How would you handle your (adult) child coming out as trans?

[Thinkingtoomuchandnotsleeping]

Just that really. I am petrified of losing our incredibly close relationship but I cannot come to terms with the expectation that I am supposed to just affirm his choice.
He is very early in his "realisation".
How would you approach this?

Unfortunately that's not enough.

when this happened to a relative of mine, they affirmed. They thought it was the answer to all
their child’s mental health issues, (there were many)
It turns out it wasn’t the answer and their mental health deteriorated rapidly after hormones started.
They now wish they’d taken a more cautious approach. You wouldn’t let an anorexic child take fat jabs without gently encouraging them to think about their health and the long term impact.

I would struggle massively with this. Any physical changes would be very distressing, though perhaps worse with a girl than a boy? Unless they have extreme surgery, boys/men seem to end up looking like themselves with long hair and body fat in the wrong places, while girls might end up balding, with beards and mastectomies.

As for the pronoun issue, I know some trans people and using their preferred pronouns does my head in. I do it to keep the peace, but it is not a simple thing and I resent it massively.

It's as if I were vegan for ethical reasons, or as if I believed in God. Other people believe differently, and that's fine. But if every time we met, my meat-eating friends insisted that I agree with them that it's better to eat animals, or my atheist friends insisted that I agree that God doesn't exist, what then? Either I agree, and lie to myself (every bloody time we meet!), or I disagree and people who are dear to me cut me off. This is what preferred pronouns do.

Oh yes, the vegan comparison is nonsense. Veganism doesn’t involve denying reality or changing the meaning of words.

OP, I would find this incredibly hard.

I’ve got no personal experience with this - I have adult daughters - but in these shoes I think I would explain to my son that I believe that his natal sex is permanent and non-negotiable. So I don’t really understand what anyone means by ‘gender’. But that I love him and will try my very hardest to accommodate his journey and development through life.

I know I would really, really struggle. I would be doing my level best to be unshockable, kind and supportive. But inside I’d be praying that it is a passing phase. I’d be hoping that by handling it gently and with love and good humour - avoiding drama and high emotion - that he’d have the chance to try it all on for size and realise life is still the same- it’s still just him, but in a dress - and that there’s no point. I would hope it would run its course.

I know a mum whose adult son cut off all contact with her quite a few years ago because her response to him, coming out as trans, was not as he would have wished. It’s desperately sad. Zero contact. She hasn’t seen him for years. Doesn’t know where he lives.

I’m so sorry you’re going through this.

But veganism does involve a belief that it is wrong to eat animals. Gender ideology is an obvious belief system. Imposing that belief on the whole of society and refusing to debate anyone who has a different view is not reasonable in a liberal democracy.

They are still completely incomparable beliefs, though.

I'm sure it's very confused logic, but I can't imagine blaming a mother for a sexual assault in a situation like that...was it along the lines of 'you didn't affirm, so I had to live w/ abusers' ?

The trans playbook is absolute to blame and attack if complete submission isn’t shown. It’s highly abusive. “If you don’t do what I want I’ll leave home/never speak to you again/kill myself”.

Even the less extreme versions are like this, as we’ve seen - keeping someone away from those who don’t bow down.

It is so so horrible for families caught up in it.

"those who don't bow down"?

No, we just stay away from people we know will never respect our decisions or our young person's right to live in the way that makes sense to them.

This moral superiority doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. We all deny reality in language all the time, unless you do tell your friend her bum looks massive in that, yes, and by the way her new haircut is shit, those shoes would look better on someone half her age, and she is a rubbish dancer with zero sense of rhythm. And tell your younger colleague that actually he's made a complete balls-up of the proposal and you'd prefer it if he never wrote a proposal again. And tell your mum that you hate the picture she has chosen for your birthday, the colours are vile. And so on...

Who knows anything , really...until that thing actually happens?

Immediate responses: If a son I'd be bemused and ask what on earth made him think he was in the same category of human as me. If a daughter I'd feel sad and ask why she felt she couldn't just be herself while not hiding the fact she's female.

Veganism can imply any number of different beliefs or preferences. It is is not always about believing it is inherently wrong to eat other living creatures. It can sometimes be about the cruelty involved in the consumption of animal products; and for some it can be about human health; and for others it is about planetary health and ecology.

Gender ideology is of a different category altogether. It is an attempt to impose a whole new radical re-definition of being. The concept of 'gender identity' challenges the reality of biological sex by saying it is irrelevent and meaningless. An empty thing. That the only reality is 'the soul' or the personal feelings.

That's not how it seems in practice for a lot of trans-affirming families and their kids. There seems to be an expectation to celebrate and joyfully chime in with one's own pronouns. I've seen explosions of anger when someone who's tried to use preferred pronouns accidentally uses accurate sexed pronouns. I've seen bullying from trans and non-binary kids towards other kids at school who don't buy what they're selling or who don't want to interact simply because it's too exhausting to be friends with kids w/ fragile identities.

I have a lot of friends w/ kids who have some version of a gender identity and the peer pressure to chime in when someone says they are the most vulnerable, etc. etc. is pretty strong. Even if I'm polite, or simply don't encourage a long discussion, or simply listen quietly without comment, affirming parents get really annoyed and go off on self-righteous vents. They complain of not-sufficiently celebratory family members, they believe the world is against their kids when often it's that the world sees the emperor is naked. It's always, always walking on eggshells around them if their kids are in the room or being discussed.

I'm not saying you're like this, but my god, being around my affirming friends and their kids has been really sucked these last 6 some years. It used to be so easy in my social circles and now it's like socializing with Gestapo in training.

Correct, and the only thing making the person the opposite sex gender are their words and everyone else's validation, except you can't force the validation and the world is starting to get sick of it.
I wonder where some of these people will end up when this passes?

Ah now. You know that none of those are comparable with demanding that male words are used for female people and vice versa. Just as your vegan comparison was nonsense as well.

Accept them as they are? Or as they say they are? Genuinely curious where would your line be on this.

If your adult child decided to devote themselves to for example, becoming ethnically Chinese (assuming you aren't ethnically Chinese, in which case what bad luck for my analogy).

Would you really help them shop for make-up products to darken their skin and change the shape of their eyes to look stereotypically Chinese? Wholeheartedly endorse that they are truly Chinese? Start calling them by a Chinese name? Begin to respect their opinions as an expert on the Chinese experience? Expect any friends/acquaintances you might have who are actually ethnically Chinese, to immediately treat them as genuinely, authentically Chinese - no questions asked & no offense taken? Support their decision to have plastic surgery to appear more ethnically Chinese? Agree with them that you mistreated them in their childhood by your failure to recognize that they were, actually, Chinese all along?

Would there be no part of you that wanted to explore:

1. what is actually being expressed here
2. where has this come from
3. is this right/fair/respectful to ethnically Chinese people

(Whilst at the same time, of course, being as loving and supportive as you can be & trying your best not to alienate)

As a GC person I can't see the difference only that one is a cultural Zeitgeist and the other isn't (yet?). Biologically it's actually far less of leap to change racial characteristics than it is to change sexual ones, but the difference in the level of taboo just feels like well, misogyny really.

Pretty much, yes. He had a crowdfunder saying that he'd been kicked out of home. He definitely wasn't kicked out. His mum was heartbroken when he left.

Great analogy

If you can't see the difference between wanting to be Chinese and being trans then there really isn't any point discussing this further. As I said, I really don't care what so called "gender critical" Mumsnetters choose to do to their relationships with their adult children.

Being trans involves wanting to be something you are not and never can be (the opposite sex). So what’s the difference between wanting to be a sex you aren’t and wanting to be an ethnicity you aren’t?

Well I think there is a point. Something doesn't have to be exactly the same (in fact, it can't be) in order to be analogous, in order for an analysis/exploration of the differences to be valid.

If you think there are key differences which justify (what I presume to be) your very different approaches to these scenarios, please elaborate, please explain them. I'm not being disingenuous.

Or, if you'd prefer to shut down the discussion than address this uncomfortable comparison, then so be it.

On the topic of analogies:

PERSON: this is my contribution to the topic

RESPONSE: I don't understand that, because I see it this way, could you explain?

PERSON: if you can't understand my perspective, there's no point explaining it, and I don't care what you think anyway!

Why join a discussion on a topic you don't care about and don't want to discuss???

You accept them for who they are. Love them and fully support them. They are an adult, its up to them how they live their life. If you don't you will probably have a very stranded relationship at best. You deal with your trauma, talk to a friend. It will get easier. Just be accepting

My best friend went down the embracing and supporting route. She did everything she could to help her daughter be who she was, a boy and not a girl. She called her by the new chosen name. She driver her to a ‘rainbow group’. She took her to Pride marches, even organising a float through her workplace festooned with rainbows and trans flags. New clothes, new haircuts, new friends.

After eighteen months of this the child tried to kill herself. She was hospitalised and her stomach pumped. Three weeks later she tried to hang herself from a tree. She started counselling. It was discovered that she had been cutting her arms for months.

And it came out that she didn’t think she was trans. She was a girl after all. She was too scared to tell her parents and they had been so supportive and gone out of their way to welcome her new boy persona Their new son.

She was embarrassed that the school, her friends and her family would all have to be told that she was just Emma again. That they would have to get rid of all of those clothes and buy even more things. She was worried that someone at Rainbow group would find out and be disappointed in her.

Who knows what would have happened if her parents hadn’t been so supportive of her. Would it have just passed by as a fad like how kids get obsessed with yo-yos or saying six seven? if they had just said ‘you can’t change sex, you can wear what you like and I couldn’t care less if you change your name to Jaxon but you can’t become a boy’.

She’s tried to kill herself five times at least. Every morning my friend is worried until she sees her again in case she has killed herself during the night.