Trans identifying people gaslight their parents - a heartbreaking read.

[Soontobe60]

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This broke my heart to read. The impact a child who chooses to declare themselves the opposite sex has on their mother in particular is brutal. I cannot imagine a world where my children would demand that I change my own history to bow to their indoctrination.

Lots of people smoke, with a really high risk of getting lung cancer and other complications.

And I don't imagine any parent ever had been delighted to find out their offspring has taken up smoking!

Its a facile, simplistic false equivalence to suggest that just because some things are dangerous, we shouldn't want to limit other dangerous things. 🙄

Hey wait up, its half term isn't it....

Identity is a self determined phenomena based on subjective personal beliefs & values. In other words, you don't get decide for someone else who they are.

Simply not true.
In nearly all cases, identity is something imposed by society, or biology. I am female, British, white, straight, and able-bodied. I did not choose any of those things, they are identities or social classifications that simply reflect the truth.

In some cases, a person does get to choose:
In Northern Ireland people can choose a British or Irish identity and passport.
Some people can choose an identity of mixed race or dual heritage or black, whatever they prefer.
Some people can choose to identify as disabled or not, when they have some physical difference that may or may not limit their daily activities - which is why employment and similar forms ask whether you 'identify as having a disability'.

But most of the time, we don't choose our identities.

For the purposes of this discussion: a person may choose to identify as 'trans' or 'a transwoman' or 'gender non-conforming' or 'non-binary'.
But they don't get to dictate how other people respond to this identification.
And they don't get to choose whether they are a man or a woman - biology decides that.

Yes, and very silly of them too, and if their parents are still around, they're probably worried sick about them. Whether they get to say so probably depends on whether their offspring are into weaponising threats of going no contact. It seems to be rather the thing with people who identify as trans; I don't know about smokers and devotees of Botox, perhaps they are more resilient.

A female baby is born with all the ova that she will ever have, so her mother will have carried part of her future grandchildren whilst pregnant. A daughter continues the mother's matrilineal genetic heritage. A son does not.

These primal biological facts remain regardless of what name and pronouns the daughter may go on to insist upon. Forcing a mother pretend her daughter is actually now a son is as scientifically ludicrous as it is emotionally cruel.

All your parenting memories being changed or deleted.

But they're not. The daughter doesn't want to discuss them.

That's not the same as them being deleted or changed.

I regard this overwrought hyperbole in the same vein as trans people and "dead names".

I agree with this to a point (though not sure I would call this controlling.)

I think this is a situation where reconciling the parent are child views is impossible. Either the mother is happy and her child miserable or vice versa. I do find the comments about her “perfect breasts” and name changing odd though.

I find the visceral anger at trans people taking new names, odd, in a world in which people changing their names via deed poll is not that weird.

I have been in this situation and think am coming out the other side thank god. I never called DD by her male name or changed pronouns, but did everything else I could to support her mental health, welcomed her friends and rarely commented on how she presented. The idea that you can bring in specialist support really doesn’t fly as they don’t want to change. It was unbelievably stressful and I really didn’t know whether my approach was right. I’m cautiously optimistic that she is moving away from trans ideology now with our relationship still intact and that is the best outcome I could hope for. She’s just gone to uni which I am very aware is make or break but it seems she has moved away from the trans crowd. My fear was she would be radicalized and encouraged to cut me off.

I'm not cis, just a woman thanks, and I don't have a gender, just a biological sex - no pretending here.

I think you are changing the basis of the argument here. This is not primarily about control. Yes, the mother, especially, is fully entitled to grieve. No, she is not at fault. The boot is on the other foot here @Twoallbeepattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepickles. It's you pov which is controlling. You're trying to obstruct a very natural reaction. Below the belt IMO.

This massively supposes the daughter has children. Many many daughters never do for multiple reasons.

You seem determined to be obtuse or play Devil's advocate.

This is my opinion based on what I see: of course sex and gender are related - gender traits are born of the two sexes - but that does not make them the same.

A person has a sex: to variable extents, each woman or man displays the gender traits related to that sex. If you are comfortable with your sex, your gender becomes irrelevant as it extends from it. Some people identify as a different gender; they have broken from their sexually imparted traits. They cannot change their sex - all their cells will continue to hold the blueprint of XY or XX (ignoring the small percentage of XXX, XYY and XXY people out there), but they can alter parts of their bodies to reflect the visible norm of the gender they choose to be, such as breast enhancement/ removal, or alterations to genitalia, hair and voice.

The result being that gender is a projection; you can call that 'pretend' if you like - personally I think that to the person living the different gender that will be more 'real' for them than their sex - but sex is scientific and unalterable.

My opinion of this article is that this mother is right to feel concerned about anyone aggressively promoting a life-changing decision. I can see that the experience of some trans people could give rise to a militant promotion and encouragement of 'rights' the moment a child starts questioning their gender identity. A change like that should be slow, measured and organic, not like a fast-moving stream that someone steps into that takes them over the waterfall before they know what's happening. I also think that it would be good if counselling between children and parents could take place (it may well do already) - not so as to persuade but to simply state how it feels for each. Ideally, this should be met with acceptance and empathy on both sides, but ultimately, if the child decides to go forward with a new gender identity then the parent should support this or risk long term harm to, or alienation from, their child.

It is my opinion that incidents of gaslighting, or aggressive promotion of a new gender identity as the mother in the article describes, would not now be happening if the parents of those first transitioners had unconditionally loved the person inside and not the physical shell they gave birth to, and society in general had been more accepting of someone with a different gender identity. Yes I'm sure it can be tough for some, but as someone with a trans person in my family, I can assure you that love and acceptance go a very long way to diffusing any tensions that might arise. We all remember the person before, but we don't grieve the loss of them, and we certainly don't see a barrier come down across our 'shared story'. It goes on, but the characters are a little different. In writing this article, this mother is ultimately fanning the flames of a fire that's destroyed her vision of life with her child. If she changed her vision, she would still have a beautiful relationship and life with her child.

What would you call it then, are the memories are to just be holed, and never accessed again because the daughter doesn't want to be reminded that she's a girl. The mother has memories of her child, they're probably years of happy memoirs, very important memories to the mother, that took up a lot of the mothers life to make. But if she's no longer allowed to remember them then what else could it be called but changed or deleted.

The TRA position is that you MUST believe as your child believes, and stop having your own memories of their past (which may be being quite comprehensively rewritten, beyond the child’s current self-perception now and over behaviours from years ago that multiple people can corroborate).

Obviously self-censoring your own memories is pretty crazy-making, especially if your child is threatening you with estrangement if you show any sign of failing to self-censor adequately.

Of course she's allowed to remember them! What hyperbolic nonsense.

The mother can keep as many photos, memories, keepsakes as she wants. She can have shelves full of photo albums if she pleases.

What the daughter wants is for those not to be shared with her. That's not an unreasonable request.

If you can find me any trans person who says someone must stop having their own memories of the past, I will engage.

Otherwise this is insane nonsense.

Fingers crossed for you and your daughter, and well done to you for staying string and not just instantly affirming her beliefs. It still astounds me that some parents just blindly went along with it. We I was 16 I had green hair, thought all property ownership was immoral and wanted to live on a commune. Teenagers often go through extreme belief phases and should be allowed to work through them without damaging themselves.

Can I ask out of interest (I still have younger children), I noted what you said about bringing in specialists not really being feasible becasue they think they really right at the time and dont want to change, how did you handle it the first time she said to you I think I should be a boy, or I think I was born in the wrong body? Did you say well tahts not possible? Do you think there was any form of counselling or therapy that cpuld have helped at that very early stage?

@Twoallbeepattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepickles
PP was referring to the word “cis”. There are no “ cis women” or “cis men”
It is made up bollocks. There are women and men (two biological sexes).
The word transwoman means a man who wants to be a woman and transman means a woman who wants to be a man. We all know that it is not possible to change sex so they are still the same sex they were born.

A feature of coercive control (for example, in an “romantic” relationship) and cults is that they rely on cutting off those they involve from family who might be concerned. The victim of such coercion will insist that they are not being controlled and that it’s entirely their choice. In reality they are vulnerable and being exploited. It doesn’t take much to see the similarities here.

It's entirely unreasonable, the only reason she doesn't want to hear about the life she shared with her mother is because she doesn't want reality puncturing her delusion. It's an unreasonable demand to make from anyone, let alone the mother you would think the daughter loves, love being a 2 way street.

Why is it only the parent who has to have 'unconditional love', where the reciprocity from the child. Unless of course they're too young for such an adult state of understanding in which case they're too young to 'know' they were born in the wrong body.

Children don't dictate to their parents.

person has a sex: to variable extents, each woman or man displays the gender traits related to that sex. If you are comfortable with your sex, your gender becomes irrelevant as it extends from it. Some people identify as a different gender; they have broken from their sexually imparted traits

Thank you for your detailed explanation @AtomHeartMotherOfGod I appreciate that - someone actually taking the time to explain their thinking properly rather than write brief, gnomic sentences.

I do disagree with what you’ve written above to some extent. I don’t see gender stereotypes/traits as “sexually imparted”. Gender stereotypes/expectations come from society, and, indeed, can differ between societies. Also, I’m comfortable with my sex but that doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with the gender stereotypes associated with my sex. I think they’re conservative and old-fashioned.

This - for me - is the crux of it all. I think gender stereotypes are silly and limiting, however, for me the answer to that is to ignore them not pretend I’m male or NB so I’m ‘allowed’ to do ‘man things’. I’m allowed to do what I want. I can wear trousers, cut my hair super short, be a builder, like Maths, play football - all without pretending to be a man or NB.

So, maybe part of the mother’s reaction in that piece stems from how upsettingly limiting the child’s outlook is. That is, how sad it is that a girl/woman doesn’t understand she can look like she wants and do what she wants rather than be in thrall to gender stereotypes that we all thought were on their way out in the 1980s and to give those gender stereotypes such power in her life and allow them to dictate to her so much.

She can remember them though, can't she? Nobody is saying that she can't. Why doesn't she remember them to the child's father or to a close friend? She could write down her feelings in a diary. She knows it upsets the child if she continually refers to their childhood and those are the child's feelings.

I would be interested what you propose as an alternative here. The situation you have is that the child is currently not speaking to their mother due to her reaction. If the mother wants some hope of repairing that relationship, she will need to get over her own feelings and put them to one side. If she doesn't want to repair the relationship, then fine, she can talk all she likes about her child's childhood. However, she must also prepare for the fact that other people who know them both might not want to take a part in that and prefer instead to respect the wishes of the adult child.

Unconditional love is expected from parents because procreation is a choice. Being born isn’t.

I think if somebody requests you do not share something with them and you are insist on doing so, it’s natural they will distance themselves from you.

Have you read the article?

Its a lot more deep and complex than the mother wanting to discuss something that the daughter does not.

Its not being able to refer, in passing, to memories, or photos, or experiences that they shared. Its having language policed all the time and having to check herself to not say 'my son' and have to correct it to 'my daughter'. A lifetime of memories are being changed.

Its incredibly self centred (and childlike) to imagine that either this has no impact on the mother and wider family, or that it somehow doesn't matter because only the mighty trans feels are valid and everyone else has to just suck it up.

Some posters seem to be willfully misunderstanding.

The mother is not complaining that the daughter will not reminisce with her.

Its about the drip drip drip of everyday rewriting of the shared history.

I really would suggest reading the article; it explains very clearly.

Most children don't have unconditional love for their parents. You might think that the child is being unreasonable here but the fact is the child has voted with their feet and no longer speaks to their mother. If the mother wants to change that, the ball is in her court. From the article, she seems unwilling to change so I guess the status quo will remain.