Sorry for the long post but I want to capture this – and it’s as good a place as any.
The Mermaids gender charity have case studies printed on their website – and in each the parent, the mum, talks about their child liking the clothes, toys, hair of the opposite sex. This stereotyping – and it is stereotyping – is part of all of these stories.
I've removed the names as Mermaids don't seem to have changed them.
K, 40, is mum to A, nine and E, seven, who transitioned to live as a girl 2015. Here K, who is married to A, 46, explains how Mermaids have helped her family.
“From the age of two we started to notice that E didn’t quite fit in. I thought that my son was going to be gay, but it became apparent that there was something more than that…“E would look longingly at other little girls who were wearing dresses or skirts, and every time I picked her up from the childminder she would be have raided the dressing up box for a princess costume. She would come to the door to meet me in a sparkly pink dress and a tiara with a big smile on her face.
J, 40, is mum to T, nine. T was born female but began to identify as a male from the age of three. J lives with husband M, 40, and their daughter E, ten. Here she explains how Mermaids have helped her family.
“I’ve never brought my children up to particularly conform to gender stereotypes, so when T developed an obsession for Fireman Sam at the age of three I didn’t have a problem with it. He never wanted to wear a dress and rejected anything that was pink or flowery…“He had gorgeous blonde hair which fell in curly ringlets, and he begged me to let him have it cut short, in a boy’s style. I finally agreed and just before the new school term started I took him to the hairdresser, and reassured myself as it fell away that it was only hair, and that it would grow back. But T absolutely loved it.
L, 42, lives with son J, 12. She sought help from Mermaids after J told her he was transgender in July 2015. L, who is divorced, is also mum to H, 9
“Growing up I’d call J the anti-girl, as from being very small he never wanted to do anything that could be classed as at all girly. “I never bought my children gender-specific toys or pink or blue clothes, so the fact Jack loved Bob the Builder didn’t bother me at all. But I remember having to bribe him at the age of four with Bob toys in order to get him to wear a bridesmaid’s dress for my brother’s wedding.
D, 47 and P, 49, are parents to S, 14 who came out as transgender in 2014 and L, 12.
“But looking back I can see there were pointers. S always wanted to play with the dressing up box, and she always wanted to be a princess. She always wanted long hair too… When she got to the final year of primary school a natural split started to happen. Boys would sit on one side of the classroom and the girls on the other, and S began to be more aware that she didn’t feel like a boy and she didn’t want to sit with the boys or play with them.
C, 46, lives with husband M, 47 and sons W 14 and J, 11. W came out as transgender when he was 11. Here C explains the difference Mermaids has made to her family.
“There was always something not quite right for W, and from a very young age he didn’t really fit in. He was never a girly girl at all, and when I insisted he wore a dress to a family event when he was about eight he became hysterical at the prospect. I knew this wasn’t just a tantrum, he was genuinely distressed but wasn’t old enough to be able to tell me why it felt so wrong.
A non mermaids parent [for some reason quoted there]
I used to think I had a little boy. A lovely, sweet, feminine little boy who loved to wear skirts and dresses and twirl around the living room. Sometimes he would even ask us to call him a girl. Just pretending, we figured. How cute.
A, 45, is mum to C, 15 and O, six and the family live in Y. C transitioned from female to male when he was 12.
As soon as he could express himself it was clear that C saw himself as a boy. When he was learning to write in nursery the first words he wrote were ‘Mr’ and ‘he’. He would never wear girls knickers, instead he always wanted underpants, and the longest he ever had his hair was in a bob, which he hated. When I let him have it cut into a crop he was thrilled. All his friends at school were boys and every activity he wanted to do was typically something that boys would be more interested in.
From there, the story goes the same way - the child expresses distress (at onset of puberty or otherwise) and the parent searches in vain for an explanation - until transition is found (online, or sometimes via the Mermaids charity). Mermaids promote puberty blockers, after which around 100% of children then move onto cross sex hormones, causing certain sterility.
This is not just like being gay.