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?

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.
That's fair, you really need to know your child and situation. It wouldn't be amusing if they were distressed.

Like sex hormones, sex dna chromosome etc. But given this is a new thing, perhaps less likely to have any issues. It’ll a good discussion point.

Restrict the access to the cult forums.

Like sex hormones, sex dna chromosome etc.
You mean do they have a DSD condition? Studies showed there was no correlation with trans identities. At one point historically doctors were testing transsexuals (as called at the time) for this kind of difference, they stopped looking because they just weren't any more likely than everyone else. So maybe not a good idea to plant, unless the child has a known condition or physical symptoms.

@ChristabelHolloway I agree with most of your advice but...

Trans people exist, and always have done.

No, not really. Some gender non-conforming people have always existed, and no-one has ever been either 100% gender conforming or 100% gender non-conforming. And it's likely that a tiny number of people who so deeply want to be the other sex they try to live as if they are the other sex are have always existed. But framing all this in terms of "trans" and insisting that some people are "really" the other sex is new.

We mostly accept gay people quite comfortably now, whereas thirty years ago many people would have been horrified by their child coming out as gay. This doesn't have to be so different.

That's part of the narrative that young people (and their parents and teachers) comfort themselves with, that this is like being gay used to be. Well I am older than most mothers here, I was adult 30 years ago, my DH is bisexual, we were young people with our friends coming out as lesbian, gay, bisexual and also transsexual and transvestite. I remember the campaigns, I remember Section 28 and I also remember the early days of AIDS.

I identify with a novella written in the early stages of the AIDS pandemic: a lesbian mother visits her gay son after she watches the Gay Pride march in San Francisco. She's picked up leaflets handed out by a health worker who everyone is ignoring and she tries to warn her son about the physical and psychic dangers of his promiscuous "gay lifestyle" in San Francisco before "safe sex" was a thing, when the symptoms of AIDS were seen but HIV was unknown. Her son shrugs her off saying she is old-fashioned. She walks away from his apartment weeping "my son, my son". A few years later they'd all seen it and lived it and the survivors had grown up to fight back but what loving parent wants their child to pay for wisdom with their life? Or their health, or their fertility.

So far so similar. But what her son doesn't say is that she is homophobic. Now the experiences of the old gay rights movements have been weaponised so that any parent who expresses concern for their child's physical or mental health is framed as a transphobe.

I guess this doesn't really change anything. But don't minimise what this means for parents. It's still about us, and our children, and our children's future too.

I would carefully and gently ask him why he feels that way and what he feels it means to be 'trans'.

I would also read the advice here Top Ten Tips – Bayswater Support

17 is still very young to really know about the world and your place in it, I would be hoping that he finds his way through this without restricting future choices or causing irreversible damage to his body. Good luck OP.

This is very similar to my situation. I gave into the pressure and got her a therapist though which definitely made things worse. The asd was self diagnosed from the internet and the therapist went along with this, despite absolutely zero concerns raised by us or anyone else over the years. If she is on the spectrum then it would be at a very low level. My dd is also saying she is probably "somewhere on the asexual spectrum". I say to her, you're 12 you don't know what you are, you are a child it's normal to feel "asexual". She is giving herself labels that will limit her life before she has even started living . History is being rewritten to she always felt like this when in reality she has never shown any signs of gender dysphoria. I guess I'll just keep the dialogue open and stick to telling her these facts and hope it sinks in eventually. I do see signs that in the Europe/UK at least this fad is coming to an end but we are in the US right now where identity politics is so prevalent. I do see some cracks appearing though with a few lawsuits being brought against medical providers who performed surgery on young women. The dam will break eventually, I'm sure of it

So many sad stories here. The elephant in the room is of course that these children and young people are being gaslit via social media and unforgivably by some adults in professions who should know better. This is a mass social contagion and we all know this.
Parents are so scared of alienating their children, treading on egg shells anxiously trying to protect children from making catastrophic decisions, usually before they've reached any level of maturity. All because there are adults and groups out there openly conducting programmes of parental alienation, openly lying to children about changing sex, openly lying about the harmful nature of drugs and surgery. Telling lies about everything.

What does come through so strongly in these accounts is parental love. We must do so much more to support parents in protecting their children from this dangerous to the young ideology.

What does come through so strongly in these accounts is parental love. We must do so much more to support parents in protecting their children from this dangerous to the young ideology.

Agree with this. However, part of the trans movement (especially on social media) is parental/family alienation, plus schools that either don’t or won’t listen to parental concerns.

I just hope more and more parents will become aware of just how dangerous to the young this ideology is. And, importantly, be vocal about it. So schools, councils, charities etc will have to fall into line.

The re-writing of history is both personal and political. Not only are "trans people" a new idea but of course medical transition is very new indeed. The voluntary removal of sex organs and cross-sex hormones were not possible a couple of centuries ago. People framed their gender non-conformity in other ways and they coped with it in other ways.

It is isn't it? The "trans people have always existed and always been in women's spaces" is an outright lie. Yes - a miniscule number of men like Jan Morris, April Ashley etc but otherwise nope. Nothing. But impressionable young people believe it when history is rewritten.

Not only is this social contagion, it's a massive social and medical experiment on children that has never before happened - until you start delving into the archives of awful medical scandals and experimentation on different vulnerable groups over the centuries.

Absolutely and the parental alienation is so dangerous considering how overrepresented sexual offending is in trans-identified males. I’ve read so many stories of children, especially girls, being groomed and sexually abused in these situations. Some of the most vulnerable children in society are being ostracised from their families and delivered into the hands of adults, large numbers of whom have a sexual fetish.

I would never do that. I would point out I saw him before he saw himself, and he has a penis and is therefore male. I know he's not female because if he was he'd have breasts and a vulva. How dare he suggest I gave birth to a girl without knowing it - the affrontery, the arrogance, the sheer rudeness; apology immediately required. No new name. No pronouns but he/him. Never give in to nonsense. He may hate you now, but later will thank you. 'Be kind' is the most evil, unkind action you can take.

@grammarnut I don't know what makes you think I'd be 'giving in to nonsense' if I acknowledged that my son is an adult who can hold his own views, while not ever saying I think he is female? From what I see from the multiple sets of parents I know who are going through this, they keep as their key goal the maintenance of a relationship with their child. And I think they are right to do this, because every person I know who has declared a trans identity is particularly vulnerable to all OTHER kinds of destructive bullshit as well. But they are still human beings who deserve respect and love.

But love does not include letting a young man use a woman's name, or lusing 'they' instead of he/him - and the dissonance that causes the user, being forced to speak an obvious lie about someone's sex is not helpful to anyone. Pronouns are rohypnol, and it's destructive to give way on them. I cannot think of one member of my family who would allow this nonsense, it having been made perfectly clear it was nonsense, as most people well know. This destructive ideology is not going away by being kind to people who fall foul of it; it's a cult and viciously destructive of its members.

'Letting a young man use a woman's name'

My son is twenty years old. I'm not going to be 'letting' him do anything, he will tell me his decisions about his life. Even if he were 17, I'm GC - I don't think names make a sex, I don't think John Wayne was a female or trans because his first (baptismal?) name was Marion. I wonder how many transitioning people you are surrounded by - I've had 6 young female connections annouce a trans identity in 2 years. What do you think you actually DO in those circumstances, if you care about the people involved? If a woman you know changes her surname on marrying, do you insist on addressing her by her previous name?

Imo your job as a parent is to be there for your child, yes you guide them gently but it’s just about support really. Your child trumps any beliefs you have (again just my opinion)

The names require nuance. Some names are essentially masculine or feminine.
Marion isn't one of them - it means "of Mary". But Maria is feminine and Mario masculine.
The feeling that people ought be clear if they are male or female is reflected in rules like in Germany you have to choose a recognised gendered name.
Young people often choose a new name for themselves, and it can be a good thing, depending on the reason and the new name.

My kid used to say he was a dog (a police dog to be precise).