Concern for son

[Nowayhozay]

My son has from a very early age had a love for all things girly, it's never ever been a problem for me. He would get himself dressed up in his sisters clothes at any opportunity and often ended up with a few hand me downs that he could call his own.
I couldn't see any harm in it and strongly believed I was being a good parent by allowing him to express himself.
I have never really said no to anything in this regard and as the years went on I even started to buy him the odd thing that he asked for or that I thought he would like.
It pretty much became normal in our family that he would occasionally appear in his girl clothes.
Just after Christmas my daughter had a clear out of her clothes and gave a lot of them to him, so suddenly he has gone from a very limited wardrobe to a pretty well stocked one.
So along comes lock down and of course he is now able to dress 24/7 which is really what I am concerned about.
What will the effect on his mental health be when he has to go back to the way things were. Is this going to have a lasting effect on him? Should I limit his dressing ? I would never try to stop him but I cant help worrying that I am doing the wrong thing.

I wouldn't broach the subject again of 'who he is'. He's told you. You listened. Just keep on supporting him. Soon he'll get past the teenage boy years of wanting to conform outside the house and move into the adolescent/sixth form years when non conforming is more cool and he will be streets ahead.

It sounds like you've raised a very happy and comfortable boy OP.
That's all we can ever ask for really, that us and our loved ones are happy and healthy.
I find that some young people are very open minded and that's where a lot of gender questioning comes from (challenging these roles and stereotypes should be totally accepted and encouraged I think).
As long as there isn't a confusion between sex and gender, everything else is simply him getting to know himself and what he likes, which is great.
Young people are resilient too, acceptance from his family will matter much more than acceptance from others soon really think things will be ok in the long run.

We had a really good chat today, it was really sunny so we sat in the garden and talked for ages.
So he says he is happy being a boy but just wishes he could be himself all the time, he said he gets jealous of girls because they can wear whatever they like, sometimes he feels sad because he has to wear ugly clothes.
He cant explain why he likes girls clothes other than they feel nice, look nice and he likes the way they make him feel.
He said that he wished he could go out dressed but he didn't think I would let him so had never asked (thats a teen asking )

He actually admitted that he thinks it will be hard to go back to normal after lock down but he knows he has no choice so will just have to do it. He kept asking for re assurance that I didn't mind, I guess because I was probing he was worried.
We agreed that when we know that lock down is going to end that he should ease back into wearing his male clothes a bit more which as you know is my main worry.

We got talking about his birthday and as it is just the three of us this year I suggested we could have a proper girls only day, that bought a smile to his face so his head is full of plans for that right now.

I want to buy him something to re affirm my support but is that the right thing to do ? I'm in two minds

It’s great that you talked about it but I don’t think it’s needs a gift, because you are in danger of making it A Thing and it’s not to him.

You don’t buy DD gifts for wearing clothes that she likes.

One time you might remind him that girls don’t get to wear what they want any more than boys do. There are very high social costs for girls who don’t conform, I have one of then and at uni she has become much more GC and has started wearing make up and short skirts when she goes out clubbing to fit it.

So nothing in his life would become better or easier if he was a girl.

As a PP said, it might be a little easier for him to dress in an androgynous style, have long hair etc when he’s at college. Depends on what he studies and where he goes of course, art and music students tend to be a bit more ‘alternative’.

A friends son decided when he was about 14 that he was trans, after spending a lot of time online. He had a lot of major behavioural and psychological issues and was out of school for a long time.

However by the time he went to college to study music tech, he decided that he was in fact just a young man who liked to have long hair, wear band t shirts and use a unisex short form of his name. And that having screaming tantrums when anyone slipped up with his pronouns was in fact in appropriate and unnecessary.

All his psychological issues ( from when he was about 14-16 ) have pretty much gone and his family are very happy that his therapists didn’t push him down a medical route.

Turns out he was just a mixed up boy in search of an identity. A decade ago he could have been a goth.

His mum suspects hes gay but he’s not decided yet. Which was probably the issue all along.

Sigh .

I absolutely agree, it's a complete minefield. I have no wish to push him down any particular route. He will always have my support and guidance though.
My concern at the moment is really ensuring that his mood doesn't take a tumble when he has to return to a normal routine.
The gift is for his birthday, I just thought it would be a nice gesture. Sorry if I confused the issue.

My DD's have a couple of male friends who wear female clothes sometimes, one is gay one is bi - and it doesn't matter at all as long as they are happy. He sounds like he just knows what he likes, good for him

My son had a kenzo jumper last year, mens range, lots of sequins. He can definitely wear that out without people being funny with him. But expensive! My son often buys this stuff 2nd hand from depop or ebay as its very dear. Might be a bit less drab for your fashion conscious boy. Sounds like you have a lovely relationship with your son.

I think some people like promote a kind of binary - people who are 100% happy with the constraints of their gender role in our society and those that are not. The first group is almost everyone and they are boring and non special while the second groups is a tiny chosen few who get to be angry at the first group all the time.

Of course it’s nonsense. Many many people don’t enjoy aspects of the little box they are supposed to Live in. It’s not just your son OP.

Does he think that you dress, live and act exactly as you would wish all the time ? I’m sure like most of us you dress, speak and behave at work in a certain way , because you have to. And you do lots of things at home (housework maybe or tax returns or sticking to the speed limit or paying your council tax bill ) because you have to.

For some of us, we have got to used to doing certain things , we Didn’t even realise what a chore it was and how much we hated it, until lockdown changed things. These boards are full of women saying how free they feel not having to perform femininity all day every day (although I accept there are other who say they miss it ). Some say they are scared to stop doing it as they will ‘ let themselves go’.

These don’t sound like free choices to me.

I’d love to run away and backpacking round SE Asia for 6 months but I can’t because I have a job / mortgage / kids / whatever.

Everyone makes compromises . No one is 100% “ themselves “ all the time . We all conform to social roles and expectations.

Your son is not the only teenager in his school who struggles with identity, who he is, what to wear, who to be friends with. They all do, it’s just that some hide it better.

He hides his taste in clothes, others hide their sexuality, religion , ethnicity and other things that are a key part of their identity. If he looks around him carefully and listens to others stories he will learn who they are.

That might help him build bridges.

:-) but a good one! Totally agree. Just let them be who the heck they want to be without sticking boxes and labels on them.

Just smiled reading your post @0DETTE - completely agree with your sentiments about manufactured gender differences and creating a gender neutral environment, however to some extent that’s as restrictive in its own way. With my eldest DD, having done various gender politics courses at university & having hated all that sh*t myself with a passion, I was determined to create a very gender neutral environment. However as she got older, DD wanted all the pink sparkly stuff, the play ovens etc- not because that’s what society told her but because that’s what she genuinely liked. She’d buy all this crap herself with birthday & pocket money. At 25, she is very involved in LGBT politics & feminist issues but still likes all the ultra girly, pink & totally gendered garbage. It’s not my idea of being a woman but it is authentically hers.

OP, while the world has moved on since we were kids, there are still some teenagers who throw the word ‘gay’ around as an insult and are complete dicks. He is unlikely not to be aware of that but I would have a chat with him about dealing with potential flack if post lockdown he wants to continue dressing in the same style, particularly if he’s thin skinned, not especially popular or doesn’t have a cohort that will stick up for him. Dressing differently to norms will get easier the older he gets and I’d just try and support him & have his back however he wants to present himself.

Odette great summary- not a rant at all- trying to follow that approach with my DS- not so much on toys/clothes as is hasn't come up but on the sort of casual sexism- if he says something like women can't do that I just ask him if you need a penis ?it does worry me what they pick up as being "normal" though.

OP- Just don't steer your son into thinking what he is doing is girly/because he's a irl - you are not having a girls day for his birthday- he's not a girl!

It's a shame that there aren't more positive role models of men who like to wear more 'feminine stuff' but are still very clearly men, as now it all seems to have been taken over by the trans agenda 'widening the bandwidth of woman' rather than widening the bandwidth of man.

John Maclean on YouTube and Instagram is good, he does seem to be playing a 'character' but I don't actually know if he is or if that is just what he is like, but seems very confident in his masculinity from his captions etc. There is also Jefree Star (although I'm not sure he is a great role model!) and Billy Porter with his dress at the Oscars! I'm sure there might be more but they do seem a bit few and far between.

As others have said, continue to stay away from Mermaids!

There is also Harry Styles who is very much experimenting with clothes and stuff at the moment, although I'm not sure your 14 year old son would see him as a role model!

Girls and women can't wear what they want without being judged. I think this applies to boys and men rather than to women and girls. There is a thread every few weeks about what people should do about their twelve year old dd going to a wedding and she doesn't want to wear a dress and loads on whether people are too old or too fat to wear something.

I know he's just inherited a load of clothes from his sister but I wonder if he should spend some time online creating his perfect 'capsule wardrobe'. At least then you would get an insight in to what he actually means as at the moment he's having to create outfits from stuff he has.

Perhaps he's associating caring about what he wears with being feminine.

I don't know where you live but when my dd was about twelve she was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable with herself as she's black and we live in very white area so I started to take her to places where people weren't so mainstream. Galleries, surfing, art fairs etc. When she wanted her ears pierced we went to a tattoo parlour and looked through all the books and talked to different people. I want her to know not everyone looks the same and wants the same for their life.

We also go to London for a week every school holidays. We don't have a plan and do a lot of wandering around just taking it all in.

The sooner society moves away from girl things and boy things the better. It’s just clothes.

Why shouldn’t he like say pink. I remember in the 80s pink shirts were in, big style - with a grey tie, or lemon with grey. It was A Thing at the time! Men wearing pastels that weren’t green or blue, oh my! People were a bit taken aback. Now nobody bats an eye at a bloke in a pink shirt. (Apart from fashion followers as it’s probably ‘last season’ but don’t even start me I’m that nonsense...!)

The sooner we all wear whatever the better. Then we will get to that stage. “Oh Jimmy is wearing a pink unicorn t-shirt again, how many of them does he have, a whole drawer!” rather than “A guy in a pink unicorn t-shirt, that’s disgusting”.

Sparkle is well into. There are plenty big rappers who wear gold and diamonds and sequins and shiny fabric. David Beckham has diamond earrings. Jewellery is acceptable now a-days. As are tattoos on women. Back in the day those things weren’t.

There is hope. But perhaps don’t refer to things as girlie days etc. I do that too but really shouldn’t. Don’t know what phrase to use instead. Pink day? Pamper day? Depends on what you are doing I suppose!

He hides his taste in clothes, others hide their sexuality, religion , ethnicity and other things that are a key part of their identity. If he looks around him carefully and listens to others stories he will learn who they are

This is beautiful! And so so true. Most teens have an ‘identity’ crisis, but ultimately what you want them to learn is that they don’t need a label or a box to fit in, they are who they are, and everyone else is who they are, and that is just fine.