Help me deal with a transgender teen from a feminist perspective please

[starfishsunrise]

I have posted here occasionally under my usual user name.
The name I have now is from the LGBT boards. If anyone has time to pop over and look at my threads on there it will give a bit of background.
I’m hoping those with experience can help me. I know we have some adult transgender posters here.

My 16 year old son came out via a letter around New Year. I was stunned. There was not even the smallest clue. I remain convinced it’s a phase and there has been some internet influences

He then never mentioned it again, I tried once or twice but he wouldn’t really open up. It’s only when I said he need to buy suit for 6 th form that things came forward once again.
He needs to choose a 6th form. The choices are between a girls school and a boys school. The 6th forms are mixed but not very, most stay where they are but slightly more girls go to the boys than the other way.

My son wants to dress as a girl from the start and go to the girls school where he would have to make compromises in his subject choices.
I want him to change gradually, start by feminising his appearance and only change when he leaves for university.
I love him and want him to be happy. I just don’t see dressing as a girl as the answer. He’s very back and white. I used the phrase tiny bit autistic on my other post which unintentionally offended some. It was a shorthand for character traits.

I can’t find the words to express how this all makes me feel and why he doesn’t have to be one thing or another but how there is a spectrum of expression.
I am sure there are people who will be happier in a different body I’m not sure my son is one of them.

Would allowing him to go to a mainly girls school just be playing into this?

I am sure there are a couple of posters here who could give your resources for pro-affirmation orgs and websites. I'll leave that to them.

Here's a board set up by parents of trans-identifying young people who are gender critical, or at least in favour of watchful waiting. I'm not a member, but you may be able to find advice there: gendercriticalresources.com/Support/.

I hope everything works out for you and your child.

I would be inclined to delay sixth form for a year tbh. This is not from a feminist perspective, it's just me as a mum! When you say some internet influence, it's probably been absolutely massive. And also he's probably been groomed to think that if you aren't full on accepting, that is abusive.

So he's the one in charge here, in a way, because in two years time he can go his own way wrt physical treatments. So you would have to tread awfully carefully. Remember he is talking online to people all the time who are warning him about you.

I would try to get him away from these influences as a first task, b cause while it's fine to be wearing whatever clothes you like, there are irreversible harms associated with physical transition.

How to do that? Tough one. Holiday? Broken internet? Accidentally smashed phone?

He’s in the middle of GCSEs and I need to tread carefully. He is probably reading this thread as he is far more computer savvy than me.

Delaying 6th form not really an option as he needs to do something.
I have repeatedly told him I love him but I think he’s on a bandwagon that’s running away with him. It’s like a cult. He doesn’t talk much.
I need to explain to him he can’t feel like a girl because he has no idea what it’s like. He just needs to feel like himself.

From a feminist perspective, whichever school will NOT suggest he is entitled to go into the girls' loos, change with the girls for sports or take their places on the teams.

From a parental perspective, keep assuring him you love him for who he is, and that he can do and be whatever he wants in life (except where it disadvantages others).

If he reads thee threads, maybe the views of Curry or Miranda or Pidge might be of use to him.

Can you persuade him outside, off the computer? Get him dogwalking or volunteering or sailing or hedgetrimming, all stuff that uses the body and not the innermost feelings?

(Yes, I've 'misgendered' throughout. I wouldn't do that to a distressed child's face, but I find it so bloody confusing to use female pronouns for males and vice versa.)

He is talking to people online who are telling him not to trust you.

Oh, and do you have any sense of WHY he believes himself to be a girl? DS had a phase of this that resolved itself into a desire/need for colour and drama and books and furry animals in his life, rather than football and porn. (Sorry for crude generalizations.)

Would the girl's school even have him?

@starfishsunrise - You might not find my response all that useful but I want to say it anyway.

This: I love him and want him to be happy.

Whatever decision your child ultimately makes in the long run, I believe that they will look back on the coming months (and years) and see that you were there for them.

I am a 28 year old, socially transitioned transwoman and having spoken to members of my family other than my parents, it is clear that my parents knew something was different about me growing up and rather than trying to do what was best for me (i.e offering support and an environment where I could talk to them about what I felt was going on with me) instead chose to coerce me out of fear of them being humiliated (having a trans child THE SHAME!).

I came out to my parents last August. I no longer talk to them due to the abuse and certain actions they have taken. They have also ostracised themselves from the rest of the family at the detriment to my sister.

I agree with what others have said, try to get them offline and to open up. I did not have the internet the way it is now to learn about myself, as a result I internalised a lof of hate for myself. Having parents that would listen (not necessarily cave to every one of my wishes) would have gone a long way to changing my life. Conversely I was also not exposed to influential people looking to take advantage of my vulnerable and still developing identity. Especially since I am a naturally over-trusting person and it has bitten me many times.

I am not sure of the current 'at home' situation, but perhaps if you are committed to allowing them to change slowly (with non medical intervention and simple presentation) at 6th Form, then perhaps trial running it at home first could be an option? Allowing whatever presentation they choose at home.. Then presumably, if they have friends who are aware of the intention, let them meet up with their friends whilst presenting how they choose. This will at least give them a taster? It will also foster the trust that will help them open up to talk about it. 'We will allow this, but you have to open up and talk'?

I think that going STRAIGHT to full presentation as female for 6th form would be a mistake. Giving this trial run would let them build confidence and also allow them to explore themselves before making any life long commitments. Also offers an initial safety bubble of being 'at home only'. If that makes sense?

I apologise if they already do have these freedoms at home, I do not mean to assume they do not.. Please correct me if I have poorly judged the situation?

Support her in her transition. This has been shown to be highly beneficial as you can see from this recent study:

www.jaacap.org/article/S0890-8567%2816%2931941-4/fulltext

Which states:

These findings are in striking contrast to previous work with gender-nonconforming children who had not socially transitioned, which found very high rates of depression and anxiety.

You may also be worried that she will regret her transition, however, this is very unlikely as you can see from this meta study done by Cornell University which looked at all the peer-reviewed articles published in English between 1991 and June 2017 that assess the effect of gender transition on transgender well-being.

whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/%20what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-well-being-of-transgender-people%20/

Which found:

This search found a robust international consensus in the peer-reviewed literature that gender transition, including medical treatments such as hormone therapy and surgeries, improves the overall well-being of transgender individuals. The literature also indicates that greater availability of medical and social support for gender transition contributes to better quality of life for those who identify as transgender.

And:

4. Regrets following gender transition are extremely rare and have become even rarer as both surgical techniques and social support have improved. Pooling data from numerous studies demonstrates a regret rate ranging from .3 percent to 3.8 percent. Regrets are most likely to result from a lack of social support after transition or poor surgical outcomes using older techniques.

Thanks @NatLuc. You are just the sort of person I need to hear from. I am sorry your family are unsupportive of you. You write eloquently and if you were my child I would support you in your considered approach.
The sentence that stood out from your reply is that your parents obviously had a clue that something was happening. We have nothing. It’s not a butch and macho house by any sense. I think we are broad minded. Or at least we were...
What’s it like to be you? Do your face discrimination? Can you go to work and socialise easily? How did you know you wanted to be female and had it made you happier? Do you have a broad spectrum of friends? Do you look like a woman?Etc. If you can please answer here or PM me. I realise these are intrusive questions but I have no experience of this at all. Feel free to ignore if I have overstepped politeness.

I am glad you see my idea of a gentle transition. For me it’s the best way. Although my son my not see this. We have previously offered to buy clothes for home but he never pursued.
When I’m certain he is a she I will gladly say this is xx and now please call them zz but I’m a far, far from certain.

Thanks WAKAME. I will read more later. At this point I cannot say my son is gender non conforming as it’s just words. He has taken no action and not mentioned anything for the last several months.

Please be aware that physical transition involves irriverdible change. Here is a study showing outcomes after transition involving the entire (at the time) transgender and transexual population of Sweden. Here

You need to inform yourself hugely as your son will be getting a lot of misinformation. He may even think that he can change sex.
This is a community of parents you may find helpful.

Many kids think you can change sex, that a boy can get a womb transplant and have a baby, that an inverted penis functions like a vagina, or that a chunk of a girl's forearm will function like a penis. This misinformation is being spread online. It's so dangerous.

"Here is a study showing outcomes after transition involving the entire (at the time) transgender and transexual population of Sweden."

That study is often used as some sort of warning by people who haven't actually read it, or who have read it but haven't understood it, and occasionally by people who have read and understood it, but want to put out misinformation.

Essentially, the study notes that regret rates are extremely low "just over 2%". It also notes that trans people post transition are still at higher risk of suicide than cis people. It does however point out that:

"no inferences can be drawn as to the effectiveness of sex reassignment as a treatment for transsexualism. In other words, the results should not be interpreted such as sex reassignment per se increases morbidity and mortality. Things might have been even worse without sex reassignment. As an analogy, similar studies have found increased somatic morbidity, suicide rate, and overall mortality for patients treated for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.[39], [40] This is important information, but it does not follow that mood stabilizing treatment or antipsychotic treatment is the culprit."

For more on whether transition improves matter for trans people. see the 2017 Cornell University meta-study I linked to above.

As for "changing sex", it's important to understand that all human sexual characteristics exist on a spectrum between masculine and feminine extremes, and we are all a mixture (although most people have most of their characteristics more towards one end than the other).

Many human sexual characteristics are highly malleable, so if you take a trans girl who has been given puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, she will have a female skeletal structure, female musculature, female stature, female shoe size, voice pitch, hair patterns, fat distribution, lactating breasts etc etc. Pound for pound, she is vastly more female than male. So the idea that you can't "change sex" both misunderstand human sexual dimorphism and also greatly underestimates how malleable humans sexual characteristics can be.

@starfishsunrise - The only open avenue my parents ever gave me when I was maybe around 12 was as I was eating Sunday dinner they blindsided me with ‘ are you gay?’ To which I squeaked ‘I like girls’. It was never mentioned again. However after I came out, it is clear that even had I been gay this would have been a problem. As ‘we could have forgiven you for being gay’. Not that that being gay is ever something that should need forgiveness.

Honestly? I have not experienced and serious discrimination.

I work as a woman, I am given the courtesy of being treated ‘as one’ like any other woman I work with. To my knowledge no one has a problem with me.

Most of my friends are Non-LGBT, I actually have more and better friends now than I did before I came out. The only real hardship I suffered (excluding parents) was having to lose my loving girlfriend. She knew about my issues for three years. The line in the sand was that if I ever wanted/needed to transition then we couldn’t be together. It was all incredibly amicable.

As someone else on here mentioned in another thread, I am probably not the best judge as to whether ‘I look like’ a girl’ or ‘pass’ but to put it into perspective, early in my transition and before when I would just go out on nights out with my girlfriend and other friends as who I am now, I used to hide my face, hang my head in shame, blush, feel incredibly anxious, and I could tell when people clocked me. Now though.. I genuinely can’t tell if they noticed that I wasn’t born female or if they are just noticing me.

I knew from a young age that my body was not congruent with what I felt I should have. I knew that people with specific genitals where treated and dressed one way and for me, the want to express myself the same way as girls was to disguise the discrepancy between my body and theirs. As I got older and puberty hit, dysphoria kicked up several gears. To the point where at 27 I couldn’t take it anymore. Transition has made me immeasurably happier.

My idea on this is as follows (though many will disagree with me perhaps?):

Symptoms of low Testosterone or High estrogen in males: low mood, depression, lethargy to name but a few.

I was all of those things and more.

Post HRT: I am happier, still dealing with certain struggles of course, but psychologically; I have a peace and a quiet in my mind that I never had before HRT. Physically, I hate my body less and I am learning to love it and it’s.. uniqueness more every day. (Maybe I romantacised this too much?)

What I’m saying is that Estrogen and flatlined Testosterone SHOULD have made me the most miserable and depressed ‘man’ around and yet I am happy.

Basically yes male puberty has done damage I will never be able to undo. But HRT has minimised this.

I am NOT trying to persuade you allow your child to start HRT. Just want to stress that. I just mean that even at 27, it was not too late for me to go through a ‘second’ puberty (even if the changes I have attained are purely cosmetic). Please I hope no one takes offence to me phrasing it that way..

You have absolutely not overstepped at all. I am very open with my transness. I make no effort to hide my history. I might try to hide who I was to joe public by ‘passing’ as much as possible.. but friends, family and colleagues (and apparently polite MNers now heh), I am very open to.

I think that it is not at all unusual to hide all signs of being trans so I wouldn’t say it is strange you didn’t know.. but obviously I can only know from my side of the fence. My aunt and I recently had a wine fuelled chat about how I was nothing like my cousin, I was gentle and far more sensitive. But obviously now I’m going in to the realms of stereotypes that prove nothing.

I thought I hid it pretty well but clearly not is what I’m trying to say with this point because my aunt said she wasn’t surprised and when she told my cousin his reaction was ‘well that explains a lot’.

I hope this has helped? And please feel free to ask whatever you like but I don’t pretend to be the expert on transness.. I can only suggest what would have helped in my case.

Either way, you choosing to love your child one way or another is what truly matters and THAT is what is going to give them the best hope of being well adjusted no matter what. It is lovely to know that you are trying to take a balanced approach I would have given anything for.

Apologies for the text wall..

"This misinformation is being spread online. It's so dangerous."

Most trans people are pretty well informed on these matters and that includes trans children. Certainly, if they get to the stage of being diagnosed with gender dysphoria, then the limitations will be explained to them.

Much more dangerous is the misinformation that transition leads to higher suicide rates or worse mental health etc etc. The science simply does not bear that out, and teaching it to trans kids can get in the way of them receiving treatment for an extremely distressing condition.

Don't take my word for it though - read the science, including the Swedish study. You will find it all points in the same direction.

starfishsunrise I think watchful waiting and taking about how your son can express himself however makes him happy, perhaps at home first as suggested, is the way to go.

I just wanted to address something that WAKAME said:

"if you take a trans girl who has been given puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, she will have a female skeletal structure, female musculature, female stature, female shoe size, voice pitch, hair patterns, fat distribution, lactating breasts etc etc. Pound for pound, she is vastly more female than male. So the idea that you can't "change sex" both misunderstand human sexual dimorphism and also greatly underestimates how malleable humans sexual characteristics can be."

It seems clear that secondary sexual characteristics can be affected by cross sex hormones, and altered to have the appearance of the opposite sex. I seriously doubt the statement that boys who transition before puberty could lactate. That seems a claim too far. What a person in this position will end up with is a feminised male body. They have not changed sex and they are no more female than before transition.

as for "changing sex", it's important to understand that all human sexual characteristics exist on a spectrum between masculine and feminine extremes, and we are all a mixture

This is what I mean. Your son may read this and think he can change sex. He can't. What this means is that hormones could make breasts or a beard grow, and some men have lower voices than other men, and that some women can have babies and some can't. None of which has any bearing on whether a person changes sex.

If your son is reading that sort of thing then he probably believes he can change sex. He can't.

starfishsunrise it's incredibly difficult what you're going through and I think you're approaching it the right way - watchful waiting is far less harmful than instant affirmation and hormones.

(I'm experiencing this in my own family though not with my own child thankfully and it's fraught with far too many opportunities to get it wrong.)

What WAKAME posted are the opinions of individual practitioners btw - internationally the consensus is that there is no consensus as to whether instant affirmation & early hormones are less harmful than the tried and tested wait and see approach. What is missing from those quoted studies is the control group of transgender youths whose parents accepted them for what they are but who adopted a much more cautious approach.

Of course, one could say that we actually do know from over 40 years of GD practice that transgender children who are accepted by their parents but wait before socially and then medically transitioning did very well indeed.

As for what you can do, I have a child the same age and have - for different reasons - had to curb their internet usage. I would absolutely recommend cutting your son off from chat groups/forums/messageboards for at least a month and encourage interaction with people in real life. We agree contracts with our kids when we do massive interventions like this with rewards and consequences as this makes it easier to stick to for all involved (plus if it's in writing there's no "I never agreed to this" or "that's not what you said" etc). But you'll know much better what works with your child and what doesn't.

If cutting him off doesn't work for whatever reason, I would consciously, intently, deliberately and constantly counteract the misinformation kids get on those websites (transgendertrend has a lot of parents who have shared their experiences at having to do this because the information their kid got from those websites was so damaging).

Being trans is currently considered cool amongst a seemingly quite specific subset of the teen population (and I often wonder how the truly dysphoric children feel about that), so social contagion is now being discussed even by the docs from the Tavistock clinic.

What I do know is that the kids coach each other online about exactly what to say to parents and doctors to achieve the desired result (word for word is not rare, neither are complete scripts they've successfully used).

In your position I'd also go the home first - then socially outside school - then school/college/work route. I'd be concerned too that your DC has not shown any interest in taking you up on your offer of clothes. From what I've seen with children with severe gender dysphoria, they don't tend to reject such an opportunity, but maybe he's embarrassed?

NatLuc thank you for your openness and honesty. It's very interesting to read about your individual journey and I am glad that transitioning has brought you peace.

If you think, even a little, that your son may be autistic you should follow that up. Most of us who post here believe strongly that gender is a social construct and my experience with an autistic dd who presents as masculine very much confirms this. She experiences gendered expectations as external, coercive, oppressive (which they are but most of us don't see it so clearly until we have been educated to see it). I wasn't gender critical before so it wasn't something I taught her about. I have found that colluding with my dd in her rejection of ALL stereotypes and teaching her that male and female brains are pretty much identical at birth has helped a lot. Children who are autistic are disproportionately likely to be gender non conforming and in today's era, trans. If he is autistic he will have a feeling that he thinks differently from others and he will know that he doesn't fit other people's gendered expectations.

Also very important, as Natluc' s post, to make clear that you will be perfectly happy with your ds being gay, straight, bi or a-sexual. If you've ever suggested you hope for grandchildren or a DIL you may need to do some unravelling of those ideas. Again, my dd receives lots of strong messages from us about lifestyle choices and how all of the above are great. We have no hopes she needs to fulfill other than she accepts herself, nurtures herself and is kind to others

as for "changing sex", it's important to understand that all human sexual characteristics exist on a spectrum between masculine and feminine extremes, and we are all a mixture

I've read so many variations on this theme from trans people who seem absolutely desperate to get people to believe this. It is clearly something that they have to convince themselves of for their own peace of mind. I wish they could live and let live.