If you are gender critical what would you do if your child said they were trans?

[Titsywoo]

That is the situation we find ourselves in with our 17 year old autistic son. We are struggling to find the right thing to do. Both DH and I don't feel he is actually in the wrong body - he never showed one sign of that till 4 or 5 months ago.

What would you do?

Sorry if people don't feel this is the right board for this but I don't want to discuss my son specifically just how people who are GC would deal with the situation if their own child (or other family member/friend) was to start down this worrying path?

Depends on how their autism presents. My Ex was austistic and he had very inflexible thinking. His ideas were always right and any attempt to discuss another perspective was always met with instant rebuttal.

With someone like my Ex, there would be no point even trying to discuss it.

Lots of sage advice above (and can identify with the "crying in private" a lot), but I also tried very gently to poke around the "why" in conversation, and ended up with a very emotional but (I think) helpful discussion around the fact that DS's issues weren't really about gender at all, and that however he identified, presented, referred to himself, he'd still be him- all his worries and problems would still be there and it wouldn't be a magic band aid. I think (hope) it landed, but let's see....

Keep it small. I remember some friends who were very concerned that their 3 year old would be jealous of their new baby. He very quickly learned that he only had to say I hate … for both parents to move in and give him lots and lots of attention. I begged them to ignore it but they felt that they needed to acknowledge his distress. Those kids are adult now and still competing.
I was in your situation and it was horrible. I never raised it, but if my yp did, I tried to do the friendly open questions and be neutral thing. So when he says that he is trans, or a girl, ask him what that means, and how he knows, and how long he’s known. If his answers aren’t true, ie if he says he’s always been a girl, show your confusion that this isn’t your recollection. So when my girl came from school all fired up about transphobia, I asked her to tell me what had happened. She just goggled at me, and then muttered pronouns. I’m afraid I did laugh, and asked how the nasty pronouns had hurt her.
I don’t think trans people are ridiculous. But I do think that a socially immature teenager with no experience of relationships, and quite a hazy sense of self, announcing that they are the opposite sex, or non binary or Demi or whatever, is ridiculous. Now mine is out of her teens, and knows that she is not trans, but a good trans ally, I do share my views with her. If i had to do it again, I would be more forthright, but also even more low-key.

@Titsywoo Thank you for posting and thank you to everyone who has responded.

I am in this situation and can’t talk to many people IRL about it. ‘Like walking on fire and through eggshells’ is a brilliant way of describing it.

I'm sorry to read this @Midgegreenstreet it sounds so hard.

I totally acknowledge unless you've been through it, which I haven't, we just don't know.
Also our answers are dependent on what we know about our own children, our relationship and family dynamic.

Some children are more sensitive, vulnerable and need an indirect gentle approach some are more robust and will tolerate direct challenge.
The age really impacts response too. And their social situation. How entrenched are they in a peer culture or is it likely quite transitory.

I hope things are improving for you and your son.

I'd laugh at them.

If any of my younger children had announced that they were trans/NB, I think their siblings and step-siblings would have delivered reality checks rather more emphatically than I might have done.

it's hard to generalise. I'd have different approaches depending on the child's age, sex, sexuality, and whether they might be autistic or similar etc.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t real or serious, just that there seems to be a social aspect to how distress manifests.

This is so, so true. There has been a lot of good academic research about how mental illness throughout history and across different cultures, tends to manifest in culturally specific and even culturally 'acceptable' ways.

For example, in the Middle Ages it might have been hearing the voices of the Virgin Mary or uncontrollable dancing or laughing (the uncontrollable dancing was definitely a thing and some folklorists think the story of the Pied Piper is actually a mythic interpretation of this phenom). In later centuries, demonic possession. Demonic possession is a way that mental illness can be manifested in certain communities in West Africa which is one reason for the woeful state of diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia in Black men in western Europe - these men might be told by their elders to go to an exorcist before they go to the doctor. In the 70s/80s/90s it was self-starvation or self-cutting. Now it is trans.

OP I would respond exactly if I would respond if I found out that my teen DD was self-harming. I would view the behaviour as a symptom and try sensitively to listen to her to understand the underlying distress. And I would scrape up or borrow whatever money I could to get her good private DBT therapy, because the waiting list to get DBT on the NHS is years long and you have to do CBT instead which might affirm her delusion given the politicised state of the NHS on this issue.

I wish you all the best.

It depends on the context really. But IMO in a child with severe distress it would be cruel and make them less likely to ever feel confident enough to speak openly again.

https://www.bayswatersupport.org.uk/

For parents of gender questioning.

Also more resources via Transgender Trend.

This is a really interesting insight. How do you think the trans thing came about as a manifestation of mental illness in recent times?

Ask him to tell you all about it. Just listen and ask questions that help him to articulate what he thinks he means by woman and how he thinks life as a woman would be different, what would it solve, how would it manifest?

I'd find ways to help improve these aspects of his life now, whether he transitions or not. Just say, everyone, male, female, trans, deserves to have the skills for self-compassion, resilience, self-confidence and to allow themselves to take healthy risks that will enhance their lives. Let's start building these right now.' And don't link them to any kind of gender-ID. They are fundamental to wellbeing, whoever you are.

I'd also be 100% accepting of make up, clothes, partners - anything that isn't actively damaging to the body. I'd save the difficult conversations for any steps he wants to take that would actually impact on his long term health. Luckily most male to female transitioners don't chop off their body parts - that's way more common in female to male. So all you are likely to need to discuss in depth with him is the effects of hormone treatment.

Finally, without leaving it to become the elephant in the room, I'd keep having plenty of conversations about other things, the wider world, life in general, topics of interest in the news, places to visit, skills to acquire etc - the huge variety of life that has jeff-all to do with our biological sex.

I don't know, I'm no expert, just a nerd who reads too much and overthinks everything lol.

I suppose it would help if we can put forward theories about mental health manifestations from the past. For example, the hearing voices of the Virgin Mary thing: teen girls in the Middle Ages had incredibly dangerous and controlled lives. You had to get married to a man of your father's choice if you were rich; to whoever (literally) grabbed you first if you were poor. Then you were almost constantly pregnant and if poor, doing physical labour, so that your chances of living beyond the age of 40 was low if childbirth didn't get you first.

In this rather gloomy context, the Virgin Mary offers a 'way out': she had a baby but without sex, the baby just happened to be the messiah which offering Mary individualism, fame and freedom. More practically, hearing her voice could mark you out as special, which could offer you a practical escape from the nuptial drudge - you might end up in a convent, where you'd have a better and more luxurious life, or you might reach the heady heights of Joan of Arc - fame, freedom and fighting. Ofc you might also get burned as a witch but it might seem a gamble worth taking.

I don't think these women were pretending by the way I think they probably did believe the Virgin spoke to them. But it was a subconcious way of espcaping from the pressures of real life.

I think anorexia (as a former sufferer) can possibly be interpreted in a similar way, as a rebellion and escape from the HUGE pressures on women in the 70s, 80s and 90s: be thin but look healthy and fit too. Have a career but for god's sake make sure you don't become more successful than men. Have as much sex as you like but don't become a slut. In this context, focussing inwards and obsessively on making yourself smaller is quite a logical move for a mentally distressed person, tbh.

So we could frame gender dysphoria as some sort of subconscious cry of distress and rebellion against the demands placed on the male and female bodies today. What they are, I dunno. Instagram-enforced images of perfection? Porn? A focus on the body as an escape from an increasingly hostile work and economic environment.

Dunno. But it's definitely not that a make has a female brain or vice versa. It's a manifestation of mental illness and needs to be thoroughly researched as such so that a decent treatment pathway can be found.

The link between trans and ASC is huge. I work with teens and it's often girls, at 12 who want to be boys. My guess is they don't want puberty to change their bodies.

Following on from interesting points PPs have made about socially acceptable presentations of MH issues over the centuries, I wonder how he'd respond if you said, 'That's interesting. Trans ID is very common in autistic teens these days. Why do you think that is?' That's a question worth exploring together, however rigid his ideas are.

Thanks @GiveMeSpanakopita ,really interesting. I think the desire to escape restrictive gender stereotypes is probably a big factor. We live in bizarre times where children might be verbally told they can dress however they want and be whoever they want to be but they are simultaneously surrounded by projections of gender stereotypes everywhere. It must be incredibly confusing. It's a sort of gaslighting.
Anyway, I will stop derailing the thread.

I spent a lot of time listening to my daughter when she toyed with being non-binary - what did it mean to her? What did her trans friend do that made her "not a girl?" What did that mean for girls as a group if being same sex attracted or preferring rugby to netball made them "not female?" How did any of this stack up against our family's longstanding position that people are free to do & be whatever they are capable of doing, regardless of their sex and social expectations?

Eventually the sexism of it all was so obvious that she stepped away from the they/them pronouns, but I think it was important that we worked through her feelings kindly and with empathy.

If the teen has done any research at all that will be met with "autistic teens are more likely to be trans because we are freer from societal expectations of gender" or some other neuroaffirmative guff that denies the vulnerability of trans teens.

(In many other contexts neuroaffirmative approaches are great. Where they reframe away the vulnerability of being neurodivergent they are harmful).

If you could give me as much detail as you'd be willing to share about this process and what you specifically said I would be very very interested.

ive told my DCs that sometimes people feel like they are in the wrong bodies and that’s fine, it’s ok and normal for many people. How people deal with these feelings is different. Some are happy to just change their clothes and style to suit their feelings. Some feel the only way they will truly be happy is to change their bodies to look and feel like the person they want to be. Again fine.

As children though you are not old or mature enough to make any serious decisions on changing your body until you’re an adult. Obviously an adult is an 18yo but I think it’s a massive decision to make at a young age.

Im happy for people, especially children to experiment and would not judge anyone for doing that, as long as it’s how they truly feel and they aren’t being pressured to change by anyone.

What I don’t agree with is that if someone dose struggle with their identity, that’s on them, it should not mean that everyone else has to make sacrifices for them. I also don’t believe it is possible to change sex, even after transitioning. Yes a person may change their anatomy, but they can not change their sex. I have respect for people who have transitioned and think they deserve safe spaces, but not by sacrificing safe spaces for others. They are also Not male or female but Transgenger and if they want anything documented to date their sex it should be this,

Self ID is 100% wrong, ridiculous and dangerous.

This is good advice, but very difficult to follow, for these reasons:

Many young people have been taught to equate scepticism (about trans ideology) with hatred, and that their parents are bigoted if they don’t fully affirm transition.

My own experience is that my son is unable or unwilling to explain himself. He is under pressure from a trans ally who has a lot of influence, and he has become steadily more unreasonable and withdrawn from any family interaction.

There is often difficulty over a new “chosen” name and over third person pronouns. I wish I had stated my feelings much more clearly right at the start - that I love him, but to use a feminine name and feminine pronouns is too hard for me to do. This might not have helped, but trying to be kind and then discovering that it is too distressing has not helped either. You will have to decide for yourself how to deal with this issue; some people are OK with new name and pronouns, some will use a nickname, some will try to avoid using the new name and/or pronouns. All options have consequences, both for you and for your child.

But to reiterate, it’s good advice, particularly trying to keep communication open. If you can get your child to recognise that disagreement is not hatred, that may help with this. But you are far from the only influence, so don’t beat yourself up if your best efforts don’t work.

Also, try to look after yourself. You may find that you are in mourning, but there is no sign of any closure. Look for support from friends and family, but be prepared for lack of understanding, and consider joining Bayswater Support.

I'd probably ban Instagram etc as a first step and get them well educated on biology.

My DH comes from a family culture where taking the piss would be the main strategy.

It’s nigh on impossible to ‘ban’ an older teen from using an app without physically confiscating all their devices (thereby increasing their sense of isolation and creating conflict and an even greater gap in understanding between you).

An intelligent, well-educated 17 year old like my DD needs no instruction in human biology. She fully understands that you can’t literally change sex, and the limitations of medical intervention (that you may be able to roughly approximate some characteristics of the opposite sex through a brutal and lifelong drug regime or crude surgical procedures, but you’ll never actually change your fundamental biology). This, however, doesn’t change how she feels - if it was as simple as drawing a diagram of chromosomes and watching the penny drop then this fucking horrific surge of trans-identifying teens would not be a thing.

As a family we definitely don’t stand on ceremony and every one of us has to withstand our fair share of piss-taking, but to suggest this might be a helpful way to approach a vulnerable teenager’s unhappiness and self-loathing shows how very little understanding you have of dealing with something so complex and upsetting. I hope you never have to walk a mile in the shoes of some of us on this thread.

Wouldn't this be the case too for an adult woman who has no friends and no sexual relationships..age is a number in a way. There are 25 year old who get to that age without romantic relationships and cos of dropping out of school and living online, no friends as well

I find it troubling cos the law recognises her as an adult and our usual approach is adults are allowed to own their decisions...but she doesn't have more life experience than a teen!

https://www.youtube.com/@alexanderl9721

Would he watch youtube videos with you? Alex is a detransitioner who is also autistic. He talks a lot about his experience growing up, not fitting in, how he came to associate sex with death, how he hated his body and sexual feelings and therefore thought it would be better to be female.

Your son might see some parallels with how he feels and how Alex felt - without the need to repeat the mistakes Alex made (tbh I don't think Alex 'made mistakes', I think he was failed terribly by the gender affirmative approach).