Re: DS is transgender ftm 16 and happy.

[crazyhat]

In reference to the suspended thread titled "DS is transgender ftm 16 and happy." I am the 16 year old, writing it from my mother's point of view, everything I said is true, and my mother and I stand by what I said. See, a few weeks ago she told me that when I first started transitioning, she came to mumsnet for help, and was met by people telling her to not endorse it, and other things that (with hindsight) are blatently transphobic. You are all free to your own opinions, I can't stop that. But I genuinely can't describe the feeling I have towards my body, it's such an extreme disconnect, and I know that transitioning is genuinely the only solution. I am very greatful that my parents support me, unlike many parents, evidently are on here. I'm sorry to anyone who feels decieved, but I was genuinely just doing it to have a sense of understanding of what my parents generation think, and to be brutally honest, it was borderline concerning. I feel sorry for people who's have to hear "advice" from some of you. However I, and my situation, is very much real.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/lgbt_children/3732775-DS-is-transgender-ftm-16-and-happy

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras loads of people have answered. Take your topic to a new thread and let the debate occur in more detail there. We are discussing something else here.

trans rights are women's rights

How are they?

there is no single overarching definition of what it means to be a woman

Well, there is...I have a shirt thay explains it well

In some ways, sex is a construct as much as gender is

Please explain how, I’m genuinely confused. I’m fairly sure my vagina, womb and breasts aren’t a construct any more than my DP’s penis is and neither of us had much choice in the develpoment of them

gender is just as essential a part of our identity as biological sex is.

Not for me it isn’t. My sex has caused me no end of problems due to PCOS and endo. I recently had a smear test which I needed due to my sex.
Gender, on the other hand, I have no sense of. It is not part of my identity because I don’t have one

Hearhoovesthinkzebras, you're certainly living up to your username!

I'm asking why this should be any different to many other medical or life decisions that we fully support 16 year olds (or younger) making?

But you've made huge assumptions about how other people would react as the parent of a pregnant teen, child cancer sufferer tired of chemo, etc - your arguments are not logically sound and are loaded with ridiculous straw men.

Then when someone challenges you, you start talking about policy for underage sex, which makes it sound like even you're not sure what point you're trying to make.

Hi OP. This website is a hellscape for transphobia and whilst I think you are so brave for coming here, you are just setting yourself up for abuse.

I'm sorry people think it's acceptable to talk down to you. Live your truth. And know that for every dick who wants to change you, then is someone else who stands with you.

One of my best friends is a trans man. Two of my other close friends are non binary. One only changed pronouns last month, and I'm so happy for them discovering what makes them feel understood.

Surround yourself with people who understand and try to stay away from those who refuse to.

Stay strong and stay happy 🏳️‍🌈

Do you know what utterly, utterly pisses me off?? So-called supporters of "trans rights" saying adults who support wanting a child waiting until they're an adult to make such a life altering decision as hormones or testosterone plus surgery as "transphobic"/"anti trans" - it's not fucking "anti trans!!!" For fucks sake! No one is saying "we don't agree with trans people" l, what they are saying over and over and over and fucking over is "just wait until you're an adult, because of these reasons".

It is incredibly dangerous to try and stir up hatred of those just trying to support children.

I would like to remind a few people here of some scientific facts:
Except in very rare circumstances you are born either male or female. It is very rare but sometimes you are born with XY but the Y isn't functioning. You would be aware of this as a girl and puberty doesn't start. No amount of surgery or drugs can change this.

Your brain isn't fully developed until 25.

1 in 5 young people will suffer from mental illness.

And my own comments, boys can have long hair and like princesses, girls can have short hair and play with trucks. These ideas are gender stereotypes, not gender. You can be a man not confirming to masculine stereotypes, it doesn't make you less of a man. And vice-a-versa.

@AutumnRose1 It is confusing re NB, isn’t it. Sam Smith has requested people use ‘they’ pronouns yet OP used ‘he’ and feels SS needs to prove it. I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt and put this down to OP’s young age and inexperience

Bloody hell there is some dangerous bullshit being posted.

The op is a child, save it for your friends your own age.

Thanks for sharing your experiences @crazyhat; I think it can be helpful to have the personal first hand account which reaches out to people in a way that discussion of general ideas and the natural politicization of the issues can't.

I guess we simply don't know the long term consequences yet because the surgery and the scale of it, at least, is a relatively new phenomenom. It will be maybe 40 or 50 years before the relevant studies can be done to try to account for overall improvements in life quality and experience and general happiness. Even then it will be very difficult because a study would have to try to compare individuals who chose to surgically transition against individuals who considered transitioning and decided against it. Then you would have to quantify the strength of initial feeling of gender dysphoria and factor that into the study - I guess there are scales for these.

Of course, we don't live in a 'sliding doors' world - we can not account for our future selves in advance, and hindsight is often 20:20 - people are more likely to believe they made the best decisions previously, when they can never know how their lives would have panned out had they chosen differently.

There are some people on this thread who have mentioned they would certainly have wanted to transition at this tender age and are now glad that they didn't. But in fact, and I really do not mean any offence by this, they don't actually know if in fact they would have been even more happy had they actually made that decision. None of us really know how our major decisions would have panned out had they gone the other way.

We can find happiness and acceptance in many different ways, with the outcomes of many different decisions and sometimes you've got to do what feels right for you and where you see your happiness. The OP could wait until he was more mature - perhaps 25 as some have suggested the brain is more fully developed then - but that could be another 9 years of deep unhappiness for him - or yes, its perfectly true, it could go the other way.

this site is a hellscape for transphobia
Hmm, I don't think that would catch on as a tag line instead of "Mumsnet: by parents for parents".
But who knows?
Posters who don't want a child to make irreversible decisions are trying to help her, not hurt her. Parenting 101.

a "cis" women

You just mean "woman". Drop the made up cis shit.

What does being a man/woman feel like?

What does being white feel like?

What does being blind feel like?

What does having a facial disfigurement feel like.

It feels like being you, doesn’t it? We have no ability to determine or explain what it feels like to be ourselves in our body without also calling upon the societal impact and implications of how we are treated based on our outside presentation.

What does it feel like to be a woman? It doesn’t feel like anything, I know that I am though. However how I can explain what it feels like to be woman is based on my experiences within wider society and by comparison to being a man.

I don’t feel like my DNA. My genitals tell me I’m female, my experiences, comparisons and innate sense of self tell me I’m a woman.

The two are separate. What it means to be a woman and have others identify you as a woman is dependent on society as a whole.

How often do you hear couples experiencing infertility say “I feel less of a man/woman”? They are genetically still Male or female, but society dictates that the epitome of womanhood is bearing children and for men it’s producing offspring.

Womanhood and manhood is a spectrum based on how society perceives you physically and and by your behaviour/choices.

If you’re not impacted by these gender norms then that’s great for you, but you are wholly in the minority.

Another minority are those for whom their identity is so disconnected from societal gender norms that the only way to possibly manage the mental toll is to change and adapt their physicality and demeanour to match their innate sense of gender (norm) identity.

The issue is NOT with the trans community, but with societal ideologies of men and women. If more people focussed on attacking the “divide and conquer” mentality of patriarchy then some gains might actually be made.

But instead let’s focus time and energy on a 16 boy.

Why is the be all and end all for you having children?

It isn't. But it's not a decision that should be made by a child.

AllStarBySmashMouth

OP would expect your friends to prove that they are nb, for some reason

We do stand by OP, nobody here is being abusive or unsupportive. What we don’t want is for OP to make a life changing decision at an age where OP is not allowed to marry/get a tattoo/drive yet, all of which have less of an impact and more reversible than what OP is proposing

I think some people are confusing the idea of feeling a certain gender with experiencing gender dysphoria. It's true that you might not feel like your gender - but you would know if your gender felt wrong.

I don’t feel like any gender. Guess that makes me NB, or agender, or whatever. I’m still female, though

@Lifeinthelastlane I know that. And of course there are medical concerns when someone starts medically transitioning at a young age.

But none of us actually know OP, and if he feels he is doing what is best for him then who are we to question that? Surely he and his family know him best.

Abortion. One off event. Can still continue to have sex, have babies should they wish to.

An abortion is permanent and the effects may very well be long lasting particularly if you later regret doing it. You might well go onto have another child but you can't reverse having a termination.

Secondly, my points aren't just about abortion are they? What about continuing a pregnancy - that isn't a one off. That's permanent and life changing.

Treatment for cancer - refusing it is potentially life ending. Same as heart surgery, transplants etc. 16 year olds will be making these decisions, not their parents.

Why are you ok with 16 year olds being able to consent to all medical treatment apart from this, many of which are serious with life long effects or are life changing or life limiting.

Final post from OP @ everyone saying that if I wanted validation i shouldn't have come here, well I didn't want validation, I wanted to help parents in similar circumstances, as I know my mother (understandably) struggled a lot when I first came out. I wanted to help explain why people transition, but many people appear to be very patronising, I'm happy for those of you who are saying "I used to feel like that and now I'm happy and have 3 kids and a husband" I'm glad you feel that way now, but the way you felt in the past is not comparable, as you are saying you had body dysmorphia, very different to gender dysphoria. In conclusion, thank you to the people who have been nice and respectful, less thank you to the people who have not been. Let's all just agree to disagree, because this surgery and hormone treatment, is happening whether you think it should or not. Kind regards.

I don't have a gender so I don't know how I'd know it felt wrong. I could imagine feeling I was in the wrong body, but that is not the definition of being transgender. I know I don't slot into all of society's expectations of the feminine gender. But I'm still female.
Smash I wouldn't address the OP as I genuinely wouldn't feel comfortable speaking to a teenager online. Support is required but support is not always to say go ahead, or even to say that a mother knows best.

Bye, OP - good luck.

Doubleraspberry

Quite. Either we accept that 16 is the age of consent, or we don't. I can't see how we can accept that a 14 year old can make a potentially life changing decision about pregnancy, a 16 year old can make every health care decision about themselves but then be deemed too immature to make this decision or a woman in her 20s or 30s not to know her mind well enough to opt for sterilisation. It makes no sense to me. If 16 year olds can't know their minds well enough about this then they can't know their minds well enough to consent to any life changing medical procedure.

Please remember anyone can pose as anything on the internet.

Do not assume someone is who they say they are. Do not allow yourself to be groomed.

Detailing and nonsense aside, these thread have repeatedly made me think of Mark Twain:

"Mark Twain says that at seventeen he could scarcely endure his father, the old gentleman was so ignorant; at twenty he noticed that his father said a sensible thing occasionally; at twenty-five he was astonished at the improvement his father had made in the last eight years."