I Am Transgender - Ask Me Anything

[Craicken]

Hello

Allow me to preface this thread with some preliminary information:

My name is Jessica
I am not currently a mother
I am a trans woman
I am university educated
I have not started hormones
I am also pansexual (Ask me about sexuality too)
I first came out at age 14
I live in the UK

With that out of the way, the reason I decided to join mumsnet and create this thread is to try and put to rest some of the fairly startling things I've read here about being transgender, and provide a credible real trans source for you to connect with.

To begin, I want to talk about the idea of "too young" because I'll be quite honest, in the current climate this is something I struggle to find a reasonable conclusion for too. My personal opinion is that if a child exhibits signs of being genderqueer before the age of 13 or 14 it is your responsibility to guide your child through these feelings where ever they lead, because once puberty starts if your child really is trans it can have an extremely damaging effect. This is particularly true for trans women, testosterone warps your body in ways that oestrogen cannot easily fix and allowing this process to take place will only aid in dysphoria.

That being said I am not a child behavioural psychologist, I don't know when is a reasonable time for a child to make this decision of their own free will but I do believe from my own experience that if a child is truly dysphoric they will let you know and if this is at a young age please don't ignore them. It is your job as a parent to explain the idea of dysphoria so that your child can elaborate on these feelings if they occur, and if they want to pursue hormones help them.

My point here is that the earlier it can be caught the less damage is done, in the case of a trans person who feels dysphoria and wants hormones.

Secondly I want to talk about the process of coming out, and your reaction as a parent. The number one thing a child is looking for when they come out to you is acceptance and support, and its more than likely theyll be happy to answer your questions about how they feel to the best of their ability if you just sit down and hash it out with them. They may be going through a very confusing time and you should be there for them. Take an active interest, read up on sources from real trans people, learn what your child wants from their transition and help them. Offer therapy sessions with credible counsellors for your child, it is far easier to explain your thought processes to a stranger.

Finally I'd like to very briefly address stigma and the GRA to an extent. I've seen some bizarre reactions on this website to a child coming out as trans and as someone who's been through it as a teen and has come out of the other side ready to start hormones and living their life as a woman I just want to say it's not scary. I'm not the boogeywoman. I go for coffee, I have barbecues with my friends, I enjoy a good dog. If this is something your child chooses to share with you it's something to be celebrated, not feared. They have searched their soul and come to the conclusion that this is what will make them happy and at the end of the day we're only here for so long, why stop them from living them on their own terms. In regards to the GRA I don't want to start an argument with TERFs, this thread is for the benefit of parents with queer children and is not in the feminist section, but I want to point out that I as a trans woman am terrified of going into woman's changing rooms in New Look or wherever because of the stigma I may receive, but I do so as a woman. The big burly man people seem to envision claiming to be a woman just to sneak a peak simply doesn't exist. Talks about changes to the GRA start this summer and I implore you, work together with trans people on this because that spectre of the big burly man is the enemy of progress here, not me trying on a skirt.

I doubt I've been as eloquent as I hoped to be here, and if any other trans people come across this thread please feel free to correct me on any bullshit but for now, ask me any questions you have and I'll answer them as an honest trans woman.

NB: my thoughts on transitioning at a younger age should be taken with a grain of salt as I myself don't have peer reviewed sources to back my opinions up, but I'll do my best to answer questions. The long and short of it is if your child is firm in their belief take them to therapy.

I dont think I have any questions
But I just want to
A. Book mark
B. More importantly praise you for your courage and assure you of my total respect .
C. Slightly bump this thread as in my view it is important

Great post

I am so sorry for what you went through in your teens , I like all parents would do anything to protect my child from that ( and you brave lady had I been there )

I am sure others with higher academic credentials and “ meatier points “ than myself will come along
That’s great

Education is power and Thankyou for offering up your own experiences
If it serves as a springboard to help just one parent guide one kid then that’s terrific in my view

I wish you a very happy future op

"Not currently a mother" is an interesting turn of phrase. I've heard women say 'I'm not a mother' or 'I'm not yet a mother' but not currently.

Currently implies it's a transitory state. Once you become a mother, you're a mother forever*. That's your male socialisation showing again.

• I include in my definition of motherhood those women (as in adult human females) who are raising a child as their own - so I include lesbian mothers who didn't birth their child and adoptive mothers. Just for the avoidance of doubt.

Hi, Craicken! Thanks for your input. My kids are too young to display any particular signs relating to gender or sexuality. I hope having two moms would help them feel able to talk to us about what they were feeling! Good luck with the thread - if you can manage to ignore the awfulness and just answer the legitimate questions, you’ll be doing well. Your post, and someone’s comment, made me wonder if we could get a doctor who works with the trans community on to answer questions. Mn has a huge trans problem (i left a while ago because of it but came back because I needed some specific support. But I read nothing on the feminism forum). Good for you for doing your bit to address is, though I’m not sure how positive it will be.

The cultural 'definition' of man that includes stereotypes is not a definition.
If your definition doesn't apply to all members of the group you are trying to define, it's not a definition.
If you say all men play football and drink beer, except for the thousands who don't, then playing football and drinking beer isn't a definition of man.

Hi there, I am also a transwoman and started a relatively successful thread like this, with mostly positive discussion, 0 bunfighting and only one comment I considered transphobic.

Your post smacks of being a bit nasty, really.

Why do you think it's acceptable to tell someone their fears "don't exist" when men have been caught coming into female only spaces like changing rooms and flashing (or worse)

Transcrimeuk has a rather large collection of many cases including sexual assault and rape. There are also men that magically become trans when they're sentenced to prison for violent and harrowing crimes towards women and girls as they perceive women's prisons to be more cushy. Ian Huntley, anyone? This cannot be ignored.

I am obviously in support of trans rights and think navigating the minefield that is trans rights and women's rights is hard, but trans rights absolutely cannot come at the expense of women's rights.
But that is not going to happen if you want to barge into a mainly female website calling women terfs and telling them their fears do not exist.

In addition, I don't think anybody under 18 should be allowed to have medication or surgery. I knew from about 5/6 something just wasn't right and began hormones at 18, had surgery in my mid 20's (way before the GRC was even a thing, and I was one of the first to get one in 2005.) but I did mutilate myself, I have damaged myself into something that feels better for me. But I am under no illusions of the damage I did to my male body which is fine by me, but I would not allow any of my four children to make that same choice until they were an adult. Hell, fucking, no. Lots of counselling, an open dialogue and emotional support is more important than handing them medication that will irreversibly change their bodies. I think in 15 years time we'll have a generation of very damaged adults, physically and mentally. Particularly in cases where kids are flown out to countries where they can have surgery under the age of 18, or hormones from age 10 or whatever. Grim.

What do you expect the outcome of this thread to be?

Joy. Another troll who thinks we are all going to faint away in horror, or be amazed that people who identify as transwomen are actual people.

Let's be clear, lovey. We have trans friends. We have trans relatives. We have trans children. Some of us have the misfortune to be married to middle aged men, have children with them, and then have them abandon us and their babies at the sacrificial altar of identity politics.

We all manage quite well to be polite to transwomen we meet. We are respectful enough to realise that their mental health issues are significant, and that they aren't doing us any harm by their general existence.

Gender is a steaming heap of bullshit that has been used for centuries to control behaviour. Your delusion that acting 'feminine' means that you really are a woman is frankly disturbing. It means you have automatically discounted yourself from womanhood. Womanhood is literally biological. Behaviour, dressing, your personality? Call it whatever you like - is not down to being a man or woman.

You are a man. You were born a man. You will hopefully live a long and healthy life, and die a man. You can take as many hormones as you like. You can invert your penis to create a new aging, and you can get a surgeon to create as pornified a set of boobs as you desire. Crack right on. But you actually can't become a woman. I know that's hard. For people with body dysphoria, it sucks. But if surgically or hormonally altering your body can help you diminish your dysphoria, it's a sometimes effective treatment for your mental illness.

As parents, our job is to protect our children from the damaging effects of believing that our lives should be ruled by gender, and that behaviours, dress, and personality should dictate your gender identity. We want our children to be able to wear what they like, play with whatever toys they like, and ultimately live lives that are unfettered by the regressive gender stereotypes that are demanded by trans ideology.

If our children do suffer from body dysphoria, we deal with that compassionately and supportively. But just as if our children suffer from anorexia, we actually employ critical thinking and consider what is more harmful to a growing body? It's pretty ordinary for teens to suffer from body dysphoria. It's also boringly normal for toddlers to claim to be the opposite sex. We should treat those ordinary stages with compassion and reassurance that it's normal to feel that way, and let them work through it, with help if necessary. What we shouldn't do is join the trendy puberty blocker craze and potentially set them on a medical pathway to sterilization before the age of legal consent. That's abusive. It is actually possible to parent GNC kids as if they were, you know, perfectly normal kids. Which they are. Given that gender is socially constructed bullshit, it would be nonsense to insist they performed it (either for or against - kids are kids - they shouldn't be measured against a gender yardstick and have the transborg tell the, that they are male or female).

And I'm assuming we are supposed to be alarmed at the mention of a good dog. Grow up. Male bodied people posting about a good dog on a parenting website is creepy AF.

Can somebody tell me hat a term is please .
I genuinely do not know
Many thanks

You lost me at ‘cultural definition of male includes playing with trucks’.
I enjoy driving trucks. My daughter plays with trucks.
I thought we were trying to move away from pigeonholing people by their behaviour and into accepting people for who they are?

Oh gosh sorry
Rushed typing

What is a terf please

Why do you think that not wanting to be a man makes you a woman?

OH, by the way op, is the 'credible' in your op a sly dig at the transwomen who post on mumsnet? Because if it is, you can fuck off to the far side of fuck. Their voices are just as valid as anyone else's, and it's a little tedious when the transcult starts dismissing voices of transwomen because they don't spew the accredited Borg dogma.

@Craicken - do you think it is fair for athletes who have grown up male, with all the benefits in terms of muscle growth, bone density, strength and lung capacity that that gives, to self-ID as trans, or to transition to female, and then transfer into the women’s races/sports, where all those physical benefits enable them to beat women who have grown up female so, despite being at the top of their game, cannot beat their male counterparts? Can you see how this would destroy women’s sport?

Is it fair to castigate a woman as ‘transphobic’ because she doesn’t want her smear done by an obviously male-bodied trans woman? Should trans women be able to work in domestic violence she,tears and rape crisis centres, even if their presence there would put off the very peop,e who most need the services of such places?

Should someone who committed violent sexual assaults as a man be able to transfer into a women’s prison, by self-IDing as a woman, and be housed with vulnerable women?

Should the Girl Guides have to allow fully male bodied teenagers who have IDed as female to sleep and shower alongside teenage girls, and is it right that the parents of those girls would have no right to be informed of this in advance?

I am all in favour of people being able to identify as they choose - I will use whatever pronoun someone wants, and call them whatever they want. I won’t bat an eyelid whatever someone chooses to wear - but trans rights seem to be being advanced at the expense of women’s rights. Prominent trans activist Shon Faye actually said ‘women - enjoy your erasure’ - and this very militant fringe of trans activism scares me.

I believe that there are some very toxic gender stereotypes out there, and this is a big part of the problem. Why can’t a boy like pink and play with kitchens, without being told he must be a girl? Can’t he just be a boy who likes pink? I like pink and skirts and baking, so I must be a girl, but I like rugby and cycling, don’t wear makeup and have short hair, so I must be male!

Why can’t we stop shutting people into such tightly bounded gender boxes? I think people would be a lot happier if we did.

Final question - should children be given powerful drugs to block puberty or hormone treatment that may have irreversible effects on their bodies? Should we not be concentrating on making society accept everyone as they are, without needing to worry about whether their choice of toy, clothing, hobby, career or whatever is going to fasten them into a tiny gender labelled box?

cultural definition of male includes playing with trucks
What utter nonsense! When I go to playgroup tomorrow, Should I be telling all the girls I see playing with trucks that they are male now?

I don't think people care as much as you think they do. They just want to protect women's spaces. How and why you are trans is something I have no interest in, in the same way as I don't care how and why my random neighbour made the choices she made in her life, the only time I care is when she's noisy or acts in a way that affects me. Do you see?

I'm bored to tears with threads like this and "Six things every trans person wants you to know/you were too scared to ask" type articles. We are just not as interested in the whys and wherefores as much as you think we are, we mostly know them already as they've been rammed down our throats endlessly and for myself I just wish we could have meaningful dialogue around trans issues and how they impact on children and women that doesn't end in shrieks of "TRANSPHOBIA!"

Hi op,

My question is why do you feel that women and girls no longer need any sex based rights or protections? We know the majority of all violent and sexual crime is committed by males and that doesn't change if the male assumes a female identity. With that in mind why end sex segregation that keeps women and girls safe?

Also, if I may ask 2 questions, do you think women and girls (the old fashioned biological kind) are ever allowed anything just for them? Safe spaces? Sports? Anything at all?

The cultural definition of man includes stereotypes, like playing with trucks.

Lol. I used to play with trucks, meccano, did soldering and still a girl! This is the problem isn't it? Who on earth says trucks are for boys?

Terf - Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist 🙄

Mamaryllis
Fantastic post Peanut

Come on, you're not serious with the 'trucks is part of a sex identity thing' are you?! Can you see that suggesting that the definition of sex is defined by interests and activities feels unbelievably retrogressive? Feminists have spent years trying to break down the linkage between cultural stereotypes and sex - ie girls can be interested in trucks, and boys can love sparkly nail varnish, and that is fine. Whereas some of the new trans ideology seems to be all about putting sexes back into their boxes, and putting the barriers up again.

To give you a sense - I have two children - one male bodied, one female bodied - both hitting teens. One loves horse riding, Greek mythology, and creepy-crawlies, and is a fearless climber. One loves coding, is hopelessly prone to tears and tantrums, and great at running and yoga. Neither fits standard gender identities, and that's fine, because they are individual. That doesn't - to me - make them less male/female.

Have you actually had puberty blockers yourself. Do you really think that it is ok for parents to give ignorant and innocent children drugs that aren't properly tested by have been linked to brittle bones, lower IQ and, infertility just because they ask? Is it the same if any child who asks (for whatever reason) or is it only OK to drug the ones who are trans?

For me personally, stereotypes weren't a huge thing. It wasn't "I must change my name to sally so I can play with dolls"
it was more pronouns, my name, I didn't want a penis anymore (so got rid of it as quickly as I could, back in the days when you had to pay privately to do such a thing) I wanted to be free to express myself how I wanted to and to do those things I felt I had to be female, or as close to as possible. I'm not the OP by the way just another Transwoman.
I'm also aware that I'm not the same as a woman, I am a transwoman and we have different needs and struggles. Being a transwoman felt more me than waking up with a Penis and being called "bob". It's hard for me to articulate but I do my best

m.youtube.com/watch?v=3cwT2UR4x4Y

Not all women who like playing with trucks are trans!

Hi peanut. Very nicely put!