophising but listening, reassuring, checking the external influences and on occasions having some honest conversations about reality and what's age appropriate. That's how you let children grow to be who they really are.

You must live in a different area or environment to me then because no woman I know would criticise you for not wearing make up. I know lots of women who don’t. Too tired to count them up, but probably more don’t than do.

No, gender exists in society not gender identities. Women are oppressed because of their sex and the tool of that oppression is gender. That’s a lot of the reason I think gender identity ideology is madness - because no woman should identify with the mechanism of our oppression! To put gender on a pedestal, to encourage people to pay attention to it and to judge themselves by it, is madness IMO.

And no, we never completely got rid of gender stereotypes but we were pretty damn close - and then all This appeared. A cynic would say that that’s not a coincidence.

When I was a young teen, we laughed at our parents talking about ‘boy’s clothes’ and saying silly things about what boys and girls could or couldn’t do. I assumed that within a few years, all those stereotypes would largely have disappeared in this country, but they haven’t, and it’s beyond sad.

So, what is your explanation for non-binary then? I mean, if you won't share, people tend to question your reasons for not sharing. You demand we accept it exists but won't tell us what is is.

I didn’t “demand you accept” anything.

Please refer to my previous post; this is exactly the type of accusatory / argumentative/ non-sequitur response that tells me everything I need to know about your (lack of) interest in anything I could possibly share/ explain on this subject.

I only made assumptions about you after you said you couldn't be bothered to explain what you think non-binary means. By all means, please share.

I only made assumptions about you afteryou said you couldn't be bothered to explain

And I replied, clearly setting out why I wasn’t offering you a definition of non-binary.

But you haven’t even acknowledged any part of that explanation , let alone reconsidered your initial assumption .

See how that works?

Queue your next response to me which - again won’t acknowledge or engage with anything I have said, but rather will be something to the effect of:

”go on then, so what is your definition on non-binary? Why are you so reluctant to share? Surely it should be easy? Or is it that you can’t, because it’s all a load of bollox”…

Something like that eh?

But you haven’t even acknowledged any part of that explanation , let alone reconsidered your initial assumption .

I fully acknowledge that you don't like my tone nor my accusations of you acting like a high priest keeping secrets. However, I'm not sorry for thinking that you are acting like a high priest keeping magical secrets, frankly, because that's how I see it. I see it this way due to your continuing to be angry about defining something you claim is important, but refuse to explain it as if it's so special and secret you can only share with someone who is nice to you, as opposed to sharing your definition as a way to bolster the argument for why you believe in the concept of non-binary. Why does a definition need emotional scaffolding? Why do you need my approval or kindness to provide it?

Even if a topic is controversial or emotionally painful, why is it not possible to define it? For example, surrogacy is an emotional and fraught topic with vastly different opinions, but I can define it despite it making me very uncomfortable to think about: the use of a woman's body to carry a baby for another family or individual, paid or unpaid for the service of giving birth to her own genetic child or another woman's genetic child.