DS trans - I am GC - how to talk and avoid conflict

[Inapickleiam]

Hi, name changed for this for obvious reasons.

DS has been at Uni for a year. Had a great time. Told me at Christmas he is, I think, pansexual, i.e. attracted to a person, could be boy, girl, whatever. This didn’t bother / surprise me. He now has a GF who is trans.

This summer a few things have been different and I had a suspicion he might be planning to say he is trans too and some other things have now occurred that have confirmed this suspicion & he is now using a female name at Uni.

We haven’t spoken about it so I want to get my thoughts and words straight. I am GC, he knows that, we have argued about it before.

Maybe we won’t speak about it, he will be a girl a Uni and stay the same at home & maybe this is for the best?

Ultimately I love and adore him and really don’t want there to be issues between us. I would struggle to accept calling him anything other than a man, because I just don’t ‘believe’ it. My biggest fear is medical intervention and doing anything that is permanent or might damage him. Secondary fears are the consequences to his family, career, relationships, plus, I guess, a belief that it is a fad, a trend, he is going along with the crowd, he doesn’t actually have a medical condition of gender disphoria. I am also acutely aware that the trans community is very welcoming and almost encourages estrangement from disapproving parents and I desperately do not want this to happen to us but fear if I fully expressed my views, I would be pushing him into the arms of this, well, it feels like a cult.

So, I think I am looking for advice on how to tackle these conversations.

Please help, I have read this back and know I sound fairly calm but actually, I am having palpitations and sleepiness nights over this!

thanks.

Btw autism diagnosis would not be given just because someone was trying to pretend not to be trans as a child. They (the diagnostic procedures) are really quite sophisticated.

My son doesn't do sleepovers btw. He can't handle sharing space with people for that long.

Well I am very sorry you felt the need to be "stealth gay." There's no shame in being a gay person.

Wtf is "performing male?" Why does he/ did he have to perform male to be male? How sexist are you?

As it happens, choosing from a wide variety of available toys to play trains as a toddler is a) quite male and b) very typical for some autistic kids. Thomas the tank engine is an incredibly common early special interest in autistic boys. He also liked cars that run on tracks and construction toys, specifically kid knex. He showed no interest in any "female gendered" toys either, despite having free access to them (and a little brother who loved playing with a dolls house).

Do you not know anything about autism, as an autistic person? Special interests are NOT dissociative. They are a symptom of monotropism in autism. Autistic brains are the brains of specialists. My son's special interests have been very typical of autistic men - Thomas the tank engine, Pokemon, and computer gaming as he has got older. He's just starting to vibe with D and D.

I can't believe you think special interests in autism are dissociative and indicative of gender discomfort. That's really horrified me.

Your posts are making me very sad.

You don't have to roleplay effeminacy to be a gay person. You don't have to perform maleness to be a guy.

You think my thinking is rigid?!

My son got confused because he's autistic. He doesn't fit in well with NT people. He lives so much online. For a while it mattered to him why he didn't fit in any more, why his primary school friends had melted away. He went online to try to find out why and found a community telling him that if he wasn't doing "boy" properly - if he wasn't wanting to date girls, smoke weed and hang out in the park, if he wasn't interested in wearing the correct clothes or the correct trainers - maybe it's because he isn't a boy.

He dabbled in a change of name and shaved his very hairy legs and arms, but was never very proactive. We went along with the name change. I offered to show him how to do makeup but he didn't care. He never wanted to alter his clothing.

Over time, and because of his one amazing autistic friend who kept visiting and was an incredible support throughout his depression, he became much more settled in understanding that he doesn't fit in with the NT friends from his childhood because he is autistic, not because he isn't male. He does not want to be that kind of guy, anyway, so the sadness is gone. He now moves almost exclusively in autistic circles, is happily writing an epic role play computer game, has not shaved his limbs for years, never mentions his former female name (changed his email address back on his own), and wears a beard. He has long hair because he uses it as a shield when forced out to NT world, and because he knows that these symbols of masculinity and feminity are just that.

"male" is a larp. its a show and dance of the same sort shulamith described the feminine role as. if it comes natively you internalise it, and it becomes you. if it doesnt gel, you wind up with a disconnect. a gap in your mask of social identity in which something else peers out.

You see you are so close to getting it, here.
Yes, masculinity is a construct. Gendered roles are to a certain extent a construct, based in biology and hormonal influences (females being more drawn to nurture on average at population level, because of female hormones and socialisation, and males more drawn to conflict for example, because testosterone).

The difference is, GC people believe your sex defines whether you are male or female, not how effectively you larp being masculine or feminine. You can be a very effeminate male, or a butch female, and yet you still are that sex.

You've lost me there, too many long words.

There are two types of sexed bodies. Those with the design intention to produce ova - these are females. Those with the design intention to produce sperm - these are male.

Anything else is your personality and doesn't change your sex.

If it makes someone adult happier to live "as if" they are the opposite sex, that's up to them. I just don't believe they are "actually" that sex.

Above in reply to yours of 23.43

and you have missed that i have effectively articulated that sex is a nonsense concept, one that ill fits the actual reality of human sexual differentiation. crude anatomy means little in the face of differing neural reality without the constraining force of binary gender. "trans" is a wedge down the concept of gender itself, which is a social reality that exists to paint over the reality of non-binary sexual differentiation

No. You haven't effectively articulated that sex is a nonsense concept.
You seem to constantly conflate sex and gender.
Sex is binary. There are only 2 sexes. One way to reproduce as mammals.

No such thing as a gender binary as gender is made up nonsense.

You seem to think that individual personality magically transcends the confines of your sexed body.

See, I think it's his autism that makes him different (and made him vulnerable to the trans message).

You think it's not your autism but being "trans" that makes you different.

Both of you had a sense of disconnect from the expectations of teenage maleness. You just reached different conclusions about the root cause.

Good luck to you anon I wish you peace. I have enjoyed our discussion and respect you for engaging so thoughtfully. Now I need to sleep!

What stood to me most is that you said you don't understand his motivation or reason. Understanding that feels like the most important thing to me, alongside maintaining and building trust to try and encourage him to feel like its safe to talk to you about it more. I feel like you need that to help position yourself as best you can to look after him

Having a biological sex is just a means to an end. To reproduce.

It doesn't matter how it's dressed. The same way as a male dog is a male dog no matter what breed they are. They all look different and their owners can further change their appearances but all male dogs have one thing in common. They're male.

It's the same with humans but as we are our own owners we get to choose our outward appearance.

Sorry. Another person who doesn't think you've successfully articulated that at all.

Sex isn't a concept. It's a biological fact.

No one can possibly successfully articulate that sex is a nonsense concept, because it isn't. Everyone has a sex.

The rest is navel gazing bollocks.

Oh dear, someone’s been reading a load of nonsense 😂😂😂😜

@usuallyanon you are describing personality. Not being trans. Noone knows how anyone else really feels so there is no way anyone can really know what being male or female feels like. Biology is real and so is sex as in you have a body, but it is mostly meaningless.
Sometimes because men have testosterone which makes them bigger, stronger and more sexually dominant, spaces have to be single sex. Otherwise it does not matter at all, wear what you want, present how you want. I don't even really believe in sexuality as an extreme, straight people occasionally fancy someone of their sex and vice versa. All personality. All bodies are good and perfect, you cannot be born wrong. But your body dictates nothing about your interests or behaviour on an individual level.

Mind if I ask how things are going with you @Inapickleiam. I’m finding this very difficult with my own son.