How do you support other siblings when a teen decides they are trans

[Autumnleavesareslippery]

I've name changed for this, have been a member for 19 years since pregnant with DS. I'm going to try and be factual as I'm in shock and dealing with a whole host of mine and my children's emotions. Yes I'm using 'he' here as none of us have got our heads around this. I'm trying to be very honest in how I feel and really need some support from people who have more of an idea about how to handle this than me.

DS (19) came home from uni on Friday. On Friday night at about 11 pm in the family chat he declared he was transgender. He informed us what he was called. It was an unusual name choice for a 19 year old - that of someone perhaps born 150 years ago. Think Enid. He told us he'd known for years.

All of us were in shock. I have DD (17) and DD and DS (both 14). I sent a message privately to him thanking for letting us know as I wasn't quite sure what else to say. He didn't read it and remained in his room. Didn't even bother with the usual teen response of a thumbs up.

Saturday and Sunday he acted completely normally, like nothing major had happened and he had told us he was vegetarian now or something. He seemed calm and relaxed. He looked exactly the same - a 6ft 2 broad shouldered man.

He then came downstairs to get a lift to the train station dressed as what I can only describe as a stereotype of what someone might think a woman looked like. Badly done make up. An odd dress that didn't fit. And started talking in a completely different soft 'feminine' voice and doing strange things with his hands that he must have deemed 'female'. He had lace like gloves on. It looked so outdated and strange.

The best way to describe it was he looked like Dame Edna or the character out of little Britain from 20 years ago in that the clothing was odd and it seemed almost designed to get a reaction. But he appeared to be deadly serious and nonchalant about it. A woman would have been clearly mocked if she dressed like it. It just leaves me wondering whether this is what he views women as?! Not that he knows any women who would act like this - he's surrounded by many women who express themselves in multiple ways but not in an Edwardian lady about to collapse way.

I drove him to the station trying to make small talk about the weather and his course and came back to everyone sat staring in disbelief. He's never said anything, acted in any way 'feminine' (whatever that means). He's at a RG uni, studying a science subject with 3 As at A level, and has organised himself a part time job. I only say this because life seems to be going well for him, rather than a potential response to something.

He is however autistic.

DD 17 is furious and says he's making a mockery of women and that woman is not a costume. She says he better not be going in female only spaces.

DD 15 looks stunned and keeps asking why he thinks he can just become a woman and what he thinks that means. She can't identify out of periods etc etc. DS 15 is laughing in disbelief. DH just looks completely confused and keeps muttering about getting loads of tattoos when he wanted to shock his parents thirty five years ago.

I genuinely don't know what to do next. Please bear in mind I'm in shock, had only just 'got over' my first born leaving for uni and all the emotions that brings.

I want to support DS19 with whatever gender expression he wants. When he still looked like him (and didn't appear to be 'dressed as' a mockery of women) I was shocked but we just thought ok, this is him experimenting with finding himself or whatever. But now I'm really worried about him and his future and whether others will look at him and think wtf. I'm also angry at the very (sorry to stereotype) 'teen boy' way he told us - late at night, no response, informing us what he was called rather than perhaps asking 'could you call me'. No consideration of the impact but I guess that might just be being 19.

I agree with what both of my daughters are saying. How do I say this because it then directly criticises DS? Do I accept he is an adult, has made his choices and my care and focus should be on them? I can't gaslight them and tell them they're wrong.

I'm now worried he's going to go into female spaces, as a clearly visible six foot plus male. This would make me angry.

He is at a university where I know lots of his lecturers (I am an academic in the same field). I know many are gender critical. Do I mention it to them first or let it be the elephant in the room?

I don't know what to say to my 85 year old mother. I think she will be very shocked and worried. I'm trying to work out if we have to tell her (she doesn't live nearby).

I don't know how much to talk to him or challenge this. I feel a kind of grief. I'm worried he's going to take hormones or do something irreversible.

We all dislike the name / think it's a very odd choice - which makes me feel very alienated from him.

And at the end of the day he's my 'baby' - I want him to be happy. I don't want people to criticise him. I want to support him but how do you do that when you question so much what he is doing? It wasn't the fact he declared himself to have a different gender but rather what followed - the declaration of name, strange clothing and fear of him going in women's spaces.

I also do absolutely realise he is an adult and can make his own choices and face the consequences. He has his own life (albeit he's being financially supported by us).

I guess it was just so sudden.

Any advice on what to do next would be gladly received.

Sorry OP this sounds like a tough and sensitive situation.
I am going to be quite controversial here... he needs therapy. Kids take this new trans route willy nilly and it's not always something they actually really want, it's a trend. He wants to be different. He wants attention and to create shock. He probably has a group of friends who are the same and they're all encouraging each other. This too shall pass. But it needs to be handled before he takes it too far. Have a really deep heart to heart with him and see if you can identify any underlying issues he has and understand why he's made the decision. Good luck xx

thereitgoes
It was like a lightning bolt when I read your post -- I am now ashamed to admit that I have generally used his brother's preferred (female) pronouns when discussing his brother now (although not when discussing their childhood etc. - e.g. "shall we invite her"). I suppose I was swaying too much there being no harm in respecting how someone wants to currently identify even if I privately don't believe them to be a woman. But now I just think what an idiot I've been - why on earth would I care so much about 'respecting someone' who isn't there and demonstrating how tolerant and balanced I am in this context. And how this action just shows how profoundly I don't get it and makes me complicit in the harm siblings tend to suffer. Thank you.

I am glad if my experience has helped, but I it's likely not everyone will react the same way to the pronouns used or even to retaining their own version of the past. Your friend may have no objection but he still may appreciate you having the conversation with him.

You haven't "been an idiot", you have been tricked. We have all been told we have to be very very kind to this special group, and indeed we do want to be kind and tolerant to a point. Is this the dilemma of the Paradox of Tolerance-- deciding when being “very kind” might actually be unkind to another, larger group?

@Autumnleavesareslippery Apologies if this has been mentioned and I missed it, but as he is autistic the likelihood that he also suffers from anxiety and depression are quite high. At the ripe old age of 43 I’m now on medication which has helped me tremendously. I’m not sure if he is on medication but I thought I would mention it. Wish I had started a long time ago.

@CautiousLurker are you me?! I could have written your post word for word (and probably why it doesn't read like mud to me, but I too run wild with my words!)

My feminism is exactly like yours, and believes in men having access to "women's things" (like being allowed to cry, talk about your feelings, have lots of close friends, stay home with your children, nice candles and flowers etc) as well as women having access to "men's things" (equal pay, the right to vote, job opportunities, beer and motorbikes etc) obviously I'm being a bit facetious before anyone jumps on me and to that point I've really tried to articulate that more and more over the years, even got into a conversation with one of DS's male friends who said "I'm not a feminist at a party" and got jumped on by his female friends but I tried to extricate what he meant and clearly he felt excluded by feminism so I just explained what feminism meant to me personally and that actually we al have the opportunity to decide that for ourselves. I think that conversation needs to happen more with young men - feminism was always about equality.

I do think some of the rhetoric of GIRLS CAN DO ANYTHING and BOYS ARE EVIL RAPISTS has had an effect on some young men and controversially I agree that the rise of the backlash of feminism of some men in the form of Incels etc have made some girls feel like a safer place to be is as a boy. God these poor kids.

@ExtremelyPrivate thankyou for your compassionate post. For me my TI child is the quiet, acquiescent one so I do also think some of this is (consciously or not) attention seeking

I may be behind the times - I hope I am - but I have to say that when this first happened to us, nearly a decade ago now, it was completely impossible to find therapy or counselling that wasn't purely affirmative. I think I'm right in saying that that was directed by law, or at least by the codes of practice of BACP and similar. No therapist would have dared go against that, so any kind of therapy that enabled the gender dysphoric child to explore their feelings and decide whether it really was gender dysphoria they were experiencing, or perhaps BDD or perhaps the burden of being ND, or perhaps just teenage angst or whatever, was a complete non-starter.

I went to huge personal lengths to arrange specialist therapy for DS and - at his request - attended sessions with him, only to find that the therapist, who claimed she would talk through all his issues with him (e.g. he was on the cusp of an ASD diagnosis) instead spent several months doing a complete hatchet job on me, and deliberately provoking hostility between us when there had been none before. She was also one appointment away from transferring him to the Tavistock, despite clearly stating at the outset the criteria he would need to meet, and the fact that - having been in every session - I knew he came nowhere close. (This was the point where I pulled the plug.)

There was just nowhere to find the kind of impartial, exploratory support we had wanted for him. I think this was also before the days of Bayswater etc, or we had never heard of them anyway, and even here on MN the advice was to be affirmative and respectful. I know that things are changing, and I have a lovely therapist (for myself) now who is firmly GC and therefore able to support me totally, but I suspect at high street level - uni counsellors and the like - the refusal to voice any reservations about affirmative care is still there.

I guess what I'm saying is to tread really carefully with therapy, and don't necessarily believe it when you're told that the full smorgasbord of outcomes is up for discussion. There is a lot of ignorance and this is also an area where many practitioners operate with an agenda.

@SophiaCohle we had the same experience with our son's first therapist, I had to extricate ourselves from that nightmare. We then found an excellent gender specialist therapist who had left the Tavistock a few years ago but DS was going through serious MH struggles and after 3 months just stopped talking to her. I wonder if it was because he was in the throes of his affirming friends saying he ought to be able to choose his therapist so he rejected the clearly non-affirming one we'd chosen. A few months later he asked to go back to therapy and we gave him some agency in choosing one. I don't know how much they discussed gender but from what the therapist said when DS ended the sessions they focused more on dealing with extreme feelings, fight and flight etc which was the reason he went.

I would love for him to go back to the GC therapist but you can lead a horse to water.....

@Autumnleavesareslippery and@AreTheyOrArentThey Your family situations might have caused your children some doubts and uncertainties about their place in the family and in the world - but then which of us doesn't have any of those uncertainties growing up? The idea that transition is a solution to these doubts - no you didn't implant that. He found it elsewhere and it seems good to him.

I know I've questioned what I did with DC as a result of this. Every parenting mistake I've made over the years has crossed my mind! And in fact DH and I felt that we'd let DC drift away from us after graduation and we made a very conscious decision to re-connect.

But sometimes it's good to remember that we mums (parents) are not the be-all and end-all of who our children are, who they become, and we cannot protect them from all the crazy risks they take and mistakes they make along the way.

No. It's you who is completely tone deaf and not even remotely listening to people telling you how their sibling transitioning harmed them psychologically.

I find it damn arrogant for posters like you to double down and tell the OP that they are wrong thinking or at risk of wrong thinking by even considering the impact on other family members.

It's appalling that on a thread where others have been silenced, have made a point about this continued trend to crush these conversations and are talking about the stigma of the subject, you try and shut down those ideas by telling the OP to step away from the thread and think about away from the influence of us!

Our lived experience and our honesty over some thing sensitive and difficult means fuck all to you and you have tampled all others trying to express this.

Please help him with his look, same as you would DD.
I think you will learn what he sees, vs what you see, what others see.

Much like other teens who get it totally wrong, or copy another with totally different body type and could use advice to tone it down.

I don't think you are remotely behind the curve.

The Conversion Therapy Bill is having a massive impact on the approach therapists are prepared to take - and indeed whether they will touch the subject with a barge pole.

Unless the current Labour Government have the guts to recognise the scale of the problem with their attempts to legislate then they have a massive problem and it will have significant implications.

Even if they do push problematic stuff through then it's still a minefield because the Gays Mens Network and the likes of Dennis Noel Kavanagh WILL challenge it in terms of discrimination and harm to gay men and it being a form of conversation.

So the whole background of this sector is currently hugely overshadowed by EDI training and the fear of liability of getting this wrong and then being sued for trying to convert or being discriminatory.

Meanwhile there's a bunch of people who are stuck in the middle of these arguments who need help and support. Quite frankly I don't want to trust ANY therapist because I have no idea of knowing their political agenda before you start to deal with very sensitive issues. The risk of encountering someone who has their own agenda that's not in your interests is currently too high. The way ERCC has played out only serves to demonstrate to me that the 'help' sector is so dominated by well meaning who aren't just their to help but also because they have wider beliefs about the concept of 'helping' or 'being kind' purely because it's a certain type of person drawn to jobs in that area.

I really like what SisterofMCW says about 'The dilemma of the Paradox of Tolerance' as it sums up the problem well. (Think I might steal that concept).

Thank you... I feel bad now that I didn't try and find someone new and better. It was just so hard to find information and we were very short of money.

The truth is that that first therapist pressed my buttons very expertly, and having been kind of neutral at the outset (i.e. upset about it all but open to whatever would make my DC happy) I ended up being rabidly hostile to the utter nonsense of gender ideology.

One of the problems with agenda-laden practitioners is that just as many trans-identifying children are autistic, so are many of their parents (including me) and it took time for me to see the machinery of manipulation in action. By the time I realised what was happening, we had both been wound up like coiled springs by her (him??) and couldn't talk to each other at all.

It all started with such good intentions but ultimately did more harm than good.

But I agree with the pp that guilt comes all too naturally to parents in this situation. You have to keep reminding yourself that you did and are doing your best, and if it isn't enough then that's unlikely to be your fault and is most likely out of your control.

I wouldn't dream of 'helping' my teenage children (1 girl, 1 boy) with their looks. I think it's bizarre and intrusive for a parent to do this with any child above the age of 11 unless asked. I don't know why you keep telling the op to do this when her son is a young adult who hasn't asked her advice and whose suddenly announced 'trans' identity causes her deep concern.

I think you will learn what he sees, vs what you see, what others see.

What does this mean?

I think this part of your post is many of us "But now I just think what an idiot I've been - why on earth would I care so much about 'respecting someone' who isn't there and demonstrating how tolerant and balanced I am in this context."

We've been told we must support the transitioning person and most people will hear that and think 'yes of course, I support anyone to be whatever they want' (often with limitations of course about women's safe spaces). I myself felt that way. Why would it matter to me if a man wants to put on a dress and call himself Edna or whatever as long as he doesn't pose a threat?

But that's because the impact on others and everything people have so eloquently discussed in this thread isn't mentioned. Of course we don't want to do harm to someone but if they are acting in a way that harms or impacts upon others, that needs to be discussed too. All of this 'living my true self' is great but why are we not considering the impacts upon others too?

It means 'learn and to enable and indulge their fantasy even if you don't agree with it'.

Tbf I think the pp may just have meant that if OP talks to her son about why he's dressing like a 1970s female impersonator, it may give her some useful insight into wtf is going on in his head.

I agree it came out as utterly patronising but a lot of the well-intentioned commentary from people not personally affected does.

Agree. Very much "you will then have the wonderful eye opener of seeing "the true self"....

Hi OP. If you have time / inclination, you might consider having a look at Marjorie Garber’s book Vested Interests - it’s a way into the interesting history of cross dressing, culture and sexuality that’s informative but also quite balanced and measured.

Obviously what’s happening to you now is intensely personal and fraught. Knowledge is power, and armed with a lot of of knowledge of all the complicated practices, motivations and contexts of cross dressing might help you to continue to be balanced and non reactionary - and discuss things with your son in that way!

Garber isn’t really for or against cross dressing, but she’s interested in all the different ways it manifests and things it can mean. She’s a good, sceptical gender theorist of the 90s, before it all became about affirming everything anyone said, and losing sight of the distinction between sex and gender.

Like you I think some identity performances can reinforce regressive stereotypes - gender theorists of the 90s knew this!

why do I keep “telling” OP … because we are on MN …

what is so wrong about talking honestly to your children. If your DC needs support is projecting an outward appearance which isn’t safe … why ignore them????

“you wouldn’t dream of helping” your child. Fine for you.

I don't know what you have been reading but I have never said any of these things, I have never minimised the impact on the family, all I have done is asserted the young mans right to a lifestyle choice.

The op asked for help with supporting her other children who don't believe their brother is a woman. It is deeply inappropriate to suggest she indulges his perception he can be a woman by advising him on makeup and clothes. There have been so many helpful and supportive comments on this thread against which you stand out as utterly tone deaf.

Yeah sure you have...

Misogyny and mockery of women as a lifestyle choice we should all pander to.

I get you perfectly. I think you should go away from this thread and think about things. (Just like you've told the OP to do...)

Do you think being a woman is a lifestyle choice?

I have followed this thread from the beginning, I have nothing to add except I don't think it is something you can begin to understand unless it has happened to you, so thank you to all who have shared their honest experiences.

I don't know what you have been reading but I have never said any of these things, I have never minimised the impact on the family, all I have done is asserted the young mans right to a lifestyle choice.

You came out with some sexist waffle and then when you were called out on it got defensive and attempted to patronise people.

You make a really valid point about pickle seeing woman as nothing more than a costume that you can pick and choose and how we should respect this.

Its utterly vile and disrepectful to women. It suggests that women CHOSE to be discriminated against...