Like many, I have found myself pondering @SolveMyPrombles OP. Partly due to the heat. But actually I have been grappling with it for nearly 10 years in fact, as I tried to support my DC. Some posters and lurkers here will recognise me despite a recent name change.
Because I have only ever seen the distress, the angst, the anger my child feels. Mainly at how women are perceived, at how she felt starting her menses - during the Weinstein trial and Trump’s grab ‘em by the pussy’ tapes and the height of the MeToo movement that confirmed that women are vulnerable and men have all the power. I understood that periods are shit if you start them relatively early, that the hormones and emotional turbulence they bring are difficult to navigate, especially if you have an as yet undiagnosed ND condition - or more than one. But she didn’t.
For much of this time I thought it was an extreme reaction to societal pressures and that she would find her way, come to terms with it. But the self-harming, the suicidal ideation, the actual (admittedly feeble) attempts at suicide spoke of something deeper. I then spent years thinking it was my and DH’s fault. Was he too masc? He has a corporate job, is often away with work, is sporty and happiest with the trad-male household jobs that his dad and grandfather taught him (plumbing, gardening, wiring). I wondered whether she was starved of his attention when home because he sort of relates to our son a little more easily. I wondered whether I had contributed to a toxic home environment that affirmed genders - I am SAHP because we have no local family to support and returning to my corporate pre baby job would mean nannies, staff and I hadn’t wanted that for my kids. Did she look at me and see an ultra femme and weak parent? Was I to blame for telegraphing and affirming toxic gendered stereotypes? I asked myself this over and over.
Except that I know this was not the case. My DH has lavished time and affection on both kids, encouraged both in STEM and the arts, dedicated his weekends to supporting both. Both were offered the access to the same sports and arts activities. There was no pink or blue to be seen amongst their toys. We let them steer and gently pushed back against sexist, racist and homophobic comments by their friends. DH cooks and does housework. I have worn a dress a dozen times in as many years and as I am as likely to be knee deep in polyfilla, emulsion and white spirit as I am carving my way through a month’s ironing with a bottle of vino and a gruesome crime boxed set. A few weeks ago I had my first ever manicure (BIAB which I have just seriously tested today hand sanding down the wooden kitchen counters and applying Danish oil. Not sure that was the oil I was supposed to drench my cuticles with, but hey, I’ve skinned my knuckles anyway).
When I explained to DD that I did not know what she meant by a gendered soul, many years ago now, because I don’t have a ‘gendered identity’ she said that was ‘very terfy of you mum’. But the thing is, I don’t - I was adopted into an apparently liberal Iranian muslim family where there were nonethless very clear expectations for women and girls. Women gave up their seats for male relatives of any age, even if there were 4 sofas and only one female person seated. Women ate after men had been served. Once I hit puberty my dad had very clear and strict ideas on how I could dress and the fact that it was MY responsibility to ensure I did not excite the sexual attention of men. Not theirs. It did mess me up and I, like my mother, had an ED by the time I was at uni, but I was fully recovered by the time I had kids. But did I telegraph my ingrained body shyness or residual issues with food? I’d be naive if I thought DD didn’t pick something up over the years.
I am probably very femme to people looking at me and my life - I sew, craft, play woodwind instruments, am an [feminist] English/creative writing post-grad. I’ve just hand knitted blankets for each of my kids for university, FGS. I desperately wanted kids - but to heal after a dysfunctional childhood, not because I am a ‘woman’. Do I ‘feel’ feminine? No. I just AM a woman. I no more understand what ‘being a woman’ is for other women, than I understand being British, or ND, or white. I only understand what my experience of those things are through the lens that is ‘me’.
So where does that leave us as a family? How can my DD have had such a visceral response to her changing female body? And it was the changing bit that was the issue. She had no issues with being a girl before her periods started and her breast began to bud. I truly do not think she ‘wants to be a man’. She just doesn't want to mature into a woman with a body that feels alien, with a mind/maturity that hasn’t caught up yet, in a world that she is struggling to understand, where the narrative around women is hostile, where toxic masculinity is recognisably an issue within certain demographics. I mean - it’s all a bit shit, isn’t it?
As far as I can see, my DD has never had any trauma other than puberty itself. A puberty she was not quite ready for, that being ND made harder for her to navigate, a puberty that is continually being pathologised by society and which the current social, political and clinical narrative is one where, rather than offer support for young people who are struggling - whether through autism, family trauma, confusion over sexual preference etc - we offer to medicalise it. I think she started as a distressed and confused little girl and society’s response to her distress has damaged her.
So no I don’t think she - or any other ‘trans’ person - has a disease. I think she has a maladaptive and negative reaction to adolescenceand her sexed body that gender ideology has weaponised and used to deeply and utterly harm her. I think she is ‘ill’ but I am constantly hopeful that given time and space - and no conversion therapy legislation or tacit cultural condoning of medicalising adolescence that the PB trial communicates - she and others like her COULD get better. Mental illness doesn’t have to be permanent. It doesn’t have to define a person - but cosmetically altering their bodies or giving them cross-sex hormones which we know do more harm than good, when they are too young to make other life altering decisions alone or unguided by parents - well, this risks trapping them in a mental ill-health cycle for life. I, personally, think that is unconscionable.