Gender swap situation

[TenThousandYears]

I know you're all probably fed up hearing about this subject...I just need to vent.

DD has been friends with "Sally" for 10 years. (Both 14) Since nursery. In the last few months Sally has decided to change gender and now wants to be called " Ron"

DD just can't wrap her head around this. If she slips up, she gets nasty looks from "Ron" and so she's treading on eggshells.

Ron's brother still refers to Ron as Sally so DD is very confused by it all.

I'm on DDs side. Personally, I would hate to be in her shoes right now. I think if you meet someone and are introduced to them as whomever then that's easier to accept than having to change names and pronouns of someone you've been friends with for 10 years. On TV shows people just accept this straight away and move on but I'm not convinced that it's really that easy.

I also think 14 is a bit young for these changes but that's just my personal opinion.

Are me and my child horrible people for not being able to accept this right away?

Well you will get a lot of MN agreeing with you as I am sure you know.
Personally I would try very hard to use the correct pronouns.

She’ll probably ( hopefully) be calling her self Salamander next week.

Your DD is doing nothing wrong here, and the fact the the brother can ‘get away with’ calling Sally Sally is a bit of a nudge about the family’s common sense. Maybe explain that Sally is a bit confused at the moment ( hormones?) but Sally was born a girl and is going to grow up to be a woman, even if she cuts her breasts off and takes some tablets to grow some facial hair. (hopefully this will not happen).

I can’t believe I have got here before all the activists who will tel you to tell your daughter to ‘affirm’ and that Sally has actually been Ron since nursery. They must be having a lie in.

Good luck OP.

Bugger, missed it!

As a teacher who had to always refer to my colleagues by Mr/Mrs/Ms XYZ in front of children, I have to say it's a pretty normal.part of life to get used to calling someone by a different name as happens quite commonly after marriage. Children seem to adapt to it very quickly when a member of staff has got married or divorced.

It's also not uncommon for children to change the name they are known by - I've taught quite a few over the years (Naphtali became Zac, Oninye became Mary, Theodora became Teo). Again kids seem to take this in their stride.

Using different pronouns is a similar process. Sometimes you slip up, you apologise and move on, just as you do if you call the new Mrs Smith Miss Jones by accident.

I’d tell my kids to back quickly away from any friend who gave them nasty looks or made them tread on eggshells, no matter the reason. I also don’t support compelled speech in any circumstances. DD would probably be much happier focussing on other friendships and I’d tell her so.

My teenage son shares a house at university with a non-binary person who he is friends with. He's faultless when it comes to using their preferred pronouns, and is completely respectful of them. As a result they've developed a really lovely friendship over the past year, which I hope with continue for a long time to come.

I think your daughter can make the effort if the friendship is valuable to her. If not, maybe she should tell her friend she can't cope with it, and distance herself.

I really hope you are not a ‘Teacher’, if you can’t detect a difference between legally adopting a spousal surname, or substituting a nickname or easier to pronounce name for the deliberate flag of impersonating the opposite sex, with all the well,publicised potential physical and psychological harms entailed.

I think it’s fine for sally to decide on a new name and your daughter should try and use it but understandably is going to slip up at times and Ron needs to accept that.

however id also tell your daughter than Ron can be called Ron instead of sally but that doesn’t actually change her biological sex. Ron is probably quite confused right now as I’m sure is your daughter.

@Allthegoodnamesarechosen

Your contempt for transgender people and anyone who supports them comes through loud and clear.

This is why we can't have reasonable discussions about this issue. Because your position on this issue is rooted in contempt for people who are gender non-conforming, and it leaks out in every single thing you have to say about them.

@Sabire9 but surely we are all gender non-conforming?

The thing I dislike about the transgender movement is the insistence it has on enforcing gender ‘norms’ and trying to say that if you don’t fit a gender norm then you must be the opposite sex

She said she wants to do this as it's all making her uncomfortable but they are all in the same friend group and it's not a big school so she doesn't have much of a choice.

What a horrible, misguided, bigoted response. I hope you get sufficient backlash in this thread to make you ashamed enough to educate yourself.

In life we have to tolerate people and opinions that we disagree with. I've worked closely with people I loathed and had to maintain a polite, working relationship with them.

If she wants to retain the rest of her friends in a small school, she needs to play the game, at least in public.

If Ron's change has totally destroyed the friendship for your daughter, it can't have been a very close friendship.

I understand what you mean.

You don't support compelled speech at all? What do your children call their teachers?

Your DD should identify as someone who calls everyone Dave.

My DD is just talking to Ron normally, as if nothing has changed, which is what Ron wanted as far as my conversation with his mum suggested. However, he seems irritated that Dd isn't using the name or the pronoun. Buy she never would have anyway. She just looks at someone and starts talking to them. DH is the same. He rarely uses my name.

If Ron's change has totally destroyed the friendship for your daughter, it can't have been a very close friendship.

It’s Sally’s bullying behaviour that’s ruined the friendship.

I’d be unhappy about my child having such a controlling friend. If this other child was kind and understanding, they would value such a long term loyal friendship and not try to compel their friends’ speech.

My son is called Jamie by some of his mates who have known him since primary school, when he used that name. Now he’s known as Jim everywhere but he doesn’t get upset about these mates and he doesn’t expect them to apologise when they say Jamie, he doesn’t give them nasty looks .

He is a kind lad who knows you have to accept people as they are, you don’t need to agree on every tiny thing, you should value your long term friends .

Children and adults who are unpleasant, controlling and self centred will ultimately make themselves very unhappy in life . Yes some superficial contacts or those who you have power over will go along with you for a short time. But good people who have a choice will back away slowly.

I suggest @TenThousandYears , that you encourage your DD not to give more to this friendship that she is getting .

I agree.

Can your dd just look on it as a nickname in order for her to get used to it. At 13 I requested that everyone use my new preferred nickname to my full name and it didn’t take long for people to get used to it, even my own mother managed to.

If she wants to stay friends then she will have to do it. I used to get annoyed if my full name was used instead of my new short one (though not gender motivated).

My daughter went through lots of this in yr 9, some of it was bumpy due to friendship groups changing and people gravitating towards other people who they identified with. She's just left yr 13 and everything very much settled, lots kids grew out of it and lots of friendships healed.
We talked about it a lot at home, changing your name is just that. It's easy to do, my friends daughter announced she was changing her name (just informally) and my friend feels very conflicted (and upset at first) about it. There is no talk of her taking hormones or changing sex, she's busy at college so my friend is leaving it and assuming it will pass but still standing by her. Obviously there will always be the kids that this is a real thing but for some of them it's just a phase too. Also yr 9 is a huge year for growth with kids at every stage of puberty, I'm currently finding my yr9 extremely challenging although he is most definitely wants to stay a boy.

I think your DD is a child and so it will understandably take her a while to adapt. Maybe her friend is going through a phase maybe not. Look at it a different way; if the friend turned vegan, even if it was just a phase, would it be acceptable for DD to keep offering snacks with meat or dairy in? People do a lot of changing over the course of their lives and a good friend will try to be supportive.

I read that response very different from you. It seems on the money to me.

Op I wouldn't want my child to be involved with Sally as she comes across as controlling. If she's like this at a young age chances are she'll only get worse.

Gender non-conforming people present how they like without believing that their presentation makes them members of the opposite sex.

Trans is an exercise in absolute gender conformity, because it follows the principle that if you express yourself with "feminine clothing" you are a woman regardless of your sex, and if you express yourself with "masculinity" you are a man, regardless of your sex.

True gender non-conformity is about as far removed from trans ideology as you can get.