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?

What? Are you telling me that you can go to Germany and have surgery for free, as a non-resident, non-member of a Krankenkasse, because of mental health issues? is that the sort of bullshit TRAs are telling vulnerable young people?

I notice the OP hasn't been back and has no previous posts under their username.

Just like many other posters are first time posters.

A trans woman is a man who believes he identifies as a woman.

Much like someone with a vile controlling partner, you can be there for them if they need you, be a comfortable happy person for them, but you don’t have to listen to every detail of how great their vile partner is, when you know it’s a pack of lies they are telling themselves to get through their life. You could very gently ask if they are OK, if they are happy etc.
I think you can limit how much you talk about it, if that’s what you and your DH want.
But family is not an ideology, or a battleground.

The OP’s sister in law is autistic, people with autism are massive more likely to go down the trans rabbit hole because they struggle to interpret the world, they feel like they don’t belong and sadly that can be exploited by an online community who peddle falsehoods and inaccurate information to these vulnerable people. No one can change sex, you don’t magically become the opposite sex just by saying so, or by taking hormones and undertaking experimental surgical treatments. No one is obliged to participate in the delusions of vulnerable people, what her SIL needs is MH support, not affirmation of something that isn’t real.

Sure.

Raging:

very severe or extreme

eg. enjoy being excluded from their life very quickly
keep arguing against DSM, Human Rights, UK law and everything else

Hate:

an extremely strong dislike

eg. transphobe
transphobia central
"If you see a terf, punch them in the fucking face!"

Not RTFT but has anyone watched "A Change of Sex" that's currently in the BBC iplayer Archives?....

So just what is a transwoman in your mind? To me it appears that a transwoman is either a man with a mental illness or a man with a sexual fetish (or possibly both).

Do you believe that a transwoman is a man who has magically transformed into a woman? Or do you perhaps believe that a transwoman is a person with a "girl brain" instead of a "boy brain"?

Or do you believe some other conception of what a "transwoman" is?

The coercion involved in the view that if you do not want to lose your relationship, if you do not want to destroy the family, if you do not want rejection, shame, punishment and misery you must submit and pretend and put all else aside to indulge this one person....

for goodness sake, this is the antethisis of any healthy relationship! Everyone deserves better in their relationships, friends and family than someone holding this emotional/social gun to their heads if they fail to comply unconditionally with whatever they are told. Run a mile from someone who would treat you in this way, who does not see you as an equal, and does not care about you as a person as much as they expect you to care about them. Run. Always. Regardless of their identity choices, sex or anything else.

I wholly agree that this is really only about your DH and any children involved.

We’ll have no performative support here thank you very much, only 💯 affirmative, adherence to the rules will do, even if those rules change at a minutes notice, nothing less than total, slavish, worship will do.

Likely in Germany - assuming you are allowed to walz in and use my contributions for your validation surgery - you don't need a diagnosis of dysmorphia on account of our selfID laws

They can't.

It's just a feeling that a particular person has, apparently.

It's what they think they are that apparently matters.

The problem we have is 99% of trans people are just toddling along quietly, see Mitchell over there? That's is a man that likes to wear a skirt and call himself a man that wears a skirt. He cracks on with life and is quite happy bothering no-one. He'd prefer it if you called him Michelle now please.

However, Grant over there is a man that likes to wear a skirt and call himself a woman and makes everyone say he's a woman, and will absolutely insist you cannot refer to the name Grant, and you must call them Coco and will have people screaming at you saying that Grant is actually a female now, they've actually changed biology and anything you say against his beliefs is transphobia.... YOU HAVE TO COMPLY WITH THIS PERSON'S BELIEFS NO MATTER WHAT!
You're not allowed your own beliefs any more, you aren't allowed to believe he's still a man that likes to pretend to be a woman. In fact your workplace will try and force you to comply with this belief system and have you declare yourself as having preferences of pronouns. And public spaces will force your daughter's to change in communal areas with these men, and if you don't like a man wandering round, cock out looking at your 13 year old daughter...the YOU'RE FUCKING TRANSPHOBIC.

I wish the grants if the world and their "allies" would fuck off and leave the Michelle's if the word to just quietly get on with life.

I don't have a fixed view on this (unlike many on here!). To me it depends on the person.

My (formerly) niece now identifies as a boy (they're a teen). I call her they/them generally (at least to their face and to her dad and mum who are very supportive of their choices - the rest of the family all still say she in other conversations 🙈) and I do use their new name to them but sorry, I can't seriously call someone wearing a miniskirt and fishnets and full makeup with a boyfriend who is apparently with them as they're gay as him/he.

Along the same lines I struggle to call my neighbour 'she' - he's a bloke in a dress with a beard (and quite predatory towards other female neighbours and friends of ours).

My husband's friend Rachel I would always call her/she as she's had the surgery and you'd never know she was born male.

So I guess what I'm saying is go with how serious you think they are with it. I find they/them is less difficult than using the wrong sex term in most cases.

Why dont you have a chat with them and see whst they say. Im sure they'd appreciate it.

It rather begs the question that if we are so full of hate, in your opinion, what are you doing here? What do you get out of posting here, confirmation that we’re all terfs and are doomed to hell?

This is the trans paradox.

If trans women really were women and trans men really were men, nobody would need to say it.

We don't waste our time and energy saying that water is water and happiness is happiness and football is football.

The only reason anybody is bothering to say that trans women are women and trans men are men is because everybody knows that it is not true.

I'd go with avoiding the use of pronouns as much as possible.

Do you have any kind of relationship with her? Does your partner?

I'd try to be as neutral as you can. Not embracing it but not putting it down directly to her either.

The best thing you or your partner can do is try to get her out into the world a bit (presented in a masculine way if she chooses) and away from the internet. The more normal interactions and distractions she can have the better before this all becomes very one dimensional.

Please do report any hate to MN.

Why not? If you don’t think anyone has expressed hate, MNHQ won’t delete the posts.

Well exactly. Because there is none. But because not everyone shares this posters world view it’s “hate”.

Yes - facts are ‘hate’.

It is a fact that human beings cannot change sex. That is not hate.

But let’s face it…you, they and everyone knows they’re not a man. So it’s a big game of pretend.

I think if this was in my family I’d struggle. I would. However much you love, like or respect someone, they’re asking you to collude in a big fat lie and that’s not ok. It’s also not healthy for them either. The best life is self acceptance.

Feminism doesn’t include tall men, short men, bald men, beardy men, old men, young men, or men that pretend they’re women.

If you’ve merely come here to scold us then I wouldn’t bother, we’ve heard it all, the abuse, the insults, the patronising language, the eye rolling and the rage, and we are simply unmoved by it. I have no idea what you and the other posters get out of coming here to tell us we’re bad people, but we’re honestly bored by it. People can’t change sex, it is immutable, and no amount of surgery or hormone treatments will change that. You can’t bully us anymore, we’re allowed to say the quiet part out loud.

You could at least take a shot at something original, rather than the tired old tropes.

There's nothing wrong with not being willing to play pretend.