Adult daughter dating trans-identified male, struggling to navigate family concerns

[BlueLegume]

Good morning all. I am normally rooted over on the Elderly parents threads. Just as I thought life couldn’t get more difficult it has. A week ago my adult daughter told us she was in a relationship with someone who identifies as male. This person was born female - daughter troped out the ‘gender assigned at birth’ nonsense. She has utterly ripped the family apart as she clearly has drunk the kool aid and cannot understand our concerns.

She has a great job, we are normal family where she says she has always felt safe and is loved.

Any advice welcome navigating this. Happy to answer questions but I will caveat this post with the following:

I am a sex realist. I hate the term gender critical.
I do not buy gender ideology. I think it is a term being used to expect society to accept trans etc off the back of the hard won rights for lesbians and gay men.

I do not believe anyone can change sex.

The ‘be kind’ mantra is a weaponised term to justify the nonsense.

Advice welcome.

The OP has said repeatedly she's happy to do that, but her DD is demanding she refer to her partner as 'he'. That's a step beyond being civil and accepting; it's in dogma/manipulation/coercive control territory.

Thanks @ConstanzeMozart

I am navigating things to ensure communication and contact with my daughter are maintained. She has changed dramatically since this relationship began and I noticed this but kept quiet.

Being ‘told’ how I must behave by her and some posters on here does very much feel like a veiled threat to do as I am told.

That is coercive behaviour.

I am navigating things to ensure communication and contact with my daughter are maintained
If you refuse to use preferred pronouns (which is your right) and you think of your adult dd's partner as mentally ill, genuinely interested in how you're navigating communication and contact? Hope it's working out for you. As it all sounds so hostile.

@SugarPuffSandwiches I will not perform because someone else tells me to because if I don’t do things their way they will feel offended. Be offended. Then consider why you are offended. If you then realise you are offended because I didn’t consent to your demands then maybe I am not the problem.

I have a right to consent - give permission for something to happen. My daughter has changed, dramatically actually.

I am staying calm and am listening to her daily rant about how I need to ‘educate myself’ and ‘understand how hard trans peoples lives are’. That doctors and midwives should not be allowed to assign what a new baby is, M or F. That in a progressive society they should wait for the baby to decide who it wants to be. All utter nonsense including that she believes her partner is a man and as such has redefined herself to fit the relationship as the partner who is biologically female does not like the term lesbian. She considers herself to be a straight man. That is internal homophobia and an insult to men. Especially gay men.

Not hostile at all. Again, you along with a few others seem to be so bloody minded that we all just get on board with the gender wang nonsense you just won’t give up.

When the medical scandal that this is enters the mainstream I presume you will be front and centre making sure these young women in particular get as much support and compassion they need for the hideous experiments they have been put through over the past 10-15 years.

I will not perform because someone else tells me to because if I don’t do things their way they will feel offended. Be offended. Then consider why you are offended
I mean, I literally said it's your right to hold your beliefs and use what pronouns you like. I'm not offended in the slightest, so not sure why you think I am when nothing I've said has indicated that?
Do and say what you like. I've never said otherwise.
You seem desperate to find offence yourself or you're deliberately misunderstanding or not reading my posts, who knows.

I have a right to consent - give permission for something to happen. My daughter has changed, dramatically actually

Your daughter is an ADULT though. Capable of making her own decisions on who she does or doesn't date.
Just like her partner is presumably an adult too and makes their own choices.

It's not really any of your business what genitals your daughter's partner has.

If you want to end up NC with her then carry on.

If you actually want a relationship with your daughter then suck it up and call him "he", it's not going to ruin your life unless you choose for it too.

From my perspective as the mother of a trans identified young woman, I'd prefer there to be more people in my daughter's life who will hold on to reality. Our family and I are the only ones who have not caved on the pronouns and new name. My daughter is able to accept this and knows how much we care about her in spite of what activists would have her believe.

I think anyone who complies with using male pronouns, even if they're internally rolling their eyes because they know humans can't change sex, are just as complicit as the true believers. I wonder how quickly she would have left this behind if everyone around her didn't preach the word at her.

So for me, I'd like more people in her life like you OP.

I'm of the opinion that OP is quite within their rights to call their daughter's partner what they like (not sure where they're getting that I'm offended from!)
but a consequence is that they can't be that surprised if the relationship is broken or damaged as a result.

Strange isn’t it that some posters don’t seem to think that your daughter should have any responsibility in maintaining a relationship with you, OP. Her demands are putting a strain on the relationship too.

When they're both unwilling to listen to each other, not really sure how the relationship can be maintained? Which is why I was genuinely asking upthread how they were "going about keeping a good relationship and communication" (paraphrasing slightly as can't remember their exact wording and don't have the post in front of me)

Some posters have told OP to “suck it up” if she wants a relationship with her daughter. I agree that there can be no compromise if OPs daughter is demanding that she goes against her own beliefs and uses incorrect pronouns.

I am hopeful this group of therapists are successful in addressing the travesty that has been medicalising young people, women in the main it would seem over the past decade or so.

https://www.thoughtfultherapists.org

Are you being deliberately obtuse or are you having a problem with comprehension?
The OP is talking about consenting (or not) to playing along with the fiction that this person is a man by referring to her as he/him.

I also hope the work being done by Nick Wallis and Mia Hughes will go some way to bring some common sense to the table, some facts and some honesty. All of which seem to be lacking in this whole debate.

https://genderblog.net/detransitioning-an-entire-culture/

That’s what I thought.

OP because you said ‘male’ that can only mean biologically male/born male. That does not apply in this case as she is a female who says she is a man.

I don’t blame you, most people must be confused.

No. You accept that the OP’s daughter is confused into pretending her girlfriend is a man, and trying to coerce her family into colluding with her in a false scenario.

Clarified earlier @ScrollingLeaves my daughter is a biological female. She is dating a biological female who says she is a man. She is not she is a woman who at some point has convinced her family and HCPs to go along with her saying she was assigned the wrong gender at birth.
A surgeon removed her healthy breasts. That means they ignored the ‘do no harm’ and did the opposite.
Either way people cannot change sex.
There are men. There are women. There is no new human or third sex that has miraculously appeared in the past few years.

@ConstanzeMozart I sense part of the issue for some of the posters such as @SugarPuffSandwiches is they have possibly quite genuinely bought the lie and acceptance that the lie is now unraveling and people are seeing the whole ideology for what is is does mean they have to consider they might have got it wrong.

Anyhow, I thank everyone for their view points. I have read them all. I have taken on board comments that are both inline with mine and also those not so.

To some degree I am quite impressed that some people have it in their hearts to accept what lies we have been sold. I’m just not there.

It's starting to appear that you enjoy your opinions more than you love your daughter, OP.

I do hope your resistance to swallowing them, at least whilst in her company, doesn't lead to you losing her.

Is being right worth that?

Interestingly the response I gave to the comment made by @WaitingForMojo about me essentially going along with things garnered quite a healthy amount of support.

my daughter is a biological female. She is dating a biological female who says she is a man. She is not she is an woman. Either way people cannot change sex
There are men. There are women. There is no new human or third sex

Has anyone on here actually said otherwise? You can legally identify as the opposite sex, you can't literally change your bodily sex though.
You can either accept that people are trans/identify as the opposite sex (which I don't think we know enough about yet) or we can all just continue to shout past each other at cross purposes in the guise of "I just want to know how to relate to my daughter!" when it's clear you're just wanting to "educate" people, churn out links robotically and pretend "you're all ears."
As I said upthread, it's like the online version of the andwich board person in the middle of a town square.

Oh, oh are we playing that game?! 😁 Will be interesting to see what response that gets off the board as it's usually *nobody cares how many likes you get, it's not a gotcha" or some such nonsense lol

Hopefully the image will be allowed. It is simply a screen shot of the 36 reactions of my response to being told to suck it up.

Actually @JustSawJohnny we are family of honesty. I love my daughter. That is not up for discussion.

If I could enjoy lying to her I am not so sure I would be the decent mother I have always tried to be. We have seen boundaries in society pushed so far that we are literally a society in chaos.

No @SugarPuffSandwiches no games being played. Just level headed common sense.

FWIW OP, I agree with you that people cannot change sex. What i do disagree with is your constant citing of the 'transgender playbook'. I mean, surely if your daughter had bought home any person that you didnt agree with, the idea that youd need to support her or lose her would stand. If she bought home a drug dealer, or a married man and you didnt agree with her choice, the same applies. Support her or lose her. You cant blame your lack of support on the 'playbook'.