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.

@Rituelec I am sorry to hear that about your parents. I hope the reason they did not support you was a sensible one not a negative one. I do not want to lose contact and I am certain she does not want to. We are early days here so lots to talk about and take away.

What do you have to gain by not lying though? You certainly have something to lose - your relationship with your daughter. You don't have to change your views outside of this specific relationship and interaction with your daughter and her gf. Just like the fact that I go along with the lie at work doesn't change my opinions or views outside of the workplace, or limit my capacity to express them.

There is a degree of emotional manipulation in threats of no-contact when it comes to whether someone believes a person can change sex and whether someone should be forced to use language that doesn't follow the standard English language conventions to suit someone else's philosophical belief.

I’d suggest ordering a couple of books on how to deal with your child joining a cult and seeing what advice they offer. At least that’s what I would do.

It’s very common in our social group (home educators, almost all of us ND). I can see it coming for us too.

I do sympathies with them though. The world they are growing up in is not like ours was. I grew up with Annie Lennox on tv, Thatcher and QEII in power, Madonna changing her whole look every year, and a general feeling that being a woman was a good and infinitely varied thing. My kids are growing up with Bonnie Blue, Gisele Pelicot, morally weak but politically and financially powerful men seeing women and girls as objects to be used, and even colour coded toys FFS.

Id probably be NB if I was 14 now, just to take myself out of the whole mess.

The DD is insisting the OP says ‘they’ or ‘he’ rather than ‘she’ about a woman. This is the definition of being forced into something.

@FernandoSor because lying is something I will not do. I might have had to tolerate cross dressers bringing their ‘whole self’ to work but I maintained a civil relationship, nothing more. I did not join in with their discussions about PMT for example, others did.

Much of the language around trans ideology is deliberately constructed for political purposes. It’s all spin…not unlike the double speak or newspeak language in Orwell’s 1984. Affirmative healthcare for example when it the opposite.

There is so much about this that is grim, not least the inability to speak out at work, for instance, for fear of reprisals.

But family is different. My trans relative is still a kind and decent person and that is what matters most. I do not bombard them with my views, nor feel the need to lie. I just maintain a good relationship with them because I love them and that trumps everything else for me.

Honestly I don't see why on a day to day basis you should be needing to say sentences like "my daughter is dating a man" or whatever. I'm as GC as it comes, but when I deal with the NB or trans identifying people in my life I use their names (including when they're not in the room). Yes, it's a little awkward sometimes to say the name over and over rather than a pronoun, but I refuse to participate in compelled speech so I just try to phrase things to avoid pronouns and names entirely ("Cup of tea for X?" rather than "Would she like a cup of tea") If someone pressed me I would just say that my views are irrelevant to how I interact with them as a person.

I would just stop discussing her relationship full stop. Not challenging it doesn't mean you personally believe it - treat it like a weird religion or cult they're into.

I don't understand why you think that you need to buy into the lie though? There's a middle ground, which might not be what you would like in an ideal world, but is likely to keep your relationship going.

What does your daughter actually want you to do? And what's acceptable to you?

I don't share your views but I don't think that matters.

My own family is "ripped apart " because my mum didn't approve of my sister's abusive and controlling fiance. She was uninvited from the wedding and a decade or more after the divorce they still don't speak. My mum was right, but that's irrelevant.

As an adult most of us believe we have the right to choose our romantic partner. If we love someone, and especially in the early loved up stages, we're not really open to criticism. It's also pretty fundamental to relationships that you expect your family to treat your partner with respect.

I get that you see calling her partner a he is lying. She sees calling them a she as disrespectful. You're not going to win this one.

There's very unlikely to be an argument you can use or a form of words that leads to her wanting you involved in her life while not respecting the person she shares it with.

A friend of mine has a daughter in law who is very racist and I guess this would be my version of your dilemma. I don't know what I'd do if maintaining a close relationship with my child meant accepting something I couldn't. I suspect I would have to keep my

boundaries anyway, but it's a devastating thought. My friend's heart is breaking as she watches her grandchildren grow in passing at occasional family functions, but she can't pretend its OK.

Only you know if your views on trans people matter enough to you to risk a permanent fracture in your relationship with your daughter.

Self respect is what I would lose.

I have been in relationships affected by coercive control, where I have suppressed what I know to keep the peace. You gradually lose yourself to appease someone else. It’s unhealthy and I cannot do it any more, however painful the result.

Also, a number of women believed, as you do, that they would be safe to express their views outside work. Many of them were sacked or managed out and ended up in the courts. This is not a gentle movement that allows live and let live. It is very much the opposite.

Doing this on my phone so apologies for typos and autocorrect weirdnesses.

First, this is not an issue of conflicting beliefs. The hard core proponents of gender ideology refuse to accept that sex is an immutable biological reality. They are deluded and society doesn't normally validate and collude with delusions or ‘agree to differ’ about what's real and what's not - and never when there are consequences.

I can offer a perspective as someone who has been through complete estrangement from her parents (nothing to do with gender ideology). What your daughter deserves from you is complete consistency and love. Any kind of contingency between the two is fatal and undermines both. If you can be perceived as making your love contingent on her falling in with your world view she won't believe in the love. If you compromise your position on gender ideology to retain her affection she will neither trust your love nor respect your intellectual integrity or judgement – because you've shown that everything is contingent and dispensable.

Consistency makes you dependable and trustworthy should there come a time when your daughter needs your support or - unlikely! - your advice.

She may need your adult’s (parent’s) unwavering grasp on reality later – and then it will be helpful that you never wavered, never apologised for and never backed away from your sex realist position. Your love should also be absolutely consistent – and be a matter of behaviour and not verbal assertions. Be honest about the love, just as you are about the sex realism, but in general show rather than tell. Find concrete, non-conditional, non emotionally-blackmailing ways to demonstrate that this relationship won't change it. Your hospitality remains available, you call the girlfriend by her name but use sex appropriate pronouns when pronouns are required, whilst as far as possible simply declining to have the battle. If there's a flashpoint, don't back down and don't say sorry that your sex realism upsets the girlfriend or your daughter. Yet always be willing to allow things to blow over.

Never feed the conflict. Gender ideology is a battering ram; you need to be the immoveable object. As a PP has said, steadfast avoidance of certain conversational topics and bland refusal to engage goes a long way when there is an unresolvable conflict yet a strong bond. Model tolerance and steadiness, not vulnerability to emotional blackmail. It needs to be absolutely clear that you're not the one placing conditions on your affection for your daughter.

If your daughter walks away (and she might) you stay minimally in touch unless she explicitly asks you not to. Make sure you tell her now that your love is unconditional - and always will be . Try and choose a moment that doesn't make a drama of this declaration, but be clear and explicit: your daughter will remember this.

You need to let go of the idea that your beliefs require you to challenge those of your evidently happy daughter and her partner. As you say, you have enough to keep you occupied and awake at night without putting up unnecessary barriers between yourself and the people you love most. Forget the trans 'ideology' for a moment. Gender identity is far more important to you than it is to your daughter, who sees this individual as just that, as someone she cares for. If I were a young person in what I saw as a serious relationship and felt a parent was being openly hostile to my partner, I would walk. I know this, because I've done it. It had nothing to do with gender or religion or cults.
Many parental concerns about our children's relationships turn out to be valid. Many do not. Voicing those concerns rarely has a positive long-term impact. I've kept my mouth shut at times too.

@PriOn1 that’s pretty much my stance tbh. It feels like the whole ideology is based on the rest of us losing our boundaries of self respect to accommodate this ideology- which it is.

I had an aunt who was an alcoholic and we all played along for years about how ‘fun she was’, ‘life and soul of the party,’ essentially we enabled her. She was not able to see her problem, refused any interventions. She lost her kids to social services. Her husband left her. She ended up with nothing, but even then she joked she had a a great time getting there.

Yes, a degree of manipulation in threats of no contact for a plethora of reasons, not just the T issue. However, if OP is determined not to be manipulated under any circumstances, then she might well be cut off. The DD holds all the cards here.

As I said originally, what can OP do? She can continue to argue with her DD or decide not to argue with her. She doesn't need to refer to DD's partner as him or he if she chooses not to.

Is your daughter happy with this person? It's a bit like having a daughter date someone from a very different culture or religion. The lie might be that they believe in God and you don't etc. For you this is a lie. For them it's their worldview. It might change over time but that’s out of your control. If you can come to terms with the fact that people can have different worldviews (lies) but still make your daughter happy then maybe you can put this aside and have a good relationship. Ultimately it's up to you. Unfortunately your daughter is unlikely to change her mind because you want her to.

@PriOn1 I don't think having an adult daughter who has drunk the TRA cool-aid and expects you to go along with it when she visits with her partner can really be considered to be on a par with coercive control.

@PineConeOrDogPoo I have not said I want her to change her mind because I want her to and I appreciate the worldview analogy.

I’m just concerned she is wrapped up in a situation that she is way out of her depth in. I can tell from conversations that the person she is with has fed her the trans affirmations dictionary of terms. We had the whole ‘ gender assigned at birth’ bollocks a few days ago.

As someone growing up 60s/70s/80s I am baffled by this trans stuff - except I am not as I see it as the political movement it is to change society. Nick Wallis the journalist has a great blog on all this https://genderblog.net/about/

You have a curious and totally misguided view of human history! It is riddled with people ‘believing’ different ‘ideas’ who then wage war, commit murder , enslave people, burn them at the stake….

Christianity’s big idea was loving your neighbour even if they were different from you ( Samaritans were the ethnic and religious enemies of the Jews) but unfortunately that didn’t really catch on….

Is your problem with the relationship itself, do you think? Or is it that your daughter has become a transactivist and thus intolerant of the views she knows you hold?

For what it’s worth, I think the post by @LadybirdsProcessing is effectively what I believe, but it is an incredibly painful pathway when your child has been taken over by what feels like cult-equivalent behaviours and you find you are powerless to get them back.

@PriOn1 good points. I think I need to work out what my issue is over and above a maternal gut instinct that this is not a healthy place to be for her. Essentially I suppose I want to say hey this is an intoxicating part of any relationship but one with baggage already and the next phase maybe testing. As all relationships are but especially ones built on a lie.

I'm in the same situation OP, except that the trans person who is in a relationship with my daughter is a TiM (i.e. biological male). They have been together for a couple of years now.

I have to accept that this relationship makes DD happy, and that keeping my relationship with DD is more important than challenging gender ideology in front of her. She has never threatened to cut me off, but in general terms it's always going to be difficult and strained if you openly disapprove of a child's partner or their views, for whatever reason. And I don't disapprove of the partner as a person, I disapprove of him calling himself a woman, using the women's toilets, using female pronouns etc. I try to avoid pronouns but sometimes it's difficult, and when I've already used the name several times I end up going with "she". (Let's face it, if you use a name where you would normally use a pronoun it soon becomes obvious that you are avoiding pronouns.) But even after 2 years it feels wrong, and when someone else in the group says "she" it feels jarring, and actually rather ridiculous.

I'd rather DD's partner adhered to some other belief that fundamentally contradicts mine, like religion or politics, as unlike pronounds they don't come up in just about every conversation.

Insisting someone lies or remains silent when challenged on something they disagree with, backed up with threats to hurt them (whether that be by physically hurting them or by breaking up the family) is not on a par with coercive control. It is coercive control.

i don’t think your analogy works.

The issue is that the daughter is demanding language changes that will show observance of the belief that the OP doesn’t believe in at all, in fact, believes the opposite of.

In your analogy, it would be like the daughter has a partner from another religion or culture and expects the family to act as if they also belong to that religion or culture, in part, through language changes.

I was going to say just this.