Daughter with gender dysphoria

[MrsRochester12]

Apologies if this is not the correct place for this thread but I’m lost and quite broken.

My DD15 who has high functioning ASD is convinced she is trans and is actually a boy. She has thought this for nearly 2 years. We ignored it for quite a while and to be honest hoped it’s was just a phase so we didn’t take it very seriously but recently she’s been getting very angry with us because we won’t use the boy’s name she has chosen etc. We are trying to use gender neutral language as a compromise but it’s difficult to always get it right. I’ve taken her to get her hair cut and she’s always worn trousers , hoodie etc. We’ve had huge rows recently because I can’t say she is a boy. I’ve tried to calmly explain my point of view and that whilst I accept that she doesn’t feel like a girl she can’t actually turn into a boy. I’ve also explained that I think a lot of it is due to her ASD but again I just get screamed at. Her therapist now wants to support her in talking to us which I am dreading. I don’t know why I’m writing this here except that I can’t stop crying.

Hope you feel there's some useful advice from the mainly thoughtful posts OP? We're at a stage where the sheer numbers of teenage girls (especially with ASD) wanting to transition provides clear evidence of the social contagion nature of all this.

The stranglehold that the lobby groups have on the education system is a major block with schools, just like parents, being terrified of cries of transphobia rather than terrified of children falling down a rabbit hole into a lifetime of drugs, surgery and permanently altered bodies.
Are there others in her school who say they're trans?

Could you write to the therapist, in advance of any meeting briefly pointing out your concerns about the life altering nature of her demands, the levels of social contagion in the school (if there are others) and explain that you're adopting a responsible position of safeguarding your DD using watchful waiting, allowing her to dress as she pleases and while you'll listen in any meeting, will not be enabling any body altering binders, drugs etc?

Thank you for everyone who has taken the time to reply. I’m looking at the websites that have been suggested. I’m so glad that I am not the only one who wouldn’t just say - okay then - crack on. As I have tried to explain to her it’s my job to protect her.

She wants to be a boy
She thinks she is a boy because she feels so different to the girls around her

She needs to understand that girl only means biology , that she is stuck with her biology , and that there is nothing about her being a girl biologically that means she is wrong ,

Can she prove she is a boy? Can she do hundreds of press ups? Write her name in Piss standing up?

I hope she isn't being bullied or denied opportunity because she is a girl with masculine traits . But I suspect both

Hi MrsRochester12, you might find this podcast helpful - gender-a-wider-lens.captivate.fm/ and there's also lots of useful information on this website - genspect.org/

(am trans)

Firstly, the wait list for children's gender clinic is so long that they'll easily be an adult by the time they're seen and assessed and will be in charge of their own healthcare..so no point worrying about hormones and all that..and frankly, if they're still saying they're trans by then, it's 97-99.5% that they are and will remain so.

Secondly, clashing heads on ideologies is utterly pointless and will just make your relationship with your child more difficult..we keep on seeing it and it always deleterious to both sides.

Thirdly, yes there is a raised incidence of people with ASD in the trans community (3-6% IIRC), but as one of my friends who is trans and autistic (and started transition ?14 years ago would tell me) it doesn't mean they're not trans.

Apologies for hideous typos and formatting, I clearly need more coffee

Firstly, the wait list for children's gender clinic is so long that they'll easily be an adult by the time they're seen and assessed and will be in charge of their own healthcare..so no point worrying about hormones and all that..and frankly, if they're still saying they're trans by then, it's 97-99.5% that they are and will remain so.

Please don't throw numbers around like this without any sources or evidence. There is a growing number of young female detransitioners, many of whom (like Keira Bell) had no medical intervention until they were 16+. The truth is that nobody really knows how many of these young women who have started to identify as trans during adolescence will eventually detransition.

If you dig out the recent statement by a group of transmen ( trans experience in females and males is different. Sex you know, affects so much)

They seem to me to clearly say that mental /societal support could prevent a significant amount of physical translation to the benefit of those afflicted

@Helleofabore

Difficult because if my child said they felt trapped in the wrong body and wanted to be referred to as a boy, I wouldn’t hesitate to do so as it is important to them. Why does it bother you so much?

Because as a parent, OP has a far better knowledge of their child than anyone else.

Because as a parent, it is OP’s role to look further than immediate gratification of one request to see how this might play out in the future.

Because, as the most recent studies have shown, affirming only treatment is not the best approach for all young people with gender dysphoria. I am happy to link the most recent from Australia if you would like. NSW, at least, has done some in-depth case progression reviews. Something that GIDS here seem to not have been able to do properly.

I’d be very interested in reading those studies please

Here is the Australian paper.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26344041211010777

Published April 22, 2021
Kasia Kozlowska, Georgia McClure et al

Australian children and adolescents with gender dysphoria: Clinical presentations and challenges experienced by a multidisciplinary team and gender service

Part of the conclusion:

Our study also found that despite the high rates of family conflict, relationship breakdowns, parental mental illness, and maltreatment (see Table 3)—and our own clinical perspective that both individual and family work were indicated for the majority of families—few families rated themselves as being in a clinically severe range on self-report (SCORE-15). Coupled with the dominant sociopolitical discourse—the gender affirmative model that prioritizes the medical treatment pathway—it is not surprising that the large majority of children and families were not motivated to engage in or to remain engaged in ongoing therapy. These data bring three important phenomena into focus. First, when children and families were given the space and structure to tell the child’s developmental story—nested in the story of the family—they were able to identify and provide a detailed narrative of the key issues that had contributed to the child’s presentation and distress. Without this space and structure, the issues remain undeclared and unaddressed. Second, some families—but also some clinicians—function within a non-holistic (non-biopsychosocial) framework where the child’s developmental experiences are disconnected from their clinical presentation. This non-holistic framework is likely to promote a healthcare delivery model that dehumanizes the child (by not examining the child’s and family’s lived experience) and that promotes medical solutions (correcting the identity/body mismatch) for a problem that is much more complex. Third, as noted earlier, our experience suggests that, insofar as the gender affirmative model is taken as equivalent to medical intervention, clinicians (including ourselves) who work in gender services are coming under increasing pressure to put aside their own holistic (biopsychosocial) model of care, and to compromise their own ethical standards, by engaging in a tick-the-box treatment process. Such an approach does not adequately address a broad range of psychological, family, and social issues and puts patients at risk of adverse future outcomes and clinicians at risk of future legal action.

And here are a few more links that you might find interesting too.

genderreport.ca/the-swedish-u-turn-on-gender-transitioning/

arms.nice.org.uk/resources/hub/1070905/attachment

And this one acknowledges the issues with bone density in female transitioners after puberty blockers.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6709704/

There is lots stored on the Break it Down for me thread. I think you will even find a paper or article on Dr Steemsta, the Dutch clinician attributed to progressing the affirming only treatment, stating that in consideration of the current cohort being mostly young female transitioners which have a different motivation for transition and have significantly different pyschological profiles, that they DON'T support affirming only treatment for that group.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3145470-Break-it-down-for-me?pg=27

OP, one of the problems with autism is the rigid, stubborn, black and white thinking.
This is why the transgender movement is so dangerous for our autistic youngsters - once they get a bee in their bonnet about being the wrong sex, it is very hard to dislodge it.
The trans thing is superficially attractive to them as an explanation for why they never “fit in” with their NT girls peer group:
“I don’t understand female social behaviour, I’m freaked out by puberty - I must be a boy, then”
When really it should be: “I don’t fit in - I must be autistic/feminist/gay” as appropriate.
This will time and patience to unpick.
May I recommend my autistic daughter’s FB group “Gender critical autistics”? The autistic posters there support each other to reject the transgender narrative.
Your DD may accept this from fellow autistics when she won’t from you. Good luck.

@OldCrone

Firstly, the wait list for children's gender clinic is so long that they'll easily be an adult by the time they're seen and assessed and will be in charge of their own healthcare..so no point worrying about hormones and all that..and frankly, if they're still saying they're trans by then, it's 97-99.5% that they are and will remain so.

Please don't throw numbers around like this without any sources or evidence. There is a growing number of young female detransitioners, many of whom (like Keira Bell) had no medical intervention until they were 16+. The truth is that nobody really knows how many of these young women who have started to identify as trans during adolescence will eventually detransition.

Or many of the other detrans voices.

Many of which completed transitioning as late teens or adults.

I agree, this advice being given to a parent of a young female is probably not taking the growing voices of detransitioners into account.

There is a difference between the male transition experience and the female transition experience and that rarely gets acknowledged.

if they're still saying they're trans by then, it's 97-99.5% that they are and will remain so

The thing is, that might have been true historically, when transitioners were very rare and had to be very determined. I don't think you can say yet whether it's true of the recent greatly increased numbers of transitioners.

The figures used for the GRA were about 5000 trans people nationwide, so a ballpark of 100 per year. Quite possibly 99 of those would have done the right thing for them, and 1 would regret it. But if you look at 4000 per year now coming forward to gender clinics, how do we know whether it's 99% of those who will be happier, or only the original desperate 99 people, with over 3900 now regretting it?

The upswing is just too recent for good stats on long-term outcomes.

Indeed MoreRainThatAnyYet

The thing is, that might have been true historically, when transitioners were very rare and had to be very determined. I don't think you can say yet whether it's true of the recent greatly increased numbers of transitioners.

It is probably also an inconvenient truth that was discovered in the study I have linked below.

Strangely, many people overlook this study which was posted by a poster back in March (although it did not 'quite' highlight what they thought it did, but it was interesting in other ways).

Effects of Medical Interventions on Gender Dysphoria and Body Image: A Follow-Up Study. 30th August 2017

The aim of this study from the European Network for the Investigation of Gender Incongruence is to investigate the status of all individuals who had applied for gender confirming interventions from 2007 to 2009

The main objective of follow-up on the cohort was to provide a description of the current status of all applicants after 4 to 6 years after clinical entry and describing participants with and without medical transition

135 natal males (119 living in the female role, 12 in the male role, 4 did not report their current gender role) and 66 natal females (60 living in the male role, 5 in the female role, 1 did not report a current gender role)

So if you work the sums... 8.88% of males and 8.33% of the females detransitioned (this does not include those who did not answer the question which if the answer was to detransition would make these figures higher). And in Figure 3. 22.2% of those who socially transitioned, detransitioned.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5580378/

So, I even now question the 'lack of detransition' rhetoric pushed by some posters in regards to historical transition rates. I suspect, and it is just my thinking, that detransitioners have been silenced for many reasons for a very long time.

Hence, I also question this

if they're still saying they're trans by then, it's 97-99.5% that they are and will remain so

Please let us know where you found those statistics so we can also look at them.

15 female ASD is bang on ripe for ROGD. It will be because everything they read on line affirms them.

It's ok to gently say they can present how they like and they can change their name but they are not and never will be male because the only thing that makes a person male is the male body they were born which was determined at conception.

@Babdoc

OP, one of the problems with autism is the rigid, stubborn, black and white thinking. This is why the transgender movement is so dangerous for our autistic youngsters - once they get a bee in their bonnet about being the wrong sex, it is very hard to dislodge it. The trans thing is superficially attractive to them as an explanation for why they never “fit in” with their NT girls peer group: “I don’t understand female social behaviour, I’m freaked out by puberty - I must be a boy, then” When really it should be: “I don’t fit in - I must be autistic/feminist/gay” as appropriate. This will time and patience to unpick. May I recommend my autistic daughter’s FB group “Gender critical autistics”? The autistic posters there support each other to reject the transgender narrative. Your DD may accept this from fellow autistics when she won’t from you. Good luck.

This is why being autistic is a highly relevant factor - the focused thinking, rigid thought patterns means that autistic kids, my autistic teens at least, are vulnerable and susceptible to this ideology.

@MrsRochester12 we are in the same position, my ASD daughter is 18 however and threatening to take medical intervention soon. Because she is legally an adult. Despite being told infinite times that ASD kids are less mature than their peers, my daughter is deemed adult enough to embark on irreversible medication :(

Fuck the people who are selling the bullshit that changing your gender (indefinable, ephemeral feelz) will make our teens happy

To those that think we should be encouraging our children to undergo medication and unnecessary surgery (and it's mostly the young girls and women undertaking "top" surgery (fucking call it a double mastectomy and not some easy-sounding euphemism) and NOT the boys and men having their dicks cut off ), transitioning is not the guaranteed solution to their mental health situation. Stop selling that lie.

It is no consolation that the NHS waiting lists are many years long because there are unethical fuckers out on the Internet who are willing to sell medication to our vulnerable teens, with next to no safeguarding. Be careful of that OP.

@MrsRochester12 is the therapist your daughter is seeing an autism specialist? Are they affirming your daughter's trans identity? If so, can you have a discussion with them to make them aware of your apprehension?

OP I'm sorry you're in this situation. Apologies for my anger, I'm very angry on behalf of my child.

to all affected by these harmful ideas

Just a handhold from me op.

I'd feel the same.

Have you got a teacher who can help you express your concerns to the therapist?

bayswatersupport.org.uk/gender-issues-for-autistic-girls/

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/autism-and-gender-dysphoria-1-hour-webinar-with-lucy-tickets-161203607329