Trans sibling in law

[Primrose86]

DH's sibling has just come out as a man. She is 26 and autistic, lives at home with mum, spends life on the Internet, got kicked out of school at 16 etc etc She has plans to go overseas and transition in germany where apparently you can get surgeries on the public health system while living with her grandpa. Her mum is fully supportive of this.

How should I react to all this. Should I start referring to him as my brother in law? What usually happens after people come out. I assume they progress to hormones and surgery but honestly based on what I read, Germany is quite resistant to health tourists who never paid in even if they are citizens. Are people really happy identifying as another gender when they wouldn't look like the other gender?

Well what are they then?

So could you explain what the characteristics are, to make sense of this part of the post?

You can change your gender by adopting the characteristics of the gender you identify with as demonstrated by transgender people all over the world.

How would one know which characteristics to adopt?

That’s precisely her point, which you’re disingenuously “misunderstanding”. In 1940 those might definitely be “masculine”: not so in 2025. In 2025 gender ideologues frequently talk about short hair being “masc” — whereas the majority of women in 1985 had short hair, so it would have been ridiculous to talk about short hair being “masculine” at that time, no?

Gendered clothes, behaviours and stereotypes change over time and across different social groups. Some gendered stereotypes or roles are external, like clothes and hair; some are social or personality-based (a liking for maths, ability to knit, submissiveness or shyness). Obviously, since these are socially inflected and constructed, all individuals do/display/“perform” them to varying degrees and with a high degree of changeability. They’re to a large extent shifting preferences and choices, some conscious and some unconscious. So how can one “identify” with them? Is “identifying” with wearing dresses different to “identifying” with being timid, or being good at engineering, or liking watching formula 1? Is there a threshold for “masculine” attributes where if you tip over a certain amount you are “identifying” with masculinity whereas if you only like a few traditionally male things, you’re still “feminine” enough? If you did everything that was considered “masculine” but just didn’t “identify” as such, are you still “feminine”?

All of that is just to show how silly and nebulous these ideas of “identifying” with “gender” are. Nearly all “gendered” roles and attributes are socially produced behaviours, not expressions of innate dispositions. Otherwise they would not vary so much with fashion and social change, would they?

My FIL is actually or potentially deluded, I’m not sure which. It’s probably dementia.

Anyway… he’s told me and various family members many times, with apparently the deepest of sincerity, that he’s going to overcome/recover from his late-stage Parkinson’s Disease.

Therefore he is refusing to engage with this medication regime properly, to engage with physio or occupational therapy at all, and he continues to drive despite having accidents… he’s a huge danger to himself and others.

He lives overseas and when we visited recently the family were mainly in happy denial of, ‘oh dad’s keeping up a very positive attitude so we let him get on with it!’. And this attitude was leading to him having falls on a daily basis, and his capability rapidly and unnecessary reducing before everyone’s eyes.

When we visited and saw what was going on we were furious. Furious about the state he was in; furious that it was simply easier for everyone to go along with his delusions rather than doing the hard work of helping him. And furious that we’d been kept in the dark by everyone including him about how bad things had become since our last visit.

Should we therefore be continuing to support and encourage his delusions in an affirming way as he gallops down a deteriorating spiral of physical and mental health?

Or should we step in, nod politely at times, but underline to him that this is a degenerative condition for which there is no cure; and that by him and us doing the hard work of accepting that and engaging with treatment, we can actually improve his quality of life and extend his independence?

Does anyone see any parallels here?

This. I’m not sure why people are having so much trouble with this concept. Gender is a social construct based on the current prevailing sex stereotypes.

That sounds so difficult

Here's where you're supposed to realise that just because a global health body has said it, doesn't mean it isn't gibberish.

Well - the clue is in the name, but there are others who seem to reject gender fully. Someone earlier said it’s nonsense and they don’t have a gender, others think it’s too wishy washy to hold any real meaning at all.

I understand being critical of those stereotypes, but you can’t challenge them if you don’t acknowledge they exist. If you don’t believe in gender identity at all, how exactly can you challenge the stereotypes.

Of course people acknowledge the stereotypes exist. They don’t think they’re anything more than that.

Well you tell me what a gender is, where in the brain or body one would find it, and I’ll tell you if i have one or not.

I agree with you. But mumsnet is a transphobic space sadly.

So you think she's changed sex then?

I think we keep them under our left knee caps?

I think we both know that anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows what a gender identity is, and where they’re come from, whether you acknowledge how your own life might (or might not!) have been shaped by those stereotypes isn’t really up to me - or anyone else.

It's not. Some people just accept that no one can change sex. As it's biologically impossible.

Op, given you barely have a relationship with this person anyway, I'd just avoid them as that seems to have been how it was going.

Well I don't.

I understand what gender stereotypes are and that people will align with / rebel against them to varying degrees.

But as to what then constitutes being transgender and how you change genders - I am no wiser than I was at the beginning.

You can actually be supportive of how someone identifies, and still believe that it's impossible to change biological sex.

That. I'm GC. I work with a trans woman. I call her by her chosen name, and I now say 'her'without even thinking. She's lovely.

Do I think that she's a woman? No. But I see her as a person, and a particularly good and kind one. So I'm not going to agonise over the rights and wrongs of transitioning when I'm with her, and I don't believe that me referring to her as I do, is a lie. We just work together harmoniously and happily.

No it's not. There's a difference between being Gender Critical and Transphobic. But screaming "Transphobia" seems to be the standard response to anyone questioning the TRAs hard line beliefs.

@SleeplessInWherever You seem very confused. There is a big difference between the long-established sociological concept of gender — socially produced stereotypes, sex roles and conventions, all external to the individual person — and the notion of “gender identity” as it’s been (very recently) invented by gender ideologues, which is an ineffable, inborn and unchanging, metaphysical or quasi-religious sense of whether one is “meant” to be male or female, and which is internal to the individual person.

One can perfectly well acknowledge that “gender” in the first sense exists (and is a way that women often find themselves oppressed or disadvantaged compared to men, and as such be “critical” of it); and also think that “gender identity” in the second sense is a made-up, unscientific load of codswallop.

I don't believe in gender identity. I don't have an inner feeling of being a woman. I just am one. According to one of my friends this makes me agender or some form of non binary. According to some other friends it means I'm "cis" because I'm happy being referred to as a woman.

Gender stereotypes are bollocks and we should be fighting against them. Plus they vary depending on where and when you are. Eg pink used to be a masculine colour.

I think that ‘gender critical’ is now used broadly to include anyone who has concerns about the conflict between trans rights and women’s rights, so people who are gender conservative or just want the right to single sex spaces are erroneously included.

However, feminists recognise gender as a social construct that oppresses women.

When somebody says they don’t have a gender, they mean they don’t have a gender identity. Gender is externally imposed, regardless of any internal sense of identity.

As somebody born in the second half of the twentieth century, with grand parents born at the beginning, I would say that the story of that century was the story of women being released from gendered expectations, largely through gaining control over their fertility (a right that still can’t be taken for granted) and maternity rights (which still lead to discrimination).

Men have not moved nearly as far, but that is no reason for women to move backwards,

It’s not a neutral act to impose the idea of gender identities on others.

Is this the lead up to where you say ‘I suppose you think trans people don’t exist either’? So predictable.

I mean I think the whole gender thing is absurd and if it were my sister or my child I’d try and get them to understand that you can’t change gender. If it were my sister in law then whatever, I’d give no reaction because it wouldn’t really affect me.

What’s your definition of transphobia?

I’m not confused, and don’t condescend me please.

The person directly below you doesn’t have a gender identity. They have been unaffected by those social expectations, or constructs, and have somehow escaped the impact of them.

My point, which has just been proven, is that whilst I completely agree that you can acknowledge gender constructs whilst also criticising them, some seem to reject them altogether. Which to use your phrase, is codswallop. You cannot have lived a life completely free of gender based ideologies, or else there’d be nothing to criticise.

No, I know you don’t think that, and I don’t usually questions I can work the answer out to.