Non-binary child major rupture in relationship

[Goldenpatchwork]

I have been as supportive as possible but dc and I had major fall out yesterday over issue of misgendering and ‘top surgery’.

This issue has been ongoing for several years. I see their psychological pain, and change my position on the surgery. Then the crisis passes and DC does nothing to progress their decision, and we’re back to square one - me questioning the politics of a community that promotes surgery and the articulation and simplification of the procedure.

DC is angry because I keep changing my mind. I respond because I change my mind in response to their pain but revert back to original scepticism when they have taken no action and I am relieved they haven’t. They are giving themselves time to contemplate.

It all came to a head last night and our relationship is further fractured. I don’t know when I have contact again. It’s really light touch now.

I can’t do anything but let it run its course. However, I feel I am being use a battering ram for DC’s actually being captured by the ideology.

Having written this perhaps I should grateful that I am perceived as the barrier. It’s delaying a life changing decision.

I feel such huge sense of grief.,

Nobody seems to be seriously looking at the social reasons behind this. It is a major act of self-harm.

Can she actually afford it? May be a non starter if she can’t, and something to just nod along to/avoid the topic of

I think it is the same importance placed on appearance that leaves women having nose jobs, boob jobs, Botox, fillers etc.
Character, eccentricities, dynamism, quirks, personality, all of these are less photogenic.
I think the pressure from society to fit into a group or a box is incredible and women do all sorts to fit a square peg into a round hole.

This has come up on other threads, and with no disrespect to the personal choice of PP the impact on women of the objectifying of women's breasts in contemporary is wholly negative.

Either we get women doing the most extraordinary and unnatural "enhancements" or wanting a double masectomy.

The Guardian has had 2 articles about women who said this was their life dream, and wrote about how liberating it was. And it was all about appearance, or rather how other's react to someone with breasts. But was made out to be about trans empowerment.

One celebrated being able to go bare breasted on a beach, which in many parts of Europe women commonly do with their intact breasts.

I am not being flippant, but wanting to appear gender neutral is something many women achieve without medical intervention.

And I also know many women who because of the natural size of their breasts suffer back pain and never ending clothes problems, have been refused breast reduction surgery.

Personally I am supportive of the Amazon concept that given their warrior focus often had one breast removed to make the use of bow and arrows easier.

How in a western society in this day and age can any decision about women's breasts their own or any others not be influenced by the torrent of objectification and commentary all the time.

Can you imagine a society where men's penises were on display everyday with tabloid commentary and worse.

Sorry OP.

This doesn't help or support you.

But think those who have said maybe you will have to just step back.

Or work out why your DC keeps bringing this up again and again.

Almost like she needs your attention when apparently she is old enough and mature enough to be living elsewhere with somebody else.

A sort of back handed compliment. That you are important to her.

I can’t do anything but let it run its course. However, I feel I am being use a battering ram for DC’s actually being captured by the ideology.

Having written this perhaps I should grateful that I am perceived as the barrier. It’s delaying a life changing decision.

I can relate to this. Not with my own DC, but with a family member I was close to. They fell down the rabbit hole of gender ideology abruptly, in what was to me a clear case of ROGD, which arose as a result of mental health issues, social isolation, and possible autism. I watched them rewrite their entire childhood (which I remembered far more clearly than them) to pretend their gender identity had always existed. I watched them fall victim to predatory influences I could do nothing to keep them from. I watched them recite all the transgender talking points as if they'd been brainwashed by a cult.

I was the only person in this young person's life who refused to play along with the delusion. I challenged it for years. Pushing back with love and logic, hoping I could reason them back to sanity. I experienced the same push and pull you did. The times when they would waver and doubt, they would seek me out and try to provoke me into an argument. I didn't rise to emotion, but I kept pushing back, every time. And they'd go quiet and pull back for a while. Change the subject and become warm to me again. Other times they'd go cold and lash out.

I was the immovable object, and trans ideology was the unstoppable force. And for a while it was a stalemate. At times, I could almost see them coming back to me. The doubt was so obvious, and I always made it seem like their ROGD gender identity was something they could walk back on if they wanted to. Not an intrinsic part of them. The path was always open with me. But it was closed with everyone else. It was a done deal. I was one person, and everyone else was telling them the opposite of what I was.

Telling them they knew themselves best, and their fabricated memories of childhood transness were completely valid. Telling them their mental health issues couldn't possibly be a factor in them feeling like this. That trans couldn't possibly be a social contagion. That if they didn't transition, they'd be miserable for life and probably kill themselves. That anyone who disagreed with trans ideology was a hateful person who didn't have their best interests at heart. And they shouldn't spend time with or listen to such a person, or they'd be contaminated by "far right" bigotry.

Their behaviour became more antagonistic. They tried to cope with the cognitive dissonance of staying in cult-think, by lashing out at the one person who wouldn't let them switch off their brain. I tolerated this for a long time. I felt like you do. That I had to be a human shield for this person I loved, because no-one else would. I kept thinking I could say the right thing and save them. This sweet innocent kid I had loved since I held them in my arms as a baby. But eventually I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't be one person holding back the flood. There were in their twenties and it had become constant verbal abuse and emotional manipulation. I couldn't get a text from them without crying after reading it. I couldn't think of them without wanting to cry, by the end. I had to step away.

I can't really offer any advice, except to say that I know how you feel. My experience was a few years ago, when the world was in the grip of unquestioning trans mania. I felt very alone in it. But people are starting to wake up now. If you could find others in your DC's life brave enough to push back on the NB identity, then maybe you could make an impact. I hope you can.

I disagree with this, at least in my daughters (?) case. She absolutely doesn't identify as male but she also doesn't identify as female, and that's the whole point of "non-binary", isn't it? And breasts are very visual.

You have your feelings; they have theirs. They're 24; my cousin had their bilateral mastectomy aged 20. If they wanted to do it, they could. They're clearly not sure yet.

I agree about you not having to have these discussions with an adult if you can't bear it. I found it just horrible to contemplate a younger woman I knew planning a breast enlargement; I've got my own scars amd history from life events and I work often with people dealing with life-changing surgical complications so this sort of extremely elective surgery makes me very stressed and upset. But if course they are so ludicrously young that the chances of perisurgical complications aren't high. Just the longterm harm of the removal of parts of their body in order to express something very dark about being female now.

DC is angry because I keep changing my mind. I respond because I change my mind in response to their pain but revert back to original scepticism when they have taken no action and I am relieved they haven’t. They are giving themselves time to contemplate.

Thing is, your DC has a fragile sense of self. She basically has no idea who she is, and is relying on other people to tell her. Right now, that's her peer group and her friends on the internet. She's performing the non-binary identity for them, and they're all playing along, because it's social suicide in those circles to question another person's declared identity. They can't (or won't) tell her it's all a crock of shit and of course she's not "non-binary".

She comes back to you because you affirm that little voice inside that says no, this isn't me. You've known her since birth, so when you say no, that carries weight. She doesn't really understand that she's using her pain to emotionally manipulate you. It's just what the ideology teaches them to do. (That, and demonising any doubters.) She uses the heightened emotional language she's been taught by the cult, because that's how she's been trained to think and talk about it all. The horrible reality is that the things she's saying - her "pain" - may not even be real. Just more talking points she's been trained to use to shut down an argument. She's angry that you're being inconsistent, because she underestimates how hurt you feel by her pain. How afraid you actually are for her.

Your emotions aren't real to her. She thinks you're operating from a place of objective logic. Trans ideology is either real or it isn't. So when you show inconsistency, by playing along sometimes, she takes that as a sign that your arguments are weak, even to you. (Maybe non-binary is real! Sometimes even my terf mum acts like it is!) Then she doesn't know where she stands anymore, she no longer feels on solid ground, and she lashes out.

I understand why you waver and give in to it sometimes. But if that's your daughter's biggest trigger, then maybe more consistency will help. Maybe telling her "I love you and I respect that your distress is real" while maintaining "but gender identity is not real" would make her feel more grounded. Focus on the feelings and never give an inch to the ideology? That really can work, if they're not too far gone.

It's a shit show, I know. I'm sorry. It's like trying to defuse a bomb. Sometimes you don't know if your approach is the right one until you've already cut the wire.

Trans women often take oestrogen which can cause breasts to grow. They absolutely do get breast implants sometimes if they’re not happy with the results.

But the fact is that while there are flat chested women, there aren’t big breasted men.

Thank you all again. Lots to keep me feeling a little better balanced.

This automatically implies that a woman who has had a double mastectomy, for actual medical reasons, is less of a woman.

Does your daughter think a cancer survivor, who has lost her breasts and hair in the fight, is less of a woman?

I don't mean to be rude, but it's such a stupid fucking thought process. The logic just collapses when you prod it.

Why was the reality of your daughter's body worth less than some hazy, half-formed ideas about "masculinity" and "femininity" she picked up off the internet? Couldn't she fix her thinking instead of harming her body?

What would you have said if your daughter told you "I want to cut off my leg because I feel like I should be in a wheelchair. But I only feel like that some days, so I'm only cutting off one leg." That would be completely insane. Why are breasts any different? Why are they the one body part it's normal to hate to the point of amputation?

"Breasts are very visual."

Your daughter's face is visual too. Would you let her pour acid on it to stop men leering at her?

Self-mutilation is not a healthy coping mechanism for feeling sexually objectified. It's madness that we've normalised this in society.

I love you and I respect that your distress is real" while maintaining "but gender identity is not real" would make her feel more grounded.

This, to me, is absolutely the right approach, not least because it’s the tried and tested method for any other non-reality-based harmful belief system.

Like the beliefs that OCD or anorexia sufferers have.

I think that's what's so upsetting about the whole thing, when you're trying to save someone from it. The universal "affirmation". I can't imagine trying to help your daughter out of anorexia, and every doctor, therapist, friend, family member, and virtue-signalling stranger felt the need to agree she was fat and push laxatives at her. Fundraise for her life-saving liposuction.

One day we are going to look back on this with absolute horror.

It's depressing that having dangerous surgery to cut off healthy breasts from a woman is in any way equated with being "non binary". Or any other "gender identity". It's basically cutting yourself in the most extreme form.

I think I would say something like “you are an adult now and this is your choice. I will always love you and support you. I’d rather you didn’t have a double mastectomy but I realise this isn’t (and never will be) my choice to make.
let’s not talk about this again. Remember I love you and you are perfect as you are”

Actually, correction, to say it's depressing is offensively minimising.

I think there is a point - and I’m like this with my own adult DC - that you need to let go and let them make their mistakes. You know it’s a mistake and yes, mastectomy is HUGE, but ultimately if she’s 24, she’s not a child. If she wants to mutilate herself, with the full consent of whatever dickhead medical professionals collude with this barbarity, then let her. She’ll have the responsibility, and any regrets will be her own to live with.

I do not get this non binary malarchy.
You are born male, your are male
born female, you are female

you can remove/stick on what you like and refer to yourself as trans NO issue!
but there is no such thing as non binary, you are still what you are

20 years ago people got sectioned for this

I, like most people, completely get not wanting to conform to gender stereotypes. I just don't see why it needs a label or announcing. My generation just, well, didn't conform. Girls had short hair, wore unisex clothes, went by unisex nicknames, wore sports bras or crop tops, chose not to wear make-up...

I don't get how non binary works from either side of the debate.

GC position is there are two sexes but this is about biology not presentation so things like having a mastectomy don't stop you being female.

From the TRA standpoint, sex is a spectrum and we might need our chromosomes examined to find out. Therefore non of it is binary. So everyone is non binary by default surely.

So if you become none non binary you then become a man or woman, to follow the logic of the argument.

Bobbins all of it.

Your child isn’t NB though, are they? That’s not a real thing.

Non binary isn't real, there's no middle ground or neutral anatomical form (genotype/phenotype).
Equally, your daughter wants to alter her body she's still your daughter after, the same as if she had tattoos all across her face.
I'd stick to facts and tell her you love her, regardless of what she chooses to do to her body.
It sounds like attention seeking so maybe show attention when she makes positive choices, plan for travel/activities and talk about the bigger picture (health and happiness) rather then the same smaller issues.

Great post.

I strongly suspect it's actually a subconscious reversion to a pre-pubescent state. So a kind of rejection of adulthood and particularly sexual maturity.

So a flat chest is 'male presentation' but we also recognise that a woman who has had a double mastectomy isn't less of a woman? There's some fairly contradictory positions on this thread about what is essentially a cosmetic procedure like breast implants.