Teen declared they were trans and now says they can't be in contact with us

[crochetedcat]

As the title says really, I'll try to keep this brief but obviously it's complicated.

DS went to university and within a few weeks of being there declared he was now trans and had a new name. We were all rather confused as this seemed out of the blue at 18. He is autistic but seemed happy and doing well, good course, plans for the future etc. I've kept using 'he' here for clarity.

We decided to jointly take the approach to be supportive and to focus on everything else, didn't question it, carried on as usual. I was very aware that challenging it would not go down well, especially when at uni with potentially lots of people saying how awful we were for asking any questions at all. So we decided to take the 'thanks for telling us dear, that's great, how's uni going' approach.

Tbh there was very little change apart from when they came home for a visit in November they were wearing a bit of make up and had made changes to voice and mannerisms. This was difficult to deal with as it felt like the concept of being female was being stereotyped but again, we didn't react and continued to support. He happily went back off to uni after a few days of seeing family etc.

Christmas was the same. He came home for a week but was fairly distant. But we continued being positive and asking about course, friends etc etc - everything you would usually do. No one questioned anything and just rolled with it. The key point here is we have all been as accepting as possible, no one has said anything even vaguely negative, lots of enthusiasm about uni and life more broadly.

Then early in the New Year, we got a message that we were all clearly embarrassed by him and there would be no more contact ever again. It felt ludicrous tbh. The day before we'd been chatting on WhatsApp about his course and something I'd been reading. I responded asking where this had come from, that we weren't embarrassed and would support him in whatever. He said ok and asked about the dog as she'd needed to go to the vet. A completely unemotional reaction really to having just declared he'd never see his family again.

However I haven't heard from him since. He ignores all messages including asking him if he's ok. This was nearly 3 weeks ago. He's not great at responding to messages but would usually do so in a day or two even if just an emoji.

I am guessing the accusations that we are unsupportive are about his anxieties. Or wanting the drama of no one supporting him. It feels very similar to 'the script' of the cheating husband where history is rewritten to fit the narrative.

I also assume the wanting to cut contact is due to him feeling uncomfortable in his 'old life' because it's confronting and now his new normal where probably everyone is effusive.

I would bet money on new friends / the internet driving this.

But it feels so unreal and I don't know what to do next. Is it serious? Is he just never going to have contact with us again? Do I just remain supportive and sending him photos of the dog and articles I see about climate science and including him on the family groups, he hasn't left those yet?

I'm of course angry that someone could just send a message like that to his mother with no feeling. And upset. And scared etc etc

And then there's the minor fact I'm financially supporting him through university. I'm paying for the phone contract for the phone he used to tell me he was never going to see me again. Is he assuming I'll carry on sending him £700 a month to cover his uni halls costs whilst he declares he's estranged?! It feels like a younger teen yelling that they hate you and then asking what's for dinner and can they have a lift to town.

At a loss really and not sure where to go from here to have the most sensible outcome.

Thank you.

Good spot. Grim.

I really feel for all the mothers and young sisters who are being mocked, disrespected AND asked to facilitate the trampling of other women's boundaries in the name of 'support'.

💪❤️

I've been thinking lots about this thread.

There are quite a few parents on it now, including many of boys who are identifying as girls.

A PP mentioned that perhaps there is a hidden uptick in ~19 year old, autistic boys (some of whom are off at uni) who experience an ROGD-style realisation that they are trans. I mentioned too on a previous comment that I think an emerging, testosterone-driven libido combined with autism could add extra confusion. Others have commented that autism can delay the emergence of sexual feelings.

But the big difference with boys who identify as girls is that there is the added issue of the discussion around the statistically-recognised danger that biological males pose to women. The majority of this board focuses on this latter issue as it's main point - and rightly so. But to me, this thread is focusing on the vulnerability of an autistic young adult male first and foremost, whilst also keeping the societal level of risk in mind.

There's a chapter in Dr Az's book Detrans where a mum of a male who identifies as female says that she's experienced a lot of dismissive messages which simply frame her young adult child as a risk to women. Yes, it's still true but it's really not the only issue at play here. When you look at the mobs of angry TRAs at the LWS events, I wonder how many are autistic males, who've had their confusion weaponised by those who have contributed to their journey into believing that the world is against them. I'm certainly not absolving them. By 18 they are legally adults, autism or not. I'm hoping that there will be more medical research specifically into males with ROGD and autism. Helping them navigate adolesence with cognitive processing strategies under Speech and Language Therapy provision (this provision is already part of EHCPs) could make a difference for both individuals and society.

OP, it sounds like you're doing an incredible job both as a mum and in keeping your head in a healthy place on the wider societal issue. I hope you get completely splattered with mud on your next run in the most womanly way possible.

@NDSceptic

My young person continues to use male facilities when no unisex facility is available. There's no need to make these blanket assumptions. When you start judging people en mass as a category that is when you have become prejudiced. Like if you judge all men on the actions of a few or start talking about Muslims or Jews or Black people or whatever minority group.

Judge individuals. That's fair.

Well, I am very feminine and I like makeup and feminine-type clothes, as is the same for a very large amount of women. Why the hate for anything feminine? Feminine isn't bad. I am exactly "like other girls" and proud of it.

It's extremely common for males transitioning to females to express their transition by wearing makeup, heels, skirts and dresses, bras with breast forms, etc.

Fine, if OP doesn't want to do that because it's not right for her, seeing as she doesn't shop, doesn't wear makeup or anything feminine, but I can't know that through a screen, and she did say he came home wearing some makeup. And neither do I think that buying womanly stuff is the "only" thing that marks the transition, as a PP said.

Helping him with his new look was just a suggestion as a way to show him acceptance, since the "That's nice, dear" approach has driven him away.

Best of luck with it all, OP.

No, don't reward his obnoxious behaviour. He can buy his own body wash.

It doesn't help even if the op did buy into it. The best thing she can do is not get involved. He's an adult not a child. Buying clothes and makeup will not change how he feels.

Kalalily

My understanding is that the medical profession is split down the middle on this and currently the NHS does not consider gender dysphoria a mental illness - unlike body dysmorphia for example 🙄

Dysphoria is the opposite of euphoria so a state of unhappiness as opposed to extreme happiness

Being unhappy is not a physical illness that needs invasive surgery. It is a mental illness

I don’t think you will find many ‘trans women’ keep their masculine names because that is sort of the point. There was that ( male) MP who claimed to be ‘working towards beings trans’ ( cue the entire HOC congratulating him/ them/ her) but they continued to wear a suit and tie and use the ( masculine) name they were elected by, so I think we can say that that ‘work’ didn’t have a propitious outcome.

In which case he can buy them himself and ask his new best friends for style advice.

He (and by the sounds of things your son) have reduced women to a set of fantasies in his head. That is enough for me to judge him by. That alone is misogynistic and sexist and is causing untold harm to women. And you talk of unisex changing rooms - do you mean like those in John Lewis and M&S next to the women’s lingerie which have been changed from female to unisex under pressure from gender lobbyists?

"Here's a perfectly nice hoody on this website. Crack on"

I suppose transwomen like to wear clothes that are obviously female, in the hope that you will see them as female. The transwoman I know best wears dresses or skirts and girly shoes maybe 90% of the time, unlike the vast majority of women that I know, who just wear dresses for special occasions.

It Is not others, it is themselves. They have a fantasy of what a women is in their head that they are acting out.

No, I am talking about unisex facilities , specifically toilets. Most recently at a motorway services. My young person would not dream of shopping for women's clothing in a store, for fear of making people uncomfortable, and because they lack the self confidence required. They don't wear lingerie.

As I already said, my young person is a victim of this ideology. I loathe the ideology. My young person is the same vulnerable gentle sweet person they always were.

Go for the ideology and the cheerleaders and I will shake you by the hand.

Start assuming that every vulnerable individual caught up in this - an ideology that, after all, they have been taught since childhood in schools and on media is factual, inclusive and kind - is a pervert or deliberately intent on riding roughshod over women's boundaries as their main aim? Then you become the thing you hate - an ideologically driven black and white thinker who has lost all sight of nuance.

The conversation about clothing is reminding me of when I worked in a department store as a student in 1996-98. One day, a man came in, dressed as a caricature of a woman, and he looked so miserable and uncomfortable. He was wearing a short tight minidress and wonky bright-red lipstick. He went to the lingerie department to get fitted for a bra. Back then, the NHS would only start gender reassignment treatment if the person had lived as the opposite sex for two years. I think you had to provide proof that you had been living that way, but I can't remember how. Perhaps people from their lives vouching in writing that they were living as a woman, I'm not sure. I don't know what the rules are today. Anyway, the woman in Lingerie helped him, and he came back with a box of chocolates for her.

When I was 12, in 1986, I went to the local ice rink a lot, and a young man used to skate. He was called Stephanie. I just accepted it as a child.

My point is that trans women existed long before any lobby, so I'm not sure it's the lobby encouraging them. Maybe it's just freeing them to express their real selves.

Anyway, if OP's son does want to express his feminine identity by wearing female clothes, I hope he gets some advice and ends up looking better than that poor uncomfortable person in the dept store all those years ago.

He is obviously going through some kind of breakdown/episode and needs counselling. I think the majority of this whole trance thing has a route in mental health problems.

I would contact the uni on invoice your concerns.

Then I would contact him and discuss the fact that you are paying for everything, and if he truly wants to cut you off, it also means financially as well. I think we beat around the bush far too much with our children and put up with ridiculous behaviour. Personally I would be annoyed at the entitlement of expecting you to pay for everything while obviously abusing your nature as a good supportive parent.

So you responded to my post about what a ‘girly shopping trip’ entails with an irrelevant post about toilets and not shopping without making either point clear?

Your son might be a victim but if he claims he is a woman then he is also responsible to helping to destroy women’s rights. If it is only self confidence stopping him invading women’s spaces then he not what I would call a sweet person. You can be both a victim and an abuser.

I responded to your assumption that all trans people (you "presume") use women's private spaces and inveigle and coerce others into supporting their fantasy.

My young person does not use women's private spaces, ever, so that is relevant. Where do I say that is only a confidence issue? I specifically did not say that.

I am delighted to see you beginning to have light dawn that young autistic males can be victims of this ideology.

I am delighted to see you beginning to have light dawn that young autistic males can be victims of this ideology.

The difference seems to be that you seem to think this means they cannot also be abusive - like OPs son, or the men who turn up and shout about at women’s rallies, or assault women, or block women speaking about women’s rights from X or Meta, or call themselves women on forms disrupting statistical evidence of discrimination against women or safety of drugs given to women, or demand the word ‘woman’ is removed from messaging for women… or become perverts through the use of sissy porn.

Victims of ideological indoctrination or not, we do not need to ‘be kind’ whilst they take up the ideology that destroys women’s rights and safety.

No, I didn't say that. Of course some of them may be abusive. I said that not all of them are automatically abusive, which appears to be your default "presumption".

I might add that women fighting against trans rights can also be abusive.

Like I said - dislike the ideology, dislike the principle that children are being told that they might be a different "gender" than their sexed body. Dislike the shouty TRAs and the middle aged sexual fetishists. Dislike the people joining lesbian groups and demanding access to women's sports.

But never lose sight of the fact that there is a large group of very vulnerable autistic young men who are really no different from the 13 and 14 year old autistic girls caught up in ROGD in terms of vulnerability, except that because of - I dunno, brain maturation rates? Puberty ages? - they are 5 -10 years older than the girls. Unless you believe that the ROGD girls are also inherently abusive and misandrist too? It's the same group of kids.

That's the problem. We are the issue we bow down to men because they are our protectors. We mollycoddle our boys. We are the ones instigating this not them. I watched Imane Khalif box his female opponent in the ring. Where are we heading this is too open minded. I don't want to watch a man beat up a woman. It is becoming more and more coercive. You will never hear a trans man say I want to go to male prison if they commit a crime or compete against a male athlete.

Anyone who demands I to pretend someone is the opposite sex to that which they are is abusive.

I want the ideology stopped. I don't want another generation of autistic kids to be swept up in this. Radicalised and brainwashed in schools to believe that their only chance of happiness is cross sex hormones. The ideology is pernicious. Some of the cheerleaders and bad actors are pernicious.

And a great many of the kids are just victims.

Oh ND. Where is the demand? Who is demanding is this scenario?

My kid just wants people not to be mean.
They are realistic that people don't perceive them as female. They don't "demand" anything. They just want to walk down the street in their chosen clothes (long hair, a long black skirt and DMs, mostly) and live a very quiet life, without being yelled at. To be fair that is what happens 99 percent of the time.

I really don't think you could find something to be angry at if you met them.

And the only way to help those victims is to stop pretending they are anything other than their sex.