Really struggling with adult child being trans

[Strugglingmmumm]

So my adult child 21 came home from Uni for Xmas. Went back yesterday. On the last evening they told me they are going to take hormones and want to have surgery etc. I have known for about a year that they identify as non binary and use the pronouns they/them. I am sorry if this offends anyone who is trans or has trans kids etc but I am feeling absolutely devastated. I can’t stop crying and it feels like one of the worst things that has ever happened in my life. They know that I am not happy about it because of things I have said in the past before they said anything. I have tried to reassure them that I will support them but I just wish so much that they wouldn’t do it. I honestly don’t even know if I can really support them. I feel beyond heartbroken. It will be so hard for me to see the changes I feel like I will be heartbroken for ever, like I will never be able to be OK with this. I really don’t know what to do or how to deal with this.

If this were true, there's be similar rates of people in their 30s, 40s, 50s and higher claiming trans identities today. But there's not.

Older people don't transition as much because they are less likely to believe they can succeed, have become resigned to being who they are, and grew up in a time where it was not as accepted and spent their entire youth forcing those feelings down. It's more acceptable now to do it when you're younger and can end up with a good result. Not so much when you're 45 and have a family and responsibilities and had testosterone warping your body for the past 30 years.

20 years ago was 2003. The GRA passed in 2004 and there were a number of famous trans people, albeit mostly MtF rather than FtM (eg April Ashley, Fay Presto, Jan Morris, Caroline Cossey, Renee Richards). Chas Bono went public with transition in 2009.

You must be very young if you think transgender people haven’t been out, proud and visible for many decades! 20 years ago wasn’t the 1950s 🤣

Transpeople have always existed

Just in tiny numbers - like a few in a country not a few in a class

Dana International won Eurovision in 1998

Nadia Almada won Big Brother in 2004

Conchita Wurst won Eurovision in 2014

The above are public phone-in contests, so it’s utterly vapid to suggest that transgender people weren’t accepted by the general public until the 2020s.

(Nadia was one of the most likeable BB contestants ever, IMO)

It's more acceptable now to do it when you're younger and can end up with a good result.

"A good result" is a myth and it's sending children down irreversible and damaging pathways.

Jazz Jennings being a poster child for a bad result.

Agree with all of this.

Plus, it’s not as simple as ‘start early, pass more’ as some natal boys on puberty blockers end up taller than they would’ve without intervention and some natal girls end up shorter and with significant and irreversible bone density issues.

All the famous trans people I’ve listed transitioned as adults, before blockers for GD existed (except Conchita who is NB and hasn’t, as far as I’m aware had any medical or surgical intervention at all).

I don’t think any could be described as a poor outcome in aesthetic terms and I think it’s rather rude to suggest that they’d look better if they started earlier.

Caroline Cossey was a BOND GIRL!

It’s much harder to do when one has longstanding careers, partners and more conservatively minded peers.

So, no your point doesn’t work.

So we are all just repressed transgender e people who are denying our true reality ?

Conservatively minded peers?

The first trans MP is a conservative
The first trans person to represent Britain in European Parliament was a UKipper.

The chair of conservative women in

The chair of conservative women in north and East Yorkshire is trans.

You seem to have a very limited idea about what trans people can do with their lives - you should do some research, older trans people are really not in the sadfaced situation you assume they are.

*It’s much harder to do when one has longstanding careers, partners and more conservatively minded peers.

So, no your point doesn’t work.*

The numbers of gay men and women have not changed so dramatically over time despite changing social norms. But 30% girls thinking they want to be boys? That's unprecedented.

Social contagion among teen girls is a well documented phenomenon. Any kind of behavior or disorder or illness that spikes at that kind of rate shouldn't be so glibly dismissed.

Key point here being "famous" trans people. These people are extreme outliers and you can't consider them representative of the general population. And I never said they didn't exist. Just that there was much less resources and help available. It might have been more accepting back then though considering the current climate sadly.

I had no idea what a trans person was until I was 16 and met one by chance. Today it's something that everyone is more aware of I think.

Also @Delphinium20 Jazz Jennings is someone who has basically been prostituted by her family as a public experiment. The way her family put her on display is what destroyed her health if anything.

They were famous = they were well known!

Yes trans people are very uncommon, no they are not new, no they were not hidden, yes they were accepted.

What has changed is social contagion and self ID.

April Ashley was part of an extremely high profile court case regarding legal status.

Poor Jazz, medically abused and then exploited by family for cash.
Parents who say their kids need puberty blockers so they can pass and then parade their kids around on TV and social media (ensuring everyone knows they trans) are batshit

the older someone is, on average, the less sympathetic they are to transgenderism regardless of these anecdotes.

The older they are the more reluctant to accept all the premises that some
transgender people and supporters put forward

As once grows up you see the world in all its complexity not just the simplistic a good versus evil

The world nuance is often mentioned yet the nuance of saying "you can dress how you like, call yourself what you like and I will defend your right to do so , I will defend your right to equal opportunity , I will defend your right to safety

but I will never accept you as a woman where sex actually relevant unless your sex is female"

@MadamAndTheAnts what do you mean "less sympathetic to transgenderism"?

Because as @midgemadgemodge says it seems less about letting someone dress however they like, call themselves what they want etc and live safely and more an expectation that we accept that a male can actually become a female because he wishes it.

Many people will never accept that. It's not an age thing or a right wing thing it's just basic facts.

Yep, acceptance was tripping along nicely - Nadia got 74% of the Big Brother vote.

Then the demand came that we jettison Darwinism completely and accept humans as like clown fish and the older and wiser amongst the general public went ‘Nah mate’.

Yeah, although if everyone is transgender, that kind of means that nobody is transgender. Which points up what a silly arse nonsense trans actually is.

I have teen DDs who are getting fed up with the hypocrisy of it all. They have friends and classmates with ridiculous demands and the older these kids get it's starting to be evident that making everything about your gender isn't cool. While kids are still #bekind to their faces, behind their backs there are a lot of annoyance and eye rolling.

Right now, plenty of teen girls watch Dylan Mulvaney because they can't stand the awful stereotypes represented. They think Dylan is a jerk and is mocking them. So, in teen fashion, they mock Dylan among themselves.

Young people aren't all on board. They have more social pressures than older people to conform. And they've learned how to pretend better.

I’ve had testosterone affecting my male body for fifty years, but I don’t think it’s reasonable for you to describe my body as ‘warped’ by it. Did you mean to insult men as creatures suffering from years of testosterone warping?

"Good result"
Sterile, weakened bones , often in pain and needing repeated surgery

Really ?

Stop thinking about superficial looks

Older people don't transition as much because they understand the risks and they also understand they don't need to

They can be their whole authentic self without changing anything and it's not worth getting upset with what narrow
Minded idiots think

Why, in particular, are you not okay with them taking hormones?

errr hair loss, weight gain, blood clots, heart disease, liver problems vaginal atrophy. For instance.